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When American historians tell the story of 2025, it will be about the rise of our off-brand fascism.   When world historians tell the story of 2025, it will be about the passing of technological, and hence economic, and hence political leadership from the U.S. to China, in the span of eight months.   ~Bill McKibben

A manuscript under review in a refereed journal and a new book together provided new evidence that at least two children of Thomas Jefferson’s slave Sally Hemmings were fathered by Jefferson. “After a covert and exhaustive 15-year effort led by the Smithsonian Institution, a team of geneticists, genealogists, historians, and anthropologists believe it has found proof that Jefferson fathered at least two of Hemings’s six children. On Tuesday, Richard Kurin, a Smithsonian cultural anthropologist, who led the multidisciplinary research effort, will publish a   book   detailing the team’s findings. A scientific paper is currently under review for publication in   Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences   ( PNAS ). The researchers, who agreed to speak with me about their results before publication, relied on the latest genetic techniques to reassemble Jefferson’s genome from the Founder’s hair. They then matched that sequence with DNA from descendants of two of He...

No, it’s not the Internet’s fault. It’s not the YAF’s fault. It’s not even entirely the Republican party’s fault. It’s the fault of modern American political conservatism, which encouraged vandalism and savagery and now finds itself a road company of   Lord of the Flies.   My sympathy is really quite limited. ~Charles P. Pierce

Blogger Duncan Black coined the “Freidman Unit” to refer to NYT columnist Tom   Friedman's frequent predictions during the Iraq War that "the next six months" would be the decisive turning point, a phrase he used repeatedly over several years without the decisive moment ever arriving.  Now, Sen. Kennedy reaches into the prophecy vault to revive the F.U. “ U.S. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana told a crowd of Iowa conservatives Saturday he believes current high inflation is being caused by the U.S.-Iran war — but said he sees an end to the conflict within six months.”   https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2026/09/19/us-sen-john-kennedy-in-iowa-predicts-end-of-iran-war-in-6-months/

From a pediatrician and fellow emeritus professor: “You want to know about vaccines? Okay. Here you go. “In 42 years, in about 150,000 patient encounters, I have only seen one child who had a bad reaction: localized severe angioedema of the arm, I.e., severe redness and swelling, where he got a DTaP. Even so, he responded well to oral antihistamines and did not need to be hospitalized.   “That’s it: one kid who did well with outpatient treatment. In 42 years. In about 150,000 patient encounters.   “Now, how many kids did the jabs I prescribed save from illness, hospitalization, even death? I’ll never know, but I know it’s tens of thousands.   “Vaccines are a miracle. Yet they are so much more. They are a pinnacle of human intellect, achievement, and compassion. They are essential to human life on this planet, and I will continue to urge everyone I know - and thousands I don’t - to get themselves and their children every vaccine that’s appropriate for them.   “Because...

It wasn’t Hitler or Himmler who deported me, beat me, and shot my family. It was the shoemaker, the milkman, the neighbor, who were given a uniform and then believed they were the master race. ~Karl Strojka, Auschwitz