GLOBAL DEBT: Business Insider reports that the IMF believes world-wide debt is $152 trillion. This is “…the highest gross debt ever recorded. The debt-to-GDP ratio is also at an all-time high of 225%, up from 200% 14 years ago.”

This is non-financial public and private sector debt combined.

Here is Zero Hedge’s take on the report.

No one really knows the real global debt total, other than “it’s really big.” I gave a speech a year ago to a professional group that briefly discussed some of the total debt estimates (I emphasize briefly). In September 2015 total US federal debt was a little less than $20 trillion. Estimates for total US debt (including state, local government and private debt) ranged from $55 trillion to $60 trillion, with the higher figure given credence. Every source agreed total global debt exceeded $200 trillion. $230 trillion was a common estimate. This Bloomberg report says global debt went over $200 trillion in 2014. A Wall Street Journal article I read last year said the world exceeded $200 trillion in 2013. A trillion here, a trillion there. This LA Times analysis (July 2016) has some more recent debt figures.

SEX WITH ROBOTS: When Will It Happen? Nobody tell notorious robophobe Matthew Yglesias.

Of course, if vibrators count as sex robots, lots of people (mostly women) are having sex with robots now.

WELL, GOOD: Zika Vaccine Could Actually be Profitable, Companies Say.

The race to find protection against the Zika virus is fueled by something often missing from tropical disease research: the potential for big profit.

The prospect of a blockbuster vaccine against a mosquito-borne virus has accelerated the pace of development and attracted the interest of big drugmakers, including Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Takeda Pharmaceuticals.

Although Zika infections are mild or asymptomatic in most people, demand for a vaccine is expected to be strong because it can cause devastating birth defects, pharmaceutical executives and disease experts said.

The most lucrative market is seen in travelers seeking inoculation against the virus that has moved rapidly across the Americas and is the only mosquito-borne disease also spread through sex.

“It scares people,” said Scott Weaver, a virologist with the University of Texas and chairman of the Zika task force for the Global Virus Network. “Europeans and Americans can pay a pretty high price for these kinds of vaccines.”

A vaccine could come to market in as little as two years. Even if the current outbreaks in Latin America and the Caribbean burn out by that time, people living in those regions are expected to want protection against a return of Zika.

Tens of millions of travelers from United States and other wealthy nations, including people on business trips with corporate-sponsored health coverage, are expected to get vaccines before visiting areas where Zika is circulating.

Faster, please.

JOHN SCHINDLER: Has the Russian Mole Inside NSA Finally Been Arrested? The FBI has a yet another defense contractor in custody on espionage charges—what did he really do?

A 3D-PRINTED ELECTRIC CITY CAR. “The car will have a 9.6-kilowatt-hour battery, and will have a top speed of about 35 miles per hour. A prototype of the vehicle cost about $12,000 to build, and Chladek is testing it on the streets of Prague. And given the car’s unusual appearance – it’s a two-toned vehicle topped by a glass bubble thing – he’s probably gotten plenty of interesting looks.”

I SUPPOSE THIS WAS INEVITABLE, ALL OF IT: ‘Panty Peeler’ Beer Under Fire for Promoting ‘Rape Culture’

WHY DON’T WE PASS THE TIME BY PLAYING A LITTLE SOLITAIRE? C-SPAN Caller Who Claims to Know Tim Kaine Says He’s the ‘Manchurian Candidate.’

Hillary as the Red Queen? I just can’t see it myself…

SPACE: Blue Origin’s Rocket Test Just Went Better Than Anyone Thought Possible.

THE INTERNET OF THINGS: Johnson & Johnson warns insulin pumps can be hacked.

I HAVE THE CURRENT PILOTS AND THEY’RE EXCELLENT TIRES: This Is the Replacement for the Mighty Michelin Pilot Super Sport. They replaced some Dunlops that were good, but not as good.

AT AMAZON, deals galore in Training & Fitness.

And shop the Amazon Emergency Prep Store. Plus, Emergency & Long-Term Storage Food Deals. When bad things happen, it’s good to have food.

Plus, Generators and Portable Power for Storm Season. Or if a generator isn’t practical, consider an inverter. It’s hurricane season, and winter storms are coming!

Hey, if you order now you can probably get the stuff before Matthew hits. I believe Popular Mechanics’ Glenn Derene (or maybe it was Joe Pappalardo) ordered a generator from Amazon at the last minute and had it set up just before Sandy arrived.

TAKE FIVE: Hillary email leak reveals that Clinton flacks Huma Abedin and Doug Band didn’t know who Dave Brubeck was.

And as Johnny Fever would say, “If I die, who will teach the children about Bo Diddley?”

(Saw Bo Diddley in a Philadelphia dive bar in the mid-‘80s, in case you’re asking. Very sorry I never saw Brubeck in concert.)

CONGRESSMAN WHO BELIEVED GUAM WAS IN DANGER OF TIPPING OVER DUE TO OVERPOPULATION CALLS FOR DHS OVERSIGHT OF ELECTION SECURITY: “Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) said Congress should give the Department of Homeland Security authority over the security of the nation’s voting systems to prevent the ‘destabilization’ of democracy.”

There’s a far simpler and much less invasive method, of course.

SOCIAL JUSTICE MEDIA: A Year After CEO’s Return, Dorsey’s Failure to Invigorate Twitter Leaves It Vulnerable.

Some high-ranking managers now say they are losing faith in Mr. Dorsey. Despite some progress making the service easier to use and improving safeguards against offensive tweets, they say new users are still largely unwilling to try the 10-year-old service, while existing members complain that Twitter accommodates online harassment. Twitter added just 1% more monthly users in the second quarter, while its revenue growth shrank for the eighth straight period to under 20%.

Twitter declined to make Mr. Dorsey available for comment. A spokeswoman said Mr. Dorsey has delivered on his goals laid out to investors, including executing product changes more quickly and simplifying the service. “We’re seeing the direct benefit of recent product improvements,” which have driven user growth and usage, she said.

Unless Twitter figures out how to eliminate the spambots and knocks it off with the heavy-handed social engineering, I suspect the company’s other improvement efforts won’t amount to much.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Controversial AI has been trained to kill humans in a Doom deathmatch.

PEAK OIL: Small Texas company announces massive oil discovery in Alaska.

“This discovery could be really exciting for the State of Alaska,” said Caelus chief executive Jim Musselman. “It has the size and scale to play a meaningful role in sustaining the Alaskan oil business over the next three or four decades.”

While Caelus plans to initiate a more advanced appraisal program which should confirm overall reservoir continuity, the company believes that with adjoining acreage included, the Smith Bay field as a whole could contain up to 10 billion barrels of oil.

A billion barrels here and a billion barrels there, and pretty soon you’re talking real energy.

THIS IS TROUBLING: Polio-like paralyzing illness is striking more U.S. kids.

FIGHTING INFECTION WITH copper doorknobs. Also copper sinks and faucets.

KURT SCHLICHTER: The Meaning of Donald Trump – An American Conservative’s Perspective.

Perhaps most important, Trump represents both a repudiation of the liberal demands for conformity of thought, often lumped generally under the label “political correctness,” and a rejection of the “rigged system” that sees one set of laws for the elite and another for regular citizens. “Political correctness” had successfully stifled free discussion of the costs of both legal and illegal immigration. Complaints about the loss of jobs, about terrible crimes committed by immigrants who should have been deported, and about the government refusing to enforce duly enacted laws were silenced with blanket assertions of racism. At the same time, rampant corruption among those connected to the liberal establishment – most shockingly with Hillary Clinton being cleared of charges of misusing classified material when the same facts would have doubtlessly led to the imprisonment of unconnected Americans – opened a path for Trump. This was especially disruptive because so many Republican politicians, while ideologically conservative, culturally identified with prosperous coastal, urban elites over the suffering citizens of “flyover” America and tried to enforce the same “political correctness.”

But Trump is no traditional American conservative. He defies much of what the Republican Party had stood for in recent decades. He brought to the surface previously marginalized views within the party. The Republican Party had defined itself with free trade, but in doing so ignored many of its constituents who have seen their solid, working class manufacturing jobs moved overseas. While the Republican (and Democrat) elite pointed to net gains from free trade, the very real negative effects on working class Americans were ignored. Trump has also bypassed many of the traditional Grand Old Party’s social issues, like gay marriage and abortion, while still winning the support of the vital evangelical Christian component of the Republican coalition.

Make time today to read the whole thing, please.

GOOGLE WIFI: Google’s second attempt at a home router: It’s a $129 cylinder and it’ll build mesh networks.

DON’T YOU LOVE FARCE? WH Weighs In on Creepy Clown Epidemic, ‘Clown Riot’ at Penn State, More Sightings.

DIVERSITY PROBLEM: Growing university gap: Democratic professors now outnumber Republicans nearly 12 to 1 in top fields. If the mismatch went the other way, it would be treated as a national crisis and a threat to learning.

TEXAS PREPARES THE GRID for EMP Attacks. “Why Texas? Its historically independent nature aside, Texas is the world’s 10th largest economy by GDP and is home to 11 percent of the U.S. military population. The state is also the nation’s largest energy producer. But the key, according to the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), is Texas’ state-controlled electrical grid.”

YOU MEAN THE EXPERTS WERE WRONG? Politico: Hey, about that Trumpian disaster for House Republicans … “The reports of the demise of Republican control of the House due to Donald Trump turn out to be… greatly exaggerated. In fact, the reports of those reports seem exaggerated, too. Until Politico’s Rachel Bade wrote that House Democrats’ hope of winning control of the lower chamber have faded in recent days, few probably knew of their existence in the first place. . . . Bade notes that previous waves in 2006 and 2010 manifested themselves weeks and even months ahead of the election in generic-ballot polling. What’s that been like this time around? The only remarkable thing about the generic ballot polling results this time around is their unremarkability.”

PROTECTING FAMILIES OR CRONY CAPITALISTS? The FDA is getting ready to squash cigar makers.

Normally when we discuss the intersection of the FDA, government regulations and tobacco we’re talking about cigarettes. (Or vaping in more recent days.) But this week Uncle Sam is getting into full retro mode and going after cigar manufacturers. The most recent spate of moves in the Food and Drug Administration aimed at saving the nation from itself is based on a bit of legislation passed more than six years ago known as the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. This act was supposed to be targeted towards the prevention of tobacco advertising geared toward minors and enforcement of labeling requirements and a few other details. It also included a rather ominous provision described as the authority “to take further action in the future to protect public health.”

Apparently “the future” has arrived and some of those further actions will be geared toward traditional manufacturers of cigars rather than the cigarette market which is the major concern when it comes to children and families.

Read the whole thing.

The real weight of the FDA’s hand will come down on small cigar manufacturers, who simply won’t be able to afford complying with the new regulations while still creating innovative new products. Big cigar makers will absorb the costs, or pass them on to consumers as the small fry are forced out of business.

Imagine a regulatory scheme protecting Anheuser-Busch InBev’s mediocre beers, while forcing your local brewpubs out of business — that’s what the FDA is doing to the cigar industry.