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All God’s critters got viruses. Not just animals and plants, but fungi and bacteria. The viruses that infect and kill bacteria are called bacteriophages (or phages, for short).   For decades, the USSR developed and used natural bacteriophages to treat bacterial infections like cholera. Even after the discovery of antibiotics, the Soviet Union continued the clinical use of bacteriophages. Now, a US company has used AI to engineer a bacteriophage to treat infections: “ Rather than searching for a virus that could kill the patient's bacteria, Omnii-1 redesigned part of a virus so it could better recognize and attack the specific bacterial strain causing the infection. The company says the AI-driven process could eventually take just days.” An increasing number of bacterial pathogens have acquired resistance to common antibiotics, and in some cases, to all available antibiotics. So, bacteriophage therapy represents a potential new tool in the bacterial arms race. How effective is it? “...

What we seem to be getting back to is the nineteenth century. Then politics tended to be centered on the fight between liberals (broadly speaking), and illiberals or anti-liberals. That struggle, and the various victories and defeats of each side, defined the history of many nations throughout that era. We thought for a while that we’d moved beyond that. We were wrong.   ~William Kristol

It’s true that the White House squeezes money and well-being from the targets of its campaign even when it doesn’t secure convictions. But when the failures are so consistent and so abject they have the effect of advertising both the President’s abuses of power and his weakness. Successfully abusing your power is a display of dominance which spreads fear. These clumsy and grasping failures more generate anger and contempt. A shrewder would-be autocrat wouldn’t have made himself so deeply unpopular, in such foreseeable ways while he was trying to impose an Orban-style autocracy. Even at this late date one with any foresight or self-control would drop these antics and focus other kinds of wrongdoing. But Trump simply can’t. We don’t diminish the gravity of Trump’s wrongdoing by noting that he is failing in this effort. ~Josh Marshall

Globalization has become tainted in our eyes, as if it necessarily constitutes a zero-sum enterprise. And its mercenary form—which is also its most common form –has indeed inflicted harm. But the global semiconductor supply chain reflects an alternative pathway. It has united its participants in the pursuit of something profoundly difficult that could not have been achieved in the absence of intercontinental solidarity. ~Gideon Lewis-Kraus

RFK Jr’s lack of knowledge about healthcare, vaccines and nutrition has been well-documented. Remarkably, this former heroin addict who cops to snorting cocaine off of a toilet seat continues to self-own his ignorance. “ There's 500 million Arabs in the world and yet they don't produce science," Kennedy said on the campaign trail Monday. "They don't win the Nobel Prize. They don't win the Fields Prize. They don't win the Wolf Prize. They don't produce literature." Egyptian law scholar Mohamed ElBaradei, a diplomat and vice-president of Egypt, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 alongside the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). ElBaradei and the IAEA, which he previously chaired, were awarded for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes. Tawakkol Karman, a Yemeni journalist, politician, and human rights activist, was a co-recipient of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the first Yemeni and the first Arab ...

Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you. ~Christopher Hitchens

Property taxes are a kind of wealth tax. For most Americans, most of their wealth is in their house.   “92-year-old Pennsylvania woman   died in January   after prolonged health issues and a nightmarish six-year battle over property taxes.   “Gloria Gaynor, who was bedridden from illness, accrued $3,500 in unpaid property   taxes   in 2020. By 2025, she was facing eviction from a company that put a lien on her home after buying the unpaid debt from Delaware County   at auction,   ABC7   reported.   “This stressful scenario is one that strikes fear into the hearts of many   retirees,   and has led to a growing movement among the   baby boomer generation ( those aged 62 to 80)   to   eliminate their property taxes.” Property taxes  fund   public schools , fire and police departments, trash collection, public health programs and road maintenance, among other public services. Here in Rhode Island, our prope...

I’ve made relatively modest financial contributions to my former employer, Saint Louis Universities, targeting a couple of worthy endowment funds. Sadly, 40% of those contributions went to the university development office, even though they had no role in my decision to contribute.   Skimming political contributions is even worse: “If your $100 was in response to a fundraising text or email, the single most expensive way to raise money in American politics, $65 is instantly consumed by the cost of asking you for it. Asking this often, and this aggressively, is expensive. It means paying the data brokers who traffic in your personal information, the digital copywriters who draft the inexplicably bizarre messaging, the email and SMS providers who specialize in slipping past spam filters, the compliance lawyers, and, of course, the fundraising consultants. Another $2 goes to strategic consultants for advice on how to spend what’s left, and $14 to administration, travel, and staff. Of ...

When a business becomes critical infrastructure, its relationship with society alters. If  SpaceX  builds a near-monopoly on satellite internet, no matter how objectively good the product is, and its CEO then uses it to conduct foreign policy according to his own politics and against the interests of the United States, the company has violated the public trust.  ~Mike Brock  

There are few things I enjoy more than a sound debunking. A few years ago, I was asked to review a book on “the science of near-death experiences.” The guy who requested the review was the author, who is also the editor of Missouri Medicine. I wrote a review that expressed my deep skepticism in the gentlest terms I could summon, and it was published in Missouri Medicine. My only Amazon product review is of a book published by a colleague in the history department, and I was far less gentle with that embarrassing publication*.     I just finished reading “Morbid: Debunking modern longevity science” by Saul J. Newman. Newman is a skeptic of longevity/aging research as marketed in the popular press and pharma industry. Along the way, he takes on the claims of telomere length as a driver of aging, a field I’ve followed closely and written about. He also takes on popular nostrums like resveratrol and young blood transfusions. He explains the distinction between longevity and aging ...

Here’s   United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby  on inheritance taxes: “ Wealth inequality has become a danger to our society, and we need to address that. We should have a national wealth tax — it won't work by state because people will just move. And I think we should have inheritance taxes that get close to 100% at some level. I would pay them." I’d be fine with that. If you want to avoid the inheritance tax, give the money to your kids *before* you die. Currently, you can gift $19,000 tax-free to each child. If you’re married, each of you can gift $19,000/child/year. If your child is married, you can also gift their spouse $19,000/year. At the very least, inheritances should be taxed as income from the first dollar. Yes, I know that money was already taxed. So was the money I’ve paid sales taxes on. We tax every time money changes hands. Why should inheritances, which the recipients don’t have to work for, be any different?   https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/article/united-...

If you want to shift public opinion, you need to bring the most egregious act to the table. And bit by bit, the mainstream narrative will move toward the next, slightly less egregious thing. It’s worked, because everybody is talking about whether Nidal Hasan’s execution should be livestreamed, but nobody’s talking about why he is being executed in the first place. And in doing so, it has made a future livestreamed execution a much more realistic possibility. ~  Dr Asim Qureshi

In reality, changing the clocks doesn’t create or destroy daylight. It only changes what we call it. If you want more daylight in the winter, you need to move closer to the equator. Changing the clocks twice a year is a nuisance. It’s also unhealthy. “The switch itself does real harm. In the days after we spring forward, heart attacks rise.   One analysis   found a 24 percent jump in heart attacks on the Monday after the change.   Strokes ,   traffic crashes , and   workplace accidents climb , too. Ending the switch is worth doing. The only question is which time we keep.” But locking in Daylight Savings Time isn’t the answer. “. . . morning light and evening light are not interchangeable. Our bodies run on internal clocks that are set by the sun, not the clock on the wall. Morning light is the master signal: It resets our internal clocks each day and tells the brain to trigger a surge of cortisol. Cortisol, a hormone released by the adrenal glands, is the ...

I live in Rhode Island, about a mile from the Massachusetts border. Massachusetts Is a real state, while Rhode Island is more of a toy state.   Massachusetts has a recent history of electing moderate Republican governors—Willard “Mitt” Romney* and Charlie Baker come to mind. So I wasn’t completely surprised when MA GOP gubernatorial candidate Michael Minogue did the reasonable thing and called on his lieutenant governor running mate to end his campaign after Shawn Oliver was arrested and jailed for OUI after he drove into five parked vehicles late Saturday night, flipping his own vehicle. “Minogue said earlier Sunday that beyond calling on Oliver to end his campaign,   he would “formally ask for his resignation” should both he and the New Bedford city councilor be elected Nov. 3.” Both Minogue and Oliver are way behind in the polls. I’m glad Minogue did the right thing. *I hear you snickering, but “Obamacare” was really Romneycare. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/10/18/m...

  From a comment thread over at angrybearblog.com: "Seven different AI LLM’s were asked to determine president’s IQ, based on transcripts from his interviews, responses to questions, and speech patterns. Two declined; the remaining five ranged IQ’s between 80-110. Gemini, who assessed his IQ at 85-95 was asked if AI could be safely guard-railed by someone with his intellect and responded: ‘ start stockpiling canned goods.’"

The US dollar has been the world’s reserve currency for decades. This has meant more favorable lending conditions for America. Now, it looks like China is making a play to displace the dollar. “ Zambia is set to accept the Chinese yuan for some copper exports starting next year, marking a significant move away from US dollar dependency.   “This innovative payment approach could lower transaction costs and minimize currency exchange risks for Zambia’s crucial copper trade with China.   “China’s push to internationalize the yuan is gaining momentum, as seen in recent yuan-based energy and mineral transactions worldwide.”   China is struggling with overproduction of goods that can’t be consumed internally. Until they get their economic house in order, they won’t displace dollar dominance. But Trump is actively eroding internation trust the US good faith and credit.   https://www.facebook.com/businessinsiderssa/posts/zambia-is-set-to-accept-the-chinese-yuan-for-some-copp...

  Going into the midterms, Democrats should be asking voters “are you better off today than two years ago?” Republicans control the White House and both houses of Congress. They should answer for why things are getting worse and why we should believe things will improve. https://jabberwocking.com/49282-2/  

Buying diesel from Russia will not change the price of diesel. It is questionable that Russia can actually deliver the diesel fuel. It is facing domestic shortages itself. Like a typical Trump deal, this could well end in an appeal to American taxpayers to pay for something two or three times which was advertised as a gift for them. But let us imagine that Russian ships actually dock in American ports with diesel fuel. All that this would mean is that Russia broke some prior contracts with other partners in order to make Trump feel grateful. The overall supply of diesel on the world market would not change. The price of diesel will not change. ~Timothy Snyder

As for Trump and Hegseth, their whole schtick is making a fetish of cruelty. Hasan won't be their first public execution. They've murdered hundreds on the high seas, accusing them without evidence of smuggling drugs while in fact preparing the way for a putsch in Venezuela designed get their greedy hands on the oil and gold. Last September, their commanders ordered a despicable double-tap attack on survivors floating in the water and begging to be rescued. Hegseth was too big a coward to let us see the video. Members of Congress said it made them sick to their stomachs. They weren't soft on drugs or Venezuela’s tinhorn dictator. They just understood the difference between right and wrong. They knew the American people wouldn't keeping putting up with cruelty for cruelty’s sake. They know a civilized government doesn't murder the helpless or shoot people for show. Hegseth and Trump operate differently. They think that little of us. ~John H. Taylor  

In her book “March of Folly,” Barbara defined three criteria to distinguish merely mistaken policy from folly: "To qualify as folly for this inquiry, the policy adopted must meet three criteria: it must have been perceived as counter-productive in its own time, not merely by hindsight. … Secondly a feasible alternative course of action must have been available. … third … the policy in question should be that of a group, not an individual leader." The current US war against Iran meets all three criteria. Now we need to implement the first law of holes: when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging.

Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it. ~Timothy Snyder  

One of the conspiracy theories about the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is that the pandemic started from a lab that was engineering a gain-of-function coronavirus. None of the data on the virus genome sequence supports this theory, but lack of evidence rarely extinguishes conspiracy mongering. I haven’t thought seriously about gain-of-function research in a while, but I was just watching a podcast that made me realize that I’ve known about this field for decades. A virologist at Saint Louis University School of Medicine (now deceased) had engineered a human adenovirus that targeted and killed cancer cells. He patented this gain-of-function virus but he was never able to get a company to produce enough to do a clinical trial using his virus. Oncolytic gain-of-function viruses remain subjects of active research world-wide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oncolytic_adenovirus

“On October 6, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York published an article to its Liberty Street Economics blog that included a chart showing that President Donald Trump’s tariffs directly led to a higher inflation rate and that without those tariffs, consumer goods prices would have declined. Through October 7, most major news organizations had failed even to mention this research yet.”   https://www.mediamatters.org/tariffs-trade/new-york-fed-research-found-if-not-trumps-tariffs-goods-prices-would-have-declined

Today’s U.S. military structures itself around assumptions of short, decisive wars. Munitions stockpiles are limited. Preparation for reconstituting a highly skilled professional force is minimal. Maintenance of reserve weapons and equipment is poor. These policies trade long-term staying power for short-term lethality and presuppose that the United States can end a conflict quickly by destroying the opposing military. But if ending a war is a matter of coercive bargaining, in which enemies can almost always keep fighting, then Washington cannot create short wars by fiat. Prudence dictates reconsidering choices that assume the opposite. ~Stephen Biddle, Sam Winter-Levy and Yuri Zhukov

“A few times I’ve noted that Trump started moving aggressively toward foreign policy and war just as his power and popularity were diminishing at home. That’s when the Greenland fury started, that’s when he went after Venezuela, that’s when, on the sugar high of Venezuela, he launched his catastrophically consequential war on Iran. No one likes unpopularity or flagging power. Trump is unable to handle it. Foreign aggression was a kind of compensating expression of power and dominance, which was possible because an American president’s war power is all but unlimited, a kind of presidential self-soothing. The naming and building campaign kicked off at about the same time and is largely the same thing. It’s an in-spite-of-himself admission that the permanent, almost statutory love he imagined would be his at the outset of the first administration and that he thought he had another shot at in the second will never happen, and he had to start mandating it in construction and name plates tha...

I used to think that the Trump aesthetic mirrored the Jim Bakkers and the Jimmy Swaggarts because they all peaked in the 1980s, which happened to coincide with the glory days of high-glam primetime soaps, which set an unfortunate standard for opulence. But I’ve come to see Trump as a secular televangelist preaching his own version of the prosperity gospel to the same marks susceptible to the same grift that powered the fleeting televangelical fortunes. ~David Kurtz

Personally, I find the time change brouhaha silly. If you live in the northern hemisphere, there’s just less daylight in the winter months. You can play with the clocks, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are 24 hours in the day and fewer of those hours will be sunlit in winter.   If people really want daylight to extend an hour further in the afternoon, here’s a proposal: all year round, just move the clock back an hour at noon and move it forward an hour at midnight. Every day. It makes as much sense as what we presently do and has the added benefit that you (a) don’t have to remember which day to make the change and (b) you don’t have to remember which direction to change in fall vs spring.  Look, this is really just a distraction from the Iran war, gas and oil prices, home mortgage cost increases and the Epstein files. Focus, peeps! https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/3/trump-ramps-up-pressure-on-us-republicans-to-end-us-clock-switching?utm_source=bluesky&u...

Trump bullied the EU into releasing 100 million barrels of oil from its reserves over the next four months. Will that bring down gas prices in the US significantly in time for midterms? The math says no.   “ Europe is putting roughly 820,000 barrels a day on the market. “The world   used   about 104 million barrels a day of petroleum in 2025, though OPEC pegged it at 105 mn b/d. Global production reached 106 million barrels per day, which means there was a slight glut, and those reserves have helped the world get through the 2026 Iran War crisis.   “So, folks, 800,000 barrels a day is very small potatoes. It is roughly the production of minor players such as Argentina or Colombia. It isn’t going to make much difference.” *snip* “ His having arranged for a release of a small amount of European reserves may help him talk up the US markets going into the midterms. It isn’t likely to make a big impact on gasoline and diesel prices, and the provision of a new 800k barrels...

A sucker is born every minute. “If you go back to the middle of the last decade, the big tech platforms were massive, and were entrenching their monopoly power in various segments of the tech economy and the national and global economy generally. The exponential growth of earlier years was giving way to merely arithmetic growth if not stagnation. In a key sign of change, the tech world, which had ignored Washington, D.C. as hidebound, sclerotic and irrelevant to their world, started pouring real sums into the lobbying and influence games like the rest of corporate America. There was a huge, huge hunger for the next thing which would bring back the financial explosion of a decade or more earlier. AI was by no means the first entrance.   “Crypto was a big one and to an extent remains one. But the big one to remember was the “metaverse.” There was a massive craze for the Metaverse which took over Silicon Valley. NFTs, absurd digital things, which people could bid up to insane valuatio...

What you're seeing is not just a silly white man making a silly mistake. Eric Schmitt is a person who has risen to one of the highest seats of power in the land as a legal technician of the politics of bigotry and grievance: as attorney general (2019–2023) and now as senator, he has turned discriminatory, illegal bullshit into lawsuits and federal pressure. This is his most fundamental source of value: a henchman for a white-supremacist regime. ~Joohn Choe

The data center conversation is a proxy for corruption. You know, people see that there is a deep integration between these big billion dollar tech companies and the Trump administration, and they don’t like it, and the proliferation of data centers is a sign to people that the only thing that matters in this administration is money and billionaire corporate power … Yes, sometimes this is about water use and land use, but it’s really a question of corruption and the data centers are an avatar for a corrupt relationship between the technology companies and the Trump administration. That’s why, that’s why the last bill they’re doing is an attempt to change two years of this corruption story. It’s going to laughably not work.   ~Sen. Chris Murphy

I’ll admit up front that I’ve always considered William F. Buckley Jr a pretentious gasbag. I recently finished reading “Buckley: The life and the revolution that changed America” by Sam Tanenhaus. I found little in this long and detailed biography to change my mind. Don’t get me wrong: I enjoyed this book. And I learned a great deal about the subject. For example, English was Buckley’s third language, after Spanish and French. He spoke Spanish exclusively until age six. For his entire life, he was a devout and unswerving Roman Catholic. He was born into wealth, and while his magazine National Review struggled financially for its first decades, he didn’t take a salary and subsidized the journal by his outside writing and speaking fees. Buckley was a man of appetites: sailing, skiing and writing. Reading, not so much. He very rarely changed his mind. The most notable exception was on civil rights. Late in life he admitted that federal intervention was necessary to secure minority rights...