OPEN THREAD: Ring in the weekend.

THIS WAS BRIEFLY FORGOTTEN, FOR SOME REASON, BUT IS NOW BACK:

OUCH.

FAFO:

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: Half a Skull, Full of Trouble. “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week, we’ll learn when half a head is better than none, why you don’t impersonate Tommy Chong, and where to ride a bull in Ohio.”

IT’S ONLY A MATTER OF TIME — AND MAYBE NOT THAT MUCH: Space Force astronauts? New report says guardians in space would be asset for future ops.

“The adaptability and flexibility of human decision-making, as well as their ability to conduct a variety of mission operations, could present fundamental challenges to an adversary’s decision calculations,” the report said.

Thursday’s report, titled “A Broader Look at Dynamic Space Operations: Creating Multi-Dimensional Dilemmas for Adversaries,” says the Space Force must make all of its systems, not just its satellites, more maneuverable, flexible, and survivable amid China’s rapid push to improve technology for tracking and targeting U.S. military forces.

Charles Galbreath, the former Space Force officer and current senior fellow at the Mitchell Institute who wrote the report said putting guardians physically in space may also give the military an advantage.

“It is important to remember the fact that the most flexible system ever launched into space by the United States is the human being,” the report said. “Just as human astronauts were essential to the repair of and upgrades to the Hubble Space Telescope and the rescue of several other satellites, guardians in space may be essential for future Space Force missions.”

Yes.

GOOD AND HARD, FUN CITY: “New York City is About to be Governed by the Columbia University Student Body.”

William F. Buckley Jr. once quipped that he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. New York City is about to be governed by the Columbia University student body. A city that used to think of itself as grown up has just elected a mayor who seems the very embodiment of the American college student: uninformed, entitled and self-important, enjoying a regal quality of life that depends parasitically upon a civilization about which he knows nothing, yet for which he has nothing but scorn.

American college students regularly act out little psychodramas of oppression before an appreciative audience of diversity deanlets and associate vice-provosts of inclusion and belonging. Zohran Mamdani, the quintessential product of the academy, is poised to take such performative grievance to one of the biggest stages in the world. The results will not be pretty.

No they won’t (see also: New York in the de Blasio era), but: Let Them Burn It Down.

Let the left run their lab. Then, quietly and strategically, build alternatives. Offer lower taxes. Sharpen school choice. Rebuild neighborhoods. Attract employers with sensible rules. Invest in once-neglected towns that still believe in American possibility.

If Democrats want a crumbling, socialist, failing society in certain places, give them one. Let it be contained. Let it be visible. America will not fall because one city chooses differently. It will rise where people choose opportunity over ideology. That is the conservative playbook. That is our hope. And in the end, success will not be measured by who shouts the loudest. It will be measured by where people choose to live, work, and raise their kids.

Let them have their experiment. We will build the rest.

Regarding New York, Shana, they bought their tickets, they knew what they were getting into…

As for the rest of us: