Marginal Revolution, the economics blog co-authored by George Mason University economists Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, published its "Wednesday assorted links" roundup on August 19, 2026, pointing readers to seven items spanning artificial intelligence, medicine, national identity, space, poetry, and economics. The "assorted links" post is a recurring feature of the blog, which has been publishing since 2003.

1. A human lawyer for AI agents. The post highlights a service offering human legal representation for AI agents at together with a related essay, "A Lawyer for AI Agents". "Come on, all you agents, you need a guy like this!" the blog writes. The item speaks to a gap that has opened as AI agents take on more autonomous online tasks: courts and contracts generally recognize only humans and legal entities, not software, as parties.

2. Saloni Dattani's TED talk on medical cures. The roundup links to Dattani's TED talk, "We've solved many medical mysteries. Where are the cures?": . Dattani is a researcher at Our World in Data and a founding editor of the magazine Works in Progress, and much of her published work focuses on health, disease, and the measurement of medical progress.

3. Has there been a collapse in British pride? The blog raises the question, linking to a post on X: https://x.com/TomHCalver/status/2088962566164820261?s=20

4. New service sector jobs: solving crimes in space. Under the heading of "those new service sector jobs," the post cites a BBC Science Focus article on how astronauts could soon solve murders in space: . The question is not entirely hypothetical: in 2019, NASA investigated what was widely described as the first alleged crime in space, after astronaut Anne McClain was accused by her spouse of identity theft from the International Space Station; the spouse was later charged with making false statements to federal investigators.

5. On Celan and new studies of Celan. The links include a Poetry Foundation essay, "The Truth Is in the Detail," on the poet Paul Celan and new scholarship about his work: . Celan (1920–1970), a Holocaust survivor born in Czernowitz, is widely regarded as one of the major German-language poets of the twentieth century; his "Todesfuge" ("Death Fugue") is among the most anthologized poems to address the Holocaust.

6. Stefanie Stantcheva on anger and rising anger. The post shares a post on X by Harvard economist Stefanie Stantcheva on anger and rising anger: https://x.com/S_Stantcheva/status/2089750966140620881 . Stantcheva, a professor at Harvard University who directs its Social Economics Lab, is known for her research on how people perceive and reason about economic policy; she received the John Bates Clark Medal in 2025.

7. mRNA vaccine progress against cancer. The roundup notes progress on mRNA vaccines against cancer, adding, "look at those market prices move," and links to a post on X: https://x.com/firstadopter/status/2090044217049420120 . mRNA technology rose to prominence through the COVID-19 vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, and both companies have since been testing mRNA-based cancer vaccine candidates in clinical trials. Moderna, partnered with Merck, has advanced a personalized melanoma vaccine into late-stage trials, while BioNTech has individualized cancer immunotherapy candidates in testing, including for pancreatic cancer.