OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: South Korea wants to build a moon base by 2045.

I DON’T KNOW WHY HE THINKS THIS B.S. WILL HELP:

There’s an increasing chance @MarkWarner has been notified that his correspondence in RussiaGate are about to be disclosed https://t.co/cb5CQzcGUL

— NOVA Campaigns (@NoVA_Campaigns) July 21, 2025

HEH:

I'm not a marketing whiz, but they may want to workshop "fantastic four skins." https://t.co/rFknYUl9X7

— T. Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) July 15, 2025

MY LATEST SUBSTACK COLUMN IS UP: Slouching Toward War? Foreign or domestic.

HMM: Natural Compound Found in Mushrooms Delays Aging and Extends Lifespan, Study Suggests. I dunno, the hippies I know don’t seem to have aged especially well.

CONCISELY STATED:

No American Indians are actually offended by it. Only stupid white people who have to invent problems to fill their meaningless lives with fake outrage are offended by it, and even then they’re only pretending. https://t.co/ZXMnT0soZW

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) July 21, 2025

COLOR ME UNSURPRISED: Global study links early smartphone ownership with poorer mental health in young adults.

BAD MESSAGING: If Giffords Intended to Tout Trump’s Pro-2A Wins So Far, What Would They Do Differently?

NEWS YOU CAN USE: New Tactical Shotguns for 2025.

JOHN HENRY SMILES: Exhausted man defeats AI model in world coding championship.

MICROBIOME NEWS: Inhaled farm dust alters gut bacteria and weakens intestinal barrier in mice.

CROWDSOURCING: NASA issues challenge for public design of ejection system.

MATT TAIBBI: Explaining Russiagate: Why the December 9th, 2016 Meeting Mattered: It’s not just what the Intelligence Community planned to say about Russian interference, it’s who would have seen the text.

In between all this, an important detail is being lost. Democrats are hammering an “apples and oranges” argument, saying documents showing intelligence officials planned a Presidential Daily Briefing on December 9th, 2016 that would say “Foreign adversaries did not use cyberattacks on election infrastructure to alter the US Presidential election outcome” and “We have no evidence of cyber manipulation of election infrastructure intended to alter results” were meaningless.

As Himes put it, the fact that “Russians could not use cyber tools to mess with the voting infrastructure, the machines that tally our votes” was “true then, and it is true now.” Two things about this statement, disingenuous in multiple ways:

One is a crucial fact left out of Saturday’s Racket article on the DNI releases. Had the intelligence community gone forward with a Presidential Daily Briefing that said Russia had not attacked infrastructure in a way “intended to alter results,” it would have been seen by a key audience: Donald Trump. Presidents-elect are entitled to read Presidential Daily Briefings. During the transition, Trump’s National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was already being read in, and would have seen the planned December 9th text downplaying Russian interference.

“I would have seen it,” Flynn says now. “I was reading the PDBs at that point.” Asked yesterday if he thought that might have been a reason for holding the planned draft, Flynn said, “Very likely.”

Second, the notion that Russia interfered with actual vote tallies was no fringe conspiracy theory then. It was widely believed by Democratic voters. This was almost certainly a consequence of a two stage process that began with the flood of news stories based on leaks from intelligence sources beginning on December 9th, 2016. These not only alleged Russia interfered to help Donald Trump in an abrupt about-face from pre-election stories, but focused heavily on Russian hacking.

Within a week — by December 16th, 2016 — Hillary Clinton was publicly calling the election “unfair, not free, illegitimate,” adding, “Vladimir Putin himself directed the covert cyberattacks against our electoral system, against our democracy, apparently because he has a personal beef against me.” . . .

Notwithstanding either the Himes comments (“This is Epstein all over again”) or Trump’s apocalyptic Guy Fawkes-themed Truth Social post, the meeting on December 9th that switched out a tepid PDB for a dramatic narrative about Russian interference to help Trump was hugely meaningful. It positioned Steele Dossier conclusions as mainstream news, set up Trump to be investigated by his own incoming FBI Director, and made sure the incoming administration did not see dissenting intelligence about Russian meddling. More to come.

It was all bullshit, and all the key figures knew it was from the beginning.

IT’S A BAD IDEA: The hidden dangers of feeding wild animals.

OUCH:

Random young white guy from Texas with no college degree absolutely destroys 46 year old journalist who does this for a living to the point where he has to ask if he’s an economist 👑pic.twitter.com/A3ILcDexDZ

— Sarah Stock ✟ (@sarahcstock) July 20, 2025

KEEP THE PRESSURE ON: College medical group’s cuts to DEI largely ‘cosmetic’: report. ‘Discriminatory and divisive DEI ideology has no place in medical education,’ watchdog says.

HIGHER EDUCATION FOR THE AMERICAN PUBLIC: Rick Scott bill would cap foreign student visas, prioritize U.S. applicants.

SEDUCTIVE AI: What Would a Real Friendship With A.I. Look Like? Maybe Like Hers. Chatbots can get scary if you suspend your disbelief. But MJ Cocking didn’t — and wound up in a relationship that was strangely, helpfully real.

The photo does not reek of emotional maturity.

RAKE. STEPPED ON. AGAIN. “It seems less a matter of Trump managing to turn things around as the press behaving badly and suffering the predictable consequence.”

DOESN’T THAT MAKE A CIVIL RIGHTS CONSPIRACY CHARGE VALID? Unconstitutional ABA Accreditation Pressures Force Law Schools To Discriminate Against Faculty And Students.

SCIENCE:

Canada is dealing with a surge in thousands of cases of measles, far surpassing the U.S. raw numbers despite having a much smaller population. Canadian liberals have no RFK Jr.-style figure to place all the blame. https://t.co/JPDE6e8NYF pic.twitter.com/wOsWS4r9et

— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) July 21, 2025

YEP:

I'm old enough to remember the Bush Administration. Whenever there's a Republican President there is a collective freakout in Europe for six months and it doesn't mean anything. https://t.co/hIWY3wUa72

— Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry (@pegobry_en) July 21, 2025

GOOD REMINDER:

Well, Well, Well … What have we here. https://t.co/yNYKnsrUUH

— Catturd ™ (@catturd2) July 20, 2025

EVERYTHING IS JUST A MONEY LAUNDRY AND JOBS PROGRAM FOR DEM ACTIVISTS UNLESS ACTIVELY SUPERVISED TO PREVENT IT: How Is It That The State Department Grew So Big And Almost No One Knew About It?