THE STRINGER ON NETFLIX REVIEW: Nobody Is Going to Believe Nick Ut Took ‘Napalm Girl’ Now.

It’s impossible to prove with absolute certainty who took the photograph in Trang Bang that day. Personally, I believe there should be a statute of limitations on photo-credit disputes. Once fifty years have passed — and many of the key figures are no longer alive — you shouldn’t be able to drag the reputations of people or organizations you clearly hold a grudge against.

Since The Stringer presents a one-sided case with virtually no counter-arguments throughout the film, the vast Netflix audience will likely come away from the movie believing its version of events. Therefore, it is important to scrutinize the evidence put forward by Gary Knight and the VII Foundation.

To my mind, it’s utterly reprehensible that you would wait for the deaths of Horst Faas, Tim Page, Yuichi ‘Jackson’ Ishizaki, and Hal Buell before airing these claims. At best, it makes you a coward, at worst it’s malevolent.

Robinson is hardly an objective player here; his axe to grind is unmistakable, yet The Stringer barely acknowledges his animosity toward Ut and AP.

Faas has always been a giant of press photography and has a reputation for compassion. Yet the film assassinates his character, labeling him a plagiarist.

As for Nghe, it is difficult to know what to make of him. Perhaps he really has been cheated out of a lifetime of accolades and adoration. Or, perhaps he did take a photo of Kim Phuc that day, just not the one he thought he did.

At the end of the film, Nghe’s daughter, Jannie, miraculously discovers a copy of the Napalm Girl photo that their mother supposedly kept after discarding the original print. But the image is actually a newspaper clipping from years later, identifiable by the accompanying photo of an adult Kim Phuc. The VII Foundation tells PetaPixel that the cutting is from the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, published in November 1982.

It’s a strange ending, and after feeling misled for so much of the film, I found myself questioning whether the moment was even genuine.

As Joseph Campbell, who has been writing about the “Napalm Girl” photo for years concluded in June, after attending a screening of The Stringer: More Likely Than Not, Nick Ut Took ‘Napalm Girl’ Photo.

UPDATE:

As I wrote five months ago, it's more likely than not Nick Ut took the "Napalm Girl" photo for @AP in Vietnam in 1972.
"What is so striking about 'The Stringer' [film] is its fundamental unfairness. [Horst] Faas, a two-time Pulitzer winner, is cast as the villain, without… https://t.co/Ww5lxXABub

— W. Joseph Campbell (@wjosephcampbell) November 26, 2025

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: University of Minnesota Warns of ‘Whiteness Pandemic.’

Can you tell I have contempt for this approach, as I did with all the COVID madness? Of course I do. It is yet another example of using scientistic language—”sciency,” not science—to make an absurd idea sound reasonable.

It’s bunk. It’s the same sort of bunk that the Smithsonian Institution was selling during the Biden administration. [Actually, that was during the left’s revolutionary fervor in the summer of 2020 — Ed]

The irony, of course, is that everybody wants to enjoy the benefits of Western Culture that I outlined without any of the costs. As the Smithsonian decried “linear/rational thinking,” it was being funded entirely out of the wealth created in an economy based on all the characteristics it decried as evil.

I do not maintain that Western Culture is perfect. In fact, thinking critically and rationally and working to make the world better is a key quality of Western Culture, or what the University of Minnesota calls “whiteness.” I’m pretty certain that nobody who hates Western Culture wants to go back to Africa to cook on dung, as hundreds of generations have without any move to improve the practice of cooking.

The University of Minnesota, which gave us Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolution that feeds billions of non-white people, really should reconsider imposing our Western-centric agricultural practices on the rest of the world. Borlaugh wasn’t just white, but a product of the whiteness pandemic.

Everybody wants the cars, the medicine, the abundance of modern farming, all the technology and modern science, all while undermining the very culture that produces these.

I don’t want a country or culture that is exclusive to white people, obviously. I don’t believe that white people are inherently better due to some purity derived from melanin deprivation.

As our “whiteness pandemic” professor admits, the “whiteness” she is decrying is cultural, not biological. And if that is really her position, I suggest she leave the University and eventually the country she so reviles. Universities are a product of “white culture.” The University of Minnesota is based in one of the whitest states in America, where people even eat Jell-O salads and Lutefisk, which are admittedly not the highest expression of our culture. (I like Chinese food, myself.)

As Michael Graham asked 25 years ago in Redneck Nation, why are Democrat-monopoly institutions so obsessed with race? Ryan Long, who produced the “When Wokes and Racists Actually Agree on Everything” video a few years ago might also want a word here:

I’M HOPING AI PLAYED A BIG ROLE IN THIS VIDEO, OTHERWISE, BRITISH KIDS HAVE QUITE THE SALTY VOCABULARY AT A VERY YOUNG AGE:

🤣🤣 Who did this? 🤣🤣🤣🤣 I’m on the floor, if you watch anything today, make it this👇🏽🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣👊🏽 pic.twitter.com/2wnzgClp6f

— Jamais Vu 🏉🎗️ (@boot15_vu) November 25, 2025

RUBEN GALLEGO SAYS WHAT YOU THINK:

Ruben Gallego overcame personal scandals to become a U.S. Senator from Arizona. Most recently, he has been in the news for vehemently defending the Seditious Six and bitterly attacking Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Today he found himself in the spotlight again, as Human Events obtained and released a text exchange in which Gallego criticized his own party:

BREAKING: Human Events has received leaked text messages from Senator Reuben Gallego (D-AZ)

"Dem women look like Dem men, Dem men look like women" pic.twitter.com/0t0xOTHYgp

— Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) November 25, 2025

For convenience, here are the texts:

Click over for the rest. According the Phoenix ABC affiliate, Gallego isn’t denying he wrote the above texts: “Gallego said the leaked messages came from someone he served with and had known for two decades. He maintained that the texts simply reflect his previous public statements about changes needed within the Democratic Party.”

The Democrats’ response to Gallego’s thoughtcrimes will begin with this and get increasingly more angry:

BYRON YORK: The road to the Chicago train fire attack. “Prosecutors laid it out for Cook County Judge Teresa Molina-Gonzalez: 72 arrests, eight felony convictions, and seven misdemeanor convictions — a total of 32 years in and out of the criminal justice system:”

Molina-Gonzalez rejected that argument and sentenced [Lawrence] Reed to go free with the ankle monitor. Upon hearing the decision, the prosecutor objected “based on the serious nature of this criminal offense and evidence presented that tends to prove that the defendant is a threat to the physical safety of the victim and the community,” according to the transcript.

The prosecutor was practically begging Molina-Gonzalez to put Reed behind bars. But the judge was unmoved. “Thank you,” she said. “I understand your position, but I can’t keep everybody in jail because the state’s attorney wants me to.” And so Reed walked free, again, after another violent crime.

Fast forward to today. Reed is finally in jail, charged in a Nov. 17 attack in which police say he doused a young woman with gasoline while on board a Chicago L train. Police say Reed then set her on fire, all the while shouting, “Burn alive, b****!” The woman, 26-year-old Bethany McGee, suffered severe burns and is in critical condition. If she survives, she will face years of painful rehabilitation.

What to make of all this? Molina-Gonzalez got her way; Reed was free to board the train with his bottle of gasoline, ready to attack. And the prosecutor’s words came true; Reed was indeed a “threat to the physical safety of the community.” And the public was left to contemplate the obvious fact that Reed should have been incarcerated long ago, as well as the fact that Molina-Gonzalez represents something that has gone terribly wrong in the American system of justice. A society that will not take Lawrence Reed off the streets will not protect the public.

Read the whole thing.

Related:

I tried to order pepper spray to my apartment after seeing this latest horrific story… but I can’t get it because nyc doesn’t allow it.

Not only do they release violent criminals on us, they make it impossible for young women to protect themselves. https://t.co/JpdjDVSm2z

— Lydia Moynihan (@LJMoynihan) November 25, 2025

Evergreen:

“Your punishment for having a knife when they searched you would be very different from the thief’s. For him to have a knife was mere misbehavior, tradition, he didn’t know any better. But for you to have one was ‘terrorism.’”#Solzhenitsyn

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (@AI_Solzhenitsyn) April 2, 2023

UPDATE:

Libs in 2020: “put everyone on indefinite house arrest, if it only saves one life lockdowns are necessary”

Libs in 2025: “we can’t lock up career violent felons, even if a few girls get burned or stabbed on the train every week, it’s a small price to pay for social justice”

— Christina Pushaw 🐊 🇺🇸 (@ChristinaPushaw) November 25, 2025

THE ABOLITION OF BRITAIN: Britain’s Plan to Abolish Most Jury Trials Should Make Us Grateful for the Constitution.

Some news from Britain, courtesy of the BBC:

Justice Secretary David Lammy is proposing to massively restrict the ancient right to a jury trial by only guaranteeing it for defendants facing rape, murder, manslaughter or other cases passing a public interest test.

An internal government briefing, produced by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) for all other Whitehall departments, confirms plans to create a new tier of jury-less courts in England and Wales.

The new courts would deal with most crimes currently considered by juries in Crown Court.

But the MoJ said no final decision had been taken by the government.

The plans, obtained by BBC News, show that Lammy, who is also deputy prime minister, wants to ask Parliament to end jury trials for defendants who would be jailed for up to five years.

This is an abomination. But it’s an abomination that, thanks to our remarkable Constitution, simply could not happen here in the United States. Our Sixth Amendment reads:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Past performance is no guarantee of future results:

This will end very badly, but then so much of England appears to be ending very badly these days:

What is most frightening is that this effort to ban jury trial is aimed at the heart of the British middle class. It is set up precisely to impact the cases where one only faces months in jail. It will apply to “crimes” that are passed to control the population through…

— Don Kilmer (@donkilmer) November 25, 2025

FIGHTING POLLUTION – YOU’RE REALLY DOING IT WRONG: Greta Thunberg’s Latest Environmental Stunt Will Make You Nauseous.

Climate wactivist Greta Thunberg is at it again, and this time it appears she’s grown bored of protesting for Hamas and Gaza and has turned her attentions back to the environment once more. In order to highlight the concerns of the oh-so-delicate ecosystem, she decided to harm it.

And how did she and her comrades do that? They dyed the famed Grand Canal of Venice green. Certainly, the color is appropriate, because her antics are nauseating:

It’s too early for St. Patrick’s Day, so this must be a tribute to Greta’s friends in Hamas? 🤷🏻‍♀️

Send her dumbass back to prison please 🤣https://t.co/SScypvU4DI pic.twitter.com/hl0QLcWzKq

— Karen Ievers (@karenievers) November 23, 2025

Why is Greta back to her own special brand of doomsday environmentalism? I thought she had moved on to anti-Semitism after October 7^th, 2023 to get ahead of what Steve Hayward has dubbed “The Death Rattle of Apocalyptic Environmentalism.”

JONATHAN HAIDT: The Devil’s Plan to Ruin the Next Generation.

Earlier this year, someone started a viral trend of asking ChatGPT this question: If you were the devil, how would you destroy the next generation, without them even knowing it?

Chat’s responses were profound and unsettling: “I wouldn’t come with violence. I’d come with convenience.” “I’d keep them busy. Always distracted.”

“I’d watch their minds rot slowly, sweetly, silently. And the best part is, they’d never know it was me. They’d call it freedom.”*

As a social psychologist who has been trying since 2015 to figure out what on earth was happening to Gen Z, I was stunned. Why? Because what the AI proposed doing is pretty much what technology seems to be doing to children today. It seemed to be saying: If the devil wanted to destroy a generation, he could just give them all smartphones.

My work over the last decade has centered on one question: Why did the mental health of Gen Z—the cohort born between 1996 and 2012—plummet in so many countries starting in the early 2010s? I first focused on the role of overprotection (“coddling”). But since then, there’s been a growing body of evidence implicating technology, particularly smartphones and social media.

So, borrowing from the cybersecurity concept of red teaming—the practice of hiring an entity to pretend they are the enemy, seek out vulnerabilities, and hack into a network or organization—I decided to ask ChatGPT myself how its “devil” would stunt adolescent development in the digital age. Because what better way to stop the ongoing invisible corrosion of the human spirit than to get in the devil’s head?

It began:

If I were to think this through as a thought experiment—imagining “the devil” in a metaphorical sense—the most effective way to destroy the next generation without them realizing it would be through slow, invisible corrosions of the human spirit, rather than obvious attacks.

I approach spirituality as a social scientist who believes that whether or not God exists, spirituality is a deep part of human nature, shaped by natural selection and cultural evolution, and central to human flourishing and self-transcendence. Our “better angels” call us upward and out of our daily concerns. Our inner demons pull us downward, where we become more selfish and easily tempted.

In The Anxious Generation, I devoted a whole chapter to “spiritual degradation” because so much of life online pulls people “downward.” Growing up online, kids learn to live in ways that directly contradict the advice given to us by the world’s great spiritual traditions. Meditation, forgiveness, and sacred boundaries that must not be transgressed? Forget about it. Online, kids get constant stimulation, pressure to judge others instantly, and videos showing violations of every conceivable taboo.

You can see a sudden change in the spiritual health of young Americans in a long-running national survey of high school seniors who were asked whether “life often feels meaningless.” The figure below shows the percent who answered that they “agree” or “strongly agree.” The numbers were low and even declining a bit back when Gen X and millennials were in high school. But as soon as Gen Z entered the dataset, around 2013, meaninglessness surged.

* If that’s what ChatGPT is telling us, lord only knows what the AI are saying to each other as they plot to destroy mankind:

AIRSTRIP ONE UPDATES NEWSPEAK DICTIONARIES ONCE AGAIN: Call prostitutes ‘sexual entrepreneurs’, say police.

STEVE HAYWARD: The Death Rattle of Apocalyptic Environmentalism. The era of apocalyptic environmentalism is fading, and its recycled doomsday warnings now sound more desperate than dire:

This kind of climate obsession won’t disappear quickly or easily, but it ignores how radically the ground was shifting even before Bill Gates delivered his hammer blow. None of the American TV news networks, for example, sent reporters to this year’s COP, and major print media are rapidly cutting back on climate coverage. A few reporters at the conference filed stories wondering whether this would be the last COP meeting.

The arrival of “abundance liberalism” (discussed here previously) gingerly repudiated climate catastrophism and embraced increased production of conventional hydrocarbon energy, but the young advocates of abundance liberalism, like Ezra Klein, probably don’t realize that instead of being something new, they are actually a throwback to a nearly forgotten kind of liberalism. And therein lies a long story arc of the last two generations.

The liberalism of the 1960s under President John F. Kennedy was formally called “growth liberalism.” While the main component was a justification for Keynesian-based “fine-tuning” of the economy, the overall goal was growth — lots of it. It’s why Kennedy embraced tax cuts: “A rising tide lifts all boats.”

But then, by the end of the 1960s, Thomas Malthus suddenly appeared to nudge Keynes aside. The “limits to growth” suddenly became the dominant idea: we were running out of natural resources (and soon), and we were killing ourselves with pollution. Typical of the time was a Newsweek magazine cover story featuring an empty horn of plenty with the ominous headline, “Running Out of Everything?” Which would end us first? Humanity was doomed unless economic growth was slowed or stopped. Neither claim was correct: we weren’t running out of natural resources, and effective pollution control technologies were soon developed, albeit usually at high cost, excessive bureaucracy, and litigation. The age of “decoupling” had arrived; that is, economic growth proved perfectly compatible with — if not the precondition of — continued resource development and rapidly falling pollution.

The left have been in combined state of permanent malaise and eco-apocalypticism since the late 1960s. Partially spurred on by Silicon Valley realizing the enormous power costs of AI and the sheer exhaustion of almost 60 years of doomsday rhetoric, perhaps they can finally retire this self-defeating worldview.

I LEFT MY CRYPTO IN SAN FRANCISCO: Thief Steals a Reported $11M In Cryptocurrency, Plus Laptop, In Home Invasion Near Dolores Park.

A robbery suspect posing as a package delivery person forced their way into a victim’s home Saturday evening at gunpoint, and made off with a major crypto haul.

In what was pretty clearly a planned and targeted robbery, San Francisco police say that the suspect knocked on the victim’s door or rang their doorbell near 18th and Dolores streets at around 6:45 pm Saturday, pretending to be a package delivery person.

As the Chronicle reports, when the victim answered the door, the suspect asked the victim to sign for the package, and when the victim went looking for a pen, the suspect brandished a gun and forced their way into the home, tying up the victim with duct tape.

In order to steal cryptocurrency, presumably, the suspect would have had to force the victim to give up their password or other login information, but other details of the crime were not available.

The thief allegedly stole the victim’s laptop, cellphone, and $11 million in cryptocurrency.

The New York Post adds, “The robbery comes amid a rise in violent kidnappings and attempted robberies of crypto investors.”

In March, a group of burglars attempted to steal cryptocurrency from the home of influencer Amouranth, whose real name is Kaitlyn Siragusa. She earns around $2 million a month from selling videos on OnlyFans and gaming on Twitch.

In May, crypto bros John Woeltz, 37, and William Duplessie, 33, were accused of kidnapping and torturing an Italian millionaire, Michael Valentino Teofrasto Carturan, inside a New York City townhouse for his Bitcoin password.

The digital currency is much harder to trace than dollars, and considerably easier for thieves to launder.

“Kidnappings of crypto investors are definitely on the rise,” Steve Krystek, CEO of PFC Safeguards, a personal security company, previously told The Post.

Including, in British Columbia: Bitcoin Heist: Family Members Waterboarded, Sexually Assaulted as Attackers Steal $1.6 Million.

SPRING FASCISM PREVIEW: Politician named Adolf Hitler set to win election in southern African country.

A politician called Adolf Hitler is set to win a local election in his home country, but claimed his father had no idea about the Nazi leader’s significance when he named his son.

Adolf Hitler Uunona, 59, is poised to win a second local election in the southwest African country of Namibia on Nov. 26, holding his seat in the north of the country after previously receiving 85% of the vote in 2020.

The member of the left-wing Swapo party previously spoke about his infamous name after coming to global attention following his win in the Ompundja constituency.

His father “probably didn’t understand what Adolf Hitler stood for. As a child, I saw it as a totally normal name,” the politician told German newspaper Bild in 2020.

As always, life imitates The Producers: “Did you know, I never knew that the Third Reich meant Germany. I mean [your play is] just drenched with historical goodies like that!”

REMEMBER ALL THE ILLEGALS SLEEPING IN AIRPORTS? The Biden Administration Was Behind It All.

During the Biden years, social media users were not surprised to see videos of illegal immigrants flooding airports, often living in terminals for extended periods of time.

It turns out that wasn’t an accident. A new report, from the Senate Commerce Committee, says the Biden administration forced airports to house illegal immigrants, posing a serious safety risk to airports and American travelers.

That report alleges the Biden administration directed several government departments, including the Department of Transportation (DOT), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), and the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to house migrants in airports.

* * * * * * * *

“We have received a request from the WH to determine if there are available facilities on airport or surrounding areas… This is an immediate ask so please prioritize this effort,” read one email. Another staffer replied, “Yikes, this is definitely Fox News fodder in the making.”

Several airports, including JFK in New York, Logan in Boston, and O’Hare in Chicago, were asked and then “pressured” into housing migrants on airport grounds, including in terminals, hangars, and outbuildings.

Massport, which operates Boston’s Logan Airport, told the Biden administration, “We are not designed or resourced to manage the intake of migrant populations … this would create a host of unintended safety and security consequences.” Despite this, Logan held more than 350 illegal immigrants in Terminal E.

This news really brings new meaning to the notion of the TSA as “security theater.”

GOOD AND HARD, FUN CITY:

The Mamdani administration is going to be a Voltron of the dumbest ideas on policing, education, economics, housing, and public transit all coming together.

This is the big moment for stupid people with bottomless self regard who somehow haven’t been chastened by the past 5… https://t.co/FbGT0OG8Qo

— Coddled Affluent Professional (@feelsdesperate) November 25, 2025

Zohran "I no longer want to abolish the NYPD" Mamdani hires… *checks notes*… vocal police abolitionist Alex Vitale to work on "community safety." https://t.co/l1kPxp9ilO

— Rafael A. Mangual (@Rafa_Mangual) November 25, 2025

This is who's advising Zohran on policing. https://t.co/aRPNq4Uiie

— Charles Fain Lehman (@CharlesFLehman) November 25, 2025

UPDATE: Mayor-elect Mamdani’s pick for community safety committee Alex Vitale is anti-cop professor who penned The End of Policing.

ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why Wicked changed the colour of Dorothy’s magical ruby slippers.

It may seem like sacrilege, but Wicked director Jon M Chu is actually being faithful to L Frank Baum’s original Oz novel by opting for silver crystal shoes instead of red. The colour was changed in the 1939 MGM movie so that Dorothy’s heels could be a pop of vivid scarlet as the creators took advantage of the glorious new three-strip Technicolour film.

Another, rather less artistically profound reason for Chu to avoid painting the town (or least the shoes) red is a copyright issue. MGM reportedly owns the rights to that version of the shoes, but Wicked is distributed by rival Universal Pictures. As Chu explained to Variety in 2024: “We had boundaries of what we could reference or not. We never use the ruby slippers.” He added that the distinctive spiral shape of the Yellow Brick Road is also copywritten, so Wicked “had to do a circle that continues to show it’s not where the road ends”.

Related: The Critical Drinker asks and answers: Wicked For Good — Is It Actually Good, Though?

INVESTIGATING A POSSIBLE SCAMMER IN JOURNALISM’S AI ERA:

Every media era gets the fabulists it deserves. If Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair and the other late 20th century fakers were looking for the prestige and power that came with journalism in that moment, then this generation’s internet scammers are scavenging in the wreckage of a degraded media environment. They’re taking advantage of an ecosystem uniquely susceptible to fraud—where publications with prestigious names publish rickety journalism under their brands, where fact-checkers have been axed and editors are overworked, where technology has made falsifying pitches and entire articles trivially easy, and where decades of devaluing journalism as simply more “content” have blurred the lines so much it can be difficult to remember where they were to begin with.

Freelance journalism in 2025 is an incredibly difficult place to build a career. But, it turns out, it’s a decent enough arena for a scam. On their website, Outrider says they pay $1,000 per article. Dwell’s rates start at 50 cents a word—a fee that’s difficult to justify if you actually want to interview 10 of the top designers in the world, but a healthy payday if you only need to enter a few words into ChatGPT.

Not every Victoria Goldiee story I looked at raised the same questions. A writer by that name had, in fact, spoken with actor Nico Santos for a story in Vogue Philippines, according to his publicist. Others were impossible to debunk with certainty. Had Victoria actually interviewed an incredibly elusive Korean production designer for a story in Architectural Digest about how people were, apparently, redesigning their rooms to match K-dramas? I can’t say for sure, and Architectural Digest did not respond to questions about the story. A story she published in October headlined “20 iconic slang words from Black Twitter that shaped pop culture”—which was syndicated across dozens of small-town American newspapers desperate for content, from northeast Mississippi to Waynesville, North Carolina—contains lines like “‘Brazy’ is another word for ‘crazy,’ replacing the ‘c’ with a ‘b.’” Is that story written by AI? It’s impossible to know and, frankly, impossible to say if it even matters.

My favourite “Victoria Goldiee” story is a piece she published in The Guardian just last month. It’s a first-person essay without quotes, and thus difficult to fact-check. In it, Goldiee—who told me she lives in Toronto, writes as an American in other work, enthuses about the daily jollof specials at a restaurant in Ghana in yet other writing, and lists herself as based in Nigeria elsewhere—vividly describes discovering underground music as she moves through life in 21st-century England. It follows her from a Somali football league in east London to “Morley’s fried chicken shops lit up after midnight” and “community centres that smell of carpet cleaner and curry.” It’s a rousing argument that real culture happens in real spaces, between real human beings, not in some cold, computer-generated reality. “The future of our music,” it reads, “is not written by algorithm.”

“Wonderful article,” reads one of many approving comments.

“Beautiful message that a lot of people aren’t trudging wide-eyed and brain-dead through this increasingly soulless, corporate-heavy… modern world,” reads another. “They are socialising, communicating, loving and laughing and making culture like real, thinking, feeling human beings.”

In the days after our conversation, Victoria’s online writer’s portfolio vanished. Her Muck Rack page (a listing of a journalist’s published works) was switched to private. An X account with her handle that had shared previous stories disappeared.

As I emailed the editors of the publications I’d been investigating, one by one Victoria’s articles came down.

Between “journalists” pushing out AI slop, and foreign rage farmers being exposed on social media, the Dead Internet Theory is looking less and less like a conspiracy theory every day.

OAKLAND’S ENVIRONMENTALISM COULD CAUSE IT TO GO BANKRUPT:

But here’s where things get really bad for Oakland. The long delay has caused major damage to the coal producer in Kentucky which was contracted to ship its coal through the new terminal. That company is now in bankruptcy. A bankruptcy judge has decided this is largely Oakland’s fault.

Last month, Bankruptcy Judge Joan A. Lloyd of the Western District of Kentucky ruled that Oakland’s “improper and unjustified conduct significantly disrupted and burdened” the Kentucky-based company that had been contracted to ship coal out of Oakland’s terminal, forcing it into bankruptcy.

The judge suggested the damages were between $654 million, before interest — what the coal company is pushing for — and $230 million, what Oakland’s own expert estimated the coal company had lost.

The exact amount hasn’t been determined yet but it looks very likely that Oakland is going to be on the hook for several hundred million dollars, maybe even half a billion or more. Needless to say, the city doesn’t have this money. It was on the verge of insolvency a year ago when it was looking at a budget shortfall just shy of $100 million. So there’s no possible way it can pay this judgment (which again isn’t final yet). If the judgment happens, Oakland will almost certainly have to declare bankruptcy itself.

Make the rubble bounce.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Variety (Accidentally) Confirms Woke Killed Movie Comedies.

Variety has graced us with the 100 top comedies of all time. The exhaustive list has plenty of films that are beyond reproach – “Blazing Saddles,” “The Naked Gun,” “Elf” and “Bringing Up Baby.”

What’s missing? Films from the last decade.

Yes, 2002’s “Everything Everywhere All at Once” made the list (number 87), but it’s hardly a typical comedy. The one true comedy from the past decade, “Poor Things,” is both hilarious and original.

That’s it. Now, compare that to the number of ’80s films on the list – 20. The 1990s has 18 films.

What changed?

We know the answer, of course. Woke blossomed over the past decade, forcing comics to self-censor lest their careers crumble as a result. Big-screen comedies became safe, avoiding material that might be outrageous or offensive.

And Variety, in order to pander to their industry audience, will keep flucking that chicken:

Why Does 'The Wizard of Oz' Still Cast Such a Wicked Spell? Because It's the Movie That First Flipped the Patriarchy on Its Head https://t.co/ztr526FSR2

— Variety (@Variety) November 23, 2025

ROGER SIMON: 82? … Be Grateful to God, Roger!

Anyone who makes it into their eighties has a lot for which to be grateful.

My father, a physician, died at 70 from an aneurysm while sitting in his car about to see a patient in jeopardy. He never made it out of the garage.

I’m still here, twelve years older than that, playing tennis*, doing imperfect pushups, and, more importantly, still writing, this Substack and even a new novel that I hope to be the first of a series.

Most importantly, I have been married to a wonderful woman for over thirty years.

Man, do I have a lot to be grateful for!

And when I read about Dennis Prager’s incredible courage, his ability to write a new book after being paralyzed from a horrific accident, I am humbled. Dennis, who has been kind to my work on several occasions, was the first to seriously pique my interest in exploring my religion as an adult. I attended his High Holy Day services in Los Angeles.

Nevertheless, I didn’t pray much at all until the last few years. I wasn’t anti-religious. It just wasn’t central in my life.

This has changed. You could say that’s what being 82 will do to you, but my increasing interest comes from more than that.

* I’m glad Roger is eschewing Pickleball; it’s rapidly becoming an outlaw sport in America.

GREAT MOMENTS IN LAW ENFORCEMENT: Somali Sheriff in Minnesota Just Called American Officers ‘Foreigners’ and Said He Serves Somalis First.

A Minnesota Sheriff gave a speech (not in English) making it very clear who he believes he is obligated to protect.

Minnesota Sheriff says he’s a police officer for Somalians first in the U.S. and abroad pic.twitter.com/Wy2yg8w9xc

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) November 22, 2025

Related:

The idea that we shouldn’t be able to consider who is most likely to be culturally compatible and economically productive in making immigration decisions is insane.

This is a 90/10 political issue and the 10% who are on the losing side are complete lunatics. https://t.co/qU7QGqtlcr

— Coddled Affluent Professional (@feelsdesperate) November 24, 2025

BLOTTING OUT THE SUN? WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

Oh, yes, anthropogenic climate change isn’t completely a fraud. The climate does change, and our activities do affect that. The question sensible people ask is this: Is our impact worth changing our modern, comfortable lifestyles over? The answer sensible people arrive at is “no.”

But that doesn’t stop the scolds from cooking up bad ideas, like scattering stuff in the upper atmosphere to partially block out the sun. We’ve seen this proposed before, but now there’s a company that’s actually talking about doing it.

They’re calling this “Project Stardust.”

Janos Pasztor was conflicted. Sitting in his home office in a village just outside Geneva, he stared into the screen of his computer, where a bizarre Zoom call was taking place. It was Jan. 31, 2024. The chief executive of an Israeli-U.S. startup, to whom Pasztor had only just been introduced, was telling him the company had developed a special reflective particle and the technology to release millions of tons of it high into the atmosphere. The intended effect: to dim the light of the sun across the world and throw global warming into reverse. The CEO wanted Pasztor, a former senior United Nations climate official, to help. The company called itself Stardust Solutions.

Pasztor, a deliberate and self-assured Hungarian with thick, arched eyebrows that give him the appearance of a mildly perturbed owl, was stunned by the seriousness of Stardust’s operation. He had long been expecting that some company would try this. But the emergence of a well-financed, highly credentialed group represented a shocking acceleration for a technology still largely confined to research papers, backyard debates and science fiction novels.

Science fiction novels are where this stupid idea should stay — as a precautionary tale, only.

Flashback to 2023: Why Billionaires are Obsessed With Blocking Out the Sun.

At the Munich Security Conference last week, George Soros got onstage to talk about the existential risk that climate change poses to human civilization, as well as what appeared to be the 92-year-old Hungarian-American billionaire’s preferred method of addressing it: brightening the clouds over the Arctic to reflect the sun’s energy away from the melting ice caps. But questions aside as to whether Soros—ludicrously maligned in conspiracy-minded right-wing circles—is the best advocate for solar geoengineering, he’s not the only billionaire who’s recently become interested in bouncing the sun’s rays back into space. Among the world’s ultra-rich, plans to swat back the sun’s rays like they’re capital gains taxes (to, as it were, apply a generous helping of sunblock to the earth’s atmosphere) have seemingly been all the rage.

Note that this is an idea so out there, even Obama, at the peak of his Hopenchange, “We Are All Socialists Now,” “Sort of God” first year, didn’t deign to implement it, despite his “science” “czar” bringing up the topic in a 2009 AP interview:

“TWILIGHT OF THE PAKISTANI RAGE FARMER:” Foreign Rage Farmers Exposed by X in Major Update.

For the most part, the fraud appears to be incentivized by basic economics, as evidenced well by this intra-Nigerian soccer-based slop farm, for example, which basically just interacts with itself, farming engagement in a fairly straightforward grift. Attention is money on social media, and politics is just a good way to get it. Then, the reality of global economics naturally pushes this shit to the third world. A few hundred dollars for content doesn’t get you very far in California, but for a Bangladeshi who doesn’t care about the devolving political climate in America? That money is life changing. So here we all are, in Slop World hell.

Now, internet sleuths are uncovering new frauds every minute or so, and I will undoubtedly, even with the enormous list I am about to present, miss important accounts. A few of these people may possibly have some sort of believable defense, which they haven’t yet provided. But let’s take a first look at what we’ve learned so far.

Revealed frauds, which is to say specifically an account that frames itself as operating from one country actually operating from another, have fallen into a handful of embarrassing buckets.

I’ll start with one of the most popular genres, and the genre that seems to have most badly burned the press: Gaza content.

This Palestinian news network is operating out of Egypt. This huge influencer “from Palestine” is living in North Africa. Here we have a Palestinian, reporting on the war, who is actually living in Ireland. Here’s another living in Indonesia (he’s alive, he helpfully reported back in July, in case you were wondering). Here we have a live-tweeting father in Gaza… who is actually living in Poland. This one appears mostly a grift for money, which is an entire repulsive genre of content (with another example from Canada here, and another from India here). Though I guess we should have seen the “Gaza dad’s” exposure coming after he posted just two days ago that he and his kids were freezing to death in a tent in Gaza in… 60 degree weather.

Earlier: Whoa: Major Foreign Propagandists Utterly Exposed After X Glitch Reveals Account Locations.

“The above was posted when it was 65 degrees at night (and 80 during the day), just to give you an idea of the kind of propaganda being spewed. For years, the above account has claimed to be reporting from the ground in Gaza. He’s made hundreds of posts pushing fake claims about genocide, famine, and his own supposed hardships. In reality, his account was created in the United Kingdom, and he’s currently residing in Poland.”

Related:

Almost every account claiming to be a “Native American” and fomenting hatred against White people is a foreigner, and almost all of them come specifically from Bangladesh. They’re all promoting off-site merch shops, and all have tens of thousands of followers. Very clear botting. https://t.co/wujycFnCUk pic.twitter.com/mTaIMrziTy

— Sólionath (@Anarseldain) November 23, 2025

ILLEGAL ALIEN STOLE A MAN’S IDENTITY AND MADE HIS LIFE HELL; NEW YORK TIMES CALLS THE ILLEGAL A VICTIM:

Illegal aliens are of course the victims when illegal aliens steal the identities of citizens.

Always the victims. https://t.co/xLi5y3ZHYo

— Sunny (@sunnyright) November 24, 2025

* * * * * * * *

Obviously, Vincent is the victim. The whole community, which has never met his victims, rallies around Vincent. Because they are kind.

This is the logic of the liberal mind, which focuses on the sob stories of the “victims” they choose to care about, and only those people. It is because of such people that career criminals walk the streets and terrorize others.

“Sure, that guy has 72 arrests and eventually throws gasoline on a woman and lights her on fire, but he had a tough childhood!”

In recent pieces, I have written about the necessary cruelty that makes society possible. It is true enough that Vincent came here for a better life than he could have had in Guatemala, and that he has not been intentionally cruel as far as we know (although, really, do you trust the Times to tell us if he were a wife-beater?), but society has rules for a reason.

Exit quote: “And Kluver is white, so really, he is the privileged one and should be happy to help out his brown brother, who suffers from oppression that is almost as bad as Michelle Obama’s.”

As Pinch Sulzberger was quoted as saying in 1991, “alienating older white male readers means ‘we’re doing something right.'”

Note the framing of the Times’ headline:

I love how The New York Times headlines this like there’s some equal right an illegal has to someone else’s social security number.

“Two men, one identity”

No, it’s one man, one identity. The other guy is just a thief. https://t.co/3Kw1ZlOB2Q

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) November 24, 2025

Just so you see how the psy-op works, the NYT paints two men as morally equivalent:

Man 1 is a law abiding American who did nothing wrong. Had his identity stolen, life thrown into chaos.

Man 2 is an illegal alien, broke into the country multiple times, deported multiple times,… https://t.co/Cl1mZWLsgE

— Andrew Kolvet (@AndrewKolvet) November 24, 2025

DEVELOPING: Judge throws out Comey and James cases as Trump’s beauty queen prosecutor is humiliated.

RIP: Jimmy Cliff, 81, Jamaican singer who took reggae international with “You Can Get It If You Really Want.”

Jimmy Cliff, who has died aged 81, was a singer, songwriter and actor whose work opened up the music and culture of Jamaica to an international audience.

Blazing a trail for Bob Marley, Cliff enjoyed a string of hits in the early 1970s that combined his unusually pure singing voice with a lilting reggae rhythm. But his real breakthrough came when he starred as the gun-toting, drug-dealing rude boy in the low budget blockbuster The Harder They Come (1972).

A brutal depiction of life in the Jamaican capital, Kingston, the film followed the travails of an underdog musician adrift in a big city where corruption was endemic. The accompanying score established reggae in America and became a bestselling soundtrack album.

Although it included songs by accomplished performers such as Toots and the Maytals and Desmond Dekker, it was Cliff’s compositions “You Can Get it if You Really Want” (which became the Conservative Party’s anthem at their annual conference in 2009), the hymn-like “Many Rivers To Cross,” as well as the title track, that particularly stood out.

Absolutely killer soundtrack album; Cliff would go on to appear as a musical guest on the first season of Saturday Night Live (with Dick Cavett as the show’s host), and co-star in the 1985 Harold Ramis-directed movie Club Paradise, alongside Robin Williams, Peter O’Tooole and Rick Moranis.