curated news excerpts & citations
… trying to ‘unbury the lede’
Paul Kedrosky:
China [AI] Models Now More Than a Third of Enterprise Market
Chinese large language model usage among U.S. companies (on OpenRouter) has soared in the first half of 2026. After being in the low single digits through early 2025, token share rose through late 2025, then soared in 2026, and now stands at roughly 35–45%. Chinese models have become a mainstream routing choice for U.S. organizations, not a niche fallback.
- Price/performance is becoming decisive.
- Once quality is “close enough,” the lowest-cost frontier-adjacent models take share quickly.
- Model nationality is less sticky than assumed.
- U.S. companies appear willing to route meaningful production traffic to Chinese models
- All it takes is a large price gap and narrowing model differences.
- Inference markets will commoditize fast.
- Token demand can migrate rapidly toward cheaper substitutes.
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Ossiana Tepfenhart:
I Think Nolan Wells Was Lynched, Full Stop.Real talk, I don’t blame people of color for being leery of befriending white people after reading about this.
…Oh, and in breaking news, it appears that Nolan was filmed getting into an altercation with his “friends” on the boat trip, near the water where he was found dead.
…Since Nolan’s passing, his friends have been silent.
His friends have all deactivated their social media accounts and put their accounts on private. Social media users have been quick to point out several things:- This is classic “circling the wagons” behavior. …
- The boys didn’t call the cops. His mother was the one to report him missing.
- His “friends” had parents in positions of power.
- People already noticed that something is up. …
I’ve looked it up, and there’s a term for this: “sundown boat trips.”
(Ossiana Tepfenhart more…)Edgar Sandoval @ NY Times: ICE Officer Kills a Mexican Man in Houston
David Edwards @ Crooks & Liars: Trump ‘Preference’ For ‘White People’ Costs Him In Blistering Court Ruling
Michael Fanone: The Insurrectionists on the Ballot
Adam Johnson, candidate for Manatee County Commission in Florida, has a campaign logo. Most local candidates go with a star, a flag, an elephant or donkey, maybe an outline of the county. But Johnson went with a silhouette of himself carrying Nancy Pelosi’s stolen lectern through the Capitol rotunda — the photo that became one of the defining images of January 6th.
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – July 7, 2026
In Ankara, Türkiye, for a two-day summit of the countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), President Donald J. Trump told reporters he was “very disappointed with NATO” because it had not backed its war on Iran. …
…NATO is the most effective alliance in human history. It is also a defensive, not an offensive, alliance.
…In place of the powerful NATO alliance that has protected all nations’ sovereignty, Trump appears to want the sort of world called for by Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, in which great powers carve up the globe into spheres of influence.
…Less than six weeks after The Atlantic published Kagan’s article, Trump attacked Iran in strikes he appeared to think would mirror the strikes against Venezuela, enabling him to replace Iran’s leadership with men willing to work with the U.S. and perhaps enabling the U.S. to take a stake in Iran’s oil production.
Instead, Iran seized control of the Strait of Hormuz in the aftermath of the strikes, choking off about 27% of the world’s globally traded oil and about a third of the world’s seaborne fertilizer. Rather than a quick strike, Trump’s war on Iran is now stretching into its fifth month, and attempts to end it, even on terms worse than when it began, are faltering.
Tonight, at 5:15, as NATO leaders met in Türkiye, U.S. Central Command announced that U.S. forces had launched “a series of powerful strikes against Iran to impose heavy costs for targeting and attacking commercial shipping crewed by innocent civilians in an international waterway.” It said the strikes were a “response to Iranian attacks on three commercial vessels that were transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s demonstrated aggression was unwarranted, dangerous, and a clear violation of the ceasefire.”
It later said it had hit more than 80 targets.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)Jennifer Rubin: ‘Freedom of navigation’
Anyone outside White House vortex of spin and lies knew the die was cast as soon as Iran demonstrated its ability to seize the Strait of Hormuz and hold the world’s energy markets hostage. With that, the vaunted principle of “freedom of navigation” that the United States has stood behind not only in the Middle East but around the world was shattered. And, as we are now witnessing, a crack in a fundamental pillar of U.S. power has dire consequences for the U.S.’s stature in the world and the rules-based system that has largely preserved peace and ensured prosperity for the Free World.
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Mitch Jackson:
The Birthday Heist: How Trump’s Freedom 250 Took the Money and Lost the CrowdThey built a shell company inside a beloved charity, sold access to the President, and rerouted other people’s donations. Confusion was the business model and clarity is the antidote.
(Mitch Jackson more…)Tyler Walicek @ truthout: Report From House Dems: Trump Used 250th Planning to Hide Corruption
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Marisa Kabas:
We didn’t need a rape accusation to know Graham Platner was unfitRebecca Solnit: Pod Save Patriarchy (or Whatever That Sorry Platner Spectacle Was)
Elad Nehorai: Platner Didn’t Have To Happen
He wasn’t inevitable. He wasn’t organic. He was the result of a recruitment effort rooted in the very biases that have allowed him to stay in the race this long.
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Jess Piper: I hope we recognize the qualified people who think they can’t run versus those who shouldn’t
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Michele Hornish: Investing in people and places pays off
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Samantha Cole @ 404 Media: Cops Say Waymo Snitched on Teens for Allegedly Drinking and Shooting a Toy Gun
The San Mateo Police Department posted on Facebook: “Parents do you know where your teens are? Waymo does!”
(Samantha Cole @ 404 Media more…)
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The Shovel: USA Through to Final Eight After FIFA Agrees To Overturn Loss To Belgium
Peter Rutzler @ Times of London: Belgium do the ‘Trump dance’ as American dream dies on home soil
Hans Christensen: Overturn This
Mary Geddry: Sometimes Karma Wears Cleats
Will Sommer @ Bulwark: MAGA Loves Trump’s World Cup Meddling—Until We Lose
Felipe @ Borowitz Report: How To Fix Soccer by Donald Trump
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Christina Pagel: Last week in the US: Trump’s $2 billion year, birthright citizenship saga, and attacks on American history
(Christina Pagel more…)
Brockovich AI Data Center Reporting
resources tracking the “Andes” hantavirus outbreak
Apocalypse Early Warning System
Al Jazeera Death toll and injuries live tracker
Mike Ludwig @ truthout: ICE Says 51 People Died in Custody Under Trump. Experts Say That’s an Undercount.
ICE Accountability Project
Sergio Martínez-Beltrán, Ximena Bustillo, Jasmine Garsd @ NPR: Deaths of migrants in ICE custody hit record high under Trump
- July 7: Lorenzo Salgado Araujo
- June 4: Mamuka Artmeladze
- April 16: Aled Damien Carbonell-Betancourt
- March 25: Jose Guadalupe Ramos-Solano
- March 16: Royer Perez-Jimenez
- March 14: Naseer Paktiawil
- February 25: Nurul Amin Shah Alam
April 1 – Jennifer Peltz and Jake Offenhartz @ AP: Death of a refugee left at a Buffalo doughnut shop by Border Patrol is ruled a homicide - January 24: Alex Pretti
- January 14: Heber Sanchaz Dominguez
- January 14: Victor Manuel Diaz
- January 9: Parady La
- January 7: Renée Good
- January 6: Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz
- January 5: Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres
- January 3: Geraldo Lunas Campos
- December 31, 2025: Keith Porter
Suffering Under President Obama
NACDL Criminal Case Tracker
Texas Tribune: A Walk for Peace: photos of Fort Worth monks’ journey to Washington
Walk for Peace – Dhammacetiya – The Ancient Sacred Buddhist Scripture Stupas
Margaret Chase Smith: Declaration of Conscience
NPR: January 6, 2021: A visual archive
Accountability Initiative ICE List
GriftMatrix
Trump Action Tracker
Timeline: Tracking the Trump Justice Department’s Anti-Voting Shift
Tracking the Lawsuits Against Trump’s Agenda
Trump Pardons Database
Project 2025 Tracker
DOGE Tracker
ProPublica: Elon Musk’s Demolition Crew
Wired: 6 Tools for Tracking the Trump Administration’s Attacks on Civil Liberties
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