OPEN THREAD: Ring in the weekend.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Norway opens Andøya spaceport.

ROLE MODEL: Dolly Parton Defends Duet With Kid Rock, Says Cancel Culture Is ‘Terrible:’ “I don’t condemn or criticize,” she says. “I just accept and love.”

EARLY HOMINIDS ARE TURNING OUT TO BE MORE INTERESTING THAN WE HAD THOUGHT: The Oldest Known Burial Site in The World Wasn’t Made by Our Species. “Paleontologists in South Africa said they have found the oldest known burial site in the world, containing remains of a small-brained distant relative of humans previously thought incapable of complex behavior. . . . Engravings forming geometrical shapes, including a ‘rough hashtag figure,’ were also found on the apparently purposely smoothed surfaces of a cave pillar nearby.​”

CHANGE: Supreme Court Agrees to Review Bump Stock Ban.

Related: U.S. Supreme Court Agrees to Hear NCLA Case Against ATF’s Unilateral Bump-Stock Ban.

ASTEROIDS: NASA’s Lucy Spacecraft Makes “Marvelous” Discovery During Asteroid Dinkinesh Flyby. “NASA’s Lucy spacecraft has revealed that the asteroid Dinkinesh is a binary system. The flyby tested the spacecraft’s tracking abilities and provided a preview of the mission’s ultimate goal: to explore the Jupiter Trojan asteroids.”

CHANGE: Jews Are Tuning in to Fox News for the First Time.

Democrat politicians and pundits have long claimed that Fox News is the media home of racistsexisthomophobicantisemites, and a lot of Jews took them at their word.

Then 10/7 happened, and Jews were shocked to see that people who they thought were allies in the social justice and political world turned out to be raging antisemites.

This included many in the news media, where the MSM places a lot of emphasis on the horrors of living in Gaza and argues that Israel is being too aggressive in rooting out Hamas. There have been exceptions, but they are so few that they actually surprise you.

So something odd has happened: Jews are turning to Fox News because it has not spent the past few weeks accusing Israel of genocide.

There’s still a lot of denial, but some people are beginning to confront reality.

SLOWLY? Dems Slowly Evolving Into the Hamas Party.

HMM: At least 14% of Americans have long COVID, research suggests.

The Chinese should be made to pay, but that’s hard when they have most of our governing class bought and paid for.

ASHLEY MCCULLY: Hashtag Bootgate. “I have done a good bit of time in political campaign comms shops, and trust me when I say this is probably how the strategy meeting went down at MAGA HQ; let’s listen in.”

BUT WE’RE NOT IN A RECESSION! EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY! International Freight Volume Plunging. “Last night Danish shipping giant Maersk announced a steep dive in profits for their third quarter compared to last year’s numbers. The heady days of astronomical pandemic shipping quotes seem to be at an end, with plenty of container space available now for transporting cargo. But there’s no freight orders to fill up the boats – volume isn’t stabilizing. It’s declining.”

UPDATE: A reader emails:

I have two customers who own major trucking companies–one on the east coast and one on the west coast. I’m sure you’d recognize their names.

They both told me last week they can’t fill their trucks with freight and they are not even making enough money to pay for the fuel. They say freight volume is down over 50%.

Consumer spending has fallen off a cliff. We are headed for some trouble.

That’s what I think. I have a friend with a specialty trucking business (boats and cars) whose volume is way down.

KNOWN WOLF: Again: Investigation Reveals Multiple Failures by Local Authorities That Led to the Lewiston, Maine Shooting.

READER FAVORITE: LE 1000LM Battery Powered LED Camping Lanterns. #CommissionEarned

HMM: Nikki Haley’s Troubling Land Giveaway to CCP-Connected Company. “The land giveaway involves a Chinese company with strong ties to the Chinese Communist Party called China Jushi.”

MARK JUDGE: The Holdovers and the Crisis of Trustworthy Male Mentors.

DEAR WORLD: I DON’T CARE. I don’t care if you’re out on the street, waving your flag and chanting your slogans. We won’t die silently the way you want us to.

NINE MONTHS OF HHS RUNAROUND NETS A SUBPOENA: Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, put up with nine months of “intentional stonewalling” by Department of Health and Human Services. Now, Wenstrup and three other House GOP chairmen, are starting to issue subpoenas to the stonewallers.

FIGHT THE POWER: S. Ct. Will Hear NRA’s Case Alleging That N.Y. Government Coerced Companies to Stop Doing Business with NRA.

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: Booty Patrol Would Like to See Something and It Isn’t Your Papers. “This week, we have a banana that couldn’t quite split, how to get a free turkey and an AR-15 to go with it, and the naked Nevada Man who shamed the Las Vegas PD.”

TIME FOR WOKE TO DIE: Woke may well be on life support, thanks to the outrageous spectacle of U.S. campuses in uproars because of genocide defending wokesters, but Issues & Insights isn’t quite ready to write the obit.

RECRUITING: Hurting for recruits, Air Force will now accept applicants as old as 42. “The Air Force said the higher maximum for non-pilots would expand the universe of potential recruits while still allowing older entrants the prospect of serving for 20 years before hitting the retirement age of 62. The service last raised its age ceiling for recruits in 2014, when it went from 27 to 39.”

HMM: FDA moves to ban drink additive linked to thyroid issues, memory loss. “The FDA has proposed a measure that would ban the use of brominated vegetable oil in the United States in response to evidence revealing the potential for adverse health effects in humans. . . . Vegetable oil modified with bromine has been authorized by the FDA in small quantities to prevent the separation of citrus flavoring in select beverages. However, recent FDA findings have led to a fundamental shift in its safety classification. Findings reveal the accumulation of bromine has adverse impact on the thyroid, a crucial gland responsible for producing hormones that exert significant control over blood pressure, body temperature, metabolism and the body’s response to other hormones.”

THE RACE CANARD: Kentucky Democrats Go Full Racist Against Daniel Cameron.

FUTURE PROBLEMS PRESENT: AI Global Risk Discussion Between Elon and UK Prime Minister.

NICE SHOOTING: Israel uses F-35I to shoot down cruise missile, a first for Joint Strike Fighter. “The Israel Defense Forces said that it used F-35I Adir fighter jets to shoot down a cruise missile this week, the first known cruise missile intercept by the American-made stealth fighter.”