DYSPEPSIA GENERATION

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Food stamps and food pantries are intended to keep struggling Americans fed.

What we found is that, in some communities, that food never reaches an American table. Instead, it gets shipped overseas and sold for profit.

The Foundry.

The Democratic Party did not merely drift left over the decades, as some still politely maintain. It was captured, body and soul, by its radical socialist wing—hijacked, thrown into the trunk, and driven straight off the cliff into the ideological abyss.

The old moderates are extinct, reduced to fossils of a bygone order that once valued pragmatism and compromise. The Blue Dogs have been buried in the backyard, their instincts for fiscal restraint and cultural common sense now dismissed as embarrassing relics.

What was once safely relegated to the “extreme Left”—the province of campus radicals, fringe activists, and academic theorists—has become the party’s beating core, its driving force, its new normal. And they no longer even pretend otherwise.

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Reform UK councillors in Birmingham have called for council meetings to be conducted only in English after an Islamic prayer was read aloud in Arabic during a mayoral ceremony in the city.

Newly-appointed Lord Mayor Zaker Choudhry invited imam Muhammad Abdali to recite a verse from the Koran in Arabic as he was sworn in. The verse was later repeated in English.

In a letter to Choudhry, Reform councillors said the council should remain “inclusive and accessible to all residents regardless of religion or culture” and argued that all proceedings should be held in English.

Group leader Jex Parkin said only English should be used in public meetings “to promote and protect the language, culture, and values of the United Kingdom.”

The move prompted criticism from Labour councillors. Majid Mahmood described the warning as “nonsense” and said Birmingham’s diversity should not be “feared or politicised.”

The imam said the prayer promoted harmony, cooperation, and opposition to “all forms of extremism and terrorism.” A council spokesman said Lord Mayors traditionally have the option to invite a religious leader of their choice to open proceedings.

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Suspected Iranian operatives are attempting to recruit people in Britain to organise anti-Israel protests, according to a report that has intensified criticism of the Labour government’s response to Tehran.

The Times reported that an undercover journalist was offered money by a suspected Iranian agent to organise demonstrations in London and recruit others sympathetic to Tehran’s anti-Israel messaging.

Elsewhere across Europe, documents suggest officers from the terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are also working in the EU under diplomatic cover, and that Tehran is hoping to expand covert operations further once its war with the U.S. and Israel is over.

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Corporations, partnerships, trusts, limited liability companies, and other “artificial entities” have the right to vote in Delaware elections under some circumstances, a judge said in a novel ruling Tuesday.

Judge Craig A. Karsnitz rejected an ACLU challenge to a charter permitting voting in local elections by the entities that own most of the property in the Town of Fenwick Island, one of several municipalities in the state with similar provisions. Karsnitz dismissed the lawsuit from Delaware’s Superior Court, citing “the principle of one person/entity/one vote.”

“Visions of faceless large corporations or even HAL controlling a small town are frightening and the stuff of science fiction,” but “trusts, partnerships, limited liability companies, and corporations are expressly recognized as ‘persons’ in the Delaware Code,” the judge said.

The dispute over municipal voting in a tiny coastal community represents an unusual flashpoint in the decades-long fight over the free speech rights of corporations and the dark money flooding the American electoral system. The US Supreme Court held in 2010’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that political spending counts as constitutionally protected speech.

Ever since that ruling effectively ended corporate campaign finance regulation, the prospect of outright voting by business entities has served as fodder for both critics and comedians.

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Regulation follows regulation. On August 12, the so-called EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) will enter into force, reorganizing the recycling framework for packaging across Europe. Adopted last year, the regulation becomes binding for all EU member states and companies on August 12 and, as an EU regulation, does not require transposition into national law. The PPWR will replace the current patchwork of national packaging recycling laws with a unified framework for the EU single market. Until then, Germany’s existing Packaging Act (VerpackG) remains in effect.

Brussels always tells the same story: regulation is supposed to strengthen the European single market and harmonize economic and environmental objectives. A beautiful narrative — especially for those who stand to profit from it. Similar dynamics have already emerged in other sectors, such as carbon emissions trading. In the end, compliance costs for affected businesses rise, the bureaucratic apparatus expands through new control and sanctioning mechanisms, and the overall economy loses competitiveness.

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The widened scope and quickened pace of the Islamic State’s military operations in the Sahel region — just below North Africa, roughly from Senegal to Sudan — threatens to alter the strategic orientation of the African continent. Efforts at countering terrorist operations in the Sahel, such as they were, have evidently failed. As all roads to Mali’s capital of Bamoko are now blocked, that country might be the first state to “go under.”

On April 25, during a coordinated attack on several Malian cities, Muslim terrorists killed the country’s Minister of Defense. The terrorists then drove the Malian Army and its allied Russian mercenaries out of the country’s north.

The military juntas ruling Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have proven themselves as ineffective at combatting Islamic terrorist operations as the democracies that they overthrew. The increasing terrorist assaults across the Sahel and the jihadists’s determined efforts to take over Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have eroded the sovereignty of these states.

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There’s being rejected by voters, then there’s being absolutely embarrassed.

That’s what we saw in Texas last night. John Cornyn, who outspent his opponent Texas AG Ken Paxton 10-1, was absolutely wrecked at the polls.

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Far-left Turkish-American millionaire and Twitch streamer Hasan Piker appears to have committed an operational-security mistake by publicly identifying American Marxist tech financier Neville Roy Singham, who has reportedly been living in China and has been linked by The New York Times to CCP-aligned propaganda networks, as a major financier of pro-Marxist revolutionary NGOs operating inside the U.S.

On Sunday, Piker discussed the U.S. Treasury’s “Requests for Information” subpoena related to his “humanitarian trip” to Cuba with pro-China CodePink cofounder Susan Medea Benjamin. That story was first published by Fox News’ lead NGO investigator, Asra Nomani, on Saturday.

Piker pointed out that the Treasury likely has a broader target, is “probably Singham” and “his operation,” naming PSL (Party for Socialism and Liberation), ANSWER Coalition, Code Pink, and “anything that he has ever financed.”

He then acknowledged that Roy Singham lives in China and has been “a funding vehicle” for political movements and activism in the U.S.

We’re sure Singham network comrades are absolutely furious with Piker because, as NGO investigator Stu Smith wrote on X, “Hasan didn’t refute the network. He mapped it.”

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“What the judge did was double harm,” former Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins said, commenting on the arrest of a man who wouldn’t have been free to go on a second shooting spree if a judge hadn’t ignored her sentencing request in 2020.

The second shooting spree took place on May 11 of this year, as CBS News Boston details, noting that a private citizen helped a state trooper end the threat:

“The shooting on Memorial Drive in Cambridge, Massachusetts Monday left two men in critical condition Tuesday as police tried to piece together what happened.

“Investigators said 46-year-old Tyler Brown of Boston walked down the street with a rifle and randomly shot 50-to-60 rounds at people and cars. He was later shot by a state trooper and a Marine veteran.”

In 2021, since-retired Suffolk Superior Court Judge Janet Sanders ignored requests by Rollins and police for Brown to be given a 10-12 year sentence after he was convicted for attempting to kill Boston police officers by firing 17 rounds at them during a shootout – while he was out on parole from his 2014 sentence for a knife attack and just days after he had been released from a psychiatric hospital.

Brown, who also had a cocaine conviction in 2008, pleaded guilty to eight charges, including armed assault with intent to murder and attempted assault and battery by means of discharging a firearm.

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A Belgian court has ruled that even “factually correct” statements can constitute criminal hate speech if used to “incite hatred.”

The ruling came as anti-migration activist Dries Van Langenhove was convicted for a second time over remarks linking mass migration to crime.

This is Van Langenhove’s second such conviction, following a speech he delivered at a university in Leuven in February 2024, in which he linked mass migration to crime.

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Sweden’s parliament has approved a new law banning marriages between cousins and other close relatives, with the measure set to take effect on July 1, 2026.

The reform, passed by the Swedish Riksdag on Tuesday, will also mean that such marriages conducted abroad will generally no longer be recognised in Sweden.

The legislation was introduced by the government following an investigation into consanguineous marriages and their links to forced marriage, family pressure, and so-called “honour”-related violence. The initiative was backed by the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats party.

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Israel claims to have killed Mohammed Odeh—commander of Hamas’s military wing—in an airstrike on Tuesday, May 26th.

The Shin Bet security service identified the target as a hideout used by the recently promoted Odeh, resulting in an attack—in which at least three Palestinians were killed—on the residential al-Kayali building, hitting the upper three floors of the structure.

According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Shin Bet in a joint statement:

As part of the joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet to eliminate the terrorist Mohammed Odeh, several buildings in the heart of Gaza City that served as a hideout for him were attacked, after months of intelligence surveillance in order to track his movements and the movements of his assistants in the organisation.

Israel also released an intensive strike wave across eastern and southern Lebanon on Tuesday, reportedly killing dozens of people. This follows Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu vowing to “crush” the Iranian proxy terror group Hezbollah.

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On December 3rd last year, 18-year-old Henry Nowak, a first-year student at the University of Southampton, was stabbed four times by his alleged attacker, Vickrum Digwa. As a Sikh, Digwa was permitted to carry a ceremonial kirpan knife. Perhaps this wasn’t butch enough, however, so he decided to complete his arsenal with an 8-inch blade or shastar (a Punjabi word for ‘weapon’ or ‘knife’), just to be on the safe side. The trial at Southampton Crown Court has heard how Digwa “aggressively pursued” his victim, inflicted the fatal wounds, and stood over him as he bled. In Snapchat footage recorded moments before the attack, Nowak taunted Digwa to say he was a bad man. Digwa replied: “I am a bad man.” He did not call for help.

Here’s the problem for Nowak: he was white; his assailant was not. Which means Digwa was perfectly within his rights to play the race card and did so to maximum effect.

When the police arrived at the scene, they handcuffed the collapsed victim (which must have been a relief to those concerned about where his blood was going). According to bodycam footage played in court, Nowak repeatedly told the officers that he had been stabbed and “couldn’t breathe.” They still handcuffed him. The police eventually decided to render first aid, shortly before Nowak lost consciousness. The ironic parallels with George Floyd are so obvious I feel I need comment no further.

Digwa, meanwhile, claimed he acted in “self-defence,” faced with the unspeakable violence of Nowak’s alleged “racial abuse.” Despite the four fatal stab wounds, the fact that Nowak’s phone was later discovered in Digwa’s pocket, and the revelation that Digwa’s mother was allegedly filmed removing and disposing of the knife, Digwa’s barrister shamefully instructed jurors to decide whether the murderer acted “in the heat of the moment.”

Science Daily.

Researchers at Texas A&M have developed a nasal spray that appears to reverse brain aging by calming inflammation and restoring the brain’s energy systems. After just two doses, memory and cognitive function improved for months, raising hopes for future treatments targeting dementia and brain fog.

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surpised.

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Most of us are already quite comfortable recycling our household waste. In Spain, for instance, millions of tonnes of packaging are processed every year, but did you know that buildings and their materials can also be recycled, or that an entire building could be completely dismantled and reassembled?

Formula 1, often a laboratory for innovation, offers us a real-world example of this in the form of the Red Bull team’s “pit box”, known as the F1Holzhaus – literally, “the wooden house”. It made its debut at the 2019 Spanish Grand Prix and has been the team’s “home” in Europe ever since. Before every Grand Prix, fourteen workers assemble its 1,221 square metres in just 32 hours, and then dismantle it in less than a day.

This building reflects a change in the conception of construction, which has to be increasingly committed to sustainable buildings that can be adapted, modified and reused.

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For Beijing, Taiwan is the unfinished chapter of the Chinese civil war and the symbolic wound of national division. But it is also a military-geographic problem. As long as Taiwan remains outside the control of the People’s Republic of China, China’s navy faces a barrier along the first island chain. Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines form a maritime arc that limits China’s free access to the wider Pacific. If Taiwan fell under Beijing’s control, that barrier would be broken.

For Taiwan, geography is both shield and vulnerability. The sea protects it from easy invasion, but the same sea makes it dependent on trade, shipping, imported energy, and open maritime routes. As noted in a recent analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Taiwan’s island status and dependence on maritime supply chains make blockade scenarios strategically dangerous even without a direct invasion.

Energy remains one of Taiwan’s deepest structural vulnerabilities. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Taiwan relies heavily on imported LNG and coal for electricity generation, making maritime security inseparable from energy security. This dependence means that any prolonged disruption in shipping lanes could rapidly become an economic and social crisis.

This is why a Taiwan crisis would not necessarily begin with amphibious landings or missile strikes. It could begin with pressure: inspection zones, cyberattacks, port disruption, gray-zone naval operations, airspace intimidation, or partial maritime restrictions. The objective would not necessarily be immediate conquest, but psychological exhaustion and economic destabilization.

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How do we learn to remember? At the most fundamental level, it’s all about chemicals and electricity. Beyond their roles in diet and nutrition, calcium and magnesium work as ions, or charged particles, in the brain. Magnesium can block a channel found within brain receptors known as NMDARs. When the blockade lifts, calcium can pass through the channel. These processes enable the brain to perform essential functions, like learning and remembering.

Scientists have known all of this for a while. What they couldn’t figure out was how NMDARs tell calcium from magnesium. Now, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Professor Hiro Furukawa, postdoc Rubin Steigerwald, and colleagues have found an answer that could have implications for brain development and disease. It involves water, dehydration, and a molecular cage captured across 50,000 movies.

WIRED.

For more than 80 years, the principle of “the surface of an object must be smooth” has been the basic premise of aeronautical engineering throughout the world in order to suppress the transition to turbulence and reduce aerodynamic drag. This premise was based on the results of a 1940 study by Ichiro Tani, a Japanese aerodynamicist who quantitatively demonstrated the relationship between “surface roughness” (an indicator of the state of the machined surface) and turbulent transition, arguing that surface roughness, which was unavoidable with the manufacturing technology of the time, prevented laminar flow from being realized.

However, in 1989 Tani reinterpreted the experimental data on rough-surface pipes obtained by fluid engineer Johann Nikulase in the 1930s, bringing a new perspective that “roughness may not necessarily only promote turbulent transition and increase fluid resistance.” Inheriting this idea, a research group led by Yasuaki Kohama of Tohoku University experimentally demonstrated in the 1990s that fibrous rough surfaces, which have fine fibrous irregularities on their surface, have the effect of delaying transition under certain conditions.

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Virginians were promised affordability. Instead, they’re getting an energy agenda that risks making electricity more expensive and less reliable.

Gov. Abigail Spanberger has consistently sided with the climate-policy wing of her party even when its proposals threaten higher energy costs for consumers.

One such proposal is rejoining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). In 2023, Virginia withdrew from RGGI, the regional cap-and-trade scheme that imposes a carbon tax in 11 states. As one of her first acts as governor, Spanberger signed legislation to rejoin RGGI, forcing the commonwealth back into the costly compact.

But Pennsylvania provides an interesting case study for Virginians to consider. After six years of legal battles and lost investment, the Keystone State abandoned RGGI—and the commonwealth had a lot of good reasons to do so.

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This is called a normal holiday weekend in Chicago.

Time to leave.

Babylon Bee.

Parents of high school graduate David Simpson helped their son sound out the words on his diploma after the teen expressed frustration at not being able to read the words on the piece of paper.

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The owner of a heavily decorated pro-Trump home in Southern California has died days after he was beaten outside his residence, according to reports.

Kerry Sheron, a 69-year-old Army veteran known in Escondido for covering his home with pro-Trump banners and American flags, died Sunday night after spending nearly a week in critical condition following the May 20 attack, FOX 5 reported.

Authorities say Thomas Caleb Butler, 32, allegedly attacked Sheron outside the home in what prosecutors described as an unprovoked assault.

Butler has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder, elder abuse, criminal threats, and battery charges.

Deputy District Attorney Ross Garcia told the court Sheron suffered devastating injuries after being punched to the ground and repeatedly struck in the head.

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Iranian leader Mojtaba Khamenei issued a message on May 26 calling for greater unity across the Muslim world against the United States and Israel, saying that the chants “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” will become the rallying slogans of Muslims and “the oppressed of the world.”

It’s already a common slogan—among Muslims.

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They keep doing it because the consequences are not harsh enough yet, and they enjoy the protection of Democrat politicians and NGO-backed funding. Without support from the Democrat Party and global non-profits, the Anti-ICE movement would not exist. In other words, they’re astroturf.

Of course, that doesn’t stop them from causing all kinds of trouble. Federal agents moved within the past 48 hours to break down a make-shift “autonomous zone” built by leftist activists around the New Jersey Delaney Hall ICE facility in Newark.

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Apparently some minorities are more equal that others.

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Conservatives have every right to feel betrayed by the Republican Congress’ recent antics.

Free marketeers, from the U.S. House to homes across America, were told in April to accept Senate Republican Leader John Thune’s emaciated Reconciliation 2.0 bill. The South Dakotan employed a limited-use budget procedure that obviates that pesky 60-vote filibuster threshold and permits passage via simple majority.

These special bills typically deliver the sponsoring party’s leading initiatives. This is how President Donald Trump and Republicans enacted the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” in 2025 and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017. Reconciliation was the needle through which former President Barack Obama and Democrats injected the poison of Obamacare into America’s body politic in 2010.

The dangerously cautious Thune had no such ambitions. Rather than a freight train, Reconciliation 2.0 was a rusty caboose. It funded little more than Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol salaries.

Conservatives, eager for a bill packed with Trump/MAGA reforms, were suspicious. “I don’t think Border Patrol and ICE should be isolated,” warned Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, the House Freedom Caucus’s policy chairman. “House Republicans are concerned about giving up their best tool to pressure the Senate to pass legislation dealing with affordability ahead of the November elections,” the Washington Examiner reported.

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A new self-driving bus service in the Swedish city of Gothenburg got off to a rough start this week when one of its vehicles was hit by a tram on its second passenger-carrying trip. The autonomous bus, running on route 169 between Gothenburg Central Station and Liseberg, opened to passengers on May 25. It was struck from behind shortly after setting off on its second run, resulting in damage to both vehicles and the bus enduring the ignominy of being towed away. According to reports, the bus braked and was rear-ended by the tram. A spokesperson for Västtrafik, the bus operator, told The Register: “A small number of passengers were on board. No one was seriously injured, and that is the most important outcome. Both the bus and the tram sustained minor damage.” The autonomous bus project began in 2024, and trials were scheduled to conclude by 2027 [PDF]. At present, a driver is still required, although the controls are not touched during normal operation. However, someone else driving into it is a whole different challenge. On the rear of the Karsan bus was the warning “Keep your distance! The bus can brake sharply!” but that did not appear to deter the tram. As a rule of thumb, trams tend to have the right of way since they cannot swerve around a suddenly slowing vehicle.

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Time to leave.

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ATQUE: Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hegseth visit grave of fallen soldier after his widow asked the internet if someone could stop by

UPDATE: DNC Pulls Memorial Day Post After Rebuke From Party Combat Veterans

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This was a field trip for a group of children aged six to eight in the Beaver Scouts, part of the Scout Movement in the United Kingdom. While screenshots of the photo have been modified, the clip appears to be authentic; even local Islamic Facebook groups do not deny it happened.

The Scout leader took them for an educational visit to the Central Scotland Islamic Centre in Stirling, Scotland, a Muslim mosque founded in 1982. Muslims are compelled to pray five times a day toward their holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, bowing to show submission (the meaning of the words “Islam” and “Muslim”) to their god Allah.

In order to earn their “Faith Activity Badge,” the young Scouts were then encouraged to follow this religious observance in prostrating themselves before the Muslim god.

One young man refused. Completely. Definitively. Courageously.

The Causal Fallacy.

I am contractually obligated as a discourse participator to acknowledge the launch of yet another discourse participating Substack. The Argument is an Abundance liberal absolutely definitely not Abundance liberal publication, led by Jerusalem Demsas (ex-The Atlantic) and staffed by a variety of people who absolutely do not have a certain ideological movement in common.1

The opening substantive post, from staff writer Kelsey Piper (whose departure from Vox means I no longer have someone to identify as the reasonable person at Vox), concerns the recent, consistent failure of guaranteed income pilots to produce any non-pecuniary benefits for their treated participants. This finding is, as Piper puts it, “shocking”.

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A fatal fiscal dynamic has become entrenched across the European Union. In nearly every member state, public spending is accelerating at all levels — from municipalities and social insurance systems all the way up to the European Commission — while the private economy at best stagnates and its industrial core sectors visibly erode.

This dangerous economic imbalance, in which a shrinking private sector is forced to finance a continuously expanding state apparatus, is already producing fiscal consequences visible in the bond markets. Interest rates have been rising steadily for years, making debt servicing increasingly expensive, while the financing needs of public budgets continue to grow under the ruling ideology of an all-encompassing state. This widening fiscal gap is fueling political appetites for higher taxation — a destructive race among parties to squeeze taxpayers at every level has begun.

And naturally, when it comes to fleecing European taxpayers, the European Commission cannot be absent. Brussels is currently preparing its seven-year budget framework, set to exceed €2 trillion beginning in 2028.

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People are beginning to understand that those who rule in their name have long been working to eliminate the nation-state.

The United Nations is not neutral ground for national governments to discuss their differences; it is a governmental construct meant to replace national governments. The World Health Organization is not an international body meant to coordinate complex responses to global health emergencies; it is an institution vested with vast power and authority to track and regulate every human on the planet. The Bank for International Settlements, the World Bank Group, and the International Monetary Fund don’t exist to expand free trade, open markets, and assist developing nations; they exist to centralize control over all economic transactions in the world.

The onslaught of “green new deal” laws in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Australia, and New Zealand have nothing to do with preserving the environment or “saving the planet”; they are part of a broader U.N. initiative to track every person’s so-called “carbon footprint” in order to monitor, tax, and regulate all human activity. The U.N.’s “climate reparations” policy has nothing to do with “justice” or “science”; it exists to justify the redistribution of wealth from Western nations to non-Western nations under the guise of “international law.”

The message we have heard all our lives is loud and clear: Nations do bad things. International organizations do good things.

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The arrest of a 22-year-old man in Italy suggests Europe’s terror threat extends well beyond that posed by Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Police in Reggio Emilia and Bologna on Monday arrested an Italian man of Moroccan origins, who judicial sources told reporters is accused of recruiting for the purpose of terrorism, including international terrorism.

Investigators discovered that the man had alleged motives to attack people with a knife. He had been in contact with a man believed to be a supporter of the ISIS Islamic terror group, who had offered training and funding.

The man is now in police custody in jail. Prosecutors have, however, ruled out a terror motive.

So he’s not an ‘Italian man’ after all, but a ‘Moroccan man’ who happens to be in Italy.

Police ‘have ruled out a terror motive’ although the reason he was arrested was he was thought to be recruiting for terrorism. There’s what wrong with Europe, right there.

Naval News.

The “Basic Plan for the Development of the Republic of Korea Nuclear-Powered Submarine” is the first document to present, both domestically and internationally, the direction for the Republic of Korea to systematically develop a nuclear-powered submarine. Its main contents are as follows.

Nuclear-powered submarines possess dramatically enhanced operational capabilities compared to existing diesel-powered submarines, including long-duration submerged endurance and high mobility. They will therefore play a key role in responding to North Korea’s submarine-based nuclear and missile threats.

The development of nuclear-powered submarines is not merely a warship construction project, but a national strategic project that requires the concentration of national capabilities based on the Republic of Korea’s technologies in the nuclear and shipbuilding sectors.

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U.S. forces carried out attacks on multiple Iranian targets along the Persian Gulf Monday night, in what U.S. Central Command called “self-defense strikes.”

“U.S. forces conducted self-defense strikes in southern Iran today to protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces,” CENTCOM spokesperson Capt. Tim Hawkins said in a statement. “Targets included missile launch sites and Iranian boats attempting to emplace mines. U.S. Central Command continues to defend our forces while using restraint during the ongoing ceasefire.”

Monday evening Iranian media reported several explosions at Bandar Abbas and in nearby areas. The city, located on the Persian Gulf, is one Iran’s main ports.

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Residents in a north Seattle neighborhood have begun building homemade barricades across residential streets after repeated shootings and ongoing crime concerns left many fearing for their safety.

Neighbors living near Aurora Avenue say gun violence, prostitution activity, and late-night disturbances have intensified in recent months, according to reporting from the New York Post.

After another shooting early Saturday, residents blocked roads using piles of dirt, concrete, gravel, and metal barriers in an attempt to reduce vehicle traffic entering nearby residential blocks.

Videos shared online showed streets partially closed with large makeshift barricades lined with reflective tape and warning markers.

Seattle police said officers responding to reports of gunfire around 4 a.m. Saturday near Aurora Avenue North and North 98th Street recovered roughly 40 shell casings from the roadway.

Bullets struck at least one vehicle and nearby buildings. Residents said stray gunfire has repeatedly damaged cars and homes.

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The Congressional Black Caucus, aligned with the NAACP, is urging black college athletes to avoid Southeastern Conference schools in Southern states as a form of economic pressure against Republican-drawn redistricting maps that eliminate majority-black congressional districts. The campaign is called “Out of Bounds,” and is essentially asking young black athletes to forfeit their best shot at a professional sports career so Democratic lawmakers can make a political statement about redistricting.

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A new TD Economics report warns Canada is quietly losing highly skilled workers, entrepreneurs and STEM graduates to the United States through work visas, tech recruitment and stronger economic opportunities.

BNN Bloomberg spoke with Francis Fong, managing director at TD Economics, about how Canada’s tax structure, productivity challenges and lack of business scale are contributing to the country’s ongoing talent retention problem.

In return, Canada can have as ,many Blue state celebrities as they can stomach. I suggest Barbra Streisand to start.

Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

When Maureen Galindo finished first in a crowded Democratic primary for a newly redrawn South Texas congressional district in March, the result surprised even seasoned observers of San Antonio politics.

With voters set to decide the Democratic nomination Tuesday, as Galindo faces off with sheriff’s deputy Johnny Garcia, local officials and political observers are grappling with how a little-known candidate with a history of inflammatory remarks about Israel and Jews has come within striking distance of a seat in Congress.

The local housing activist went into the race with little political profile, having received less than 3% of the vote in a San Antonio City Council race last year. Local officials familiar with the contest chalked up Galindo’s success to a litany of factors, including low voter awareness of the candidates and a newly drawn Republican-leaning district that attracted few high-profile Democratic contenders.

What they did not credit for her success was her antisemitic rhetoric. While the race heading into Tuesday night’s runoff has been defined by scrutiny and criticism of Galindo’s views toward Zionists, local political analysts and activists told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that her controversial positions were not widely known ahead of her March win and, if anything, are hurting her chances against Garcia.

The Other McCain.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), formerly known as Zaire, and before that, the Belgian Congo, is one of those Third World nightmare hellholes that I describe as being “worse than Baltimore.” However, since a new federal prosecutor has brought Baltimore’s homicide problem under control, I’ll describe the DRC as worse than Memphis.

Joseph Conrad famously used the Belgian Congo as the scene for Heart of Darkness, with the madman Kurtz dying of fever, his final words being: “The horror! The horror!” The situation has not much improved lately, as the State Department warns: “Do not travel to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) due to crime, civil unrest, and health. Some areas have increased risk due to armed conflict.”

Welcome to the Turd World. Be careful not to step in the Diversity.

Times of India.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has recently criticised New York City’s public school spending and Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s economic policies. The tech billionaire argued that increased funding alone does not solve the underlying issues. During an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Bezos compared the city’s education system with Amazon’s operations, saying inefficiencies in public administration would not be tolerated in business.

Your tax dollars at work … and play.

“If we ran Amazon the way New York City runs their school system, your packages would take six weeks to arrive. We’d have to charge you a $100 delivery fee. And then when the package did finally arrive, it’d have the wrong item in it anyway,” Bezos told CNBC.

Sounds like Democrats me….

The comments were directed at New York City’s education spending, which Bezos said amounts to around $44,000 per student annually despite declining enrollment and low academic outcomes. He argued that increased spending is being absorbed by administrative structures rather than reaching teachers.

“None of this money is getting to the teachers, I promise you. If you’re charging $44,000 per student, how much of that money do you think is trickling down to teachers? Not much,” Bezos added.

Plundering and blundering….

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I suspect that one could make a long list of things that trigger things “even worse for the planet” that “scientists” did not predict.

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Millions of Americans have altered vision, ranging from blurriness to blindness. But not everyone wants to wear prescription glasses or contact lenses. Accordingly, hundreds of thousands of people undergo corrective eye surgery each year, including LASIK—a laser-assisted surgery that reshapes the cornea and corrects vision.

The procedure can result in negative side effects, prompting researchers to take the laser out of LASIK by remodeling the cornea, rather than cutting it, in initial animal tissue tests.

Michael Hill, a professor of chemistry at Occidental College, presented his team’s results at the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS Fall 2025) held Aug. 17–21.

Human corneas are dome-shaped, clear structures that sit at the front of the eye, bending light from surroundings and focusing it onto the retina, where it’s sent to the brain and interpreted as an image. But if the cornea is misshapen, it doesn’t focus light properly, resulting in a blurry image. With LASIK, specialized lasers reshape the cornea by removing precise sections of the tissue.

Lifehacker.

Jeff Somers, in addition to being a very handy fellow, is also a distinguished science fiction author. Highly recommended.

Quanta.

Since their discovery in 1982, exotic materials known as quasicrystals have bedeviled physicists and chemists. Their atoms arrange themselves into chains of pentagons, decagons and other shapes to form patterns that never quite repeat. These patterns seem to defy physical laws and intuition. How can atoms possibly “know” how to form elaborate nonrepeating arrangements without an advanced understanding of mathematics?

“Quasicrystals are one of those things that as a materials scientist, when you first learn about them, you’re like, ‘That’s crazy,’” said Wenhao Sun (opens a new tab), a materials scientist at the University of Michigan.

Recently, though, a spate of results has peeled back some of their secrets. In one study (opens a new tab), Sun and collaborators adapted a method for studying crystals to determine that at least some quasicrystals are thermodynamically stable — their atoms won’t settle into a lower-energy arrangement. This finding helps explain how and why quasicrystals form. A second study (opens a new tab) has yielded a new way to engineer quasicrystals and observe them in the process of forming. And a third research group has logged (opens a new tab) previously unknown properties of these unusual materials.