On this day:
1780
American Revolutionary War: Benedict Arnold gives the British the plans to West Point.
1792
The National Convention declares France a republic and abolishes the monarchy.
1823
Joseph Smith is reportedly visited by the angel Moroni, who told him the location of gold plates, which Smith obtained four years later and partially translated into The Book of Mormon.
2003
The Galileo mission is terminated by sending the probe into Jupiter’s atmosphere, where it is crushed by the pressure at the lower altitudes.
American Revolutionary War: Benedict Arnold gives the British the plans to West Point.
1792
The National Convention declares France a republic and abolishes the monarchy.
1823
Joseph Smith is reportedly visited by the angel Moroni, who told him the location of gold plates, which Smith obtained four years later and partially translated into The Book of Mormon.
2003
The Galileo mission is terminated by sending the probe into Jupiter’s atmosphere, where it is crushed by the pressure at the lower altitudes.
"Joseph Smith an eighteen-year-old with small hands and big feet, a quiet and "unlaughing" boy, encountered the Angel Moroni, son of Mormon, on a drumlin alongside a little road south of Palmyra [N.Y.] in 1827. . . . There he unearthed the golden plates that he said were the source of the Book of Mormon. With the aid of an ancient pair of optical instruments, the Urim and Thummin, which Smith found with the plates, he was able to translate the "revised" Egyptian hieroglyphics, although he insisted on dictating his translation to scribes from behind a curtain."--William Least Heat Moon, in Blue Highways.
***
A book on Madame de Staël (by Biancamaria Fontana) offers some interesting observations.
de Staël was a towering personality (and Necker's daughter) who, in addition to her loud and tumultuous life, was a keen and prolific political and social commentator. She wrote from before the French Revolution to after the Napoleonic government. Beyond partisan politics and poor leadership, what had gone wrong in France in the 1790s?
Fontana argues that, for Staël, one answer lay in the abstraction that had so engrossed Necker: public opinion. She addressed the topic in her first published political intervention in 1791, when she asked how the opinion of the majority of the nation could be ascertained and, when known, judged as based on fear or reason. Convinced that most people were moderate and wanted stability, she argued that this majority should be kept at the center of representative government. So how did it happen that a small radical faction had led it by the nose? By the end of the revolutionary decade, she had to conclude that the French public had been simply too uneducated and badly informed to assume political responsibility. And de Staël usefully reminds us that nothing in politics is inevitable or fated, that everything must be analyzed, and that politicians should always be held accountable.
***
President Trump complains that trade with China is “one-sided.” Does he speak English or what? One-sided trade is like a one-sided triangle: you can say it, but you can’t mean (think) it.--Richman
***
Douglass Academy High School on Chicago’s West Side was designed for more than 1,000 students. Today it enrolls 27. The school employs 28 staff members, a one-to-one student-to-staff ratio. Per-pupil spending exceeds $90,000. With that kind of money, one might expect stellar academics and high engagement. Reality is the opposite. Nearly 66 percent of the enrolled students are chronically absent. Not a single child scores proficient in math or reading.
***
A new breed of websites known as “dopamine sites,” a trend that emerged in South Korea, is emerging to protect you from yourself. These websites — like Dopamine Shop and FoodNeverComes — recreate the entire ritual of online shopping: You search for products, compare reviews, add items to your cart, enter a shipping address, place an order, and even track your delivery.
Then … nothing happens. No money changes hands. No package arrives.
***
PACs
The following is excerpted from an article by one Adam Bonica, "a political scientist who studies money in politics." He is a concerned Democrat; this is from a site by another serious long-term Democrat, reproduced here with some delicate editing. The concern of both is the exploitative, dishonest nature of fundraising. They are concerned about the corrosive effect it could have on their party.
The politics has already been profoundly contaminated by money and ambition. It's a little disturbing that these people seem surprised.
--Spam PACs rarely operate in isolation. My analysis of FEC data shows that they cluster into networks linked by a small number of treasurers who oversee multiple committees at once. . . .
--[From 2011] through 2025, Harry Pascal’s network of eight PACs raised more than $390 million from individual donors. According to my analysis of FEC filings, roughly $20 million of that went directly to Democratic candidates, or funded independent expenditures supporting them. Another $100 million or so covered field and get-out-the-vote programs and the payroll to staff them, and roughly $20 million went to administrative costs. The rest — an estimated $249 million, or 64 cents of every dollar raised — went to fundraising itself. (italics added)
“Among the fundraising ads run by the largest spam PACs,” Bonica found, “between 70 and 85 percent of impressions are delivered to users 65 and older.”
--Whether or not those who operate this fundraising model recognize or intend it, fundraising spam runs on similar psychological levers to those that the FBI and AARP identify as hallmarks of elder financial exploitation: manufactured urgency, emotional appeals engineered to trigger guilt or fear, false exclusivity, fabricated account or profile statuses that look like official notices, and relentless pressure to give before there’s time to think.
Only about 20 percent of Democratic congressional candidates hire the high-volume digital fundraising firms used by spam PACs. But those candidates raised a combined $570 million from captive spam donors. The remaining 80 percent of Democratic candidates who stayed outside the spam ecosystem raised just $37 million from these donors.
--This fundraising model is a parasite on the party, enriching outside consultants while steadily starving the host. Republicans succumbed to it first, watching their own grassroots donor base hollow out in real time. If Democrats don’t change course, they are headed into the exact same donor death spiral.
So, an outpouring of regret and improvement? Not so fast:
--The party’s platform champions protecting the vulnerable. Its fundraising apparatus exploits them. The party’s official campaign committees, which should set the standard, are instead some of the worst offenders. Emails and texts from the DCCC and the DSCC feature similarly aggressive fundraising pleas and draw heavily from captive spam donors.
The following is excerpted from an article by one Adam Bonica, "a political scientist who studies money in politics." He is a concerned Democrat; this is from a site by another serious long-term Democrat, reproduced here with some delicate editing. The concern of both is the exploitative, dishonest nature of fundraising. They are concerned about the corrosive effect it could have on their party.
The politics has already been profoundly contaminated by money and ambition. It's a little disturbing that these people seem surprised.
--Spam PACs rarely operate in isolation. My analysis of FEC data shows that they cluster into networks linked by a small number of treasurers who oversee multiple committees at once. . . .
--[From 2011] through 2025, Harry Pascal’s network of eight PACs raised more than $390 million from individual donors. According to my analysis of FEC filings, roughly $20 million of that went directly to Democratic candidates, or funded independent expenditures supporting them. Another $100 million or so covered field and get-out-the-vote programs and the payroll to staff them, and roughly $20 million went to administrative costs. The rest — an estimated $249 million, or 64 cents of every dollar raised — went to fundraising itself. (italics added)
“Among the fundraising ads run by the largest spam PACs,” Bonica found, “between 70 and 85 percent of impressions are delivered to users 65 and older.”
--Whether or not those who operate this fundraising model recognize or intend it, fundraising spam runs on similar psychological levers to those that the FBI and AARP identify as hallmarks of elder financial exploitation: manufactured urgency, emotional appeals engineered to trigger guilt or fear, false exclusivity, fabricated account or profile statuses that look like official notices, and relentless pressure to give before there’s time to think.
Only about 20 percent of Democratic congressional candidates hire the high-volume digital fundraising firms used by spam PACs. But those candidates raised a combined $570 million from captive spam donors. The remaining 80 percent of Democratic candidates who stayed outside the spam ecosystem raised just $37 million from these donors.
--This fundraising model is a parasite on the party, enriching outside consultants while steadily starving the host. Republicans succumbed to it first, watching their own grassroots donor base hollow out in real time. If Democrats don’t change course, they are headed into the exact same donor death spiral.
So, an outpouring of regret and improvement? Not so fast:
--The party’s platform champions protecting the vulnerable. Its fundraising apparatus exploits them. The party’s official campaign committees, which should set the standard, are instead some of the worst offenders. Emails and texts from the DCCC and the DSCC feature similarly aggressive fundraising pleas and draw heavily from captive spam donors.
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