The Nobel Institute is investigating whether the winner of this year’s peace prize was leaked. Hours before the institute announced María Corina Machado, a Venezuelan opposition leader, her odds of winning surged on Polymarket, a betting site, from around 4% to 74%. Ms Machado is a vocal critic of Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, and lives in hiding in the country.
Economist World in Brief
Wonderful new podcast from the Free Press: Old School, with Shiloh Brooks. First episode is Brooks (who I didn’t know before) interviewing Adm. James Stavridis about Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea, a book that sits among the Admiral’s First Editions of Hemingway.
In a totalitarian system, you couldn’t publish something like this, but we are merely authoritarian, so we can.
Finished Glen Scrivener, The Air We Breathe: How We All Came to Believe in Freedom, Kindness, Progress, and Equality. 📚
Began reading Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking. 📚 Embarrassed to have never read her before, considering what a master writer she’s reputed to be.
On news that President Donald Trump is considering a pardon for Epstein-associate Ghislaine Maxwell, right-wing activist Laura Loomer took to X, warning him “Do not do it. There will be no coming back from that.” Words we never expected to write: We agree with Laura Loomer.
The CBS newsroom is freaking out after David Ellison paid $150,000,000 for the Free Press and put Bari Weiss over the CBS news operation:
as Christopher Hitchens said in a different context, “It’s not just the principles. It’s the money of the thing.”
Hitchens’ quip is great.
O frabjous day! Purdue men’s basketball is ranked the favorite for the national championship! Fun season coming up! Boiler up! (Must renew Peacock to see them all.)
Dodged a bullet. I got three jabs on one arm yesterday
The Shingrix stung, but I’m not feeling sick. OTOH, I woke up before 4 am for some reason.
Need it be said that I’m not a vaccine skeptic? I remember, faintly, polio (one classmte used crutches).
The DA’s office is happy for its attorneys to serve on juries (with the tacit understanding that they will always vote to convict).
No wonder people become deeply cynical.
I think someone else I follow has noted this, but I sense that this Ross Douthat column is important. Yet I can neither summarize it nor pull a single quote that reflects it.
So I’ll just give y’all a gift link.
I was out of commission most of yesterday with a Church Fall Festival.
I am very glad there are people who can organize things like that. I’m not “that guy.”
Dig in obituaries long enough and you may hit pay-dirt. Ashleigh Brilliant, Prolific ‘Pot-Shots’ Phrasemaker, Dies at 91. (Gift link)
Reading Glen Scrivener, The Air We Breathe: How We All Came to Believe in Freedom, Kindness, Progress, and Equality. 📚I just didn’t want to start anything heavy.
I should have kept up better on my iPhone capabilities. Retiring my Apple Watch force a second look and I was delighted to discover that I can set “Do Not Disturb” automatically when I’m at Church or my two commonest concert venues. (Settings –> Focus –> Do Not Disturb)
At my advanced age, I’ve ceased trying to understand how everything works on the internet. But Peggy Noonan’s column in the Wall Street Journal gave me an “Aha!” moment: MB is sane and decent and pleasant because there are no algorithms feeding our biases.
Thanks, @manton, for your wise choice.
Can your news source slip it in and twist it?
After three close second-place finishes, Chunk—a 1,200-pound brown bear with a broken jaw—has won this year’s Fat Bear Week contest. The Alaska resident is now considered a front-runner to primary Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
I will be reading Caleb Nelson’s Originalist Critique of Unitary Executive Theory - Reason.com very carefully.
After almost 3.5 years, my Apple Watch battery is unable to keep the watch running all day. It might still be useful for monitoring exercise, but I went back to my Citizen Eco-Drive.
Huzzah! No more distracting haptics every time I start something requiring concentration.
I never imagined that I would recommend that someone listen to an accordion player. But the YouTube channel Sergei Teleshev Accordion is astonishing. I’ve never (that I can recall) seen accordions like that or heard them making serious, even thrilling, music. (The daughter is 16, by the way.)
I’m pleased to report that the [Trump-Hegseth-Generals] assembly was somewhat more cringy than it was menacing, a case of two men who radiate neurosis about their own toughness lecturing a roomful of actual tough guys about how to be tough.
Nick Catoggio, Patton for Dummies
A blogger-debunker I’ve been reading is starting in on debunking a narrative of Charlie Kirk’s murder, relying on ballistics analysis.
I barely had a glimmer who Kirk was until September 10. I’m not going down this rabbit-hole now. No way. Nuh-huh. Nope.
