Links 2026-08-30T19:28:42.706Z

Lake America and the Trade War Farce

When maps are drafted in a fit of pique,
A lake of centuries becomes a brand;
The globe must shift, the satirists must speak,
And premiers laugh as if at sketch-comedy land.
Ford calls it Saturday Night, Hochul won’t yield,
Maher jabs the language police in kind;
A gulf, a lake—perhaps an ocean field—
While treaties and old names stay unresigned.
The water does not care what papers say,
Yet politics will baptize every shore;
Trade war and theater share the same display:
Rename the world to settle yesterday’s score.
Call it Ontario still, or Lake America—
The shoreline knows which title will endure.
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When Partisanship Crosses the Water’s Edge

The gangster in the film would not serve Nazis;
Today the studio will cheer the foe
If cheering wounds the man across the aisle.
Lawrence lifts Tehran while Bessent talks of dawn;
The enemy of enemy is still the worse—
Yet party is the only country left.
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The Constitution as Tissue Paper

They quote the charter as the atheist quotes scripture—
Until the moment power is at hand.
“Institutionalist” is the new oligarch;
The DSA would slay the beast they call the Frame.
Carville swears the voters will not crown the far left;
Pool says there is no shared republic left to save.
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Telescopes, Kardashevs, and Watts That Won’t Switch On

Dijkstra said the field is not the machine;
Astronomy is not the telescope’s glass.
Roman rides a Heavy into dark-energy night;
Trump phones in live to say it looked beautiful.
Musk notes we are mites on the Kardashev scale,
And fifteen gigawatts of 2027 silicon
May never even find a plug.
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Brains, Drugs, Motivation, and Living Time

You have never read a word in true silence;
The throat still whispers what the eyes take in.
SSRIs were meant to quiet anxious circuits—
The scan showed the opposite after two weeks.
Orexin neurons keep the effort worth the food;
Life, Levin writes, is self-reference in time.
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Code Without Stores, Text Without Visible Marks

California’s age law almost swallowed Linux;
Unanimous votes carved out GPL and friends.
Claude’s watermark is not an em-dash parade—
You cannot see it, and that is the point.
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Influence Wars: Qatar, Israel, Islamism

An American critic of a vice president
Is recast as foreign interference by the funded.
Schrader names FARA ties; the Caller hits the messenger.
Islamism and Marxism, different metaphysics,
Share a totalizing political machine.
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Honey Badgers, Parasites, and Stalled Science

Activate the inner honey badger, Saad reads—
Bessent’s letter schools Warren on FX like a lash.
Weinstein says cowboy science died, physics froze,
And the All-In quartet recaps Nvidia, debt, and vaccines.
Universities breed bad ideas; empathy turns suicidal.
Imagine, Pool says, already arrived as nightmare.
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Miscellaneous

A queen who never heard of Queen Victoria;
Six epics that dare to rival Tolkien’s walk;
El Niño stacked on a hotter ocean floor;
Two WSJ notes the feed would not ingest.
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