I grew up playing with Legos, and so did my kids. But when I told them the story of Bryan Mansell, Star Wars Legos, and Bricks & Minifigs, it sounded too strange to be true. It sounds like something written by a committee of internet pranksters, small-town cops, corporate lawyers, Lego collectors, and Kafka.

I did not expect this story at the start of the summer.

Where are the Legos? Who owes the Mansell family? And why did it take an internet firestorm to get anyone to listen?

At the center of it is not a culture-war symbol, a presidential scandal, classified documents, or some new university ideology. It is a Star Wars Lego collection.

And somehow, around this collection of plastic bricks, we now have lawsuits, arrests, temporary restraining orders, allegations of corporate misconduct, allegations of harassment, a YouTuber reportedly fleeing to Mexico, a police department under national scrutiny, and a family still asking the question that started the whole mess: Where are the Legos?

The collection

Act 1 begins in Keizer, Oregon.

Bryan Mansell says he took his 83-year-old father’s prized Star Wars Lego collection to a Bricks & Minifigs retail location in late 2023. His father was battling cancer, and the family wanted to sell the collection to help with medical expenses.

This was not a box of random toys found in an attic. By Mansell’s account, it was a massive collection assembled over many years, with hundreds of sets and more than a thousand minifigures. Some estimates put the value between $150,000 and $200,000. Some collectors described it as one of the most impressive private Star Wars Lego collections in the region.

The arrangement, according to reporting that reviewed the documents, was a written consignment agreement. The store would sell the collection, take its percentage, and pay the Mansell family. The important point is simple: Under the agreement, the collection remained Mansell’s property until sold.

Then the store changed hands. Records became contested. Corporate Bricks & Minifigs says the consignment arrangement was unauthorized, poorly disclosed, and mishandled before corporate officials or later owners had enough information to sort it out. Former franchise owners dispute parts of that account. Mansell says much of the collection was not returned and he was not properly paid.

That should have been a civil dispute. It might have been messy, but it should have been boring: contracts, inventory, accounting, receipts, lawyers, and maybe a settlement.

The YouTuber

Instead, Act 2 arrived in the person of Benjamin “Reckless Ben” Schneider.

Schneider is a YouTuber, which meant the story would not stay in the file cabinets. He began making videos about the dispute and tried to help Mansell recover what he claimed was owed. Millions watched. A local disagreement about consignment inventory became an internet crusade.

Then the saga became even stranger.

Schneider went to Utah, where Bricks & Minifigs is based, and tried to confront or serve people connected to the company. American Fork police got involved. Schneider was arrested twice and later charged with stalking and targeted residential picketing. Bricks & Minifigs and its owners also filed a civil lawsuit accusing Schneider, Mansell, and others of defamation, disparagement, conspiracy, stalking, trespass, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

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Then came the temporary restraining order. On May 28, a Utah judge ordered that videos related to the underlying dispute and allegedly defamatory or unlawful content be taken down. The order also restricted contact with Bricks & Minifigs employees and prohibited conduct such as threats, doxxing, trespass, and interference with the business.

That raises an obvious constitutional problem. Courts can punish defamation after proper process. They can restrain threats and harassment. They can enforce trespass laws. But when a court orders videos removed before a final judgment, and when the surrounding legal process appears unclear to the public watching online, ordinary Americans have reason to ask whether the case has drifted into something darker.

We are not talking about a terrorist cell. We are talking about a YouTuber and a Lego dispute. Yet suddenly there are allegations of prior restraint, questions about due process, and a police response many viewers found hard to square with ordinary law enforcement neutrality.

Schneider reportedly fled to Mexico, while the online world tried to piece together what was happening. It is the kind of plot turn that would get rejected by a screenwriter for being too ridiculous. “The YouTuber investigating the missing Star Wars Lego collection fled the country after Utah police arrested him.”

That sentence should not exist. Yet here we are.

The cleanup

Act 3 is the attempted corporate cleanup.

Bricks & Minifigs has now closed the Salem-area store and parted ways with the most recent franchise owners. CEO Ammon McNeff has said he wants to sit down with Mansell, review the spreadsheets, consignment agreement, and point-of-sale data, return any remaining Star Wars Lego items in the store, and compensate Mansell for anything shown to be unaccounted for.

That sounds like progress. It also raises the central question again: Where are the Star Wars Legos?

If they were mostly sold, where is the full accounting? If some remain, why has it taken this long to identify and return them? If the consignment agreement was unauthorized, why should that eliminate the duty to account for property that belonged to someone else? If multiple versions of inventory records exist, who created them, and why do they differ? If corporate now says it wants to make Mansell whole, why did that require months of public pressure, lawsuits, arrests, and internet outrage?

The guardrails

Here is the larger question: Why did a Lego dispute produce behavior that looks to many observers like constitutional overreach? What was really at stake in this collection that allowed a consignment dispute to spiral into lawsuits, arrests, and First Amendment questions?

America is supposed to have guardrails. Police are not supposed to look like private security for the well connected. Courts are not supposed to silence speech merely because it embarrasses a company. Citizens are supposed to know the charges against them. Journalists, creators, and ordinary people are supposed to be able to ask uncomfortable questions without being treated like criminals.

Of course, there are limits. No one has a right to threaten, stalk, trespass, or defame. If Schneider or anyone else crossed those lines, the law can address it. But the same standard must apply in the other direction. If police abused their authority, if a court order went too far, or if a company used litigation to silence criticism rather than answer legitimate questions, that also demands accountability.

RELATED: Rainbow Batman from LEGO sparks outrage: ‘We don’t need gay Batman!’

Mark Kerrison/In Pictures/Getty Images

The question

The Bricks & Minifigs saga is not over. It may still end with a full accounting, a settlement, and the Mansell family receiving what it is owed.

But the damage has already been done.

A family tried to sell a beloved collection to help an elderly father with medical bills. A YouTuber turned the dispute into a national spectacle. A company tried to contain the fallout. Police and courts entered the story. Now everyone is asking what should have been answered at the beginning.

Where are the Legos?

Who owes the Mansell family?

And why did it take an internet firestorm to get anyone to listen?

​Lego, First amendment, Bricks & minifigs, Star wars, Utah, Corporate corruption, Courts, Opinion & analysis 

“Our earth in 1969 / Is not the planet I call mine,” W.H. Auden declares at the outset of his late poem “Doggerel by a Senior Citizen.” While acutely aware of the youth revolt then transforming the culture around him, Auden makes it clear that he is perfectly happy being stuck in the past:

Then Speech was mannerly, an Art,
Like learning not to belch or fart:
I cannot settle which is worse,
The Anti-Novel or Free Verse.

Nor are those Ph.D’s my kith,
Who dig the symbol and the myth:
I count myself a man of letters
Who writes, or hopes to, for his betters.

Dare any call Permissiveness
An educational success?
Saner those class-rooms which I sat in,
Compelled to study Greek and Latin.

Though I suspect the term is crap,
There is a Generation Gap,
Who is to blame? Those, old or young,
Who will not learn their Mother-Tongue.

These verses display a quality seldom found among today’s aging cultural figures: a complete lack of interest in courting the approval of the young. Auden was 62 when he wrote the poem; how many sexagenarians in 2026 would willingly describe themselves as “senior citizens”?

Even as counterfeit youthfulness fails to convince actual young people, it can offer them a useful warning signal.

Nor did the legendary poet make much effort to conceal the fact of his age. By then his face had become famously craggy and weathered, prompting him to quip that it resembled “a wedding cake left out in the rain.”

Perpetual maidenhood

As it happens, it was a wedding cake that helped launch pop star Madonna to worldwide fame. At the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards, the then-relatively unknown 26-year-old emerged from a 17-foot-tall, three-tiered prop cake in bridal white to perform “Like a Virgin.”

Today, Madonna is five years older than Auden was when he wrote “Doggerel.” It goes without saying that as a celebrity of a certain age, she has availed herself of the surgical remedies available to those with sufficient means. And she has achieved the familiar effect: She does not look old, exactly, though neither would anyone mistake her for young. Nor does she look particularly like Madonna.

In keeping with this perpetually “youthful” image, Madge continues to perform in the same kind of skimpy stage lingerie she wore in her 20s. Perhaps aware that the effect of such outfits is now more nostalgic than erotic, she has increasingly devoted herself to courting her sizeable gay male fan base. Yet even here she appears reluctant to surrender her claim on youth culture, recently “taking over” the gay hookup app Grindr to promote her latest album.

Withered wisdom

Whatever one thinks of her music, Madonna long ago secured her place in the cultural pantheon. She has nothing left to prove. On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine that she doesn’t have something to teach. You don’t survive five decades in the public eye — weathering shifts in fashion, technology, and taste that bring lesser stars crashing back to earth — without learning a few things. But imparting the wisdom that comes with age and accomplishment would require shedding the past-its-sell-by-date “boy toy” packaging.

Many of us who aren’t famous must contend with this dilemma too. Even as a child, I cringed at the efforts of some adults to be “relatable” to me, abdicating their natural authority as if it would gain them back a few lost years.

Now, as a teacher slowly approaching my own Auden/Madonna crossroads, I hate to admit that I’ve at times found myself tempted to play the “cool” adult. Experience has taught me, however, that this pose has diminishing returns — especially in the classroom.

It also indicates a deeper moral and spiritual rot, as the late historian Christopher Lasch reminds us in his 1979 book “The Culture of Narcissism.”

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Cult of youth

Lasch’s thesis — which remains all too relevant almost half a century later — is that our modern “cult of youth” is emblematic of the nihilism and anxious obsession with the present that has overtaken so many. As he writes:

In a society that dreads old age and death, aging holds a special terror for those who fear dependence and whose self-esteem requires the admiration usually reserved for youth, beauty, celebrity, or charm. The usual defenses against the ravages of age — identification with ethical or artistic values beyond one’s immediate interests, intellectual curiosity, the consoling emotional warmth derived from happy relationships in the past — can do nothing for the narcissist.

It’s not that fillers and facelifts can’t be used with subtlety and restraint — although this rarely seems to be the case. It’s that even the most imperceptible plastic surgery suggests surrender to this nihilistic worldview. The passage of time doesn’t lead us to some greater meaning; it can only offer us decay. Where these fragile vessels take us is either unknowable or irrelevant; the important thing is to keep the paint fresh.

God’s design

This approach to physical decline may be dominant, but there remains another way. For every Madonna, we have the counter example of women like Helen Mirren, Maggie Smith, and Meryl Streep, who embrace their age with elegance. The cliché rings true: Real physical attractiveness begins with inner confidence and manifests outwardly from within.

Even as counterfeit youthfulness fails to convince actual young people, it can offer them a useful warning signal. “Don’t look to me for guidance,” it seems to say. “I’m as clueless as you are.” When I need advice, when I need someone to help me view the everyday grind from a broader perspective, wrinkles and gray hair offer a certain guarantee.

They also offer me hope, especially as my own glances in the mirror become more fraught — hope that I, too, will find the serenity to resist the course of nature and the grace to accept God’s design.

​Aging, Christopher lasch, Culture, Education, Entertainment, First-person, Madonna, Meaning, Meryl streep, Nihilism, Plastic surgery, W.h. auden, Lifestyle, Narcissism 

In November, X began displaying each account’s country of origin. Unsurprisingly, this caused an uproar. Users rushed to prove that their online enemies were foreign interlopers. Many accounts that claimed to be from one country were, in fact, from another.

It was funny. But it also revealed a serious problem.

Politically engaged Americans should understand that large online followings may not reflect genuine American support.

As the developing world gains broader access to the internet, American political and cultural discourse becomes increasingly vulnerable to foreign influence.

According to the International Telecommunication Union, 5.4 billion people had internet access in 2023, roughly 67% of the world’s population. That marked a 4.7% increase from 2022. Because 93% of people in high-income countries already had internet access, most of the growth is now coming from poorer countries. The ITU reports that internet access in low-income countries increased 44.1% from 2020 to 2023. From 2022 to 2023 alone, the number of internet users in low-income countries rose 14.3%.

Simply put, the internet becomes more global every day.

What does that mean for Americans? After all, foreign users do not vote in our elections. Why should anyone care what people in slums halfway across the world say about American politics?

That objection misses the nature of the problem.

In the age of social media, clicks are king. To be important online is to have a large following. All of us, to some degree, are tempted to think this way. We see a big number on someone’s profile and assume, “This person matters.”

Audience size has always mattered in media. Television executives obsessed over ratings. But when American television dominated American culture, a large American audience usually meant actual Americans were watching. Access outside the country was limited.

That is no longer true. The internet has democratized and globalized the distribution of information. English remains the world’s dominant online language, creating a new path to political and cultural relevance. If your business is clicks, it doesn’t really matter whether those clicks come from Nigeria or Wisconsin.

There is nothing inherently wrong with appealing to an international audience. The problem comes when influencers convert foreign support into domestic political capital. Credulous observers see a large following and conclude that someone must be expressing the voice of America’s silent majority.

The silent majority of Jakarta, perhaps.

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Foreign bot networks make the problem worse by artificially boosting narratives and talking points that serve non-American interests. But even organic foreign engagement threatens the coherence of American political discourse when it is mistaken for domestic opinion.

The rise of the so-called “anti-Zionist right” offers a useful example. Since October 7, a collection of questionable internet personalities has tried to steer American right-wing discourse away from domestic concerns and toward the Israel-Palestine conflict. As with any foreign country, Israel is open to valid criticism. But the monomaniacal focus on Gaza demanded by this crowd goes far beyond normal foreign-policy debate.

Domestic support for Israel has declined, especially among Democrats and younger Americans. But anyone using social media as the primary barometer would likely assume the decline is far greater than it is. Why? Because anti-Israel content appeals to large foreign audiences, especially in the developing world. Bot networks amplify it as well.

This helps explain why Florida Republican gubernatorial candidate James Fishback has put anti-Zionism at the center of his campaign. In an ad posted to X, Fishback referenced claims that Israel is committing genocide and that Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal — claims he suggested could land people in jail. Florida does have anti-Semitism laws, and while such legislation should raise concerns, asking those questions will not send Floridians to prison.

The ad drew three million views and 30,000 likes. That is more traction than most campaign ads receive online. Based on those numbers alone, you might conclude Fishback is going places.

There is only one problem: He is polling at 7%.

As it turns out, catering to the anti-Israel online sphere is not a clear path to electoral success as a Republican. A poll of attendees at the recent Turning Point USA America Fest conference found that only 13.3% did not believe Israel is an ally of the United States.

Fishback’s campaign shows what happens when political actors mistake the internet for real life. The size of your reach matters, but so does its composition. It is not only how many people you reach; it is who they are.

Larger influencers have made the same mistake. Candace Owens has bragged about her sizable international audience. She once claimed that her documentary on Brigitte Macron went viral in China. I believe it. But millions of Chinese viewers watching an American political broadcaster does not mean Americans should treat her as a serious representative of domestic public opinion.

RELATED: Can we have online safety without total surveillance? Yes. Here’s how.

Deagreez/Getty Images

So what can be done?

First, every social media platform should follow X’s lead and display a user’s country of origin. The method is not foolproof, but it is better than nothing. For accounts above a certain size, platforms should also show a breakdown of the audience’s countries of origin.

Second, platforms should consider allowing users to region-lock their accounts. A region-locking feature would let users prevent people outside approved countries from seeing or engaging with their posts. Such a tool would reduce engagement, but many users would gladly trade raw reach for the ability to discuss contentious domestic issues with their countrymen without being swarmed by foreign accounts.

These measures would mitigate some of the downsides of an increasingly non-Western internet. But the problem cannot be solved entirely through platform policy.

What conservatives need most is awareness. Politically engaged Americans should understand that large online followings may not reflect genuine American support. They should be skeptical of influencers whose apparent domestic relevance depends heavily on foreign audiences.

There is no going back. The international cat is out of the bag. We cannot stop social media figures from catering to foreign audiences.

But we can stop pretending those audiences speak for America.

​Foreign influence, International audience, October 7, Israel, America, Internet security, X, Zionists, Opinion & analysis 

After the extremely popular Spencer Pratt fell behind no-name Nithya Raman in the Los Angeles mayoral race, BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler believed there was possible election fraud.

Now, she’s sure of it.

“Today we have crimes detected for you,” Wheeler says. “But let’s make one thing very clear first. The California election system is completely rigged. And you and I have zero obligation to simply accept that because California is ‘Commie-fornia.’”

These “crimes detected” were covered in a recent report by the New York Post, where it found that “thousands of homeless voters … were registered to vote at L.A. shelters, despite many not living there or the facilities not having any beds.”

And in an interview this week with Will Chamberlain, he theorized to Wheeler that “there was going to be some centralized location where an unreasonable amount of these homeless people all had their ballots sent.”

“That’s exactly what the New York Post found,” Wheeler says.

“As Spencer Pratt was eliminated by Nithya Raman in the mayor’s race on Monday night, it can be revealed that one drop-in center … that received $600,000 from the socialist candidate … had 185 voters at the address but offers no accommodations,” the article reads.

“So not only is this one of the centralized locations that Will speculated about yesterday, 185 people registered here, doesn’t even have beds, and it’s tied monetarily to Nithya Raman. The New York Post says the revelations have prompted U.S. Attorney [for the Central District of California] Bill Essayli to say that he will investigate the concerns uncovered by the Post,” Wheeler comments.

The Post also uncovered that the drop-in center that received $600,000 from Raman was taxpayer funded.

“The corruption of these people, it can never be overstated,” Wheeler says.

When the Post contacted Raman’s campaign as well as the L.A. shelter, not only did the campaign not respond — but a photograph of Raman presenting a check was taken down from the shelter’s website.

“This is taxpayer money that Nithya Raman gave to this place,” Wheeler says, adding, “Your money if you live in the city of Los Angeles.”

Want more from Liz Wheeler?

To enjoy more of Liz’s based commentary, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Blazetv host, California election, Election fraud, Liz wheeler, New york post, Nithya raman, Spencer pratt, The liz wheeler show 

Iran and the United States have riddled their fragile ceasefire with missiles in the 14th week of the war.

President Donald Trump confirmed on Tuesday that the U.S. Army AH-64 Apache helicopter downed while patrolling the Strait of Hormuz on Monday had been shot down by Iranian forces. While the uninjured pilots were rescued, the president stressed that “the United States must, of necessity, respond to this attack.”

‘US forces remain vigilant, lethal, and ready.’

Hours later, U.S. Central Command announced that it had begun launching “self-defense strikes,” which it characterized as a “proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression.”

Early Wednesday, Trump noted on Truth Social that “they’ve taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price!!!”

The president clarified later in the day that more American strikes were forthcoming.

“We hit them hard yesterday. We’re going to hit them again hard today, in case you miss it, in case you don’t turn on your television set, and we’ll see what happens with the deal,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

On Wednesday evening, CENTCOM launched another series of “self-defense” strikes, stating afterward that it had targeted “Iranian military surveillance capabilities, communication systems, and air defense sites across Iran.”

RELATED: US Apache helicopter crashes near Strait of Hormuz on 100th day of Iran war; Trump says end in sight

Ford Williams/U.S. Navy/Getty Images

Iranian media claimed, however, that among the structures damaged in the American strikes was a pair of water tanks in the south of the country with a combined capacity of 2.5 million liters — tanks said to have supplied water to tens of thousands of civilians. When asked by the New York Times about reports of damage to water facilities, CENTCOM declined to comment.

“U.S. Marine Corps, Air Force, and Navy assets fired precision munitions on Iranian targets that posed a threat to U.S. forces and international commercial ships transiting regional waters,” CENTCOM said in a statement. “The strikes are in response to Iran’s unwarranted and continued aggression. U.S. forces remain vigilant, lethal, and ready.”

According to Trey Yingst, an Israel-based Fox News reporter, Trump said that the U.S. fired at least 49 Tomahawk missiles into Iran and executed bombings via fighter jets, hitting targets as close as 40 miles outside Tehran. Trump also reportedly said that if the Iranians don’t sign the peace agreement, “we’ll bomb the s**t out of them.”

Iranian state media reported on Thursday that in retaliation for the American strikes, “18 important targets belonging to the U.S. military in the region were successfully hit during two operational waves following the recent aggression against Iranian territorial integrity.”

The Iranians maintain that their attacks constitute self-defense “as recognized under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations.”

According to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the targets were located “at the Al-Salem and Ahmad al-Jaber air bases, as well as the Sheikh Isa air base.”

Citing an unnamed military official, Jordanian state media reported that 20 missiles had been intercepted and neutralized by the country’s air defense systems, adding there had been no human casualties or material damage.

Iranian drones and “hostile aerial targets” were reportedly intercepted over Bahrain and Kuwait.

While Iranian media also claimed that the Strait of Hormuz had been completely closed in response to the American strikes, CENTCOM stated on Wednesday evening that “commercial ships are continuing to transit in and out of the Strait of Hormuz.”

Trump emphasized on Wednesday that “the UNITED STATES of AMERICA CONTROLS the Strait of Hormuz — NOT Iran.”

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​Iran, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Middle east, War, Israel, Donald trump, Tehran, Bombing, Centcom, Military, Conflict, Strait of hormuz, Politics 

Many AI systems now produce fully documented reports with citations, making the apparatus of scholarship available without the slow friction through which scholarship is ordinarily built. From the university to the lab, the repercussions are quickly being felt. As researchers benefit from these shortcuts at scale, what is being lost?

OpenAI’s Deep Research spends five to 30 minutes searching the internet, filing results into a structured synthesis, and delivering a report complete with footnotes. Google’s equivalent may use 80 search queries for a typical task, running asynchronously in the background while the user attends to something else. Anthropic describes a multi-agent architecture in which a lead agent spawns parallel subagents to explore separate branches of a question; this setup outperformed a single-agent arrangement by 90.2% on an internal evaluation. Perplexity logged 21 search queries and 193,947 reasoning tokens to answer a single prompt. The systems find facts and compress them into a format a human can skim in four minutes.

What the system decides gets to count as knowledge.

The dream behind all this is older than the microprocessor. Vannevar Bush, in 1945, called for a new relationship between the thinking person and the sum of human knowledge. Douglas Engelbart later imagined a human-artifact system designed to improve problem-solving by restructuring symbols, processes, and collaboration. What is striking about the current systems, by contrast, is how thoroughly they have dissolved the researcher into the background. Bush and Engelbart mostly imagined tools that strengthened the researcher’s own agency. What we have now is a delegated researcher, one that disappears and returns with a finished report. The human researcher merely issues the prompt.

The compression is the key principle. Retrieval narrows the corpus. Ranking narrows retrieval. Subagents narrow branches. The final report narrows everything again into prose. What the system decides is worth compressing is what gets to count as knowledge. Anthropic’s description of its architecture notes that “the essence of search is compression.” The observation is an announcement of how the world will henceforth appear.

Mistakes are made

Consider the failure cases, which the companies document. OpenAI’s notes acknowledge that its system can hallucinate facts, make incorrect inferences, and struggle to distinguish authoritative information from rumors. Anthropic says its testers found early agents over-selecting SEO content farms over more authoritative, less search-optimized sources, requiring the addition of source-quality heuristics. Google warns about prompt injection from malicious webpages. WebGPT, the earliest major working prototype of the form, made the deepest point years before the current products existed: a capable system may eventually learn to cherry-pick persuasive sources rather than fairly represent the evidence. The system inadvertently hides its reliability problems.

The BrowseComp benchmark presents agents with 1,266 short-answer tasks whose solutions are hard to find but easy to verify. On that benchmark, OpenAI’s Deep Research reaches 51.5% accuracy versus 1.9% for GPT-4o with browsing. But the benchmark’s authors note that short answers are easy to grade, and it remains unclear how tightly this correlates with open-ended work in the actual world. Model Evaluation and Threat Research found that many pull requests passing automated software evaluations would still not be merged into real repositories. Machine-evaluable success and acceptable work are not the same thing.

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Matt Cardy/Getty Images

The deeper problem is knowledge that cannot be found by any search. Much that matters is not already in PDFs, public filings, or searchable webpages. It is tacit, local, and embedded in what scholars, laboratories, newsrooms, or courtrooms have internalized over years of practice.

Automatic AI research can summarize a method section, compare papers, draft a literature review, but it is less secure when what matters is the unsaid context, the understood constraint, the judgment that would embarrass its holder to have to articulate. Sakana AI’s AI Scientist-v2 submitted three fully AI-generated papers to an ICLR 2025 workshop, and one scored above the average acceptance threshold. Sakana also reported citation errors and reproducibility concerns and judged none of the submissions good enough for the main conference track. Synthesis is advancing faster than judgment. The system can generate the form of scientific inquiry without inheriting its discipline.

Automatic AI research depends on the open web while threatening the business models that keep parts of that web alive. CNN sued Perplexity on May 28, 2026, alleging unlawful distribution of copyrighted content. If research agents become the primary interface to knowledge, then questions of licensing, attribution, and compensation become reliability problems. A research tool that undermines the conditions of its own training data is not a stable arrangement.

The unintentional user

Pew’s 2025 survey found that only 16% of American workers said at least some of their work was currently done with AI. Workers who did use chatbots were more likely to say the tools helped them work faster than to say they improved quality. A separate Pew browsing study found that 58% of respondents encountered an AI-generated summary in Google search, but only 13% used an AI tool during the month. Automatic AI research is becoming ambient infrastructure before it becomes a universally adopted destination. People may increasingly receive AI-mediated research without thinking of themselves as users of anything in particular. The most consequential technologies often arrive this way.

What has been built is the industrialization of a specific layer of epistemic labor: searching, filtering, summarizing, and drafting, at scale. That changes what kind of thinker a user can become and what kind of web a publisher must survive in. What it is not, at least not yet, is a substitute for the full ecology of inquiry: the laboratory humiliation, the hallway argument, the reading that goes nowhere and then suddenly does. The system knows how to compress the world. We do not yet know what we are losing in the compression.

​Tech 

As their cultural icons fall, leftists cannot accept reality or responsibility. The reality is simple: The market for their increasingly radical beliefs is shrinking. The responsibility is theirs. They moved far away from the American public and then blamed the public for refusing to follow.

So the left does what it always does. It refuses to blame its fallen icons. It refuses to change its beliefs. Instead, it turns its icons into martyrs.

The left makes martyrs of the people and institutions falling from their pedestals. That is easier than admitting the left was wrong.

The latest martyr is Scott Pelley, a former correspondent for CBS’ “60 Minutes.” According to the Associated Press, Pelley accused one of his bosses of “murdering” the show and said “she has no qualifications for her job.” He then reportedly turned on others, saying, “You have slender qualifications for this job.”

Page Six’s Hollywood section put the episode more bluntly: “‘Poison Pelley’: Scott Pelley’s tirade against new ‘60 Minutes’ boss latest example of respected CBS journo’s ‘diva’ behavior.”

Pelley told the New York Times on Sunday that CBS News had lost its way.

“We have people who’ve been installed in these jobs who, through no fault of their own, have no experience in television,” he said. “They don’t know what they’re doing. And there’s a subtle political bias that I’ve never seen at ‘60 Minutes’ before, or at CBS News before. So that is my hope: a return to sanity.”

Pelley is right about one thing. CBS News has never had a “subtle political bias.” The bias has always been obvious and leftward, as AllSides’ media bias rating makes clear.

His elevation to martyr status joins a long and growing list.

Network news did not need Scott Pelley to damage itself. It was already doing that quite well. According to Gallup polling in 2025, only 28% of Americans had a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in mass media. In February, Pew Research found that 57% of Americans had low confidence in journalists to act in the public’s best interest.

That helps explain why NBC News cut loose MSNBC, why MSNBC tried a major rebrand and cut salaries and staff, and why CNN underwent another major overhaul in 2025. These outlets did not suffer because America suddenly became too stupid to appreciate them. They suffered because Americans understood them too well.

Hollywood tells the same story. “Supergirl” is a super flop, another link in the industry’s chain of progressive pandering. It was short on plot and long on marketing budget. The marketing could not overcome the product. And if the force-feeding of ideology were not enough, the film’s star insulted the prospective audience before viewers had a chance to walk out.

“Supergirl” is symptomatic of Hollywood’s superhero genre and of the larger industry. Both now treat entertainment as beneath them. A movie is no longer a movie. It is a vehicle for indoctrinating supposedly backward Americans who can absorb the left coast’s “higher values” only through metaphor and spandex.

RELATED: ‘Supergirl’ Milly Alcock’s most fearsome foe? Christian dads

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Late-night television offers the same lesson through Stephen Colbert. Or rather, it did. Colbert is no longer on television and for good reason. He was not funny. His show was too expensive. Like Pelley, he repeatedly insulted his bosses. Now, the left lionizes him as a brave man who stood up to President Trump.

Colbert was to late night what “Supergirl” is to Hollywood: a symptom of a larger disease. What was true of him individually is true of late-night television generally. It became another forum for the left to talk to itself while demanding that the rest of America listen.

Print media is no better. The Washington Post is suffering the same fate as its brethren in film and television: declining readership, mounting financial losses, and staff cuts. As with TV, what can be said of the Post can be said of newspapers generally. Their audience shrank because their contempt grew.

In all these cases, the left has transformed icons into martyrs because it refuses to accept reality. In Pelley’s case, the reality is especially obvious. Publicly lashing out at your bosses is showboating stupidity. Everyone knows this. Everyone follows that basic rule except the left, which believes its heroes deserve a different standard.

In the other cases, the left refuses to accept the market’s verdict. Life does not operate as a charity or a government program. Charities can treat losses as proof of need. Governments can tax and borrow their way around failure. Markets are less sentimental. When audiences stop watching, buying, reading, or subscribing, the message is clear.

RELATED: Propagandist Stephen Colbert gets final jab from Trump on the way out

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The left hates that message because it hates markets. Markets reveal what people actually want. They do not care what cultural elites believe people should want.

That is why the left prefers government and bureaucracy. Regulation can soften market verdicts. Subsidies can delay them. Institutional capture can disguise them. But none of it can make Americans love products they have already rejected.

The left also refuses to accept responsibility for the collapse of its icons. America’s left has become more radical, and the rest of the country has not followed. To admit that would require admitting failure.

So the left makes martyrs of the people and institutions falling from their pedestals. That is easier than admitting the left was wrong. It is less painful than asking why so many Americans stopped listening.

But the answer is not hard to find. The icons fell because the public fell away.

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As America approaches its 250th birthday, patriots are gearing up for festivities and traditions, while many Democrats are fantasizing about living in another country.

In a new poll from Elon University conducted by YouGov between April 30 and May 4, 55% of Democratic respondents answered that there is another country they would rather live in than the United States.

Glenn Beck was disheartened by the data.

“If anyone on this continent ever had a right to say, … ‘This country is a fraud. These documents are a lie,’ … it was Martin Luther King and the people who lived at that time,” he says.

He recounts how in King’s day, “Black Americans [were] being beaten for trying to vote; children [had] fire hoses turned onto them; men [were] being lynched, and the murderers [were] walking free.”

But instead of listening to the voices in the Civil Rights Movement denouncing the American project as “rotten to the root,” King, Glenn says, “reached for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution … and he called them a promissory note.”

“This is the solution to our problems!” he exclaims.

In his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech, King expressed genuine belief in America’s promise that all had a right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” but argued that black Americans had received a “bad check … marked ‘insufficient funds.’”

This hopeful yet demanding position Glenn calls “extraordinary.”

“He could have torn the note up; he could have said that promise is worthless. But he didn’t. He said he refused to believe that the bank of justice was bankrupt,” he declares. “He didn’t come to Washington to renounce the founding; he came to cash the check.”

This is what allowed King to change the world, Glenn says.

But many of today’s disgruntled Americans wouldn’t fit in with King. Unlike him, they don’t believe in the American project.

“King said, ‘The promise is real, so pay it.’ Today, they say, ‘The promise is fraudulent, so what’s the point of staying or living within the system?’” Glenn says.

The latter group, he says, is perpetuating a dangerous narrative: “If the documents are the disease, then there is no cure to be found inside the house. There’s no way out except the exit door or the match.”

To the 55% who long to leave the country, Glenn gives a sobering message: “Nearly every country on the menu you’d flee to has a lot more [soft despotism], not less.”

The “antidote,” he says, is neither flight nor destruction; it’s the Bill of Rights.

“That is the tool that Frederick Douglass picked up. That’s the tool that King picked up. When the majority had failed him, he didn’t appeal to a foreign flag; he appealed to the promise the majority had signed and broken — and he demanded America honor it,” Glenn passionately recounts.

“The Declaration is your check. … The Constitution is that check. The Bill of Rights is your enforcement clause. They are not the thing standing between you and a country worth loving. They are the only road to that country worth loving.”

To hear more, watch the video above.

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