MORE NUKES IS GOOD NUKES: Amazon goes nuclear, to invest more than $500 million to develop small modular reactors.

AWS announced it has signed an agreement with Dominion Energy, Virginia’s utility company, to explore the development of a small modular nuclear reactor, or SMR, near Dominion’s existing North Anna nuclear power station. Nuclear reactors produce no carbon emissions.

An SMR is an advanced type of nuclear reactor with a smaller footprint that allows it to be built closer to the grid. They also have faster construction times than traditional reactors, allowing them to come online sooner.

Amazon is the latest large tech company to buy into nuclear power to fuel the growing demands from data centers. Earlier this week, Google announced it will purchase power from SMR developer Kairos Power. Constellation Energy is restarting Three Mile Island to power Microsoft data centers.

I’m pleasantly surprised that the Chinese/Russians/Saudis (pick one or more!) don’t already have an astroturf environmental campaign in place to derail these nuclear plans.

ROBERT SPENCER: YAF Calls Out UCLA AGAIN for Restricting the Speech of Patriotic Students. “Will UCLA and the other far-left indoctrination centers that call themselves our nation’s universities ever learn? Will they ever recall that Americans, including American students, have First Amendment rights? Will they ever admit that even those who dissent from the left’s agenda have a right to be heard and that university administrators, of all people, should respect that right?”

READER FAVORITE: Thermajohn Long Johns Thermal Underwear for Men. #CommissionEarned

I’M NOT — I NEVER EVEN BRIEFLY CONSIDERED GIVING A DNA SAMPLE TO TOTAL STRANGERS: 23andMe To Pay Up To $10,000 To Data Breach Victims—Are You Eligible?

Related: 23andMe faces an uncertain future. Here’s how to delete your DNA data.

WHO YOU GONNA BELIEVE, HARRIS’S RAPID REACTION DIRECTOR OR YOUR LYIN’ EYES? Trump Slays at Al Smith Dinner but Wait’ll You See No-Show Kamala’s Reaction.

DOG BITES MAN: Kamala Harris Celebrates Hamas Chief’s Killing, After Loudly Opposing Operation That Got Him. “Kamala Harris is hailing Israel’s killing of Hamas Leader Yahya Sinwar. But last spring as the IDF was poised to expand its operations further south into Rafah, she was firmly against it. She had even warned of ‘consequences’ (which of course never came). Throughout the more than year-long conflict the Biden-Harris administration has been speaking out of both sides of its mouth. The contradictions abound. Of course, the first and foremost contradiction is that the administration has admitted that large-scale massacres of civilians have taken place in Gaza, yet continues to arm America’s ‘closest Mideast ally’ to the teeth and to the tune of billions.”

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Donald Trump — Come for the Jokes, Stay for the Awesome Second Term. “Unfortunately, Governor Walz isn’t here himself. But don’t worry, he’ll say that he was.”

PROGRESS: Sinwar Is Gone, Hamas Isn’t Far Behind.

So who wants to fill Sinwar’s shoes now? Israel took out Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh in July. The crown then fell to Sinwar, and now he’s dead. The list of senior Hamas members killed by Israel is long and growing longer by the day. The same, rather suddenly, applies to the senior ranks of Hezbollah. There aren’t many takers for the job of next mole to be whacked. Especially if it means getting whacked for a crumbling cause with a spare and ruined fighting force. It’s not going to be easy recruiting new members to what’s left of Hamas.

But what about Hamas’s supporters over here in the U.S.? Are they still “exhilarated” by the October 7 attack? Do they still think that it was a “gift to Allah from the world”? That “Palestine has never been as within reach”? Are they satisfied with what Hamas has wrought for the people of Gaza? And do they still think they’re on the winning side against Israel? Even if they now recognize Hamas’s strategic failure, they undoubtedly still supporting its aims. And they’re the kind of enemy that’s truly hard to defeat because you can’t destroy moral imbecility. On October 7, 2023, Sinwar ensured his own demise and that of his monstrous organization. But the woke jihadists of the West will live to tweet another day.

And here’s a thought for the Biden administration. The U.S. has recently threatened to withhold arms shipments to Israel over concerns about humanitarian aid getting into Gaza. The greatest gift of humanitarian aid ever received by the people of Gaza was Israel’s killing of Yahya Sinwar.

Indeed:

Mohammed, a 22-year-old who had been repeatedly displaced in Gaza, said the news of Sinwar’s death marked “the best day of my life.” pic.twitter.com/nCZjvlygWU

— Menschadoodle (@menschadoodle) October 17, 2024

LIMITED TIME DEAL: CRYSULLY Men’s Military Tactical Jacket. #CommissionEarned

SETTLING ALL FAMILY BUSINESS: Morning Greatness: October 7 Mastermind Killed by Israeli Forces.

In the words of Keith Laumer, there’s nothing more peaceful than a dead troublemaker.

ROGER SIMON:

But assuming for the moment the polls and the more reliable prediction markets are correct and she’s a loser, something I heard last night while listening to Tucker Carlson’s interview with Mark Halperin is resonating in a truly spooky, not a fun Haloweenish, manner.

Tucker asked political prognosticator Halperin what it would be like if Kamala loses. He said millions of Democrats would suffer from a psychological collapse that would create the “greatest mental health crisis in the history of the country”. The ramifications of this, including violence, will be all over society for a long time. This is no normal election.

I don’t have the expertise and certainly not the contacts of Halperin, but that has also been my observation. The time between the election and inauguration could well be fraught beyond anything we have seen this century and quite a while before. And it’s not likely to stop at the inauguration. Trump Derangement Syndrome, so manifested by Ms. Harris during the interview, is a profound mental illness not likely to go away with the snap of the finger or anybody’s vote. And with the psychotherapy community so predominantly leftist they are likely to exacerbate the situation more often then help improve it.

Most of our political class is a Cluster B debacle.

WOEING: Chalk Up Two More Wins for Elon Musk and SpaceX.

THAT SOUNDS LIKE A LIFE WELL-LIVED: Autopsy of 78-year-old man reveals he had three penises.

COLD WAR II: When Will the United States Cease Wasting Billions of Dollars To Comply With Dead and Violated Arms Control Agreements?

Contrary of the illusions of the Arms Control Association, the current situation as stated by senior White House official Pranay Vaddi in June 2024, is that, “Russia, the PRC [China] and North Korea are all expanding and diversifying their nuclear arsenals at a breakneck pace—showing little or no interest in arms control.” In August 2024, Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy Vipin Narang observed that “…we now find ourselves in nothing short of a new nuclear age—an unprecedented mix of multiple revisionist nuclear challengers who are uninterested in arms control or risk reduction efforts.”

Nonetheless, the Biden Administration continues to believe that there is an arms control solution to our security problems. This is pollyannish. The United States faces more than a refusal to negotiate. The record of Russian (and before it Soviet) compliance with arms control agreements is extremely poor. In 1987, President Ronald Regan told the Congress that, “The Administration’s most recent studies support its conclusion that there is a pattern of Soviet noncompliance. As documented in this and previous reports, the Soviet Union has violated its legal obligation under, or political commitment to, the SALT I ABM Treaty and Interim Agreement, the SALT II Agreement, the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963, the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the Geneva Protocol on Chemical Weapons, and the Helsinki Final Act. In addition, the USSR has likely violated provisions of the Threshold Test Ban Treaty.” In 2023, the bipartisan Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States pointed out that “…there is no prospect of a meaningful arms control Treaty being negotiated with Russia in the foreseeable future,” and, “Over the past 20 years, Russia has either violated or has failed to comply with nearly every major arms control treaty or agreement to which the United States is or was a party.”

The recognition of Russian arms control misconduct has become somewhat bipartisan.

Much more at the link.

While China is barely mentioned, Beijing has shown zero interest in arms control and is currently in the midst of a “strategic breakout” with its ICBM force and enjoys a “massive…advantage in ground-launched INF-range missiles.”

JOEL KOTKIN: How Harris Obstructed California Home Construction: She says she wants to clear away ‘red tape,’ but as attorney general, she produced a lot of it.

Kamala Harris has a plan to help America’s struggling home buyers by increasing the supply of houses. Her recently released 82-page policy book, “A New Way Forward for the Middle Class,” calls for clearing away the “regulatory burden” and “red tape” that constrains new-home construction. Tim Walz promoted the “three million new houses proposed” under Ms. Harris’s “bold forward plan” during the vice-presidential debate.

Yet like Mrs. Harris’s scripted reversals on fracking, immigration, and Medicare, her push to create more single-family homes contradicts her past positions.

Of course it does.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Who’s Got the Joy? “Where’s the joy in Antifa riots? Where’s the joy in transgenders and non-binaries berating others for not using the ‘correct’ pronouns? Where’s the joy in desecrating buildings and works of art in the name of advancing left-wing causes?”

FOLLOW THE SCIENCE: We Were Wrong To Panic About Secondhand Smoke: A recent American Cancer Society study reports a negligible risk from passive smoking, shedding new light on the uproar over a 2003 paper.

In 2003, UCLA epidemiologist James Enstrom and I published a study of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS)—also called “secondhand smoke” or “passive smoking”—in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). Using data from the American Cancer Society’s prospective study of 1 million adults, we concluded that ETS exposure was not associated with increased mortality.

Since that conclusion flew in the face of the conventional wisdom that had long driven state and local bans on smoking in public places, our study understandably sparked a controversy in the public health community. But the intensity of the attack on us in the pages of a medical journal—by critics who were certain that our study had to be wrong but typically failed to provide specific evidence of fatal errors—vividly illustrates what can happen when policy preferences that have taken on the status of doctrine override rational scientific debate.

A recent study by American Cancer Society (ACS) researchers underscores that point by showing that, contrary to what our critics asserted, the cancer risk posed by ETS is likely negligible. The authors present that striking result without remarking on it, which may reflect their reluctance to revisit a debate that anti-smoking activists and public health officials wrongly view as long settled.

Flashback: The Suicide of Expertise.

First link from the comments on this by Brian Leiter.

WHEN YOU BREAK PEOPLE’S TRUST, YOU’RE OPENING UP A VERY STRANGE CAN OF WORMS:  The Poisoned Stream.

GOOD:  SpaceX sues California Coastal Commission.

BECAUSE THE ALTERNATIVE TO TOTAL VICTORY IS DESTRUCTION:  Sinwar’s elimination is merely one small win in Israel’s new quest for total victory.

REMDESIVIR CLINICAL TRIALS KILLED 601, LEFT MANY OTHERS WITH SEVERE ADVERSE EFFECTS:  Lethal drug given to US service personnel – and hundreds died.

WHEN META SAID THEY’D “NEVER DO IT AGAIN” THE ‘IT’ WAS GETTING CAUGHT:  In Undercover Video, Meta Software Engineer Explains What Happens to Anti-Harris Posts.

ASTROTURF IS THE ONLY THING THAT ‘GROWS’ UNDER GASLIGHT:  Democrats caught bribing TikTok influencers to mislead Generation Z.

I GUESS THE BRET BAIER INTERVIEW LEFT HER SO RATTLED SHE COMMITTED A KINSLEY GAFFE:  Kamala Harris makes a brutal gaffe in speech to Wisconsin voters: ‘I stood up to veterans’.

Also with apologies, and full understanding I’m a terrible human being: she stood up to veterans, she knelt to so many other men….

NOT SURPRISING:  Ukraine Reports North Korean Soldiers Now Aiding Russia in the War.