Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

December 15, 2025

TINIEST TRUMP SCANDAL OF ALL TIME? New State Department FONT Policy!

This could qualify as the tiniest Trump scandal of all time — even smaller than the “Trump dumped all the fish food in the koi pond” scandal. It’s a FONT scandal. NBC News thought this was hot-buns news from the Department of State:

That’s right: we’re supposed be outraged by this: “Calibri font is the latest casualty in the Trump administration’s war on diversity and inclusion.” Admission of guilt: I use Calibri font constantly as I write up articles. I don’t remember anyone on the right railing against Calibri font.

* * * * * * * * *

Then it became more ridiculous: JustMindy at Twitchy flagged Steve Herman, a former White House reporter for the supposedly objective Voice of America, compared this to the Nazis:

The Nazis, in 1941, banned the Fraktur font because it was “too Jewish.”

Could there be a possibility that there is anything Team Trump does that can’t be compared to the Nazis?

At the Free Press, Nellie Bowles jokes, “That font is too woke:”

The State Department is cracking down on woke typefaces. They announced this week that the Biden-era font Calibri is banned from official forms, and we’re back to Times New Roman. A serif, like what this country was built on. Calibri is the streamlined font that has no serifs, and disability activists say it’s better for them, which doesn’t really make sense to me but whatever. I guess they want it to be like braille? Or Comic Sans, to draw in all IQ levels? I write in sans serif font but the lib one (Arial) and not the libertarian one (Helvetica).

Say what you will about Calibri, it has nowhere near the ubiquity that Helvetica had in the mid-to-late 20th century, seamlessly interlinking federal and local governments and the biggest of big corporations into one homogeneous whole. Or as I dubbed it in 2010, “Liberal Fascism: The Font.”

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 15th, 2025

December 14, 2025

REPORT: Rob Reiner and Wife Michele Found Dead At L.A. Home; Wounds Consistent With A Knife.

UPDATE: Rob Reiner and Wife Found Dead as LAPD Investigates ‘Apparent Homicide.’

ANOTHER UPDATE (FROM GLENN):

UPDATE (From Ed): People magazine are reporting that “Reiner and His Wife Michele Were Killed by Their Son (Exclusive Sources).” “In a 2016 interview with PEOPLE, Nick spoke about his years-long struggle with drug addiction, which began in his early teens and eventually left him living on the streets. He said he cycled in and out of rehab beginning around age 15, but as his addiction escalated, he drifted farther from home and spent significant stretches homeless in multiple states.”

Posted at 11:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 14th, 2025

CATS AND DOGS, DINING TOGETHER:

Screenshot
Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 14th, 2025

ROGER SIMON: Are Tucker and Candace Responsible for Sydney Terror?

Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, plus the whole metastasizing antisemitic crew infecting social media, are not directly responsible for the horrifying Chanukah carnage in Sydney that, as of now, killed 15 and injured 40.

Still, it’s hard to deny that they—putatively conservatives, once anyway—with their constant internecine hostility generate a zeitgeist that encourages such events near and far.

Save Sen. John Fetterman, one of the few courageous politicians who declared opposition to rewarding Palestinian violence with a state, on Maria Baritoromo this morning (Dec. 14), it’s also hard to deny that nearly the entire Democratic Party has turned against Israel,

But that’s an old story. At the 2012 Democratic Party convention, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called for a voice vote in favor of moving the American embassy to Jerusalem. He got a salvo of furious catcalls in response.

By now, there’s hardly a defender of Israel in that party other than Sen. Fetterman. Most who may be are too afraid to say so.

Though smaller in number, the rise of antisemitism on the right is more recent and, to some extent, more ominous. It threatens to leave Jews and Israel without their only solid ally (and, not so parenthetically, the USA without its only reliable military partner in the Middle East).

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 14th, 2025

ROBERT SPENCER: Australia Discovers What It Means to ‘Globalize the Intifada.’

What exactly would it mean to “globalize the intifada”? What would a globalized intifada even look like? At least twelve people are dead and 29 injured on Australia’s Bondi Beach Sunday, as two Muslims opened fire upon a Hanukkah celebration. And so now the world has yet another example of what looks like when an intifada is globalized.

“Intifada” means “shaking off” or “rebellion,” and refers to armed struggle against Israel, including Israeli civilians. The Jerusalem Post noted back in 2021, when there was a good deal of globalization of the intifada that went largely unnoticed, that “during the Second Intifada from 2000-2005, Palestinian terrorist groups, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and some affiliated with Fatah, carried out hundreds of terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and security personnel, killing more than 1,000.”

And so it is clear: globalizing the intifada means doing violence to Jews the world over. When New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani refuses to condemn the term, he is tacitly admitting that he has no problem with violence against Jews who are not members of the IDF, not fighting in Gaza, but just going about their business on Bondi Beach and elsewhere.

Australia welcomed in the killers who decided to globalize the intifada on Bondi Beach. It welcomed them as “asylum seekers” and “refugees,” but they were actually Islamic jihadis, or became Islamic jihadis once in Australia. (Either way, it’s not a good advertisement for Australia’s immigration policy, which is essentially the same as immigration policies all over Europe and North America.) One of the mass murderers is named Naveed Akram. He is from Pakistan. The other is Khaled al-Nabulsi, who hails from Lebanon and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS). Police said that they were “aware” of one of these grateful asylum seekers before he made the decision to murder Jews in large numbers in order to gain the favor of Allah. They did not, obviously, do anything to stop him.

Related:

UPDATE:

MORE:

Posted at 4:10 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 14th, 2025

MEGAN MCARDLE: Why does anyone want to buy Warner Brothers, anyway?

Break out the popcorn and a jumbo box of Raisinets, because just when we thought the Warner Bros. Discovery drama was over, it turned out we had barely gotten started. The suspense over the company’s pending sale is mounting, and new questions are developing faster than writers can resolve old ones. Which suitor will shareholders choose? Will regulators block the deal? Will any of these characters find happily ever after?

If you remember last week’s episode, Netflix beat out Comcast and David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance to buy WBD — or at least its studio and streaming business, which are the bits everyone really wants. If you kept following the show, you’ve seen the action heat up: Ellison has launched a hostile bid for WBD, arguing that its shareholders would do better by taking $30 per share from him to buy the whole company, including its cable television stations — CNN, TNT, TBS and lifestyle outlets such as HGTV — than by getting $27.75 per share from Netflix for just the studio and streaming.

Spoiler alert: Cord-cutting is decimating the cable business so rapidly that this is a reasonable argument, even though the cable stations currently generate higher revenue and gross margins than streaming or studio. Between WBD’s debt and declining cable subscribers, there’s just not much future value left in those assets.

So stay tuned for more twists and turns! Eventually writers might resolve the biggest mystery: Why does anyone want to buy this company, anyway?

Fortunately, one august institution is dedicated to saving Warner Brothers from its ignoble fate: British cinemas demand Labour intervene against Netflix’s Hollywood takeover.

Cinemas have urged Labour to intervene in the planned takeover of Warner Bros by Netflix, warning that the deal would result in a “much thinner” selection of films for audiences.

Industry bosses have written to media minister Ian Murray to raise concerns about the streaming giant’s $83bn acquisition of the Hollywood studio behind major franchises such as Harry Potter, arguing that it could result in fewer films being released in cinemas.

In the letter sent to MPs on both the culture select committee and business and trade committee, Phil Clapp, the chief executive of the UK Cinema Association, said the takeover would be a “significant blow” to the industry – which is still struggling to recover from the pandemic.

Mr Clapp warned that audiences would be the biggest losers from the proposed deal, adding that it would also lead to significant job losses.

The trade group urged Mr Murray to take an active interest in the takeover and called on both committees to launch an inquiry.

Yes, launch an inquiry – write some really stern letters, England. That ought to do the job! But as John Podhoretz noted last week, we could be witnessing the “end of moviegoing” as we used to know it:

And in a thread Twitter/X McArdle explained why she didn’t bother going into details in her Washington Post article about Ellison’s goal of acquiring CNN along with Warner Brothers, as aging viewers and declining numbers mean that technology is also reaching its twilight years as destination viewing:

 

Posted at 12:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 14th, 2025

THE RISE OF GERMAN NATIONALISM EXPOSES WASHINGTON’S DELUSIONS:

The recent electoral surge of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which secured 20.8 percent in February’s snap election and won state elections in Thuringia last year, has predictably triggered alarm bells throughout Washington’s foreign policy establishment. The usual suspects are warning of a new Nazi threat, the collapse of the transatlantic alliance, and the end of Western civilization as we know it. But beneath the hyperbole lies a more complex reality that American policymakers would be wise to understand rather than reflexively condemn.

Let’s be clear about what’s happening. The AfD’s rise is not some inexplicable resurgence of fascism but rather a predictable political backlash against decades of failed policies—economic stagnation in eastern Germany, botched immigration policies, and Berlin’s costly entanglement in the Ukraine conflict. When the mainstream parties offered voters more of the same, voters looked elsewhere.

Washington’s foreign policy blob has responded with its standard playbook: demonize, isolate, and lecture. Yet this approach fundamentally misunderstands both German politics and American interests. The same establishment that assured us NATO expansion posed no threat to Russia, that the Iraq War would be a cakewalk, and that Afghanistan could be turned into a democracy now wants us to believe that AfD supporters are crypto-Nazis rather than ordinary Germans fed up with bearing the costs of extreme liberalism and America’s geopolitical adventures.

Politico (whose parent company is based in Berlin) is getting the vapors that much of Europe is turning “hard right and far-right:”

But then, the left see “far right” as being everywhere these days:

If only there was a way to slow the rise of the “far right” in both Europe and America:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 14th, 2025

AUSTRALIA’S BONDI BEACH SHOOTING: What we know so far about Hanukkah attack.

Twelve people have died — including one gunman — following a shooting at Australia’s Bondi Beach which targeted the Jewish community on the first day of Hanukkah.

According to police, 29 others were taken to hospital and two officers were shot during the incident, which has since been declared a terror attack by officials. The surviving gunman is in a critical condition.

More than 1,000 people were attending an event on the beach celebrating Hanukkah.

Chris Minns, the premier of New South Wales, said: “Our heart bleeds for Australia’s Jewish community tonight.

“I can only imagine the pain that they’re feeling right now to see their loved ones killed as they celebrate this ancient holiday”.

Its origin and purpose, still a total mystery:

UPDATE: From last December: How Australia went from ‘goldene medina’ to ‘vitriol and vilification’ of Jews.

Posted at 10:54 am by Ed Driscoll on Dec 14th, 2025

WELL, THIS IS THE 21st CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Orbital Data Centers Will “Bypass Earth-Based” Constraints.

Last week, readers were briefed on the emerging theme of data centers in low Earth orbit, a concept now openly discussed by Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Jeff Bezos, and Sam Altman, as energy availability and infrastructure constraints on land increasingly emerge as major bottlenecks to data center buildouts through the end of this decade and well into the 2030s.

Nvidia-backed startup Starcloud has released a white paper outlining a case for operating a constellation of artificial intelligence data centers in space as a practical solution to Earth’s looming power crunch, cooling woes, and permitting land constraints.

Terrestrial data center projects will reach capacity limits as AI workloads scale to multi-gigawatt levels, while electricity demand and grid bottlenecks worsen over the next several years. Orbital data centers aim to bypass these constraints by using near-continuous, high-intensity solar power, passive radiative cooling to deep space, and modular designs that scale quickly, launched into orbit via SpaceX rockets.

“Orbital data centers can leverage lower cooling costs using passive radiative cooling in space to directly achieve low coolant temperatures. Perhaps most importantly, they can be scaled almost indefinitely without the physical or permitting constraints faced on Earth, using modularity to deploy them rapidly,” Starcloud wrote in the report.

Starcloud continued, “With new, reusable, cost-effective heavy-lift launch vehicles set to enter service, combined with the proliferation of in-orbit networking, the timing for this opportunity is ideal.”

No word yet how SID is holding up these days.

Posted at 10:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Dec 14th, 2025

December 13, 2025

WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY: Animal Farm review: Director Andy Serkis softens George Orwell classic for family animation. “Originally conceived by George Orwell as a satirical allegory for the Russian Revolution and the subsequent struggles of the USSR under the rule of Joseph Stalin, Animal Farm’s political ire is redirected in this lively CG-animated adaptation directed by Andy Serkis. Rather than Stalinism, Serkis takes aim at greed, rapacious consumerism and corporate corruption and malfeasance. There’s also a timely dig at populist political movements.”

This isn’t the first attempt at a mirror universe Animal Farm; Roger Waters did the same thing nearly 50 years ago on Pink Floyd’s Animals: “Whereas the novella focuses on Stalinism, the album is a critique of capitalism and differs again in that the sheep eventually rise up to overpower the dogs.”

(Via, appropriately enough, Small Dead Animals.)

UPDATE:

“Has anyone considered the possibility that the real issue why theaters are shutting down nationally is that no one in Hollywood outside of Tom Cruise has made an entertaining movie in like oh… I don’t know… ten years at least?” Speaking of movies ten years ago, that’s when it all started to go wrong, but few knew it at the time: 

 

Posted at 10:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 13th, 2025

GOOD AND HARD, FUN CITY:

Posted at 5:39 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 13th, 2025

DEVELOPING:

UPDATE: Suspect still at large, apparently:

Posted at 5:05 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 13th, 2025

MAYBE NEIL KINNOCK WILL CHIP IN:

Since Joe was the figurehead during Obama’s third term in office, isn’t the answer here simple? Just give Biden’s library a couple of rooms in the basement of Barry’s Death Star flak tower:

Posted at 2:44 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 13th, 2025
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