CHRISTIAN TOTO: Why Did You Stop Going to the Movies? “Box office collapse portends darker days for Tinsel Town in 2023 … and beyond.”

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Guess What the Tylenol Shortage and the Fentanyl Surplus Have in Common.

FROM TAMARA KEEL: Review: FN Five-seveN Mk. 3 MRD.

My (much briefer, and of course less-elite) impressions here.

OH: Another mystery death in Russia as tank boss dies ‘suddenly’ a day after Putin abruptly cancels meeting with him.

IT’S ALMOST AS THOUGH FREE INQUIRY HAD BEEN PART OF THE SCIENTIFIC PROCESS ALL ALONG: You Are Free to Question ‘The Science’ on Twitter Again.

BE PREPARED: GearLight Flashlight 2pk Bright. #CommissionEarned

GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Comic Book Fans Shun Superheroes’ Woke Makeovers. “A new Batman is black. There’s a new Spider-Man-like character, except she’s a lesbian who uses a wheelchair. Iron Man is now a black teenage girl. Really.”

HIGHER ED’S CULTURE OF HATE BREEDS TERROR, VIOLENCE: Top 5 campus protests that turned violent this year.

JOE BIDEN DID THAT: Gird Your Loins, $5/Gallon Gas Could Be Coming Again in 2023.

HIGHER EDUCATION’S CULTURE OF BIGOTRY: University of New Hampshire accused of ‘open hostility’ toward religious freedom club.

BOB MCMANUS: Hope jailing serial NYC shoplifter is a new start for Manhattan DA Bragg. “Hey, look, everybody. Alvin Bragg is doing his job! Maybe Mr. District Attorney isn’t beyond embarrassment after all.”

OF COURSE: NASA Mulls SpaceX Backup Plan for Crew of Russia’s Leaky Soyuz Ship.

NEW YEAR SALE is here. #CommissionEarned

FIGHT THE POWER: Judge rules lawsuit against Yale filed by concerned alumni may proceed: ‘They have set up a system to, in effect, insulate themselves from true alumni participation.’

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: DeSantis Is Again the Desperately Needed Adult in the Room. “There is a lot to unpack in this story, most of it creepy. The important detail is that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his office became aware of the freak show and now the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR) is looking into it, per a statement from DeSantis’s press secretary.”

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Mark Judge: America needs a rock ‘n’ roll rebellion against woke censors.

THEY WANT YOU TO FREEZE IN THE DARK, AND ACCEPT IT: The New-Normaling of Blackouts.

It already seems as if people are being conditioned to expect talk of rolling blackouts whenever the weather outside seems frightful.

To be very clear: rolling blackouts are not now, nor have they been, normal in the US. Therefore, having to expect rolling blackouts going forward would be abnormal. Nevertheless, as utility providers and power grid monitors have recently warned, the more grids are saddled with intermittent, unreliable wind and solar facilities, the more unreliable they are becoming. They’re more prone to capacity shortfalls and blackouts.

The Biden administration is dead-set on adding more wind and solar generation to the grid, which requires shuttering existing, reliable power plants. Along with much higher electric bills, it means more rolling blackouts. Electric customers would be incensed, however, given their current expectation of power at the flip of a switch. There are only two ways to go: change the plan to destabilize the grid with politically favored renewables, or try to change people’s idea of normal grid operations.

Changing people’s idea of what’s normal…we’ve seen this process before. Remember April 15, 2020, when the governors of several US states all began speaking of the “new normal” of government reordering their lives in dealing with COVID-19? The rollout was inartful, but effective. Almost three years later, people wonder whether the next cold and virus season might prompt fresh rounds of government lockdowns, face mask mandates, school closures, and worse. All these concepts were plain unthinkable before 2020.

We’ve seen similar new-normalling of other inevitable bad outcomes of Biden policies, including inflation, COVID vaccine mandates, and illegal immigration. So I write with a high degree of confidence of how changing expectations on blackouts will play out, though I confess I’m not sure which of The Atlantic, Washington Post, or CNN will be first with the inevitable “I Love Blackouts” column, or whether it’ll be “Rolling Blackouts: Why Saving the Planet Has Never Been So Much Fun.”

Following is an outline of the new-normalling process, in general.

Do not normalize the Biden Administration. It is abnormal. (Bumped).

GRATITUDE: US military bases that housed Afghan evacuees suffered $260 million in damage. “Air Force officials described tables, chairs and cots broken by guests and tents and cots ruined by spray paint, human biological matter and holes.”

That’s an average of over $2,000 in damages per evacuee.

ELON MUSK: “The legacy media should worry about its reputation. We have only just begun.”

What reputation?

THE ELECTORATE IS CAPABLE OF LEARNING: Independent voters abandon Biden, choose DeSantis and Trump.

Independent voters have lost faith in President Joe Biden to handle the problems facing the United States and would choose former President Donald Trump or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis instead in 2024, according to a new post-election survey of the influential and growing group.

In a new Zogby Poll shared with Secrets, just 36.9% of independents approve of Biden, with another 60.7% signaling disapproval, a huge gap for a president considering a reelection bid.

Independent voters in the past have generally fallen in between Republicans and Democrats on key issues, though they have been trending in the direction of the GOP, and Jonathan Zogby’s poll tracks that shift.

Overall, in his survey of independents taken shortly after the November election, there is no good news for Biden.

Currently, Biden remains in the 2024 race with only Trump, despite a long list of problems on his Oval Office desk, including inflation, a potential recession, the historic border crossing crisis, a two-year supply chain disaster, and questions about his mental capabilities.

In a head-to-head matchup with independent voters, Trump just edges Biden, 38%-37%.

But against DeSantis, it’s a blowout with the Florida governor ahead, 43%-34%.

It’s a long way until 2024, but these are bad indicators for Biden.

ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE AT WORK: We’ve Never Found Anything Like the Solar System. Is It A Freak in Space?

Speaking of which, I wonder if Frank Tipler is still an InstaPundit reader.

UPDATE: Tipler emails:

OF COURSE I still read Instapundit!

And I still think we are the only intelligent beings ever to evolve in the universe. Someone has to be first, and it’s us. It’s uninhabited, unclaimed property out there.

Our descendants will one day sweep out from this planet, engulf the entire universe, and control the entire universe.

The Earth is the womb of life, but one cannot remain in the womb forever.

It would be fatal to try.

The Earth is doomed. If nothing else, the Sun will, in its death, destroy the Earth and its biosphere — unless our descendants prevent it. And they will.

Using physics, I know now how to PROVE (Reports on Progress in Physics 2005) that our descendants will eventually gain control of the entire universe, and they will use this control to ensure the entire biosphere survives.

Humanity is currently the spearhead of the biosphere.

If the Laws of Physics be for us, who can be against us?

No one. Except maybe the Greens. (Bumped).

WE FREEZE AS BIDEN FIDDLES IN THE SUN: The Lid’s Andrew West is not happy that, while much of the U.S. is still digging out from a lethal winter storm that killed dozens of Americans, our chief executive is snapping selfies in the Caribbean.

STARRS:  The acronym stands for “Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services.”  It is a group dedicated to fighting wokeness in the military.  If you haven’t done so already, check out the group’s new web site.

NO, HE WILL SERVE HIS TIME WITH WOMEN: A Man Who Murdered His Parents Will Serve His Time as a Woman.

JUDGES AGAINST THE CONSTITUTION: Ninth Circuit Judge Urges Supreme Court “Not to Give Any First Amendment Protection for Racist Hate Speech.”