OPEN THREAD: Wave goodbye to the weekend.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: SpaceX shows off newly modified Starship Super Heavy booster (photos).

ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why Does The Orgasm Gap Exist? A Psychologist Explains.

Of course, the article mentions women faking orgasm, but omits any discussion of men. But those of us who follow the science know that men fake it too.

THE LINE BETWEEN ENGLISH RESERVE AND AUTISM CAN BE A BLURRY ONE: Shocking Findings: Number of Autistic People in England May Be Twice As High as Previously Thought.

CUCKOO: Alarmists Want You to Turn off Lights, Close Blinds so ‘One Billion Birds’ Won’t Die.

OK, that was a bit hyperbolic and a tad misleading. Let’s try it again.

The National Audubon Society, a non-profit environmental organization dedicated to the conservation of birds and their habitats, is asking Americans to make their communities “bird safe” in a concerted effort to prevent more than “one billion birds” dying per year from flying into closed windows.

The bird group told WBAL-TV in Baltimore that “lighting and reflectivity, specifically during migration for birds, is a really dangerous problem and kills up to one billion birds in North America per year.”

I’ll get to the very fuzzy math relative to how they came up with one billion later.

Does it really matter? Birds aren’t real.

NOT LIVING UP TO THE HYPE? Blue light-filtering glasses may not protect eyes.

GOOD: Smog Police to Put Less Scrutiny on Emissions-Defeating Parts: The EPA falls back on its hard-core push to eliminate aftermarket “defeat devices.”

I THINK THE OLD VERSION WAS PRETTIER: 2024 Mercedes-AMG GT Coupe Revealed with AWD, Up to 577 HP. This seems vaguely reminiscent of a Mustang.

BE PREPARED: OXO Steel Vertical Lever Corkscrew with Removable Foil Cutter. #CommissionEarned

WHAT DO THEY KNOW THAT WE DON’T (YET): “In a report on a Camp David news conference, CBS News referred to Joe Biden as ‘Former President Joe Biden.'”

IDEAS: Jordan Peterson and Vivek Ramaswamy talk about attention span. “This is extraordinarily insightful.”

BOOK OF THE DAY: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. #CommissionEarned (Bumped)

THAT DOES IT, I’M MOVING TO IBIZA: Adherence to a Mediterranean lifestyle associated with lower risk of all-cause and cancer mortality.

FOLLOW THE SCIENCE: Examining how breast size affects women’s attitudes to exercise.

There’s nothing about adjusting for body mass, though, so breast size may in part just be a proxy for obesity here.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Maryland health officials report resident with locally acquired malaria.

PUSHBACK: Alumni group reaching ‘50,000 Cornellians’ publishes free speech demands for alma mater.

THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST: UTSA teaching assistant ousted after threatening to ‘murder’ and ‘rape’ conservative personality.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Russia’s Lunar Lander Crashes Into the Moon: The robotic Luna-25 spacecraft appeared to have “ceased its existence” after a failed orbital adjustment, the space agency Roscosmos said. “The Luna-25 lander, Russia’s first space launch to the moon’s surface since the 1970s, entered lunar orbit last Wednesday and was supposed to land as early as Monday. On Saturday afternoon Moscow time, according to Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, the spacecraft received orders to enter an orbit that would set it up for a lunar landing. But an unexplained ’emergency situation’ occurred, and the orbital adjustment did not occur.”

It’s a bad decade for Russian hardware.

JUSTICE: Gingrich Makes Bombshell Allegation About Latest Trump Indictment. “Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich revealed on Thursday that a reliable source told him that a request was made from Washington, D.C., to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis that she had to bring charges against former President Donald Trump because they needed a distraction from the ‘screw up’ with recently appointed Special Counsel David Weiss.”

Sadly believable, at this point.

UPDATE: NYT: Weiss wanted to let Hunter off scot-free — until IRS whistleblowers fought back.

PRIORITIES: Hawaii Utility Pursued Green Energy Goals While Fire Mitigation Projects Were Delayed.

THE ONLY REASON COULD BE RACISM: WaPo columnist: If Biden retires and Harris doesn’t get nominated, watch out.

The choice of Kamala Harris was Joe Biden’s bid to paper over anger among Democrats over nominating another old white man in a cycle where their activists wanted a “diversity” ticket. Harris was supposed to carry that effort herself, but proved so inept and incompetent that Tulsi Gabbard demolished her in the early debates. Harris couldn’t even make it to Thanksgiving, let alone an actual primary contest, and yet Biden picked her anyway expressly as the future of the party.

In the three years since, Harris has proven even worse at politics. She manages to make Biden look coherent, no easy feat. As the party’s presidential nominee, Harris would prove utterly disastrous, and at least some Democrats know this.

But if Biden retires and the party doesn’t nominate Harris, all of the bad blood over the diversity promises of 2020 will explode. That will be especially true if the party nominates Gavin Newsom instead, who notably angered the black and female activists in the party by appointing Alex Padilla to fill out the rest of Harris’ term in the Senate rather than another black woman. This won’t be a Kennedy-Carter contest but an explosion of identity-politics grudges and fury, much more 1968 than 1980.

I mean, sure, she’s totally unqualified. But so was Biden, and the establishment carried him across the finish line.

OH, THEY’RE NOT THAT NICE: Mark Judge: Assume That Journalists Are Cannibal Zombies, Coated in Plutonium.

ROGER KIMBALL: Uniparty’s Plan to Save ‘Our Democracy™’ Unfolds.

I REMEMBER WHEN NEVERTRUMPERS WERE GOING TO BRING BACK SERIOUS POLITICS: Grifters Gonna Grift: Lincoln Project Adviser Sells Overpriced Trump-Themed Mints to Depressed Liberal Wine Moms.

DEAL OF THE DAY: Felicigeely Athletic Cushion Running Socks. #CommissionEarned