November 5, 2026

AFTER THAT, YOU’D BETTER BOOK A RIDE ON STARSHIP:

It’s a good thing SpaceX has all that Louisiana property under development, because Texas just got bad for business.

Posted at 4:37 pm by Stephen Green

SALON SINGS SWAN SONG: Goodbye from Salon.

We also want to thank our readers. You came to Salon for the journalism, the dialogue, the essays, the criticism, the unexpected discoveries and the sense that there was a place on the internet where ideas mattered. You read, shared, challenged, subscribed, wrote to us and kept coming back. Your engagement made Salon a publication and a community, and it gave our work meaning. We are so grateful for the time you spent with us.

The business realities of independent digital journalism have changed profoundly over the years. After careful consideration, we have reached the difficult decision that our publishing model is no longer sustainable. We know this news will be deeply disappointing to many of you, and we share that sadness.

Perhaps we can still collectivize all the memories, though:

● Hugo Chavez’s economic miracle.

—David Sirota, Salon, March 6, 2013.

● “Let’s nationalize Fox News: Imagining a very different media…Excerpted from ‘Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA.’

—Salon.com, January 18, 2014.

● “Like [the late communist Pete] Seeger and the FDR cargo cult, Salon also harbors turn-the-clock-back fantasies of their own: Last month, the publication called for the nationalization of the news media because it was uncomfortable with the glut of right-leaning news and opinion led by — you guessed it! — Fox News. (Hmmm — I wonder if someone in the FCC read that article?) Now the Website wishes to turn the clock back on the film industry because of a perceived glut of independent films.”

—Easy Riders, Raging Stasists, Ed Driscoll.com, February 22, 2014.

● “Let’s nationalize Amazon and Google: Publicly funded technology built Big Tech. They’re huge and ruthless and define our lives. They’re close to monopolies. Let’s make them public utilities.”

—Salon.com, July 8, 2014.

Exit question:

Screenshot
Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

HMM: Did Re-Redistricting Actually Hurt Republicans? “The fast-congealing conventional wisdom is that the GOP attempt to re-redistrict didn’t just fail but also backfired on them. In other words, they drew ‘dummymanders’ and ended up worse off than they would have if they’d stuck with the old maps. The reasoning is pretty straightforward: By spreading their voters too thin, Republicans set up a situation in North Carolina where it looks as though the map will produce a 10-4 Democratic edge. The re-redistricting in Texas netted a seat loss, while precipitating a redraw in California that looks as though it will net the Democrats five seats.”

Posted at 3:51 pm by Stephen Green

GOODER AND HARDER, LOS ANGELES:

Honestly, I’m not sure if trading in the closet commie for the openly commie is a step back or merely sidewise.

Posted at 3:35 pm by Stephen Green

THEIR FIRST MOVE MIGHT HAVE TO BE REMOVING THUNE:

And this is exactly what the Democrats would do, if the roles were reversed.

Then again, if the roles were reversed, their might not be a backlog of 135 nominees.

Posted at 3:04 pm by Stephen Green

THE (R) BRAND MIGHT BE IN THE TOILET AT THE MOMENT…:

…but conservative policies remain popular.

I got into that a bit earlier today in this week’s VIP essay.

Posted at 2:33 pm by Stephen Green

SURE, WHY NOT? Pete Hegseth for President.

They say everything moves faster in the age of the Internet, and that’s certainly true of Hegseth. He hasn’t even begun campaigning, and already the impeachment hearings have been scheduled for him!

UPDATE:

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

REQUIRED READING:

But no one wants to even factor in the glaringly obvious: the US has been under the most sustained information attack by foreign states in decades, if not generations.

Foreign adversaries have learned to weaponize the very protections and safeguards – First Amendment, Section 230, privacy laws – that make discourse online possible. They use our shield as their weapon.

These actors have learned that they don’t need to “hack Facebook” — as the press claimed Russia did in 2016. (In fact, that had no measurable impact.) They found that they don’t need to infiltrate voting systems.

Instead, they have learned to focus on seeding poisonous narratives into virtually every open information system online. It’s not only effective, but it’s remarkably efficient.

Read the whole thing, but understand that the side that argued stripping is a constitutional right did not adopt the burqa by accident.

Posted at 2:02 pm by Stephen Green

ONCE AGAIN, ELON WAS WAY OUT IN FRONT OF THE CURVE: The Blue Wave Has Tech Bros Scrambling for Data Centers in Space.

A wave of Democratic candidates across the country—and notably in Texas, a national data center hot spot and home to Elon Musk’s SpaceX—won their state and congressional races on Tuesday, including many candidates who voiced opposition to the data center industry. The results have sent some corners of the tech industry looking to the heavens for answers.

In recent hours, data center enthusiasts have proclaimed on social media that they’re still “bullish” on building data centers—just not necessarily in Texas, or even on Earth at all. Instead, they say, it’s time to focus on data centers in space.

Elon Musk—who spent more than $400 million of his fortune supporting Republican candidates who all went on to lose their midterms races—has been among those leading the charge. “Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now,” Musk posted on X in the early hours of Wednesday, after it was clear that Democrats had taken the House and Senate.

We’ve reached the point where you have to leave the planet to escape the statists.

Robert Heinlein wrote about that very thing a time or three.

Posted at 1:47 pm by Stephen Green

WELCOME TO THE HANGOVER:

 

Posted at 1:41 pm by Ed Driscoll

A DOZEN MUSLIM COUNTRIES HAVE DESIGNATED MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION:

And Russia has, too.

Posted at 1:32 pm by Stephen Green