SKYNET SMILES: Controllable Cyborg Beetles for Swarming Search and Rescue.

HUFFPO: White House Christmas Decor ‘Spooky,’ Like a Scene from ‘The Shining.’

You might not be interested in the Gleichschaltung, but HuffPo will help make sure the Gleichschaltung is interested in you.

AND ANOTHER ONE’S GONE: NPR Chief News Editor Departs After Harassment Allegations. So it’s easy to see why lefties think “rape culture” is everywhere. In their world and institutions, it is.

NEXT! NBC Fires Lauer Over Sexual-Harassment Claim — But Are More Coming?

Ed Morrissey:

After the announcement, HuffPost reporter Yashar Ali remarked that he and other reporters began hearing about Lauer before they started working on a bigger story:

If that was the case, Lauer’s sudden firing removes that obstacle. He has no more power over careers inside or outside of NBC, which means that the floodgates should open up shortly. That may produce some uncomfortable moments at NBC, including for Guthrie and Kotb, who worked with Lauer for years without apparently ever knowing of any issues. Just as with CBS This Morning, the women may not only have to pick up the pieces but also ask themselves how they missed the signs.

Apparently Lauer’s bad behavior was something of an open secret at NBC, which still hasn’t received any real blowback for spiking the original Ronan Farrow story on Harvey Weinstein. Farrow took his story to The New Yorker, where burst the dam on the infotainment industry’s tolerance (to put it mildly) for sexual predators.

So Lauer is gone, but the Peacock Network still has much to do before anyone believes that it has actually cleaned house.

WEIRD, HE WAS JUST IN THE WAPO DEFENDING AL FRANKEN: BREAKING: Garrison Keillor says he’s been fired by Minnesota Public Radio over allegations of inappropriate behavior.

UPDATE: Me, literally three hours ago:

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Two familiar Democratic names tied to possible immigration scam. Terry McAuliffe and Hillary’s brother Tony Rodham.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Trump court pick Kyle Duncan is the Neil Gorsuch of Louisiana.

‘EVIL, FRIGHTENING STUFF:’ Matt Lauer is just the latest example of ‘everyone knew.’

“To recap,” Jelani Cobb of the New Yorker tweets, “NBC shut down Ronan Farrow’s Weinstein story, forcing him to pursue it on his own — a story that ultimately helped create a climate where NBC had to sever ties with their franchise player. Definition of a bad look.”

And speaking of a bad look, “When a news organization fires a hugely prominent figure, it should have case ready to present to public,” Byron York adds. “Don’t throw two anchors on air who don’t know what’s going on. When CBS fired Rose, public knew overwhelming evidence. With NBC and Lauer, public in dark.”

A WORTHY CAUSE: Slow Motion Magic.

I assumed my magic days were over due to the loss of dexterity and slowness of motion which are symptoms of this specific type of Parkinson’s. Instead of giving up my passion for magic, however, I realized that I could adjust my technique and would just have to be twice as good. In the spirit of making the best of a difficult situation, I decided to use magic to raise awareness about Parkinson’s disease.

Slow Motion Magic was born.

The first link goes to his GoFundMe page, and this link goes to his fascinating YouTube videos.

HMM: Did Rep. Conyers Tacitly Admit Dems Are Hiding Assault Allegations?

Well, he is an “icon.”

ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN UPDATE: Attention, cryptozoologists. Yetis are real — except DNA analysis says they’re bears. Rare Himalayan brown bears. The article is a fun read.

GET WOKE, GO BROKE: NFL TV Partners Set To Lose Up To $500 Million On Ratings Decline.

(Classical reference in headline.)

NO. Do Captured Terrorists Belong in U.S. Courtrooms?

There are four potential conclusions to draw from the news that a jury convicted Libyan terrorist Ahmed Abu Khattala on several conspiracy charges, but not murder, in a U.S. federal criminal court yesterday.

1. Maybe the prosecution really dropped the ball. (Not likely.)

2. Maybe proving guilt for a chaotic terrorist attack halfway around the world is more difficult than it looks. (More likely, more on this in a moment.)

3. Maybe this is why military tribunals and/or drone strikes are a better way to deal with terrorists.

4. Maybe he just got the descendants of the O.J. Simpson jury.

Maybe they thought a YouTube video was the real killer.

WE’RE HEARING THIS FROM A LOT OF QUARTERS: The Tech Giants Must Be Reined In: Silicon Valley usurped the role of traditional news media, without assuming any accompanying social responsibilities.

This fall, Facebook, Google and Twitter executives were hauled before a Congressional committee after being asked to investigate allegations of Russian meddling. Facebook admitted that 126 million of their users may have seen content produced and circulated anonymously by Russian operatives. Twitter admitted to working with 2,752 Russian accounts, and that 36,000 Russian bots tweeted 1.4 million times during the election. Google testified that 1,108 videos with 43 hours of content related to the Russian effort were uploaded on YouTube, and that Russians placed $4,700 worth of search and display ads on its network.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the kind of meddling the social media giants tolerated. And getting a grip on how to address these issues will be no small feat. The social media business model itself is flawed and unethical; the tech giants have usurped the role of traditional news media—without assuming any historic social responsibilities.

Silicon Valley’s image has really taken a hit.

A SHARP DECLINE FOR JIMMY FALLON’S ‘TONIGHT SHOW:’

Ten months after Inauguration Day, the trend is holding: For late-night hosts, being sharply critical of President Trump is a winning strategy. And that is bad news for “The Tonight Show.”

Stephen Colbert, who has made Mr. Trump a nightly target, assumed the top position in the ratings race in February and has only increased his lead since then. His program, “The Late Show” on CBS, has taken viewers away from Jimmy Fallon, the cheerful host of NBC’s storied franchise, who has lost 21 percent of his audience year over year since the fall season began on Sept. 25. At the same time, Jimmy Kimmel has made ratings gains in the 11:35 p.m. slot on ABC.

Ever since Mr. Colbert leapfrogged Mr. Fallon in total viewers, NBC executives have emphasized that “The Tonight Show” is still the No. 1 choice of viewers in the 18-to-49-year-old group prized by advertisers.

Now even that lead is shrinking.

Straight out of the theory posited by the Federalist’s Robert Tracinski last month: “So the late-night shows are in a much fiercer competition for eyeballs than ever before, and I suspect the politicization is a response to that—a desperate way of getting in the news, of getting noticed, of securing the loyalty of a particular demographic. This is also my theory about the big entertainment awards shows like the Oscars and the Emmys. If the big, broad, general audience you used to have is gone, and deep down you think it’s never coming back, then why not make a harder bid for the loyalty of the smaller audience you’ve got left? In a time when the entertainment industry is (or thinks it is) a one-party state with no dissenters, you had better echo that politics back to your base.”

WE WON’T HAVE TO SAIL SO FAR TO SINK THEM: Iran Deploying Warships to Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: University shuts down bias reporting system after complaint. “According to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), Longwood was one of many universities with a bias reporting system that ‘call[s] upon students to report fellow students and faculty for protected speech, including political speech,’ but stood out for its particularly broad definition of ‘bias incident,’ which raised red flags at FIRE.” Bias is not a crime.

FIRE does great work. You may want to consider making a year-end donation.

AT AMAZON, Cyber Monday deals continue all week.

BARI WEISS: The Limits of ‘Believe All Women.’ “The huntresses’ war cry — ‘believe all women’ — has felt like a bracing corrective to a historic injustice. It has felt like a justifiable response to a system in which the crimes perpetrated against women — so intimate, so humiliating and so unlike any other — are so very difficult to prove. But I also can’t shake the feeling that this mantra creates terrible new problems in addition to solving old ones.”

Well, we’ve already seen that the rule has exceptions, like when a prominent white Democratic senator is involved.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Chuck and Nancy Ghost Trump, Conyers’ Underwear and Much, Much More.

LIVE FIRE EXERCISE IN THE PHILIPPINE SEA: A Navy five inch gun at work.

GOOD READ: One test pilot flew both top-secret aircraft that are widely regarded as giving birth to the stealth revolution.

THIS IS A DISGRACE: Virginia mother could face prison after trying to record bullies of 9-year-old girl.

A Virginia woman is facing felony charges after she put a digital audio recorder into her 9-year-old’s backpack in an effort to catch what she said were her daughter’s bullies.

Sarah Sims could spend up to five years in prison. She was charged this month with using an electronic device to intercept oral communication, a felony, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a misdemeanor.

Ms. Sims, whose daughter attends Ocean View Elementary School in Norfolk, told a local NBC affiliate that she placed a recording device in her fourth-grade daughter’s backpack after school officials failed to stop other students from bullying her.

School officials eventually found out about the recorder and called police, the station reported. Ms. Sims said she didn’t find out until she was charged a month later.

“I was mortified,” she said. “The next thing I know I’m a felon. Felony charges and a misdemeanor when I’m trying to look out for my kid. What do you do?”

It’s almost like sending your kid to government schools is parental malpractice.