Author: nick

On April 18, the evil spy company Palantir made a Twitter post—apparently based on a 2025 book by founder Alex Karp—about their philosophy that the government needs to transform into a “technological Republic.” To channel Marge Simpson, I don’t think our government can afford to hire any company that has a philosophy. The whole thing is grim; they essentially propose a tech dystopia and justify making any scary weapon the government asks for. In a recent article for the Libertarian Institute, Alan Mosley wrote, “This ‘manifesto’ is a cautionary tale of ideology cloaked in technobabble,” and I would add a…

Church Rock uranium mine, Navajo Nation lands. Photo: EPA. A dark storm cloud of ignorant financial speculation hovers above the Navajo Nation, the largest indigenous reservation in the country, rich in mineral resources, livestock, farms and sacred landmarks. It stretches across parts of northern Arizona and New Mexico, and southern Utah. Some young billionaires and wannabes, with minds full of fungible narratives about new riches in data centers and small modular (nuclear) reactors, have begun to speculate on resuming uranium mining on the Colorado Plateau. Mountain-state members of Congress authored a successful bill to make buying Russian uranium ready processed…

As I explained in my previous post, I recently tasked AI with comparing two transcripts of the 1807 treason trial of Aaron Burr.  My ultimate question is, what do I do with the document that resulted?  And that breaks down into two sub-parts.  First, do I publish this, either just online informally or with some kind of journal?  And second, how do I describe what my relationship is to it?  Am I a co-author?  The author?  Just a prompter? Let me start by explaining how the memo was created, and then turn to the questions I have. I. How the…

A respected human rights activist has spoken repeatedly against the US-Israeli aggression on Iran. She recognizes the illegality of the war and does not shy away from condemning it in clear terms. Yet, almost invariably, she feels compelled to qualify her position, reminding her audience that Iran has killed “tens of thousands of protesters” during recent anti-government demonstrations. The number itself is highly questionable. Even widely cited figures from international reporting – such as Reuters coverage in January 2026 – place the death toll of the protests in the thousands, not tens of thousands. But the issue here is not…

Economic sanctions have become the defining coercive instrument of American foreign policy. Currently, roughly 27% of the world’s countries are under sanctions imposed by the United States, the European Union, or the United Nations—up from just 4% in the early 1960s. A landmark 2025 study published in The Lancet Global Health by economists Francisco Rodríguez, Silvio Rendón, and Mark Weisbrot has put a number on the cumulative death toll of these measures. Unilateral sanctions kill approximately 564,000 people per year, a figure comparable to the total annual mortality burden of armed conflict. Over the 1971 to 2021 period, the aggregate…

Image by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen. Pittsburgh, the city where I live, has some very good art museums. The Carnegie Museum of Art has a large collection, focused on contemporary art. Thanks to the Carnegie International, this institution regularly has good presentations of present day artworks. There is, also, a branch of that museum, the Warhol, which has a display of his art and, also, an archive devoted to his studio. And the Frick museum, the smaller branch of the museum in New York, has a distinguished, small old master collection. I value these local institutions, and so I have often reviewed…

Keir Starmer, who has elevated the political U-turn to something approaching an art form, now appears ready to abandon his pledge to ban imports of foie gras and fur. The explanation, we are told, lies somewhere between trade negotiations and the lingering ambition to edge Britain back toward the European Union. Principle, once again, is invited to wait outside while pragmatism conducts its business.At first blush, the specifics may seem surprising. Animal welfare is assumed to sit only within the modern center-left’s moral repertoire. Starmer, a North London pescetarian, seems almost comically well-cast for the role of animal defender. But…

Date of discovery: April 26, 2026Location of discovery: Earths sunSource: Helioviewer.orgGuys check this out. I caught a 7-10 mile UFO disk shooting slowly across the NASA satellite view of our sun. The object is barely making a trail at all so that truly rules out comet. However NASA calls it a comet labeling as Comet R3 pan-starrs also called comet C/2025 R3. Take a look at the video yourself and you too will notice that there is barely any trail at all…that alone is enough because its flying near our sun and heat and radiation is hitting it at incredible…

Gen Z Longs For the 90s, Can Democrats Lean Into This? Source link

North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he no longer plans to oppose President Trump’s nomination of Kevin Warsh to replace Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell now that the DOJ has dropped its investigation into Powell. He suggested that allowing President Trump to create the appearance of using a DOJ investigation to intimidate, pressure, or force Powell to resign could have undermined the institution’s global credibility and had “devastating” consequences for U.S. financial markets.”We can move on and let the Fed be independent,” Tillis said. “Thank God we avoided that.”Tillis said he thinks…