Monday, September 22
Headlines
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More than 100,000, including many Trump admin officials, turned out for Charlie Kirk Memorial. The State Farm Stadium in Glendale, AZ, with 63,400 seats and a maximum capacity of 73,000, filled up completely within hours of opening at 8am local time. Thousands more mourners occupied an overflow venue and stood outside it. Speakers at the service included White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump Jr., Tucker Carlson, Charlie’s widow, Erika Kirk, and Vice President JD Vance. President Donald Trump was the last to take the podium. The event also reunited President Trump and Elon Musk publicly for the first time since May.
Kirk’s Christian faith, organizing ability served as dual focuses of memorial. Vice President JD Vance said that members of the administration attended not just because they were personal friends with Kirk, but also because “we know we wouldn’t be here without him. Charlie built an organization that reshaped the balance of our politics,” referring to Turning Point USA, the nonprofit organization Kirk founded in 2012 to advocate for conservative politics on high school and college campuses. Erika Kirk spoke for about 30 minutes. She said her husband died with “unfinished business” and expressed gratitude for being the next CEO of the organization, vowing, “Now his mission is my mission.” And of her husband’s killer, she said, “I forgive him because it was what Christ did, and is what Charlie would do. The answer to hate is not hate.”
Western nations recognize Palestinian statehood. The UK, Canada, and Australia coordinated their formal recognition of a Palestinian state ahead of the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly taking place this week in New York. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in his recorded announcement, “We recognized the state of Israel more than 75 years ago as a homeland for the Jewish people. Today, we join over 150 countries who recognize a Palestinian state also.” Portugal also announced its recognition yesterday, and more countries, including France, are expected to follow suit during the meeting. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the move, saying, “A Palestinian state will not be established west of the Jordan River.” Hamas said the newly announced recognition is the “rightful outcome of our people’s struggle, steadfastness, and sacrifices on the path to liberation and return.” The group is sworn to Israel’s destruction. The United States is opposed to the recognition of a Palestinian state, which President Trump reiterated after he met with Starmer in the UK last week, although he said he wanted the war in Gaza to end.—HVL
Robert Reich
In the face of the worst crisis American democracy has faced in living memory, they’re silent or complicit
Friends,
As Trump and his goons strip Americans of our constitutional rights, the silence of the nation’s leadership class is deafening.
I’m old enough to remember when, during the Vietnam War, university presidents utilized their bully pulpits to remind America of its moral center.
Today, university presidents are cowed. One college president recently told me point blank that “university presidents have no business speaking out on public issues.”
The chancellor of my own university, the University of California at Berkeley — the very place where the “free speech movement” began in 1965 — still hasn’t explained why Berkeley last week handed over to the regime the names of 160 students, lecturers, and faculty members who took part in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Some are here on visas and terribly vulnerable. Others lack tenure and are vulnerable in different ways.
At A Glance
Hundreds participate in first Chicago River swim in a century.
Why pregnant teachers were once banned from classrooms.
How to talk with your teenage boy about his online activity.
Study finds longer syllables make for more convincing apologies.
The McIntosh apple, from its 1795 discovery to its decline.
Americans' perception of AI in society.
A breakdown of the $5M American Dream.
Clickbait: Meet our new quasi-moon.
Historybook: President Abraham Lincoln issues preliminary Emancipation Proclamation (1862); Peace Corps formally authorized by Congress (1961); Iraq invades Iran, beginning the Iran-Iraq War (1980); “Friends” debuts on NBC (1994); Baseball great Yogi Berra dies (2015).
In The NEWS
Credit cards, 101
Arguably the biggest financial innovation of the past 100 years, credit cards are familiar pieces of metal or plastic that allow cardholders to borrow funds to pay for goods and services (with roughly $1T owed to credit card companies today).
Unlike debit cards, which draw money from the cardholder’s checking account, credit cards allow the cardholder to borrow a certain amount of money (called a credit line) from the card issuer (typically a bank or other financial institution) based on their creditworthiness (how credit limits are determined).
Credit cards are also the fourth-highest source of US consumer debt. Americans had roughly $1.2T in credit card debt as of Q3 2024—almost as much as they had in auto loans at the time ($1.6T), and significantly more than home equity loan debt.
... Read our full explainer on credit cards here.
Also, check out ...
> How Bank of America first built Visa, the first national credit card network. (More)
> Who actually pays for your credit card rewards? (More)
> Why there are microchips in credit cards. (More)
King of Planets
What is Jupiter?
Jupiter is the fifth-closest planet to the sun and the largest and oldest planet in the solar system. As with all planets in our solar system, Jupiter formed from what remained of the cloud of gas that collapsed into the sun and protoplanetary disk (see examples).
Named after the king of Roman gods, this gas giant is most easily recognized by its Great Red Spot—a hurricane-like storm larger than Earth that has existed for about 200 years.
Heat from Jupiter’s core moves fluid in convection cells—hot gases rise and cooler ones sink. The planet’s rotation—the fastest in the solar system—spreads these rising and sinking fluids into east-west flows that wrap around it like global jet streams. The coloring of the flows results from differences in convection cell temperature and composition, which vary across three unique cloud layers (see images).
... Read our full overview of the planet here.
Also, check out ...
> Thousands of objects, including 95 moons, orbit Jupiter. (More)
> Jupiter was twice its current size when it was first formed. (More)
> How Jupiter may have helped destroy the dinosaurs. (More)
What is Jupiter?
Jupiter is the fifth-closest planet to the sun and the largest and oldest planet in the solar system. As with all planets in our solar system, Jupiter formed from what remained of the cloud of gas that collapsed into the sun and protoplanetary disk (see examples).
Named after the king of Roman gods, this gas giant is most easily recognized by its Great Red Spot—a hurricane-like storm larger than Earth that has existed for about 200 years.
Heat from Jupiter’s core moves fluid in convection cells—hot gases rise and cooler ones sink. The planet’s rotation—the fastest in the solar system—spreads these rising and sinking fluids into east-west flows that wrap around it like global jet streams. The coloring of the flows results from differences in convection cell temperature and composition, which vary across three unique cloud layers (see images).
... Read our full overview of the planet here.
Also, check out ...
> Thousands of objects, including 95 moons, orbit Jupiter. (More)
> Jupiter was twice its current size when it was first formed. (More)
> How Jupiter may have helped destroy the dinosaurs. (More)
SOURCE: 1440 NEWS
Myrtle Beach, SC 2025
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We got back from Myrtle Beach at 2pm yesterday, even though we were up at 5:00 am, left at 6:00 am, and should have arrived home at 12:30 pm. REASON: very slow-moving traffic from Asheville, NC to Tennessee, especially where they were fixing the roads due to rockslides.
By the time we unloaded the car, put everything away, turned everything on, plugged everything back in, mowed the yard, updated my two blogs, and ate a TV dinner, it was too late to do much of anything else but sit on the sofa, veg out, and wait until we were tired enough to go to bed.
Our seven nights - six days at South Myrtle Beach went by fairly slowly through Wednesday and it seemed to both of us that this just might be an unexpectedly long week. However, the next three days went by quickly than stink on you know what, and the next thing we knew we were home, apologizing to our three cats for staying gone so long.
Myrtle Beach had not really changed much other than we saw new communities that had been built since we were last there, new restaurants replacing old ones, and not as much traffic as we had anticipated there might be. The weather was damn near perfect for every day except for one and a half days where it was hot but no wind, or very little.
We had taken a large umbrella that we put into the ground beside the one we rented giving us more shade, but it took us a couple of days to realize we got more shade by putting the umbrella on the left rather than the right even though we overlapped the umbrellas. We had enough shade now for three chairs.
Like always, we ate in a few really nice (and expensive for our budget) restaurants and the rest of the nights we ate in more budget friendly ones. The only part of our vacation that bothered us was the condo we rented because it was not being properly maintained by its owners, and the service that the resort used to offer had declined as well.
We always rent a condo with a kitchen and separate bedroom, and we always make sure that condo is ocean facing. We are considering looking for another condo next year, but we are still going to Myrtle Beach.
AI will never be a shortcut to wisdom
The internet and AI have given us almost magical access to knowledge — but it is not “earned.”
Studies on cognitive flexibility suggest we no longer walk through the fog of a complex question — we skip across it, like stones.
AI can amplify intelligence, but it cannot replace wisdom. DeGraff suggests four simple habits to reclaim your mind.
Sunday, September 21
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