Stupidity Watch 1

The Irkutsk Plague Institute and Russian Phage Therapy By Robert Korczynski October 7th 2026 The recent death of 28-year-old laboratory technician Darya Shipilova at the Irkutsk Research Anti-Plague Institute, and the resulting lockdown of sixty scientists at the Institute alongside the hospital monitoring of two hundred likely family contacts will never be officially explained by the Russians, who are not known for their transparency. If this event was a localized lab leak of an engineered super plague, the Russian Scientists and their family members are certainly being given pneumonic plague bacteriophage therapy. The Irkutsk Research Anti-Plague Institute was explicitly designated for dual-use biological weapons warfare research under the Soviet system, meaning the likely research was with the endemic Pneumonic Plague, creating one or more Multiply Resistant Pneumonic Plague (MRPP) strains from regional wildlife reservoirs like marmots and ground squirrels. Recent revelations from t...

Why American Democracy Lasted 250 Years ​By Robert Korczynski ​Between odd-year voting for local municipal elections, even-year voting for the House and Senate, and the Electoral College for the presidency, the United States operates with three distinct governing models inherited directly from ancient Greece and Rome. Depending on which office is on the ballot, power is allocated through an ancient property-owner direct assembly, an aristocratic Roman-style representative republic, or a mechanical lottery system that ancient Athenians would instantly recognize as sortition. ​The first tier operates quietly at the local level. Research from the Sightline Institute and the MIT Election Data and Science Lab analyzing more than 25,000 local governments nationwide shows that roughly 60% to 75% of municipalities hold their elections off-cycle, either in odd-numbered years or on separate spring and summer dates. By scheduling municipal, school board, and mayoral elections away from the...

Odd-Year Voting is Classic Greek Democracy By Robert Korczynski In ancient Sparta and Athens democracy only included land-owning male veterans that were citizens of the state, and never included people passing by or temporarily living there, and no women, and no slaves. The amount of the population that fit this criteria was about 13%, and they were the only ones that were allowed to vote. Up until 1820 in the United States and everywhere on the planet, the definition of democracy had always been some version of Greek democracy. America was set up with classic Greek democracy, but in 1820 three American states extended voting rights to poor white men, participating in the slippery slope into universal suffrage on the planet started by the French and the Haitians, but without killing the ruling class. Over the next 100 years the suffragist movement finally achieved universal suffrage in the United States, first with "all persons" to reverse Dred Scott and to include freed blac...

America Declares Control of Space By Robert Korczynski ​In 1967 the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom signed the Outer Space Treaty, establishing an international framework intended to prevent the weaponization of satellites in orbit, legally barring nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction from orbiting the Earth. For decades, the Pentagon leaned into that ideal, treating the orbital theater as a sanctuary dedicated to communication, GPS navigation, and reconnaissance satellites. ​On August 28, 2026, President Trump stood at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston to sign an Executive Order establishing the Presidential Commission on the United States Space Academy, laying the groundwork for a dedicated federal service academy to train a permanent officer corps for orbital defense, NASA, and the commercial space sector. ​Then on Monday, September 14, 2026, at the annual Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, Secretary of the Ai...

Accused Juvenile Dearborn Halloween Terrorists Are In Jail By Robert Korczynski Last year right before Halloween weekend, the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested what became known as the Dearborn Halloween terror suspects along with members of a New Jersey and Washington State cell who were caught at a Michigan shooting range practicing rapid transitions between their primary and secondary weapons. This tactical behavior made the group immediately actionable, and the feds moved in to collect them before their planned "Pumpkin Day" operation could take place. Following the predawn raids, the FBI exposed a network that was actively coordinating weapon staging, body armor acquisition, and physical surveillance logs over TikTok and video game chats, linking operators directly between Dearborn, New Jersey, and Washington State. Unlike their New Jersey and Washington boyfriends, Tomas-Kaan Jimenez-Guzel, Milo Sedarat, and Saed Ali Mirreh, who have all officially broken un...

When Michigan Wolverines Go to War ​By Robert Korczynski​ ​When the British redcoats tried to mock colonial soldiers during the Revolutionary War, they sang "Yankee Doodle Dandy" to brand the Americans as foolish country bumpkins playing dress-up. The colonists said, "Thank you." They took the song, embraced it as their own battle hymn, and sang it right back at the retreating British. ​ ​Decades later, during the border dispute over the Toledo Strip where Michigan eventually traded it for the entire Upper Peninsula, Ohio tried the same trick. Aiming to insult Michiganders as greedy, uncivilized, and vicious frontier brawlers, Ohioans called the Michiganders "Wolverines." Michiganders said, "Thank you." They looked at the fiercest, most relentless creature in North America and claimed the name as an eternal badge of defiance and grit. Most people probably think that the Michigan Wolverines are just the football team at the University of Michig...