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?

Sunday/Caesar

 

On this day:

320
Pappus of Alexandria, a Greek philosopher, observes a solar eclipse and writes a commentary on The Great Astronomer (Almagest).

1356

Basel earthquake, the most significant historic seismological event north of the Alps, destroys the town of Basel, Switzerland.

1851
Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is first published as The Whale by Richard Bentley of London.
1860
The Second Opium War finally ends at the Convention of Peking with the ratification of the Treaty of Tientsin, an unequal treaty.
1867
United States takes possession of Alaska after purchasing it from Russia for $7.2 million. Celebrated annually in the state as Alaska Day.
1898
United States takes possession of Puerto Rico.
1945
The USSR’s nuclear program receives plans for the United States plutonium bomb from Klaus Fuchs at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
1967
The Soviet probe Venera 4 reaches Venus and becomes the first spacecraft to measure the atmosphere of another planet.

***

“The problem with consensus societies is that sometimes the consensus is wrong, and when it is, there is no corrective mechanism.”-- Wolfgang Münchau, author of “Kaput—The End of the German Miracle.”

***

China’s total R&D expenditure exceeded $583 billion in 2025, and according to state news agency Xinhua, spending grew at an average annual rate of 10% over the five years through 2025, making China one of the fastest-growing major research investors

***

In "the greatest good for the greatest number," is there a definition of "good," and does it have any limits?

***

Reports indicate Trump has expanded his personal net worth by $2.2 billion during his second term. His elder sons, Eric and Donald Jr., have joined investment firms, while twenty-year-old Barron Trump reportedly accumulated a $150 million cryptocurrency fortune.

***

Every dollar added to the debt shifts resources from productive enterprise to debt maintenance.

***

An “extremely reliable” informant told authorities about the missing murder weapon, according to newly unsealed records. The informant’s brother told The Times his sibling was at the crime scene.--NY Times

***

A former Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scientist won a legal victory this week after losing his position following sexual misconduct allegations made by a female colleague.
Dr. David Sabatini, a former MIT biology professor and prominent biomedical researcher, was awarded $6 million in damages Friday after a jury found that his former colleague, Dr. Kristin Knouse, had defamed him.
Quite a story.

***

Sunday/Caesar

 “[O]ur Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”--John Adams

The Gospel today is the "Give unto Caesar..." gospel. The wolves are circling. Christ has delivered three parables since his return to Jerusalem, and all are grim assessments of the organized Jewish religion; in the middle one about the tenants and the vineyard, he identifies himself as the Son of God. The Caesar question is asked to isolate him from either Rome or his religious followers. When asked a difficult "either-or" question, Christ answers "Yes." Almost vaudevillian.

If everything were not so serious, it would be funny. But this implies the government has certain responsibilities, certain authority that might be seen as "divine right." It certainly is not an anarchistic view.

Christ shows himself to be very understanding of our lives. He is willing to give the material world--the bustling business and marching political world--its place. But it is a limited place. The world has its demands, practical and real--working on the sabbath to rescue the family cow from a ditch. Christ does not begrudge us our practical anxieties. But he follows with the hugely diminishing clincher: While you understandably must render to Caesar what is his, so must you render what is God's to God. God and Caesar are not competitors because Caesar is part of the whole.

And so the great Caesar and giant Rome are allowed a large shadow, but in their very small world.

SatStats

On this day:
539 BC
Cyrus the Great marches into the city of Babylon, releasing the Jews from almost 70 years of exile. Cyrus allows the Jews to return to Yehud Medinata and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.
1346
Battle of Neville’s Cross: King David II of Scotland is captured by Edward III of England near Durham, and imprisoned in the Tower of London for eleven years.
1448
Second Battle of Kosovo, where the mainly Hungarian army led by John Hunyadi is defeated by an Ottoman army led by Sultan Murad II.
1604
Kepler’s Star: German astronomer Johannes Kepler observes a supernova in the constellation Ophiuchus.
1660
Nine Regicides, the men who signed the death warrant of Charles I, are hanged, drawn, and quartered.
1777
American Revolutionary War: British General John Burgoyne surrenders his army at Saratoga, New York.
1781
American Revolutionary War: British General Lord Charles Cornwallis surrenders at the Siege of Yorktown.
1907
Guglielmo Marconi’s company begins the first commercial transatlantic wireless service between Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada and Clifden, Ireland.
1961
Scores of Algerian protesters (some claim up to 400) are massacred by the Paris police at the instigation of Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon, then chief of the Prefecture of Police.

***

If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin. -Samuel Adams, revolutionary

***

Re Zacharia: When was it decided that not becoming a lawyer was a bad thing?

***

Jack Clark, a co-founder of Anthropic, now thinks AI that can build its own successor is more likely to arrive in 2027 than 2028. I’ve followed Jack for years, and I think he’s right. If anything, he might be understating it. You think AI is improving quickly now? Just wait… this is going to accelerate things even further.

***

Lewis's Moneyball was about baseball talent evaluation. There was a history of subtle subjectivity, the belief in a baseball physiognomy, an American 'baseball face.' The jury's out, but talent from DR and Venezuela may require a little fine-tuning.

That said, what do you think were the factors in Katie Zacharia's appointment?

***

Dyson, on the prehistoric brain: "It was not helpful to have brains questioning whether the stories were true." That is an extremely provocative idea and directly opposes the aims of the Enlightenment.

***


SatStats

Sudan’s artisanal gold mining sector employs about two million people.

*

Analysis of 857 Chinese open model releases between September 2021 and September 2026, including 741 product models and 116 research models. Of that pool, only 31 models, or about 3.6%, had safety reports attached, and only 9 of them were available at or before release.

*

The U.S. arrested two Americans accused of helping North Korea run a tech worker impostor scheme.
The scheme touched more than 70 U.S. employers and made about $3 million for the fake workers. 

Fake workers?

*

The proportion of people unable to "use mathematical reasoning when reviewing and evaluating the validity of statements" (which includes logic skills, not just arithmetic) has risen by 25% worldwide. But it's up by 35% in the U.S.

*

Space:

For the Earth to become a black hole, it would have to be condensed down to about the radius of an olive.

*

For every one of the roughly 436 quadrillion seconds since the Big Bang, there are roughly 160,000 stars. There are roughly 1.6X as many planets as stars. For that reason alone, it’s highly improbable that we are alone in the universe.

*

Normal matter only accounts for around 5% of the contents of the Universe. Around 25% is Dark Matter — we can’t see it (ie it has no interaction with light), but we can see its indirect gravitational effects. And the rest is Dark Energy, completely unrelated to Dark Matter; that is the term we use for what is causing the expansion of the Universe to accelerate.

*

At the speed of light to Proxima Centauri it would take 4.24 years for someone watching from Earth. For you, it would be instant. Time stops at the speed of light

*

There are more stars in the observable universe than there have been seconds since the Big Bang.

*

A 'magnetar' is a highly magnetized neutron star. It is the ultra-dense core left behind when a massive star collapses whose magnetic field decays by emitting high-energy electromagnetic radiation, particularly X-rays and gamma rays.

*

95% of stars that have, or ever will be born, have already been born. We are at the end of the age of star formation.
*

95% of all the stars/galaxies we can see are forever unreachable, even if we could travel at the speed of light, due to the expansion of space.

*

95% of all the mass-energy in the universe is dark. All the light from all the stars and galaxies we see only makes up 5 percent of the universe.

*

The nearest star is so far away that if the Voyager II (the fastest and farthest ship we have) were headed to it, it would take 82 THOUSAND years to get there.

Representative from Bristol

On this day:

1529
The Siege of Vienna ends as the Austrians rout the invading Turks, turning the tide against almost a century of unchecked conquest throughout eastern and central Europe by the Ottoman Empire.
1582
Pope Gregory XIII implements the Gregorian calendar. In Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Spain, October 4 of this year is followed directly by October 15.
1764
Edward Gibbon observes a group of friars singing in the ruined Temple of Jupiter in Rome, which inspires him to begin work on The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
1783
The Montgolfier brothers’ hot air balloon marks the first human ascent, by Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, (tethered balloon).
1793

Queen Marie-Antoinette of France is tried and convicted in a swift, pre-determined trial in the Palais de Justice, Paris, and condemned to death the following day.
1815

Napoleon I of France begins his exile on Saint Helena in the Atlantic Ocean.
1863
American Civil War: The H. L. Hunley, the first submarine to sink a ship, sinks during a test, killing its inventor, Horace L. Hunley.
1880
Mexican soldiers kill Victorio, one of the greatest Apache military strategists.
1888
The “From Hell” letter sent by Jack the Ripper is received by investigators.
1894
The Dreyfus affair: Alfred Dreyfus is arrested for spying.
1917
World War I: At Vincennes outside of Paris, Dutch dancer Mata Hari is executed by firing squad for spying for the German Empire.
1934
The Soviet Republic of China collapses when Chiang Kai-shek’s National Revolutionary Army successfully encircles Ruijin, forcing the fleeing Communists to begin the Long March.
1945
World War II: The former premier of Vichy France Pierre Laval is shot by a firing squad for treason.
1951
Mexican chemist Luis E. Miramontes conducts the very last step of the first synthesis of norethisterone, the progestin that would later be used in one of the first two oral contraceptives.
1956
Fortran, the first modern computer language, is shared with the coding community for the first time.
1997
The Cassini probe launches from Cape Canaveral on its way to Saturn.
2001
NASA’s Galileo spacecraft passes within 112 miles of Jupiter’s moon Io.
2003
China launches Shenzhou 5, its first manned space mission.
2008
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 733.08 points, or 7.87%, the second worst day in the Dow’s history based on a percentage drop.

***

From everything that man erects and builds in his urge for living, nothing in my eyes is better and more valuable than bridges. They are more important than houses, more sacred than shrines. Belonging to everyone and being equal to everyone, useful, always built with a sense, on the spot where most human needs are crossing, they are more durable than other buildings and they do not serve for anything secret or bad. -Ivo Andric, novelist, Nobel laureate (9 Oct 1892-1975)

***

There's a movement growing aimed at Peter Theil's legal use of a legal government tax program devised to help people avoid impoverishment in their old age by the tax and spend governmental system and the failing government social security plan.

***

Sally Rooney, the very successful Irish novelist has had her book royalties impounded by the British government because of her support of an organization they have declared 'terrorist.'

***

Beyond Understanding Department:

Moscow accused Ukraine of launching its first strike against a Russian oil refinery in the Ryazan region since Trump abruptly declared an “energy ceasefire” that neither Russia nor Ukraine said they had agreed to. Sort of an incomplete Memorandum of Understanding.
Zelenskyy said Russia had attacked Ukraine with more than 850 Shahed drones at a time when the speed of Ukraine’s defensive capabilities was being “artificially restricted”, a reference to the sudden limitations on Ukraine’s use of the Starlink and Starshield mobile internet terminals.
Tech mogul Elon Musk has suggested that the US government could be behind the decision to restrict the speed of SpaceX’s satellite-technology used by Ukraine’s military.

***

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

***

Representative from Bristol

On November 3, 1774, the great quasi-liberal conservative member of Parliament, Edmund Burke, delivered his immortal “Speech to the Electors of Bristol.” He was responding to a claim by his opponent in an election that a representative ought to be a mere servant of the self-interested opinions of their voters. Burke declared, “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion. . . . Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole.”

That is to say, the representative from Bristol gives Bristol's voice to the national debate.

The Gospel According to Munger

 On this day:

1066
Norman Conquest: Battle of Hastings – In England on Senlac Hill, seven miles from Hastings, the Norman forces of William the Conqueror defeat the English army and kill King Harold II of England.
1322
Robert the Bruce of Scotland defeats King Edward II of England at Byland, forcing Edward to accept Scotland’s independence.
1586
Mary, Queen of Scots, goes on trial for conspiracy against Elizabeth I of England.
1656
Massachusetts enacts the first punitive legislation against the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). The marriage of church-and-state in Puritanism makes them regard the Quakers as spiritually apostate and politically subversive.
1867
The 15th and the last military Shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate resigns in Japan, returning his power to the Emperor of Japan and thence to the re-established civil government of Japan
1912
While campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the former President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, is shot and mildly wounded by John Schrank, a mentally-disturbed saloon keeper. With the fresh wound in his chest, and the bullet still within it, Mr. Roosevelt still carries out his scheduled public speech.
1913
Senghenydd Colliery Disaster, the United Kingdom’s worst coal mining accident, occurs, and it claims the lives of 439 miners.
1943
The American Eighth Air Force loses 60 B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers in aerial combat during the second mass-daylight air raid on the Schweinfurt ball-bearing factories in western Nazi Germany.
1947
Captain Chuck Yeager of the U.S. Air Force flies a Bell X-1 rocket-powered experimental aircraft, the Glamorous Glennis, faster than the speed of sound - over the high desert of Southern California - and becomes the first pilot and the first airplane to do so in level flight.
1962
The Cuban Missile Crisis begins: A U.S. Air Force U-2 reconnaissance plane and its pilot fly over the island of Cuba and take photographs of Soviet missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads being installed and erected in Cuba.
1968
Jim Hines of the United States of America becomes the first man ever to break the so-called “ten-second barrier” in the 100-meter sprint in the Summer Olympic Games held in Mexico City with a time of 9.95 seconds. He generally did not run out of blocks.
1994
The Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, The Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, and the Foreign Minister of Israel, Shimon Peres, receive the Nobel Peace Prize for their role in the establishment of the Oslo Accords and the framing of the future Palestinian Self Government. And some wonder why Peace Prizes are not taken seriously.
2003
Chicago Cubs fan Steve Bartman becomes infamously known as the scapegoat for the Cubs losing game 6 of the 2003 National League Championship Series to the Florida Marlins. This has become known as the Steve Bartman incident.

***

Eric Trump's book documents that he and his family received 112 subpoenas and spent 400 million dollars in their defense during the Biden Regency's legal attack on Trump and his family. The shocking intensity and the volume of these attacks in a free nation make Trump's response look less churlish.


***

As of August 28th, 170 billionaire families have spent over $1.7 billion to influence the outcome of the 2026 federal midterm elections.

***

An error by Guardians All-Star José Ramírez, who is their reliable and constant hero, and Peralta's six scoreless innings, allowed the Rays to even the playoffs with Cleveland, 1-1.

***

The Pope's cancer is adenocarcinoma, a more random, and generally more aggressive, lung primary. It sounds early.

***

Well, Guilfoyle is gone, as if it would make a difference. The Greeks called her removal "an issue of national dignity." 

The ethics of the political charade are simple: do not let them see behind the disguise. But Trump seems to relish it. No wonder his representatives can get confused.
"National dignity."

***

Across the board, affecting everything from attention spans to problem-solving skills and numeracy, or the ability to work with and understand numbers and mathematical concepts, the OECD's Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies shows declines among all age groups.

It is, however, worse here in the U.S. in some cases than in the rest of the world.

***

The Gospel According to Munger

Munger was a great success and thought about it a lot. Here are some of his suggestions from several sources, organized by Burns.

 

1. Let Go of High Expectations

“The first rule of a happy life is low expectations. That’s one you can easily arrange. And if you have unrealistic expectations, you’re going to be miserable all your life.” –- Charlie Munger

This does not suggest low effort. People hear “low expectations” and picture someone who has quit trying. Munger meant something closer to realism. You can work as hard as you want on a goal but accept that the world owes you nothing for the effort.

2. Let Go of Envy and Social Comparison

“Someone will always be getting richer faster than you. This is no great tragedy.”--Charlie Munger

Aquinas defined envy as sadness at the success of others. Sadness.

Munger had a low opinion of envy. In his words, “Envy is a really stupid sin because it’s the only one you could never possibly have any fun at.”

Yet it can be relished and sometimes turned into a lifestyle or a job in politics.

3. Let Go of Resentment and Self-Pity

“Generally speaking, envy, resentment, revenge, and self-pity are disastrous modes of thought.” --Charlie Munger

Self-pity feels comforting for about a day. After that, it keeps you parked in the same mental spot, replaying how unfair things were while the problem sits there untouched.

Resentment is worse because it hands your mood to someone else. The coworker who took credit for your project probably isn’t thinking about you at all, and neither is the relative who said something cruel at Thanksgiving. Munger’s fix was practical. Take whatever lesson the hit offers and focus on what you can still change.

4. Let Go of Bad Habits Through Inversion

“Invert, always invert.” – Charlie Munger

Munger picked up this habit from the German mathematician Carl Jacobi and applied it to stock picks and to his own life. Instead of asking how to be happy, you ask what reliably makes people miserable. Then you stop doing those things.

He liked to put it in a joke: “All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there.”

Make a short list of what reliably leaves you worse off. For a lot of people, that list includes spending money they don’t have, saying yes to plans they’ll bail on, scrolling at 1 a.m., and one friend who always leaves them drained. Pick the worst item and quit it first.

Munger thought avoiding dumb mistakes beat chasing brilliance. “It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.”

5. Let Go of Stagnation and Become a Learning Machine

“They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up, and boy does that help, particularly when you have a long run ahead of you.” – Charlie Munger

Learning, you can see yourself getting better at something even when the rest of life is flat.

The Melting Pot

On this day:

54
Roman Emperor Claudius is poisoned to death under mysterious circumstances. His 17-year-old stepson Nero succeeds him to the Roman throne
409
Vandals and Alans cross the Pyrenees and appear in Hispania.
1307
Hundreds of Knights Templar in France are simultaneously arrested by agents of Phillip the Fair, to be later tortured into a “confession” of heresy.
1773
The Whirlpool Galaxy is discovered by Charles Messier.
1884
Greenwich, in London, England, is established as Universal Time meridian of longitude.
1917
The “Miracle of the Sun” is witnessed by an estimated 70,000 people in the Cova da Iria in Fátima, Portugal.
1972
Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashes in the Andes mountains, near the border between Argentina and Chile. By December 23, 1972, only 16 out of 45 people lived long enough to be rescued. Survival can be a mixed blessing.
2010
The 2010 Copiapó mining accident in Copiapó, Chile comes to an end as all 33 miners arrive at the surface after surviving a record 69 days underground awaiting rescue.

***

“There’s nothing Christian about Christian nationalism.” -- James Talarico. Strong answers to unasked questions are always political fun.

***

Unknown hackers have remotely compromised industrial refrigeration systems across hundreds of French supermarkets, forcing cooling units into continuous defrost cycles and spiking temps up to 50°C (122°F). (Le Monde) Imagine waking up in the morning with the sole goal of gratuitously harming strangers.

***

The U.S. is a net diesel exporter.

"...if Trump were really concerned about the price burden on Americans (and the midterm prospects of Republicans), he could simply end his imbecilic trade war with Canada, our ally and neighbor. Because of the complexities of the global diesel market, as well as such inane American policies as the Jones Act and the discouragement of new refining capacity, we do import some diesel despite being a net exporter. The vast majority of those imports come from Canada — from which we could easily import more if necessary without violating sanctions laws and lending comfort to our Russian enemy. But Trump being Trump, he’d rather appease Putin than admit that his trade policies antagonize our allies while crushing Americans."--from a NR article on Trump's strange decisions on diesel, which includes this: 

"The second reason for doing the diesel deal with Putin is, as ever, corruption. In early October, the New York Times reported that Trump is working on an even more execrable multibillion-dollar oil deal with Putin: The U.S. would waive sanctions so that an investor group could buy up oil fields, refineries, and gas stations around the world that are owned by Lukoil, the Russian energy giant. The deal has been negotiated by Trump’s aforementioned emissaries, Kushner and Witkoff. Among the major beneficiaries are said to be one of Trump’s major donors (Todd Boehly, who has donated $2 million to Trump political causes) and Middle Eastern executives who have business ties to Trump, Kushner, and Witkoff. These include Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al Nahyan, the top security official of the United Arab Emirates — who, as I detailed in a series earlier this year, is a part owner of the Trump and Witkoff families’ crypto enterprise, into which Tahnoon has poured $2.5 billion. (That enterprise is the main explanation for the jaw-dropping increase in Trump’s net worth during his second term in “public service” — well over $2 billion in just 20 months.)

***

There's a movement growing aimed at Peter Thiel's legal use of a legal government tax program devised to help people avoid impoverishment in their old age by the tax and spend governmental system and the failing government social security plan. 

Seemingly the demand for equality does not cut both ways.

***

A Six Flags Over Georgia park visitor died after an incident on the Goliath roller coaster on Monday. Four others were injured in the incident.

*

Bednar is a free agent.

*

The Melting Pot
 
My seventh grade teacher would repeat her mantra daily as she wagged a bony finger at us: "Remember, children, America is not a melting pot of culture." 

I puzzled over this at the time, and it was years before I understood what she meant. Her point is, years later, a basic question in this country: what binds the people of this country together? How does a free people not spin off in all directions? Do the individual cultures transplanted here have to be managed and constrained? Where does the nation-state start to conform to unify? What must be lost?

Wasn't America the great melting pot?

No, not of culture, but there has been a melding. The essence is that the men and women of America have come together and agreed that all men are created equal, that all men have an inherent value that makes them equal among each other and before the law. And, as a result, every man can pursue his life freely as long as he adheres to this essential principle. That is the country's foundation and it allows the separate cultures to develop as they will. It permits the diverse peoples in the country to pursue their different lives and beliefs, to pursue their separate cultures, and not surrender their many cultures into a common alloy. The Americans are joined in the mind, not at the hip.

Other cultures are joined by a common history. Or ethnicity. Or religion. It will be difficult for an Algerian to be French. Sadaharu Oh was never truly Japanese. A Mormon will not find peace in Saudi Arabia.

America's unity is not in a melting pot of culture. It is a philosophy, an a priori agreement of its citizens of the rights and responsibilities of man.

“What do We mean by the Revolution? The War?” Adams wrote to Jefferson in his old age. “That was no part of the Revolution. It was only an Effect and Consequence of it. The Revolution was in the Minds of the People.”  

The Antagonists

On this day:
539 BC
The army of Cyrus the Great of Persia takes Babylon.
1216
King John of England loses his crown jewels in The Wash, probably near Fosdyke, perhaps near Sutton Bridge
1279
Nichiren, a Japanese Buddhist monk founder of Nichiren Buddhism, inscribes the Dai-Gohonzon
1492
Christopher Columbus’s expedition makes landfall in the Caribbean, specifically in The Bahamas. The explorer believes he has reached India
1692
The Salem witch trials are ended by a letter from Massachusetts Governor William Phips.
1773
America‘s first insane asylum opens for 'Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds’in Virginia
1823
Charles Macintosh of Scotland sells the first raincoat.
1871
Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) enacted by British rule in India, which named over 160 local communities 'Criminal Tribes', i.e. hereditary criminals. Repealed in 1949, after Independence of India. Critical theory?
1960
Cold War: Nikita Khrushchev pounds his shoe on a desk at United Nations General Assembly meeting to protest a Philippine assertion of Soviet Union colonial policy being conducted in Eastern Europe
1960
Inejiro Asanuma, Chair of the Japanese Socialist Party, is assassinated in Japan by Otoya Yamaguchi, a 17-year-old. The cameras were rolling at the time, so the moment was caught on film.
1984
Brighton hotel bombing: The Provisional Irish Republican Army attempt to assassinate Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet. Thatcher escapes but the bomb kills five people and wounds 31.
2000
The USS Cole is badly damaged in Aden, Yemen, by two suicide bombers, killing 17 crew members and wounding at least 39
2002
Terrorists detonate bombs in the Sari Club in Kuta, Bali, killing 202 and wounding over 300.
2005
The second Chinese human spaceflight Shenzhou 6 launched carrying Fèi Jùnlóng and Niè Hǎishèng for five days in orbit.

***

“And if you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of."--Peterson 

***

Today is "Columbus Day" or Indigineous Peoples Day," commemmorating the meeting of two peoples, a tribel namadic people of earlier times and a new people, of the wheel, of steam power, of cities, of distance weapons, religeous ferver, and mass organization. History then sat back to watch the encounter.
Some people are shocked at the results of this collision.

***

Ideocracy: noun:
1. Government according to the principles of a particular ideology.
2. A state or society governed in this way.

ETYMOLOGY:
From ideo- (idea) + -cracy (rule). Earliest documented use: 1813.

Ideocracy is one letter away from idiocracy (government by idiots). The pairing even has presidential precedent: John Adams proposed ideocracy on the model of ideology but his written coined word appears to read 'idiocracy,' while his grandson’s 1851 edition prints 'ideocracy.' So it's a thin line between rule by ideas and rule by idiots.

***

President Trump stated that inflation could pay down the debt rapidly. That is, high inflation is a de facto method of reducing the real burden of debt. Is that the plan?

***

One common observation about American government is the apparent concern with the letter of the law and not with the crucial element in government the Founders recognized: the ability and willingness within the nature of politicians to sacrifice the community's well-being for their own advantage. The sanctity of the individual citizen seems to have been displaced in the hubbub.

***

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Sunday to stop airing ads funded by the U.S. government that portray President Donald Trump in a favorable light, effective immediately.
Why is this even debatable?


***

Funny shirt but, like so much in politics, doesn't actually describe what's happening.

***

After being drafted by the Pirates last year, third baseman Murph Gray hit .305 with a 1.042 OPS, 32 home runs and 97 RBIs in 2026.

***

The Antagonists

In most of the adventure stories I remember, the really, really bad guy is a businessman. I can't think of a Bond movie without one. It's never a politician with his nukes, or his lab making a homicidal virus, or his army. And, of course, the ubiquitous revolutionary wants the government to solve the problem of evil so the evil must not be centered in the government.

Indeed, the fear of the impact of corporations and businesses on our lives might be exaggerated by special interests who seek their own power through government. Commerce is a good target. It's everywhere and more personal than government. Problems can be personalized, as at some point, a commercial transaction always occurs.

Monopoly accusations are hard to deny when a business is successful. And there's always the Jews. They own lots of businesses and were perfect for Hitler. So a businessman can be shot in the street by a stranger, and many people debate about it. They consider the factors.

Strangely, commercial interests are seen as wealthy, even though they pale in comparison to government wealth. 60% of American land is privately owned; the other 40% is government land. For fiscal year 2025, the budget proposed $7 trillion in spending. Put that number up against your average business. Commercial companies hope you buy their product; the government sends you a bill for the money they need and arrests you if you don't comply.

Governments are armed to the teeth, have unimaginable weapons, have a police force and an army, write rules you must obey, manipulate the economy, crush disagreement, regulate borders and trade, invade and destroy people they don't like, build weapons of mass destruction and end-of-life potential, and constantly harrangue their citizens about the danger of the neighborhood grocer.

With all this power, you would think they would do a better job--a bigger question. After all, how many of us could list government job requirements? How could you tell a good government leader from a bad one? And what about his legions of assistants and advisors? None of the bureaucrats I've encountered resemble any of those noble idealists Michael Lewis knows. What if these guys are there by chance, or simple persistence? Are they going to be able to rise to the occasion when real business threats like dangerous pharmaceuticals, military accidents, or AI present themselves? They don't seem to be able to keep the streets drivable or safe.

That might be a good place to start.

Sunday/The Wedding Guest

On this day:

1634
The Burchardi flood – “the second Grote Mandrenke” killed around 15,000 men in North Friesland, Denmark and Germany.

(On the 16th of January 1219 the first Marcellus flood took between 36,000 and 100,000 casualties, drowning people along the coasts of Westfriesland and Groningen, as well as along the River Elbe and also the Jade Bight. The Second Saint Marcellus flood — 15th and 17th January 1362--was so disasterous that it was given a name of its own, the First Big "Mandränke". Mandränke translates into English as 'great drowning of men,' with 100,000 casualties. It swept across the British Isles, the Netherlands, northern Germany, Schleswig, and Denmark, southern Jutland. Some 30 to 40 villages were lost.)

1649
Sack of Wexford: After a ten-day siege, English New Model Army troops (under Oliver Cromwell) stormed the town of Wexford, killing over 2,000 Irish Confederate troops and 1,500 civilians
1809
Along the Natchez Trace in Tennessee, explorer Meriwether Lewis dies under mysterious circumstances at an inn called Grinder’s Stand.

1962
Second Vatican Council: Pope John XXIII convenes the first ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church in 92 years.
1968
Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 7, the first successful manned Apollo mission, with astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn F. Eisele and Walter Cunningham aboard.
1972
A race riot occurs on the United States Navy aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk off the coast of Vietnam during Operation Linebacker.

***

Most scientific breakthroughs result from accidents that smart people recognize as important. Breakthroughs are not determined by committees, even Nobel Committees, by the consensus of experts, or by Congressional legislation.--Happer

***

Stanton’s contract carries a total value of $325 million, making him one of the most expensive players in franchise history. There are rumors the Yankees might cut him.

***

Who did Germany's ex-spymaster spy for?

***

Guardians won last night to complete their comeback. They struck out 21.

***

What is Trump doing with oil and Ukraine? Does he  expect Ukraine to sacrifice itself for the betterment of the West? Remember Hilary's comment on hearing of the Russian invasion, "Good. Russia will bleed itself dry."

***

Anthropic says it now prohibits “sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior toward our models.” What?

This sounds crazy but it is meaningful in that it implies Anthropic believes its machines are capable of subjective experiences. Nobody else believes that, nor do they think we should be analyzing AI as if it is sentient.

What could this mean? Are AI's feelings in development? Are its creators themselves confused? Or is this just insincere marketing? Do they want you to think of its mechanical product as personal? Which is to say, are the leaders of this technology manipulating us?

***

A gambling addiction nonprofit, the nation's largest, accepted a $2 million donation from Kalshi.

***

Sunday/The Wedding Guest

This week's gospel is the wedding guest gospel. In it, a king invites his people to his son's wedding. His people first ignore, then kill his messengers. The king attacks them and destroys their city. He then invites strangers and passers-by to the wedding.

Then things get really tough.

One new guest is improperly dressed. The king berates him, binds him and throws him into the darkness. This to a guy who was a stand-in for the original guests; a throw-in. A substitute. Just along for the food, the ride. He is judged as strictly as the original guests who owed the king.

Spiritually, Woody Allen is wrong: You get no credit for "showing up."

SatStats

On this day:

19
Roman general Germanicus suddenly dies in Antioch under mysterious circumstances. Roman historian Tactius records that Germanicus was poisoned by Syrian Governor Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso under orders from Roman Emperor Tiberius.
680
Battle of Karbala: Hussain bin Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, is decapitated by forces under Caliph Yazid I. This is commemorated by Muslims as Aashurah.
732
Battle of Tours: Near Poitiers, France, the leader of the Franks, Charles Martel and his men, defeat a large army of Moors, stopping the Muslims from spreading into Western Europe. The governor of Cordoba, Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, is killed during the battle.
1580
After a three-day siege, the English Army beheads over 600 Irish and Papal soldiers and civilians at Dún an Óir, Ireland.
1780
The Great Hurricane of 1780 kills 20,000-30,000 in the Caribbean.
1911
The Wuchang Uprising leads to the demise of Qing Dynasty, the last Imperial court in China, and the founding of the Republic of China.
1933
United Airlines Chesterton Crash: A United Airlines Boeing 247 is destroyed by sabotage, the first such proven case in the history of commercial aviation.
1938
The Munich Agreement cedes the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany.
1945
The Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang signed a principle agreement in Chongqing about the future of post-war China. Later, the pact is commonly referred to as the Double-Ten Agreement.
1957
The Windscale fire in Cumbria, U.K. is the world’s first major nuclear accident.
1970
In Montreal, Quebec, a national crisis hits Canada when Quebec Vice-Premier and Minister of Labour Pierre Laporte becomes the second statesman kidnapped by members of the FLQ terrorist group.
1973
Vice President of the United States Spiro Agnew resigns after being charged with federal income tax evasion.

***

The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power--Daniel Webster

***

A powerful magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck near Panama's southern tip on Friday morning, shaking buildings more than 100 miles away in the capital and prompting evacuations, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. A second powerful 6.6 magnitude earthquake struck the country later in the day following a series of aftershocks.
Amazingly, there have been no reported deaths yet and the predicted tsunami never materialized.

***

The Battle of Tours in 732, also called the Battle of Poitiers, pit the Franks against The Umayyad Caliphate. Islam was invading France. Charles Martel (The Hammer) defeated ‘Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, who was killed. The significance and the facts are always debated. It is assumed that the two armies met where the rivers Clain and Vienne join between Tours and Poitiers. The Franks (and Burgundians) numbered about 30,000, the Muslims about 80,000. (But there is significant disagreement over these numbers.) Europe has always claimed it a great victory, Islam less so.

What is without doubt is that 109 years after the death of the Prophet, when communication was very limited, a most powerful army developed from nowhere and, under the inspiration of this dead man, threatened to conquer the entire known world.

***

Kimberly Guilfoyle was preparing for her congressional hearing to become U.S. ambassador to Greece when she reached out to a Trump donor with an urgent request: She needed $100,000 that she said she owed American Express—in a way that wouldn’t leave a paper trail.

“It won’t show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express,” she wrote on Signal, according to messages reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “Please, honey.”

This will be Trump's son's ex-girlfriend, not Newsom's ex-wife.

***

Weeks after revealing the city was five years away from running out of reserve funding, Pittsburgh leaders announced a series of reforms Tuesday aimed at increasing transparency and cracking down on a mayor’s ability to spend money without the council’s authorization. Huh? Like DeBlasio's wife's $800,000 million?

***

The government plans to televise the execution of the Fort Hood fanatic. They've actually created some sympathy for this lunatic.

***

President Trump said Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin would “immediately” release hundreds of thousands of tons of diesel fuel onto the global market.

Trump made the announcement on Truth Social and said the action would will help bring diesel prices down.

Since its invasion of Ukraine, wide-ranging sanctions have been applied to Russia. In order to get the diesel fuel moved, the Treasury Department simultaneously announced Friday that it would be easing sanctions on Russia through April 7.

What exactly are we doing? What will Ukraine think? Europe? Are we skewering international politics for local effect?

***

Trump's success has never been his own. He has been an outsider in a corrupt game run by incompetents. Imagine running against the Biden Regency in America. Then Kamala. But the bell curve is flattening and Kamala actually got over 48% of the votes. Trump's success has hinged on his seesaw not tipping into the Regency-Kamala authoritarian-incompetence-foolish range. He's close.

***

SatStats

The number of Japanese companies operating in China fell to the lowest level on record.

*

College:

While the money premium from college is falling, the friends and marriage premium from college is going up and probably will rise further still.

The data show that college-educated people are more likely to marry, and to stay married. More generally, college-educated folks have superior social indicators of all kinds, including resistance to alcohol, drug, and gambling addiction. (Charles Murray wrote a whole book on this theme, called Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.)

If you have a bachelor’s degree and are over 25 years of age, your chance of being married is 64 percent. If you have only a high school degree, your odds of being married are an even 50 percent.

For divorce, the results are more dramatic yet. The chance of a woman remaining married for at least 20 years is 78 percent if she went to college, but 41 percent if she is only a high school graduate. For men, the gradient is less sharp though still significant—namely, 65 percent versus 47 percent.

People who finished college also have more extensive networks of friends. For instance, they are twice as likely to have six or more close friends, and less than half as likely to have no close friends at all.

*

1% and 2% of people worldwide have red hair, which makes it the rarest natural hair color. In Ireland and Scotland, roughly a tenth of people have it, and a much larger share of the population carries the trait without showing any sign of it.

*

Jupiter's moon Europa contains the fourth-biggest saltwater ocean in the solar system. Earth has about the ninth-biggest. Pluto does have a saltwater ocean, and Pluto's ocean may be as big as, or bigger than Earth's.

*

If you took all the DNA in your body and stretched it out end to end, it would be roughly 42 billion miles long. That's enough to go from Earth to the Sun and back more than 200 times. All of that DNA is packed inside microscopic cells. So, do it.

*

Italy:

Italy could lose nearly 4 million residents by 2050, with the population falling from 58.9 million at the beginning of 2025 to 55 million in 2050, the national statistics office Istat predicted on Monday.

By 2080, the number is expected to fall to 45.8 million, according to the Istat forecasts. The main reason is said to be a low birth rate, as the death rate rises.

In her first government policy statement, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni declared that promoting the birth rate would be a political priority for her government and appointed a birth minister. A birth minister. This has not halted the downward trend.

*

The age 20-24 unemployment rate is unchanged since the AI boom began.

*

Rome
The people, 320,000 of whom depended on public rations for food, were ready to follow any man who promised to obtain for them by revolution what they could not obtain by law. Ergo, Caesar.

320,000!

*

In the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, released Friday and covering the three years ended 2025, the share of families behind on loan payments jumped from about 12% in the prior survey to nearly 20%.
That is the highest level since the 2010 survey, when the country was still climbing out of the 2007 to 2009 crash.

Families two months or more behind rose from 5% to more than 8%.

Families spending more than 40% of income on debt payments rose from 6.5% to 8.6%, the highest since 2013.

*

California’s top 1% pay nearly half the state’s income taxes.