MY LATEST SUBSTACK ESSAY: Report from Down South.

OPEN THREAD: It’s there. It’s there for you. It’s what you want.

Bonus points for anyone who can find this Shaeffer beer ad from the 1980s online.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: FAA license update brings SpaceX closer to next Starship launch.

I’M GONNA GO WITH “USING BOATS,” BOB: We’re Still Slowly Learning How Polynesian Voyagers Navigated Entire Oceans.

HMM: No link between ADHD medications and psychosis, study finds.

BAD NEWS: The Supreme Court is Already Packed.

It’s all part of the judiciary’s class war.

CARS: This is the Cheapest Car for 2025. “The Nissan Versa is one of the last automobiles you can buy in the United States for less than $20,000. Even so, is it worth the price?”

EVERYTOWN SAYS A LOT OF THINGS, MOST OF THEM BULLSHIT: Everytown Calls NFA Stamp a ‘Critical Safety Tax,’ Says Zeroing It Would Be a ‘Tax Break for Gun Manufacturers.’

I’D FEEL BETTER ABOUT IT IF THERE WAS A DECENT TREATMENT: Do people really want to know their risk of getting Alzheimer’s?

APPLE CARPLAY ULTRA, First Look. “It’s not Apple taking over all the software programming in your dashboard but rather inserting itself between you and the automaker’s software. To do that, it’s expanding CarPlay’s reach beyond the central infotainment screen to every screen on the dashboard. The biggest target: your digital instrument cluster.”

Um.

UPDATE (From Ed): New Apple CarPlay Ultra: Apple Just Took Over Your Car! (Video.)

WELL, GOOD: A 19-year-old won $100,000 for inventing a cheaper, faster way to make antiviral drugs out of corn husks.

SPACE: California firm Rocket Lab launches third satellite for Japanese company.

BURGERS AND FRIES, BEST THINGS FOR YA: Toxic metals found in all rice samples in study.

LET THEM STARVE THEMSELVES: Yale students go on pro-Hamas hunger strike; administrators refuse meeting.

WELL, THAT’S JUST ANOTHER LIE: Harvard president rejects ‘partisan’ label in letter to Sec. McMahon amid clash with Trump admin. Of course Harvard is partisan. Watch what they do. And heck, listen to what they say when they’re not being investigated for partisanship.

THIS IS THE QUESTION THEY DON’T WANT ANSWERED. OR EVEN ASKED.

We don’t need @jaketapper or anyone else to tell us Biden has been increasingly senile since the 2020 election. We need them to tell us who was actually running the federal government from 2020-2024 and how they did it. You’re not coming clean until you come clean about that.

— Randy Barnett (@RandyEBarnett) May 17, 2025

THE DANES ARE FINALLY GOING NUCLEAR: They have to because of all their renewables. “Most of the renewed interest in nuclear seen around the world stems from the expected growth in electricity demand from AI data centres, but Denmark is different. The Danes are concerned about possible blackouts similar to the one that struck Iberia recently. Like Spain and Portugal, Denmark is heavily dependent on weather-based renewable energy which is not very compatible with the way power grids operate.”

ROGER KIMBALL: Trump in Riyadh: A Rejection of the Globalist Gospel: Trump’s Riyadh speech rejected nation-building and globalist dogma, marking him as a bold champion of sovereignty over interventionism.

Quoth Trump: “In the end, the so-called ‘nation-builders’ wrecked far more nations than they built — and the interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves.”

There’s no particular reason to think that they even understand what makes their own societies work.

CHANGE: FDA Makes Big Announcement On Fluoride: “When it comes to children, we should err on the side of safety.”

SALENA ZITO: ‘People You Should Know’ Is a Love Letter to Bottom-Up Solutions.

MARK JUDGE: Jake Tapper Is Why We Can’t Quit Stephen Glass. “This is why, even decades after the fact, Stephen Glass remains such a compelling journalistic figure and a totem rather than a villain for liberal journalists. They have adopted Glass’s strategy of lying to cover lies and then adding lies, except unlike Glass they – with good reason – think they can now get away with it. Their colleagues will protect them.”

JOSH HAMMER: End the ‘Nationwide’ Injunction Racket Once and for All.

ALEX BERENSON: Why we need to humiliate Joe Biden. “Exposing his cognitive decline may seem cruel. He’s a sad old man. But it’s necessary; it’s the best way to keep other similarly addled sad old men from clinging to power at all costs.”

True, but even more important to humiliate — or worse — the people who enabled him and covered up his decline in order to exercise unearned power.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: FAA license update brings SpaceX closer to next Starship launch.

MOST VIOLENT SO FAR: The Most Violent Solar Storm Ever Detected Hit Earth in 12350 BCE.