UNLESS OUR TEACHING INSTITUTIONS HAVE BEEN TAKEN OVER BY AN ENEMY FORCE, LIKE, SAY, MARXISM: The Humanities and Social Sciences Should Teach Civilization, Not Contempt.
August 24, 2026
WHAT HE SAID: Wishing I stayed under the rock.
WE’LL NEVER NEED TO REPLACE EVERYTHING… BUT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT WE’LL NEED TO: American Heirloom Project: How would you rebuild it all?
OVERALL, WHATEVER PUSHES PEOPLE AWAY FROM DEPENDENCY ON THE STATE IS GOOD: Trump’s bill prompts steep SNAP enrollment decline — including over 50% in one state.
FROM THE OUTSIDE, THIS LOOKS RIGHT: I AI Code All Day. I Hate Talking About It. Five conversation failure modes, none of which involve a shipped feature.
THE WHOLE ANTI-DATA CENTER THING IS A PSY OPS BY PEOPLE WHO DON’T MEAN US WELL: I Made a Website to Monitor Data Center Effects on Electricity Prices.
THE ATTACKS ON OUR MONUMENTS ARE ATTACKS OF PEOPLE WHO HATE THEMSELVES AND ARE TOO COWARDLY TO ADMIT IT: Asking WHY…
NOT ANYWAY TIRED OF WINNING: Another Brick in the Wall.
August 23, 2026
OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.
IT’S NOT YOUR DAD’S COLLEGE FOOTBALL ANYMORE: Agents: Dae’Quan Wright to be waived by Browns, set to join LSU.
The Cleveland Browns are waiving tight end Dae’Quan Wright, who has an agreement in place for the 2026 season to play for LSU if he clears waivers, agents Drew Rosenhaus and Kyle Lincoln told ESPN’s Adam Schefter on Sunday.
Wright is believed to be the first player to have an agreement to return to play in college after signing with an NFL team as an undrafted free agent. He signed with the Philadelphia Eagles after the draft and then was claimed on waivers by the Browns on Aug. 11.
He didn’t appear in either of Cleveland’s first two preseason games. Wright hasn’t practiced in more than a week, but he dressed for the Browns’ second preseason game against the Buffalo Bills on Saturday. Browns coach Todd Monken said Wright has been sidelined by an injury.
On Wednesday, Wright officially entered the transfer portal after he and a group of athletes who filed a lawsuit in Louisiana were granted a temporary restraining order to return to college for one more season.
Who knows where this could lead?
The college sports I grew up on: “Somebody gave this kid a quarter to play Galaga? He’s banned for life and you can play in a bowl game again in 2063.”
College sports today: “We’d prefer that no multi-time All-Pros come back to school. But, you know, whatever, you do you.”
— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) August 23, 2026
JONATHAN TURLEY: Assassination Sing-a-Long: Hasan Piker Mocks the Murdered Charlie Kirk to Cheering Crowd.
We have seen protesters on the left around the country mocking the assassination of Charlie Kirk, even reenacting his murder. Hate traffickers like Jennifer Welch have even justified his assassination. It is all shocking and depressing, but none reached the level of Hasan Piker leading a huge crowd in mocking Kirk and his faith. Before he was murdered, Kirk debated Piker and called him a “socialist hypocrite.” What is shocking is not the utter depravity and cruelty of Piker, but the ecstasy of the crowd in relishing the death of someone with opposing views. It is part of the conditioning in what I have previously called an “age of rage.”
In the video, Piker leads the crowd in the meme song “We Are Charlie Kirk” at a stop of his “Fear& LIVE” tour, including such lines as “We are Charlie Kirk, we carry the flame. We’ll fight for the Gospel, we’ll honor his name.” His co-hosts and the crowd seem to be laughing with joy.
Joining him at this hatefest at the Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco on August 21 were reportedly Will Neff, QTCinderella, and AustinShow.
Hasan is wearing his now-signature Mao jacket as the young crowd and his co-hosts laugh hysterically. It is the very essence of this movement to desensitize people, particularly young people, to violence and hate.
* * * * * * * * *
Civility, and even humanity, become signs of weakness in these times. They gravitate to figures like Abdul El-Sayed who has campaigned with Piker and promises to “choke out” Republicans and refers to moderates like Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman (D) as ogres to have their heads cut off and put on pikes.
The American left has found their berserkers, the old Norse warriors who were known to fight in a virtual violent trance. The new berserkers offer the chance to hate completely and without remorse or reflection. Over time, supporters are conditioned to disregard even the murder of those with opposing views. As shown in San Francisco, assassination becomes nothing more than a sing-a-long in an age of rage.
But no clipart is involved, so this is all merely harmless fun and games to the media.
REAL RUSSIAGATE HAS NEVER BEEN TRIED:
Schmidt’s argument relies on his refusal to acknowledge a mountain of evidence refuting all his points while stringing together conspiracy theories, debunked allegations, and clinically paranoid speculation. Schmidt inadvertently captures the delusional mindset of collusion conspiracists in a quote he got from FBI official Andrew McCabe, the instigator of the Oxferd Comma counterintelligence investigation, who described what the probe was meant to discover: “Could the president actually be the point of coordination between the campaign and the Russian government?”
Granted, Comey didn’t sound much more sane when he blurted out, “I don’t know whether the current president of the United States was with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow in 2013. It’s possible, but I don’t know.”
Despite the nearly year-long Crossfire Hurricane investigation, the nearly two-year-long Mueller probe, and every major media outlet in America spending almost three years chasing down every preposterous collusion allegation, there’s still no evidence of collusion. Yet according to Schmidt, there is nothing wrong with the Russia collusion narrative at all—it just hasn’t been proven yet.
At this point, Michael Schmidt is a Japanese soldier hiding in the Philippine jungle in 1970, refusing to acknowledge the war was lost. He is a guy standing next to Geraldo as he opens Al Capone’s empty vault, insisting it’s full of invisible treasure. He is an organizer of the Fyre Festival raving about the great concert as malnourished, dehydrated, disheveled concertgoers are being evacuated. He is Kevin Bacon in Animal House, screaming “all is well” as the town descends into chaos around him.
At least that’s what I was told by three officials familiar with the matter.
Heh, indeed. At this point, the DNC-MSM is coming full circle in its TDS:
It was always highly conspicuous that the entire anti-Trump hoax industry began with something as unconventional as claiming he was a Russian agent. It was almost as if Democrats had concluded that the tried and tested sex scandal route was useless against Trump.
To be fair,… https://t.co/wRlaaVQGWC
— Hans Mahncke (@HansMahncke) August 23, 2026
MY NEW SUNDAY SCIENCE COLUMN (VIP): Sunday Supplement: Big Badda-Boom.
DISAPPOINTING: Lamborghini Says It Has No Plans for a Manual Transmission.
HOW IT STARTED: New England Journal of Medicine Opinion Editor Takes Credit for Ruining Its Reputation.
The New England Journal of Medicine still publishes objective scientific articles. But in the last decade-plus, it is just as notable for its hard left political opinion pieces about issues ranging from climate change, to race relations, to promoting “equity” (as distinguished from equality), to gun control, to supporting transitioning gender-dysphoric minors, and more.
Debra Malina, Ph.D., the first and so far, only “Perspectives” editor — an opinion section where most of the woke political screeds published by the NEJM are placed — is retiring. She has written a swan song piece taking credit for bringing blatant politics to the pages of the NEJM.
* * * * * * * *
With Malina heading into retirement, the editors of the NEJM can restore the publication’s reputation as a sober and focused source of important medical information rather than one with “soul.” First, the next Perspectives editor should not be an English major or a progressive ideologue. More to the point, I would hope the editors of the NEJM will keep it completely out of politics, or at least public policy controversies that do not have a clear medical or public health nexus. That may not be as much fun as attacking Trump policies, but it is certainly more in keeping with the important public role of a respected medical journal.
Let’s just say that NEJM isn’t rushing to change the current tone of the publication:
Woke never ended.
The New England Journal of Medicine just published an insane thinkpiece that starts with a neurotic hallucination and then alleges Jason Arday did no wrong and that he was killed.
It's no surprise people don't trust our institutions anymore. pic.twitter.com/FkGhEutsfw
— Crémieux (@cremieuxrecueil) August 22, 2026
Insane editorial.
The author explicitly argues that if you’re *ideologically correct* you should be professionally unaccountable:
‘I want to be clear that I don’t care whether or not any of these allegations against Prof. Arday were true. None of them were worth his career.’… https://t.co/75xToUTEh1
— Coddled Affluent Professional (@feelsdesperate) August 23, 2026
Tweet concludes:
If this is the standard that academia employs, no one should ever trust academia again on any matter of importance.
And thus, it’s time: Nuke Academia From Orbit. It Is the Only Way to Be Sure.
MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING DURING THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE:
The conventional explanation for Rome’s demographic collapse is wealth. People got comfortable. They stopped having children. It happens to every prosperous civilization. Nothing to be done.
This is wrong. Or rather, it is incomplete in the way that matters most.
Rome didn’t… https://t.co/i77beu6Czm pic.twitter.com/yEG9KNaD5s
— Krzysztof Szczawinski 🇵🇱 (@Kristof_Poland) August 23, 2026
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Reader John Steakley writes:
Whether it was Rome in 46 B.C. or the USSR two millennia later, the test of a society all comes back to . . . bread.
I propose the socioeconomic metric “Law of Bread:”
“Bread waits for winners, and losers wait for bread.”
GET ENOUGH MAGNESIUM: BIOptimizers Magnesium Breakthrough Supplement with 500mg. #CommissionEarned
EMBRACE THE HEALING QUALITY OF “AND ALL OF THE ABOVE:”
2/ What are the possible motivations? To get accolades from the Left? To publicly display his hatred of Trump? To get Trump killed? Thing is, even if not the latter, the ONLY way the first to motives are achieved is if you give 86 natural meaning of "to off."
— Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) August 23, 2026
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why Can’t Even the Most Insufferably Annoying Brits Hire Their Own Armed Security?
WHEN REALITY BITES SEN. CHRIS MURPHY: The Connecticut Democrat tweets that 52 immigrants have died in ICE detention facilities and …. you can probably fill out the rest of his demagoguery. Why do I say demagoguery? Check it out here.
COMPARISON:
Report: More people have died from heat in France this summer than all US mass shootings in history https://t.co/Uvc1xjVTfr
— Not the Bee (@Not_the_Bee) August 23, 2026