Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

April 14, 2026

MARKER LAID DOWN:

Posted at 8:35 am by Ed Driscoll on Apr 14th, 2026

HOW DO YOU STALL FOR TIME WHEN YOUR ASSETS HAVE BEEN DECIMATED?

Monty Python’s Black Knight plans to wriggle around on the ground limbless until January of 2029?

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll on Apr 14th, 2026

THE IRGC THOUGHT THEY COULD PARTY LIKE IT’S 1979 FOREVER:

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Apr 14th, 2026

DISPATCHES FROM THE WAYBACK MACHINE: The Internet’s Most Powerful Archiving Tool Is in Peril.

This month, USA Today published an excellent report that revealed how US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement delayed disclosing key information about the impacts of its detainment policies. The authors used the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to compile and analyze detention statistics from ICE and track how the agency had changed under the Trump administration. The story is one of countless examples of how the Wayback Machine, which crawls and preserves web pages, has helped preserve information for the public good. It was also, Wayback Machine director Mark Graham says, “a little ironic.”
USA Today Co., the publishing conglomerate formerly known as Gannett that runs both its namesake paper and over 200 additional media outlets, bars the Wayback Machine from archiving its work. “They’re able to pull together their story research because the Wayback Machine exists. At the same time, they’re blocking access,” Graham says.

A number of other major journalism organizations have also recently moved to restrict the Wayback Machine from archiving their stories, including The New York Times. According to analysis by the artificial-intelligence-detection startup Originality AI, 23 major news sites are currently blocking ia_archiverbot, the web crawler commonly used by the Internet Archive for the Wayback project. The social platform Reddit is too. Other outlets are limiting the project in different ways: The Guardian does not block the crawler, but it excludes its content from the Internet Archive API and filters out articles from the Wayback Machine interface, which makes it harder for regular people to access archived versions of its articles.

USA Today Co. spokesperson Lark-Marie Anton emphasized that “this effort is not about specifically blocking the Internet Archive” but instead part of the company’s broader efforts to block all scraping bots. Robert Hahn, the Guardian’s director of business affairs and licensing, says that it has been in conversation with the Archive over “concerns over potential misuse by AI companies of content sets crawled for preservation purposes.”

Now, individual reporters are pushing back on this trend. This week, advocacy organizations including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Fight for the Future rallied journalists around the Wayback Machine’s cause. The coalition collected more than 100 signatures from working journalists who recognize the tool’s value and presented a letter of support to the Internet Archive. Signatories range from television mainstay Rachel Maddow to independent reporters like Spitfire News’ Kat Tenbarge and User Mag’s Taylor Lorenz.

While Lorenz wants to keep the Wayback Machine open as a tool, ironically enough, she herself is an unperson there:

Here’s a working link, and it does indeed show Lorenz as “excluded from the Wayback Machine.”

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Apr 14th, 2026

April 13, 2026

TO SERVE MAN: The Left’s Favorite Food Is Other Leftists.

Sabrina Carpenter is just another industry elitist who checked almost every leftist box she could on the way up the fame ladder. She puts on hyper-sexualized displays during her concerts, consistently degrading and hating on men, and is constantly curating leftist support. You’ll recall she “bravely” stood up to the Trump administration when they used her song in a post showing off ICE’s success.

Something that the White House turned around and used to promote ICE further.

Yet, during one of her concerts, Carpenter made the mistake of disliking someone doing the Arabic zaghrouta, which is the celebratory sound you hear Islamic women make whenever an Islamic terrorist successfully kills Israelis or Westerners. You’ll recall that sound being heard quite a bit in videos after 9/11.

Someone was doing that at Carpenter’s set during her Coachella performance, which Carpenter didn’t like at all. Even after someone told her that this was a part of her culture, Carpenter responded by saying she didn’t like it.

As you can imagine, the piranhas have begun to swarm.

But the damage is done.

I don’t think it’s going to destroy her career, and I’m pretty sure there are going to be industry reps and their friendly outlets working overtime to sweep it under the rug, but as it stands, Carpenter’s being roasted alive, and there will be a solid chunk of her audience that doesn’t forget or forgive. They can’t, because they have too much to gain by hating on her for her “racism.”

As Steve spotted earlier, in a post headlined, “Now That’s One Well-Played Historical Reference,” there was another path for Carpenter:

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 13th, 2026

BAD NEWS: Alarming study reveals the universe will end much, much sooner than previously estimated.

It’s the end of the world as we know it — a lot sooner than we think.

A team of researchers have drastically scaled back the going estimate of how long it will be until the universe ceases to exist.

Previously, scientists believed it would be 10¹¹⁰⁰ years until the very last objects in the cosmos would disappear forever — that’s a 1 followed by 1,100 zeroes, in layman’s terms.

But a new study published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics by a trio of researchers at Radboud University in the Netherlands posits the real figure as closer to 10⁡⁸ years, or a 1 followed by just 78 zeroes, Science Aim writes.

Make no mistake, 10⁷⁸ years is a long, long, long time. But the difference between 10⁷⁸ years and 10¹¹⁰⁰ years is so enormous that it’s unfathomable to the human mind.

Some exceptions, such as Alvy Singer, apply:

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 13th, 2026

THE FUTURE OF LAW ENFORCEMENT – ROBOCOP ROBODOG! Robot Police Dogs Powered by AI Take Over Atlanta’s Streets.

Four-legged robot dog, powered by AI have been patrolling the streets, apartments, parking lots and construction sites in Atlanta as a move to up security. However, the addition of this automated security has raised concerns about the increasing use of private technology by law enforcement agencies.

A video of one such surveillance robot dog walking in Atlanta has gone viral on social media, leaving onlookers in awe as they drive past it.

When someone honks, the robot stops immediately and looks at the person recording it, producing noise that resembles a dog. The robot dog then waves, something that the car’s occupants find adorable.

The caption suggests that the robot dog has been developed by Undaunted, a company that offers such autonomous security to various industries. The robot dog follows a predetermined route for surveillance, judging its path through cameras.

This isn’t creepy or dystopian at all (language alert if you’re playing the video in public):

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 13th, 2026

TRUMP HAS DEMS IN A ‘STRAIT’-JACKET:

If President Donald Trump really wants to drive crazed Democrats off a cliff, he would burn an Iranian flag on the White House lawn while chanting “Death to Iran.”

That would get the doomsday Democrats and the messianic mullahs in Tehran talking. The two allies could hold a joint press conference to impeach Trump.

They could use the event to add to his alleged “war crimes,” which include threatening to wipe a nuclear armed Iran off the map, something the U.S should have done seven presidents ago.

It could have happened in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter when revolutionary Islamic “students” invaded the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took sixty-six Americans hostage.

Or it surely could have taken place under President Ronald Reagan when the Iranian terrorist proxy Hezbollah killed 241 U.S. marines and sailors with a truck bomb in Lebanon in 1983. It was the largest number of marines killed in one day since Iwo Jima.

While the two Bush presidents—George H.W. Bush and Georg W. Bush—invaded Iraq, which had no nuclear weapons, a couple of times, Iran, which was developing one got a pass.

Besides the Dems, Trump has another far-left totalitarian regime in a “Strait”-jacket as well: “A broken Iran means China has to buy American, and any plans to pose a threat to Taiwan were put on indefinite hold. The Iranian regime keeps doubling down on this nonsense. Because what else can they do?”

Posted at 6:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 13th, 2026

SWALWELL’S BLANKET PARTY:

The Dems depantsed the repulsive Eric Swalwell over the weekend in an attack with something like the Pearl Harbor effect. It swiftly sunk Swalwell’s gubernatorial campaign. We followed the depantsing, but without quite the humorous detachment of Wall Street Journal Free Expression editor Matthew Hennessey. There are several interesting angles to the story and he inflicts glancing blows on most of them. He doesn’t expressly mention the apparent knowledge of members of the press about Swalwell’s way with women.

But what will become of Swalwell’s campaign merch? Heh, indeed:

Posted at 5:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 13th, 2026

GREAT MOMENTS IN SELF-AWARENESS:

I know, Sandy! I was thinking exactly the same thing back in 2019.

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 13th, 2026

MR. KISS KISS FANG FANG CRASHES OUT:

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 13th, 2026

THE 21st CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I HAD HOPED: The Rising Tide of Anti-AI Violence.

The attempted firebombing of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s San Francisco home should be a wake-up call. Had the attacker, who also reportedly made threats against OpenAI’s offices, hit a window rather than the side of the house, against which his Molotov cocktail merely “bounced” off, the event could have been far more horrific.

Just a couple of days later, two men were alleged to have fired on Altman’s house, which should have set the conditions for a national conversation about the horrifying prospect of revivified, violent Luddism.

To its credit, the Washington Post editorial board tried to start that very conversation last week when its members raised alarms over a violent attack on an Indianapolis-based lawmaker’s house — an attack in which 13 bullets were fired at his home. “The gunman left a note on the lawmaker’s doorstep,” the Post observed, “NO DATA CENTERS.”

The editorial linked that act of violence to a broader hostility toward the construction of data centers, which facilitate modern marvels like video streaming services, cloud data storage, and, yes, artificial intelligence. “It wouldn’t be the first time in history that deranged Luddites turn to violence to fight the advancement of frontier technology,” the Post’s editors note.

Note that the attack wasn’t just aimed at Altman; “other AI CEOs were also on his hit list:”

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 13th, 2026

April 12, 2026

NOT WITH A FANG FANG, BUT WITH A WHIMPER: Eric Swalwell drops bid for California governor after sexual misconduct allegations.

One more resignation to go?

Earlier: “The Democrats are doing to Swalwell what they did to Clarence Thomas. And Donald Trump. And Brett Kavanaugh. And who knows how many others. In other words, they may have fabricated another Christine Blasey Ford to come at Swalwell. Don’t put it past them—the California governor’s seat is important enough to throw one of their own under the bus.”

UPDATE:

Posted at 10:20 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 12th, 2026

WE’RE BLOCKADING IRAN, NOT THE STRAIT:

In the short term, China will have an incentive to lean on whoever is left in the regime to open the Strait. In the meantime, we aren’t destroying Iran’s petroleum infrastructure, merely preventing it from selling any oil. That means that Iran’s supply will be added to the global total before long, one way or another, and if the Iranian people are able to throw off the yoke of Islamic tyranny, they will take over an intact oil infrastructure.

And Trump is making the IRGC “play by their own rules:”

Meanwhile, the man who wrote the “Axis of Evil” speech for GWB has strange newfound respect for the CCP:

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 12th, 2026

THIS IS THE EQUIVALENT OF SACRAMENTO’S “TRAVEL BANS” TO THE RED STATES:

Posted at 8:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 12th, 2026

ORBÁN CONCEDES DEFEAT IN HUNGARIAN ELECTION:

Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s pro-Russian prime minister, conceded defeat on Sunday, bringing an end to his authoritarian 16-year rule after an election seen as the Europe’s most consequential election this year.

Peter Magyar, the 45-year-old leader of the centre-Right Tisza party, won a landslide victory and promised to repair relations with the EU and Nato, which were badly strained by Mr Orbán’s blocking of policies helpful to Ukraine.

In the campaign, the Fidesz party leader accused Volodymyr Zelensky and Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, of plotting with Mr Magyar to drag Hungary into the war.

“Together we have freed Hungary,” Mr Magyar told a delirious crowd of supporters on the banks of the Danube, “My friends you have worked a miracle. Hungary has written history.”

Worst. Autocrat. Ever:

But is the globalist left celebrating a little too much and too early?

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 12th, 2026

I DON’T THINK THE BIG BANG THEORY WAS INTENDED TO BE A HOW-TO GUIDE FOR HOSPITAL ROBOTICS:

Deploy the Shelbots!

To be fair, the Shelbots are brilliant tailors as well. They were the forerunners of the oversize suit craze of the 1980s:

 

Posted at 12:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 12th, 2026

ROBERT SPENCER: Truth-Teller Encounters the Buzz-Saw of the Establishment Narrative.

What happens when someone dissents from the leftist establishment narrative in a way that is so compelling and convincing that the continued wide acceptance of that narrative is imperiled? What happens is that the leftist media establishment deploys its strongest rhetorical weapons against the offender, hoping to destroy or at least cripple the dissident before he or she is able to amass a significant following, or to dishearten and disperse that following if it already exists. This is why the April 2026 issue of Tablet magazine contains a massive article, over 6,000 words long, damning with faint praise the pioneering scholar of dhimmitude, Bat Ye’or.

Former New York Times writer Judith Miller, who for decades has been a reliable conduit for the establishment line, pulls out all the stops to ensure that her readers will come away with the idea that Bat Ye’or, for all her admirable qualities, is a bit of a nutter. It is a shabby way to treat one of the great thinkers of our age, and demonstrates how deeply threatened the academic left is in the face of the truths Bat Ye’or has uncovered.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 12th, 2026

NEVILLE AGAIN:

 

On Friday, London Telegraph columnist Jake Wallis Simons wrote: Starmer has just shown the world what a truly pathetic leader he is.

At least Neville Chamberlain had rhetoric. The phrase may have represented the nadir of British appeasement, but “peace for our time” had a lovely ring to it. Keir Starmer, however, probably finds its resonances with the Book of Common Prayer distasteful, given that modern Britain is for “people of all faiths and none”. So he plumped for “fed up” instead.

“I’m fed up with the fact that families across the country see their bills go up and down on energy, businesses’ bills go up and down on energy,” he told Robert Peston in the Gulf. Forgive me if I do a little sick. The Prime Minister didn’t seem to mind when, thanks to Ed Miliband, Britain had the highest industrial electricity prices in the OECD even before the war in Iran. But when prices rise because of a struggle against the most evil regime on Earth? That gets right up his nose.

If I were an Iranian parent, say, who had lost a child when the regime massacred more than 30,000 people in 48 hours in January, or a relative of a victim of Tehran’s recent surge in executions, my sympathies for Starmer’s irritation at rising domestic bills might be limited.

The inevitable made-for-Netflix movie depicting Starmer as the eight-dimensional chess playing mastermind of Operation Epic Fury should make for mind-blowing viewing.

Posted at 12:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 12th, 2026

TRUMP ANNOUNCES BLOCKADE OF STRAIT OF HORMUZ AFTER IRAN PEACE TALKS COLLAPSE:

President Trump on Sunday announced plans to blockade the Strait of Hormuz after negotiations in Pakistan to end the Iran war collapsed.

“Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “The Blockade will begin shortly. Other Countries will be involved with this Blockade. Iran will not be allowed to profit off this Illegal Act of EXTORTION.”

The president said the blockade will be enforced in an effort to stop Iran from policing the strait to its economic benefit while other countries suffer.

“At some point, we will reach an ‘ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO IN, ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO OUT’ basis, but Iran has not allowed that to happen by merely saying, ‘There may be a mine out there somewhere,’ that nobody knows about but them,” he said. “THIS IS WORLD EXTORTION, and Leaders of Countries, especially the United States of America, will never be extorted.”

He additionally said the U.S. Navy will “seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran.”

Earlier: “Iran played its biggest card and the main result is that the United States became the world’s emergency gas station and China’s cheap energy subsidy evaporated. This is either the most elaborate coincidence in the history of geopolitics… or someone planned the sequence Venezuela -> Iran -> profits!”

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 12th, 2026

GEORGE MF WASHINGTON: When Hollywood Did It Right: Pirates of the Caribbean.

Will Turner’s fire is lit, his adventure begun, with the help of another classic story trope… the older wiser mentor figure who is at best wildly eccentric and at worst completely insane. This trope too goes back to the very beginning of Western storytelling, but we see it very clearly in many of today’s most popular mass entertainment franchises, some of which are still throwing off sequels, prequels and reboots, from “Star Wars” to “The Matrix” to “Point Break” to “Highlander.” The twist with “Pirates of the Caribbean” is that Johnny Depp did too good a job with Captain Jack Sparrow and accidentally whoopsied himself right into the lead role.

But that was merely a happy accident. Like “Star Wars” and all those other enduring movie examples which we could name, “Pirates of the Caribbean” is a classic male-oriented adventure in both form and function, and that is precisely why it worked so well.

Which brings me to the female lead, Elizabeth Swann, played by Kiera Knightley. Elizabeth is beautiful, of course, but also smart, funny and capable… she is for all intents and purposes a classic Hollywood “modern woman.” But here is the most critical piece, she is a modern woman within the context of the world in which she lives… a world that is a Georgian Era Patriarchy which exists on a distant island colony run with ruthless discipline by the officers and men of the Royal Navy. As such, the men in Elizabeth’s orbit do not cower before her superior intellect, nor are they driven to their knees by her unparalleled strength and wisdom. And she is certainly not a ninety-five pound Scarlett Johansson throwing two hundred and seventy pound men across rooms like they were Jenga blocks.

Elizabeth Swann is simply a woman, emotional and flawed and heroic, in all the ways we used to understand makes a woman, in the days before The Culture decided that being a woman was not enough.

And now I’m going to write something that should not be controversial, but which has become so here in our highly politicized “modern culture.” I’m going to write very clearly and deliberately so that I cannot be misunderstood… and yet I will be misunderstood, deliberately so, because the activists whose grift is based on pretending to misunderstand the most fundamental things about human nature can allow it to be no other way, lest their lucrative grift collapse entirely.

So, here goes… men and women are fundamentally different and often want different things from the entertainment they consume. Generally speaking, women are not as interested in adventure movies like “Pirates of the Caribbean” as men are, and are less likely to pay to see them in theaters. Notice I did not say all women are disinclined to see these kinds of movies, I said that generally speaking, men prefer them more than women do.

By the same token, the audiences for movies like “Hamnet” and “Wuthering Heights” are overwhelmingly female, something I have never heard anyone suggest is a societal problem that needs to be remedied by fundamental industry-wide changes in the way those movies are developed and made. And yet this is precisely what has happened at companies like Marvel, DC and Lucasfilm, where the stubborn refusal of women to attend action-adventure movies in the same numbers as men is treated like some kind of national emergency. When it comes to romantic dramas, on the other hand, we seem to understand that men and women want different things from the movies they consume… and that’s OK.

(Slight pause so that all those readers who have just fainted can be revived)

We good? Everyone still with me?

Keep your fainting couch nearby and read the whole thing.

Posted at 10:52 am by Ed Driscoll on Apr 12th, 2026

DISPATCHES FROM THE MEMORY HOLE:

So why now? California ended up “with eight Democrat candidates and two GOP candidates in the primary, and depending on what poll you consult, it is possible that two Republican candidates might emerge as the two top primary winners, guaranteeing a Republican governor emerges in the general election. In other words, the distorted, undemocratic system installed in California by the Democrat majority is backfiring on them, and now they are scrambling to save themselves—and the only way to do that is to dilute or eliminate the support to one of the leading Democrat candidates, thereby kicking that support to another Democrat, thereby guaranteeing that at least one Democrat is on the ballot in November for the two-candidate general election. And Eric Swalwell is the designated fall guy.”

Posted at 8:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Apr 12th, 2026

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Will Public Accept Sanitized Michael Biopic?

The April 24 release was slated to begin in 1993, when Jackson was first accused of sexually inappropriate contact with a minor.

Not anymore.

Those moments, and others allegedly shot for the movie, didn’t make the final cut, according to Variety. Nor did other problematic chapters of his life.

But the sequence with investigators who arrive at Neverland Ranch to search for evidence is one of many that were left on the cutting room floor. “Michael,” which Lionsgate will release in the United States on April 24, was supposed to explore the impact of the allegations on Jackson’s life, with much of its third act devoted to the scandal. But that finale was scrapped, along with any mention of the child molestation accusations, according to sources with knowledge of the production.

Why?

Variety ticks off two reasons. One, recent Jackson projects have done something similar, and the public outcry has been limited or non-existent.

Two, the legalese tied to the movie helped make this sanitized version possible.

The third, unofficial reason? Team Jackson had a heavy hand in the production and is invested in the film’s financial future. And the King of Pop’s, too.

Will the public cry foul or marinate in the memories? Those box office predictions suggest the latter.

Flashback: The sexual predators everyone still worships.

Posted at 8:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Apr 12th, 2026
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