OF COURSE THEY DID:  NYC Leaders Just Voted to Give Themselves a Massive Pay Raise.

AS IF DEMOCRATS ARE FIT TO GOVERN ANYTHING:  Francesca Hong Continues to Prove She’s Unfit to Lead Wisconsin, but Can Democrats Stop Her?

THEY CAN RUN BUT THEY CAN’T HIDE: Not in the age of New Media:  The New York Times Is Trying to Do Damage Control After the Graham Platner Implosion.

BOUND TO HAPPEN:  Japan To Raise Foreigners’ Residency Fees Significantly.

BUT YOU BET THE SOCIALIST INDOCTRINATION IS COMING ON LIKE A DREAM:  Report: Nearly Half of NYC Schools are Failing in Reading and Math.

SIGH:  The North Atlantic “Cold Blob” and Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation Collapse Hype.

WORD FROM DER OYSTERFUHRER BUNKER:  Graham Platner: ‘We are Suspending Campaign Operations’.

NICE OF THEM TO NOTICE:  Former acting DHS secretary warns Chinese criminal organizations are infiltrating America’s hemp industry.

YEAH. THAT DOESN’T SEEM TO BE TRUE:  This is a certain kind of talk around LLMs that I find increasingly puzzling. That is all of the people bitching that LLMs constantly generate crap code and hallucinate solutions, and are worthless for programming.

THIS SHOULD BE TAUGHT IN SCHOOL EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR:  It is Not a Right if Someone Else has to Provide It.

UM… YES AND NO. IT’S PAST TIME WE MADE EUROPE CONTRIBUTE TO THEIR OWN DEFENSE: They’re wasting a lot more money than we are on “benefits that ain’t,”  Staring Down the Barrel.

I’VE GOT BAD NEWS AND GOOD NEWS: You’re going to have to forge your own path!  Where We’re Going We Don’t Need Roads.

DOWNFALL: Platner drops out of crucial Senate race after bombshell rape allegation torpedoes campaign.

OPEN THREAD: You go back, Jack, comment again.

I WOULD HAVE NAMED IT BASIDIUM: Did you know Earth has a ‘minimoon’? It’s known as asteroid 2016HO3, or Kamoʻoalewa.

SCIENCE, UNSETTLED: Scientists Thought Royal Jelly Made Queen Bees. They Were Wrong.

CLEAN YOUR HOUSE: roborock Qrevo CurvX Robot Vacuum and Mop, 22,000Pa Suction. #CommissionEarned

I’VE BECOME SUSPICIOUS OF HORMONAL BIRTH CONTROL: Not all birth controls are equal, some are linked to higher risk of brain tumors, study finds. Though, as is often the case with these studies, the increase in risk isn’t huge.

THE ULTIMATE PROJECTION:

People in NYC used to say that Trump was "a poor person's idea of a rich person"–which was supposed to be a dunk and actually described his political appeal. Dems trying to tap that same populist energy instead selected a rich person's idea of a poor person. https://t.co/ihlW9oAiyh

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) July 8, 2026

EVERGREEN HEADLINES: Democrats: Addicted To Scumbags.

UPDATE:

One of the defining qualities of post-2010 elite media, culture, and academia is a crippling incapacity for basic social and psychological recognition.

Part of the reason for this is that elites come from a narrow, oversocialized milieu. Another big reason is that elite culture… https://t.co/Dae14iwPMr

— Coddled Affluent Professional (@feelsdesperate) July 8, 2026

“Another big reason is that elite culture (novels, films, etc) used to be brutally and unsparingly honest in its psychological depictions, and you could learn a lot from that and recognize all sorts of personalities you would encounter in real life. Post-2010 the purpose of culture has been to propagandize, lie, confuse, and dissemble on behalf of all sorts of inconvenient truths and now as a result elites tasked with sense making are poorly ‘educated’ to an unprecedented degree and don’t stand a chance in engineering the outcomes that they desire.”

FINGERS CROSSED: SCOTUS’s AR-15 Ruling Could Open a Broader Range of Questions the Gun Control Industry Doesn’t Want Answered.

KEEPING HIS CITY AFLOAT… FOR NOW: Mamdani Crows About Socialism’s ‘Success,’ but It’s Capitalism That’s Keeping His City Afloat.

SOUNDS CONFUSING: Here’s How Many Ways You Can Open the Rear Doors of the Mercedes-Maybach S-Class.

RESHORING: Apple to invest $30 billion in US chip manufacturing. “The investment, in partnership with Broadcom, is set to produce 15 billion chips, creating hundreds of U.S. jobs. Broadcom’s facility in Fort Collins, Colorado, is expanding its capabilities to produce the chips.”