Josh Rubin

Mayor Mamdani just announced that he will be opening 5 city-run, tax-funded grocery stores: "Prices set at 30% below retail prices"

My insurance company denied coverage for my son’s overnight hospital stay after he had a tumor removed from his chest and a port placed. His surgeon had to file an appeal because apparently that wasn’t considered medically necessary. But ya insurance companies rock

This should be the biggest story in all of sports but of course no one is actually talking about it. Good on ESPN doing some actual journalism and showing the world the true colors of the gambler.

This is the actual recording of Ippei Mizuhara claiming to be Shohei Ohtani during a call to authorize a transfer of funds to Mathew Bowyer's account. Listen to the first two episodes of "The Betrayal of Shohei Ohtani" on July 28, wherever you get your podcasts 🎙️

Mamdani: Today, I am proud to announce a collection of essential staples that will be predictably 30% cheaper at all five of our city-run grocery stores. This core set of goods will include all fresh produce, meat, and seafood, along with 20 other essential items like cheese, milk, and bread. Here's how it will work. Once a month, our five city-run grocery stores will set prices for this core set of goods at 30% below typical retail prices. No exceptions, no gimmicks. The savings will last for the entire month. That means no weekly fluctuations or sticker shock at the checkout line—not for our seniors living on fixed incomes, nor for the parents who rely on a regular supply of apple slices to keep toddler tantrums at bay.

i've seen this perspective a lot and i worry people are overcorrecting. all this does is establish that two people in similar environments still have underlying personality differences. it doesn't establish anything about the relative importance of nature vs nurture, it just establishes that there is some amount of natural personality variation even when you hold nurture steady.

🦔AI companies are bulk-buying rare books, scanning them through high-speed machines that cut the spines off, and shredding the originals. A service called ISBNdb facilitates orders of up to a million books and keeps buyers anonymous. Pre-2022 books are premium because they're free of AI-generated text. A federal judge ruled the practice is fair use because eliminating the original means only one copy exists at a time. Anthropic hired the former head of Google Books partnerships to obtain "all the books in the world." My Take This got to me. A bookseller told 404 Media that rare books with almost no surviving copies are being fed into this pipeline. Books that survived wars, fires, and centuries of handling are being shredded so an AI can learn to write a better marketing email. ISBNdb's website literally says "'AI company destroys two million books' is not a headline that generates sympathy," and they still built an entire business around making it happen quietly. They offer NDAs as a feature. They coach clients to call it "digital preservation." I've covered AI companies scraping the internet, torrenting libraries, and stealing music. This is worse because it's irreversible. You can re-upload a website. You can reprint a bestseller. You can't replace the last three copies of an 18th-century botanical text once someone shreds them for training data. And the judge said it's legal. So it's going to accelerate. "We shred rare books and offer NDAs so nobody finds out" is a legitimate business model in 2026. What a timeline. Hedgie🤗

Two men repeatedly strike an autonomous delivery robot on a California street at night, July 2026.

A sneak peek at the never-before-heard story of Shohei Ohtani's break-up with his interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, and the world of illegal sports gambling 🎙️ Listen to the first two episodes of "The Betrayal of Shohei Ohtani" podcast on July 28 where you get your podcasts 🚨

A sneak peek at the never-before-heard story of Shohei Ohtani's break-up with his interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, and the world of illegal sports gambling 🎙️ Listen to the first two episodes of "The Betrayal of Shohei Ohtani" podcast on July 28 where you get your podcasts 🚨

A sneak peek at the never-before-heard story of Shohei Ohtani's break-up with his interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, and the world of illegal sports gambling 🎙️ Listen to the first two episodes of "The Betrayal of Shohei Ohtani" podcast on July 28 where you get your podcasts 🚨