Cracks of Color

Jan Vormann is a German artist who uses LEGO bricks in his artwork. He patches up broken sides of buildings and walls with legos in a beautiful way that turns the structures into art. 

This is one of my favorite uses of Legos that I've come across. And if I may add, it is an incredible and uplifting art initiative! 

Vormann’s global project, known as Dispatchwork, beautifully bridges the gap between childhood playfulness and public architecture. By filling the crumbling, fractured spaces of old stone and brick buildings with vibrant, multicolored LEGO bricks, he doesn't just "fix" a wall – he draws attention to its history while injecting a burst of joy into the urban landscape.

What makes it even better is the interactive nature you mentioned. It transforms regular city dwellers from passive observers into active creators, reminding everyone that public spaces belong to the community and can be reimagined through collective creativity. 

The project was born in Bocchignano, a small medieval village in the Sabina region of Italy. In 2007, he was participating in the "20 Eventi" contemporary art festival in the region. Inspired by the village's historic ruins, he began spontaneously filling the gaps, cracks, and missing sections of its ancient stone walls with bright, multicolored LEGO bricks. 

This temporary intervention launched his famous global street art movement known as Dispatchwork. He describes it as a "multiplayer game" for cities. 

The artistic concept rests on three core pillars:

• Embracing Impermanence: Vormann intentionally does not use glue or cement. The structures are meant to be temporary. He welcomes the fact that children often take the loose LEGO bricks back home to their toy boxes. 
• Highlighting History through Contrast: Inserting modern, mass-produced plastic into ancient, eroded masonry draws immediate visual attention to the wear and tear of historical sites. It emphasizes how cities continuously repair themselves over centuries. 
• Democratic Public Art: The project bypasses traditional art institutions. Through his website, Vormann invites anyone worldwide to "patch" their own neighborhoods, making the act of urban preservation a collaborative and playful community experience.

Vormann and a global network of volunteers have installed LEGO patches across more than 40 cities worldwide. Notable historical and urban sites include Berlin in Germany, New York City in USA, Toulouse in France, Aberdeen in Scotland, and even Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia! 

In KL, the Dispatchwork installation was famously initiated at the historic Pudu Jail (specifically along Jalan Hang Tuah). The intervention done in April 2016 was carried out by independent global contributors named Kaffy, Wikkee, and Caibin, who submitted their work directly to the official Dispatchwork archive. 

True to the collaborative nature of the project, they chose the crumbling perimeter of this notorious, century-old prison site to insert bright, modern toy bricks into the gaps of its weathered structures. 

It is important to highlight that because Jan Vormann’s philosophy strictly dictates never using glue or permanent fixtures, these plastic patches are highly transient. 

Over the years, much of the original Pudu Jail complex has been demolished or heavily redeveloped into modern commercial projects (like Lalaport BBCC), meaning the original 2016 bricks have likely been removed, built over, or taken home by passersby.

World's Most Dangerous Rogue States

The United States and Israel are the world's most dangerous, rogue actors, functioning as the preeminent engine of global instability, and acting as the primary existential threat to world peace through calculated, widespread aggression. 

It is a well-known fact that the US has been at war 222 out of 239 years since 1776. And, since Israel's founding in 1948, the country has been in a state of near-perpetual conflict. 

Today, Donald Trump (far left) and Benjamin Netanyahu (left), both war criminals, represent the new axis of evil.

The war against Iran is their latest handiwork. It began on February 28 and the two didn't just target the Islamic Republic; they murdered the prospect of peace by launching joint, pre-emptive strikes against the country while diplomatic talks were still taking place. A calculated, unlawful act by the US and Israel.

Presently, the grueling war has petered into the current stalemate that brings a temporary lull to the battlefield, yet the rhetorical warfare remains fiercely active. 

On Tuesday, during Trump's address at the 81st session of the UN General Assembly, he openly mused whether he should completely "annihilate" Iran and drive the nation into hell with "no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations". 

By using the UN podium to openly contemplate wiping out a fellow member state, Trump brought an indecent irony to his delivery at the United Nations – an organisation founded to save future generations from war. 😡😡😡

The Great Unwind: China Cuts US Debt to 18-Year Low

China pruned its holdings of US Treasuries to an 18-year low in July, as overall holdings by foreign countries fell for a second consecutive month amid deepening worries over the sustainability of American government debt. 

China’s holdings fell to $618 billion in July from $633.4 billion in June, data released by the US Treasury Department showed on Wednesday. 

This rapid divestment is a calculated strategy driven by three core motivations: 

Sanction Insulation: Following the freezing of Russia’s foreign reserves by Western nations, Beijing increasingly views dollar-denominated assets as a geopolitical vulnerability. Reducing this exposure shields its global reserves from potential future sanctions. 

US Debt Sustainability Fears: Deepening worries over the expanding American government deficit raise valid concerns about long-term dollar stability. To avoid holding potentially depreciating paper debt, China is proactively shifting its wealth. 

The Pivot to Hard Assets: Instead of parking trade surpluses in US bonds, China is diversifying into harder, less volatile assets. Most notably, it has ramped up its sovereign gold reserves, which serve as a stateless store of value that cannot be devalued or frozen by a foreign power. 

Ultimately, while $618 billion remains a Brobdingnagian financial position, the trajectory is clear. Beijing is steadily swapping its reliance on the American financial system for more sovereign, independent stores of value.

Weaponizing Space: The US Aggression

On September 14, 2026, US Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink announced at the Air, Space & Cyber Conference that the United States has fielded "on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action". 

This marks the first time any global superpower has publicly acknowledged having active, offensive technology positioned directly in Earth's orbit. 

The public admission of orbital weapons deployment underscores a deeply disturbing shift toward absolute military dominance, signaling clear belligerence and warmongering intentions by the United States. Far from a measure of passive defense, moving active weaponry into Earth's orbit effectively breaks a decades-long global taboo against the weaponization of space, transforming the final frontier into a potential theater of war. 

Sivasangari Subramaniam was just two points away from beating the World No. 1 in the Qatar Classic semi-final in Doha on Thursday. 

But the Malaysian, having dragged Egypt's Hania El Hammamy all the way to a fifth-game tiebreak, just couldn't finish it off. It was easily the match of the year – an 87-minute battlefield that ultimately ended 8-11, 11-9, 15-13, 9-11, 12-10 in Hania's favour. 

A loss is still a loss. 

Sure, this was her maiden Platinum-level semi-final. Sure, breaking into the top four in Doha proves she is actively scaling the highest tier of the global game. 

But she still couldn't cross the finish line. Even though she remains the highest-ranked Malaysian since the legendary Nicol David, being a torchbearer isn't the same as holding the trophy. This performance wasn't a ceiling; it was a benchmark – and a stark reminder of the gap she needs to close.

Iran Will Not Fold

Donald Trump announced that the United States could potentially stay in Iran and "keep the oil" suggests that he is fundamentally miscalculating the war in Iran by treating its sovereign natural resources as low-hanging fruit. His brazen declaration – just as it did after removing Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela – exposes a dangerous strategic delusion. 

[While reports surfaced globally on September 14, 2026, Trump originally made these specific remarks to reporters a day earlier, while attending the Irish Open golf championship in Doonbeg, Ireland. He later confirmed in a phone interview with NBC News on Monday that seizing Iranian oil has actively been discussed within his administration].

This overt ambition to seize sovereign oil reserves is a blatant violation of international law. Under the Geneva Conventions and international legal frameworks, the unilateral confiscation of another nation's natural resources for domestic profit constitutes the war crime of pillage.

Trump’s blueprint relies on a completely flawed comparison that ignores both legal and geopolitical realities: 

• The Flawed Analogy: In August 2026, the US successfully leveraged a rapid regime collapse in Caracas to force a deal ceding control of 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil. Trump explicitly views this asset seizure as a repeatable model to pay for US military interventions. 
• The Institutional Reality: Venezuela’s command structure imploded because it was tied to a single strongman. Conversely, Iran is a deeply institutionalized, ideologically driven theocracy. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have completely rejected US overtures, vowing a war of attrition rather than capitulation. 
• The Strategic Lever: While Venezuela's oil infrastructure was easily isolated, Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran has already weaponized this chokepoint to choke global supplies, spiking US fuel prices and using global markets as a counter-offensive shield. 

Trump’s hubris in thinking he can simply dictate an exit strategy, secure the oil fields, and walk away with Iran’s wealth is an outright fantasy. Tehran will not fold to a "Venezuela-style" playbook, and any attempt to permanently occupy its oil reserves will violate international laws against resource theft, pulling the US into an un-winnable regional quagmire. 

Ultimately, Washington's strategic calculus fails to recognize that Iran is a different proposition entirely. History and regional resilience suggest that Iran will not be defeated; in fact, if pushed into a prolonged war of attrition, Iran will, for sure, prevail over the US.

Heading to China? The US Wants You to Read This First

The latest fearmongering to discourage Americans visiting China! LOL!

The US State Department have issued a stark warning to their citizens planning travel to China, cautioning that they risk facing sudden exit bans, arbitrary detentions, and intense digital surveillance under the country’s broad security laws.

Updated on September 04, 2026, the Level 2: Exercise Increased Caution advisory sharpens its language regarding the lack of legal transparency in mainland China. It explicitly warns that local authorities frequently enforce laws arbitrarily and impose exit bans without due process. This expansive security network poses a significant, hidden threat to Americans traveling for business, research, education, journalism, or family visits – often long before they realize they are a target.

In fact, I refrained from blogging about this immediately upon discovering it, as the matter is frankly just too LUDICROUS to warrant my comment. Unless you are in China for nefarious reasons, there's absolutely nothing to worry about. 🙄🙄🙄 

Liverpool secured a 3-1 victory over Tottenham Hotspur in the EFL Cup third round at Anfield yesterday. 

The Reds opened the scoring in the 21st minute through a beautifully worked team move. Cody Gakpo teed up Rio Ngumoha on the edge of the box, who quickly fed Alexis Mac Allister. The Argentine midfielder didn't hesitate, unleashing a first-time strike that flew past the Spurs goalkeeper, leaving him rooted to the spot. 

The Merseysiders then doubled their advantage in the 54th minute when Mac Allister turned provider. He slipped a perfectly threaded pass through to Cody Gakpo, who smartly cut inside the Tottenham defense and unleashed a fierce, clinical drive across the face of goal into the far corner. 

The Lilywhites managed to pull one back in the 69th minute after Liverpool failed to clear a corner, allowing the visitors to bundle the ball into the net from close range. 

However, any hopes of a Spurs comeback were thoroughly dashed in stoppage time. In the 91st minute, Dominik Szoboszlai controlled a loose ball 25 yards out with his first touch, before unleashing an absolute rocket into the back of the net to seal the win.

The China Tech Pilgrimage

Humanoid robots working on factory floors, AI models challenging global rivals and electric-vehicle plants churning out cars at breathtaking scale are drawing a new wave of foreign visitors to China. 

Investors and entrepreneurs are paying thousands of dollars for rare access to Chinese factories, ​seeking a front-row seat to what many believe could be the next technological revolution. The influx reflects mounting fears of a "China shock 2.0", with Western boardrooms and capitals confronting the possibility that Chinese companies are seizing ‌the lead in advanced manufacturing and cutting-edge technologies. 

"Right now, people are looking at China as an object of study and learning – a trend that barely existed just a few years ago", says Robert Wu, CEO of Shanghai-based data research firm Baiguan. He noted that visitors often arrive with misconceptions – for instance, assuming China's robotaxi sector leads the US, when domestic policy caution around potential job losses actually keeps it a step behind. 

According to Reuters, Wu has organised two tours for more than two dozen investors, entrepreneurs and executives so far, charging up to $15,000 for a five-day programme. Around half the participants came from Southeast Asia. 

He is part of a growing cottage industry catering to foreign demand for first-hand access to China's innovation ecosystem. 

Many attendees avoid publicising their visits. Among those known to have made the trip are US investment firms Dimension, Capital Group and Thrive Capital, as well as US tech podcaster Lex Fridman. 

While data on tech tours is scarce, broader industrial tourism is booming. China's industrial tourism sector ⁠pulled in $17.8 billion last year, according to state media, and is projected to blow past 300 billion yuan ($44.6 billion) by 2029. 

Shanghai-based tech tour agency Glopen says inquiries jumped 50% in 2026 from mostly European and Singaporean clients, and it now runs over 100 single-day company tours every month. 

"You cannot grasp the true scale, speed, and physicality of Chinese innovation without standing on the factory floor", says Bertrand Chen, CEO of the Global Shipping Business Network, who joined an April three-city robotics and emerging tech tour organised by Chinese American investor Rui Ma. 

Ma, founder of Tech Buzz China and organizer of eleven such tours since 2019, frames it as essential due diligence: "Even if you're not actively investing in China, you're increasingly likely to encounter Chinese companies as competitors, partners, suppliers, or investments in markets around the world". 

The circuit spans Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Hangzhou and Hefei, the industrial powerhouses at the heart of China's electric-vehicle, battery, AI and robotics boom. 

World leaders too have also flocked to Xiaomi's Beijing auto factory, while Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz was famously filmed watching Unitree's dancing humanoid robots in Hangzhou, a high-profile showcase of the country's technological ascent. 

None of this is happening by accident. 

Beijing has explicitly pledged to "vigorously promote" industrial tourism, designating over 140 official demonstration sites. A growing number of factories are offering public tours at around $60 a pop. 

Xiaomi's EV factory has welcomed more than 250,000 visitors since March 2024. Demand is so intense that lottery-awarded entry slots are scalped online for up to 2,000 yuan ($300). 

Xiaomi told Reuters in a statement that eligibility for visits is determined through an online lottery and tickets cannot ‌be transferred. 

For European ⁠executives wrestling with sluggish productivity growth and fears of falling behind in AI and robotics, China has become a particularly important destination.

Alex Shengyun Lu, a Shanghai-based AI consultant at Praxis Advisory, has led seven delegations of up to 50 corporate visitors since late 2025 and describes an uneasy mood. 

"The smartest people in Europe are acutely aware of the situation. The insecurity is palpable", he says. 

Executives typically arrive seeking answers to two questions, Lu said: what they can learn from Chinese companies and from China's state-backed approach to technology investment. 

"They are coming here with a genuine mindset of humility and learning". 

Lu, who declined to name the companies due to confidentiality agreements, says many European executives want to understand how China coordinates AI deployment across provinces at scale and what ​lessons can be applied back home. 

Still, some industry observers caution against overstating China's advantage. 

"Non-Chinese (tech) companies still have most of ⁠the global market share, the most advanced IP, and the biggest profits", Tech Buzz founder Ma insists. 

Even so, the flow of tech pilgrims remains strong, including American visitors despite escalating US-China technology tensions. 

"The people who are actually on the ground trying to build physical products don't care about the politics at all", says Joshua Woodard, a US manufacturing consultant based in Shenzhen. 

"US robotics companies still heavily source components and hardware from China. We pretend we can do it all ourselves in America, but it is incredibly hard to completely decouple".

Shark Nannies: The Ultimate Baby-Sitters

Just off Kri Island in Raja Ampat, Indonesia, meter-long dotted sharks glide underwater – a sight conservationists say was vanishingly rare until recently. 

The Indo-Pacific leopard shark – also known as the zebra shark – has historically inhabited reefs along Indo-West Pacific Ocean, the Red Sea, East Africa, Japan, and Australia. But years of habitat destruction and overfishing have reduced the population by 50-79% over the past three generations (around 57 to 72 years), and they are classified as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). While their historic decline was driven by the shark fin trade, overfishing pressures persist through accidental bycatch and trade in its exotic leather. 

In Raja Ampat, less than a decade ago they had all but disappeared. The IUCN SSC Shark Specialist Group estimated that left alone, the archipelago’s population could take between 100 and 200 years to recover naturally. 

Now, a global group called ReShark say they are attempting to “restore balance to the ocean” with what they describe as the world’s first shark rewilding program. The initiative, known as the Stegostoma tigrinum Augmentation and Recovery (StAR) project, after the shark’s scientific name, sees leopard sharks bred in aquariums around the world, before the offspring are released into protected waters in Indonesia and Thailand. 

“Back in 2019, in Raja Ampat, we estimated that there were about 20 individual adult sharks remaining”, says Mark Erdmann (left), executive director of ReShark. 

“Most conservation activities for sharks usually revolve around either setting up marine protected areas or doing fisheries management. In our case, our niche is we’re doing active recovery”. 

The idea first emerged during a visit Erdmann made to Singapore’s SEA Aquarium in 2015. The staff showed him tanks crowded with baby leopard sharks they had successfully bred in captivity. 

“They said, ‘we actually have a problem, we’re producing too many pups, and we don’t know what to do with them’”, Erdmann recalls. 

That encounter sparked an eight-year effort involving governments, aquariums, nonprofits, academics, local communities and conservation scientists who worked together to release captive pups into Indonesian waters. 

Like many sharks, the Indo-Pacific leopard sharks are harmless to humans. But unlike most sharks, they reproduce by laying eggs. In fact, they’re the largest of the egg-laying sharks, a trait that makes them well suited for this rewilding effort. 

“About 43% of sharks are egg layers”, says David Ebert (right), program director at the Pacific Shark Research Center, San Jose State University, who is not connected with ReShark. “With live bearing, you have a whole different set of issues to deal with. So, this is probably a good species to potentially start with”. 

His global efforts to spot elusive sharks have seen Ebert become known online as the “Lost Shark Guy”. In his opinion, the leopard shark has another advantage, “the cute factor”, which can help the public get on board with conservation initiatives. 

ReShark, supported by Rolex’s Perpetual Planet Initiative, have partnered with nearly 60 aquariums worldwide. Of those, about a dozen across the United States, Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore are actively breeding sharks for the program, according to Erdmann. 

Viable eggs from global aquariums are transported to ReShark’s two nurseries in Raja Ampat and Phuket, Thailand. There, specially trained aquarium managers – nicknamed “shark nannies” – monitor the eggs, care for the pups and prepare them for life in the wild. Once the sharks grow to a meter long and can forage food for themselves, they are tagged and released into protected waters. 

The nickname may sound playful, but the work is highly technical. Shark nannies undergo months of training in animal husbandry, often supported by large public aquariums. An internship program hires residents rather than international volunteers, to involve local communities. 

“It’s super important that the people in Raja Ampat and the people in Phuket are supportive of this program, and that we don’t fall back to the way it was 10 or 15 years ago when these sharks were being caught and killed”, says Erdmann. 

Some shark experts remain cautious about the program’s long-term effectiveness. 

Ebert, who has spent more than four decades studying sharks and rays around the world, describes the program as innovative but still largely experimental. 

“It’s kind of a neat science project,” he says. “But how’s it going to impact the (shark) population? That’s the big question”. 

Among his concerns is whether the released sharks will survive long enough to reproduce in the wild. Since leopard sharks are believed to take between five to 12 years to reach maturity, the earliest ReShark will find out if its first released pups are breeding is 2028.

Saving Children from Their Parents’ Creativity

"Ikea", "Fanta" and "Chanel". These names of a major furniture retailer, a soft drink and a luxury brand, respectively, have all also been given to babies in Germany. 

But joining this brand line-up, names drawn from Japanese such as "Taro" and "Kasai" are also said to be proving popular overseas in recent years. In Japan, the revised Family Register Act took effect in May 2025, requiring the readings of names to be added in family registers in the phonetic katakana syllabary. For so-called "kira-kira" names, or "sparkling" names with unorthodox readings, including foreign-style names and character names assigned to kanji, the revised law set a standard that readings differing from the original readings of the kanji must be "generally recognized as readings of characters used in names". 

The legal revision was reported around the world, including by The New York Times. The German magazine Der Spiegel, in an article with a headlined translating as "Japan introduces stricter rules for children's names", presented names symbolized in kanji for "Pikachu", "Nike" and "Kitty" as examples of kira-kira names. 

But as the German examples above show, "eccentric" names also exist in Europe and the United States. 

According to Knud Bielefeld (right), a name researcher in Ahrensburg in northern Germany, such names are rare but are sometimes chosen out of a desire to "give a child a special name". This appears to have something in common with parents in Japan who give their children kira-kira names. 

As reported by Western media reports, there was a child in Britain in 2024 named "Everest", the same as the world's highest mountain. In the United States, "Kasai" is gaining popularity as a boy's name meaning fire, and several hundred children were given the name in 2025. It is also said to be derived from the Japanese word "kasai", meaning a destructive fire. 

In some cases, however, courts have rejected unusual names, citing concerns including the risk that children could become targets of bullying. 

In France in 2015, the court rejected the name "Nutella", the same as the popular chocolate spread, for a girl. In Sweden in 1996, there was reportedly a case in which parents tried to have a long name made up of 43 letters of the alphabet with no vowels and a number read as "Albin", but it was not approved. 

At their core, both Japan's kira-kira names and the brand-inspired names of the West stem from the same place – a parent's deep wish to gift their child a special identity. However, as the legal backlash in Sweden, France, and Japan demonstrates, a name is never just a personal choice. It is a child's first introduction to the world, and striking the balance between 'memorable' and 'practical' is a global challenge that isn't going away anytime soon.

Donald Trump’s Wild Weekend: From the Moon to ‘New America’

On September 06, 2026, US President Donald Trump posted an image of Earth's natural satellite on Truth Social overlaid with the text “THE MOON IS OURS” alongside an American flag. 

Of course, the post went viral globally. 

He should know he cannot legally own or have the authority to claim the Moon for the United States, despite his viral social media assertion. 

• The Outer Space Treaty of 1967: Drafted in part by the United States and signed by over 100 countries, Article II of this treaty explicitly states that outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, use, occupation, or any other means. 
• Province of All Mankind: Under international space law, the Moon is legally designated as a shared resource for all humanity, meaning it cannot be added to any country's territorial or real estate portfolio. 

Media analysis indicates that the Moon graphic was part of a rapid-fire series of speculative and satirical posts. This sequence included AI-generated concepts for black US Space Force uniforms and altered geographic maps. 

Critics were quick to mock the sheer absurdity of trying to annex the cosmos with a social media graphic, noting that the stunt perfectly encapsulates Trump's signature brand of delusional showmanship and low-effort internet trolling. Legal and space policy experts emphasize that this social media assertion functions strictly as hollow political theater rather than a formal executive action or a shift in official US space policy.

On the same day too, Trump shared social media posts promoting the renaming of New Mexico to "New America". He started by uploading a modified United States map alongside an AI-generated video that showed an "America" sticker being placed over a "Welcome to New Mexico" highway sign.

After the maps went viral, he persisted with a text post claiming that "many people" had voiced the idea to him, writing: "Many people suggested changing the name of New Mexico... to NEW AMERICA. So much more prestigious and beautiful for the people of that potentially incredible State. Wow, I Love It!!!"

However, the US federal government have no authority to change the name of a state. New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham (right) rejected the proposal in a post on X, stating, "New Mexico's name isn't up for debate – it's been ours since before the United States existed". 

Following the viral pushback from local leaders, Trump aggressively doubled down the next day when he went on a rapid-fire spree, posting seven more times within a single hour with additional map variations and flag memes to keep the topic trending. 

The Comic Strip Commando

Welcome to the US War/Defense Department gaming lobby: how a cartoon perfectly captures Pete Hegseth’s high-octane, culture-war defense doctrine. 

Imagine a Pentagon briefing room transformed into a teenage boy’s bedroom – complete with action figures, Monster Energy drinks, and a speaker blasting death metal – and you’ve got the exact vibe of the former co-host (right) of Fox & Friends Weekend’s "warrior ethos".💥 

In fact, Graeme MacKay’s three-panel editorial cartoon, published on September 04, 2026, for The Toronto Star and The Hamilton Spectator, captures this exact brand of military doctrine.

It is less a grand geopolitical strategy and more a hyper-charged schoolyard fantasy where the Department of War/Defense operates like a live-action GI Joe commercial.

Instead of traditional defense diplomacy, his public messaging stands out through a bizarre trifecta:

• Hypermasculine chest-thumping💪
• Call of Duty-style meme culture📱
• Militant Christian nationalism⛪

Because apparently, nothing screams "national security" quite like running the world's most powerful military like an energy-drink-fueled gaming lobby. 🎮🛡️

The questionable appointment of Pete Hegseth serves as a prime example of the Donald Trump administration's disruptive approach to governance. Alongside a lineup featuring JD Vance, Scott Bessent, Marco Rubio, and others, his prominent role reinforces fears that the United States is sliding downhill. In fact, the whole White House leadership operates less like a strategic team and more like an accelerated eviction notice for both American stability and international security. 

A tough Champions League match awaited Liverpool yesterday as they took on Atlético Madrid. Of course, they were unfazed and went on to win 2-1. 

Diego Simeone's side actually scored first in the 17th minute. The Reds pushed back hard and found their equalizer in the 40th minute through Dominik Szoboszlai, who converted a pass from Ronald Araújo. 

And then, in the 50th minute, Alexis Mac Allister scored Liverpool's winning goal with a stunning long-range rocket to complete the comeback.

Road Runner's Final Lap

Let's clear the air: cartoons aren't real! Most of the time, anyway! 

And, sometimes, the coyote catches the road runner. In the classic “Looney Tunes” cartoons featuring the Road Runner and Wile E Coyote, which first appeared in 1949, the coyote is foiled again and again in his efforts to catch the puckish bird in the deserts of the American Southwest. 

But a photographer in the Chatsworth Nature Preserve in Los Angeles on Saturday captured a real-life image of something you would never see in that cartoon: a coyote who successfully nabbed a road runner, instead of falling from a cliff, getting hit by a train or having an anvil land on him. 

The snapper, Alexander deBarros (right), took the photo while out with a survey team from the San Fernando Valley Audubon Society for a monthly check of the ecosystem at the preserve, a 1,325-acre space in northwestern Los Angeles. (The photograph was reported by the Los Angeles TV news station KTLA). 

There is no indication that this coyote effected the capture through the use of an Acme jet-propelled pogo-stick, Acme rocket-powered roller skates or Acme dehydrated boulders (“Just add water!”). 

Also, there were no reports of the road runner saying, “Beep, beep”.

While the image proved that coyotes do sometimes come out on top against road runners, it’s not a common occurrence. 

“It is considered very rare for a coyote to catch a road runner”, said Scott El Henke, a professor at the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute at Texas A&M University, Kingsville. Road runners can run about 20 miles an hour and are agile, he asserted. 

“Physically they can outrun a coyote”, he added, and they “can fly up into tree branches to escape attacks”. 

DeBarros said in an interview that he initially thought the prey might be a ground squirrel. 

“When we confirmed that it was, in fact, a road runner in that coyote’s mouth, we freaked out a little bit”, he intoned. He claimed in 17 years of birding, it was the first time he had seen the cartoon antagonists together. 

When DeBarros spotted the coyote, it already had the road runner in its mouth. He did not see any chase or kill. 

Dr. Henke said this particular road runner might have been caught because it was distracted hunting its own prey, or perhaps it had been hit by a vehicle and was scavenged by the coyote. 

Scavenged? Maybe Wile E didn’t catch the road runner after all. 

Another coyote expert, Stanley D Gehrt, a professor of wildlife ecology at Ohio State University, agreed that the scavenger theory could be true. 

“But I have learned to never underestimate coyotes”, he said. “They can do anything, even catch a road runner”. 

[FYI, the species found in the American Southwest and depicted in the cartoons is the Greater Roadrunner (Geococcyx californianus)]. 

In an odd coincidence, DeBarros’s father, Brian Mainolfi, is an animator who worked with Chuck Jones, a creator of the coyote-road runner cartoons, on the 1994 cartoon “Chariots of Fur”. 

Jones, who died in 2002, once said he got the idea for the coyote character from a travel book by a classic novelist. 

“I first got interested in the coyote as an animal while perusing Mark Twain’s ‘Roughing It’ at the age of 7”, he said in a 1989 interview with The New York Times. “I thought of it as a sort of dissolute collie. And actually, that’s just about what a coyote is! No one saw it more clearly than Mark Twain”. 

The cartoon has been back on the radar since the American release on August 28th of the movie “Coyote vs. Acme”, in which the coyote sues the Acme Corporation for its defective products. (It is fictional). 

The feature is dong exceptionally well. It earned a spectacular 95% 'Certified Fresh' score on Rotten Tomatoes and an A CinemaScore from audiences.

But did you know that it has an intriguing back story? 

After years of headlines mourning its potential deletion, the theatrical run of "Coyote vs. Acme" has turned the film into one of Hollywood's ultimate underdog success stories.

Independent distributor Ketchup Entertainment acquired the worldwide rights for roughly $50 million, stepping in to rescue the live-action/animated hybrid after Warner Bros. Discovery initially chose to shelve it for a $30 million tax write-off in late 2023. 

Size Matters: UN Fixes the World Map

The United Nations on September 04 voted for a shift away from the 16th-century Mercator global map toward one more accurately reflecting countries' true size, a resolution sponsored by African states to counter perceptions that the continent is peripheral. 

Togo led the initiative to advance the African Union campaign to limit use of the Mercator map, which distorts the relative size of land masses by expanding those nearer the poles. It makes Greenland appear roughly the same size as Africa, though the latter is about 14 times larger. 

"A fair world begins with a fair map", ⁠Togo's Foreign Minister Robert Dussey ⁠told Reuters ahead of Friday's vote. 

The resolution promotes ‌the Equal Earth projection, which more accurately portrays the size of the continents. It is not legally binding and it "in no way challenges the use of the Mercator projection for maritime and aerial navigation, for which it remains fully suited", the Togolese ministry said in a statement. 

The ⁠resolution passed in the UN General Assembly by a vote of 164 to one, with six abstentions. The United States, the only country to vote against the resolution, said it promoted an "ideological agenda" and was a distraction ‌from the "genuine problems of international peace, prosperity or good relations". What BS! 

The Mercator map remains widely used in classrooms, but Togo hopes to change its school geography materials by the end of the year, Dussey told Reuters. 

"Togo will be ​the first country to change our own geography books", Dussey said. "In the classroom, we need to change it to give an example to ⁠all the countries in the world". 

His country will press other governments, schools, international organizations and technology companies to ⁠move away from the centuries-old Mercator projection, Dussey said, adding that Equal Earth offers "the best perception" of ⁠the ⁠world. 

Dussey linked the campaign to adopt the map to wider African efforts to confront colonial-era legacies, while saying it was not an attack on Europe or any other civilization. 

The Mercator map's widespread use is a consequence of colonization, he insisted. 

"The world is ⁠changing. Africa also is changing".

From Donald Trump:

There's absolutely no need for words because it is self-explanatory.

Chasing the Book Devourers

Amazon have been caught scanning and destroying a large shipment of rare books so they can train their AI models. 

In an investigation by 404 Media, a US bookseller suspected that an order they received for 1,000 books on Biblio, a marketplace where buyers can remain anonymous, was for an AI company. 

So to get to the bottom of the mystery, they agreed to place an Apple AirTag between the pages of one of the volumes. The tracking device traveled across multiple US states, eventually terminating at a high-security Amazon facility in Las Vegas, Nevada. 

Inside this warehouse, a specialized unit code-named VGT3 systematically processes incoming books by slicing off their bindings, scanning the pages for digital intake, and destroying the physical originals. 

This aggressive scanning pipeline highlights the extreme lengths to which tech companies will go to secure high-quality training datasets, particularly pre-2022 literature that is completely free of AI-generated content. 

While independent booksellers watch their inventories get shredded, legal and ethical questions are mounting over the practice of turning physical, copy-protected books into digital training data before disposing of the evidence. 

Amazon defended the operation in a brief statement, claiming they purchase books through commercial channels to improve their products and services, but the revelation has ignited intense debate over the systematic destruction of physical human knowledge to fuel artificial systems.

Despite Amazon clearly trying to keep this practice under wraps, the logo for the part of the warehouse the book scanners work in, called VGT3, is so on the nose that it borders on farce: a T-Rex holding a book in its hand that it’s about to eat – which, we have to say, kind of looks AI-generated. 

Futurism's Frank Landymore reported on August 17, 2026 that the public only became aware of this AI industry practice in a lawsuit against Anthropic, which revealed that the Claude chatbot maker was using industrial equipment to cut the pages out of millions of books and scan them, before they were disposed of. 

More alarming was the upshot of that lawsuit, Bartz vs. Anthropic when Judge William Alsup in the US District Court for the Northern District of California ruled on June 23, 2025 that this specific one-for-one digital conversion of legally purchased print books for internal AI training was "spectacularly transformative" and constituted fair use, as the digital copies were not shared or sold outside the company. 

Since then, book sellers have often suspected that their wares are being used, and then destroyed, to train AI models. In previous 404 reporting, one said that some of the giveaways were the size of the orders, the seemingly random selection of books, and that the books all had ISBNs. But they couldn’t prove this hunch because the orders are anonymous. 

As 404 notes, that the workers at the Amazon site are apparently scanning the ISBNs of all the books they process gives credence to a spooky theory by booksellers: that AI companies are trying to scan every printed book in the world by going through a list of all their serial numbers.

The bookseller 404 worked with sold books that are rare, meaning that there are few copies left in circulation. That can be for a myriad of reasons – they’re not necessarily first editions of old classics – but they’re still valuable. 

“There are different types of value”, the bookseller told 404. “There’s monetary value, obviously, but there are a lot of other types of value. There’s historical value, intellectual value, sentimental value. All sorts of things, and all of those the AI companies don’t care about. They just want the content as a bunch of words strung together”.

The World According to Trump

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday, suggested renaming the Strait of Hormuz as “Trump Strait” despite ongoing clashes with Iran – then hours later implied he wasn’t serious. 

He has made a series of geographical name changes to international bodies of water in his second term, at least partly with the aim of trolling other countries. 

The latest suggestion came as Trump insisted the US had full control of the crucial waterway, even as fresh clashes raged there with Iran. 

“Now that we have it under USA control, should we change the name Hormuz Strait to TRUMP STRAIT??? Like America itself, it would be ‘hotter’ than ever before!” Trump said on his Truth Social network. 

The White House later posted a map of the Gulf on social media with his suggested name, adding: “It’s got a nice ring to it”. 

Trump has in recent weeks repeatedly threatened to claim sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, even posting a map showing the waterway as a “new US territory”. Trump, however, later played down the idea of rebranding the Strait of Hormuz. 

This psychological warfare via cartography mirrors Executive Order 14422 Trump signed to officially rename Lake Ontario as "Lake America" on August 27, 2026. 

Even major tech platforms like Google Maps and Apple Maps have already updated their platforms to display "Lake America" exclusively for US-based users. 

The aggressive rebrand has sparked severe backlash from America's northern neighbor. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Ontario Premier Doug Ford both condemned the action, asserting the 400-year-old body of water will remain "Lake Ontario, now and forever". 

Ford's administration went as far as erecting a massive physical "Lake Ontario" signage on the shoreline as a direct jab back at Washington. 

The Great Lake rebranding marks the second official success of Trump's broader geographical campaign, following his executive order in early 2025 that legally designated the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” on official US federal maps. 

I won't be surprised if the Pentagon’s next strategic deployment includes a highly armed team of graphic designers to update the world’s maps before the international borders decide to sue for trademark infringement! 😝