MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT [VIP]: The Interlocking Genius of Elon Musk.”

They should’ve sent a poet. So beautiful… beautiful… so beautiful, so beautiful. I had no idea.” — Astronaut Dr. Ellie Arroway, humanity’s first interstellar traveler, on viewing the cosmos through the portal of an alien transport in the film version of Carl Sagan’s “Contact.”

We don’t have friendly aliens to share their blueprints for an interstellar spaceship so, here in the real world, we’ll have to make do with the interlocking genius of Elon Musk — and that might just be enough to start humanity on our way to the stars… or at least to that fourth rock from the Sun: Mars.

It’s the interlocking part that will make it work if anything can — and the poetry I’ll come back to shortly.

“I want to die on Mars, just not on impact,” Musk joked more than a decade ago. Getting there is easy, relatively speaking. Building a colony large and wealthy enough that an elderly man could immigrate there to die there of old age… that’s the tricky part.

“Why Mars?” you might ask, and I’ll answer that a bit further down. For the moment, it’s the HOW? that you’ll find most intriguing.

Much more at the link for our VIP subscribers.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Bank Study Claims 52 Percent of Households Postponed New Vehicle Purchases.

CRISIS BY DESIGN (NYC EDITION):

The NYPD were not allowed to enter a migrant hotel near Times Square to respond to a call due to an apparent policy banning officers without a migrant program supervisor present. Video by @ViralNewsNYC: pic.twitter.com/9MKkXOw0ed

— Andy Ngo 🏳️‍🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) October 22, 2024

If that isn’t two-tiered justice, what is it?

OF COURSE SHE WON’T:

NEWS w/ @JarrettRenshaw @KamalaHarris will NOT be making a trip to Austin to speak with @joerogan during her upcoming Texas swing, several sources said. She will be in Houston on Friday to talk abortion rights and is expected to fly to Michigan right after.
It remains unclear…

— Nandita Bose (@nanditab1) October 23, 2024

Harris can’t get through a softball mainstream media interview without flubbing it.

SCOTT PINSKER NAILED IT: TWO DAYS AGO, I Predicted a Flood of Negative Leaks From Kamala’s Staffers. Guess What Just Happened.

LIMITED TIME DEAL: EF ECOFLOW Solar Generator. #CommissionEarned

LISTEN SUG, DON’T FORGET TO SAY YOUR PRAYERS: The Critical Drinker on Threads (Video).

WELL, THE FBI: The FBI’s Revised Crime Stats Were Made On The Sneak.

SLOUCHING TOWARD WORLD WAR III: 3,000 North Korean troops are in Russia preparing to fight in Ukraine, South Korea says.

About 3,000 North Korean troops have been sent to Russia and they are now receiving training on drones and other equipment before being deployed to battlefields in Ukraine, South Korea’s spy chief told lawmakers Monday.

In a closed-door parliamentary committee briefing, National Intelligence Service Director Cho Tae-yong said another 1,500 North Korean troops have joined the 1,500 his agency estimated were in the country last week, according to lawmaker Park Sunwon, who attended the briefing.

Cho told lawmakers that his agency assessed that North Korea aims to deploy a total of 10,000 troops to Russia by December, Park told reporters.

Park cited Cho as saying the 3,000 North Korean soldiers sent to Russia have been split among multiple military bases and are in training. Cho told lawmakers that NIS believes they have yet to be deployed in battle, according to Park.

Speaking jointly with Park about the NIS briefing, lawmaker Lee Seong Kweun said that the NIS found that the Russian military is now teaching those North Korean soldiers how to use military equipment such as drones.

3,000 soldiers only represent about three days of Russians killed or wounded.

BEEGE WELBORN: Gwen Walz Reportedly in Full-Blown Snit After Being Told She’s ______________ ?

She seems fun, no?

NO.

Well, David had the first word on this yesterday when, suddenly, the delightful Mrs. Walz dropped out of a campaign event scheduled in Maine.

The more time went by, the more word got out that she’d “angrily” canceled after hearing some unflattering…um…critiques, I guess you could say, of her campaigning style. Instead of taking them to heart and maybe rejiggering her presentation, I guess she just got mad and threw a tantrum instead.
…
Telling that bastion of cuddly, shotgun-fumbling masculinity to get the old ball and chain to tone down the psychotic schoolmarm shrieking before the last three white dudes for Harris peel away was going to result in an epic eruption, guaranteed.

Much more at the link.

HMM: A Deep Dive Into the Democrats’ Latest Polling: There’s a Rebellion Brewing.

BE PREPARED: Prepared Hero Emergency Fire Blanket – 2 Pack. #CommissionEarned

DOES THIS MEAN THEY’VE GIVEN UP ON ARIZONA? Biden-Harris admin shipping migrants to Arizona and Texas to hide border problem before Election Day: ‘It’s about optics.’

On the other hand, there’s this:

🚨 WTF?! Maricopa County, Arizona is now saying it could take 10-13 DAYS to tabulate the results for the election

HOW?

What the hell is going on?! pic.twitter.com/JAQcjY5Ibz

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) October 23, 2024

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: 10 More Images Of Trump That ‘Newsweek’ Is Warning Might Be A.I.-Generated. “Despite what this image may have you believe, Newsweek cannot confirm that Donald Trump is Batman.”

Actually, this is one we can confirm. Trump is indeed Batman:

HMM: Scurvy may be re-emerging amid cost of living crisis and rise of weight loss surgery.

NO WORD YET IF THEY’RE ALSO UPGRADING TO WINDOWS ME: San Francisco Muni Will Spend $212M to Move Train Control Off of Floppy Disks.

EXCLUSIVE: Rasmussen Reports Talks Polling in the Final Weeks of the Presidential Campaign.

SO THEY HAVE A SIMILAR GENE TO SORORITY GIRLS: Oriental hornets do not get sick or die when consuming very large amounts of alcohol, study shows.

HOW IT STARTED: How Kamala Harris Took Command of the Democratic Party in 48 Hours.

How it’s going: Senate Democrats running away from Harris in ‘blue wall’ states.

Democrats running for the Senate in “blue wall” states that will be critical to determining the outcome of the 2024 election are running away from Vice President Harris, signaling that they are hoping to win over some of former President Trump’s voters to keep their seats.

And Democratic candidates in those states have been careful about criticizing Trump during the high-stakes debates. They have focused on policy and their own records without taking many — or any — shots against the Republican nominee.

Pennsylvania incumbent Sen. Bob Casey (D) has even embraced Trump’s tariff policies. His campaign launched an ad last week that described him as “independent” and touted how he “bucked” the Biden administration to protect fracking and “sided with Trump to end NAFTA.”

“There’s no party affiliation in Casey ads. I don’t recall seeing any that say ‘Democrat’ or anything like that. He’s running as an incumbent on his own record,” said Berwood Yost, the director of the Center for Public Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College.

“He’s trying to distance himself a little bit from an administration that is viewed negatively by the most part. He doesn’t want to be tied to that either through Biden or Harris,” he said.

Out, damned cockiness.

WELL, GOOD: Study: Fatal opioid-meth overdoses fall by 37% in United States.

TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE: ‘Frighteningly awful’ Biden struggled to complete sentences for over a year before dropping out, book reveals: ‘Like your senile grandfather.’

Joe Biden struggled to remember basic words or even stand up at campaign fundraisers over a year prior to dropping out of the presidential race, with witnesses describing him as “frighteningly awful and a “senile grandfather” Bob Woodward’s bombshell book “War” reveals.

At a Silicon Valley fundraiser in September 2023 guests were extremely concerned by Biden’s appearance as the then-presidential candidate struggled to remain upright and only took two pre-arranged questions.

“He could not wait to sit down,” a donor at the event, hosted by Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott, recounted.

Despite bringing a stack of note cards with pre-written answers, the 81-year-old president struggled to stay on point and frequently meandered in his speech, attendees claimed.

Attendees said “[He was] like your 87-year-old senile grandfather,” and called him “frighteningly awful.”

At a different event at the New York City Four Season in June 2023, Biden could not recall the word for “veteran,” and pleaded with the crowd for help describing a person who has “served in the military,” Woodward writes.

But what did the vice president know, and when did she know it?

IT’S FOR YOUR HEALTH: Harvard Doctor Confirms that Human ‘Brains Need Meat.’

THE NEW SPACE RACE: After nozzle failure, Space Force is ‘assessing’ impacts to Vulcan schedule.

Col. James Horne, who oversees launch execution for Space Systems Command, called the test flight a “successful launch” in an interview with Ars. The nozzle failure caused a “significant loss of thrust” from the damaged booster, he said.

The Vulcan rocket’s ability to overcome the dramatic nozzle failure, which was easily visible in video of the launch, “really demonstrated the robustness of the total Vulcan system,” Horne said.

“They nailed the orbit, probably one of the most accurate orbital insertions that I’ve seen them fly yet,” he said. “And at the end of the mission, they did some extended duration testing … which was not part of the orbital insertion. And even after that extended mission, they still had substantial performance reserve left over.”

That’s a good sign and “officials expect to approve certification for the Vulcan rocket.”

LAWLESS: A look at the ‘shadow network’ that censors dissent and tried to destroy Trump.

GRAY LADY DOWN: Meet the New York Times Source Who Claims Kamala Harris’s Late Mother Told Her That Her Daughter Worked at McDonald’s. She’s a Harris Campaign Surrogate Who’s Visited the White House.