Extreme Temperature Diary- Saturday August 22nd, 2026/Main Topic: El Niño Set to Be ‘Strongest in Living Memory’, Says Met Office
The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day.…
VDH: America Dominates Tech
It’s easy for the uninformed to get black pilled about America’s comparative advantage in technology. “China’s AI efforts are eating our lunch!” Etc. Victor Davis Hanson…
Can an AI agent serve at a Foreign Office?
This ten day pilot already identified real failures in AI models widely available to diplomats and people in statecraft. However, due to its limitations, the pilot cannot tell a government ministry…
Mark Ruffalo’s Inner Antisemite Hulks Out Over Paramount Merger
Mark Ruffalo attacks Paramount’s Jewish owners, prompting the company to condemn his rhetoric for invoking antisemitic tropes. Continue reading Mark Ruffalo’s Inner Antisemite Hulks Out Over…
And now the news: 8/22/2026
This is a long page, sorry. Almost any few inches of it would be enough to have Donald Trump removed from office and brought up on criminal charges, if America was a sane society. ... [read more]
I support Mark Carney
[…]
Fridays with Nicole Sandler
Natalie Harp is the gatekeeper with no boss. The post Fridays with Nicole Sandler appeared first on emptywheel.
The Barbarians Have Taken The Institutions
(Originally published July 22, 2020.) Let’s be honest about something: We in the West have been overrun by a tidal wave of racial hatred, and it erupted from institutions “of higher learning.”…
Fix healthcare by increasing supply
I previously wrote about my experience getting blood tests in a Chinese public hospital and how fast, efficient and inexpensive the whole process was. One of the things that struck me was how much…
Quartier Molson gets OK for taller buildings
Plans for Quartier Molson are going ahead with approval for taller buildings than allowed in the zoning. A floated referendum didn’t collect enough signatures.
Psalm 78:24-25: God rained down ammo for the people to load. He gave them the guns of heaven, and sent them glocks in abundance. [New American Bible, Revised Edition]
God has given this nation 500 million guns, and has scattered them abroad in such a way that every moment of every day one is found unattended.
Canada keeps exporting its best builders, but the fix is right in front of us
Canada has a smart, highly educated, and entrepreneurial population base. The problem is that too many are leaving to build elsewhere. Here are some alarming stats from Barn Ventures, using data from…
Galileo Didn't Have to Put Up With This
SpaceX has asked for permission to put up to 1 million satellites in front of the most powerful survey telescope ever built. The agency deciding is the one that happens to hold the radio spectrum. On…
SATURDAY: Did Ossoff float an insinuation?
SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 2026 Citizen Heilemann, please! Should Natalie Harp be subject to ridicule? On balance, we'd say no. That said, we told you the ridicule was going to come. Starting yesterday…
Wake Up — Every Catastrophe Was Intentional
I had some of the most remarkable conversations of my recent time in France — sharp, well-aligned, genuinely illuminating exchanges with some of the most educated and articulate people I encountered…
BAYESIAN GAMES WITH NUKES
how we all learned to stop worrying and love the bomb... for a while
Can’t keep a secret?
The orange baby just blurted out the number of nuclear weapons possessed by North Korea. It’s fifty-seven, by the way. This seems more than a little off for several reasons: • It seems like the…
Warum Deutschland eine Lernende Regierung braucht.
Als ich 1989 nach Singapur kam und dort bis 2005 lebte, beobachtete ich eine politische Kultur, die mich zunächst irritierte und schließlich faszinierte. Nicht wegen ihrer autoritären Züge, die real…
Skyroot Vikram-1, the least worst case scenario for India’s launch crisis
Indian Space Progress #41-42: A garden does not save the forest.
Euro7 – How tires figure in!
Euro 7 is the seventh set of regulations involving vehicle emissions – and this time, they’ve included tires as part of the regulation. What effect does Euro7 have on tires? For the first…
General Election Analysis Pt.2
Over the last few days I have been analysing the publicly available results announced by the Electoral Commission of Zambia alongside the principal independent assessments of the 2026 election: most…
2026: PRC Prosecutions for Incorrect Views on Chinese History
After reading the two front-page articles from the August 20 issue of China Social Science News translated at 2026: Beware Historical Nihilism! The Tang Dynasty was Not a Fake Dynasty I got to…
On AI Text Watermarking
Recently, a new regulation of the European Union went into force that requires AI providers to watermark anything their models generate. While this has been common for image or video generation, text…
On This Day in the Spanish Civil War: 23 August 1936 – The Madrid Modelo Prison and Toledo Provincial Prison Massacres
Madrid On 22 August 1936, violence reached the heart of Republican Madrid when armed militiamen entered the Modelo Prison and murdered dozens of political prisoners held inside its walls. Among those…
Addendum: Surrender hope, but carve out your heart for the future
A slightly angry, deeply hopeful rant about Indonesian politics, the burden of fighting for change, and why we play TTRPGs to imagine a better world.
Your Country Is Your Largest Undiversified Portfolio
A rough historical model suggests that the chance of a catastrophic domestic conflict over the next 50 years may be closer to 50% than 5%. If that order of magnitude is even roughly right, most of us…
Mayor Wilson orders major overhaul to deliver more street safety improvements more quickly, including on busy high-injury roadways
In one of the biggest overhauls of Seattle’s approach to making streets safer, Mayor Katie Wilson signed five executive orders (PDF) to speed up delivery of safety fixes and expand the…
Selected Case Summaries Published by Justia, Week Ending August 21, 2026
During the week ending August 21, 2026 we have received listings of 37 Government and Administrative Law Summaries, 45 Constitutional Law summaries, 100 Criminal Law Summaries, 4 Intellectual…
Moellman’s Definitive Statement on Populating the Judicial Committee
Ken Moellman, Judicial Committee Chair, has issued a definitive analysis of the process by which the Judicial Committee fills its vacancies. It is 27 pages of careful bylaws argumentation, available…
Ocean 9:5 turns back TheBobMob, and the patrol boats still do not return
Founders World, week in review: Flowkap forces the Black Tide off Small Island and Medium Island, roxx keeps pressure on BigChris while also striking BartigeBert and BOBYDOG, and Noob Nation scouts…
SDP's C-Suite Grew 10.6x in 11 Years
SDP had 5 central office employees earning $175K+ in 2014-15. In 2025-26 there are 53 — a 10.6x increase, almost all of them Assistant Superintendents (19 of the 53), one per Learning Network. The 15…
Responding to Bala, again
Bala responded to my previous critique of his post over on Startup Iceland. In the same response, he responded to an article I posted on Vísir yesterday, where I responded to Carl…
Elon Musk's Diary: Saturday, August 22nd, 2026
**JUDICIAL CONVERGENCE / STARSHIP VELOCITY TRANSITION / APPARATUS QUANTUM FLUX**Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers now chief judge Northern District California. Apparatus misinterpreted "chief" as "primary…
Woke What? Let's Be Fucking Serious
Our politics are not the politics that have detached this country from reality, or normalized increasingly inhuman policies.
The real world and…that other one
The June 22, 2026 New Yorker has a marvel of an article by Ben Taub entitled, “Allies On Ice: How the secret plans to take over Greenland have ruptured transatlantic relations.” That lede…
Critical Illness Diagnosis is not a Special Enrollment Period Event
Address Change SEP: If you must move because of your illness and your existing health plan is not offered, then you could change health plan and metal tier. The post Critical Illness Diagnosis is not…
2026: Beware Historical Nihilism! The Tang Dynasty was Not a Fake Dynasty
People who don’t stick with the Party line on China’s history are sometimes denounced as historical nihilists. Don’t be one of those. There are consequences. See: 2026: PRC…
FRIDAY: "Multiple paths," the Cook Report says!
FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 2026 Unless you're watching Fox: Who will control the Senate next year? We have no idea. If we were somehow forced to bet, we'd bet that the GOP will retain control, but it seems…
Light Strike Revisited: From Concept to Contemporary Relevance – Think Defence 2026 (1)
This is post 5 of 5 in the series “Light Strike” Light Strike Revisited: From Concept to Contemporary Relevance – An Introduction Light Strike Revisited: From Concept to Contemporary…
Europe’s Soviet Moment May Arrive in the 2030s
Japan did not defeat the Soviet Union. It helped convince Soviet elites and citizens that their economic model had failed. China may be doing something similar to Europe.The most consequential thing…
The worst people are having the most children everywhere
So, here we have the fertility rate of Iran by province: In the southwest at 2.14, you see Khuzestan province. This is where the Iranian [...]
Inside the Long Breakdown Between Iran and America
The post Inside the Long Breakdown Between Iran and America appeared first on Joel Kotkin.
Can We Just Do The November Elections Now Please?
I am only affiliated with an American political party (Democratic) so that I can vote in primaries. That’s it. Otherwise, I just stay firmly in the Independent category, because I’m not really a fan…
Inklings #023 📧
Newfangled 'Hackquisitions' • Epic v. Apple • Meta v. States • OpenAI v. Apple • 'Stripe of AI' • Vision Pro Pickle
Power grid evolution in the AI age
Power transmission plays a defining role in the energy security of a region but because the industry is more operationally intensive it rarely makes headlines, often working silently in the…
The Peyton Watson Trade
I was traveling yesterday and so didn't get a chance to write about this right away. Shams broke the news on Wednesday evening:Cavaliers receive: Peyton Watson, Cam Whitmore, 2027 2ndClippers…
fist to five
democracy in the hands (and fingers) of a group
Memo: Fri Aug 21 2026
If Banksy was based out of the United States, he would probably be in prison by now. That's how we roll in the Land of the Free.
Eight Months Later, My HOA Suddenly Has a Problem With My Fence — And Georgia Homeowners Now Have Somewhere to File Complaints
When HOA Enforcement Starts to Feel Personal Just when I thought my HOA story couldn't get any more ridiculous, another warning letter arrived. This time? My fence. A fence that was installed in…