FEDS SPENT $273 MILLION RESEARCHING ‘MISINFORMATION:’ Another way of describing what Open the Books found in their analysis of federal grants in which the word “misinformation” appears at least once would be “laying censorship groundwork.” It’s my latest PJMedia column.
Archive for 2024
November 22, 2024
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Gladiator 2 Gets the Bloody Job Done.
Age has been kind to both director Ridley Scott and his 2000 epic “Gladiator.”
Scott’s film earned Best Picture honors at the turn of the century, and it’s remained in the cultural conversation. (Can you say the same about “Moonlight,” “Crash” or, gasp, “The Shape of Water?”
That meant a sequel wasn’t just a possibility but a coup despite the franchise missing its two key attractions.
No Russell Crowe. No Joaquin Phoenix.
No problem, apparently.
“Gladiator 2” delivers a textbook sequel, unable to match the original but hardly a wasted affair. Scott may be 86, but he choreographs the mayhem like a 20-something hopped up on Fortnite and Rockstar.
It helps that Denzel Washington carries the film on his legendary shoulders.
The Critical Drinker isn’t as impressed:
Anachronisms be damned, I’m still looking forward to seeing it next week.
‘Blue days, all of them gone’, Al Jolson sang, almost a hundred years ago. ‘Nothing but blue skies from now on!’ Mr Jolson’s sunny sentiments seem to have been oddly prescient. For 97 years later, the great and the good of the public sphere – well, at least the ones who never stop telling themselves and us how great and good they are – are decamping en masse from X (formerly Twitter) to rival social-media site Bluesky.
Bluesky aims to recreate the previous iteration of Twitter, before that awful, vulgar Elon Musk got his filthy mitts on it two years ago. Those were the good old days when the people who ran Twitter colluded with the FBI and suppressed any opinion slightly to the right of Hillary Clinton’s. In this alleged golden age, an army of faceless moderators would chuck users off for having the temerity to express hateful Nazi slurs like ‘there are two sexes’. Bluesky is the new go-to site for people who like peace, brotherhood and dobbing their neighbours in to the authorities. For people whose feelgood movie is The Lives of Others.
Having discovered that they are massively, disastrously out of touch – thanks to the Trump landslide – their solution has been to self-isolate, and to make themselves even more out of touch.
And thus, behold, the perfect Bluesky user:
More from Gareth Roberts of Spiked:
So, how are things over the wall, in the place where the skies are blue? Well, the sudden surge of users on Bluesky (though we must remember that X is also reporting all-time usage highs) hasn’t quite created the promised paradise. It turns out that snitchers love to snitch, wherever they go. Simple statements of fact like ‘sex is not a spectrum’ are, on Bluesky, swiftly labelled with the single warning word: ‘Intolerance.’ Intolerance of what, exactly? Delusion?
The sofa Stasi are certainly busy over there. ‘In the past 24 hours’, the Bluesky safety team posted last week, ‘we have received more than 42,000 reports (an all-time high for one day). We’re receiving about 3,000 reports [per] hour. To put that into context, in all of 2023, we received 360,000 reports.’ Then, in marvellously pompous language, they added: ‘We’re triaging this large queue so the most harmful content such as CSAM [child sexual abuse material] is removed quickly.’ What a great advert for your own site – the place is full of informers and child molesters. Grasses galore and nonces by the score – roll up, roll up!
Live look at the Bluesky trust and safety team in action:
UPDATE: Allan Lichtman, the man, the myth the legend, is back from his visit to the “Smugularity:”
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Researchers develop skin patch to measure blood pressure.
DIVERSITY IS OUR STRENGTH: Shameless court behavior of migrant charged with robbing and exposing himself to Alvin Bragg’s assistant prosecutor.
Simosa was arraigned at Manhattan Criminal Court on Thursday and was charged with first-degree sexually motivated robbery.
But he appeared nonchalant during the hearing, at one point closing his eyes and lying back languidly across the courtroom bench.
Judge Janet McDonell also pointed out that the defendant did not appear to be taking things seriously – as he was pictured rolling his eyes.
‘He arrived here in New York in June and has managed to get arrested seven times since June, and at one point was smiling, and is smiling now, and I observed him laughing during the proceeding,’ the New York Post reports the judge said.
Simosa walked into the court smirking wearing a green jacket, jeans and black boots.
She remanded him in custody pending his trial. ICE has already put in a request for custody.
Simosa is accused of following the 38-year-old victim into her 44th Street building before demanding she hand over her possessions.
The terrified attorney handed over her phone, ID and credit cards, Assistant District Attorney Devin Horzempa told the court.
Simosa is then alleged to have yelled at the victim until she gave over her PIN codes and ‘began masturbating towards the victim for a period of several moments,’ Horzempa said.
He’s just doing the jobs Americans won’t do.
BIAS BY OMISSION: MSNBC Skips, CNN Spends 2 Minutes on Laken Riley Trial in Prime Time.
If you relied on CNN or MSNBC evening shows for your news, you likely would have no idea that the illegal alien who murdered Laken Riley was just tried and convicted. CNN’s prime time programming (between 8:00 p.m. and 12:00 a.m. ET) featured just a single, two-minute segment on the trial, while MSNBC’s evening shows skipped the story entirely.
Don’t worry though, MSNBC’s Website covered Jose Ibarra’s sentencing with a headline that’s a masterpiece of cool, crisp absolutely unbiased objectivity:
Comcast can’t offload this dumpster fire of a channel fast enough.
UPDATE: After being mocked into oblivion online, MSNBC tones their headline down quite a bit:
More: John Nolte: MSNBC Paints Laken Riley’s Murderer as Political Victim. “MSNBC’s parent company Comcast recently announced MSNBC and other cable networks will be spun off into a separate corporation. It should be spun off into the trash. No matter how much you try to hate the corporate media, you will never hate them half as much as they hate you.”
AND THEN HE CRACKED OPEN A TALL FROSTY BOTTLE OF BUD LIGHT: Jaguar boss says criticism of rebrand is ‘vile hatred and intolerance.’
The boss of Jaguar has defended the carmaker’s controversial rebrand and described criticism of its marketing campaign as “vile hatred and intolerance”.
Rawdon Glover, the managing director of Jaguar, said the campaign message had been lost in “a blaze of intolerance”, adding that the carmaker must move away from “traditional automotive stereotypes”.
It comes after Jaguar ditched its historic “growler” cat logo and released an advert featuring models with asymmetrical haircuts and dressed in brightly-coloured clothing. It also includes the phrases “break moulds” and “create exuberant”.
Mr Glover told the Financial Times: “We need to re-establish our brand and at a completely different price point so we need to act differently.
“If we play in the same way that everybody else does, we’ll just get drowned out. So we shouldn’t turn up like an auto brand.”
Jim Geraghty writes: Jaguar Bud Lights Itself.
Copy nothing. #Jaguar pic.twitter.com/BfVhc3l09B
— Jaguar (@Jaguar) November 19, 2024
I don’t want to speak for all straight males — or even all late-40s, 6’2″, straight white males — but nothing in this commercial — avant-garde fashion, the sullen expressions on the vaguely androgynous faces, the declaration that without their product my life isn’t exuberant, vivid, or extraordinary enough — appeals to me or makes me want to buy that brand of car. And remember, Jaguars are luxury cars that start at around $50,000 for the bare-bones models but go well into the high five-figures and into the six-figures. If I’m going to plunk down a small fortune on a luxury car, it had better be off-the-charts awesome in both its performance and its image. A high-end Jaguar F-Type can run $115,000. For that kind of money, I want the Batmobile.
In a recent interview, secretary of defense nominee Pete Hegseth says of the Pentagon, “On the recruiting side, what you’ve done is you Bud Lighted yourself.”
To a conservative, the phrase “they Bud Lighted themselves” is abundantly clear. They let their image be remade by a far-left individuals who didn’t understand the institution’s original purpose, mission, or appeal, and found themselves alienating a vast swath of their previous supporters, with little or no offsetting appeal to the very small demographic that the new image is supposed to win over.
* * * * * * * *
I passed a Jaguar dealership here in Palm Beach — think the guys selling the cars there are loving this new rebrand and new commercial?
The online left has no idea how small it is, demographically, in a country of 337 million people and roughly 154 million voters. It is likely that both online and offline, they spend time around like-minded people — perhaps extremely like-minded people — and have no idea how they come across to people who don’t already agree with them. And then, when confronted with disagreement, their first instinct is to get the disagreeing person removed in some way: reported to HR, fired, or banned from a platform. And if that fails . . . they leave X and flee to Bluesky.
And then declare the vast majority of the public, who predictably loathed Jag’s weird new ad as spewing “vile hatred and intolerance.”
I’m not sure how that sells cars, but then, Jag isn’t in the car business anymore. It’s in the DEI business. On Wednesday, Steve wrote, “The genderfluid DEI people got control of another brand via the marketing department and the rest seems inevitable.”
ADMIN POST.
The new head of brand strategy at Jaguar.
Explains everything.
RIP Jaguar. pic.twitter.com/nNHA6bexPC
— Tommy Robinson 🇬🇧 (@TRobinsonNewEra) November 20, 2024
As Robert Conquest Third Law of Politics states, “The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.”
NY MAG TO ALVIN BRAGG: You Still Here? It’s Over! Go Home!
Everyone seems to realize that the days of lawfare are over — at least for Democrats. Jack Smith has decided to get out of Dodge, er, Washington DC, before the new sheriff rides into town on January 20. The Georgia Court of Appeals suddenly canceled a hearing without explanation, which could mean that Fani Willis has decided enough is enough.
That leaves Alvin Bragg, whose conviction on an absurd alchemy of an indictment that turned ledger entries on an NDA payment into 34 felonies against Donald Trump remains in limbo. Rather than read the room or the verdict from the 2024 presidential election, Bragg remains determined to keep his case on life support for the next four years. Rather than admit defeat, Bragg’s office appeared in court this week to tell Judge Juan Merchan to freeze the case until Trump leaves office, lest a veritable pandemic of questionable ledger entries suddenly erupts across the globe.
This risible position turns out to be too much even for New York Magazine. Elie Honig pours scorn over the idea of keeping the Braggenstein Lawfare Monster alive, and tells his former colleague to get a grip:
The hush-money case against Donald Trump is moving inexorably towards its final resting place — back on the same scrap heap it came from. But the DA’s office isn’t quite ready to give up just yet. In a court filing this week, prosecutors conceded that Trump’s sentencing should be postponed while the parties litigate whether he has constitutional immunity, along with other novel issues arising from his status as president-elect. That part is entirely reasonable.
Related: New York Judge Indefinitely Postpones Trump Hush-Money Sentencing, Will Consider Dismissing Case.
More: Trump’s sentencing in New York has been delayed indefinitely and the Left is NOT TAKING IT WELL.
Conan, what is best in life?
GREAT GIFT: Vantrue N2 Pro Uber Dual Dash Cam Infrared Night Vision. #CommissionEarned
GET INVOLVED IN OTHER PEOPLE’S STUPID WARS, WIN STUPID PRIZES: Senior North Korean General Wounded in Recent Ukrainian Strike, Western Officials Say. “Russia President Vladimir Putin enlisted the support of North Korean troops because Russian forces have been stretched thin as they seek to grind forward in eastern Ukraine while pushing back on the Ukrainian forces in Kursk, according to military analysts.”
Then again, Mark Galeotti’s estimation seems apt: “First, Russia is losing. It is using its soldiers like human ammunition, burning through its economic reserves and mortgaging its future to Beijing. Second, Ukraine is losing faster than Russia. Ukraine’s forces are beleaguered along a too-long front and increasingly reliant on what looks like press-ganging for recruits. The country’s energy infrastructure is 80 percent damaged or destroyed.”
A DAY MAY COME WHEN THE RADICALISM OF DEMS FALLS, BUT IT IS NOT THIS DAY: Good News for Republicans — Dems Don’t Grasp How Fringe and Cringe Their Coastal Elites Are.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA is stacking the Artemis II rocket, implying a simple heat shield fix.
The readiness of the Orion crew capsule, where the four Artemis II astronauts will live during their voyage around the Moon, is driving NASA’s schedule for the mission. Officially, Artemis II is projected to launch in September of next year, but there’s little chance of meeting that schedule.
At the beginning of this year, NASA officials ruled out any opportunity to launch Artemis II in 2024 due to several technical issues with the Orion spacecraft. Several of these issues are now resolved, but NASA has not released any meaningful updates on the most significant problem.
This problem involves the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield. During atmospheric reentry at the end of the uncrewed Artemis I test flight in 2022, the Orion capsule’s heat shield eroded and cracked in unexpected ways, prompting investigations by NASA engineers and an independent panel.
NASA’s Orion heat shield inquiry ran for nearly two years. The investigation has wrapped up, two NASA officials said last month, but they declined to discuss any details of the root cause of the heat shield issue or the actions required to resolve the problem on Artemis II.
It seems strange that NASA now seems satisfied with the unexpected behavior of Orion’s heat shield during Artemis I but still won’t say why.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Scholars blast Nottingham U. for content warning on ‘The Canterbury Tales’ due to Christian themes.
THE DEEP STATE AT WORK: Biden Administration Rigging System to Protect Illegals From Trump.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: ‘Queer Marxism’ course coming to Cornell University next semester.
BLACK FRIDAY DEAL: New Balance Men’s 997H V1. #CommissionEarned
BIG CUTS WORK:
JP Morgan has raised its estimate of Argentina’s GDP growth in the third quarter to 8.5%, one of the highest in the world.
JP Morgan is citing optimism around recent reforms by President Milei as the reason for such rapid growth.
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) November 22, 2024
Growth, way up — inflation, slayed.
Inflation in Argentina stood at 25.5% when Milei came into office on December 10th last year. Since then:
January: 20.6%
February: 13.9%
March: 11%
April : 8 ,8%
May: 4.2%
June: 4.6%
July: 4%
August: 4.2%
September: 3.5%The figure for October just came in – 2.7% pic.twitter.com/STM9SfBf0Y
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) November 21, 2024
I’m sure the DOGE boys are paying attention.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Was Trump Doing His 4-D Chess Thing With His Attorney General Picks? “Given Pam Bondi’s close personal and professional relationship with Donald Trump, why wasn’t she his first choice? Since we’re having fun with the 4-D chess idea, we have to wonder if the plan always was to eventually have her be the nominee.”
MOST INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS SHOULD BE DEFUNDED, BUT THIS IS A GOOD PLACE TO START: Roger Simon: Defund the Antisemitic International Criminal Court: Nuremberg in reverse …
AND HIS PROTECTION IS DISAPPEARING: Well, YEAH: Cop Who Shot Ashli Babbitt Has Long Disciplinary Record. “The issues in Captain Michael Byrd’s background included a failed shotgun qualification test, a failed FBI background check for a weapons purchase, a 33-day suspension for a lost weapon and referral to Maryland state prosecutors for firing his gun at a stolen car fleeing his neighborhood, according to congressional and police documents.”