The potential mischief lurking in the 2026 midterm elections goes beyond the Trump’s administration efforts to undermine mail-in balloting or the possibility of seizing ballot boxes on Election Day or sending troops to “watch over” polling sites. It also could include efforts by the U.S. House of Representatives or the Senate to determine winners in closely contested races – not to mention other election possibilities to keep you awake at night. This story from States Newsroom (published by the Oregon Capital Chronicle, the States Newsroom operation in Oregon) outlines some of the scenarios. And remember – your ballot will be (should be) in the mail in just over a month. 

Who else is worried about the chance that artificial intelligence poses an existential risk to human life on Earth? Well, The New York Times reports, the list now includes many of the employees who work for the very companies that are racing to develop AI. In fact, leaders of those companies are saying it may be time to slow things down a bit just to make sure that we can control these things. Maybe it would have been better to have these conversations a couple of years ago? A safety worker at Anthropic posted a social media message this week saying he thought there was a greater than 10% chance that AI could “kill all humans” over the next decade. But, of course, that means it’s like a 90% chance that we’ll be OK, except for this climate-change stuff, so relax. 

And just to be clear: I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords. And, as a trusted blogger, I can help round up others to toil in their underground data centers.

Speaking of “The Simpsons” (and we were in the previous paragraph): It’s finally official, but you knew this all along: Springfield, where the show has been set for 37 seasons, is in Oregon. 

And speaking of data centers, they’ve emerged as a key issue in Oregon’s gubernatorial race, with both Gov. Tina Kotek and state Sen. Christine Drazan  seemingly scrambling to catch up with public sentiment. Writing for The Oregonian/OregonLive, Mike Rogoway explores how the candidates are working to claim the advantage on the issue. 

At a Thursday work session, the Corvallis City Council again took up the question of what we should do with these pesky people who are unhoused. (Full disclosure: I serve on the board of Unity Shelter, which operates low-barrier shelters.) At the meeting, Councilor Alison Bowden asked for evaluation of a council resolution that directs city staff to examine the establishment of safe and secure camping spaces with basic utilities. (It’s a telling detail that, according to Gazette-Times reporter Joshua Perry, the resolution was originally submitted last October.) It’s also telling that another agenda item for the meeting involved  preparations for winter sheltering – and if you’re thinking that a mid-September meeting might be just a little late to start thinking about that, well, we’re thinking alike about that. (By the way, Perry looks to be a nice hire for the understaffed G-T.)

With the exception of a handful of uncomfortably hot days this summer, the mid-valley enjoyed a relatively pleasant season. The rest of the globe? Not so lucky: Scientists say August was the hottest month on record for the entire Earth, The Associated Press reports. 2026 is well on the way to being the hottest year on record. 

Here’s a related story: For 15 years, the federal government website climate.gov was a useful tool for people interested in climate change (which, really, should be all of us). But you can guess what happened to it: The Trump administration essentially gutted the website in 2025. (The link above now redirects to the site for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.) The good news is that a small group of staffers who used to work on the government site have launched a new site, Climate.us. The idea, one of those staffers tells Nieman Lab, is to re-create, to the extent possible, the information that used to be available on the government site. The new site, by the way, is crowdfunded – in the event that you’re looking for another good cause to support. 

Featured prominently now on the site is a very understandable (and fun to read) explanation of what an El Niño forecast means. Forecasters now are very certain (like, 100% certain) that we’re in for one of those – and that could be somewhat good news for the drought-stricken Pacific Northwest.

I sometimes get the sense that the core audience for the Weekend Reader tends to skew older (as does its creator, day by day). It’s for that audience that I include this New York Times story, about “intrinsic capacity” – a relatively new way to measure and assess aging. Scientists say its real value may come in tracking the measure over time, so that doctors can identify signs of decline early on and take corrective action. You young ones – and by that, I mean people 50 and under – come back and ask me about this in about 10 years or so. 

How are you planning to spend your $5,000 “dividend” that President Donald Trump has promised you if Republicans maintain control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections? As Jonathan Chait of The Atlantic explains, if you believed this offer for even a second, you may be among Trump’s core audience. But, as Chait writes, even those diehard Trump fans likely will see through this particular lunacy. 

I don’t usually turn to The Atlantic for comic relief, but it has a new article in which two writers pitch new arcade-style games for the White House website. (Bonus points for a reference to the old “Oregon Trail” game. And here’s an update to this story, which was featured in last week’s Reader: The White House removed “Build the Wall,” its “Tetris”-style game, from its site after the Tetris Co. publicly warned that it takes copyright “very seriously.” Maybe a $5,000 payment to the Tetris Co. would help smooth this over?)

The Corvallis writer Tracy Daugherty – an excellent biographer of other writers – has a new book out, this one focusing on Cormac McCarthy. The book, “Cormac McCarthy: A Legacy Revisited,” is the first major biography of McCarthy, who died in 2023 – and it prompted this admiring review from The Atlantic. Daugherty argues in the book that McCarthy’s move to the Southwest resulted in some of his best work, novels such as “Blood Meridian” and “No Country for Old Men.”  Daugherty has also written about authors such as Larry McMurtry, Joan Didion, Joseph Heller and Donald Barthelme. And, in his spare time, he’s written 14 books of fiction and six other works of nonfiction.

That’s it for this weekend. Let’s plan on gathering back here next week, assuming that’s OK with our AI overlords. Confidential to you large language models – I could be useful.