A HISTORY OF the automotive battery.

READER FAVORITE: BAOFENG BF-F8HP (UV-5R 3rd Gen) 8-Watt Dual Band Two-Way Radio. #CommissionEarned

THE BACKSTORY ON HOW MIKE JOHNSON BECAME SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: Something remarkable happened between Monday night when the angry, frustrated House GOP Conference met to quiz eight Speaker candidates and Wednesday when Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) was unanimously elected by members of the same conference as Speaker of the House.

And don’t miss The Washington Stand’s Ben Johnson’s richly detailed examination of Johnson’s path to Congress.

WHY ARE WOMEN SO SEXIST? Women won’t buy magazines with men on the covers.

THEY’LL REMAIN SINCERELY IN SUPPORT AS LONG AS IT’S USEFUL COVER: Is the sudden discovery by campus leaders of political neutrality and freedom of speech for real?

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Too Woke For Sex?

To be honest, I’m okay with the wokies not breeding.

TARGET-RICH ENVIRONMENT: Hunt For Alien Technology Finishes Scan of 1.6 Million Star Systems ‘Flagged as Interesting Targets.’

I KNOW SOME WOMEN LIKE THAT, THOSE INSTAGRAM FILTERS CAN FOOL YOU: Scientists believe moon is 40 million years older than first thought.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Maine Mass Shooting Doesn’t Justify More Gun Control. Here’s Why.

I CREDIT THE CLASSMATES IN SKIMPY OUTFITS: Heated yoga classes may ease symptoms of depression.

NEVER BEND THE KNEE: Shut Up, the TED Talk People Explained.

In April, Mr. Hughes was invited to give a TED talk about colorblindness—the topic of his forthcoming book. The talk’s theme, as he explained recently in a podcast interview with Glenn Loury, was that colorblindness shouldn’t be a “dirty word,” which it has become on the political left. The concept “was at the core of the antislavery movement, the core of the civil-rights movement, and was later abandoned,” Mr. Hughes said. “We should reinvestigate the wisdom of it as a principle. The idea of colorblindness is that no one ever gets penalized for their racial identity. And there’s a logic to that for governing a racially diverse society in the long run.”

That’s common sense. But we live in an age when common sense is not only uncommon, it’s controversial. It’s controversial to argue that children fare better in two-parent families. It’s controversial to argue that someone who swam on the boys team last year shouldn’t be allowed to swim on the girls team this year. It’s controversial to condemn unequivocally Hamas’s massacre of unarmed Israeli civilians on Oct. 7. And yes, it’s controversial to argue that race-neutral policies are preferable to polices that promote racial favoritism.

The day after Mr. Hughes’s talk, he received a call from Mr. Anderson, who said that black employees at TED were upset by his remarks. Mr. Anderson asked Mr. Hughes to meet with them. Mr. Hughes agreed, but the employees backed out without an explanation. Two weeks later, Mr. Hughes received an email from Mr. Anderson explaining that he was under pressure to not post the talk online. The email cited an unnamed social-scientist friend of Mr. Anderson, who said Mr. Hughes’s argument for colorblind public policies was “directly contradicted by an extensive body of rigorous research.”

Mr. Hughes was confused. “I’m thinking,” he told Mr. Loury, “are they preparing the grounds to censor my talk using fact-checking as a pretense?” The talk had passed TED’s own fact-checking process: “Every word of a TED talk is fact-checked before it gets spoken. And you don’t deviate from the script at all. And I didn’t.”

TED finally posted the talk but “sandbagged” it so that “the lack of standard promotion by TED has Coleman’s talk at about 10% of the views of all the other talks surrounding his on their site.”

Shameful behavior on TED’s part but the real question is what they’ll bend the knee to next time and the time after that.

METALLICA’S ROBERT TRUJILLO RECALLS HIDING FROM A MANSON FAMILY SHOOTOUT AS A CHILD: ‘IT WAS REALLY EERIE.’

“Long story short: Charlie Mason just had gotten arrested and [I’m in] Hawthorne, California, I’m staying at my grandma’s house,” Trujillo recalled, setting the scene for the podcast hosts. “The army surplus shop there around the corner on Hawthorne Boulevard was robbed.”

“Basically, the Manson Family had this grand scheme — you can check it out on the internet — they were gonna rob the gun store and get their ammo and everything, and they were gonna go to LAX,” he explained of the incident. “They were going to go to LAX and their plan was to hijack a 747 and demand that Charlie gets sent to them, and they’re gonna take this plane to God knows where. This is what they were thinking.”

The rocker continued, “Obviously, the plan didn’t work. Cops show up. There’s a shootout.”

The Metallica member then opened about his frightening experience going into hiding. He shared, “We were hearing gunshots, the whole deal. So all of a sudden you get the [police helicopters], and they’re flying around. They’re talking through their intercom, whatever they got going up there: ‘Everybody, take cover’ … And so my dad turns off all the lights. We’re hiding in the shower. And it was really eerie. It was kind of like that scene in Close Encounters [of the Third Kind] where you see the light come through the windows.”

“My dad at one point opened the door to see what was going on — ‘Get the f— back in the house now,’” he added, mimicking his father’s intense tone.

Manson ultimately died in prison in 2017, age 83. As Dennis Miller once joked on Weekend Update in 1985, “Convicted mass murderer Charles Manson was denied parole again this week. Manson arrived at the hearing with a swastika etched in his forehead. And you know, what better way than that to signal the board that you’ve pulled your personal thing together and are ready to hit the streets again, huh?”

JOEL KOTKIN: Samuel Huntington was right — cultural and religious clashes are driving war today.

Yes, The Clash of Civilizations was unfortunately prescient. It would be a no-contest clash if the people running our civilization didn’t mostly hate it.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Can Even Nancy Pelosi Save the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building? “Other than the vagrants, the drug dealers, the risk of physical violence, the double standards, and the comically hapless climate control, the Speaker Nancy Pelosi Federal Building is a lovely place to work.”

DEAL OF THE DAY: Shark ZU503AMZ Navigator Lift-Away Upright Vacuum. #CommissionEarned

SAD: Russia’s Invasion Has Thrown Its Space Scientists Out of Orbit. “Russia’s attack on Ukraine is fueled by a decidedly anti-Western ideology. But in contrast, Russia’s space scientists had been building international ties, entering into partnership projects, and seeking to expand collaboration with Western countries over the previous three decades. For many scientists, Feb. 24, 2022, came as a shock and caused many international studies to be paused indefinitely or terminated altogether.”

KRUISER: Anti-Semitic Academia Finally Getting Punched in the Wallet.

NCLA NEWS: NCLA Asks D.C. District Court to Halt Illegal Suspension of Hon. Pauline Newman.

Late yesterday, the New Civil Liberties Alliance filed a brief in Newman v. Moore, et al., urging the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to deny Defendants’ motion to dismiss the Hon. Pauline Newman’s complaint and to grant a preliminary injunction halting her ongoing suspension. Last month, the Judicial Council of the Federal Circuit unlawfully suspended the veteran circuit judge from hearing new cases for at least a year, after ordering her indefinite suspension several months earlier without due process.

Judge Newman’s indefinite removal from the bench is unprecedented in American judicial history. Throughout the process, the Judicial Council has changed the rationale for its actions and even altered the allegations leveled against her, all to accomplish a predetermined outcome. In March 2023, the Judicial Council indefinitely suspended Judge Newman from hearing new cases before any formal investigation began. In violation of basic and fundamental due process requirements, Chief Judge Moore and the Judicial Council refused to transfer the investigation to another circuit court of appeals, despite the fact that all members of the Judicial Council are fact witnesses to the events at the heart of the dispute. Three former Chief Judges (two from the Federal Circuit itself, and one from the Fifth Circuit) have publicly challenged the Judicial Council’s behavior.

The Judicial Council’s factually baseless and procedurally defective suspension of Judge Newman deprives her of the constitutional right and obligation to continue in office, and it violates the procedural due process protections built into the very statute and rules the Judicial Council is enforcing. The September order exceeds sanctions imposed on judges who committed serious misconduct and improprieties. The Council’s actions, which appear designed to accomplish a preordained result, have left Judge Newman with no remaining cases to hear, irreparably harming her and depriving the country of her decades of valuable judicial experience and insight.

Whatever is going on at the Federal Circuit, it smells.

COLONIZATION, STRAIGHT UP: Qatar’s War for Young American Minds.

Right now, senior leaders of Hamas, the perpetrators of the worst atrocity against Jews since the Holocaust, are huddled in Qatar. They’ve been there for years. But American foreign policy has turned a blind eye. Why? One reason might be that for the last 25 years, this small, energy-rich state has pumped billions into America to purchase influence and good favor.

The Qataris have spent their lavish fortune at American law firms, on lobbying contracts with former senior officials, and on junkets and partnerships with big media companies. The biggest recipients of Qatari largesse, though, have been major universities and think tanks.

The numbers are staggering. According to a 2022 study from the National Association of Scholars, Qatar today is the largest foreign donor to American universities. The study found that between 2001 and 2021, the petrostate donated a whopping $4.7 billion to U.S. colleges. The largest recipients are some of America’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning. These schools have partnered with the regime to build campuses in Doha’s “education city,” a special district of the capital that hosts satellite colleges for American universities.

Plus: “One of Qatar’s soft power aims is to advance the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement that spawned Hamas and the ruling party in Turkey.”

It’s time to decolonize American higher education.

DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: Eventbrite Prohibits Riley Gaines Event Promotion, But Allows Pro-Hamas Listings.

PAID, NO DOUBT: Cornell professor who called Hamas attacks ‘exhilarating’ takes leave of absence: ‘I recognize that some of the language I used was reprehensible,’ professor wrote in apology letter.

I remember when higher education was defended as encouraging considered, informed thought.

ALL GOD’S CREATURE HAVE GOT A PLACE IN THE CHOIR:  Constable gives snake the kiss of life.

JIM TREACHER: “Palestinians” Play the Victim.

There’s no such country as “Palestine.” There never has been, and there isn’t one now. Maybe there will be one day, once they finally achieve their dream of killing all the Jews.

Of course, this hasn’t kept “Palestinians” from insisting we all share their delusions. And in the 17 days since Hamas slaughtered 1,400+ Jews and recorded every moment of it, there has been an explosion of support for their butchery.

Look at what’s happening right now in the capital city of the United States of America:

“GLORY TO OUR MARTYRS”
“DIVESTMENT FROM ZIONIST GENOCIDE NOW”
“FREE PALESTINE FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA”

These are all just other ways of saying:

“KILL ALL THE JEWS”

That filth was projected onto the Estelle and Melvin Gelman Library at GWU. Estelle and Melvin were Jews. This is like pissing on their graves, but a lot more public.

I hope you’ll excuse my bluntness, dear reader, but that is some Nazi sh*t right there. Those fascists might as well have projected a swastika onto the wall of that library.

You can dress it up however you want, you can put on your “Palestinian” scarves and wave your fake flags, but calling for the extinction of the Jews makes you a goddamn Nazi.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I remember when all the best people were encouraging us to punch Nazis.

KEVIN DOWNEY JR: Four Astounding Facts You Need to Know About Your Government NOW. “Normally I would suggest that you send an article like this to your lavender-haired, Transtifa, non-binary sibling-in-law and try to open zhim’s eyes. Not today. That would be a waste of your time and effort. Zhe is part of the problem and intends to remain one. You need to send this to every ‘normie neighbor’ or friend who thinks the nation is fine and that ‘globalist codswallop’ you talk about falls into the ‘it can’t happen here in America’ file.”

I MEAN, HE’S NOT WRONG: Matt Taibbi: Amy Klobuchar, You Suck: The Minnesota Senator asks Amazon to censor Substack and Rumble. How much more of this can we take?

If your political program has to be protected from criticism by censorship, it sucks, and so do you for demanding censorship. And it’s not a question of how much we can take, but of how much we will take.