November 11, 2026

OPEN WIDE. YOU NEED A SERIES OF THESE:  The White Pill.

Posted at 1:32 am by Sarah Hoyt

FOR VETERANS DAY, GET A BOOK BY A VETERAN, WITH VETERAN CHARACTERS:

From Celia Hayes:  Return to Alder Grove

#CommissionEarned

Love in all the wrong places – Caro Robertson was a professional researcher, employee and occasional on-air reporter for a national public radio outlet; the perfect job, the perfect condo, the perfect fiancée. She had the college education, the job, the social position, the perfect life … and then in one fell swoop, everything went sour. Wrong. Disastrously wrong. In the space of a single week, she lost her beloved pet, the perfect fiancée and then her job. What was left for her, but to return to Alder Grove, the little town in Texas where she lived as a child and try to rebuild that life and a new career?
Mark Bascomb – owner of a small fabrication business, small-town handyman, veteran and high-school drop-out; everything in life that Caro Robertson wasn’t. Could they find common ground with each other, a common interest, even love, when they are so different?
Find out when the sparks fly in Alder Grove, in this short romance novel by the author of the Chronicles of Luna City, and the Adelsverein Trilogy.

Posted at 12:49 am by Sarah Hoyt

November 10, 2026

OPEN THREAD: Tuesday’s groovy.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

DAVE BARRY: Ask Mister Language Person.

Q. Why should we modern youths bother to learn about grammar? We have Artificial Intelligence! It does our reading and writing for us! In fact AI is writing this question for us right now while we’re off somewhere getting our noses pierced.

A. You should learn to read and write because these are important skills that can mean the difference between life and death. For example, in a recent true anecdote, four modern youths were shipwrecked on a desert island that, tragically, did not have Wi-Fi. The youths wanted to make an emergency message by arranging coconuts on the sand, but without the help of AI none of them could figure out how to spell “SOS.” The best they could do was make a sad-face emoji, as seen in this photograph taken from a Coast Guard helicopter.

Q. So it worked? The Coast Guard rescued them?

A. No.

Q. Why not?

A. They had nose piercings.

Heh. Read the whole thing.

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

JIM TREACHER: James Gunn Is Super Fired.

A lot of nerds are celebrating. They hate his guts. There’s this weird feud between Zack Snyder fans and James Gunn fans. I’m just sitting on the sidelines. I just want good movies.

Gunn is good at outcasts and weirdos, because he’s an outcast weirdo. Even in Superman, the best parts were Clark being weird. It’s Gunn’s wheelhouse, and I’m looking forward to the sequel for that reason. But I haven’t really liked anything else he’s had his fingers in.

I know that the big merger had a lot to do with this. I don’t really care about any of that. I just want to watch superheroes doing superhero stuff, without being lectured on my privilege.

I’m tired of millionaires scolding me for being a white male consuming their product. Somebody who makes 100 times what I make in a year, or more, lecturing me. I just want to see Green Lantern do cool stuff with his magic ring. Leave me alone!

Anyway, James Gunn will be fine. He’s not going to go hungry anytime soon.

I know I’m way too old for all this superhero crap, but I like it. And even when I don’t like it, I want to like it. I don’t watch any of this stuff thinking, “This is gonna suck.” I want it to be good. But most of it isn’t anymore.

Just make good movies that don’t require me to watch every single other superhero product you’ve ever made. I don’t have that kind of time or money.

Plus Treacher on the Charlie Kirk hatred: “[I]f you have a problem with these two laughing at murder, you’re a ‘fascist.’ That’s what ‘fascism’ means. Only ‘fascists’ don’t like it when their friends get murdered and their enemies laugh about it. There’s a comedian named Ben Bankas who’s got a funny bit about that, about how everything on the left is somehow ‘fascism.’”

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

TRUMP WHITE HOUSE UNITES BEHIND PETE HEGSETH AS WAR SECRETARY DODGES ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT: “The House voted on Tuesday night to send the articles of impeachment to committee, which effectively killed the matter. It can languish in committee and would die a legislative death when this session of Congress ends in early January. Still, it’s a temporary reprieve. Democrats take control of the House in January and have said impeaching Hegseth is a top priority.”

Posted at 6:56 pm by Ed Driscoll

NIFTY:

Posted at 5:37 pm by Stephen Green

I READ AN ADVANCE COPY, AND AMELIA HAMILTON’S LATEST IS ENDLESSLY CHARMING: Myrtle Saves the Boston Tea Party. “When a mysterious time ripple threatens to change the history of the Boston Tea Party, the American Revolution could be ruined before it even begins. It’s up to Myrtle, a specially trained Labrador retriever, to leap through time and keep history on track.”

It’s the start of Amelia’s new “Myrtle Saves America” series aimed at middle school readers who also love dogs — as it was more than charming enough for this middle-aged dog lover.

Posted at 5:22 pm by Stephen Green

REQUIEM FOR A TRUCK:

I mean sure, it’s striking, and unique, and does appear to be straight out of the Tron franchise, if that’s your cup of tea. But would it kill these EV manufacturers to tap into colorful nostalgia instead of cold cyberpunk aesthetics for once? Literally just one time?? Seriously guys, what is stopping you from building electric vehicles that look like this:

Still, it would be unfair to solely chastise Elon for a design pattern reflected across the entire EV industry… even if the Tesla CEO pushed it to the extreme. Besides, the man is already facing enough criticism from folks like Shitstain Scott Galloway, who, upon wiping his ass, will once again resume calling for Elon’s summary execution.

Instead, we should admire our brave Rocket Man for once again daring to build something awe-inspiring (if a bit odd). In Cybertruck, he created something bold and unique, unlike any vehicle we’ve ever seen. That ambitious, risk-taking spirit is something we will always admire at Pirate Wires.

As we mourn the passing of Cybertruck (2019-2027) — the brave electric engine that could — let us remember what it taught us about ourselves, and always strive to be the best version of what we saw in that angular, stainless steel mirror.

To quote the words of one Hogarth Hughes to another Iron Giant (Warner Bros. 1999) who also met an untimely end amidst humanity’s bitter division and turmoil — “You don’t have to be a gun…

…you are who you choose to be.” 

Alas though, Galloway can’t:

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

DOG BITES MAN: Nets Hype Hegseth Impeachment Chatter, Ignore Senate Dems in Disarray. “Correspondent Caitlin Huey-Burns helps Massie advance the leftist talking point of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro being kidnapped, along with the other reasons for the punitive impeachment of Hegseth. The item includes a soundbite from Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon, who says ‘Hegseth was not the right choice,’ and a soundbite from an incoming Democrat freshman saying it’s not a matter of if but when.”

Related (From Ed):

Posted at 4:51 pm by Stephen Green

WILL NO ONE REMEMBER THE ORANGE JULII OF DAYS GONE BY?

Somewhat more seriously, Sam Lyman adds: “The woman pictured here credited the viral success of her campaign to the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a China proxy organization operating here in the United States.”

Posted at 4:35 pm by Stephen Green

JOHN NOLTE: Disney Sells Out to AI (Again) with Adobe Deal.

Pure gobbledygook. So I asked Grok what it meant. Grok’s first explanation made no sense. So I asked Grok to dumb it down. Now we’re getting somewhere…

“Disney’s teams (especially the people who design theme parks) already sketch ideas on paper. The AI can quickly turn those rough sketches into polished concept art that looks like official Disney style (Mickey, Star Wars, Marvel, etc.),” Grok explained. “They’re also building private AI models that only know Disney’s characters, worlds, and art styles. That way the AI won’t invent weird or off-brand stuff, and everything stays under Disney’s control.”

Bottom line: “It speeds up the early design process for parks, rides, movies, and ESPN stuff so ideas can move from ‘rough sketch’ to ‘ready to show the bosses’ much faster.”

Grok then falls for the spin with the claim that none of this will replace Disney artists or create AI-designed movies or rides.

Except it will.

Of course it will.

Former Cheers producer Rob Long has a better suggestion for using AI in Hollywood: The Showbiz Jobs AI Should Replace.

If David Ellison, the new owner of the Antietam battlefield called Warner Bros., replaced every single executive tomorrow, no writer in town would realize that the call was no longer coming from an office on Colorado Boulevard in Santa Monica but a data farm in the Nevada desert instead. It would be like swapping out the Darrins on Bewitched. After a day or so, no one would notice.

And what would the server rack need to learn? Not much. After every pitch, it would learn to say this: Fun stuff, let us talk internally and get back to you. In every notes session, this: Is there a way to show more of the quirks of the female character? A consistent body of language has been created that a large language model can master in an hour. What I’m proposing is a next-token prediction engine: It produces, one word at a time, whatever response is statistically most likely. If you’ve ever sat through a notes call, you’ll recognize that as the job description.

I know, I know: Crazy Modest Proposal stuff, right? But in 1729, when Jonathan Swift published A Modest Proposal, his satirical pamphlet that calmly suggested the Irish poor solve their poverty by selling their children as food to the rich, the poor weren’t actually doing it. Not so in Hollywood. Several studios already run scripts through AI coverage before a human reader ever sees them. There’s a new tool that tells a studio, within nanoseconds of uploading new script drafts, whether a writer took the studio executives’ notes. Hollywood has spent three years worrying that AI is coming for the writers and artists and Mystery staff, but it hasn’t yet; meanwhile, the Spreadsheet side has invited its own replacement into the meeting and taught it how to say, There’s lots here in this pass we love, but we have a few places that bump for us.

Rob’s article was written prior the November midterms; leftist politicians and activists are curiously, “Progressives” who find technological progress rather frightening, and are counting on voters to feel the same: Everything is Stupid Now.

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll