SatStats

On this day:
1606
Gunpowder Plot: Guy Fawkes is executed for his plotting against Parliament and James I of England.
1865
American Civil War: The United States Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, abolishing slavery, submitting it to the states for ratification.
1876
The United States orders all Native Americans to move into reservations.
1915
World War I: Germany uses poison gas against Russia
1942
World War II: Allied forces are defeated by the Japanese at the Battle of Malaya and retreat to the island of Singapore.
1943
German Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrenders to the Soviets at Stalingrad, followed 2 days later by the remainder of his Sixth Army, ending one of World War II’s fiercest battles.
1945
US Army private Eddie Slovik is executed for desertion, the first such execution of an American soldier since the Civil War.
1958
Explorer program: Explorer 1 – The first successful launch of an American satellite into orbit.
1958
James Van Allen discovers the Van Allen radiation belt.

***

Bad as it is financially for the federal government to be saddled with the runaway costs of “entitlement” programs, it is far worse for the society as a whole to be saddled with millions of people with the “entitlement” mentality and all the social problems that go with it.--Sowell

***

And this is far from the end. With thousands of officers having risen through the ranks under Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, these individuals now recognize they are primary targets for a systemic purge. Mobile devices have been seized across ranks & all units are now on high alert--Wei

***

David Brooks, who has occupied the prestigious (if mythical) “reasonable conservative” perch at the opinion section of the Paper of Record for nearly a quarter century, is now decamping for The Atlantic, another inert organ of elite consensus politics, to serve as a staff writer and host of a video podcast. For Brooks to be forsaking his role as the nation’s Times-branded civic scold while US democracy swoons further into the abyss amid Donald Trump’s second authoritarian term drives home how ineffectual-to-untenable he has been as a trollish Never Trumper. Still, his failure bears a closer look, if only to size up the vacuity of a particular strain of culture-calibrating punditry from the US right that has bent over backward to avoid acknowledging a clear and present mobilization of blood-and-soil reaction.--the intro in The Nation on Brooks by Lehmann

***

Virginia's Clean Economy Act was passed in 2020. The law requires the states’ utilities to be carbon-free within two decades. Dominion Power last year said that it would need to charge ratepayers $220 billion—about $25,000 for every man, woman, and child in the state—to pay for the long-term costs of renewable energy “certificates” to meet the mandates.

***

SatStats


The decision made this winter by ReaderLink to stop distributing mass market paperback books at the end of 2025 was the latest blow to a format that has seen its popularity decline for years. According to Circana BookScan, mass market unit sales plunged from 131 million in 2004 to 21 million in 2024, a drop of about 84%, and sales this year through October were about 15 million units. But for many years, the mass market paperback was “the most popular reading format,” notes Stuart Applebaum, former Penguin Random House EVP of corporate communications.

*

The greenback has lost about 14% of its value relative to the euro over the past year.

*

California already relies on taxpayers making over half a million dollars a year (the highest income 2.5 percent) to pay 49 percent of income tax revenue.

*

Europe


Nearly two-thirds of respondents said the “best years are behind us” (63 percent), while 77 percent believe life in their country “will be harder for the next generation, according to a poll by the strategic communications firm FGS Global shared exclusively with POLITICO, which surveyed more than 11,000 people across 23 European Union countries in November.

A majority of Europeans (76 percent) said democracy in their country is in decline.

Nordic countries, generally less gloomy, had the most positive numbers. Negative opinions were higher in Romania (91 percent), Greece (88 percent) and Bulgaria (86 percent).


*

In all countries, more than 70 percent of respondents felt they were “entitled to expect more from government,” as opposed to expecting too much.

*

Asked whether they agreed their countries “should be more assertive of [their] national interests even if this creates friction with other countries,” a large majority approved (71 percent).

*

A Biden administration Treasury study found that the wealthiest 92 Americans faced total state, local, federal, and international income tax rates of 59 percent. Recent research by four prominent liberal economists concludes that US billionaires pay higher tax rates than their counterparts in the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and France.

*

Skenes

Skenes had just a 10-10 record in 32 starts with the Pirates, but a 1.97 ERA over 187.2 innings pitched, 216 strikeouts to 42 walks, a .199 opposing batting average and a 0.95 WHIP, along with a 10.36 K/9, a 2.01 BB/9 and a 5.14 K/BB.

*

He ranked amongst the best pitchers in baseball, with the lowest ERA, tied for the fourth-most strikeouts, the fourth-lowest WHIP, the sixth-lowest batting average and the 10th-most innings pitched, plus the fifth best K/BB, seventh best K/9 and ninth best BB/9.

*

Skenes also ranked highly in the NL, with the lowest WHIP, the fourth-lowest batting average, tied for the second-most strikeouts and the fourth-most innings pitched, as well as the second-best K/BB and both the fifth-best K/9 and BB/9.

*

His play made him the starting pitcher for the NL in the All-Star Game, becoming the first pitcher to start consecutive All-Star games in the first two seasons in the major leagues.

*

He was the first NL pitcher with a sub-2.00 ERA and 200+ strikeouts since right-hander Jacob DeGrom did it with the New York Mets in 2018. He was a also the first MLB pitcher to finish with a sub-2.00 ERA in a season since right-hander Justin Verlander did so with the Houston Astros in 2022.

*

Skenes became the first pitcher in MLB history to finish with 200+ strikeouts and a sub-2.00 ERA and still not have a winning record since ERA became a stat in 1913.

*

He was the first qualified pitcher to post a sub-2.00 ERA in a season at 23 years or younger, since right-hander Dwight Gooden did so at age 20 with the Mets in 1985. Skenes also made Pirates history, with his 216 strikeouts the most for a right-handed pitcher in the live-ball era (since 1920). Only Ed Morris, who had 326 strikeouts in 1886 and 298 strikeouts in 1885, the most and second-most in a season in franchise history, has more than him.

*

His 216 strikeouts rank seventh-most in a season in franchise history and fifth-most in the live-ball era.

*

Skenes is just one of three Pirates pitchers who led the MLB in ERA, with right-hander John Candelaria last doing so in 1977 and right-hander Cy Blanton doing it first in 1935, according to OptaStats.

Law From a Great Distance

On this day:

1048
Protestantism: The villagers around today’s Baden-Baden elect their own priest in defiance of the local bishop.
1649
King Charles I of England is beheaded.
1661
Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England is ritually executed two years after his death, on the anniversary of the execution of the monarch he himself deposed.
1703
The Forty-seven Ronin, under the command of Ōishi Kuranosuke, avenge the death of their master.
1835
In the first assassination attempt against a President of the United States, Richard Lawrence attempts to shoot president Andrew Jackson, but fails and is subdued by a crowd, including several congressmen.

1862
The first American ironclad warship, the USS Monitor is launched.
1933
Adolf Hitler is sworn in as Chancellor of Germany.
1945
World War II: The Wilhelm Gustloff, overfilled with refugees, sinks in the Baltic Sea after being torpedoed by a Soviet submarine, leading to the deadliest known maritime disaster, killing approximately 9,400 people.
1948
Indian pacifist and leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi known for his non-violent freedom struggle is assassinated by Pandit Nathuram Godse, a Hindu extremist.
1969
The Beatles’ last public performance, on the roof of Apple Records in London. The impromptu concert is broken up by the police.
1972
Bloody Sunday: British Paratroopers kill fourteen unarmed civil rights/anti internment marchers in Northern Ireland.
1996
Gino Gallagher, the suspected leader of the Irish National Liberation Army, is killed while waiting in line for his unemployment benefit.
***
More than four million Americans will turn 65 between now and 2027. “That’s over 11,000 people hitting this milestone every single day. The program's cash surplus is expected to run out in less than a decade,” according to NPR.

***

The fast-growing measles outbreak in South Carolina is now the largest in the United States since the disease was declared eliminated in this country more than two decades ago. 789 cases were reported as of Tuesday.

***

The Left is whispering. They say last week in Brussels, Robert Fico, Slovakia’s prime minister and one of Europe’s most vocal Trump supporters, pulled aside his fellow European leaders to share what he’d witnessed during a private meeting with the American president. The word he used to describe Trump’s demeanor? “Dangerous.”

Governing by rumor and innuendo is how the Left works now. We don't know if it's true, what he meant, or what accuracy governs Mr. Fico, but we do know that when you govern by rumor and innuendo, and you allow your President to abdicate his powers to a group of grad students for four years, you lose a lot of credibility.

***

Law From a Great Distance

Rules should be a relief to a culture.

The oldest known evidence of any law code are tablets from the ancient city Ebla (Tell Mardikh in modern-day Syria). They date to about 2400 B.C. — approximately 600 years before Hammurabi put together his famous code.

"An eye for an eye ..." is a paraphrase of Hammurabi's Code, a collection of 282 laws inscribed on an upright stone pillar. The code was found by French archaeologists in 1901 while excavating the ancient city of Susa, which is in modern-day Iran.

He ruled the Babylonian Empire from 1792-50 B.C.E. And his laws seem to grow out of necessity: he was trying to organize an expanding empire of diverse groups with diverse rules and norms.

His was actually an effort to eliminate tribal justice that holds groups responsible for individual acts and individuals for group acts, for example, Hatfield and McCoy thinking. If this sounds familiar, it should. This is the thinking of the modern, ironically named, Progressive.

Group identity is the most primitive of all legal forms. Hammurabi's genius was to overcome it, to apply individual crimes to individuals. There is a thesis that it influenced the Old Testament (through the Babylonian Captivity).

Group identity has never left the Middle East. And it's strong, the obverse of our bonding. We will always have the lurching monster staggering around, fed and encouraged by the Left in the American University Lab, as it seeks a place to apply its broad brush.

Its threat in places like Minneapolis is that it appeals to very early, unformed human thought because it requires so little of it. A complex problem can be quickly solved and acted upon without the hesitancy and uncertainty of unfocusing debate.

And in the softer mind, certainty is its own reward. Law is a unifying and stabilizing element in a culture. It takes advantage of that bonding tendency in us and focuses it towards a general, agreed-upon good.

In Minneapolis, the local government has officially denied the law, sits back while the Feds go in alone to enforce it, and then complains bitterly about the chaotic results.

That takes a special kind of high-minded cowardice.

Rising Above the Law and Those Left Behind

On this day:

1834
US President Andrew Jackson orders first use of federal soldiers to suppress a labor dispute
1886
Karl Benz patents the first successful gasoline-driven automobile.

***

Nobody is needy in the market economy because of the fact that some people are rich.--von mises

***

Norway’s $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund made $247 billion in 2025. Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) manages the fund on behalf of the Norwegian population. Set up in the 1990s to invest excess revenues from Norway’s oil and gas industry, the fund is currently an investor in more than 7,000 companies across 60 countries.The fund is worth the equivalent of $385,000 for every Norwegian man, woman and child and finances some 25% of the country's fiscal budget.

***

"But it does make a kind of sick sense that if Vance can’t have a white wife standing next to him as he clearly looks toward the 2028 presidential election, the next best thing is a pregnant one."

This is from Slate, and you can keep it in mind for those times when you are uncertain how bad the far Left really is.

***

Rising Above the Law and Those Left Behind

Democrat Commissioner Diane Marseglia in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. spoke as she and Democratic Board chairman Robert Harvie, Jr., dismissed the earlier Pa. Supreme Court rulings in order to accept ballots without required signatures or mandatory dates. She declared that she would not second a motion to enforce a Supreme Court ruling, “mostly because I think we all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country and people violate laws any time they want. So, for me, if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention to it.”

So a county commissioner thinks the law is optional, perhaps part of a continuum. A hint of what's to come.

This may help explain the current problems in Minnesota. The state has refused to enforce the immigration laws and has forced the Federal agents to work alone in the face of serious local opposition, including assaults, to protect Federal criminals living or arrested there.

This stance, called 'nullification,' was an early Southern position to resist anti-slavery laws, a charming precedent for the good citizens of Minnesota to adopt. Like the county commissioner, it rejects the law, in this case because the individual has a better idea. Importantly, the local officials have encouraged their citizens to encounter the Federal law enforcement with the hopes that the conflict will dramatize their position. Two have been killed, but sacrifices must be made. And they can sue.

One is struck by the confused thinking the violators use to explain themselves. It is a throwback to the pre-Hammurabi days, when Hammurabi's 'eye-for-an-eye' was a significant civilizing advance over the barbaric vendetta and vigilante arrogance. And, as the commissioner shows, the so-called political and social leaders are at least as dim-witted and irresponsible as their camp followers.

And, according to the news, these lemmings think Noam is the problem. There are plenty of problems.

It's hard to imagine how popular support for immigrant criminals will turn out, but while the nation will suffer, the immigrants--both legal and illegal--will suffer most. Biden let in over 10 million unvetted people--perhaps as high as 20 million--from all over the world. They will be of all sorts. Most will be just desperate, like their predecessors, although some, like the 70 battalions of young Chinese men, will be of more specific concern. The fate of the 300,000 unaccompanied children will be abandoned to...fate.

The criminals among them will eventually reveal themselves, but managing that number of people will be difficult without public support. We will probably have to accept the group and their social and criminal burden, and deal with the criminals one by one, as their new, emancipated selves fulfill their criminal destinies. And, we'll watch the others--and those that look like them--suspiciously. This will create in the national mind a second class of citizens, undermine the culture's cohesiveness, and accept the apparent unrest these people seem to be so comfortable with. And, of course, there's the success of the rioters and the lesson that will teach.

It would be great if Noam and the reaction of the law were the problem.

Procrustean Bed

On this Day:1547
Henry VIII dies. His nine year old son, Edward VI becomes King, and the first Protestant ruler of England.
1754
Horace Walpole coins the word serendipity in a letter to Horace Mann.
1909
United States troops leave Cuba with the exception of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base after being there since the Spanish-American War.
1977
The first day of the Great Lakes Blizzard of 1977, which severely affects and cripples much of Upstate New York, but Buffalo, NY, Syracuse, NY, Watertown, NY, and surrounding areas are most affected, each area accumulating close to 10 ft of snow on this one day
1986
Space Shuttle program: STS-51-L mission – Space Shuttle Challenger breaks apart after liftoff killing all seven astronauts on board.

***

There is something obscene about people holding protest rallies in order to try to keep getting money that someone else has worked for.--Sowell

***

A company called GRU Space publicly announced its intent to construct a series of increasingly sophisticated habitats on the Moon, culminating in a hotel inspired by the Palace of the Fine Arts in San Francisco.

On Monday, the company invited those interested in a berth to plunk down a deposit between $250,000 and $1 million, qualifying them for a spot on one of its early lunar surface missions in as little as six years from now.

Options on things that don't exist in inaccessible places.

***

The shark cannot explain his hunger. Nor can the baby chick explain his urge to take the risk and fly.
Most forks in the road are not solved with decisions; they are of a shorter circuit. So ambition becomes passion; love becomes obsession.
It is this edge of transition, where assessment becomes generation, where comedy and tragedy are born, and we humans live.
Take a bunch of hot-blooded young men with righteous anger and automatic weapons that can stop an elephant and put them in conflict with a bunch of suburban moms with righteous anger who think that their moral passport is a library card, and you've got a real problem.

***

Procrustean Bed

With tariffs, U.S. farmers have higher costs for seeds and fertilizer, as well as new international competitors like Brazil. With a diminished competitive advantage and the loss of the Cold War’s cooperative infrastructure, U.S. farmers now face a more volatile global market. Indeed, Trump is now in Iowa as part of his Forever Campaign and went to a restaurant where he touted his new $12 billion farmer bailout to compensate.  

So a little tariff interference here requires a compensatory tweaking subsidy there. The $12 bilion subsidy must come from somewhere. Somehow. And a distorting, byzantine infrastructure grows.

We live in a world of growing suspicion that demands old lessons be retaught. Actions have consequences. We can only wait and see where the rewards of Minneapolis's experiment with selective law enforcement lead.

Because of a nail. 

Hoofbeats

On This Day:
661
The Rashidun Caliphate ends with death of Ali.
1593
The Vatican opens seven year trial of scholar Giordano Bruno.
1606
Gunpowder Plot: The trial of Guy Fawkes and other conspirators begins, ending with their execution on January 31.
1868
Boshin War: The Battle of Toba-Fushimi between forces of the Tokugawa shogunate and pro-Imperial factions begins, which will end in defeat for the shogunate, and is a pivotal point in the Meiji Restoration.
1961
Soviet submarine S-80 sinks with all hands lost.
1967
Astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee are killed in a fire during a test of their Apollo 1 spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
1973
The Paris Peace Accords officially end the Vietnam War. Colonel William Nolde is killed in action becoming the conflict’s last recorded American combat casualty.

***

In the 1,526 singles matches I played in my career, I won almost 80% of those matches.
But what percentage of points did I win?
54%
In other words, even top-ranked tennis players win barely more than half the points they play.--Federer, speaking at Dartmouth

***

Does anyone think that 'negotiations with Fry and Walz' is like a medieval meeting of warlords? The Califate meeting with the tribes?

***

Behind Klein's Abundance is the argument that much wrong in our society comes from manufactured scarcities. We have made it too hard to build and create the things people need more of, particularly housing, clean energy, and state capacity.

***

Always look for the bottleneck. That's where things can be changed. Would you really expect the elite to release an honest Epstein report?

For example, Russia is preparing a new economics textbook for university students that aims to challenge what its authors call a “myth” that democracy drives economic growth and to revive the socialist economic theories of Soviet leader Josef Stalin.
The Russians have an academic book on economics!

***

In Ukraine in the early 1930s, collectivization led to such mass man-made starvation and cannibalism that Soviet authorities had to distribute posters that read, “To eat your own children is a barbarian act.”

***

Hoofbeats

What should we do about ICE? There is no longer a question about the seriousness of the problem. The insurgency is not a misunderstanding.  These people are not able to behave responsibly, even to protect their own lives. The risks are simply beyond them. They knowingly place themselves at the mercy of the people they are attacking. Sometimes they overestimate the goodwill of their opponent. Or, sometimes, an accident happens. Should ICE withdraw? Should we protect these people from themselves? Should we readjust the bar, like the Special Olympics?

We step over the homeless, we don't go after COVID fraudsters or Autism thieves, we don't pay our debts, we have no voter ID requirements, for four years we had an open border, we've never seen the Epstein Files, we have not demanded revenge for a committee of grad studebts taking over the presidency and shutting down the American economy and the education system for three years...we have crossed the River Tolerence into the Land of Lax. We demand no responsibility. We are very forgiving. Or indifferent.

Of course, things like this cannot go on forever. At some point, Comes a Horseman.

Policing a Feeding Frenzy

On this day:
1500
Vicente Yáñez Pinzón becomes the first European to set foot on Brazil.
1531
Lisbon, Portugal is hit by an earthquake--thousands die.
1564
The Council of Trent issues its conclusions in the Tridentinum, establishing a distinction between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.
1565
Battle of Talikota, fought between the Vijayanagara Empire and the Islamic sultanates of the Deccan, leads to the subjugation, and eventual destruction of the last Hindu kingdom in India, and the consolidation of Islamic rule over much of the Indian subcontinent.
1885
Troops loyal to The Mahdi conquer Khartoum.
1949
The Hale telescope at Palomar Observatory sees first light under the direction of Edwin Hubble, becoming the largest aperture optical telescope (until BTA-6 is built in 1976).
1978
The Great Blizzard of 1978, a rare severe blizzard with the lowest non-tropical atmospheric pressure ever recorded in the US, strikes the Ohio – Great Lakes region with heavy snow and winds up to 100 mph (161 km/h).
1998
Lewinsky scandal: On American television, U.S. President Bill Clinton denies having had “sexual relations” with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

***

When Theodore Roosevelt asked Attorney General Philander Knox to concoct a legal justification for the unsavory U.S. measures that enabled construction of the Panama Canal, Knox replied, “Oh, Mr. President, do not let so great an achievement suffer from any taint of legality.”

***

I looked over old records of the Kent State shootings. While I found interviews in which the students thought the Guard's weapons had blanks, I found nothing to show the Guard thought so.

***

Why is the Minnesota fraud case a partisan investigation?

***

Spot prices of silver cracked past $103, while gold ran to as high as $4,988, just $12 shy of $5,000.

***

There was a dramatic selloff in the Japanese bond market last week, accompanied by wild swings in the yen. Inflation, long dormant in Japan, has taken hold, and, moreover, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is pushing fiscal stimulus plans that would swell a government debt pile that is already uncomfortably large. As a result, investors have been frantically sending bond yields up to levels once unthinkable — more than 4% on the longest-dated JGBs. That’s exerting upward pressure on interest rates from the US to Britain and Germany.
Higher Japanese yields will prompt domestic investors to bring much more of their money back home. Some $5 trillion of the country's capital is deployed overseas.

***

Policing a Feeding Frenzy

So the residents of Minnesota have organized into helpful little volunteer groups to monitor whether the Immigration Police are operating within the law. They are trying to make these encounters more difficult but more safe, a bit contradictory. Re the safety part, isn't that what the cops are supposed to do? Why do they need these standins? Apparently, the most recent shooting involved the victim intervening between ICE and an observer. They've been complaining that ICE is undertrained; are the self-appointed observers well-trained?

And the 'making the police action more difficult' part, how exactly does that fit in? Does that make things safer?

What's really happening is that amateurs are interfering with the cops. They are intervening in police actions against illegal immigrants. Dangerous stuff. Combustible. And unpredictable. Why would amateurs expose themselves to such risk? To pacify? Maybe they plan a religious conversion? Do they even know there is a risk? Do they think the good guys can shoot the gun out of the bad guy's hand? Do they think that in a fight with the cops and someone yells "Gun!", that there will be several calm moments to debate if the cry is accurate or not?

We are seeing a growing number of militant busybodies who are trying to influence behavior in a shark tank. Why would any sensible person do such a thing? There may be some recent insight. A congressional representative recently said in an interview that ICE was not in Minnesota to enforce immigration law; they were there for 'intimidation.' The crack interviewer did not ask any clarifying follow-up questions, so we were not told who was being intimidated or why.

This is the opinion of an elected official. We can't explain what the thought process was here or its relationship to the militant observers. But we can accept the innuendo: the bell-shaped curve is a hell of a lot flatter and broader in this country than we thought.

 

Sunday/Amateurs

On this day:
1533
Henry VIII of England secretly marries his second wife Anne Boleyn.
1533
Henry VIII of England secretly marries his second wife Anne Boleyn.
1918
Ukraine declares independence from Bolshevik Russia.
1971
Charles Manson and three female “Family” members are found guilty of the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders.
1981
Jiang Qing, the widow of Mao Zedong, is sentenced to death.
1993
Five people are shot outside the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia resulting in two murders.
1995
The Norwegian Rocket Incident: Russia almost launches a nuclear attack after it mistakes Black Brant XII, a Norwegian research rocket, for a US Trident missile.
2011
Egyptian Revolution of 2011 begins in Egypt, with a series of street demonstrations, marches, rallies, acts of civil disobedience, riots, labour strikes, and violent clashes in Cairo, Alexandria, and throughout other cities in Egypt.

***

Long-run political policies are almost a contradiction in terms in societies where politicians are elected in the short run.--sowell

***

Carney argues that the decline in Europe has been forced upon it by the U.S. rather than being passively accepted. But have the Americans just filled the gap, trying to help?

A quick rebuttal to Carney's assessment of the West's recent past and unknowable future by Magnus:

The parallel between Havel’s moral argument for dissent under conditions of coercion in a totalitarian communist system makes for good oratory. But it offers a poor, and deeply misguided, illustration of our lives under the old liberal rules-based order, and cannot provide a guide for how we must now adapt. Personal and moral bravery in 1970s Czechoslovakia and Eastern Europe isn’t quite the same as trying to wrestle military, technocratic and economic statecraft back from an over-reliance on the United States, which we all thought was a good idea for over seven decades.

***

The non-argument over 'tax the rich' is not about the money of the wealthy; it is about the power and the corruption of the politician and bureaucrats.

***

Sunday/Amateurs

In today's gospel, Christ begins to collect his disciples. They are Galileans--local men whose district was associated with a radical political sect--and fishermen. And this latter group will lead a revolution in human social and religious thought. To develop a universal rethinking of mankind, these are very parochial messengers.

This is not meant as a diversity joke, but this is a very limited group of evangelists in an ethnic community that will carry Christ's word across languages, races, and cultures. And the subsets of people most obviously absent are the intellectuals, the civic, and the religious leaders.

The notion that they were the most needful does not answer the other side of their conversion, the evangelical side, as the intellectuals and successful would presumably be the most persuasive.

It's like having the world changed by a bunch of Cajuns. 

SatStats

On this day:
41
Roman Emperor Caligula, known for his eccentricity and cruel despotism, is assassinated by his disgruntled Praetorian Guards. The Guard then proclaims Caligula’s uncle Claudius as Emperor
1679
King Charles II of England dissolves the Cavalier Parliament.
1848
California Gold Rush: James W. Marshall finds gold at Sutter’s Mill near Sacramento.
1961
1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash: A bomber carrying two H-bombs breaks up in mid-air over North Carolina. The uranium core of one weapon remains lost.
1972
Japanese Sgt. Shoichi Yokoi is found hiding in a Guam jungle, where he had been since the end of World War II.

1978
Soviet satellite Cosmos 954, with a nuclear reactor onboard, burns up in Earth’s atmosphere, scattering radioactive debris over Canada’s Northwest Territories. Only 1% is recovered.
1990
Japan launches Hiten, the country’s first lunar probe, the first robotic lunar probe since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 in 1976, and the first lunar probe launched by a country other than Soviet Union or the United States.

***

The demonstration turnout in Minnesota was surprisingly large until you realize that if only a portion of the illegals had shown up, they could have had millions.

Does it count if you have a demonstration supporting criminals, and all the criminals show up?

***

“Order is not a pressure imposed upon society from without, but an equilibrium which is set up from within.”--Ortega y Gasset

***

President Trump will personally control the so-called “golden share” that his administration has forced U.S. Steel to accept as part of the terms of a deal that will see the previously private company get acquired by Japan-based Nippon Steel. Is this different from Mamdani and his groceries?

Or is this just a tax by another name?

***

Gangs have attacked Guatemalan police after seizing control of three prisons in coordinated riots, The Associated Press (AP) reported.

***

Mattel has a new autistic Barbie

***

SatStats

There were fewer births in China in 2025 than in 1776

*

Greenland held a referendum on 23 February 1982 and voted to leave the European Communities / European Economic Community (EEC) (about 52–53% for leaving).

*

Just 32 fossil fuel companies were responsible for half the global carbon dioxide emissions driving the climate crisis in 2024, down from 36 a year earlier, a report has revealed.



Saudi Aramco was the biggest state-controlled polluter and ExxonMobil was the largest investor-owned polluter.

*

Nemacolin laying off 150 emplotyees

*

Almost one fifth of government revenues are now used to service foreign loans in Africa

*

Walmart now does $100 billion per year in e-commerce sales.

*

Spotify is now the #2 provider of audio books behind Audible.

*

Americans throw away up to $68 million in coins a year.

*

As of the end of 2022, there were more $100 bills than $1 bills in circulation.

*

79 of the 100 most expensive U.S. zip codes in 2023 were in California.

*

There are more than one billion Cricket fans in the world, but just 2% of them are in the United States.

*

When men feel their masculinity is threatened, they are 24 percentage-points more likely to want to buy an SUV. They are also willing to pay $7,320 more than non-threatened men for the same vehicle. Similar vague and goofy numbers: Swearing improves grip strength by 9%, wall sit time by 22%, and plank time by 12%.

*

Every culture has a word for black and white. If a culture has a third word for a color, it is always red. If it has a fourth word, it is either yellow or green.

911. Can You hold?

On this day:

971
In China, the war elephant corps of the Southern Han are soundly defeated at Shao by crossbow fire from Song Dynasty troops.
1368
In a coronation ceremony, Zhu Yuanzhang ascends to the throne of China as the Hongwu Emperor, initiating Ming Dynasty rule over China that would last for three centuries.
1556
The deadliest earthquake in history, the Shaanxi earthquake, hits Shaanxi province, China. The death toll may have been as high as 830,000.
1570
James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray, regent for the infant King James VI of Scotland, is assassinated by firearm, the first recorded instance of such.
1897
Elva Zona Heaster is found dead in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. The resulting murder trial of her husband is perhaps the only case in United States history where the alleged testimony of a ghost helped secure a conviction.
1941
Charles Lindbergh testifies before the U.S. Congress and recommends that the United States negotiate a neutrality pact with Adolf Hitler.
1943
World War II: Australian and American forces finally defeat the Japanese army in Papua. This turning point in the Pacific War marks the beginning of the end of Japanese aggression.
1960
The bathyscaphe USS Trieste breaks a depth record by descending to 10,911 m (35,798 feet) in the Pacific Ocean.
1968
North Korea seizes the USS Pueblo, claiming the ship had violated their territorial waters while spying.

***

However, as much as the political left loves to use words like “change” and “revolution” as if they had a monopoly or a copyright on them, the actual track record of the left pales in comparison with the social revolutions created by the free market.
No government of the left has done as much for the poor as capitalism has. Even when it comes to the redistribution of income, the left talks the talk but the free market walks the walk.--Sowell

***

Hayek pushes the point that markets are about price discovery. In controlled systems, the price is arbitrary.

***

The astonishing rise of standards of living over the last two centuries has lifted everybody. Even a Dickensian street urchin has joined the productive class with hopes of more than others' success. And some have more success than others. This is the dreaded so-called income disparity. Many reasons might explain these disparities, although one rarely hears that any of the unhappy have themselves to blame.
But the idea that any inequality inspires some to break the system that has revolutionized the world is breathtaking.

***

Mamdani's restricted housing is like restricted car-buying. The story is in the circumstances. There is abundant, affordable housing, but not in Manhattan. Or Marcos Island.

***

What in the name of heaven is Newsom doing stalking Trump in Davos? Did he think he would rescue the stupid appearance with a stupid gay joke?

This is a leader?

***

911. Can You hold?

The Minneapolis conflicts have an asymmetry. The ICE problem is an unusual external, whereas the everyday is the local cops, and what is asymmetrical is their absence in civic disturbance, disturbances that are advertised and certainly easy to find. These diffuse confrontations, which seem to be planned with the hope of escalating violence, would be ended with the appearance of the local police. Yet they are not in evidence, even by accident.

How is that possible? How can the people and the organizations responsible for civil order ignore this dangerous chaos? They are employed--and paid--to maintain civil order but seem devoted not to do so.

So, who is responsible for the citizens' safety? For the general order of the community?

And, on a coarser level, who is legally responsible when those agents, for whatever reason, refuse their sworn duty?

Seriously vs Literally

On this day:

1879
Anglo-Zulu War: Battle of Rorke’s Drift – 139 British soldiers successfully defend their garrison against an intense assault by four to five thousand Zulu warriors.
1917
World War I: President Woodrow Wilson of the still-neutral United States calls for “peace without victory” in Europe.
1968
Apollo 5 lifts off carrying the first Lunar module into space.
1973
The Supreme Court of the United States delivers its decision in Roe v. Wade, legalizing elective abortion in all fifty states.
1987
Pennsylvania politician R. Budd Dwyer shoots and kills himself during a televised press conference, leading to debates on boundaries in journalism.

***

“They say it is better to be poor and happy than rich and miserable, but how about a compromise like moderately rich and just moody?”--Diana

***

There’s been an ongoing general diversification away from US assets, especially by global central banks, according to Ray Dalio, the founder of hedge fund firm Bridgewater Associates.
“When you look at gold being up 67%, it’s not a precious metal that goes up 60%,” Dalio told Bloomberg Television’s Francine Lacqua in Davos on Thursday. “It was bought by central banks particularly, but others, and in order to diversify fiat currencies, not just dollars.” 

This is indicative of serious anxiety among big money. Maybe this is the reason European leaders cry during interviews.

***

"lilliputian hallucinations" – the psychiatric term for the perception of tiny human, animal or fantasy figures. It is so named after the small people who inhabit the fictional Lilliput Island in the novel Gulliver's Travels. It is specific — and consistent — to certain mushrooms. Or looking at Congress.

***

Is this excitement over the Minnesota fraud 'news'? Is there something unique here? Suddenly, this is taken seriously? Does this imply that we can no longer afford this voracious abuse?

***

Lutnick's speech at Davos was clarifying. It would be interesting to hear how the Carney insight translates into a future of debased currency, exporting manufacturing, and importing people who hate you. 

No wonder the European leaders cry.

***

Seriously vs Literally

Trump publicly boasted that “drug prices are falling at levels never seen before, 500%, 600%, 700%, and more” in a Truth Social post. The greatest anyone has ever seen. ...no one has ever seen before...bad things will happen, very bad...not seen since...

Exaggeration on the edge of nonsense.

These are all from Trump's "seriously but not literally" file, a peculiar style that might be a way of calling attention to things he knows will not be treated fairly in the press. He certainly spends a lot of time and effort trying to put the question to the harassment and slander of the past. And he adopts the language of his enemies. People call him a nazi, he returns with 'moron' and "the worst in history."

In fairness, it is hard to believe his presidency is always a source of ridicule and criticism while the Biden Regency, its enablers, and the party responsible for the fraud are rarely even mentioned.

Transparency can be just foolishness. Hyperbole might focus attention, but at some point, it becomes engulfed in the same political exaggerated insincerity that makes people turn their minds off and retreat into cynicism. 

And, of course, there is the risk of misunderstanding. Or it can morph into uncertain symbolism. Sometimes forthrightness can be a ploy. Remember, the U.S. sending a female ambassador to Iraq-- a curious decision--was said to be understood by Hussein as the U.S. turning a blind diplomatic eye toward his ambitions in Kuwait.

And what happens if his audience does not remember? Or hates him so much they don't care? Does that turn him into a blowhard? Is his harping on the Nobel instructive or petty?

Hall of Mirrors

On this day:

1789
The first American novel, The Power of Sympathy or the Triumph of Nature Founded in Truth, is printed in Boston, Massachusetts.
1793
After being found guilty of treason by the French Convention, Louis XVI of France is executed by guillotine.
1950
Alger Hiss is convicted of perjury.
1954
The first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, is launched in Groton, Connecticut by Mamie Eisenhower, the First Lady of the United States.
1966
New Year’s Day in Chinese calendar. Start of the year of the Fire Horse in Chinese astrology.
1968
A B-52 bomber crashes near Thule Air Base, contaminating the area after its nuclear payload ruptures. One of the four bombs remains unaccounted for after the cleanup operation is complete.
1977
President Jimmy Carter pardons nearly all American Vietnam War draft evaders, some of whom had emigrated to Canada.
2008
Black Monday in worldwide stock markets. FTSE 100 had its biggest ever one-day points fall, European stocks closed with their worst result since 11 September 2001, and Asian stocks drop as much as 14%.

***

Use the talents you possess, for the woods would be a very silent place if no birds sang except the best. -Henry van Dyke, poet (10 Nov 1852-1933)

***

What is Gavin Newsom doing in Davos?

***

France will delay this year’s Group of 7 summit to avoid a conflict with the mixed martial arts event planned at the White House on Donald Trump’s birthday.

***

A meta-analysis of 168 studies encompassing more than 11 million people found no reliable link between economic inequality and either overall well-being or mental health. In other words, living in a place that has large gaps between the rich and the poor does not affect these outcomes.

***

Peace and Love. Obama: hope and change. .. Hillary: change, stronger together... Biden: Build Back Better... Harris: First Forward. Then Joy... All these are promises by politicians to deliver those things in unlimited supply.

***

Hall of Mirrors

The Supreme Court has been the great mirror that democracy holds up to itself. It is the moment of clarity, the final judge. Decisions are made, directions deflected, society and men assessed. The Court reflects itself, its culture's thinking, and its people.

Bork showed that the politician would lead with platitudes and distort with lies, innuendo, and media manipulation to achieve the success of his political tribe, sacrificing quality regardless of the quality of the outcome. Thomas' accuser stuck her complaints in every mind, as did the long-past, uncertain memory of Kavanaugh's accuser. All showed the culture's susceptibility to planned manipulation of unproven and unprovable accusations for the purpose of political advancement at the expense of people's reputations and lives. The value of weaponized gossip.

The most recent Supreme Court-mediated social epiphany has just arrived, folded its tent, and moved on into the night. Several states have been sued for denying boys access to girls' sports. In the early presentation, the trans-girl's attorney admitted, under superficial questioning, that she could not define the nature of the principles in the case, her case. She could not define the qualities of the sexual points or the conflicts, and apparently was asking the court to both define them for her and then decide the debate.

Into this intellectual vacuum stepped the esteemed Ketanji Brown Jackson, who, during her confirmation hearing, was unable to define a woman. Here she delivered a soliloquy that made Kamala Harris sound like William Brennings Bryant.

Again, the Court clarifies and defines both them and us.

Current Thoughts

On this day:
1265
In Westminster, the first English parliament conducts its first meeting held by Simon de Montfort in the Palace of Westminster, now also known colloquially as the “Houses of Parliament”.
1649
Charles I of England goes on trial for treason and other “high crimes”.
1783
The Kingdom of Great Britain signs a peace treaty with France and Spain, officially ending hostilities in the American Revolutionary War (also known as the American War of Independence).
1841
Hong Kong Island is occupied by the British.
1936
Edward VIII becomes King of the United Kingdom.
1969
East Pakistani police kill student activist Amanullah Asaduzzaman. The resulting outrage is in part responsible for the Bangladesh Liberation War.

***

There is no example, nor does either state cite an example in their papers, of a judge prohibiting a federal law enforcement agent from enforcing federal law in a given state. The reaction that we’ve heard from various Minnesota officials, including Attorney General Keith Ellison, when confronted with this lack of precedent and lack of case law, is essentially, “Well, this is really bad, though. Well, this is an invasion.” There is plenty of dramatic language in the complaints, but that doesn’t change the legal calculus. You can’t just take a situation that has no legal precedent and no legal support and say, “Well, yes, but our situation is really, really bad, therefore we get to invent new law.”--Honig

***

Shocking article on testosterone use in American public life, the military, and public figures. Traces back to the Nazis, Hitler. Raises a lot of questions about public combativeness and policymaking.
What guy in confrontational work doesn't want an edge?

***

The African nations of Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali have all stopped issuing visas for Americans in what they describe as a reciprocal move, given the treatment of their citizens.

***

***

Our model of the universe is deeply flawed — unless space is actually a 'sticky fluid,' new research hints. I assume they'll get back to us on this.

***

Current Thoughts

A terrific football weekend. The college championship may have been the best.

The country should stick with fair competition and leave politics to the sideshow.

***

Trump has been using executive power casually, but has anything he has done approached the enormous power assumed by the Biden Regency during Covid?

***

Greenland is in NATO, right? So why do they need an additional umbrella?

***

Trump's confrontational style may get results, but it is really obnoxious. On the other hand, it may be a correct assessment of his single term's short influence. 

***

Where are the city cops in Minnesota? Is this a special riot?

***

There were several infants treated for tear gas exposure. How could a parent put a child at that risk?

***

Confrontation with armed, harassed men is dangerous. Strangely, violence by the police is what these people hope to provoke.

***

The mayor of Minneapolis looks sincere. He also sounds unhinged. Apparently, these domestic disturbances are an outpouring of 'love.'

***

So, the reason ICE is in Minneapolis is that there are many illegal immigrants there. The reason is that it is a 'sanctuary city,' so the locals will not release the targeted illegals. The reason they are there is that the border was open during the Biden Regency. Is this conflict over the nullification of the federal law? Resistance to immigration law? Resistance--or indifference--to the very notion of borders--and the ability of a state to define itself?

***

Invading the church was a tactical mistake. Many who don't care about these disturbances care a lot about the integrity of churches.

***

Why are there so many women among these rioters? Is it a 'chicks up front' tactic? Is there some gender selection here?

***

It has been reported that Ms Good's wife was shocked that the ICE had live ammo. Is that true? Does she know what killed the kids at Kent State? Is that 'outdated history'?

***

Is abolishing ICE like defunding the police?

***

Is a sanctuary city incompatible with church sanctuary?

The Tie-Breaker

On this day:

1419
Hundred Years’ War: Rouen surrenders to Henry V of England completing his reconquest of Normandy.
1883
The first electric lighting system employing overhead wires, built by Thomas Edison, begins service at Roselle, New Jersey.
1915
World War I: German zeppelins bomb the towns of Great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn in the United Kingdom killing more than 20, in the first major aerial bombardment of a civilian target.
1920
The United States Senate votes against joining the League of Nations.
1945
World War II: Soviet forces liberate the Łódź ghetto. Out more than 200,000 inhabitants in 1940, less than 900 had survived the Nazi occupation.
2006

The New Horizons probe is launched by NASA on the first mission to Pluto.

***

National Review‘s Andrew McCarthy points out that the executive branch of the U.S. government has no Constitutional authority, acting alone, to acquire more territory – including Greenland – for the United States, whether through purchase or conquest.


***

Chavez (and later Maduro) outsourced a lot of their policing and stability to violent leftist paramilitary groups called colectivos.

That might be a difficult negotiation.

***

Study confirms that neither Tylenol nor vaccines is responsible for the rise in autism BECAUSE THERE IS NO RISE IN AUTISM TO EXPLAIN just a change in diagnostic standards.

***

McCutchen — free agent, elder statesman, human embodiment of “good vibes only” — is still getting ambushed by Comprehensive Drug Testing (CDT) at his house on a Sunday morning.

***

The Tie-Breaker

The penalty kick shoot-out became the norm in soccer competition in 1975 to make tournament games definitive. One wonders about its impact on the acceptance of soccer in the U.S.

Americans love competition, and they hate ties.

There might be changes afoot. We now have participation trophies, sliding scales like DEI and homogenized testing. Many colleges don't require SATs; AI may force more objective interviews. Corporate "teams" are everywhere.

Maybe it takes a village, maybe the starlet's breathless podium award acceptance speech is real. Maybe everyone who worked on the film deserves the award, too.

The problem is that sometimes an individual is quite enough. Madame Curie clearly did not need a village; she could think herself out of a vault. Indeed, she may be stalking this great land right now.

But a lot doesn't apply to the rest of us mortals. Team-building, Critical Theory, whatever the homogenizing effects of AI are, all appear to be a trend to "replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism."

So we give participation trophies to prepare the child for the adult world of irresponsible success and defeat, of self-punishing redistribution. Success is no longer achieved on the shoulders of giants; it's just another brick in the wall, a sincere sharing like the starlet's speech, a perfect preparation for the faceless future of AI.

This is the world to come, where a prize honoring a significant peace-giver among our warring clans can be gifted, one to another, and handed around like the Stanley Cup to the losing locker room, brought home for a day or week by everyone within reach.

It may be ironic. Or satisfying. But it is symbolic of the great coming crisis: it ain't justice.

            

 

Sunday/Some Religious Bits

On this day:

1486
King Henry VII of England marries Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV.
1535
Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro founded Lima, the capital of Peru.
1778
James Cook is the first known European to discover the Hawaiian Islands, which he names the “Sandwich Islands”.
1788
The first elements of the First Fleet, carrying 736 convicts from England to Australia, arrive at Botany Bay.

***

“The only piece of advice I give to newlyweds is don’t ever use sarcasm with your children. I mean, it may be sarcasm to you, but it’s a lash across the back to them they’ll never forget.”--Warren Buffett

***

Shark Tank's Kevin O’Leary contrasted America’s grid stagnation with China’s rapid buildout, noting that Beijing has added 500 gigawatts of power in the last 24 months, while the U.S. has built “zero.” Without massive infrastructure upgrades, O’Leary warned, the U.S. cannot sustain the energy-hungry data centers required for the next phase of AI.

***

France will delay this year’s Group of 7 summit to avoid a conflict with the mixed martial arts event planned at the White House on Donald Trump’s birthday.

***

Until 2009, India was poorer than Pakistan on a per capita basis. India truly became richer than Pakistan after 2009. If trends continue for a decade, India will be more than twice as rich as Pakistan soon…
So why has India pulled ahead in GDP per capita? Birth rate. Pakistan’s high fertility has driven population growth faster than India’s. In 1952 Pakistan had about one-tenth of India’s population; by 2025 it had grown to nearly one-seventh.

***

Effective altruism, in ethics, a theory of conduct and a movement that centers on identifying ways to benefit others and then mobilizing and utilizing resources to bring those benefits to fruition. --Ency. Brit.

The Venezuelan stock market is up 73% since Maduro's kidnapping.

So, is Trump an Effective Altruist?

***

Sunday/Some Religious Bits

Pelagianism: a 5th-century Christian heresy taught by Pelagius and his followers that stressed the essential goodness of human nature and the freedom of the human will. Pelagius was concerned about the slack moral standards among Christians, and he hoped to improve their conduct by his teachings. Rejecting the arguments of those who claimed that they sinned because of human weakness, he insisted that God made human beings free to choose between good and evil and that sin is a voluntary act committed by a person against God’s law. Celestius, a disciple of Pelagius, denied the church’s doctrine of original sin and the necessity of infant baptism.

*

Marcionite: any member of a gnostic sect that flourished in the 2nd century AD. The name derives from Marcion of Pontus (an ancient district in northeastern Anatolia), who, sometime after his arrival in Rome, fell under the influence of Cerdo, a gnostic Christian, and went on to expand upon his theology. Cerdo’s stormy relations with the church of Rome were the consequence of his belief that the God of the Old Testament could be distinguished from the God of the New Testament—the one embodying justice, the other goodness. For accepting, developing, and propagating such ideas, Marcion was expelled from the church in 144 as a heretic, but the movement he headed became both widespread and powerful.

The basis of Marcionite theology was that there were two cosmic gods. A vain and angry creator god who demanded and ruthlessly exacted justice had created the material world of which humanity, body and soul, was a part—a striking departure from the usual gnostic thesis that only the human body is part of creation, that the soul is a spark from the true but unknown superior God, and that the world creator is a demonic power. The other god, according to Marcion, was completely ineffable and bore no intrinsic relation to the created universe at all. Out of sheer goodness, he had sent his son Jesus Christ to save humankind from the material world and bring about a new home.

Marcion is perhaps best known for his treatment of Scripture. Though he rejected the Old Testament as the work of the creator God, he did not deny its efficacy for those who did not believe in Christ. He rejected attempts to harmonize Jewish biblical traditions with Christian ones as impossible. He accepted as authentic all of the Pauline Letters and the Gospel According to Luke (after he had expurgated them of Judaizing elements). His treatment of Christian literature was significant because it forced the early church to fix an approved canon of theologically acceptable texts out of the mass of available but unorganized material.

The Marcionites were considered the most dangerous of the gnostics by the established church.

*

“England, which at the beginning of the sixteenth century seems to have been one of the most Catholic countries in Europe, became, by the seventeenth century, the most virulently anti-Catholic, and the almost dominant ideology of anti-Catholicism fueled the civil wars that engulfed all parts of the British Isles in mid-century and later provoked the Bloodless Revolution, from which what passes for a British constitution derives” (Collinson, 2004, )

SatStats

On this day:
395
Emperor Theodosius I dies at Milan, the Roman Empire is re-divided into an eastern and a western half. The Eastern Roman Empire is centered in Constantinople under Arcadius, son of Theodosius, and the Western Roman Empire in Mediolanum under Honorius, his brother, at the age of 10.
1377
Pope Gregory XI moves the Papacy back to Rome from Avignon.
1608
Emperor Susenyos of Ethiopia surprises an Oromo army at Ebenat; his army reportedly kills 12,000 Oromo at the cost of 400 men.
1912
Captain Robert Falcon Scott reaches the South Pole, one month after Roald Amundsen.
1961
Former Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba is murdered in circumstances suggesting the support and complicity of the governments of Belgium and the United States.
1961
U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers a televised farewell address to the nation three days before leaving office, in which he warns against the accumulation of power by the “military-industrial complex”.
1966
A B-52 bomber collides with a KC-135 Stratotanker over Spain, dropping three 70-kiloton nuclear bombs near the town of Palomares and another one into the sea in the Palomares incident.
1991
Gulf War: Operation Desert Storm begins early in the morning. Iraq fires 8 Scud missiles into Israel in an unsuccessful bid to provoke Israeli retaliation.
1998
Lewinsky scandal: Matt Drudge breaks the story of the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky affair on his website The Drudge Report.

***

Please tell me the Tomlin rumors are not true.

***

Roger Severino insists that the Heritage Foundation, under its president Kevin Roberts, still supports free markets and free trade, “but” – BUT? – “we’ll pursue those goods without sacrificing our love of faith and family, our national security, the innocence of our children, or loyalty to the U.S.”
So it supports free markets and free trade except when it doesn't?

Trump is just making an omlet. He is "The Sineater."

***

A Russian research vessel located the remains of Likhter-4, a Soviet-era barge that was intentionally sunk in 198, full of nuclear waste. 

A good citizen of the world.

***

In Ukraine in the early 1930s, collectivization led to such mass man-made starvation and cannibalism that Soviet authorities had to distribute posters that read, “To eat your own children is a barbarian act.”


***

Millions of traders logging on every day to services like Kalshi and Polymarket to place high-dollar and incredibly risky bets on the outcome of the world in real time, whether it's an award host's turn of phrase to the number of migrants the U.S. will deport this year.

***

SatStats

California’s Medicaid spending—which pays for Native American exorcisms, music lessons, cooking classes and many other nonmedical services—has ballooned by nearly 50% over the last two years.


*

2025 was the third-worst non-recession year of the 21st century for job growth. Put differently, 19 of the past 26 years (for the year 2000 is included in these calculations) saw more job growth than did 2025. In fact, even one recession (2007) year saw more job growth than did 2025.

*

Two-thirds of the Forbes 400, a list of the richest people in America, built their own businesses

*

In 2024 alone, state Medicaid Fraud Control Units reported more than 1,151 convictions and more than $1.4 billion in civil and criminal recoveries. Federal enforcement recovers a tiny share of what is stolen. Fraud that goes undetected never appears in the data.

*

Warren Buffett's 90/10 strategy involves allocating 90% of assets to a low-cost S&P 500 index fund and 10% to short-term government bonds.

*

Today, 44% of women in America are unpartnered.
IVF accounts for almost 100,000 births each year. That's up 50% from 10 years ago. 2% of births in America.
The number of unmarried women in their 40s who are having babies has grown by 250% in the last 30 years.
Each time a woman tries to get pregnant via IVF, the cost can range from $15,000 to over $30,000.

*

“The speed of intercontinental travel rose from about 35 kilometers per hour for large ocean liners in 1900 to 885 km/h for the Boeing 707 in 1958, an average rise of 5.6 percent a year. But that speed has remained essentially constant ever since—the Boeing 787 cruises just a few percent faster than the 707”

*

The number of bourbon distilleries in the US went from 75 in 2006 to nearly 2,300 by 2022.

*

On average, 70% of the time Americans spend online leaves them feeling disconnected and lonely rather than genuinely connected, leading to feelings of being overwhelmed (25%), anxious (22%), and irritable (18%).
84% of Americans have adopted analogue lifestyle choices, with 32% writing in notebooks, 31% reading printed books, and 28% using paper calendars to create boundaries screens can’t provide.
70% of Americans plan to read more in 2026, with half choosing physical books specifically, citing how reading makes them feel relaxed (46%), mentally stimulated (32%), and grounded (27%)

*

More than half of the volume of S&P 500 options traded are those that expire on the same day. These have low premiums and offer very high leverage (up to 400x). On average, the expected payout is -32,000%.

*

Humans throughput information at 10 bits per second, so “Instead of the bundle of Neuralink electrodes, Musk could just use a telephone, whose data rate has been designed to match human language, which in turn is matched to the speed of perception and cognition.”

*

Education

Among public school students who began high school in 2018, 87% graduated within four years. This was true for:

• 94% of Asian students.
• 90% of white students.
• 83% of Hispanic students.
• 81% of black students.
• 74% of American Indian/Native Alaskan students.

In 2024, 36% of high school students who graduated that year took the ACT college readiness exam. Among these graduates, 20% met ACT’s college readiness benchmarks in all four subjects (English, reading, math, and science). For each subject, the rates of college readiness were as follows:

• English – 51%
• Reading – 40%
• Science – 30%
• Mathematics – 29%

Among high school students who graduated in 2024 and took the ACT college readiness exam, the following racial/ethnic groups met ACT’s college readiness benchmarks in all four subjects:

• Asian – 47%
• White – 27%
• Hispanic – 11%
• Pacific Islander – 8%
• American Indian – 5%
• African American – 5%

*

A  suggestion that protected industries become less productive: