September 30, 2026

HEH:

Posted at 6:10 pm by Stephen Green

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Rockefeller Brothers Fund Sent Nearly $32 Million to China-Based Nonprofits, Watchdog Finds. “While political spending by far-left billionaires and networks has attracted attention, the role of nonprofit organizations such as the Rockefeller network has been less extensively scrutinized, even though it is influential. If people think of Rockefeller charity at all, they might recall John D. Rockefeller Sr.’s role in founding the University of Chicago, where the Rockefeller Chapel is a campus landmark, or Abby Aldrich Rockefeller’s role in founding New York City’s Museum of Modern Art, where the central sculpture garden is named after her. Today’s Rockefeller charities have taken a dramatic turn in a different direction, the new report says.”

Posted at 5:54 pm by Stephen Green

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Jan. 6 Themed ‘Social Reckoning’ Expected to Bomb at Box Office.

World of Reel shares a pointed reaction to the film and its subject matter:

January 6th eventually comes up, the entire film builds toward it. The film’s arc leads naturally to the suggestion that January 6th was, in part, a product of Facebook itself.

Sorkin has literally said the same thing on the record regarding Facebook and Jan. 6.

The problem?

Who will actually see the movie? Box office projections have “The Social Reckoning” opening to a very soft $6-$10 million on its opening weekend. The competition won’t be stiff.

$6 million seems high.

Posted at 4:52 pm by Stephen Green

CHANGE:

Posted at 4:38 pm by Glenn Reynolds

ADAM THIERER: What Hayek Can Teach Us About AI Safety.

This is where a dose of Hayekian thinking is particularly useful. Hayek would tell us that AI alignment is not a computable math equation, and that efforts to treat it as such will lead to the sort of authoritarian thinking and proposals we witnessed with previous efforts to remake economies and humanity according to some grand design.

In his 1974 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Hayek warned of the “pretence of knowledge,” or the belief that experts understand society well enough to direct everyone else’s choices according to their supposedly enlightened plans. He argued that the “limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men’s fatal striving to control society—a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.”

Hayek teaches us that technical “alignment” can be a pretext for dangerous political control of our economy and liberties. Empowering global elites to guide humanity’s acceptable risks and technological future raises other risks in the process. Aligned with whose values? Imposed by whose authority? And at what cost? “Progress by its very nature cannot be planned,” Hayek wrote in The Constitution of Liberty, but instead “civilization [is] the accumulated hard-earned result of trial and error,” and “the sum of experience.”

As a general rule, put your guard up whenever powerful people suggest a political solution to a technical problem.

Posted at 3:50 pm by Stephen Green

PRETTY MUCH, YEAH:

Posted at 3:32 pm by Stephen Green

KRUISER: Dems’ Haplessness Makes Them an Even Bigger Existential Threat to the Republic. “What does worry me, though, is that the Democrats are not unlike an unhinged, cornered rabid animal these days. Because it’s now a party dominated by coastal elites, there is also an almost feral quality when Dem politicians are out in normal America. There is a complete lack of regard for civility and convention that makes them unpredictable and dangerous.”

Posted at 3:19 pm by Stephen Green

MONITOR YOUR HEALTH: KardiaMobile. #CommissionEarned

Posted at 3:02 pm by Helen Smith

EAT MORE MEAT: Nearly a third of Americans eating fewer fresh vegetables after ‘explosive diarrhea’ virus outbreak.

Nearly a third of Americans cut back their produce consumption and nearly two-thirds changed their behavior this summer after an “explosive diarrhea” parasite ravaged rectums across the country, according to a poll.

At least 30% of people said they were buying less fresh produce at grocery stores over the cyclosporiasis parasite outbreak, which left tens of thousands of people cramping on their commodes from vicious bouts of viscous diarrhea.

I like to think I was ahead of the curve on this one. Way out ahead of the curve.

Posted at 2:48 pm by Stephen Green

THAT’S GONNA LEAVE A MARK:

In-flight Starlink ought to be industry standard — it’s just that good.

Posted at 2:01 pm by Stephen Green

CHANGE: Airbus A350F Makes First Flight. “Airbus’ next-generation A350F freighter, which the manufacturer confirmed to be under development in July 2021, has finally conducted its maiden flight.”

Posted at 2:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

TEACH YOUR CHILDREN TO HATE WHAT GOVERNMENT DOES TO CAPITALISM:

Posted at 1:32 pm by Stephen Green