OPEN THREAD: Almost three weeks since the election. How are you guys feeling about things?

THE NEW SPACE RACE: FAA updates environmental review for increased Starship launches. “The Federal Aviation Administration released Nov. 20 an updated version of a draft environmental assessment for an increase in the number of annual launches and landings of Starship/Super Heavy from its Starbase test site at Boca Chica, Texas. The assessment examined the impacts of up to 25 launches a year, along with 25 landings each of the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stages.”

FASTER, PLEASE: Stem Cells Grown in Space Turn Out to Have a Surprise Advantage. “Stem cells are special in the way they can keep on replicating, and turn themselves into many other types of cell. Now scientists have discovered how their superpowers get a remarkable boost when they’re grown in space. The microgravity environment increases some of the regenerative capacities of stem cells even further, researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Florida have found, based on experiments carried out on the International Space Station (ISS).”

FASTER, PLEASE: Scientists Discover Molecule That Heals Intestines and Combats Cancer Growth.

BLACK FRIDAY DEAL: EF ECOFLOW Portable Power Station Delta 2. #CommissionEarned

OUT ON A LIMB: Jaguar and Volvo’s ads are both terrible. We’ve beaten the Jag ad to (a quite well-deserved) death, so let’s quote from Neal Pollack’s look at the Volvo ad, which was also the subject of a (slightly less) spirited debate on Twitter this past week:

On the other end of the cultural spectrum, you have Volvo, a company that’s doing quite well and is still making cars that people actually want to buy. Recently they put out a nearly four-minute-long ad, shot by the cinematographer of Interstellar and Oppenheimer. I first saw this ad at a Volvo launch in southern California this week and instantly proclaimed it “horseshit.” Apparently, I was alone in my opinion, because the internet went berserk for this thing. But I stand firm.

In this ad, you see a very Euro man and woman in a Scandinavian-designed apartment. They have learned they are pregnant — and the man is telling his mother over the phone that he’s scared. We then see the child’s entire life flash before us, told in short bursts, including melodramatic fights with her parents, the heartbreak of young love and what appears to be a pungent semi-career of partying hard in Ibiza.

Finally, nearly three minutes into the mini-movie, we see the pregnant mother crossing the street with some groceries. Some gal who we haven’t yet seen is noodling down the street in her Volvo. As the mother enters the crosswalk, the Volvo’s extraordinary AI safety features engage, braking just in time to avoid hitting the mother, thereby preserving the unborn child’s future of rolling on molly while dancing to a Roger Sanchez set live at Pacha.

We see the words: “Sometimes the moments that never happen matter the most.”

How profound!

This ad is ridiculous and manipulative and contains all the elements of modern storytelling I despise the most: voiceover, dark, grainy lighting and, most of all, a non-linear narrative. It does highlight Volvo’s longtime signature selling point: top-of-the-market safety features. But it does so in the most pretentious way possible — and hides the actual car until the end of the movie.

People loved this mini-movie, but to the conservatives who think this is an “anti-woke” model: this family only has one kid and they live in Europe. And also, the car is electric. As for the non-ideological people who are responding to the excess sentiment, well, there’s no accounting for taste. I guess we all want to feel safe.

At the beginning of the video, the parents-to-be live in an environmentally-friendly tiny apartment with Bauhaus-style tubular steel chairs and pootle their electro- Volvo around what is likely meant to represent an EU-approved “15-Minute City.” In addition to “preserving the unborn child’s future of rolling on molly while dancing to a Roger Sanchez set live at Pacha,” as Pollack wrote above, it’s a pretty safe bet that she’s going to grow up to become Julia, whether it’s Orwell’s version, or Obama’s. But at least the people in the video are recognizable as some species of humans, rather than a cross between the extras from Mike Myers’ Sprockets sketches and the cast of Teletubbies. In the (hopefully) waning days of the uber-woke, perhaps we should be thankful for small favors.

GOOD ADVICE:

2/2 by the top tier for "holistic" reasons. Your 2025 entering class will be sensationally talented. Within a few years, you will be flooded with top applicants, a high proportion of which have parents who can pay full tuition. Your prestige will have soared.

— Charles Murray (@charlesmurray) November 23, 2024

HAHA: ‘Hawk Tuah Girl’ Gives Jeff Bezos Nickname Over Elon Musk, Trump Comment.

BLACK FRIDAY DEAL: eufy Security 4G LTE Cam S330, 4K Cellular Solar Security Cameras Wireless Outdoor. #CommissionEarned

SELF-DEFENSE: Making your defensive pistol of choice work for you is a process.

GET IN SHAPE: New Balance Men’s Fresh Foam Arishi V4 Running Shoe. #CommissionEarned

HEALTH: Food recalls galore: Does America have a worsening food safety problem?

CONTAMINATION HAPPENS. Ryugu asteroid sample rapidly colonized by terrestrial life despite strict contamination control.

Rods and filaments of organic matter, interpreted as filamentous microorganisms, were observed on the sample’s surface. Variations in size and morphology of these structures resembled known terrestrial microbes. Observations showed that the abundance of these filaments changed over time, suggesting the growth and decline of a prokaryote population with a generation time of 5.2 days.

Population statistics indicate that the microorganisms originated from terrestrial contamination during the sample preparation stage rather than being indigenous to the asteroid.

Results of the study determined that terrestrial biota had rapidly colonized the extraterrestrial material, even under strict contamination control. Researchers recommend enhanced contamination control procedures for future sample-return missions to prevent microbial colonization and ensure the integrity of extraterrestrial samples.

Germs are tricky.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY UNDER BIDEN ADMINISTRATION DIPLOMACY: Russian ballistic missile attack on Ukraine portends new era of warfare: This is the first time an IRBM, once restricted by a Cold War arms treaty, has been used in combat.

MICROBIOME NEWS: Coffee drinking habits may greatly impact makeup of gut biome, research suggests.

MIXED REVIEWS FOR DOGE AMONG HILL AIDES: One might expect a roughly 50-50 split among Republican and Democrat congressional aides in terms of their view of the forthcoming Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), to be headed by Elon Musk and Vivik Ramaswamy.

But the latest Capitol Pulse CNCT informal survey finds a big split, with Senior GOP policy aides very much in favor, but the younger ones not so much. Not surprisingly, opposition among Democratic aides was all but unanimous.

The age split is the reverse of what might typically be expected among GOP Hill staffers, with the “cooler heads” of the older aides cautioning about taking a $2 Trillion spending cut leap and younger aides pushing for radical action now.

THIS COULD BE BIG: Supreme Court Grants Certiorari in Nondelegation Case. “This case arises out of challenges to the constitutionality of the FCC’s Universal Service Fee, and may produce a major administrative law decision–but the Court also gave itself an out. . . . Note that this case both presents traditional nondelegation questions–whether there are limits on Congress’ power to delegate authority to a federal agency–but also what is referred to as the ‘private nondelegation doctrine.’ This latter doctrine concerns whether there are distinct limits on the ability of Congress to delegate (or authorize the delegation of) power to private entities. Concluding there are limits to the delegation of power to private entities (or limits on the ability of agencies to subdelegate such power) does not require concluding that the nondelegation doctrine itself has much force. In other words, the Court could conclude that the method of determining or imposing the Universal Service Fee is unconstitutional without overturning or tightening the ‘intelligible principle’ standard reaffirmed in Whitman v. American Trucking Associations.”

WELL: CBS News poll finds Trump starts on positive note as most approve of transition handling.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW. The Trillionaires of Mars.

GET READY FOR THE HOLIDAYS: CUKBLESS Stemless Wine Glass Set Of 4 (10 Oz). #CommissionEarned

BLACK FRIDAY DEAL: Apple 2022 MacBook Air Laptop with M2 chip. #CommissionEarned

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: ‘Queer Marxism’ course coming to Cornell University next semester.

MY LATEST SUBSTACK ESSAY: Is AI Coming for Your Kids? Yes, yes it is. The Insta-Daughter comments: “I’m anti-AI chatbot after seeing what Slack has done to productivity.”

Plus: “Our friends with kids mostly have a zero screen policy, except on flights.” There’s more and more of that.

PREPAREDNESS: Our Embarrassing Rust-Bucket Navy.

FEARS, CERTAINTY, WHATEVER: Biden-Harris Admin Races To Dish Out $25 Billion for Green Energy Before Trump Takes Office, Sparking Fraud Fears.

Shoveling out the payoffs before it’s all over.