OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.
Archive for 2025
October 19, 2025
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Watch SpaceX launch its 10,000th Starlink satellite to orbit today on rocket’s record-breaking 31st flight.
In, say, 2010 this was inconceivable. Well, except maybe to Elon, who conceived it.
BODYWEIGHT CAN BE POWERFUL: You Only Need 1 Piece of Equipment For Strength Training, And It’s Free. That said, I prefer the iron.
THE SAHARA WAS HISTORICALLY GREEN: Rain in the Sahara? Climate Change Could Turn the Desert Wetter than Ever.
TRIM YOUR NAILS: 360° Rotating Toenail Clippers. #CommissionEarned
COLOR ME UNSURPRISED: Social media usage linked to lower cognitive performance in preteens.
YOU MEAN THEY’RE TRAINABLE? Pink-Haired Protestor Says the Quiet Part Out Loud About the ‘No Kings’ Protests.
LEXUS IS DOING A BETTER JOB OF DESIGNING ATTRACTIVE CARS THESE DAYS: 2026 Lexus Car Updates: Redesigned ES, Refreshed IS, Special LCs, and LS Finale.
STUMPS WOULD BE INSULTED BY THE COMPARISON: Don Lemon Is Trying to Get ICE Agents Killed.
YOU WOULD THINK THEY’D LEARN: Colombia’s Petro Picks a Fight With Trump. Spoiler Alert: FAFO.
Dr. Arthritis Back Brace for Lower Back Pain Relief. #CommissionEarned
IT’S LIKE THAT’S THE POINT: Wrist Slaps for Left Wing Assassins and Terrorists Only Encourage More Violence.
GET STRONGER: Twister Arm Trainer, Adjustable 5 Resistance Levels (40-130 lbs). #CommissionEarned
AND I’M THERE FOR IT.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:
Mamdani Says He Will Build Wall Separating East New York From West New York https://t.co/HwTmbzkxDL pic.twitter.com/6YC9kKSUov
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) July 1, 2025
GREAT MOMENTS IN PROJECTION: “Michelle Goldberg told a Harvard audience that the New York Times ‘lacks pro-Trump columnists because it has had a hard time finding people who are ‘pro-Trump, honest, and not racist.’’”
Yes, I can see how that would be difficult, particularly when you work for a newspaper whose then-publisher “told a crowd of people that alienating older white male readers means ‘we’re doing something right,’” in November of 1991, whose newsroom’s atmosphere was summarized as “moderate white men should die,” and starting in 2019, went all-out to promote “the 1619 Project:”
As part of his review of the 1619 controversy as it stood through the summer of 2020, [Peter] Wood gives us a portrait of 1619’s creator, Nikole Hannah-Jones. A woman who styles herself “the Beyoncé of journalism” acts the part of a diva, and more. Treated by the Times, according to Wood, as “exempt from ordinary forms of accountability,” Hannah-Jones didn’t deign to reply to even the most respectful and serious scholarly criticism of her project. She booked herself instead into speaking venues where she was greeted as hero, prophet, or genius. And of course, Hannah-Jones was showered with accolades, including the Pulitzer Prize. Rudely putting down critics, falsely denying that she’d said things she had demonstrably said, deleting tweets that showed her in a bad light, the behavior that eventually destroyed Hannah-Jones’s credibility was in evidence well before the final collapse. And it was all encouraged by the Times, which treated Hannah-Jones with kid gloves and ignored her critics until its hand was forced. Even when Times magazine editor Jake Silverstein finally answered a critical letter from twelve historians (not the first such letter), that letter’s text was never printed in the magazine.
Something larger is at stake here. To all appearances, Hannah-Jones is a grown-up “cry-bully.” She embodies the movement of campus snowflake culture into the “real world” (if the Times newsroom can be called that). In the old days, Hannah-Jones might have been dubbed a “spoiled child.” Pampered, self-important, lashing out in fury when challenged, she would appear to be a product of the modern double-standard.
Meanwhile, Joy Behar of The View says, “I think we should have more Republicans on the show, but they don’t want to come on. They’re scared of us.”
In response, this person says he’s willing to try to overcome his fears and take up the challenge:
I don’t know that much about Mr. Walsh’s oeuvre, but he seems like an earnest young chap and declares himself to be, “a moderate, who’s down the middle…I’m more of a, you know, I’m like a Bill Kristol Republican. I’m more of a Michael Steele, Colin Powell-type Republican. That’s my thing. I’m an Adam Kinzinger Republican, you know.” All of which sounds like a perfect fit to be a guest of the long-running ABC News program. Give ‘em a shot, Joy and Whoopi!
UPDATE: Christian Toto: Conservatives Carpet Bomb Joy Behar’s Fake View Complaint.
START YOUR TAPE RIGHT NOW, because I’m about to tell you the truth. And eff you if you can’t handle the truth. This version of Robert De Niro, intellectually, analytically, is the best De Niro ever. Not a close second, and I’ve known him for years. Paulie Cicero has known him for 50 years. If it weren’t the truth, I wouldn’t say it:
Outstanding. https://t.co/4K76QyLNaq
— Joe Concha (@JoeConchaTV) October 19, 2025
UPDATE:
This video has probably 60M views across all the accounts that have shared it – elected officials, major Democrat accounts and channels…
What does it say about the No Kings protest that the most viral video of it is actually… from 2017? https://t.co/sn3mzYBaHv
— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) October 19, 2025
THIEVES STEAL CROWN JEWELS IN FOUR MINUTES FROM LOUVRE MUSEUM.
In a minutes-long strike Sunday inside the world’s most-visited museum, thieves rode a basket lift up the Louvre ’s facade, forced a window, smashed display cases and fled with priceless Napoleonic jewels, officials said.
The daylight heist about 30 minutes after opening, with visitors already inside, was among the highest-profile museum thefts in living memory and comes as staff complained that crowding and thin staffing are straining security.
The theft unfolded just 250 meters (270 yards) from the Mona Lisa, in what Culture Minister Rachida Dati described as a professional “four-minute operation.”
One object was later found outside the museum, Dati said. French media identified it as the emerald-set imperial crown of Napoleon III’s wife, Empress Eugénie, containing more than 1,300 diamonds. It was reportedly recovered broken.
Images from the scene showed confused tourists being steered out of the glass pyramid and adjoining courtyards as officers closed nearby streets along the Seine. No one was hurt.
Also visible was a lift braced to the Seine-facing facade near a construction zone, since removed — the thieves’ entry point and, observers said, a striking vulnerability for a palace-museum.
More details here: Hunt continues for thieves after priceless jewels stolen in heist at Louvre museum in Paris.
COINCIDENTALLY, JUST AS OBESITY DRUGS BECOME AVAILABLE: Experts say new obesity definition includes millions more Americans.
Sens. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and Chris Murphy (D., Conn.) passionately defended the anti-Trump No Kings rally in Washington, D.C., this weekend against allegations that it will attract Hamas sympathizers and other far-left radicals. But one of the senators’ fellow speakers has praised Hamas’s “resistance” against Israel, cheered the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump, referred to conservative activist Charlie Kirk as a “bitch” after his assassination last month, and expressed her desire for “the west” to “fall.”
Sanders pushed back earlier this week against House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.), who predicted that “Hamas supporters,” “antifa types,” and “Marxists” will be prevalent at the event. In a video posted to X, Sanders said No Kings is “not a ‘hate America’ rally.”
“Quite the contrary; it is a love America rally,” said Sanders.
They like Ike! Well, Ike Turner at least; back during the Dubya era, Ace of Spades once defined the left’s love of country as being from the “Ike Turner school of patriotism:” “Those who love America show it by denigrating and beating the shit out of her at every opportunity.”
UPDATE: And speaking of the Ike Turner school of patriotism:
TRAPPED IN 1972: Haaaaa! No Kings Rally Was So Organic They Literally Handed Out Instructions on How to Protest (Pic).
Of course it is:
On the other hand, it’s awfully subversive of whoever suggested “Imagine” be played at the No Kings (well, Some Kings) rally, considering that near the end of his tragically short life, Lennon (allegedly) supported an earlier Hitler himself: Working class hero? John Lennon ‘was closet conservative and fan of Reagan.’ “But by the time he died, John Lennon was a closet conservative embarrassed by his radical past, according to his former personal assistant. Fred Seaman claims that the former Beatle was a fan of Ronald Reagan, who went on to become America’s Republican president in 1981 and forged a close political alliance with Margaret Thatcher. ‘John, basically, made it very clear that if he were an American he would vote for Reagan because he was really sour on [Democrat] Jimmy Carter,’ he says in a documentary film.”
Because of Lennon’s murder, and because so much footage exists of him recording the Imagine album in 1971, his radical chic image has become freeze-dried. But it was simply another phase for Lennon, in-between the psychedelia of the mid-‘60s, the booze-fueled “lost weekend” of the mid-‘70s, his house husband phase raising his son Sean few years later, and his return to recording near the end of the ‘70s.
As Lennon himself said in one his last interviews, “I dabbled in politics in the late 1960s and 1970s, more out of guilt than anything. Guilt for being rich and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn’t enough and you have to go and get shot or something, or get punched in the face to prove I’m one of the people. I was doing it against my instincts.”
UPDATE:
NBC Boston describing the 'No Kings' protest: “An older crowd, a lot of white hair. You see Q-tips as we used to call them in the business… Not a lot of young people”
— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) October 19, 2025