Belfast Burning, Billionaires’ Billions
President Trump just signed a bill into law that “gives his immigration and deportation agenda a nearly $70 billion boost for the rest of his time in the White House … His signature ended a nearly six-month fight over Department of Homeland Security funding that began with the shooting deaths of deaths of two U.S. citizens, Alex Pretti and Renee Good.” Keeping outsiders out is a subject that is hardly limited to the White House, or even the United States. In Northern Ireland, the issue spilled out onto the streets after the violent stabbing of a man by a Sudanese asylum seeker went viral on social media. The “footage was posted by Tommy Robinson and other far-right figures, prompting demands for protests in response … X owner Elon Musk shared a post from Robinson announcing locations of protests, and another from the far-right Restore Britain party that read: ‘Do not make peace with evil. Destroy it.'” And destruction followed. “Masked men set houses, vehicles and a city bus ablaze in Belfast on Tuesday night, torching neighborhoods across the city … Ignoring pleas for calm from politicians and clergy, rioters rampaged through heavily immigrant neighborhoods in Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, in some cases going door-to-door and causing some families to flee under police protection.
Men in balaclavas and hoods shouted ‘foreigners out.'” WaPo (Gift Article): A new wave of anti-immigrant violence hits U.K. as riots convulse Belfast.
+ Northern Ireland is hardly a hotbed of immigration. It “is the least ethnically diverse part of the United Kingdom, with just about 3.4 percent of residents from minority ethnic backgrounds.” That hasn’t stopped it from being swept up in this globalized version of the Troubles. “In some communities people feel left behind, struggling against a lack of jobs and opportunity. That helped create the conditions for anti-immigrant and far-right sentiment to grow and be picked up by fringe groups. ‘People being burned out of their homes is not new to Belfast,’ said Carl Whyte, a local councilor who grew up in the north part of the city, alluding to the sectarian conflict known as the Troubles. ‘And last night, we saw that being used toward immigrant families.'” NYT (Gift Article): Police Step Up Security in Northern Ireland After Night of Violence.
+ “On a residential street draped in loyalist flags near Belfast’s Shankill Road, the masked men approached a house with a boarded-up window and a security camera stationed outside. As a woman from an ethnic minority background looked down from an upstairs window, some of the men rushed the front door and broke it down. With the air thick with smoke from fireworks, they attacked the downstairs windows with bricks. As they stormed the property, some claimed to be ‘liberating’ it. Graffiti nearby demanded ‘local homes for local people.’ A woman in the crowd said to her friend: ‘There’s wee girls inside.'”
+ The family of Stephen Ogilvy, the victim who was seriously injured in the original crime, issued a statement: “We want to make it absolutely clear that overnight unrest is not welcome, and peaceful protest is the only way forward. We have many migrants who make a deeply valuable contribution to our country, including in our healthcare system and hospitality sector and we depend on them to make our country work … [We don’t want this] terrible tragedy to be used to divide people or fuel hostility.” I wonder if Elon Musk will amplify that message as well. Here’s the latest from BBC and BelfastLive.
Great Expectations, Harsh Calculations
“Fifteen years ago, the world’s billionaires collectively had $4.5 trillion. By 2024, their wealth had more than tripled to $14.2 trillion. Now, their combined wealth totals $20.1 trillion — an amount that is equivalent to nearly a fifth of the entire world’s total yearly output.” NYT (Gift Article): Billionaires’ Billions Are Increasing Faster Than Ever. “The stunning figures — calculated by the French economist Gabriel Zucman, director of the International Tax Observatory, a research organization funded by the European Union — reveal more than a surprisingly rapid increase in the concentration of wealth at the tippy top. They also reflect a series of important global trends: the growing dominance of a few technology companies leading artificial intelligence development; the shrinking slice of the economic pie that goes to workers; and a deepening inequality that will be handed down to the next generation.”
Dread Lasso
The World Cup always has its share of controversies and negativities before the games actually begin. But this year, the ticket prices, hotel vacancies, and general unwelcoming vibes in one of the host countries make things seem even less pitch-perfect than usual. Will, as is often the case, the actual matches achieve the goal of kicking the bad vibes to the curb? The Ringer: The 2026 World Cup Is an Experiment Like No Other.
More Than a Little Slice of Paradise
“Throughout his life, Mr. Basinger (pronounced BAY-singer) devoted himself to pursuits that some would have dismissed as fanciful. As a young man, he walked from New York to San Francisco. He moved to Kenya on a whim, becoming fluent in Swahili after spending five years teaching at a rural school for boys. Perhaps most improbably, he became a musician for the National Theater of the Deaf. He was not deaf, but he mastered sign language and spent decades performing with, writing for and helping run the troupe.” And then he decided to try something else. NYT (Gift Article): John Basinger, Who Memorized All 12 Books of ‘Paradise Lost,’ Dies at 92.
Extra, Extra
Throw the Book At Em: “On July 17, 2025, at around 6 o’clock in the evening, President Trump’s top officials filed into the White House Situation Room — the secure bunker where classified and high-stakes national security matters are discussed and decided. This was where President Barack Obama, along with Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the president’s national security team, watched the raid that ended with the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011. Now, however, Trump’s most senior advisers had gathered — without him — to figure out how to gain some measure of control over a very different kind of crisis threatening to engulf the presidency: the Epstein files.” Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan with an outtake of an upcoming book: Inside the White House Freakout Over the Epstein Files. (As per usual, this craziness makes for good book fodder, but no one is likely to be held accountable.)
+ Inflation and Other Blow Ups: Inflation Heated Up to 4.2% in May, as Energy Costs Continued to Bite. And the key driver of that inflation is heating up as well. Trump: “We’ll see what happens. But we hit them hard yesterday and we’re going to hit them again hard today … We were we were really close to a deal. But they keep tapping us along. They keep playing us for suckers.” Here’s the latest from The Guardian and NBC.
+ Screen Passes: “The ingredient, bemotrizinol, works by blocking ultraviolet radiation. It filters out two kinds of ultraviolet rays: ultraviolet A, which contributes to wrinkles and skin aging, and ultraviolet B, which causes sunburns.” NYT: F.D.A. Clears Sunscreen Ingredient Long Used in Europe and Asia. In other sun news: Solar Passes Coal in Historic Shift for US Electricity Mix.
+ S.E.O. Brother, Where Are Thou? “According to Shopify, the best e-commerce platform is Shopify … If rankings produced by the very company at the top of the list seem unlikely to fool anyone, that’s because humans probably aren’t the target audience. Chatbots are.” The Atlantic (Gift Article): Your Search Results Are Getting Sloptimized.
+ Prediction Market: “A Chinese company has been trying to develop artificial intelligence-powered technology that would enable authoritarian governments to not just monitor dissidents but also potentially predict who could become one in the future. The work, which appears to be in the research stage, is ripped out of dystopian science fiction, offering a glimpse of a world in which an authoritarian state is able to move against its citizens before they begin any public dissent.” China Aims A.I. at Predicting Who Could Pose a Political Risk.
+ A Whole New Ballgame: On second thought, maybe there should be crying in baseball… “Around the league, more and more often, catchers need a minute. It’s become routine to see the umpire call time as the catcher lies in agony, doubled over after yet another foul ball or spiked pitch caroms into a sensitive area.” The Athletic (Gift Article): Ball strike system: Why MLB catchers are getting hit in the groin more often. (In the case of the Giants this season, it feels like the same thing is happening to the fans.)
Bottom of the News
“Describing an elaborate ruse that ‘read like a movie script,’ Canadian authorities accused a longtime Air Canada pilot of fraud on Tuesday, saying he had flown many hundreds of hours over 17 years despite not having the proper credential to sit in the captain’s seat.”
+ Not all jobs are being taken over by AI. You can still apply to be the Head of Stonehenge.
