…continues to make (good) waves at CBS News.
All posts by Rand Simberg
The Nature Of The Regime
I hope that Trump has finally figured out that the Islamic Republic of Iran is not an entity with which he can do a deal. If he can keep the strait open, and oil prices down, he won’t have to wait until after the election to get back to the business of ending it.
[Update a few minutes later]
Iran is already begging for a deal; don’t give them one.
Moloch Returns To The Middle East
A piece that I’d forgotten I’d written, over seventeen years ago, that is just as relevant today.
One Of History’s Greatest Monsters
Rousseau was at the root of much of the collectivist evil.
— WG MORROW (@WGMorrow) July 9, 2026
The Qualified
Why they don’t run for office.
— WG MORROW (@WGMorrow) July 9, 2026
Ingrates
I know someone will tell me this is AI.
— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) July 9, 2026
I know.
But it’s a banger. pic.twitter.com/OgAYl8xZRd
Fortunately, Ember isn’t much of a hunter (neutering probably will do that), and his sister Ashe, who is the hunter in the family, generally only brings in butterflies, most of which I manage to save and release. We don’t have mice (AFAIK), but once in a great while she’ll get a bird.
How Iran “Won”
The Iranian tankers in China are full because IRAN has no place to put the oil. They were dumping it into the sea right before the ceasefire after they ran out of storage.
— Matt Forney (@mattforney) July 9, 2026
Prices were never better than they were during the ceasefire. The demand for Iranian oil is gone. It was… https://t.co/jRIklCxOfk pic.twitter.com/iwubxaXhtR
The Mullahs are screwed, but sadly, unless the Iranian people can finally overthrow them, they are as well.
On Platner
No, we didn’t all make mistakes. I sure as hell didn’t. I didn’t on Covid, either, or Biden’s obvious cognitive issues. That’s on them, and we should never trust them again, if we ever did.
[Update a few minutes later]
This is reaping the consequences of the politics of unquestioned assumptions.
I like the kicker: “If they were capable of learning lessons from failure, they wouldn’t be Democrats.”
Coding And AI
An interesting X thread of diverse experiences:
This is a certain kind of talk around LLMs that I find increasingly puzzling. That is all of the people bitching that LLMs constantly generate crap code and hallucinate solutions, and are worthless for programming.
— Eric S. Raymond (@esrtweet) July 8, 2026
This has almost never happened to me, and never during the last…
My own experience is that it can be useful in providing first drafts for things like business plans, requirements documents, etc., but I have to edit, and many wouldn’t have the knowledge to do it properly or recognize issues. It can be a multiplier of both good and bad.
[Update a while ago]
The wages of AI: Professor bans take-home exams after rampant cheating.
What would terrify me about this if I were a student again would be having to go back to handwriting papers and essays. If I didn’t have a keyboard, I’d have hardly written anything in my life.
The Value Of Civilization
Yes, space will be viewed as a waste of money until the looters understand its value, and will then try to take control.