Congratulations to Kansas for holding on to a good thing. I wish we had this system in North Carolina.
Kansas voters reject constitutional amendment on judicial selection by wide margin • Kansas Reflector
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A Blistering Critique of the Roberts Court, From Hawaii’s Supreme Court
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/a-blistering-critique-of-the-roberts-supreme-court-hawaii
Good article, worth bookmarking (which I’m doing by blogging it).
«The Bulwark is home to Sarah Longwell, Tim Miller, Bill Kristol, JVL, Sam Stein, Catherine Rampell and more. We are the largest pro-democracy bundle on Substack for news and analysis on politics and culture—supported by a community built on good faith.»
Bill Kristol was and probably continues to be a big fan of Ronald Reagan and the Bushes. Dubya appointed John Roberts to the Supreme Court. Still waiting for Kristol’s mea culpa.
Some conservative figures have indeed issued mea culpas.
Not enough.
The Struggling Colleges Raiding Their Endowments to Pay the Bills – WSJ
«The percentage of private, nonprofit colleges drawing down endowments at greater than 7%—considered a sign of financial instability—nearly doubled to 19.3% in 2025 from 9.7% in 2016, according to Perspective Data Science, which analyzed nearly 1,000 institutions. The percentage of schools drawing down endowments at 15% tripled to 5%.
“A lot of schools are doing whatever they can to keep the lights on,” said Hendricks.
College and university enrollments are hitting the so-called demographic cliff, a falloff in the population of potential students caused by lower birthrates. The largest number of Americans born in a single year started college this past fall. Now, enrollments are projected to fall 13% by 2041, according to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. In the Midwest and northeast the decline has been ongoing for several years.»
(Pretty sure I’ve posted about this before, a couple of years ago. Small Midwestern colleges winking out, one by one.)
David French, you dumbass
Not even linking to his editorial on the both-sides newspaper.
Yo, dude. This from the guy who just can’t bring himself to vote for a Democrat under any circumstances?
Sam Altman Announces That the Singularity Has Arrived
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/sam-altman-announces-singularity
«Definitions vary, but the singularity is generally defined as the moment that the capabilities of thinking machines might start to accelerate [blah blah blah]
Hey, Futurism: No. That’s not the singularity. That’s the definition Altman would prefer you operate with.
The singularity is when the slope of the curve of general technological advancement, which is (supposedly) becoming steeper and steeper, becomes infinite, like when you plot the function 1/x.
When that happens (supposedly), there will be no time to generate a web post and an eye-catching headline.
It’ll be like the Rapture, actually. If you’re still around, you missed it; you got Left Behind.
Actually, I just realized something: the Singularity is the Rapture for tech-bros.
AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents to Train Models, and Then Destroying Them at Incredible Scale | Futurism
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-companies-destroying-rare-books
«“The optics problem is real,” ISBNdb’s site says. “‘AI company destroys two million books’ is not a headline that generates sympathy.”»
No, it does not.
Poll: These Americans say they’d be disenfranchised by Trump’s election law
https://www.gelliottmorris.com/p/2026-07-24-save-act-proof-of-citizenship-july-poll
«This would not be the first time in the last year when voters turned against something they thought they wanted. That is, in several ways, the story of Donald Trump’s presidency so far.»
😆
Man Who Killed Dem Lawmaker and Her Husband Sentenced to Two Life Terms Plus 40 Years – MeidasTouch
Will A.I. take your job? Mine? Everyone’s?
https://www.slowboring.com/p/will-ai-take-your-job-mine-everyones
«lots of people are mediocre and half of them are below average.»
Median, Matt.
Yes, I’m being cranky, but c’mon. I’m pretty sure exactly zero of your readers are idiots.
Can we just normalize use of the median? Change starts where you are, right?
Opinion | This Is How America Trounces China in the A.I. Race – The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/23/opinion/china-ai-open-weight-us.html
«Two U.S. congressional committees have opened investigations into Airbnb and Cursor’s parent company….»
“Cursor’s parent company.” Nice, NYT. Why not just say who’s Cursor’s parent company?
It’s SpaceX.
That would have been a one-word insertion. Are you assuming your readers (who have to pay for a subscription) are idiots, and that we wouldn’t know? Or are you assuming that of course we all know? Why not just put the one word that’s the name of the parent company in the story? Or did an editor take it out?
Here, Read This 