Tyres, The Online Safety Act falls at the first hurdle.
In a historic first, on 18th July India’s first private orbital launch named Vikram-I, successfully lifted off from Sriharikota and has successfully placed multiple technology demonstration payloads into orbit. These payloads include two satellites named SCOPE & Grahaa which were injected to a Low Earth Orbit along with others that carry out various in-orbit experiments. This is a phenomenal achievement by Skyroot Aerospace Private Limited which was founded in 2018 by two ISRO scientists.…
Tim Sablik acts as interlocutor in “Interview with Christiane Baumeister,” subtitled “On measuring the effects of oil shocks, changes in global energy markets, and forecasting tail risks” (Econ Focus: Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Third Quarter 2026). Here are some of the comments that caught my eye: On her career choice: My father was a high school economics teacher, and I loved to spend time in his office browsing through his books. … When I had to pick my field of study in high school, I…
Link: China delivers a one-two punch to America’s AI dominance, by Robert Hart in The VergeAI models, as a product in themselves, have very little moat beyond what amounts to brand loyalty and superficial switching costs. Instead, the moat is in the enterprise services that sit around them: the deals and contracts, connectivity with enterprise systems, and quality of life features in an enterprise context.If we consider the models themselves, it’s easy to switch between them: someone could be…
A couple days ago, I was part of the process to select delegates to choose a replacement for Graham Platner as the Maine Dem candidate for Senator. I mean, kind of. After how it all went down, I'm not really sure why we went through with the charade.I was already verified as both a voter and a candidate for delegate days before I arrived. In order to do so, you needed to be a registered Democrat, which is honestly bullshit because in Maine, unenrolled voters are allowed to vote in Dem…
One of you must have suggested Nigel Davenport (1928-2013) for an MCM because I can’t
At the Wall Street Journal, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) explains why she will be voting against Donald Trump's ill-considered and disingenuous attempt to federalize and overhaul American elections.Many of her objections sound like those I raised in March, only greatly exaggerated by Alaska's peculiarities as new, far-flung state with a very low population density:Or maybe you're a fisherman in Unalaska, out on the Aleutian Islands. The flight to Anchorage -- the closest election office, some…
→ Bloomberg Opinion
“Genocide” has a legal definition that was unanimously adopted by the United Nations in 1948. It means “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures…
20th July 2026 * Regular readers of this blog will recall that there is nothing unusual and indeed nothing wrong with our political system’s capacity to eject Prime Ministers from office. As set out in a previous post, it is that we keep appointing poor Prime Ministers that is the problem, not that we are deft at getting rid of them: an input issue not an output issue. In essence – our body politic retains an admirably efficient discharge system for getting rid of poor PMs, it is the diet which…
I used to try to explain when a young or pre-menopausal woman makes some sort of confident statement about what she will be like post-menopause. Now I just shrug and say, "You'll find out soon enough." — Maggie McNeill (@maggiemcneill.bsky.social) 2026-06-17T17:21:31.990Z It's always amusing to me when a paywall demanding I provide my personal information is followed almost immediately by a popup admitting they will sell that information to anybody who wants it. — Maggie McNeill…
A Coupla Things:Trump Assassination Victim's Widow Makes Stunning New Claim 😳 #Trump #Breaking #Politics - YouTubeICE Officer In Maine Shooting Has History Of Violent Behavior, Family And Records Say | HuffPost Latest NewsA Twofer:Republican election fraudThey told her she could vote - YouTubeAnd Finally:"We Don't Have The Biggest D*CK On The Planet!" - Nick Irving[DEBATE] U.S. Lost The War With Iran!Miscalculations are costly. #historyshorts #history #trump #greenland #nato Addendum: COMIC…
Arizona Primary Is Tomorrow Arizona has elections for governor/lieutentant governor (one ticket), attorney general, secretary of state, state treasurer, superintendent of public instruction, state mine inspector, and nine House seats this year. Gov. Katie Hobbs (D-AZ) is running for reelection and is unopposed in the Democratic primary. On the Republican side, there is a contest between extremely Trumpy (and Trump endorsed) Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) and Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ), plus some…
A federal judge in the US has allowed a whistleblower lawsuit to go forward, in which a former official of the National Institutes of Health accuses a Harvard professor of repurposing research grants and falsely claiming he had met his objectives. The allegations are unproven. But the reason this case matters is that everyone in academia knows this kind of thing happens all the time, and until
In December 2017, Trump reduced Bears Ears National Monument from 1.3 million acres to roughly 228,000 acres, an 85 percent reduction, while Grand Staircase-Escalante was cut nearly in half, from 1.9 million acres to about 1 million. BIDEN Reversed that. But now Shithead's Monday 7/14/2026 executive orders cut sthe monuments to less than a quarter of what was left after the previous shrinking of the monuments. So even BIGGER Reduction.…
This is quite possibly the stupidest thing in the Epstein files. Lord knows there’s lots of competition from the likes of Soon-Yi “Woody” Allen, Larry “Lawrence” Summers, Nathan “Clippy” Myhrvold, and Columbia’s own Richard “Axel” Foley, but I think this one takes the cake. In honor of another Epstein associate (see here), I’ll frame it as a “Linda problem”: Vilayanur is 74 years old, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in neuroscience. As an adult, he was deeply concerned with issues of…
I did my first financial deal while attending Purdue University. It was at the beginning of my Junior year, 1980. My roommate received a grant. The state gave him money to pay his college tuition, fees, and living expenses for the semester. Larry received his grant a week before the semester started. After paying his tuition, he had $1,100 remaining that had to last till the end of December. The arrangement caused him concern. It was more money than he had ever had under his control. Larry was…
[Radical Action Cooperative ; Council for Liberation of Imagination]. [Samizdat on the 1968-9 Harvard protests]. Cambridge, MA: n.p., ca. 1968-1969. n.p. [14 p.]; 21 x 29 cm.; black ink on xeroxed white stock. Samizdat of hastily photocopied texts by the the Radical Action Cooperative (King Collins et al.) / Council for Conscious Existence / Council for Liberation of Daily Life, with an early1970s provenance. Most of the texts are unaccounted (all but one are missing from Ken Knabb’s archive at…
Sunday Mailbag The first three questions yesterday generated quite a response. And it was... all quite civil. Click here for full story
I never that knew GK Chesterton, a 19th - 20th century writer, raconteur and master of the bon mot, knew about 21st century industrial and laboratory safety culture. Neither did Chesterton, probably. Types of Safety, Type-Safety, and Good Ol’ GKC So I was reading – as one does – about software safety and the use of the programming language Haskell to make certain kinds of faults impossible [1], what with isolation of side-effects in monads, an expressive (!) but strict type system, lazy…
As we previously reported, the leadership of the City of London Corporation (= Council) in 2024 commissioned a report from Professor William Pettigrew on “Assessing the Connections between the Transatlantic Traffic in Enslaved African People and the City of London Corporation”. They did this as a reputation washing initiative that seemed like a good idea at the time. When the report was recently produced, however, its content turned out to be more problematic for the Corporation than its…
Feds for Freedom is an anti-COVID vax organization. It registered an Instagram account. F4F is upset that Instagram allegedly warned anyone who tried to repost their content that: This account has repeatedly posted false information that was reviewed by independent fact checkers or went against our Community Guidelines. Do you want to @mention this account? There was a more prominent “cancel” button than the option to proceed, implicitly nudging users to cancel. F4F claims that none of its…
“de-gene-erates” is hilarious the core premise is an interesting thought experiment, but the overall plot unfortunately doesn’t do it justice
Tom Ferguson came across this news article, Who Really Has the 2026 Midterms Cash Edge?, and was disappointed to see this completely wrong graph: The problem here is not the inclusion of no-longer-candidate Platner, as that’s noted in a footnote. Rather, as Ferguson says, The Times shows Platner outraising Collins; whereas she is millions and millions of dollars ahead, as our charts show. Here’s the chart that Ferguson shared with us the other day: If Collins raised $39 million, why did the…
This article appeared in Inside Higher Ed, July 8, 2026. For the first time since he started teaching Welfare Economics and Social Choice Theory nearly two decades ago, Brown University economics professor Roberto Serrano gave his students a take-home midterm this spring. Quite a few students had expressed anxiety about being in a classroom after a gunman killed two students and injured nine in a December mass shooting at Brown, and so “it was appropriate,” he said, to allow students to take…
Saturday Q&A Today we start with three questions in a row that are guaranteed to make some people upset. This week's headline theme proved to be unusually difficult. So, we'll tell you that among the phrases we might have used, but didn't, are "A Falling Star," "Your Breath" and "of the Day." Click here for full story
Today’s word is effluviant. As in, Donald Trump is an effluviant windbag.
CPI cools, moving housing affordability to the center of Fed policy. Circle gets its national trust charter approved. China competition heats up with Kimi K3 and US election tampering announcements. with Matt Dines and I
Camera: Fujifilm XT5Location:https://w3w.co/doll.yard.blocks I waited and waited for these two men on smoko to face each other. One would stand in front of the other, and then the other would stand in front of the one. A do-si-do of photographic obstruction. A frustrating little detail but it is important for my composition. Finally I shot them. I like this photo. And yes, I can confirm the court is high. The second two pics are B-roll. I give them a 4/10.The huge front glass edifice with the…
9:01 – Mon 13 July 2026 12:01 – Mon 13 July 2026 9:06 – Tue 14 July 2026 12:07 – Tue 14 July 2026 9:05 – Wed 15 July 2026 12:03 – Wed 15 July 2026 9:02 – Thu 16 July 2026 12:06 – Thu 16 July 2026 9:03 – Fri 17 July 2026 12:05 – Fri 17 July 2026 Bonus Follow Me As discussed previously, on Fridays, I present my weekly social media roundups. Note that toots of articles generally include header images from the articles, which I don’t include here unless their creators happen to have released them…
