Just for the Record

The Guinness Champ, The Other Presidential Race

"Among the items that now take up space in David Rush’s basement and garage are: Four unicycles, hundreds of juggling objects, piles of chopsticks, three pogo sticks, a Samurai sword and a water balloon launcher." The Samurai sword may sound a little worrisome. And I'm not sure how I'd feel about having a neighbor who juggles axes in the backyard. But David Rush is probably pretty harmless (if you keep a distance) to everyone other than those clinging to one of many bizarre Guinness World Records. Those people should beware. He's coming after you. Rush now holds the record for most records, and that includes setting a new record (after his old one had been broken) by "smashing 55 vinyl records in 30 seconds." WaPo (Gift Article): It began with sibling rivalry. Now he has 181 Guinness World Records. Maybe David Rush is a little crazy. Or maybe, in a moment when we're all desperate for momentary distractions from political battles and geopolitical news, a guy who spends his time focused on trying to balance 101 rolls of toilet paper rolls on his head will also set a record for holding onto his sanity the longest.

2

Racing Against the Race

There are two campaign races: One for votes, one to suppress or overturn them. And while one candidate currently has a lot of momentum in terms of enthusiasm, the other candidate has a lot of momentum when it comes to convincing people the vote is rigged, limiting the number of people who get to vote, and laying the groundwork for disputing results. Heather Cox Richardson in Letters From an American on the little lies that support the big one: "The lie that there was widespread voter fraud in 2020 led to a wave of new state laws to suppress the vote. MAGA lawmakers defended these laws on the grounds that they must respond to voter fraud. The nonprofit law and public policy Brennan Center for Justice recorded that in 2021 alone, from January 1 through December 7, at least 19 states passed 34 laws that restricted access to voting. As MAGA Republicans and their plans—especially their assault on reproductive healthcare and the policies outlined in Project 2025—become increasingly unpopular, Republican-dominated states are ramping up their effort to keep the people they assume will oppose them from voting."

+ NYT (Gift Article): Latino Civil Rights Group Demands Inquiry Into Texas Voter Fraud Raids.

+ NYT: Democrats Sue Georgia Election Board, Warning of ‘Chaos’.

+ Meanwhile, RFK may be unable to withdraw his name from ballots in some swing states.

3

Moving to the Land Down Under

"After weeks of scrolling, I found a handful of dream hideaways on the market whose sellers were willing to let me take a tour. There were two bunkers in Montana, one of which sleeps at least ninety; a prepper bunker in Missouri that features an inconspicuous entrance and a conspicuous arsenal of guns (not included in sale, but makes you think twice before criticizing the kitchen-countertop choice); a defunct missile-silo site in North Dakota; and a twenty-thousand-square-foot cave in Arkansas used by its previous owner to raise earthworms. (Favorite bit of real-estate marketing copy: 'The worm room speaks for itself.') Patricia Marx in The New Yorker: Real Estate Shopping for the Apocalypse. "Thirty-nine per cent of Americans believe that we’re living in end times, and the market for underground hideouts is heating up."

4

Band of Brothers

Will the Gallagher brothers really put aside their infamous feud for what could be a highly lucrative Oasis reunion tour? I mean, they say yes. So fans are looking forward with anticipation. But will they end up looking back in anger? The shows the band has announced are scheduled for next summer. That leaves a lot of time to get into another fight. The Gallagher brothers are reviving Oasis. Here's a look at their decades-long feud. (These Gallagher brothers should not be confused with the much more reasonable Gallagher brothers famous for smashing watermelons with a giant mallet.)

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Extra, Extra

Stem Cells Offer Seeds of Hope: "Smith is at the forefront of a medical experiment that seeks to treat the root cause of diabetes by replacing the cells the disease destroys. It’s a key step forward in the long quest to develop a cure for diabetes and a front-runner to finally deliver the sci-fi promise that has enveloped the stem cell field for more than two decades." Diabetes took over her life, until a stem cell therapy freed her.

+ Long Absence: "Never before have so many Americans redrawn their relationships with work as a result of one public-health crisis. More than four years after the pandemic began, some are still reckoning with how to balance their livelihoods and life with long Covid, the chronic condition doctors are still trying to understand." WSJ (Gift Article): Long Covid Knocked a Million Americans Off Their Career Paths.

+ Hostage Rescue: "Kaid Farhan Al-Qadi, a Bedouin Israeli citizen from Rahat in southern Israel, was rescued from a tunnel in southern Gaza by Israeli forces." Israel rescues 52-year-old held hostage by Hamas from tunnel during ‘complex operation’ in Gaza.

+ Country Over Party: "More than 200 Republicans who previously worked for either former President George W. Bush, the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., or Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president in an open letter Monday." These folks putting country over party don't represent the norm. Tom Nichols in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Conservatives Who Sold Their Souls for Trump. "They never expected having to deal with Trump for this long; they never foresaw themselves doubling and tripling and quadrupling down to the point where they now must politely look away from felonies, attacks on America’s alliances, and promises to pardon insurrectionists."

+ Sorry if I Offended Covid: "Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) that the Biden administration in 2021 'repeatedly pressured' his company to take down certain posts related to covid and was 'wrong' to do so." Zuckerberg expresses regrets over covid misinformation crackdown.

+ Pick a Side: "In a statistical oddity made possible by two of the quirkiest entities on Earth — the baseball rule book and the New England weather — Jansen became the only player ever to appear on both sides of a baseball box score when he took the field for Boston on Monday in the resumption of a rain-delayed game he started for Toronto in June, before he was traded to the Red Sox." Danny Jansen plays for both teams in Blue Jays-Red Sox game, an MLB first.

+ Brotherly Love: Jason and Travis Kelce's podcast deal with Amazon reportedly worth more than $100 million.

6

Bottom of the News

"A 15-year-old girl and her boyfriend are studying alone together on a hot summer day when she removes her jacket and clings to his shoulder. What should he do? In Hong Kong, the authorities advise the young man to continue studying or to seek a diversion, including badminton, to avoid premarital sex and other 'intimate behaviors.'" NYT (Gift Article): Fighting Sexual Temptation? Play Badminton, Hong Kong Tells Teenagers. (Whacking a shuttlecock was about as far as I got as a teenager.)