As an AP U.S. History student nearly 40 years ago, one of the more vexatious essay questions my classmates and I had to tackle was whether the War of 1812 was a matter of “national honor” or “national interest.”

As I recall, we went round and round for days before settling on national honor.

National honor can serve the national interest. National vanity does not.

Honor is often a dumb reason to go to war.

Often — but not always! In reality, the war was fought for honor and interest. The British were impressing American sailors, interfering with American commerce, and treating the sovereignty of the young republic as something they could disregard when convenient.

National honor and national interest were entangled.

Donald Trump is very big on national honor. He wants America respected. He hates the idea that foreign governments might laugh at us, exploit us, rip us off, or conclude that the United States is too weak or timid to defend its interests.

There is much to be said for that instinct.

The problem is that Trump sometimes confuses national honor with national interest. And sometimes he confuses both with national vanity.

Which brings me to Lake America.

On Thursday, Trump signed an executive order directing the federal government to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America.” The order gives the United States no additional territory or water rights. It opens no market, lowers no tariff, strengthens no alliance, and makes no American safer.

It does, however, annoy Canada.

This is where the War of 1812 becomes more than an old high school essay question.

RELATED: Trump renames Lake Ontario to ‘Lake America’ in jab at Canada over trade war

Al Drago/The Washington Post/Bloomberg/Getty Images

One assumption behind the American invasion of Canada was that it would be easy. Thomas Jefferson famously predicted that acquiring Canada would be “a mere matter of marching.” Not quite.

We surrendered Detroit, lost at Queenston Heights, and repeatedly failed to conquer Canada. Oh, and of course, there was the not insignificant matter of the Brits burning down Washington, D.C., in 1814 as retaliation for our burning and looting of York (modern-day Toronto) the year prior.

Americans had looked at the disparity in power and concluded that the disparity settled the question.

There is an echo of that mistake today.

My friend Kurt Schlichter captured the attitude neatly last week in a Townhall column headlined “It’s Always Cute When Canada Thinks It Matters.”

Schlichter is right about the imbalance of power. Canada is vastly weaker than the United States. It neglected its military while sheltering beneath the American security umbrella, and its economy depends much more on our market than ours depends on Canada.

But “Canada is weaker than we are” and “Canada doesn’t matter” are very different propositions.

My old teacher Angelo Codevilla had a useful maxim: “What is nearest is dearest.”

Writing about Mexico in 2009, Codevilla argued that geography had joined our countries together “whether anybody likes it or not.” Events close to home bear more directly on American peace and prosperity than events halfway around the world. “Canada’s position is analogous,” he added.

Canada matters not because we owe Canadians special deference. It matters because geography says it does.

We share more than 5,000 miles of border, the Great Lakes, continental defense, energy systems, supply chains, waterways, pipelines, railroads, and deeply integrated economies.

An America First foreign policy should understand this instinctively.

That does not require being nice to Canada. If Ottawa is free-riding on defense, demand more. If Canadian protectionism hurts American farmers or manufacturers, fight it. If pressure produces better terms for Americans, squeeze away.

The question is what American interest the pressure serves.

RELATED: How Mark Carney chose the dairy cartel — and China — over a Trump trade deal

Evelyn Hockstein/POOL/AFP/Getty Images

Trump has spent much of his second term calling Canada “the 51st state,” referring to ex-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “Governor Trudeau,” dismissing the border as artificial, and threatening or imposing economic pressure on our northern neighbor. Canada’s navy is barely a coast guard!

Canada did not respond by becoming more accommodating. It became more Canadian.

At the beginning of 2025, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives appeared headed for a crushing victory. Trudeau was finished, and the Liberals were exhausted and deeply unpopular.

Then Trump changed the question.

Instead of asking whether they had finally had enough of the Liberals, Canadian voters increasingly asked who was best equipped to deal with Donald Trump.

That was a much better question for Mark Carney.

Trump did not single-handedly cost Poilievre the prime ministership. Carney was a strong candidate in his own right, and Poilievre had weaknesses of his own.

But the reversal was extraordinary. The Liberals came back to win bigly. Poilievre lost his own seat even as Conservatives won a record 8.1 million votes.

Trump helped turn a Liberal Party on its heels into a government with a political incentive to resist the United States.

That should interest an America First president, shouldn’t it?

I do not especially care whether Canadians believe their national honor has been wounded. I care whether wounding it makes them more or less likely to do what is advantageous to us.

Foreign policy is not therapy. We do not need to validate Canadian feelings or pretend Canada and the United States are equals in power.

But statesmanship requires understanding how other people are likely to behave.

Tell 40 million Canadians often enough that their country is a joke, their sovereignty is optional, and their border is imaginary, and some sizable fraction will become willing to pay a price to tell you no.

RELATED: Scratch a liberal, find a censor

Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

That may be foolish of them. It’s also predictable.

The United States can hurt Canada much more than Canada can hurt us. Of course we can.

But the measure of foreign policy is not whether you can hurt the other fellow. It is whether hurting him gets you something you want.

Tariffs might. Pressure on Canadian defense spending might. Hard bargaining over trade, energy, manufacturing, critical minerals, or Arctic security might.

What does Lake America get us? No land. No water. No money. No security. No concessions. Just the satisfaction of reminding Canada that we are bigger than Canada. Big whoop.

Nearly 40 years ago, my classmates and I decided the War of 1812 was chiefly about national honor.

I’m less interested today in settling that old argument than in remembering the question.

National honor can serve the national interest. National vanity does not.

​Canada, Donald trump, Lake america, National interest, Opinion & analysis, War of 1812, History, America first, Foreign policy, National honor, Vanity, Trade war 

If they can’t get Trump, they’ll go after the people around him. That’s the conclusion Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck is drawing as he examines the media firestorm surrounding Natalie Harp — the Trump aide nicknamed the “human printer.”

Harp hasn’t done anything controversial outside of being a loyal aide, but that didn’t stop Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) from setting off a firestorm by mocking her in a speech.

“And while the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings,” Ossoff said, pausing for the crowd’s laughter.

“He golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar,” he added.

“Notice how the crowd goes wild when he mentions Natalie Harp?” Glenn asks.

“He didn’t say affair. He didn’t say mistress. He didn’t say anything a fact-checker could grade. He just said her first name and said it, you know, the way you’d say something about a man’s girlfriend,” he says.

“Seventy-two hours later, Slate was running a headline asking whether the president of the United States is sleeping with his executive assistant,” he continues. “The Daily Beast published her private letters. CNN counted her tweets from five years ago. The Guardian ran two separate pieces. The New Republic, a writer there who once ran Obama’s social media accounts explained that she’s a danger to the republic.”

“The Washington Post flew a reporter to Nicaragua to interview her estranged brother who is, and I am not making this up, an actual Sandinista. Che Guevara books on the bookshelf, an FSLN flag on the wall, and that’s who they use as a character witness against her,” he adds.

Harp had stage-2 bone cancer in her mid-20s and has said publicly that “doctors offered her opioids and disability, do not resuscitate paperwork,” and a “conversation about dying with dignity.”

However, because of the left’s attack on her, Snopes has had to publish a fact-check on whether or not her cancer was real.

“They went after whether she was sick or not,” Glenn says, disgusted.

“She’s not a security threat. She’s not a scandal … and she’s being taken apart on national television for the crime of standing too close because they can’t get him,” he adds.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

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​Daily beast, Donald trump, Jon ossoff, Natalie harp, Washington post, Glenn beck, Blazetv show, Snopes 

A Florida HVAC technician was fired and arrested after he allegedly was caught on video violently abusing a small dog while on the job.

The Sanford Police Department said it was alerted on Wednesday to an “incident that took place where an HVAC technician who was working inside a resident’s home intentionally kicked the homeowner’s dog.”

‘May God watch over their sweet fur baby and bring healing and comfort to their family.’

Police said the suspect — identified as 43-year-old Richardson Noel — was caught on video allegedly abusing the animal by a dog treat dispenser that doubles as a motion-activated camera.

The footage shows a man entering the home shortly before 11:30 a.m. last Monday as a 12-year-old Chihuahua named Boomer barks at him, according to People magazine.

Seconds after entering the house, the disturbing video appears to show the man violently kicking the small dog and sending the animal airborne.

Ryan Menzies, the dog’s owner, told WESH-TV that the incident occurred while he and his girlfriend were at work; she received a motion alert from the dispenser’s app.

Menzies said his girlfriend sent him a video of the alleged animal abuse.

“I was standing in the parking garage at work, and I said out loud, ‘Oh, my God,’ and almost started crying,” Menzies recalled. “And then anger took over, because I knew I had to get home.”

“She looked back in the video, and that’s when she called me back and said, ‘You need to get home now. He kicked the dog. …'” Menzies told WKMG-TV. “She started crying when she first saw it and then immediately went to her supervisor and said, ‘I need to leave.'”

According to Menzies, the brutal kick knocked the senior dog unconscious and triggered a seizure.

“He gave a 100-pound kick to an animal that’s five pounds,” Menzies said. “So [Boomer] flipped over, slid along the floor, and was unconscious for over a minute, after which he woke up and had a seizure for five minutes.”

WESH said that during the 65-second video, Noel can be seen returning twice — first moving the dog’s head around with his boot and then turning him over. The station said Boomer remained limp for the remainder of the recording.

Menzies said Boomer and the couple’s other Chihuahua were secured in another room, but it was unclear how the dog got out.

According to Menzies, the veterinarian said Boomer had no broken bones but warned that the animal could have internal bruising.

RELATED: DC dog daycare employee kicked, killed puppy: ‘Bronny brought immeasurable joy to our lives’

Police said Noel turned himself in to authorities Thursday.

Noel, of Broward County, is charged with aggravated animal cruelty.

Citing jail records, WESH reported that Noel’s bond was set at $8,000, and he was released from jail Thursday night after posting bond.

Sanford Police Chief Cecil Smith stated, “It is deeply disturbing that someone entrusted with entering a person’s home to complete a service would violate that trust by viciously injuring a defenseless animal. The video is difficult to watch and shows the callousness of this individual.”

According to the arrest report, Noel was on a service call for his employer, ElDante HVAC Services, LLC, at the time of the incident.

The company announced that Noel has been fired and issued an apology on its website:

First and foremost, we offer our deepest and most sincere apologies for the incident involving one of our technicians. As pet parents ourselves, we fully understand the emotional gravity of witnessing a beloved dog being subjected to physical harm. We are truly sorry for the distress and pain this incident has caused.

While the technician has shared that he has had negative experiences with dogs in the past, his actions are absolutely not justified. The behavior he displayed was completely unacceptable and does not reflect the values, standards, principles, or professionalism that we hold our company and our team to.

We have taken this matter extremely seriously. The technician’s employment was terminated immediately after we reviewed the circumstances and the available evidence. Criminal charges have also been pursued, and we are cooperating fully with the appropriate authorities regarding this matter.

When we first became aware of the incident, we immediately questioned the technician about what had occurred. In his initial account, he stated that the dog had attempted to bite him twice. After reviewing the recorded evidence later that same day, we determined that his account did not accurately reflect what had occurred. This further confirmed our decision to terminate his employment that same evening.

We also want to emphasize that we have a strict company policy that no technician is permitted to enter a property when unattended pets or minors are present. In this situation, the technician failed to follow our established safety protocol and proceeded on his own rather than contacting his supervisor for guidance. This was a serious violation of our company policy.

We have personally extended our sincerest apologies to the tenants and offered our assistance in any way we can during this difficult time. We sincerely hope their beloved dog makes a full and speedy recovery.

May God watch over their sweet fur baby and bring healing and comfort to their family. Our thoughts and prayers remain with them during this difficult time.

WESH reported that ElDante HVAC Services, LLC did not respond when asked if the company would pay for Boomer’s veterinary bills.

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​Animal abuse, Animals, Florida, Florida man, Animal cruelty, Dog, Crime 

Kids are different these days. Kids are spoiled these days.

It sounds like something an old curmudgeon might say, but sometimes the old curmudgeons are right, aren’t they?

Loving children doesn’t require arranging the world around them. In fact, doing so can hamstring the very people we’re trying to help.

There have always been rich people who could spoil their children. But for most of human history, ordinary people simply didn’t have enough money to do much spoiling with things. They lived modestly, and their children did too.

Kids didn’t have bedrooms and closets overflowing with toys. They might have a doll, a wooden train, a ball, a bat, a top, and a few other things. Read old memoirs and accounts of childhood, and you encounter children delighted by things that would barely register as presents today — an orange in a Christmas stocking, for instance.

Imagine giving the average American kid in 2026 an orange for Christmas and expecting excitement.

Spoils of abundance

Mass abundance changed all that. We can now spoil our children with things on a scale our ancestors could hardly have imagined. But I think we spoil them in another, more consequential way too.

We spoil them with importance.

Spoiling children with things is a problem everybody understands, even if plenty of us do it anyway. We know that buying children whatever they want whenever they want it can produce ungrateful, entitled adults.

But we talk much less about what happens when we organize family life around children — their preferences, their feelings, their schedules, their entertainment, their happiness. We don’t merely give children too much. We make too much of them.

There are many ways to describe this kind of spoiling, but the simplest is that we teach children to believe the world revolves around them. A child who learns that lesson fails to learn humility, flexibility, self-awareness, and the ability to accommodate other people. He grows up with a distorted view of how the world works and what his place in it is.

This has been happening for at least a generation or two, and I think we’ve all seen the results in our degrading culture, even if we don’t always recognize the cause.

The explosion in material spoiling is easy enough to explain: mass abundance. But what explains this other kind?

Lonely islanders

As usual, there isn’t one answer. The rise of “gentle parenting” is part of it. So is the cultural change that followed the social revolutions of the 1960s, when adults increasingly began looking to “the youth” rather than expecting the young to learn from their elders. Another part is parents abdicating their roles as leaders, teachers, and disciplinarians because they would rather be their children’s friends.

But there is another explanation that interests me more: Families got smaller.

The connection between smaller families and spoiled children is pretty straightforward. The fewer children you have, the more time and attention you can devote to each one. That sounds wonderful, of course. All good parents want more time with their kids.

But smaller families don’t just give parents more time. They give parents more bandwidth to accommodate every preference, negotiate every disagreement, indulge every mood, and bend over backward in ways that aren’t necessarily good for a child.

If you have one child, that child naturally becomes the center of your world. And why wouldn’t he? We love our children. Of course they’re central to our lives.

But there is a difference between three, four, five, or six children being the center of a family’s world and one child being the center of it.

When all of a family’s attention, energy, money, patience, anxiety, and ambition can be concentrated on one child, it’s much easier for that child to conclude that his importance within the family reflects his importance everywhere else.

A large family naturally limits how much the household can revolve around any one child. And that may be one of its greatest virtues.

Thank you for sharing

When parents have more children, they are forced to divide their time and attention. They cannot endlessly negotiate every dispute or accommodate every preference. They can’t always have infinite patience, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Sometimes Dad has to be the judge and make a ruling. Sometimes your brother gets his way. Sometimes your sister gets the front seat. Sometimes somebody else gets the last piece. Sometimes you have to wait. Sometimes you have to share. Sometimes the family is doing something you don’t particularly want to do, and you’re doing it anyway because you’re part of the family.

That’s life.

A house full of siblings teaches lessons that parents can otherwise spend enormous amounts of effort trying to manufacture. You learn that other people have needs and desires too. You learn to negotiate, compete, compromise, forgive, wait, lose, and get over things. Most importantly, you learn that you are loved enormously without being the most important person in the room.

RELATED: We need a Labor Day for moms

David McNew/Getty Images

Love and limits

Having more children places natural limits on our ability to spoil them as much as we might instinctively want to. In doing so, it can make us better parents and our children better prepared for the world.

Because the desire to spoil our children is perfectly natural. We want to give them everything. We want them to be happy. We want to enjoy our time with them. We want them to know how deeply they are loved.

Those are good impulses. But good impulses can manifest themselves in unhealthy ways. Loving children doesn’t require arranging the world around them. In fact, doing so can hamstring the very people we’re trying to help.

At the end of the day, our job is the same job parents have had throughout history: to raise children who become moral, functioning, upright, hardworking, well-adjusted adults capable of forming families and raising good children of their own.

Our children should know that they are loved beyond measure. They should also know that the world does not revolve around them.

Teaching them both may be one of the most loving things a parent can do.

​Abundance, Family life, Kids, Spoiled, Virtues, Lifestyle, Big families, The root of the matter 

On Tuesday, my lawyers from the Goldwater Institute and I will appear before the Arizona Supreme Court to argue a proposition that, until recently, I would have thought too obvious to require lawyers: When the government violates a law enacted to protect you, you ought to be able to ask a court to make it stop.

Apparently this is controversial.

The question before the Arizona Supreme Court is larger than one professor, one university, or even DEI.

My case began with Arizona State University’s mandatory “Inclusive Communities” training. ASU required employees, as a condition of employment, to complete instruction on such fashionable academic doctrines as “whiteness,” “heteronormativity,” and “transformative justice.” An early version included a quiz requiring employees to select approved answers, including that land acknowledgments are important tools of accountability and that DEI should permeate every aspect of the university.

The course included material on “white privilege,” “white supremacy,” and the claim that American institutions normalize racial oppression. One segment even included a Starbucks employee describing an “existential crisis” when Americans could not pronounce her name.

There was, however, an inconvenience. Arizona has a law.

And the law says the state and its agencies “may not require an employee” to participate in training that presents “any form of blame or judgment on the basis of race, ethnicity, or sex.” It separately bars the use of public money for such training.

This is not an especially cryptic statute. One need not summon a seminar on poststructuralist hermeneutics to decipher the words “may not.”

I’ve alleged that ASU violated the statute. The merits of that claim have never been tried. Before ASU can be required to defend the training in court, the Arizona Board of Regents has argued that I cannot bring the case at all.

The trial court said I could. The Arizona Court of Appeals said I could not. The state Supreme Court has now agreed to hear the case and framed the question in the language lawyers love: whether the court of appeals failed to apply Arizona precedent for determining when a statute contains an “implied private right of action.”

That phrase sounds calculated to make normal Americans suddenly remember they have lawns to mow. But the principle behind it is important.

The law does not expressly say, “An employee may sue his employer for violating this section.” The Board of Regents therefore argues that no private cause of action exists. The Court of Appeals accepted that reasoning.

My attorneys argue that Arizona law does not end the inquiry there. Under state precedent, statutory silence “begins, rather than ends” the inquiry. Courts may consider a law’s language, context, purpose, subject matter, and consequences to determine whether a private right is implied.

RELATED: Feds probe ASU for racial bias — will other universities be held accountable?

flags/iStock/Getty Images

And the law is expressly directed at protecting state employees from being forced into prohibited training.

So here is the elementary question: If the employee the legislature meant to protect cannot enforce the protection, what exactly has he been given?

The lawmakers who sponsored the statute filed an amicus brief supporting my case and arguing that employees like me are exactly whom the law was intended to protect. That does not decide the legal question. It does underscore the practical one: If the protected employee cannot sue, who can?

A legal protection that government may violate without anyone able to invoke it in court has been demoted from law to suggestion.

That is why this case is not merely about DEI and certainly not merely about me.

Imagine a future Arizona government dominated by people whose politics are the reverse of mine. Suppose it mandates ideological training that violates a statute protecting progressive state employees. Should those employees be told, “Yes, the legislature prohibited this, but you are not permitted to ask a court to stop it”?

Of course not.

Conservatives, liberals, Christians, atheists, Republicans, Democrats, and the politically exhausted all have the same interest here. A government constrained by law is safer than a government permitted to decide for itself whether the laws restraining it will actually be enforced.

The larger controversy over DEI only sharpens the point. For years, university administrators embraced an ideology that purported to fight racial discrimination while rehabilitating racial judgment under new terminology. The vocabulary changed. The moral error did not.

Now legislatures are acting, parents are objecting, faculty members are speaking, and DEI offices are being renamed or reorganized.

But changing the stationery is not accountability.

RELATED: Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging: A new name for the same game

johnwoodcock/iStock/Getty Images

Institutions regain public trust by telling the truth about what they did. Administrators who imposed unlawful training should answer for it if a court finds that the law was violated. Those who objected should be able to get through the courthouse door long enough to have that question decided.

When a government institution is accused of violating the law, its first instinct should not be to discover an ingenious reason the citizen cannot sue.

Let the case be heard.

If ASU’s training complied with Arizona law, let ASU prove it. If it did not, let the courts say so.

That is what courts are for.

The question before the Arizona Supreme Court is larger than one professor, one university, or even DEI. It is whether a law written to restrain government is something the people it protects may actually invoke against government.

Arizona has already told its agencies, “You may not.”

Now we find out whether an employee is allowed to answer, “Then prove it in court.”

​Goldwater institute, Opinion & analysis, Arizona supreme court, First amendment, Diversity equity inclusion, Arizona state university, Freedom of speech 

I received my Fitbit Air near launch day back in May, and I’ve had it on my wrist ever since. In our original hands-on coverage, I loved it for its lightweight design, long battery life, and 24/7 wearability, despite a lack of GPS tracking for runs, questions around data privacy, and an inconsistently reliable AI coach.

Three months later, I have more thoughts on how Fitbit Air has aged and whether or not I still recommend the device.

I find that it’s an inconsistent health partner.

Things I still love about the Fitbit Air? For starters, the size and weight have proven to be a huge selling point for the Fitbit Air. It’s so light and unobtrusive, I forget I have it on most of the time. Unlike larger fitness bands or even watches, its bracelet-like design makes it easy to wear in tandem with jewelry or accessories on the other wrist. Personally, I pair mine with an Apple Watch (I’m a data nerd; don’t judge), and I rarely dodge judgmental glances in public, so it must look normal to most folks.

Its covert aesthetic is further complemented by reliably impressive battery life that lasts slightly more than a week per charge, though this window may shorten a bit if you’re a real exercise fanatic. I rarely have to take it off or acknowledge it’s there, which is the best thing you could ask for in a dedicated fitness tracker. Considering that the Fitbit Air samples heart rate data every five seconds, this kind of battery life cannot be overstated. It’s truly impressive, as far as wearable gadgets go.

Zach Laidlaw

If there’s anything to gripe about, it’s that the pebble module inside the Fitbit Air is made of plastic. Sure, it’s lightweight and cheap to produce, but it’s also easy to damage. Shortly after the Fitbit Air launched, some users reported scratches on the heart rate sensor, and one unlucky user found out that bug sprays and plastics don’t mix. Keeping these in mind, I’ve been careful with my Fitbit Air, and it’s held up quite well so far, despite getting drenched for daily showers, occasional exercises, and rounds of dirty dishwater in the kitchen sink. Let’s see if that trend continues.

Things I dislike about the Fitbit Air

That’s not to say that Fitbit Air is perfect. When the device launched, Google heavily pushed its Gemini-powered AI health coach as a key feature. The company even rebuilt the Fitbit app around it as Google Health. Unfortunately, Coach still needs some work.

Through my day-to-day musings with Coach, I find that it’s an inconsistent health partner. Sometimes, it’s really good at making recommendations to improve personal fitness or serving as a soundboard for discussing random health questions. Other times?

RELATED: Google’s Fitbit overhaul is actually great. There’s just one catch.

Zach Laidlaw

It hallucinates over the data stored within the app. I’ve had it misread my readiness score, undercut my daily steps, and send me a morning notification to tell me I woke up too early while I was actively still sleeping.

One time, it even invented its own stress score, which is a feature Fitbit used to have, but it was removed when Google Health took over. When I asked Coach where it got the number, it said that I could find it myself in Google Health, but naturally, it wasn’t there. I’m still not sure where it found that hidden data, if it existed at all.

At this point, Coach is an interesting feature to play with, but it’s not actually reliable or useful yet. If it wasn’t already included in my Google AI Pro subscription, I wouldn’t dare spend the extra money on a Google Health Premium plan to try it out.

Would I recommend the Fitbit Air?

It’s only been a few months, but Fitbit Air remains to be one of the most interesting fitness trackers I’ve used in the last 15 years. Shortcomings aside, it does the basics well. Build, comfort, and battery are all highly rated in my book. It’s also tough to find a reliable tracker with class-leading heart rate, sleep, and fitness metrics for under $100. For the money, you get a lot of gadget here, and I would recommend it to anyone who is even the least bit curious about your health.

Zach Laidlaw

The story doesn’t end there, though. Fitbit Air is about to get better. Google announced at its hardware event in mid-August that the wearable is getting a powerful software upgrade. As part of Google’s new Health Guardian system for Pixel Watches, Fitbit Air will receive several quality-of-life features: insulin resistance metrics and blood pressure trends.

Together, these could theoretically help users detect early signs of diabetes and hypertension. That said, the features are expected to roll out in September, so I haven’t had a chance to test them yet. When they’re available, though, I’m sure I’ll have some thoughts. You’ll just have to wait until the six-month long-term review to read them.

​Tech, Fitbit 

Meta is set to pay a staggering $17 billion settlement after allegations that its social media platforms contributed to addiction and other harms among young users.

The agreement marks one of the largest corporate payouts tied to the growing backlash against Big Tech — and BlazeTV hosts Christopher Rufo and Jonathan “Lomez” Keeperman aren’t exactly sure how to feel about it.

“So we had a ruling this week,” Rufo says, “a settlement this week that Meta, which is the kind of dumb rebrand, like, middle-aged man identity crisis rebranding of Facebook, has settled to pay $17 billion.”

“Meta has been found guilty, or admitted to, harming children with its Facebook technology,” he explains.

“Essentially, they’re saying social media is addictive and harmful to kids in the same way that kids might be, you know, lighting up cigarettes,” he adds, before asking Lomez whether it’s good or bad.

“I’m of like two, three, four minds about this, honestly. On the one hand, it does strike me a little bit as a moral panic, I should say, which is like, OK, we’re going down this path of increased social media use. People are addicted to their phones,” Lomez says.

“There’s no ambiguity around that. That’s obvious and demonstrably the case. The question is, what harms are these doing? … And I think there are real harms,” he adds.

One of these “harms” is the “pervasive mass psychosis” that Lomez explains is “dominating our public life in almost every respect.”

“People getting herded into these sort of algorithmic valleys, you might call them, where they don’t see outside of it. Their information environment is completely one-sided, and this is deranging to people,” he says.

However, is the responsibility on those who have created social media, or those who use it?

“I think it’s a little bit of both,” he says. “And certainly when it comes to kids, I think kids are particularly susceptible to this stuff. And there ought to be a certain kind of responsibility that’s placed on the people creating these tools to be mindful of the ways in which kids in particular are susceptible, are able to be manipulated, where their sort of weaknesses are.”

“So this is all to say, when it comes to Meta here, is it reasonable for them to pay out $17 billion to these states? My answer is actually, yeah, it is,” he adds.

Want more from Rufo & Lomez?

To enjoy more of the news through the anthropological lens of Christopher Rufo and Lomez, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​17 billion, Addiction, Big tech, Christopher rufo, Jonathan lomez keeperman, Meta, Social media, Blazetv show