US News Blogs

• Main - Kottke.org2026-10-14✓ Read

  It’s time to de-privatize the US government. “The problem

  It’s time to de-privatize the US government. “The problem is not just that privatization is often inefficient because it adds a nontransparent layer of profiteering on top of government functions. The problem is that government loses basic capacity.”

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• Inverse2026-10-14✓ Read

  Street Fighter 2026 Movie: Cast, Release Date & Everything We Know

  The highly anticipated Street Fighter reboot releases later this week, and here's everything fans should know going into it.

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• Inverse2026-10-14✓ Read

  The Wildest Survival Thriller Of The Decade Finally Reveals Its Endgame

  Yellowjackets started as a word-of-mouth success on Showtime. Since then, it’s grown its sprawling mystery over two additional seasons, with Season 3 finally showing the survivors a path back home. But with the reveal that Season 4 will be the show’s final season, the pressure is on to wrap things up. Can this final batch of episodes explain what’s really in the Wilderness? And what will happen to the remaining characters in the present?

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• Inverse2026-10-14✓ Read

  Will There Be More Seasons Of ‘Avatar: Seven Havens’? Books 3 And 4 Are On The Way

  When Paramount first announced the continuation of the Avatar saga with Avatar: Seven Havens, the new series was plagued by the constant threat of an untimely leak. Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender had already been leaked in its entirety, and the same hackers claimed they would do the same with episodes of Seven Havens. Paramount seemed eager to get ahead of that; with two seasons of Seven Havens completed and 26 episodes to think about, that instinct made plenty of sense.

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• Jacobin2026-10-14✓ Read

  The Problem With Homeownership

  A few days from now, my adopted hometown of Vancouver in British Columbia is going to elect a new mayor and council. The low turnout in municipal elections here skews toward affluent owners of detached houses who pay the most property tax and grumble about it. Mayor Ken Sim and his ABC (“A Better City”) party, who won the 2022 election, understand their base: they froze property taxes this year after abolishing the living wage for city employees.

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• Inverse2026-10-14✓ Read

  Why Is ‘Godzilla Minus Zero’ Rated R? Producer Reveals The Surprising Reason

  Godzilla Minus Zero upgrades the King of the Monsters in several ways, and one of the more unexpected ones is that it’s the first Godzilla movie to receive an “R” rating in the United States. That’s partially becaise of the monster action: The climactic kaiju battle incorporates realistic gore into the creatures’ sci-fi regenerative abilities, making for a more intense viewing experience than in Godzilla Minus One.

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• Main - Kottke.org2026-10-14✓ Read

  Q: “An AI tool with all your passwords or a bear in the

  Q: “An AI tool with all your passwords or a bear in the woods?” Signal president Meredith Whittaker: “Look, I know social media wants this. I know you guys want this little clip. But what the fuck? What the fuck?? Both are bad!”

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• VVOX2026-10-14✓ Read

  Your flu shot can’t wait

  This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.

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• VVOX2026-10-14✓ Read

  The problem with the US surrogacy system

  For some couples, surrogacy is a miracle: an opportunity to have a child even if they’re unable to conceive one naturally. But it’s also big business. Not only is surrogacy expensive — think six figures — but it’s also largely unregulated. And that last part is becoming a bigger problem.

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• Cracked: All Posts2026-10-14✓ Read

  Ex-Scientologist Chuck Lorre Says the Church Let Him Leave Because He Was Broke

  The ‘Big Bang Theory’ and ‘Two and a Half Men’ creator claims Scientologists only go after wealthy apostates

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• Main - Kottke.org2026-10-14✓ Read

  May Peace Prevail on Earth

  Here are some photos I’ve taken during my time in Tokyo so far. I’ve been posting new stuff more or less daily to Instagram. Somehow I’m already about halfway through my stay.

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• Main - Kottke.org2026-10-14✓ Read

  “‘Digger’ has a lot of haters. Here’s why they’re wrong.”

  “‘Digger’ has a lot of haters. Here’s why they’re wrong.” Digger is fascinating — I can’t remember another big movie where public opinion has been so divided (it’s either genius or garbage). I saw it with a friend and he loved it so much he went again.

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• Jacobin2026-10-14✓ Read

  Student Protests Are Making Their Mark on Serbia’s Election

  Sitting in the trashy garden of a café frequented by students near an iconic Belgrade market, we are, naturally, discussing the elections. A somewhat hippieish father of a friend complains that the situation is terrible, that he’s never seen such polarization, and that decades-old colleagues are barely on speaking terms. He tells me he tried to lighten the atmosphere, joking “Guys, I am neutral, you can relax, you can all be yourselves with me.” His remark didn’t sit well with either camp.

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• Inverse2026-10-14✓ Read

  ‘Doctor Who’ Showrunner Predicts Reboot Filming Start Date— And It’s Sooner Than You Think

  Doctor Who is in big trouble, and the only solution may be time travel. The British sci-fi series has been in trouble after the dissolution of an experimental partnership with Disney, and now it’s officially put out to tender, meaning the BBC is fielding pitches from production companies to decide who should revive the series eventually.

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• Main - Kottke.org2026-10-14✓ Read

  Anthropic says that, as of Sept ‘26, they were merging

  Anthropic says that, as of Sept ‘26, they were merging 30,000 code changes per day, a 12-fold increase from just four months earlier. The volume increased so much that they wrote their own Git alternative.

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• Inverse2026-10-14✓ Read

  ‘Whalefall’ Turns A Biblical Fable Into A B-Movie Survival Thriller

  Taut, tense, and full of tentacles, Whalefall delivers exactly what you want out of a survival thriller.

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• All That's Interesting2026-10-14✓ Read

  The Chilling Story Behind The Only Photo Ever Taken Of A Condemned Prisoner Dying In The Electric Chair

  Ruth Snyder was executed in January 1928 after being found guilty of murder, and a newspaper photographer covertly took a picture of her as she died.

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• Jacobin2026-10-14✓ Read

  How Charles Manson Became a Hero of the American Far Right

  The person most responsible for the recognition of Charles Manson as a quasi-icon of the twenty-first-century radical right is James Mason. Born in 1952, Mason is a lifelong white supremacist activist who joined George Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi Party as a teen, then Joseph Tommasi’s more radical National Socialist Liberation Front, then became even more extreme after he took over that party’s newsletter, Siege (1980–86).

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• Jacobin2026-10-14✓ Read

  Joe Biden’s Team Is Rewriting Its History on Gaza

  After three years of slaughter in Gaza, some leading officials of the Biden administration are trying to justify their record. Figures like Antony Blinken and Brett McGurk have been on media tours recently giving their version of the story. Meanwhile, Akbar Shahid Ahmed has been working to provide a serious account of what really happened.

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• Main - Kottke.org2026-10-14✓ Read

  Whoa, the Lion Nebula!

  NASA’s JWST recently snapped this image of the Lion Nebula (NGC 2392). Massive stars undergo supernova explosions at the end of their lives, but these kinds of events are few and far in between. Most of the universe’s stars have lower masses, like the one belonging to NGC 2392. When a lower-mass star can no longer sustain itself with nuclear reactions in its core, the star becomes unstable and pulsates, losing its mass by shedding its outer layers, which then turn into shells of gas and dust called a planetary nebula.

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