Morning

Thirsty Thursday

Happy Hour

Oh no stonks

100% Of People Who Love Trump Still Love Him Though

We'd better interview some of them.

Trump’s overall approval rating, 34%, matches the career low he last saw at the close of his first term, following the January 6, 2021, insurrection. Half of Americans now strongly disapprove of him, a high across his terms, with a record-low 15% strongly approving.

All My Stonks Gone

Another round of the cycle.

US President Donald Trump promised retribution for an Iranian missile attack that was intercepted by US forces.

“We are going to beat the f**king sh*t out of them,” Trump told Fox News Wednesday morning.

America's Worst Human

Elon Musk.

The ideas, images and language of “The Turner Diaries” have long since entered the gestalt of far-right ideology. The book hovers there even when it isn’t mentioned. In his manifesto, for example, Dylann Roof — who murdered nine people at the Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, S.C. — frames himself as a martyr and calls on white Americans to fight a race war against Black people.

Today, you don’t have to look far or dig deep to see the ambient influence of “The Turner Diaries” on the far right. You need just to spend a little time in the online world of the richest man on the planet, Elon Musk (although to be clear there is no direct evidence that Musk has read the book).

Kudos to Bouie for going where few in journalism do. As he says:

If there is a question to ask, then, it is this: Why does Musk get a pass? Why do politicians, journalists and commentators treat his far-right racist radicalism as a sideshow rather than the core of his political, ideological and industrial project, seen in everything from his deep support for Donald Trump in the United States and Restore Britain in Britain to his decision to construct a massive pollution-generating data center in predominantly Black Memphis, Tenn.

Musk spends a large part of his free time fomenting violence and spreading the same hateful ideology that motivated some of the deadliest shootings and attacks ever to happen on American soil. It is that fact, and not the cars he builds or the rockets he launches, that ought to define his place in public life.

And They Came To That Conclusion All By Themselves

Almost the entire political establishment, the media, and the armed state forcefully telling people the opposite.

The July 25 - 27 Economist / YouGov Poll finds that 47% of Americans think that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is guilty of war crimes in Gaza; half as many (24%) think he is not guilty. Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to believe Netanyahu is guilty (71% vs. 20%).

About half (49%) of Americans think the U.S. should arrest Netanyahu if he comes to the U.S., based on an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court; 27% think the U.S. should not arrest him. Two-thirds (68%) of Democrats want the U.S. to arrest Netanyahu, compared to only 24% of Republicans.

It seems like suburban soccer moms want to arrest Netanyahu! No choice but to obey!

An Attack On His Core Business Model

And you thought it was cars and rockets.

Elon Musk’s xAI, now owned by SpaceX, sued Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison to challenge a law that would ban so-called nudify apps in the state.

In their complaint, filed in a federal court in Minnesota on Monday, attorneys for xAI wrote that the statute “imposes an overbroad, content-based ban on free speech and the tools of visual expression in a clumsy attempt to prohibit ‘nudification.’”

The Minnesota law, which goes into effect on Saturday, targets apps and websites that give people the ability to generate non-consensual sexualized imagery, levying $500,000 fines each time a user creates explicit deepfakes. The law, passed in April, was spearheaded by Minnesota state Sen. Erin Maye Quade after she learned about a man who created sexualized images and videos of of over 80 women he knew using their social media photos without their consent.

Lawyers for xAI argued that the law violates First Amendment protections and said the penalties are too steep, potentially costing a business whose users created 100,000 prohibited images “an eye-popping $50 billion dollars.”

Though, being honest and not just snarky, he might even be right (I have no idea) about it being overbroad. The new internet censorship (age verification) is getting ugly. Neither Musk nor nudify apps inspire much sympathy, but doesn't mean this precise legislation is good (again, I have no idea!).

Happy Hour

get happy

LOL

Scoop: I’m told that Ross Douthat is exiting The NYT and is expected to take a role at “60 Minutes.” News expected to be announced soon.

— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy.bsky.social) 28 July 2026 at 20:45

Fauci Hate

I was never a Fauci superfan for various reasons, but I have never really understood precisely why The Right turned him into an object of hate. Six years later!

2 Planes

I really don't have any idea why this project would cost so much.

Boeing’s money pit of an Air Force One project just sank a little deeper.

The company said it’s making a substantial effort to get the first of two presidential planes out the door – four years later and for billions of dollars more than initially promised.

CEO Kelly Ortberg on Tuesday told employees via an internal email that the company is adding “significant resources” to deliver the heavily modified 747-8 jets by 2028. That ramp-up in production and certification resources in the Air Force One program cost Boeing an additional $280 million last quarter, the company announced in its quarterly financial statement.

The program’s cost overruns have now surpassed $3.1 billion. Boeing has agreed to foot that bill.

Thought controlled missile interceptors? 

Sure Why Not

Just checking in with the Harry Potter lady.

Transphobic billionaire author J.K. Rowling has encouraged random people in the United Kingdom to photograph people in women’s restrooms just in case they are transgender. Her advice is likely to result in the public harassment of cisgender women who don’t fit people’s preconceived notions of how a cis woman “should” look — such harassment has occurred many times in the past.

In a Saturday post on X, Rowling noted that someone asked her, “How are you planning to police public toilets” in light of the recent U.K. Supreme Court ruling that the legal definition of men and women in the country’s anti-discrimination law is based on biological sex. After the ruling, the U.K.’s Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said trans women and men “should not be permitted to use” the public restroom facilities that align with their gender.

In response, Rowling said that policing trans people in public toilets can be handled, “Quite easily, really. Decent men will stay out, as they always have, so we can assume all who don’t are a threat, given their disregard for women’s and girls’ safety, privacy and dignity. Photographing, reporting and disseminating such men’s images online will be a piece of cake.”

Moaning Myrtle was a sign of... something. 

Already Signed Up

As an extremely important influencer - and renowned Musk superfan - I have had this for months and I encourage all of you to join too.

X Money, a core part of Elon Musk’s mission to turn X into an “everything app,” is rolling out starting today, 9to5Mac reports. The payment platform offers a digital wallet and peer-to-peer payments similar to Venmo, along with a metal Visa card users can emblazon with their X username. Other perks include Apple Wallet support and free money transfers on X. It also advertises “up to” a 6 percent APY, but only Premium Plus subscribers are eligible for it — standard Premium subscribers have to deposit a certain amount of money to get a “boosted” 6 percent APY.

Everyone is very impressed by my metal Visa card with my emblazoned X username.

Dealing With Our Own

The Dems are of course not perfect in dealing with bad actors in their midst, but they are, without a doubt, much much better.

Though Dems tend not to get "credit" for dealing with these things. If anything, dealing with them is an admission that is used against them.

I guarantee we'll be hearing about Platner and Swalwell - problems the Dems "dealt with," if not perfectly, forever - while, whether or not he faces any consequences, most people will never even hear of the Miller issues.

I'll leave why that is as an exercise for the reader.

Morning

Taco Tuesday.

Happy Hour

Get happy

Having A Normal One

"She" is Anne Hathaway.

He is responding to a speech from 2018.

Are We Doing This Again

Apparently "we" are very close to an Iran deal which will be the case until one of his Foxy Friends makes it sound like a bad deal, and in fact a humiliating loss, and then...
 
...repeat every week until the heat death of the universe.

Gonna Be Everything

I am quite sure many companies which had all their systems locked down tightly until about 3 years ago - medical, law firms, etc... - have been recently feeding everything they do into what will eventually be public AI.

A trove of chat logs and projects created with Anthropic’s Claude — some including sensitive personal and company information — have been left exposed to Google, making them them searchable to anyone on the web. |

The artifacts appear to have been made public when Claude users opted to distribute a given chat or project to colleagues or associates using the chatbot’s “share” feature. After hitting a “share” button in the top right corner, Claude notes that sharing will create a “public” link, and “anyone with the link can view.” The warning, though, doesn’t alert users that shared content could wind up being indexed by a search engine — meaning that a user could effectively be sharing their Claude-generated document with the entire internet.

I don't claim to know how everything works, but I haven't seen anyone explain why/how the plagiarism machine isn't just feeding your trade secrets and medical information into its training data.

I've noticed a lack of people asking, too.

"We'll Go Back To"

I think these threats are less and less scary each time.

Trump says he’s ready for ‘strong military action’ if Iran talks fail President Trump tells Axios that the US is in “very deep talks” with Iran.

“If they don’t work out, we will be go back to very strong military action,” he said.

Trump said he paused attacks on Friday because the countries acting as mediators to bring an end to the US-Iran conflict asked him to. “All of the people that deal with Iran asked me: ‘Don’t fire’.”

Asked how long he was willing to give diplomacy, he said, “Not much time. Either it goes fast or not at all”.