SatStats

On this day:

1517
Protestant Reformation: Martin Luther posts his 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg.
1917
World War I: Battle of Beersheba – “last successful cavalry charge in history”.
1926
Magician Harry Houdini dies of gangrene and peritonitis that developed after his appendix ruptured.
1940
World War II: The Battle of Britain ends – the United Kingdom prevents a possible German invasion.
1984
Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated by two security guards. Riots break out in New Delhi, and nearly 10,000 Sikhs are killed.

2002
A federal grand jury in Houston, Texas, indicts former Enron Corp. chief financial officer Andrew Fastow on 78 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice related to the collapse of his ex-employer.

***

"I do think that we've gotten away from really celebrating our founders and our heroes. What they were doing in 1776 was incredibly radical, if you think about it. At that time, everyone accepted the divine right of kings. Everyone accepted hereditary rule. And our founders took Enlightenment ideas from John Locke and philosophers, and they turned it into the framework for a government. The idea of self-government and that our rights come from our Creator, that we have inalienable rights that are given to us by God and not from a king. Those were radical ideas of the time.

I like to say our founders were the first civil rights heroes, the first civil libertarians. And I think our education system has gotten away from that. They don't view them in the time that they existed, and suddenly now everything is oppressor versus oppressed narrative. And they are labeled more like colonizers or enslavers, and that's the only view that they're looked at, and not as human beings who sacrificed their very lives to write the Declaration of Independence, to form this country…it was an incredible, bold, and courageous act, but it was also an act of moral courage and philosophical courage."-Kelley Paul

***

A NASA twin study (using now-Senator Kelly) shows chromosome changes during and after spaceflight, especially telomeres, related to longevity.

If telomeres lengthen during long spaceflight, why? Is it related to exercise, reduced body mass, altered metabolism, folate status, immune-cell shifts, radiation response or something else? If they shorten rapidly after landing, is that primarily re-entry stress, gravity readaptation, inflammation, immune remodeling or a change in circulating cell populations? And if critically short telomeres remain more common afterward, does that create meaningful health risk, or is it a temporary signal whose clinical meaning is still unclear?

***

Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is the only place besides Earth known to have standing liquid on its surface, and with it, rivers, rain, clouds, lakes, and seas fed by a weather cycle that runs much like our own. The rain and the rivers are liquid methane and ethane, and the ground they cut through is water ice, frozen so hard at Titan’s temperatures that it behaves like rock. It is the closest thing in the solar system to a working copy of Earth’s landscape, built from a completely different set of materials.


***

Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Oracle issued about $194 billion of bonds in 2026 through July 7, up from roughly $108 billion in all of 2025, according to Reuters. Goldman Sachs expects the five biggest hyperscalers, including Microsoft, to issue roughly $400 billion in bonds in 2027.

***

With gerrymandering and 'Decoy Dan', how could anyone take a politician's posturing of honesty seriously?

And 'Decoy Dan' has been on the ballot for months. Why has such a late revelation been hailed as such a journalistic achievement?

***


SatStats


The Mets finished last in the N.L. East, with the highest payroll in baseball.

*

79 NBA players are listed on the 2:30 PM injury report for the 10/28/26 games. That’s roughly 15% of the entire league.

*

A monograph by Yi Fuxian, a University of Wisconsin-Madison demographer and longtime critic of China’s population policies, argues that China’s actual population may be closer to 1.27 billion—not the 1.4 billion officially reported. The gap would be as much as 130 million people, roughly the population of Mexico. And Yi argues the distortion has warped strategic thinking in both China and the U.S., feeding overconfidence in Beijing and anxiety in Washington.

*

The Rays have the third-most wins in the American League since 2017, despite consistently operating with one of their lowest payrolls.

*

Berlin and Los Angeles are comparable in size. Berlin has 18,000 cops, L.A. has 8,000. Because we have too few cops to get at the root of violent crime before it is even committed, we wind up spending a fortune on prisons instead. --From Gladwell's new book.

*

At Harvard University, Black students account for just 9.3% of this fall's incoming class, down from 18% in 2023, the year the Supreme Court ruled against affirmative action in college admissions.

*

In World War I, 150 German soldiers were sentenced to death for serious crimes, of which a mere forty-eight were executed. In World War II, thirty thousand death sentences were decreed by military courts, of which two-thirds were carried out, in addition to many more that took place without any judicial proceeding. By contrast the British executed forty men, the French 103, the Americans 146, almost all the condemned Allied soldiers having committed capital crimes as defined in civil law, rather than being sentenced for dereliction of military duty. Meanwhile, the Japanese executed 22,253 of their own men, and the Russians at least 150,000, possibly as many as 300,000.

*

Texas produces more than Canada, with three-quarters of the population.

*

Last year, China’s credit to the nonfinancial sector—a broad measure of corporate, government and household borrowings—topped 300% of gross domestic product. Chinese leader Xi Jinping is presiding over a dangerous spiral of debt that is strangling the economy at home and damaging trade partners around the world.


*

Tampa Bay constructed its World Series roster with a staggering 17 of the Rays' 26 players acquired through trades. No other playoff team acquired more than 14 players through trades.


*

The Debt Crisis

When Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed, its U.S. operations had 1.2 million derivatives transactions outstanding with 6,500 trading partners.
In all, the contracts, which were tied to interest rates, bonds, currencies, commodities, and stocks, had a "notional," or theoretical, value of $39 trillion. (wsj)

The notional value of the world's derivatives actually was estimated at more than $600 trillion. Yes, $600 trillion. Notional value is the total value of a leveraged position's assets.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) estimated the net notional value of uncollateralized derivatives risks was between $2 trillion and $8 trillion

*

The Democratic Republic of Congo sits on mineral deposits valued at an estimated twenty-four trillion dollars, a figure that turns up in advocacy material, mining-sector research and the United States government’s own commercial guide to the country, which notes that most of those resources remain untapped. The same country is described by the World Bank as among the five poorest nations in the world.

*

Back-of-the-envelope estimates suggest that the global cost of cyber risk exposure is around $1 trillion per year.--Journal of Finance

*

From 2000 through 2019 (just before COVID) the percentage of total job separations caused by non-retiring workers voluntarily quitting their jobs was 56%, while the percentage of total job separations caused by workers being involuntarily discharged was 38%.

Values of Diversity

 On this day:

1226
Tran Thu Do, head of the Tran clan of Vietnam, forces Ly Hue Tong, the last emperor of the Ly dynasty, to commit suicide.
1470
Henry VI of England returns to the English throne after Earl of Warwick defeats the Yorkists in battle.
1485
King Henry VII of England is crowned.
1905
Czar Nicholas II of Russia grants Russia’s first constitution, creating a legislative assembly.
1918
The Ottoman Empire signs an armistice with the Allies, ending the First World War in the Middle East.
1922
Benito Mussolini is made Prime Minister of Italy.
1938
Orson Welles broadcasts his radio play of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, causing anxiety in some of the audience in the United States.
1941
World War II: Franklin Delano Roosevelt approves U.S. $1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to the Allied nations.
1985
Space Shuttle Challenger lifts off for mission STS-61-A, its final successful mission.

***

"Even $1 million isn't going to make you happy. It is not going to happen. You look around, and you see people with $2 million, and your happiness will disappear."--Warren Buffett

***

Packers wide receiver Christian Watson left Lambeau Field in an ambulance on Thursday night after breaking a rib and spitting up blood, but he later returned to the field. Watson finished the game with eight catches for 113 yards: Six catches for 100 yards before going to the hospital, and two catches for 13 yards after returning from the hospital.

***

Earlier this year, Russian authorities issued a stern warning to a Siberian institute that researches the pathogens behind bubonic plague, anthrax, and other diseases: It lacked a sufficient decontamination plan in the event bacteria accidentally escaped. 

As if this were not a government program.

***

People who use less widely spoken languages could end up paying more to use artificial intelligence than those who speak English or other dominant languages. 

Perhaps a brewing "diversity" question?

***

Values of Diversity

"Recent years have witnessed many strong claims that ‘diversity’ leads to more original and impactful science, which is a science-focused form of what we call “The Diversity Hypothesis.” However, what evidence supports the claim that diversity enhances scientific output or impact? This pre-registered rapid scoping review seeks to collate and evaluate the scientific evidence for the Diversity Hypothesis…

…Based on over 100 scientific articles, we find that only between 15% and 28% of results reported in the literature are consistent with the hypothesis, with the balance of the results not being consistent with it.

…Overall, the results of the analysis section indicate that there is little empirical evidence that diversity improves scientific output and/or impact. In fact, with the possible exception of disciplinary diversity—a type of informational or viewpoint diversity operationalized at the team level—the majority of the evidence seems to point in the other direction. These findings are robust regardless of how the data is parsed and analyzed. The same conclusions can be drawn looking at the full data set, only the population-adjusted results, or only the results of high quality based on the MMAT analysis."--tabarrok

Diversity is an equality token, like refusing distinctions between apples and lemons because they are both fruit. But we are strangely selective. For example, we don't hear cries to diversify ownership of nuclear weapons among nations.

Financing Democracy

On this day:

539 BC
Cyrus the Great enters the city of Babylon, detains Nabonidus, and ends the Babylonian captivity. He gives the Jews permission to return to Yehud province and to rebuild the Temple, but most Jews choose to remain in Babylon.
312
Constantine the Great enters Rome after his victory at the Milvian Bridge, stages a grand adventus in the city, and is met with popular jubilation. Maxentius’ body is fished out of the Tiber and beheaded.
1268
Conradin, the last legitimate male heir of the Hohenstaufen dynasty of Kings of Germany and Holy Roman Emperors, is executed along with his companion Frederick I, Margrave of Baden by Charles I of Sicily, a political rival and ally to the hostile Roman Catholic church. Both became romantic symbols for various subsets through time, and Charles of Anjou set a dangerous precedent for many other executions over succeeding centuries of dynastic and political rivals across Europe.
1390
First trial for witchcraft in Paris leading to the death of three people.
1618
English adventurer, writer, and courtier Sir Walter Raleigh is beheaded for allegedly conspiring against James I of England.
1675
Leibniz makes the first use of the long s (∫) as a symbol of the integral in calculus.
1929
The New York Stock Exchange crashes in what will be called the Crash of '29 or “Black Tuesday”, ending the Great Bull Market of the 1920s and beginning the Great Depression.
1941
The Holocaust: In the Kaunas Ghetto, over 10,000 Jews are shot by German occupiers at the Ninth Fort, a massacre known as the “Great Action”.

***

We haven't yet learned how to stay human when assembled in masses. -Lewis Thomas, physician and author

***

AI constitutions (like Claude’s Constitution and the OpenAI Model Spec) are real constitutions, and we need to take how they govern us – and the AIs they create – seriously.

In this paper, I apply constitutional theory’s oldest paradox – that “the people” authorize the constitution, but the constitution defines “the people” – to the AI constitutions, and explore how we could build institutions that would create the conditions for meaningful consent if an AI can give it. --Caputo

***

Obligate mutualism is a special case of mutualism where an ecological interaction between species mutually benefits each other, and one or all species are unable to survive without the other. In some obligate relationships, only one species is dependent on the relationship. Fig and fig wasps are an example of a co-obligate relationship, where both species are totally dependent on the relationship. The fig plant is entirely dependent on the fig wasp for pollination, and the fig wasp requires the fig plant for reproductive purposes. Many insect-fungi relationships are also co-obligate: the insect disperses, and in some cases protects, the fungi while the fungi provide nutrients for the insects.

***

Vast numbers of nonwhites are being raised to believe that America hates them. This, itself, should be a hate crime.

***

The Sullivan news in Alaska's Senate race is not new; indeed, the fact that it has been under the radar for so long is more damaging to so-called American journalism. 

Any election where at least the spirit of the law has not been violated was because it was too hard. These people are awful.

***

Darlene Graham is in trouble in the S.C. Senate race? Must be an error. Political success seems to be hereditary. But should she lose, the Rube-publicans can be reassured the substitute, whoever she is, will be no different. All of these people are linked by a hidden net of insincerity, short-sightedness, and willingness to sacrifice the national well-being for personal gain.

***

Financing Democracy

Good news. Both American parties want to end corruption in politics and eliminate the influence of political money in elections and government. Here are the obvious targets they can work on. (They probably already know.)

As of August 28th, 170 billionaire families have spent over $1.7 billion to influence the outcome of the 2026 federal midterm elections. 17 of these families—who collectively gave $363 million this cycle—had direct personal or professional connections with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. With two months remaining in the election cycle, this amount of billionaire election spending surpasses the record-breaking $1 billion they spent in the 2022 midterm cycle and is on track to double their political spending from four years prior. We are very pro-growth.

Billionaires’ political spending is up 53-fold since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision allowed for unlimited campaign donations.
Twenty years ago – the last midterm cycle before the floodgates of unlimited spending were opened – the top 15 contributors spent less than $15 million in the 2006 elections. A handful of individuals now spend 6,400% more to decide who controls America’s federal government. Presumably politicians are more expensive now. Inflation and all.

The vast bulk of billionaire-family political contributions went to so-called “independent expenditure” groups–which, thanks to Citizens United, can raise unlimited amounts from each donor–rather than directly to candidates or parties, which still work under campaign-contribution limits. Less than 20% of billionaires’ contributions went through committees with spending limits. Innovation.

Billionaire spending heavily favored Republicans over Democrats by over two-to-one, with $1.2 billion (69%) going to support Republican candidates so far and $488 million (28%) going directly to backing Democrats.

In addition to known billionaire political donations, there are nearly $600 million in dark money contributions from unknown, shadowy sources that could include the nation’s wealthiest families and the corporations they control. But certainly not interested foreign actors with bad intent.

Cleaning up this mess will probably not come from new laws; it will come from new candidates. And virtue. Imagine: "Just say 'No!'" But I wouldn't count on it.

Now there's a bet for Kalshi.

Business and Other Nations

On this day:
312

Battle of Milvian Bridge: Constantine I defeats Maxentius, becoming the sole Roman Emperor.

1628

The Siege of La Rochelle, which had lasted for 14 months, ends with the surrender of the Huguenots
1919
The U.S. Congress passes the Volstead Act over President Woodrow Wilson’s veto, paving the way for Prohibition to begin the following January.
1922
March on Rome: Italian fascists led by Benito Mussolini march on Rome and take over the Italian government.
1929
Black Monday, a day in the Wall Street Crash of 1929, which also saw major stock market upheaval.
2006
The funeral service takes place for those executed at Bykivnia forest, outside Kiev, Ukraine. 817 Ukrainian civilians (out of some 100,000) executed by Bolsheviks at Bykivnia in 1930s – early 1940s are reburied.

***

“There is no such thing as a Lost Cause, because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause.” --T.S. Eliot

***

A factor unmentioned in the polls that might be important in the midterms: Americans don’t want us to ally with Putin (and North Korea) in their invasion of Ukraine, alienating ourselves from Canada and Europe, the Aussies and the Brits. Just a gut feeling.

***

Terrific series, though the experts were worried. Milwaukee and Tampa Bay have the third-smallest combined television market of any World Series pairing in the modern era, and the two teams’ payrolls, added together, are nearly a hundred million dollars less than that of either the Mets or the Dodgers.
But they are not afraid. The Brewers began scouting their best offensive player, Jackson Chourio, when he was 14 and living in Venezuela, and signed him to an eight-year, $82 million contract before he even reached the majors.
Brewers have clawed and elbowed their way back into every game, one run at a time, as they had all season. They’d trailed in every game against the Dodgers, in the N.L.C.S., and still swept them.
The Brewers aren’t some small-market darling, and expense is not quality.

***

Reuters notes China's STAR50 index of AI and semiconductor companies has collapsed by 40 percent, wiping out $480 billion in market value. 40%.

***

Business and Other Nations

While the default position of democracies--everybody's lying-- is likely true, it is also true that, in Ukraine, a private U.S. business probably compromised some defensive Ukrainian software and threatened the country without breaking a law or firing a shot. This may, or may not, have caused Ukraine serious trouble. The company, Starlink, says Ukraine violated its contract not to use the software to kill. Capitalism takes the high ground.

Should a free citizen be allowed to compromise the nation's friends?

Should we compromise the independence of rapacious, ambitious, high-performance producers and put them at the mercies of rapacious, ambitious politicians from the bottom quintile who have no obvious redeeming social value?

Will we see the profound politicians seek to curtail the free activities of citizens that seem to compromise political entities in whom we have shown an embarrassing disinterest?

How long do you think it will take the lowest quintile crowd to try to nationalize Starlink and run it disguised as virtue?

Creative Destruction

 

On this day:

312
Constantine the Great is said to have received his famous Vision of the Cross.
1553
Condemned as a heretic, Michael Servetus is burned at the stake just outside Geneva.
1838
Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs issues the Extermination Order, which orders all Mormons to leave the state or be exterminated.
1870
Marshal François Achille Bazaine surrenders to Prussian forces at Metz along with 140,000 French soldiers in one of the biggest French defeats of the Franco-Prussian War.
1936
Mrs Wallis Simpson files for divorce, which would eventually allow her to marry King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom, thus forcing his abdication from the throne.
1962
Major Rudolf Anderson of the United States Air Force becomes the only direct human casualty of the Cuban Missile Crisis when his U-2 reconnaissance airplane is shot down in Cuba by a Soviet-supplied SA-2 Guideline surface-to-air missile.

***

"It is impossible to walk rapidly and be unhappy." - Dr. Howard Murphy

***

Michael Servetus (born 1511?, Villanueva or Tudela, Spain—died October 27, 1553, Champel, Switzerland) was a Spanish physician who developed a thesis on pulmonary circulation. He was a translator and published theological writings, translations, and books on astrology and prophecy. His unorthodox religious teachings led to his condemnation as a heretic by both Protestants and Roman Catholics and to his execution by Calvinists from Geneva.

***

A powerful gene-editing technique has been used to edit DNA directly in a person’s body — the first known instance of such a treatment.
The milestone treatment is part of a clinical trial of prime editing, a technique that can alter DNA with more precision than standard CRISPR–Cas9 methods can. In this case, prime editing was used to treat a condition called Wilson’s disease by rewriting DNA in liver cells, to erase a mutation that prevents them from eliminating excess copper.
This technique engineers cells directly in the body, rather than using the standard method of extracting a person’s cells, editing their DNA in a laboratory, and then reinjecting the altered cells.

***

Two Paths to Prosperity traces the emergence of two very different social organizations in premodern China and Europe—the clan and the corporation—showing how they were key factors in the economic and political divergence of these two great civilizations.

***

Unbelievable third game of the Series.

***

The senatorial race in Alaska should convince people that deceiving the electorate is an elemental characteristic of politics. And it is so blatant it implies even more disrespect.

***

Creative Destruction

“In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing.”--Assar Lindbeck

Ours is a strange time of shifting foundations and increasing dogmatism.

Locked in a tight re-election campaign against a democratic socialist, Brett Smiley vetoed a rent-control bill the Providence City Council passed in April. His position put him at odds with a bedrock progressive policy in one of the most liberal places in the United States.

Notably, Smiley helped Providence add more apartments in its latest fiscal year than in any year in two decades; 40% of them are affordable.

“I believe it is a false promise,” he said in a phone interview earlier this month. “But it’s good, cheap, easy politics.”

Smiley lost the election in a landslide.

He became the first mayor in Providence’s history to lose in a primary, falling in September to David Morales, a 27-year-old state lawmaker and member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Morales, who called the veto “absolutely shameful,” is a near lock to win the general election next month. Morales pledged to sign rent control in his first 100 days.

In difficult times, savages and the electorate turn to magic.

China's AI Position

On this day:

1597
Imjin War: Admiral Yi Sun-sin routs the Japanese Navy of 300 ships with only 13 ships at the Battle of Myeongnyang.
1774
The first Continental Congress adjourns in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1775
King George III goes before Parliament to declare the American colonies in rebellion, and authorized a military response to quell the American Revolution.
1776
Benjamin Franklin departs from America for France on a mission to seek French support for the American Revolution.
1881
The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral takes place at Tombstone, Arizona.
1942
World War II: In the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands during the Guadalcanal Campaign, one U.S. aircraft carrier, Hornet, is sunk and another aircraft carrier, Enterprise, is heavily damaged.
1967
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi crowns himself Emperor of Iran and then crowns his wife Farah Empress of Iran.
977
The last natural case of smallpox is discovered in Merca district, Somalia. The WHO and the CDC consider this date the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, the most spectacular success of vaccination.
1999
Britain’s House of Lords votes to end the right of hereditary peers to vote in Britain’s upper chamber of Parliament.
2002
Moscow Theatre Siege: Approximately 50 Chechen terrorists and 150 hostages die when Russian Spetsnaz storm a theater building in Moscow, which had been occupied by the terrorists during a musical performance three days before.

***

The grass isn't always greener on the other side. It’s greener where you water it.--Riley Gaines

***

Neutrinos are elementary particles, meaning they cannot be broken into smaller components, as far as we know. There are three neutrino "flavors": electron, muon and tau. Unlike some other elementary particles, neutrinos have no electric charge. Although they have mass, they are incredibly light—maybe 10 million times lighter than an electron. There are one billion neutrinos for every atom in the universe.

***

In China, individual doctors can set up clinical trials with real patients without approval from a centralized authority like the FDA. This system produced the blockbuster cancer drug Carvykti, as well as a wave of experimental therapies available only in China.

***

"It may be that the Trump administration has pushed too far, but my real worry is that we are losing an equilibrium. Science was never completely independent of politics, of course, but even at the worst of times, funding was decentralized and the culture-war material that dominated the headlines was never more than a tiny fraction of the whole. Like an independent judiciary, independent science has been an American virtue. COVID policy, gender policy, and now the Trump administration’s weaponization of these mistakes may have destroyed that equilibrium.

...we are adopting the loser policies of authoritarian nations, but those policies are the norm elsewhere for a reason. Centralized control of science is the default because it serves the people in power of whatever party. Decentralization is the fragile exception—a historically unusual achievement that is easier to destroy than rebuild."--Tabarrok

***

Gladwell has a new book in which he says that a big problem in the U.S. is that we have too few police. Berlin and Los Angeles are comparable in size. Berlin has 18,000 cops; L.A. has 8,000. Because we have too few cops to get at the root of violent crime before it is even committed, we wind up spending a fortune on prisons instead.

***

China's AI Position

China's spy chief just offered a window into Beijing's priorities confronting AI's biggest risks.

Chen Yixin, China's minister of state security, published an article in China Cyberspace, a journal run by the Cyberspace Administration of China, the country's internet regulator.

In it, Chen identified six major risks AI could pose to Beijing. The first was "regime security."

He wrote that "various hostile forces and malicious individuals abuse generative AI technologies — such as deepfake audio and video, AI-generated images and text, and intelligent online armies — to produce political rumors at low cost and in large quantities."

Those tools can "spread harmful information, incite antagonistic emotions, and wage a war of public opinion and cognitive warfare," posing direct threats to China's political, institutional, and ideological security, he said.

Chen also identified five other major AI risks, including:

-Dangers to China's critical infrastructure, because cyberattacks can be carried out with extreme efficiency, considering the power of models like Mythos.
-The risk of large-scale data leaks, where Chinese AI users and foreign intelligence agencies alike could obtain critical national data, trade secrets, or citizens' personal information.
-An imbalance in technological development caused by monopolies and closed technological systems, as countries can exploit AI's power and fragment supply chains in the name of national security.
-Challenges to social governance that lead to disruptions in public order.
-Fundamental shifts in warfare, as AI-powered precision targeting gives adversaries a major advantage on the battlefield.

Where are the people here? Did you see any concern about the possibility of an aberrant AT causing health risks or damage to real individuals, or is China concerned only about the State and its hierarchy? What do you think that means?

Sunday/The Greatest Commandment

On this day:

1147
Seljuk Turks completely annihilate German crusaders under Conrad III at the Battle of Dorylaeum.
1147
The Portuguese, under Afonso I, and Crusaders from England and Flanders conquer Lisbon after a four-month siege.
1415
The army of Henry V of England defeats the French at the Battle of Agincourt.
1760
George III becomes King of Great Britain.
1854
The Battle of Balaklava during the Crimean War (Charge of the Light Brigade).
1917
Traditionally understood date of the October Revolution, involving the capture of the Winter Palace, Petrograd, Russia. The date refers to the Julian Calendar date, and corresponds with November 7 in the Gregorian calendar.
1944
Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in history, takes place in and around the Philippines between the Imperial Japanese Navy and the U.S. Third and U.S. Seventh Fleets.
1944
Heinrich Himmler orders a crackdown on the Edelweiss Pirates, a loosely organized youth culture in Nazi Germany that had assisted army deserters and others to hide from the Third Reich.
1944
The USS Tang under Richard O'Kane (the top American submarine captain of World War II) is sunk by the ship’s own malfunctioning torpedo.
1962
Cuban missile crisis: Adlai Stevenson shows photos at the UN proving Soviet missiles are installed in Cuba.
1983
Operation Urgent Fury: The United States and its Caribbean allies invade Grenada, six days after Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several of his supporters are executed in a coup d'état.

***

“I'm a liberal in the real sense of the word. The word comes from the Latin which means a free person, as—and this was very much in the minds of Romans when they used the word—contrasted with a slave. And one very simple way of describing true liberalism is to say that everyone has the right to say no.”--mccloskey

***

The Rays traded Lowe, Mangum and Montgomery, won 98 games and captured the American League pennant anyway. Pittsburgh acquired them, received tremendous production from all three, and still couldn't do better than an 82-80 record.

***

Metonymy: noun, Rhetoric 1. a figure of speech that consists of the use of the name of one object or concept for that of another to which it is related, or of which it is a part, as “scepter” for “sovereignty,” or “the bottle” for “strong drink,” or “count heads (or noses)” for “count people.” 1540-50; < Late Latin metōnymia < Greek metōnymía change of name;

***

A Scottish museum has reportedly removed mummies because the individuals hadn't given their consent. A reminder that Kafka's world is self-imposed.

***

Sunday/The Greatest Commandment

In today's gospel, a scribe asks Christ which commandment is greatest. It is interesting because questions usually are aimed at either defeating Christ in an argument or placing Him in opposition to the Law. In this instance, the question is sincere and welcomed.

Christ answers to love God completely. His answer is very close to the Shema, a declaration of faith that every Jew of the time recited twice a day. And every Jew would have given the same answer to the scribe's question. (The first line of the Shema, "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.")

Then Christ does something curious; He goes further and gives the famous second commandment, to love your neighbor as yourself. This question was not asked. He takes a question that every Jew would see as demanding a narrow definition and expands it much further. He then says, "There is no greater commandment than these two," essentially joining the two as one. When the scribe agrees with Him, Christ says, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

What is wonderful here is Christ's acceptance of questioning as not just reasonable but as a way to truth, with faith as a process, a step to understanding.

SatStats

On this day:

1260
The spectacular Cathedral of Chartres is dedicated in the presence of King Louis IX of France; the cathedral is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
1911
Orville Wright remains in the air 9 minutes and 45 seconds in a Wright Glider at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.
1929
“Black Thursday” stock market crash on the New York Stock Exchange.
1944
World War II: The Japanese aircraft carrier Zuikaku, and the battleship Musashi are sunk in the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
1960
Nedelin catastrophe: An R-16 ballistic missile explodes on the launch pad at the Soviet Union’s Baikonur Cosmodrome space facility, killing over 100. Among the dead is Field Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin, whose death is reported to have occurred in a plane crash.
1990
Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti reveals to the Italian parliament the existence of Gladio, the Italian “stay-behind” clandestine paramilitary NATO army, which was implicated in false flag terrorist attacks implicating communists and anarchists as part of the strategy of tension from the late 1960s to early 1980s.
1998
Launch of Deep Space 1 comet/asteroid mission
2002
Police arrest spree killers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, ending the Beltway sniper attacks in the area around Washington, DC.
2008
“Bloody Friday” saw many of the world’s stock exchanges experience the worst declines in their history, with drops of around 10% in most indices.

***

"I am going to teach the South American republics to elect good men!"--Woodrow Wilson

***

Tennis star Serena Williams needed surgery to remove a blood clot from her lungs in 2011, and nearly died from a pulmonary embolism and related complications after she gave birth to her daughter in September 2017.

***

Ms. Chevalier is typical of the intellectuals who Hayek described as being guilty of “constructivist rationalism.” This mouthful of a term applies to those persons who are convinced that if they can think of a concept (details are unnecessary) – if they can describe a concept in words or graphs or equations – then that concept is therefore not only possible to achieve in reality, but achievable in a way that has no unforeseen negative consequences.--rothman

***

Mamdani in DC. A bill would establish a new “Department of Defense Equity Investment Account” in the Treasury and authorize OSC’s director to use that account to make equity investments.

***

During 2025, Boeing churned out 600 commercial airliners from its assembly facilities in Washington state and South Carolina. Many of those planes were sold to foreign airlines and exported. This is tremendous news for the workers at Boeing and for the company’s shareholders. It’s also great for those foreign buyers—airlines can purchase Boeing planes without first needing to develop a local airliner-production industry. They can develop a transportation industry.

Now use that info as a metaphor for the Balance of Trade

***

Bernie Sanders schemes to have government seize 50 percent of the equity of AI firms. Imagine that. Imagine thinking that in America.

***

Biden and Trump administrations previously asked SpaceX to switch Starlink on or off, six former officials say
Biden officials asked SpaceX to cut service tied to Houthis and Hezbollah, former officials say
Trump officials discussed activating Starlink in Iran after 2025 and 2026 strikes, sources say
US reliance on SpaceX raises questions over Musk’s influence on policy decisions--Reuters says

***

Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders have unionized.

***

SatStats

On Oct. 14, 2026, Citizens Against Government Waste released its 2026 edition of Prime Cuts. First published in 1993, when the national debt was $4.4 trillion, its 494 recommendations, drawn from proposals from both Democratic and Republican administrations and members of Congress, and nonpartisan sources, would save $639 billion in the first year and $5.6 trillion over five years.

*

In the salary cap era 112 teams won three games or less over the first 10 games of a season. Only 21 of them made the playoffs.
That is roughly 16 percent.

*

By the dawn of the twentieth century, the U.S. had become almost as large economically as England, Germany and France combined.

*

E-bike injuries have increased almost 800%

*

Congressional Budget Office report projected annual deficits increasing from $1.9 trillion in fiscal 2026 to $3.1 trillion in fiscal 2036. Over these ten years, deficits will average $2.44 trillion a year, adding $24.4 trillion and pushing gross federal debt to $64.6 trillion by fiscal 2036, 61.5 percent more than today.

*

Only 38.4% of students in California public schools showed math proficiency on tests this spring. Only 49.3% met or exceeded state standards in English.

*

In the first half of this year, China’s disciplinary authorities filed roughly 538,000 cases, an average of nearly 90,000 a month, up from about 83,000 a month in 2025. At the top, 36 senior officials at the provincial or ministerial level and above were investigated or disciplined in the first half of this year alone.

*

China's economy is half of America’s GDP, and its debt is 75% of America’s.

*

Shares in the South Korean data-center startup, Elice, plummeted over 30% on their trading debut, signaling renewed investor caution toward artificial-intelligence stocks. Elice had raised the equivalent of $151 million from its IPO.

*

"The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid a 23.1 percent average rate, six times higher than the 3.7 percent average rate paid by the bottom half of taxpayers," the Tax Foundation's Erica York noted in 2024, of 2022 tax data. "The top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid 97 percent of all federal individual income taxes, while the bottom 50 percent paid the remaining 3 percent."
The share of taxes paid by wealthy Americans is higher than in most other countries.

The Museum of Self-Indulgence

On this day:

4004BC
The day of creation according to the Irish scholar Archbishop James Ussher, who used Biblical references, astronomical data, and secular history to build a timeline. This was published in 1650 and included in the margins of modern English Bibles, like the King James version, into the 19th Century.
42 BC

Roman Republican civil wars: Second Battle of Philippi – Mark Antony and Octavian decisively defeat Brutus’s army. Brutus commits suicide.
1641
Outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641.
1642
Battle of Edgehill: First major battle of the First English Civil War.
1861
U.S. President Abraham Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus in Washington, D.C., for all military-related cases.
1906
Alberto Santos-Dumont flies an airplane in the first heavier-than-air flight in Europe at Champs de Bagatelle, Paris, France.
1911
First use of aircraft in war: An Italian pilot takes off from Libya to observe Turkish army lines during the Turco-Italian War.
1912
First Balkan War: The Battle of Kumanovo between the Serbian and Ottoman armies begins.
1956
Thousands of Hungarians protest against the government and Soviet occupation. (The Hungarian Revolution is crushed on November 4).
1958
The Springhill Mine Bump – An underground earthquake traps 174 miners in the No. 2 colliery at Springhill, Nova Scotia, the deepest coal mine in North America at the time. By November 1, rescuers from around the world had dug out 100 of the victims, marking the death toll at 74.
1983
Lebanon Civil War: The U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut is hit by a truck bomb, killing 241 U.S. military personnel. A French army barracks in Lebanon is also hit that same morning, killing 58 troops.
2002
Moscow Theatre Siege begins: Chechen terrorists seize the House of Culture theater in Moscow and take approximately 700 theater-goers hostage.

***

If a man can be a woman, there is no such thing as a woman. --Interesting line from Rowling

***

Belling the cat: On Oct. 14, 2026, Citizens Against Government Waste released its 2026 edition of Prime Cuts. First published in 1993, when the national debt was $4.4 trillion, its 494 recommendations, drawn from proposals by both Democratic and Republican administrations, members of Congress, and nonpartisan sources, would save $639 billion in the first year and $5.6 trillion over five years.

***

Researchers say they have found a consistent internal signal that seems to function a little bit like pain does in biological beings inside 25 different AI models. Like pain.

***

Ben Kindel could return to practice as soon as next week after losing consciousness aboard the Pittsburgh Penguins team plane Tuesday, general manager Kyle Dubas said Thursday. The episode has been called 'vasovagal,' a sudden drop in pulse rate and blood pressure, the mechanism of fainting.

***

Is 'The greatest good for the greatest number' meaningful without a definition of 'the good'?

***

The Museum of Self-Indulgence

A provocative question has been raised about the Smithsonian Institution.

The White House Domestic Policy Council (DPC) published a report arguing that the Smithsonian Institution has “adopted an ideological framework that no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance.” More bluntly, the report—titled “Saving America’s Story”—claims the exhibits at the Smithsonian’s flagship National Museum of American History were “prepared by people who don’t want you to love your country.” According to DPC director Vince Haley, “The bottom line is that there’s no national story at the National Museum of American History.”

Washington Post culture critic Philip Kennicott writes that Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch—who recently announced that he’ll retire at year’s end—“has been an enormously consequential leader.” Kennicott elaborates: “Never has the nation more urgently needed to focus on key issues, like climate change and its long history of racial, ethnic and class division,” rather than on “the happy narrative of American exceptionalism.”

In his 2019 book A Fool’s Errand, Bunch criticized a museum profession “awash in whiteness” and expressed his desire “to help Americans grapple with their own culpability in creating a society based on slavery.” He has also said that he wants museums “to make diversity and inclusion so central that it’s no longer talked about,” and that museums should “inspire new generations of activists.” His worldview is particularly evident at the National Museum of American History, where exhibits opened under his watch—and that of Anthea Hartig, the museum’s director for the past seven years—excessively prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion over telling America’s story. The museum now devotes more square footage to displays about lowrider cars and salsa music than to displays about the American Founding.

Is this received well? Is there a correlation between these changes and attendance?

According to the institution’s own statistics, in 2018—the last full pre-Bunch (and pre-Hartig) year—the number of visits to the Smithsonian was 28.5 million. In 2025, it was 14.9 million. In other words, the Smithsonian had barely over half as many visits in 2025 as in 2018.

If we exclude numbers from the National Zoo, which hasn’t been overtaken by DEI—and, unsurprisingly, hasn’t declined in popularity—from this assessment, the Smithsonian lost even more than half of its attendance from 2018 to 2025: visits fell from 26.7 million to 13 million, a 51 percent drop. The National Museum of American History fared worse than Smithsonian museums overall. From 2018 to 2025, its attendance fell from 4.1 million visits to just 1.8 million—a 56 percent decline.

The median American museum lost only 5 percent of its annual attendance from pre- to post-COVID, comparing 2019 to 2025. The Smithsonian’s attendance drop over that same timespan places it in the bottom 10 percent of all museums nationally. 

Is all this just a coincidence?

--most from City Journal

Some UBI Results

On this day:
362
A mysterious fire destroys the Temple of Apollo at Daphne outside Antioch.
1707
Scilly naval disaster: four British Royal Navy ships run aground near the Isles of Scilly because of faulty navigation. Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell and thousands of sailors drown.
1784
Russia founds a colony on Kodiak Island, Alaska.
1797
One thousand meters (3,200 feet) above Paris, André-Jacques Garnerin makes the first recorded parachute jump.
1844
The Great Anticipation: Millerites, followers of William Miller, anticipate the end of the world in conjunction with the Second Advent of Christ. The following day became known as the Great Disappointment.
1877
The Blantyre mining disaster in Scotland kills 207 miners.
1943
World War II: in the Second firestorm raid on Germany, the Royal Air Force conducts an air raid on the town of Kassel, killing 10,000 and rendering 150,000 homeless.
1962
Cuban Missile Crisis: US President John F. Kennedy, after internal counsel from Dwight D. Eisenhower, announces that American reconnaissance planes have discovered Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, and that he has ordered a naval “quarantine” of the Communist nation.
1964
Jean-Paul Sartre is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but turns down the honor.
2008
India launches its first unmanned lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1.

***

"Debt is future consumption brought forward," von Böhm-Bawerk

***

Starlink is having regulatory problems in India. This, from Space Jam:
It’s important to remember here that Starlink is not any ordinary satellite operator: it has massive geopolitical power. It operates the largest LEO constellation with about 11,000 satellites, a scale that’s difficult for its competitors in India to currently match. Starlink and SpaceX are also key parts of the U.S.’s civil and defense space ecosystems, with Starlink playing a key role in the Ukraine conflict. Again, India has multiple interests to balance: consumer choice, local innovation, and its relationship with the U.S. A key challenge for the nation here, therefore, is in taking advantage of Starlink’s technical capabilities while ensuring that the national communications infrastructure isn’t controlled by a single operator.

***

Cameroon’s 92-year-old Paul Biya is no ordinary leader.
Ruling oil-rich Cameroon since 1982, the world’s oldest head of state basically lives at the InterContinental Geneva, where his delegation books out the entire 16th floor.

***

The moon turns red because, as Earth blocks the Sun's rays, any sunlight reaching the moon has to travel along our planet's edge. Most of the light with shorter wavelengths—blue, violet, and green—is scattered away by the atmosphere, leaving only longer wavelengths—the red, orange, and yellow colours —to dimly illuminate the moon.

This process also causes the reds and yellows at sunrise and sunset.

***

Federal authorities on Thursday charged a prominent Virginia Democrat with racketeering and a money laundering conspiracy as part of an alleged public corruption case involving a cannabis business she co-owns. Virginia state Sen. L. Louise Lucas, one of the most powerful Democrats in the state, surrendered to authorities Thursday, the Justice Department spokesperson said.

***

Dubas said the Kindel incident has been diagnosed as a vasovagal episode.

***

Four years after being the #4 draft pick, Termarr Johnson's development has stalled, his prospect stock has plummeted, and a devastating knee injury has made an already uncertain future even more complicated.

***

Europe is worried about its reliance upon American space technology. 98% of the weight launched into space is carried by SpaceX.

***

Some UBI Results

Universal basic income (UBI) is a notion that would provide federal cash for everyone, no strings attached. An annual payout to every citizen--age limits to be determined--to guarantee the basic necessities of life.

There's a history. Thomas Paine, a pamphleteer whose ideas helped spur the American Revolution, proposed a tax plan in which revenues would provide a basic government income. So, too, Martin Luther King, Jr., proposed “guaranteed income” in his book "Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?" published in 1967. In 1962’s "Capitalism and Freedom",  Milton Friedman argued that a “negative income tax”—essentially a UBI—would help overcome a mindset where citizens aren’t inclined to make sacrifices if they don’t believe others will follow suit. Libertarian philosopher Charles Murray believes that guaranteed income would also cut government bureaucracy. He has proposed a $10,000-per-year UBI, as well as basic health insurance, which he says would allow the government to cut Social Security and other redistribution programs.

And a present. AI is looming. How will workers be impacted? In 2023, researchers at OpenAI—a leading artificial intelligence (AI) research organization—and the University of Pennsylvania published a working paper analyzing the impact of the technology on the labor market. Per their analysis, 80% of the U.S. workforce could have at least 10% of their work affected by large language models, a type of AI that can process and generate text. 19% of workers could see 50% or more of their tasks impacted. AI might alleviate the damage. And there's Andrew Yang, always the smartest guy in the room. He estimates UBI, which he enthusiastically endorses, would cost almost $2 trillion and suggests covering those expenses, in part, by shrinking other social programs and imposing a 10% value-added tax (VAT) on businesses. He also proposed ending the cap on Social Security payroll taxes and taxing carbon emissions for his guaranteed income plan.

Comedian Dave Chappelle, a serious guy, thinks UBI would "save my community almost instantly."

UBI activist Conrad Shaw agrees, "You would effectively get rid of extreme poverty immediately."
He says a UBI will help people "start businesses, fix their homes, or invest in sustainable gardens."

Sustainable gardens.

Sam Altman, the guy behind ChatGPT, helped create a test. His big study gave 1,000 low-income people $1,000 per month for three years—no strings attached. What happened?

Not the great things that were promised. After three years of getting $1,000/month, UBI recipients were actually a little deeper in debt than before.

Why? Because they worked less. Their partners did, too.

And the group used more health care.

Some recipients talked about starting businesses, but few actually tried it. Most who said they did start a business waited until the third year of the study—when their free money was about to end.

Some advocates said that working less meant they were enjoying life more. As might be expected, work generally doesn't seem to be a virtue in this group.

But nobody ever said getting $1,000 a month was bad.

No Pawns

On this day:

1096
People’s Crusade: The Turkish army annihilates the People’s Army of the West.
1097
First Crusade: Crusaders led by Godfrey of Bouillon, Bohemund of Taranto, and Raymond IV of Toulouse begin the Siege of Antioch.
1774
First display of the word “Liberty” on a flag, raised by colonists in Taunton, Massachusetts, in defiance of British rule in Colonial America
1805
Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Trafalgar: A British fleet led by Vice Admiral Lord Nelson defeats a combined French and Spanish fleet off the coast of Spain under Admiral Villeneuve. It signals almost the end of French maritime power and leaves Britain’s navy unchallenged until the 20th century.
1854
Florence Nightingale and a staff of 38 nurses are sent to the Crimean War.
1861
American Civil War: Battle of Ball’s Bluff – Union forces under Colonel Edward Baker are defeated by Confederate troops in the second major battle of the war. Baker, a close friend of Abraham Lincoln, is killed in the fighting.
1944
World War II: Battle of Aachen: The city of Aachen falls to American forces after three weeks of fighting, making it the first German city to fall to the Allies.
1944
World War II: The first kamikaze attack: A Japanese plane carrying a 200 kg bomb attacks HMAS Australia off Leyte Island, as the Battle of Leyte Gulf began.

***

"Biographical history, as taught in our public schools, is still largely a history of boneheads: ridiculous kings and queens, paranoid political leaders, compulsive voyagers, ignorant generals, the flotsam and jetsam of historical currents. The men who radically altered history, the great creative scientists and mathematicians, are seldom mentioned if at all." -Martin Gardner, mathematician and writer (21 Oct 1914-2010)

***

Another "No Kings" weekend. A funny aspect of 'No Kings': The hope this would become an international leftist populist movement (without the violence, rape, and murder inherent to revolutionary philosophies) was limited by the fact that many of the target countries really had kings.

***

In his early fantasy baseball shortstop rankings for 2027, CBS Sports' Scott White ranked Griffin fourth overall, behind only Bobby Witt Jr., Elly De La Cruz and C.J. Abrams.

***

 

...“children getting lost in the woods, in a world without human signifiers, without signage or trails, only celestial bodies and natural forms”--from the new translation of Thure Erik Lund’s The Mystery of What Befell in the Ditch

***

Anyone who challenges the notion that campus rape is a widespread phenomenon, or that alleged victims must automatically be believed, supports and upholds “cultures and systems of rape, sexual assault, and violence,” in the words of Columbia Political Review.--City Journal


***

No Pawns

One of the country-and-western axioms of democracy is that 'Freedom Isn't Free.' It also isn't one-sided. A look at the American Revolution, a pivotal event in the Western world, shows that getting rid of oppression wasn't the half of it. 

On July 2, 1776, the Congress voted to declare independence. Two days later, Congress ratified the Declaration. Cornwallis surrendered his entire army at Yorktown on October 19, 1781. The American Revolution officially ended on September 3, 1783. Washington was inaugurated on April 30, 1789, in New York City. It took years to hammer out a constitution that everyone could tolerate.

After the Lee Resolution proposed independence for the American colonies, the Second Continental Congress appointed three committees on June 11, 1776. One of the committees was tasked with determining what form the confederation of the colonies should take. This committee was composed of one representative from each colony. John Dickinson, a delegate from Delaware, was the principal writer.

The Dickinson Draft of the Articles of Confederation named the confederation "the United States of America." After considerable debate and revision, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation on November 15, 1777, establishing a "league of friendship" for the 13 sovereign and independent states. Each state retained "every Power...which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States. The Articles of Confederation also outlined a Congress with representation not based on population – each state would have one vote in Congress. Partisan bickering delayed final ratification until March 1, 1781.

A few years later, the young country was on the brink of collapse. With the states-nee-colonies retaining considerable authority, the central government had insufficient power to regulate commerce. Nor could it tax, set commercial policy, or support a war effort. Congress attempted to function with a depleted treasury, and paper money was flooding the country, creating extraordinary inflation.

The states were on the brink of economic disaster, and the central government had little power to settle quarrels between states. Disputes over territory, war pensions, taxation, and trade threatened to tear the country apart.

In May of 1787, the Constitutional Convention assembled in Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation. They shuttered the windows of the State House (Independence Hall) and swore secrecy so they could speak freely. By mid-June, the delegates had decided to completely redesign the government. After three hot, summer months of highly charged debate, the new Constitution was signed, which remains in effect today.

This is to say, after the stunning success of the Revolution, even the geniuses who engineered it could not create a lasting government structure. Their first effort resulted in unworkable chaos.

Which brings us to the charming street fair known as 'No Kings.' Free government is an oxymoron; it is very hard. Trying to create your own populist movement by opposing something that doesn't exist by dressing up in multicolored unicorn costumes and dancing is benign enough, but only if you truly understand that it is neither serious nor meaningful.

The real lesson of 'No Kings' is that the flamboyant opposition to something that doesn't exist is not even a first step to solving our life-threatening problems.

Saluting the Uniform

On this day:

1803
The United States Senate ratifies the Louisiana Purchase.
1910
The hull of the RMS Olympic, sister-ship to the ill-fated RMS Titanic, is launched from the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
1917
The Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, in charge of preparation and carrying out the Russian Revolution, holds its first meeting.
1935
The Long March ends.
1941
World War II: Thousands of civilian men and boys in Kragujevac in German-occupied Serbia are killed in the Kragujevac massacre, a reprisal for insurgent attacks in the Gornji Milanovac district that resulted in the deaths of ten German soldiers and the wounding of 26 others.
1943
The German cargo vessel Sinfra is attacked by Allied aircraft at Suda Bay, Crete, and sunk. 2,098 Italian prisoners of war died, most by German gunfire.
1944
Liquid natural gas leaks from storage tanks in Cleveland, then explodes; the explosion and resulting fire level 30 blocks and kill 130.
1947
The House Un-American Activities Committee begins its investigation into Communist infiltration of Hollywood, resulting in a blacklist that prevents some from working in the industry for years.
1951
The “Johnny Bright Incident” occurs in Stillwater, Oklahoma, a
violent on-field assault against African-American football player Johnny Bright by white player Wilbanks Smith during a college game 
1968
Former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy marries Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis.
1973
“Saturday Night Massacre”: President Richard Nixon fires U.S. Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus after they refuse to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who is finally fired by Robert Bork.
1977
A plane carrying Lynyrd Skynyrd crashes in Mississippi, killing lead singer Ronnie Van Zant and guitarist Steve Gaines along with backup singer Cassie Gaines, the road manager, pilot, and co-pilot.
1981
Two police officers and an armored car guard are killed during an armed robbery in Rockland County, NY, carried out by members of the Black Liberation Army and Weather Underground.
1982
During the UEFA Cup match between FC Spartak Moscow and HFC Haarlem, 66 people are crushed to death in the Luzhniki disaster.
2011
The former leader of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi, and his son Moatassem Gaddafi are killed shortly after the battle of Sirte (2011) while in the custody of NTC fighters.

***

Where there is no property, there is no justice.”--Locke

***

Jalen Hurts was originally diagnosed with having a superficial blood clot, according to a team statement released on Oct. 15, which was discovered following an ultrasound in London before the Eagles' Week 5 game against the Jacksonville Jaguars. It was deemed that mobility was important and Hurts could safely play in the game, per the statement. A follow-up ultrasound last Wednesday showed the blood clot had moved, the team said. Hurts was subsequently ruled out of Sunday's Week 6 game against the Carolina Panthers and has since been put on injured reserve.

They let him play.

***

Kimberly Guilfoyle pleaded with three influential men to help save her job as U.S. ambassador to Greece. One was Hegseth. Hegseth.

***

A fascinating story from WSJ.
Bill Gross has dedicated his life to democratizing entrepreneurship. A serial entrepreneur himself, he is the founder of Idealab, which spawned nearly 200 startups, including as many as 10 unicorns.
Now he believes AI is about to supercharge his life’s mission. Speaking today at the Cloudflare conference in San Francisco—and tomorrow at the Masters of Scale Summit in the same city—Gross will demonstrate his new platform, Idealab.ai, which provides free access to more than a million new business ideas designed to address the world’s problems.
Gross trained Idealab.ai on a huge database of journalistic and professional articles, with an eye toward finding problem statements and then proposing business ideas to solve them. He also trained it on a massive amount of patent and other data to identify problems that haven’t yet been addressed.

***

Authorities have identified 43-year-old Brendan Nugent, a local activist and family friend, as the suspect in custody following the deliberate ramming of Australian parliamentarian Helen Haines. She remains in critical condition, with no word yet on the suspect’s motive.

***

Saudis secretly executed a Bangladeshi couple on indecency charges. This new playground image might be tough to maintain.

***

A Russian military satellite has maneuvered to within metres of a US-registered radar satellite believed to provide intelligence to Ukraine, according to space-tracking data reported by The War Zone, a US defence news site.

***

The single greatest act for peace might be if the Nobel Committee would just give Trump the Peace Prize so he can re-ally with Ukraine. Then, next year, the Nobel Committee could give the Peace Prize to itself.

***

Saluting the Uniform

Science wears a sort of armour. Like the university chair, it carries gravity; it earns respect simply by arriving. But science also developed lobotomy and eugenics.

In 1960, Science, one of the world’s leading science journals, published an article with an unambiguous title: "Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026." It predicted that on this future date the human population would approach infinity and effectively annihilate itself.

The outlandish claim drew widespread public attention. More surprisingly — because its underlying research and math seemed sound — it also received careful and sustained scientific attention, like a pronouncement from a prominent family, 

The authors — Heinz von Foerster, an Austrian-American professor and cybernetics expert, and two of his students, Patricia M. Mora and Lawrence W. Amiot — argued that human populations are exceptional and might grow beyond an exponential rate, at an ever-increasing one.

Heinz von Foerster was, at one point in his life, a stage magician. Never overlook presentation.--culled from somewhere

Lessons of International Crises

 

On this day:
1469
Ferdinand II of Aragon marries Isabella I of Castile, a marriage that paves the way to the unification of Aragon and Castile into a single country, Spain.
1512
Martin Luther becomes a doctor of theology (Doctor in Biblia).
1781
At Yorktown, Virginia, representatives of British commander Lord Cornwallis handed over Cornwallis’ sword and formally surrendered to George Washington and the comte de Rochambeau.
1789
Chief Justice John Jay is sworn in as the first Chief Justice of the United States.
1805
Napoleonic Wars: Austrian General Mack surrenders his army to the Grand Army of Napoleon at the Battle of Ulm. 30,000 prisoners are captured and 10,000 casualties inflicted on the losers.
1812
Napoleon I of France retreats from Moscow.
1813
The Battle of Leipzig concludes, giving Napoleon Bonaparte one of his worst defeats.
1900
Max Planck, in his house at Grunewald, on the outskirts of Berlin, discovers the law of black body emission (Planck’s law).
1950
The People’s Republic of China joins the Korean War by sending thousands of troops across the Yalu river to fight United Nations forces.
1956
The Soviet Union and Japan sign a Joint Declaration, officially ending the state of war between the two countries that had existed since August 1945.
2005
Saddam Hussein goes on trial in Baghdad for crimes against humanity.

***

“Make no mistake: What we are dealing with is a real mysterious creature, not a simple and predictable machine. And like all the best fairy tales, the creature is of our own creation. Only by acknowledging it as being real and by mastering our own fears do we even have a chance to understand it, make peace with it, and figure out a way to tame it and live together.”--Jack Clark, whose official title at Anthropic is head of policy

***

Another political concept often heard in our times is “solution.” Early in these essays, I argue that there are no real solutions in politics – only trade-offs. That theme also recurs in the essays that follow, and extends to foreign policy as well as domestic issues, to economics as well as law, to educational issues no less than to issues of race and sex.--Sowell, in a preface

***

A tablet, known as Plimpton 332, was discovered in the early 1900s in Southern Iraq by the American archaeologist and diplomat Edgar Banks, who was the inspiration for Indiana Jones. The true meaning of the tablet has eluded experts until now, but new research by the University of New South Wales, Australia, has shown it is the world’s oldest and most accurate trigonometric table, which was probably used by ancient architects to construct temples, palaces, and canals. However, unlike today’s trigonometry, Babylonian mathematics used a base 60, or sexagesimal system, rather than the 10 that is used today. Because 60 is far easier to divide by three, experts studying the tablet found that the calculations are far more accurate.
The tablet, which is thought to have come from the ancient Sumerian city of Larsa, has been dated to between 1822 and 1762 BC.

***

This is from a Substack that believes the Pens have made an unspoken decision and that this year is not unplanned: 

"They still need to find their next franchise player, or somehow get into a position for it. Maybe this will be the year it happens.
In the meantime, they are clearing long-term cap space, stockpiling picks, and trying to find some hidden gems.
Do you know what that is? That is rebuilding."

***

In California, one of the richest, tech-savvy populations in the world, only 38.4% of public school students showed math proficiency on tests this spring. Only 49.3% met or exceeded state standards in English.

***

Noah Adams, a writer, broadcaster, and storyteller who hosted All Things Considered for 18 years, has died.

***

Strange episode of a car weaponized in Wichita.

***

Lessons of International Crises

Communication changes have allowed us to see more of the world's processes and decisions. It's not reassuring. The two more obvious and dangerous problems are Israel and AI.

There is violence in the street over more than Israel's policies; there is debate over its very existence. Evidence encompasses UN resolutions, the history of the Holocaust, even Old Testament precedent. But, of course, there is no deed to the Promised Land.

AI has scared everyone witless. AI executives are calmly suggesting that AI might initiate the end of the world. That, of course, is worst case. A happier compromise, best case, would be humanity's enslavement. The problem is, AI is everywhere, even in the hands of people less enlightened than Washington. And, like Israel, everyone is assuming good intentions. Who would be so foolish as to use it for ill?

The debates are very heartfelt, and sometimes the losers in the debates can become quite righteous. But both of these arguments exemplify the essence of modern conflict: these intense problems are never clean problems. Often there are collateral elements, never discussed, that are more important.

Israel debates will never be resolved without this unasked--and probably totally unresolvable--question: After whatever dissolution-destruction-evaporation of the Israel problem, what will be done with Israel's 200 nuclear weapons? Why does this question never come up?

And with AI, what will happen if the Americans develop and control it? Or ban it? Will everybody accept their decisions? Will there be no efforts at rogue use? Is there a good history of agreements among nations that have allowed for the effective control of dangerous technologies?

Or are these just two more wistful, bell-the-cat notions, shallow and self-congratulatory, whose main impact is to call attention to the hand-wringing virtuous and, preemptively, absolve them of responsibility?