Month: September 2026

Edible magic for 50 cents a pound


Click here for high-resolution version.

It makes me sad that my Celtic ancestors did not have pumpkins. Oh, the Old World magic they’d have made of them if they had. To make their autumn lanterns and carved faces, they had to use turnips and rutabagas.

Once pumpkins were discovered, though, by the first European explorers to sail to the New World, pumpkin seeds made their way back to Europe very quickly. There is a painting of a relative of a pumpkin in a book painted for French royalty in about 1508. Like turnips, for many years pumpkins were seen as food for poor people and fodder for livestock. But by the late 17th century, French cooks were experimenting with pumpkin recipes.

It was in 1697 when Charles Perrault first wrote of a pumpkin being turned into a carriage — an innovation in the Cinderella story, which is much older than 1697. Thomas Jefferson grew several types of pumpkins at Monticello.

It surprises me how little country people here in North Carolina know about pumpkins these days. They buy the ugly, inedible, bright orange variety (Howden pumpkins) for Halloween. And they often use “heirloom” pumpkins to decorate their porches. But they no longer see pumpkins as a food to be bought fresh and cooked from scratch. Of course they like pumpkin pie, but virtually everyone buys canned pumpkin for pies, which they put into a store-bought pie shell, something that ought to be a felony crime against nature. (Libby’s uses Dickinson pumpkins for canning.)

The woman who weighed the pumpkins I bought yesterday didn’t even know about baking pumpkins as the best way to acquire pumpkin for pies. It ought to be obvious: Cut a lid in the top of the pumpkin, clean out the seeds through the hole in the top, then replace the lid and bake the pumpkin. At 325F, the pumpkin will need to stay in the oven for an hour or more, depending on the pumpkin’s size. It’s easy enough to press the excess water out of the pumpkin flesh. And that pumpkin juice should go into soup. It has been years since I serve pumpkin soup in a pumpkin tureen. Maybe I’ll do that this fall.

August weather has lingered into late September, and it’s too hot this week to bake a pumpkin. But next week there will be pumpkin soup and pumpkin pie.


This farm near King, North Carolina, sells strawberries in the spring and pumpkins in the fall. Click here for high-resolution version.

The deplorables’ demonology meets the undeniable


Madison, North Carolina, September 19, 2026

One of the services provided by deplorable opinion leaders is to deliver to the deplorables a demonology designed to deceive them, enrage them, flatter the traits that make them deplorable, and exploit them politically. The deplorables perceive that someone is eating their lunch — no great feat of cognition. But if the deplorables somehow became capable of perceiving who really is eating their lunch, instead of their scapegoats, then America would become Denmark, instantly, just like that, overnight, and democracy would flourish.

During the 2024 election, the demonology boiled down to this: Immigrants are invaders, poisoning the blood of America, stealing jobs, voting illegally, and living on welfare. Democrats, allied with a “woke” radical left, hate America, steal elections, trample on deplorable freedoms, and are intentionally destroying America with weapons such as DEI and even empathy. The “deep state” is persecuting conservatives and standing in the way of a white, Christian America. A globalist elite headed by the likes of George Soros is using its billions to pull all the strings. If these demons are defeated, then a Norman Rockwell America in which prices never go up will arise from the ruins of what the demons have wrought, and the demons will all go back to whatever hell they came from and stay there.

There is only one thing about which the deplorables cannot be deceived. That’s the price of gasoline. In 2024, Trump promised the deplorables that he’d get the price of gasoline below $2 a gallon. They believed it and were counting on it. (In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, Trump told Fox News that the price of gasoline will drop to below $2 a gallon after the midterm elections.)

With the average price of gasoline in the U.S. now above $4 a gallon, the deplorables, shocked and betrayed, have to figure out whom they should demonize for that. The revisions to the demonology differ.

MAGA types are almost scholars on the price of gasoline. Something like 60 percent of MAGA types correctly blame Trump and the Iran war for gasoline prices. Still, that leaves about 40 percent of MAGA types who blame Biden, or OPEC, or Iran, or something.

MAGA types dismiss most of Trump’s lies. They just don’t care. But if you lie to them about the price of gasoline, then an extraordinary 60 percent of them will actually wake up and take notice.

This is terrifying and marvelous at the same time. It’s terrifying that they’re so thick. But it’s marvelous that there is at least one way to get through to some of them.

Update: In California, prices are much higher.


From a Facebook post

When pigs fly


Illustration by ChatGPT. Click here for high-resolution version.

Politico has a piece this morning busting Senator Rand Paul for sending staff to Pittsburgh on a chartered plane at a cost to taxpayers of $18,000. The purpose of the trip was to investigate whether the Secret Service should have done a better job of protecting Trump from an assassination attempt.

A train ticket to Pittsburgh costs about $150 round trip. A commercial flight would cost about $150 to $250 round trip. Congressional staff don’t normally fly on chartered planes. You can be sure, though, that they all want to now — the Republicans, anyway.

My oligarch aircraft tracker database has been running since May 10, 2026. Since then it has tracked 4,655 flights by people who have a lot of money and who are active in the project of making the world safe and profitable for oligarchs. It’s the status symbol that all the wannabes are so eager for now, the transportation version of Mar-a-Lago Face.

Today I had Claude Code run a query on the database to list where American oligarchs have been going to when they travel outside the country. Below, I’m including the raw report as written by Claude Code.

One pig in particular stands out: Kash Patel, Trump’s FBI director. Why does this plane go where it goes? I have no idea, but I suspect the media have stopped tracking Patel’s plane because they have so many other pigs to fry.

A note from Claude: Not every landing is a destination. Long-range private jets still have to refuel, and they do it at a familiar set of waypoints — which is why these lists include places no billionaire is actually visiting. A stop in the Faroe Islands (or Iceland, Greenland, or eastern Canada) is almost certainly a fuel stop on the North Atlantic crossing between North America and Europe. Likewise, brief touchdowns in obscure corners of West Africa — Gambia, Guinea, Cameroon, Cape Verde — are almost certainly refueling stops on the long haul down to South Africa, where the tanks won’t reach in one leg.


Miriam Adelson, 304 landings, including rural Faroe Islands; rural Greece; Petaẖ Tiqva, Israel; Astypálaia, Greece; Rocchetta di Vara, Italy; London, United Kingdom; Vienna, Austria; rural Canada; rural China; Chihuahua, Mexico; rural Cyprus; Larnaca, Cyprus; Kenitra, Morocco; rural Western Sahara; Rishon LeTsiyyon, Israel; rural Brazil; Nice, France; rural Italy; rural Morocco; Mílos, Greece; Tianjin, China; rural Japan; Barcelona, Spain; Pissoúri, Cyprus; Bnei Brak, Israel; Kobe, Japan; Kagoshima, Japan; Hsinchu, Taiwan; Hong Kong, Hong Kong; Zhuhai, China; rural Malaysia; Singapore, Singapore; rural Türkiye; rural Norway; rural Iceland; Toronto, Canada; Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei; rural Philippines; rural Ireland; Ceriale, Italy; Askeaton, Ireland; Fontcoberta, Spain; Venice, Italy; La Spezia, Italy; Sant Antoni de Portmany, Spain; Sixmilebridge, Ireland; rural Greenland; rural Spain; Toyohama, Japan; Makurazaki, Japan; rural Taiwan; rural Mexico; rural Hong Kong

Liberty University, 240 landings, all within the United States.

Steve Wynn, 176 landings, including rural Mexico; Colonia Teñhe, Mexico; Tijuana, Mexico; Mexico City, Mexico

Howard Lutnick, 164 landings, including rural Canada; Paris, France; Carterton, United Kingdom

Ken Griffin, 158 landings, including rural Canada; Kobe, Japan; Tokyo, Japan; Nice, France; Amsterdam, Netherlands; London, United Kingdom; Stabbia, Italy; Gazzola, Italy; Rome, Italy; Paris, France; Jerez de la Frontera, Spain; rural Algeria; Naples, Italy; Milan, Italy; Castelforte, Italy; rural Spain; Genève, Switzerland; Nîmes, France; Santon, Isle of Man; rural Gambia; rural Guinea; Luanda, Angola; rural Cameroon; Johannesburg, South Africa; rural South Africa; rural Italy; rural Dominica; rural Puerto Rico; Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom; Bournemouth, United Kingdom; rural Iceland

Elon Musk, 151 landings, including Reynosa, Mexico

FBI Director, 148 landings, including rural Greece; Ankara, Türkiye; rural Morocco; rural Canada; Seoul, South Korea; rural Japan; rural Philippines; Bangkok, Thailand; rural Cambodia; Jakarta, Indonesia; San Miguel, Philippines; Ningjin, China; Niudaokou, China; rural China; Xinkaikou, China; Larnaca, Cyprus

Lachlan Murdoch, 127 landings, including Sydney, Australia; Melbourne, Australia; rural Canada; London, United Kingdom; Sydney, Canada; rural United Kingdom; Dublin, Ireland; Swinford, Ireland; Sixmilebridge, Ireland; Charlestown, Ireland

Mark Zuckerberg, 115 landings, including rural Canada; London, United Kingdom; Steeple Bumpstead, United Kingdom; rural United Kingdom; rural Iceland; rural Italy; Cavtat, Croatia

Charles Koch, 73 landings, including rural Portugal; Lisbon, Portugal; Paris, France; Cowichan Bay, Canada; rural Bahamas; San Juan, Puerto Rico; rural Puerto Rico; Shawnigan Lake, Canada

Richard Uihlein, 70 landings, including Edmonton, Canada

Peter Thiel, 65 landings, including Shawnigan Lake, Canada; Victoria, Canada; Mill Bay, Canada

Franklin Graham, 64 landings, including rural Canada; rural Bahamas; Madrid, Spain

Tilman Fertitta, 60 landings, including rural Mexico; Lamezia Terme, Italy; Rome, Italy; rural Italy; Munich, Germany; rural Canada; Brindisi, Italy; Messina, Italy; Porto Azzurro, Italy; Casarza Ligure, Italy; Oschiri, Italy; Richmond, Canada; Ottawa, Canada; Montréal, Canada

Harold Hamm, 58 landings, including Bogotá, Colombia; rural Cuba; rural Jamaica; rural Honduras; Atenas, Costa Rica

Kenneth Copeland, 56 landings, all within the United States.

Jeff Bezos, 44 landings, including rural Canada; Paris, France; London, United Kingdom; Silistra, Bulgaria; rural Kazakhstan; Tianjin, China; Tokyo, Japan; rural Fiji; Nadi, Fiji; Sydney, Australia; Zaton, Croatia; Seget Vranjica, Croatia; rural Italy

Harlan Crow, 36 landings, all within the United States.

Donald Trump (family plane, not Air Force 1), 32 landings, including rural Bahamas; rural Canada; Aberdeen, United Kingdom; Prestwick, United Kingdom; rural Ireland; Sixmilebridge, Ireland

David Geffen, 25 landings, including rural Canada; Inca, Spain; rural Spain; Madrid, Spain

Rupert Murdoch, 24 landings, all within the United States.

Timothy Mellon, 5 landings, all within the United States.

Samaritan's Purse, 1 landing, none with a usable position fix.

How this works: Acorn Abbey’s oligarch aircraft tracker continuously monitors 127 aircraft from 22 countries, using publicly available data from the global ADS-B network. Ownership is cautiously assigned from publicly available records. However, aircraft ownership is often obscured behind holding companies such as LLCs, and in some cases cannot be determined with 100 percent confidence. Note too that ADS-B tracks aircraft, not people: who is aboard cannot be known. The Acorn Abbey database and its programming are on a virtual private server in Nuremberg, Germany.

Reassessing existential risk


I asked ChatGPT to create an image based on chapter 10 of my 2014 novel Fugue in Ursa Major. Jake is in Washington, and all hell is breaking loose on a global scale. Jake is about to head for the hills. But much has changed since 2014. Click here for high-resolution version.

This morning there were yet more stories about how AI could exterminate the human race:

Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon has quit the AI company, saying those building the technology “earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

If the people issuing these warnings were anti-technology outsiders, we’d do well to take them less seriously. But these warnings keep coming from people who actually are involved in AI development. There rarely are any specifics on how AI would actually do such a thing. A bio-engineered pandemic is sometimes presented as the easiest way. Another type of threat has to do with AI getting control not only of weapons systems but also life support systems such as water systems and the power grid.

We might take some comfort in the RAND Corporation’s findings that exterminating all human beings would be very difficult, because humans are so adaptable and there are so many places on the planet where people can hide.

But it seems to me that, short of extermination, there are many ways in which elites who have both power and money are already building systems for controlling the masses. I’m much more inclined to worry about authoritarians using AI for entrenchment than about AI wiping out the human race.

The most worrisome concept, I think, is “stable authoritarianism” and how AI could make it far more difficult for people to throw off a corrupt authoritarian regime:

• Greatly improved systems of watching people and tracking people, using cameras and facial recognition plugged into AI systems.

• Automated censorship and narrative control, once a free media has been eliminated.

• Automated security forces, which boils down to armed robots under AI control — RoboCops, a roboticized military, and drones for civilian surveillance, many of them armed.

Science fiction has thoroughly explored these areas. We have been warned.

Some of these things are in the early stages, but they’re no longer science fiction. In the U.S., Flock cameras have become a big issue. Something like 120,000 Flock cameras, which read license plates and track vehicles, have already been deployed. China is the world leader in public surveillance. China already has a large surveillance system that uses facial recognition. China also is in the early stages of deploying robots. They’ve started with traffic control robots in cities, but they’re also testing robotic dogs and even humanoid robots as police assistants. China is scaling these systems up, and there are lots of countries that want to buy what China is developing.

There’s another disturbing new angle that comes with AI. If AI increasingly does the work that is now done by the millions of people who work in offices, and if autonomous robots can increasingly do manual labor as well as the work of police and soldiers, then what’s to become of the human beings thus displaced? Historically elites and their capital have needed human beings as workers and soldiers, which meant that people had some power over their own welfare because they were needed. The Trump administration — and in particular the attitude and actions of Elon Musk in joyfully eliminating any costs that support human welfare — is a pretty good clue as to what elites think of the rest of us and how much they’d like to not need us. In fact this seems to be a big part of what is driving the financial bubble right now — the development of means whereby the owners of capital can reduce the need for human beings.

One thing has not changed and probably never will. In Fugue in Ursa Major in 2014, it was the billionaires and oligarchs beyond the reach of democracy who would do anything at all to get what they want — control of all the money and all the power. It’s still the billionaires and authoritarians and oligarchs who want total domination. What has changed is that AI has suddenly given them new options, and they know it.

All this touches on a big question: Why do elites need people, and what do they need us for?

Elites at present are alarmed about birth rates because they need people young enough to work and to fight, rather than an aging population. China’s population is aging and shrinking. We need to watch China for clues about what authoritarians will try to do, because China has the technology and the industrial power to respond to demographic and technological change without any interference from democracy.

The rapid development of AI is coinciding with declining populations in places where people are still needed. Authoritarian elites have two urgent needs: To run a country with more technology and fewer people, and to better control a population when domination threatens to create turmoil.

Whatever happens over the next few years, we’ll probably see it in China first, keeping in mind that authoritarian elites in the U.S. still have a big problem to deal with — democracy interfering with their dream of domination. So that’s another thing that doesn’t change. Democracy, law, and regulation — the things that authoritarian elites hate the most — are the people’s only hope.