Edouard Manet, The Races, c. 1865 - c. 1872 #edouardmanet
Letters from an American
• Heather Cox Richardson
August 17, 2026
From Friday through Sunday, Trump continued his now-habitual weekend flooding of social media with fantasies that he is smart, beloved, and powerful.
It’s Natural to Envy Your Friends (Gift Article) (nytimes.com)
A Nazi bunker stands in the way of Berlin’s housing plans (washingtonpost.com)
Ars Technica - All content
• Jennifer Ouellette
Theban tomb reveals how Egyptian burial trends evolved in time
Practices shifted from individuals buried in coffins to reusing sites for later mummy interments.
Trump threatens to bomb Oman if it ‘gets in the way’ over Hormuz (thetimes.com)
Russia fires ex-minister who drew parallels with 1917 revolution (thetimes.com)
U.S. Navy destroyer lost power for 4 days in South China Sea (wapo.st)
Raphael, Group of Three Standing and One Crouching Nude Figures; verso: Two Standing Nude Figures, 16th century #raphael
Watched: Lanterns S1E1, Pilot 📺 I’ll stay with it, see where it goes.
Jeanie Buss contests vote to sell Lakers stake, calls family strategy ‘breach of trust’ (Gift Article) (nytimes.com)
A California County Eyes a New Hire: Tina Peters, the Election Denier (Gift Article) (nytimes.com)
Reform UK: We’ll make jobless do community work or face losing benefits (thetimes.com)
Richard Tice: Scrap net zero and enjoy the weather (thetimes.com)
The San Francisco Standard
• Jane Kenny
The Valkyries clinch: 5 reasons Golden State is headed back to the playoffs
With 10 games left in the regular season, Natalie Nakase’s squad became the second WNBA team to lock up a postseason berth.
Scripting News for email
• Dave Winer
Scripting News: Monday, August 17, 2026
Another busy day programming with Claude on Frontier. I still have to come up with a codename. But we got to a milestone today. I was able to create, edit, publish and revise a web app using the new version of the app still running on the old machine. When it's done I will get to retire this old Mac, keep it around so we can test the new code to make sure it does what the old code does, incredibly important when porting a development and runtime environment. Claude works on its stuff at night. The workload it's going to do tonight is the equivalent of several months time for a skilled human developer who manages their time well. As people get used to working this way, I imagine the AIs will learn how to better work with humans, if that is their destiny. I still can't believe we're doing what we're doing. #
L3Harris Ousts CEO After Investigation Into Conduct (wsj.com)
See How Europe’s Rivers Are Drying Up and Threatening Its Economy (wsj.com)
地方選で飛び交う根拠不明な情報 対抗する地元メディアには葛藤も：朝日新聞 (digital.asahi.com)
digital.asahi.com/articles/ASV8B1W6VV8BUTIL00MM.html?ptoken=01M09F64QT7BHZKAK6W88VK7N4