canisgallicus

Aug 17, 2026 #JohnMearsheimer#Geopolitics#ForeignPolicy

John Mearsheimer – Trump’s latest Iran ‘deal’ EXPOSED! In this video, we dive deep into the latest geopolitical shifts, great power competition, and international relations through the framework of Offensive Realism, featuring insights and analysis from Professor John Mearsheimer. As global conflicts evolve, understanding the structural behavior of great powers is critical. We break down the strategic foreign policy decisions of the United States, China, Russia, and NATO, explaining why nations act the way they do on the world stage. How do power dynamics and realist theory predict the future of global warfare and diplomacy? Watch the full analysis to find out.

Ray Kinsella

@ProfRayKinsella

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1h

Germany has imposed huge damage on its own economy– and on the EU–aligning to a war that should never have been allowed to happened and turned economics on its head

@EoinLenihan

@RobLooseCannon

@elonmusk

@PM_ViktorOrban

@

https://twitter.com/elblackburngibi/status/2034030640648142910/video/1

@Nick_Delehanty

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6h

As crime spirals out of control in Ireland.. its important everyone understands which NGO shapes Govt policy on criminal punishment, “The Irish Penal Reform Trust”

Below is its management team. They get €755k in multi-annual State funding... including €492k directly from the Dept of Justice. They are hardcore believers in social justice theory. Their main goal is to “make prison a last resort”.

So basically the Dept pays these people to lobby for:

• fewer people in prison

• Early release

• Easier sentencing

• No new prisons EVER!!

• Justice for Travellers

They regularly meet, host & mingle with Ministers & Opposition TDs. Their own annual report boasts: “we shaped the thinking of many political representatives who went on to be elected.” So this is how the policy sausage is made:

1: Dept funds the NGO.

2: NGO develops woke policy.

3: NGO lobbies same Dept.

4: NGO then also lobbies the Opposition.

5: NGO enters Govt working groups.

6. Woke policy becomes Govt policy.

Hats off to this team, they are brilliant at what they do, All funded by you!

Defense Grills Psychiatrist Over Lindsay Clancy’s Treatment in Court

The defense questioned a psychiatrist about Lindsay Clancy’s treatment during courtroom proceedings.
In this video, we break down the key points raised during the questioning and the psychiatrist’s testimony.
We also examine how the testimony fits into the broader arguments being presented by both sides.
The courtroom discussion highlights important questions surrounding treatment, medical assessments, and the legal process.
Watch the full courtroom recap and analysis of this significant moment.
This video is created for news reporting, commentary, and educational purposes.
Information is based on publicly available courtroom proceedings and reported case developments.
The case remains subject to the legal process, and allegations should not be treated as proven facts.
Subscribe for trial updates, courtroom news, and legal analysis.
⚖️ Like, comment respectfully, and turn on notifications for more updates.

Aug 15, 2026

For free and unbiased Medicare help, dial 507-478-7579 to speak with my trusted partner, Chapter, or go to https://askchapter.org/smerconishPaid Partnership

Luigi Mangione has admitted in federal court that he killed United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. But his guilty plea may also be part of a carefully calculated legal strategy. Michael Smerconish examines the continued fascination with Mangione and argues that anger at America’s health care system cannot justify murder. He then speaks with CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig about why Mangione’s legal team may have made a “savvy” move by pleading guilty federally—and then immediately invoking New York’s unusually broad double-jeopardy protections in an effort to get the state case dismissed. Honig also explains why prosecutors may have had reason to fear a Mangione supporter getting onto the jury and offers a striking prediction about federal Judge Margaret Garnett: he’d be shocked if she sentences Mangione to anything less than life. Can Americans hold two thoughts at once—that the health insurance system needs reform and that Brian Thompson’s murder cannot be justified? Vote on today’s poll and subscribe to the daily newsletter at http://www.smerconish.com Chapter and its affiliates are not connected with or endorsed by any government entity or the federal Medicare program. Chapter Advisory, LLC represents Medicare Advantage HMO, PPO, and PFFS organizations and stand alone prescription drug plans that have a Medicare contract. Enrollment depends on the plan’s contract renewal. While we have a database of every Medicare plan nationwide and can help you to search among all plans, we have contracts with many but not all plans. As a result, we do not offer every plan available in your area. Currently we represent 50 organizations which offer 18,160 products nationwide. We search and recommend all plans, even those we don’t directly offer. You can contact a licensed Chapter agent to find out the number of products available in your specific area. Please contact Medicare.gov, 1-800-Medicare, or your local State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) to get information on all of your options.

By John Nosta

AI and Subtractive Innovation. When AI makes thinking less necessary.By John Nosta

Source: VIVIANE M./Pixabay Three years ago, I wrote a post asking whether artificial intelligence might eventually place human cognition on the technological chopping block. At that time, AI was beginning to reveal what it could do, and the concern seemed fairly straightforward. Innovation has always created obsolescence. Machines replaced physical labor, calculators took over much of routine arithmetic, and digital technologies displaced entire industries. But now the domain of innovation is less about that old stereo or calculator but human thought itself. OK, cognition hasn’t become obsolete per se. In fact, AI has made us astonishingly more capable. Scientists can explore hypotheses faster, physicians can interrogate complex medical information, and you and I can analyze, write, code, or create at levels that previously required specialized (and expensive) expertise. It’s truly remarkable and I don’t think we should diminish it simply because we’re concerned about some of the consequences. I’ve called one expression of this Iterative Intelligence—the back-and-forth between human and machine in which an idea gets questioned, reframed, and sometimes pushed somewhere neither would have taken it alone. And while this is new, it also harkens back to the venerable Socratic dialogue. Used in this context, the technology doesn’t necessarily reduce thinking. Sometimes it creates more of it. So I’m increasingly uncomfortable with the simple question of whether AI is making us smarter or dumber. Something more complicated may be happening. Obsolescence Begins With Necessity We tend to think of obsolescence as an endpoint. Something works until a better technology arrives and eventually the old thing gets thrown away. Film cameras, fax machines, and typewriters come to mind. But before any of them disappeared, something more consequential happens and this is important to recognize. We simply stopped needing them. And perhaps that’s a better way to think about cognition in the context of AI. AI doesn’t have to destroy my ability to write. It only has to make writing something myself less necessary. My memory doesn’t have to deteriorate if remembering becomes less important. And my ability to construct an argument doesn’t have to disappear if a reasonable argument can be generated before I’ve even worked through it. This leads me to a concept I think of as That’s when innovation increases the capability of the human-machine system while reducing the necessity for the human to exercise the capability being augmented. And I think the word necessity is critical here as I’m not arguing that using AI inevitably makes us cognitively weaker. Human beings have been offloading cognitive tasks onto tools for thousands of years, and many of those tools have made us smarter and more capable. AI may do the same on a scale we have never seen before. So, here’s what concerns me. Human abilities tend to have a “use-it-or-lose-it” quality. When we don’t need to do something, we generally do it less. And if we do it less, I think it’s reasonable to wonder what happens to the underlying capability over time. I don’t think we know the answer yet, but the pathway is certainly worth paying attention to. When Thinking Becomes Optional A blank page once required someone to write the first sentence. An argument had to be constructed, and even asking a good question usually required enough understanding to know what you didn’t know. So, here’s the point: Increasingly, these things are optional. AI can start the page, finish it, and summarize it. And here’s where it gets interesting: Every one of those choices can be completely rational. Why spend 20 minutes doing something that can be accomplished in 20 seconds, particularly when the result may be just as good or even better? This is where I’d suggest that Subtractive Innovation becomes different from simple cognitive offloading. AI isn’t taking our ability to think away from us. It’s removing, piece by piece and thought by thought, some of the necessity to think for ourselves. Cognitive surrender, if it happens, probably won’t come from some dramatic decision to turn our minds over to machines. It may emerge almost unnoticed through thousands of sensible decisions to avoid effort that technology has made unnecessary. The Choice Inside the Machine Iterative Intelligence offers another path. Instead of asking AI to eliminate the cognitive act, we can use it to extend that act. We can challenge its answer, change the premise, find the contradiction, or follow an association we hadn’t considered. Two people can use exactly the same AI and arrive at equally impressive outputs while having very different cognitive experiences. One may have used the machine primarily to complete the task, while the other used it to change the thought. Curiously, this path isn’t the shortest distance from question to answer, it’s the longer and bumpy experiential path of discovery and learning. This brings me to the idea of abundance, another word that has become almost inseparable from the promise of AI. I’ve written before about the strange dynamics of cognitive abundance, and I think Subtractive Innovation adds another dimension to it. We tend to assume the math moves in one direction—more intelligence available to us should mean more intelligence for us.I’m not sure the equation is that simple.The abundance of machine capability can make the human-machine system dramatically more powerful while simultaneously making some human capabilities less necessary. Both things can be true at once. We can have more intelligence available to us and fewer reasons to exercise our own. A technological lifetime ago, about three years, I wondered if cognition itself might eventually become obsolete. Today, I think obsolescence may be the wrong place to begin looking. The earlier signal is necessity. A capability can remain perfectly intact while becoming progressively less necessary, and perhaps that’s where the real cognitive consequences begin. AI may indeed usher in an age of abundance. But the math may not move in only one direction. And more at the level of the system doesn’t necessarily mean more at the level of the human. And that leaves me with a slightly different question. What happens to humans when thinking becomes optional?

John NostaThe Digital SelfTechnology, Transformation and the Future You

Felix Tamsut in Jerusalem08/16/2026August 16, 2026

The debate around the ultra-Orthodox community’s place in Israel has come to a head since the war in Gaza. At its heart is their refusal to join the army.

https://p.dw.com/p/5IuaH

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Israel is facing a deepening debate over military conscription as growing numbers of Israelis question long-standing exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men, many of whom study the Torah instead of serving in the army.

Critics say the system places an unequal burden on other families, while ultra-Orthodox leaders argue military service threatens their religious way of life.

With demographic shifts, political turmoil and elections approaching, the dispute has become a major issue that could shape Israel’s security, society and economy for decades.

Felix Tamsut Reporter for DW News@ftamsut

@ianbremmer

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12m

president trump doing his damnedest to antagonize another one of america’s closest allies. surprisingly good news for kim jong un, though.