Men's Lifestyle August 14, 2026 0 Comments

How Trump’s Latest Military Spending Stunt Could Silence Your Wallet—And Why You Need to Know Now

Ever wonder if those sleek, shiny countertops in your dream kitchen hide a deadly secret? Yeah, me too—and it’s not about stains or scratches. Turns out, the very surfaces we covet might be silently sabotaging the folks who craft them. We’re diving deep into a modern-day Gilded Age horror story where engineered stone countertops are literally cutting lives short, affecting hundreds, if not thousands, across the nation. It’s a grim reminder that sometimes, our quest for perfection has a hidden cost — one measured not in dollars, but lost breaths. Stick around—this story’s got layers, dust, and a hard-hitting reality you won’t wanna gloss over. LEARN MORE

9 min read

Out on the Weekend

(Permanent Musical Accompaniment to the Last Post of the Week from the Blog’s Favourite Living Canadian)

And now … killer countertops. From the Los Angeles Times:

Latino men who cut artificial stone countertops in California are falling ill from an incurable and deadly lung disease at an alarming rate, a new study finds. These workers are developing silicosis, a condition in which microscopic silica dust contained in the stone slabs they grind and polish is cutting up the inside of their lungs until the organs fail. Life expectancy can be extended through a lung transplant, but even then the fatal disease will continue to progress. The number of silicosis cases reported in California has increased more than tenfold in less than four years—from 2019 through 2022 there were 47 cases; from 2023 through August of this year, there have been 571, according to data from the state Department of Public Health.

This is some real Gilded Age shit right here.

“It’s become clear that this product engineered stone countertops … cannot be manufactured safely and economically,” said David Michaels, professor of environmental and occupational health at George Washington University and co-author of the study. “This is a product that we do not need that is damaging the lungs of hundreds of workers [in California] and probably thousands of workers across the country.”

A proposed bill to tighten safety protocols at stone fabrication shops and publish reports of compliance was put on hold in 2024.

Then in 2025, California Senate Bill 20 expanded the state public health agency’s role in silicosis surveillance, outreach and education, and the department designated silicosis as a mandatory reportable condition in California.

Under this law, employers are required to take steps to protect workers, such as providing protective respirators and using water to suppress dust, when employees are cutting, grinding or polishing slabs. It also eliminated an earlier loophole that allowed stonecutting manufacturers to dodge safety requirements by claiming that protective steps weren’t feasible.

Australia banned artificial stone containing more than 1 percent silica, and it had a material effect on the cases of silicosis. But the resonance is deeper than that. Six hundred people have died because some of our fellow citizens want prettier kitchens.

He gets something in his head and you can’t dislodge it with a tactical nuke. From The Guardian:

After nearly a decade of loudly complaining about the fact that modern U.S. aircraft carriers use electromagnetic systems to launch fighter jets instead of steam-powered catapults, Donald Trump has directed the Pentagon to redesign a new aircraft carrier to replace the modern system with the old-fashioned catapults he prefers.

Trump signed a national security memorandum on Thursday directing the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the acting navy secretary, Hung Cao, to make the change he has had his heart set on since at least 2017, when he first described his idea to Time magazine.

The memorandum gives the Pentagon leaders 60 days to come up with “a plan on the required measures to replace the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System and Advanced Weapons Elevators with steam and hydraulic systems for the construction of” the USS Doris Miller, a Ford-class aircraft carrier, which is already two years behind schedule.

It was over this issue where we learned that magnets don’t work when they get wet.

“You know the catapult is quite important,” Trump told Time magazine in 2017 before recounting a conversation he said he had with an unnamed navy officer.

“So I said, ‘What is this?’ ‘Sir, this is our digital catapult system,’ ” Trump went on. “It sounded bad to me. Digital. They have digital. What is digital? And it’s very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out. And I said—and now they want to buy more aircraft carriers—I said, ‘What system are you going to be’—‘Sir, we’re staying with digital.’ I said, ‘No you’re not. You[’re] going to goddamned steam, the digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it’s no good.’ ”

God only knows how much this idiocy is going to cost. Maybe he’ll find another pool guy.

Hef was on the case. From NewsNation:

Hugh Hefner reportedly notified the FBI that a Playboy Playmate was sexually abused and trafficked by disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein and others in his orbit. Court records state that Hefner was told by then-Playboy Playmate Audra Christiansen in 2005 that she was an Epstein survivor and requested the Playboy founder call the FBI, arguing he would have more status than her with the authorities. Hefner allegedly called the FBI several times with the tip, who didn’t investigate the claim for 15 years, according to court documents.

Good God, did everybody know about this monster? The more I read stories like this, the more I think the Epstein Class should become a permanent, nonpartisan collective in our political lexicon. Once again, we have to thank the relentless Julie K. Brown for revealing Christiansen’s story. Good on Hef for trying.

Here are the folks at Tiger Beat on the Potomac still trying to sweeten the White House beat.

Yet as Trump approaches the midpoint of his term, there’s also mounting evidence that he has gotten the better of the markets. And while the president hates the notion of TACO, he has privately made a similar point, a person familiar with the matter told me: It’s funny there is a perception that he caves to pressure when he tends to still end up in a much better place, from his perspective, than he started.

After all, for all his swerves and concessions, the president has not abandoned a global trade war that has fueled inflation or a stalemated conflict with Iran that has rattled oil markets. And financial markets have become pretty zen about all of it.

Well, isn’t that special. The world economy is staggering. Inflation is eating better than most citizens are. Farm country is bleeding. And that’s not even to mention that he still doesn’t know how tariffs work. But the financial markets, the folks who brought you the 2008 catastrophe, are “pretty zen” about it. This brings to mind the great Jim Hightower’s old formulation about the Doug Jones Index. Hightower argued that, alongside every newspaper account of the Dow Jones Index, we should read something called the Doug Jones Index, which described the economic status of an ordinary citizen named Doug Jones.

Jesus, these people.

Weekly WWOZ Pick to Click: “Don’t Go No Further” (Koko Taylor): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit to the Pathé Archives: Thursday was the 100th birthday of Fidel Castro, the man who drove America crazy for four decades. Here, from 1959, is New York City giving him the big hello. Whadda guy, right?

History is so cool.

Doc Rivers was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. Not only do we share an alma mater—Doc nailed a half-court shot to beat Notre Dame, which was a blessing from Valhalla—but his 2008 Celtics were one of the more delightful operations in the history of that franchise. (How can you not love the fact that the TV people had to mute the backboard mic’s because of Kevin Garnett’s magnificent profanity?)

The first time I ever saw him was after his senior season at Proviso East High School outside Chicago. He came to play with the Chicago team at the late, lamented Boston Shootout, an all-star tournament held every summer at Boston University. It was set up as city vs. city. That year’s finals came down to Chicago and New York. Doc had dinged a knee the game before, and he was laboring through the first half with a bandage on his leg. The New York kids were waiting for him in the hallway as Chicago came out for halftime. Much opprobrium filled the air. Doc went back into the locker room. He came out without the bandage. Then he set about tearing new apertures on the entire New York lineup.

Savage dunks. Outside jump shots. Tip dunks off his own misses. I knew he had committed to Marquette, and after one of these plays I stood up so suddenly that my wooden folding chair flew backward. I may have promised to build a new physics building. Good on you, Doc. Ring out them ahoyas.

Discovery Corner: Hey, look what we found! From Popular Mechanics:

The longhouses, some measuring 26 feet wide and almost 100 feet long, are surrounded by outbuildings and small, sunken-floored huts. The excavation team from the Westphalia-Lippe Regional Association (LWL) called this new find an exception for the era, as most people in East Westphalia at the time were living on isolated farmsteads or relatively small hamlets of just a few farms. Sven Spiong, head of LWL Archaeology in Bielefeld, said in a translated statement that it must have been a “significant center for the region at the time.”

Archaeologist Sebastian Düvel said it should come as no surprise that the inhabitants chose to settle and build where they did. The location (on the northern slopes of the Teutoburg Forest) has plenty of fertile soil, and was situated near the Mühlenbach stream, which would have flowed through the settlement and provided a steady, year-round supply of fresh water. The site was also near an old Roman pass.

The settlement likely used the quality soil to their economic advantage, growing surplus food and selling it to passing traders. The foreign artifacts found in the region may have come from travelers trading for food or could have been brought back by soldiers as war spoils during Roman rule.

Turning dirt into gold. Another lost skill.

Hey, ScienceDaily, is it a good day for dinosaur news? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!

Researchers have found strong evidence that original collagen can survive inside dinosaur fossils for tens of millions of years, overturning a long-standing assumption about fossilization. The discovery could unlock hidden molecular clues about dinosaur biology, evolution, and how ancient proteins managed to survive for so long.

For decades, scientists generally assumed that fossilization destroyed the original organic molecules once present in bones, teeth, and other tissues. Under that view, proteins and other biological materials were not expected to survive for tens of millions of years. New research led by the University of Liverpool now provides strong evidence that some Mesozoic fossils, including dinosaur bones and teeth, can retain traces of those original organic materials.

Collagen? Dino beauty enhancements? Thousands of years from now, paleontologists are going to amazed by thousands of human skeletons. And they will conclude that we lived now to make them happy then.

I’ll be back on Monday for whatever fresh hell awaits. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line and wear the damn masks, and take the damn shots, especially the boosters and any New One. In your spare time, spare a thought for all the victims of our current epidemics, including the killer countertops. Representative Max Miller’s wife and child, and for the Iranian people, and the Lebanese people, and all the other people downrange in our newest war, and all the people in ICE detention, and the Epstein victims, whose trauma is back in the news again, and the victims of the Canadian wildfires, and also the ones in Spain, and the victims of the floods in Missouri, and the victims of the heat domes, and those affected around the world by wildfires, and the victims of the Venezuelan earthquake, and for the victims of the earthquake in Japan, and the victims and their families in the Tumbler Ridge school shooting in Canada, and for the shooting victims in Austin, and for the families of the victims of the mosque shooting in San Diego, and in Michigan, and in Virginia, and in Louisiana, and for the victims and their families of the shootings in Wilmington, Delaware, and Kansas City, and for the families and victims of the mass shooting in Midland, Texas, and for the brilliant journalists of The Washington Post, and for the citizens of the occupied city of Minneapolis and South Burlington, Vermont, and for all the people in the flooded areas of southern Africa, and in the flooded areas in Ireland, and in the flooded areas of Brazil, and for the storm-clobbered, flooded areas of the upper Midwest, including my alma mater, and in Georgia, and for the people affected by the tornadoes in Mississippi, and for people suffering from the hantavirus outbreak on the Hondius, the outbreaks of measles, the Hegseth Flu down in Texas, the explosive-diarrhea bug, and the Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in Harlem, and the victims of the heat wave in Europe, and for our LGBTQ+ citizens, who deserve so much more from this country than they’re getting.