Buchanan on X: Barcelona is banning Airbnb-style apartments. Dublin needs to do the same.

Posted on August 19, 2026 by michelleclarke2015

BUCHANAN: Dublin Time Machine

@RobLooseCannon

Barcelona is banning Airbnb-style apartments. Dublin needs to do the same. Spain’s Constitutional Court told landlords their property rights don’t trump a city’s right to house its own people. We have thousands of properties sitting on Airbnb in our city that should be homes. It’s not a housing shortage, its a housing monopoly. Eliminating Airbnb redirects tourism to hotels, hostels and guesthouses and creates employment in the hospitality industry which has been crippled by, among other things, IPAS centres. This decline in visitor beds triggers the collapse of local businesses depending on tourists. Restaurants, cafes and shops. The domino effect is locals can’t get jobs and have to leave towns. Ending Airbnb in Dublin won’t solve everything in the country, but its a bloody good start.

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Axios: Washington’s stealth oil operation

Posted on August 19, 2026 by michelleclarke2015
Washington’s stealth oil operation
 
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Stock: Getty Images

The U.S. military has quietly established a shipping corridor in and out of the Strait of Hormuz, two U.S. officials tell Axios’ Barak Ravid.

🚢 Under the operation, which has been underway for the past several weeks, 15–20 tankers have entered and exited the strait through a southern channel along the coast of Oman.

About 10 million barrels of oil a day are being transported out of the strait and injected into the global energy market, the officials said. That’s roughly half the pre-war volume.

⚓️ The U.S. military is helping empty tankers enter the Gulf from the Arabian Sea through the strait, pick up oil from the UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait, and then exit.

One of the U.S. officials, who has direct knowledge of the matter, tells Axios: “We have been controlling the southern lane of the Strait of Hormuz for two months now. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps can be a nuisance, but they don’t control the strait. We do.”

🪖 The task force overseeing the Hormuz effort is being run out of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division headquarters in Fort Bragg, N.C.

It creates a daily list of ships exiting the Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz and into the Arabian Sea, as well as a list of rented empty tankers that travel from the Arabian Sea, through the strait and into the ports of Gulf countries to pick up more oil.

Each night, the ships are scheduled to move in one big outbound line during a certain time slot and one big inbound line during a separate time slot.

The ships are given several checkpoints to pass through and report back.

The U.S. Air Force has fighter jets looking for Iranian cruise missiles and drones to shoot down. Keep reading.
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To Presidents, Prime Ministers, leaders of countries, herein such wisdom (referred to by Iran and who added Prudence) … World at wars … too many

Posted on August 19, 2026 by michelleclarke2015

@WordsnWisdom26

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“The difference between humans and animals is that animals never allow a fool to lead the pack.” — Winston Churchill

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Ireland’s abandoned asylum: Central Mental Hospital, Dundrum. Land now for housing but the building, its heritage, could render it a place for historic reasons. It is older than Broadmoor in the UK

Posted on August 19, 2026 by michelleclarke2015

Aug 14, 2026Go to https://surfshark.com/urbandoned or use code URBANDONED at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark! In today’s episode, we head inside the abandoned Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum, Ireland. After closure in 2022, Europe’s oldest forensic psychiatric hospital, predating Broadmoor Asylum by a decade, was left abandoned, giving us the chance to have the first unrestricted access within the infamous complex in 175 years. SUBTITLES AVAILABLE Join this channel to get access to perks:    / @urbandoned  

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Michael Smerconish: Did Affirmative Action Set Up Jason Arday to Fail?

Posted on August 19, 2026 by michelleclarke2015
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Axios: The new existential threat to AI

Posted on August 19, 2026 by michelleclarke2015
 🤖 The new existential threat to AI
 
Illustration of data center servers on an abstract vector background
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Stock: Getty Images
 
Forget energy. Forget chips. Forget China. The most clear and present danger to AI and any AI-related economic boom is rapidly rising public opposition to U.S. data centers, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in a “Behind the Curtain” column.

Why it matters: Republicans and AI CEOs are in full panic mode watching politicians and the public turn on the physical engines of AI growth. In private, they tell us they can’t find a compelling message to shift opinion fast enough.

Their nightmare — a political and economic daisy chain that cripples the AI revolution — is already taking shape:

Voters revolt against data centers over electricity bills, water use, giant warehouse-like developments and fears about AI eliminating jobs.

Democrats race to capitalize, competing to impose tougher restrictions or block projects altogether.

Republicans — watching candidates get punished in places like Ohio — retreat from an industry they’ve spent years championing.

The pipeline of new data centers slows, constraining the computing power AI companies need to keep improving their models and products.

Investors question the staggering spending, borrowing and valuations built on expectations of relentless AI growth.

🔭 Zoom out: The AI boom has become dangerously intertwined with the U.S. economy, meaning this will ricochet far beyond Silicon Valley.Goldman Sachs estimates

 U.S. AI investment will hit about $600 billion this year, equal to roughly 2% of GDP and 10% of business fixed investment.

Big Tech has already locked itself into trillions of dollars in future spending: The Financial Times found six hyperscalers have nearly $1.5 trillion in purchase commitments, much of it tied to AI infrastructure, plus roughly $1.5 trillion in lease obligations. Even the richest companies in history are now turning to debt markets to bankroll the buildout.

A handful of those AI-heavy tech giants dominate the stock market’s gains, swelling the portfolios of wealthy Americans who account for an outsized share of consumer spending.

🎨 The big picture: The increasingly toxic politics of data centers are surfacing in several of this fall’s governors’ races.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), a 2028 hopeful, had welcomed data centers as an economic-development boon, boasting last year that an Amazon plan to build $20 billion in AI infrastructure was the “largest private sector investment in the history of Pennsylvania.

“Yesterday, Shapiro, whose Republican opponent in November is campaigning on halting data-center development, went from AI cheerleader to critic and signed an executive order imposing stringent new requirements for data-center developers.

👀 The intrigue: In Wisconsin, GOP gubernatorial nominee Tom Tiffany — a close Trump ally — is running ads attacking his Democratic opponent for suggesting the state could become an AI data hub “for the entire globe.”

It’s a striking crack in Trump’s pro-AI coalition, as Republicans in swing states scramble to get on the right side of the new populist wave upending the midterms.

The other side: OpenAI is aggressively courting state and local officials to try to persuade them of the economic benefits of data centers. Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer, told us: “As the late, great Tip O’Neill famously said, ‘All politics is local.’“

“That is especially true of AI data centers, where you have to show up, listen, and directly respond with specifics to the concerns of locals,” Lehane added. “You have to answer the mail on issues like electricity and water, while also demonstrating a seriousness of purpose when it comes to ensuring the community gets a good deal. … That is democracy in action.

“Meta last week announced i

A line chart that shows how adults ages 18 to 29 view AI each year from 2021 to 2026. Those more concerned than excited rose from 31% to 55%, peaking in 2026. Those more excited than concerned fell from 25% to 11%, reaching their low in 2026.Data: Pew. Chart: Noah Bressner/Axios

🔢 By the numbers: In Pew Research Center polling published yesterday, 52% of Americans said they’re “more concerned than excited” about increased use of AI in daily life — up from 37% in 2021.

Even adults under 30 have soured on AI, with 55% now saying they’re more concerned than excited — mainly because of fears the technology will take jobs. Excitement has faded across all age groups over the past five years, Pew found.

A June Echelon Insights poll found AI data centers are uniquely toxic: Just 27% of voters say they would support building one in their community, dead last among the projects tested — including a nuclear power plant.Zachary Basu and Alex Thompson contributed reporting.Share this column … Go deeper: “AI optimism fades among young adults,” by Axios’ Josephine Walker.
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Axios: Fresh inflation warning

Posted on August 19, 2026 by michelleclarke2015
Fresh inflation warning
 
A line chart that shows monthly annual change in the producer price index for bare printed circuit boards from June 1992 to July 2026. The series ranges from minus 5.09491% in April 1994 to 45.3514% in July 2026, with mostly modest moves before a sharp surge in 2026.Data: Bureau of Labor Statistics via FRED. Chart: Emily Peck/Axios

Prices for one of the world’s least glamorous products — bare printed circuit boards — are skyrocketing to record levels, Axios’ Emily Peck reports.

That’s a blazing-loud warning for more inflation to come.

🟩 The big picture: Bare printed circuit boards are the green rectangles that house silicon chips.They’re in everything from smartphones and cars to medical and military equipment.🤖 Data centers and AI labs are fueling huge price increases for computer chips — but also the simple boards that they get placed on.

The Producer Price Index for the boards rose 45% in July from the same time last year.That reflects prices charged by domestic manufacturers. The U.S. produces only about 4% of the global supply, but the data still illustrates the pricing squeeze.

📈 Between the lines: The Iran war has pushed up prices for the boards’ basic components: primarily resin and copper.

A major manufacturer of resin in Saudi Arabia was knocked offline in April after an Iranian attack.
That one plant makes 70% of the world’shigh-puritypolyphenylene ether resin.

👀 What we’re watching: Price hikes tied to higher circuit board costs will take a while to hit your wallet.

Jason Miller, a professor of supply chain management at Michigan State University’s business school, tells Axios: “It takes at least six months, if not a year, for these price increases fairly far upstream in the supply chain to start to make their way to end users.

“Go deeper.
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Chay Bowes on X: It is like China is winning with robots

Posted on August 19, 2026 by michelleclarke2015

https://twitter.com/JnglJourney/status/2089764912662770027/video/1

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A homeless man in London captured the attention of thousands, not for begging, but for the way he rocks his dog to sleep every night. When asked why, he explained that life hadn’t always been this way. “When I first got him, we had an apartment,” he said softly. “Living on the street has been a hard adjustment for him. The honking, the sirens, the people, it keeps him up. So every night, I make sure he’s asleep before I close my eyes.”

Posted on August 19, 2026 by michelleclarke2015

dominic dyer

@domdyer70

A homeless man in London captured the attention of thousands, not for begging, but for the way he rocks his dog to sleep every night. When asked why, he explained that life hadn’t always been this way. “When I first got him, we had an apartment,” he said softly. “Living on the street has been a hard adjustment for him. The honking, the sirens, the people, it keeps him up. So every night, I make sure he’s asleep before I close my eyes.” #dog #wholesome #dogs #doglover

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Highly Sensitive Person vs Unrecogniszed Autism

Posted on August 19, 2026 by michelleclarke2015

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