HMM: Unlocking the Future of Solar Cells: Scientists Discover Key to Stable Perovskites.

ESTABLISHING A STANDARD: Nissan EVs To Gain Tesla Supercharger Access Next Year. Tesla’s NACS charging system is just better.

HMM: AR-15 for Home Defense: Why It Should Be Your Go-To Choice.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: How Do You Clean Your Shotguns?

IT HELPS IF YOU CAN ACTUALLY LAUNCH STUFF: SpaceX prevails over ULA, wins military launch contracts worth $733 million.

THE MAIN CAUSE OF POLARIZATION IS A SCREECHING, EXCITABLE, ONE-SIDED MEDIA ESTABLISHMENT: Megastudy tests crowdsourced ideas for reducing political polarization.

WELL, SURE, IT WORKS: When Big Tech Needs Power, They Turn to Nuclear and Not ‘Renewables.’

YOU CAN’T THROW A ROCK WITHOUT HITTING A USELESS ADMINISTRATOR: Pro-Israel professor suspended after confronting ‘useless’ Columbia official.

IT’S A SHORT TRIP FROM USC: USC to host ‘Demonic’ drag show called ‘Drag Me to Hell.’

THE BUREAU-TO-CRIMINALS PIPELINE: ‘Destroyed’ FBI, DEA gun parts found in criminal ‘ghost gun.’

Not the first time the federal government has armed criminals, of course.

THEY SHOULDN’T NEED THAT: Bill Maher has to — tries to — explain freedom of speech to Mark Cuban and Joe Scarborough.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Kamala’s Latest Cringefest Campaign Ad Hits on Black Men’s Love Lives, Demeans Women.

COMING SOON: MEGA: Make Education Great Again.

GOOD RIDDANCE: Bidding Farewell to Biden’s Foreign Policy.

OUCH: There are writers who try to see something clearly, and then to show it to other people, and there are writers who are…Anne Applebaum.

The prevailing model in American “mainstream” media is to go plow the same row again and again and again, because plowing where everybody else has already plowed is, I don’t know, safe? Consensus journalism, the 9,746th journalist ringing your doorbell to announce that Trump is a lot like Adolf Hitler. Looking wonderfully proud of themselves, like they just shat a cookie. All day, every day, all messages are the same message. Idea for a new movie: Groundhog Minute.

And I’m just done with it. David Brooks, Tom Nichols, William Kristol, and Peggy Noonan have all written the most amazingly refutable piles of nonsense in the last few days, being professionals at the task, and I kept asking out loud if David Brooks hears himself, because every paragraph clashes and refutes all the other paragraphs around it. But no.

Well, that’s journalism today.

ANDREW SULLIVAN: Rachel Levine Must Resign. “The discovery from a lawsuit against the State of Alabama over its ban on the medical sex reassignment of children has left me reeling. It shows a staggering level of bad faith from the transqueer lobby, and, also, from Rachel Levine — the Assistant Secretary for Health at HHS. . . . Most gays have no idea what’s actually going on — by design. The reason GLAAD tries to intimidate reporters on this subject is because they know that the truth would devastate their arguments. They can count on the gay press to be silent. But the MSM rattles them. Levine should resign. She intervened in a medical process for entirely political reasons, putting children at risk, destroying all safeguards for them. So should the heads of every so-called gay group that have pushed and lied about ‘gender-affirming care.’ Marci Bowers (she was replaced on October 1) is another matter. It seems to me that a doctor who privately doubts if her child patients can give meaningful consent and operates on them anyway is not a doctor, but a sociopath.”

OPEN THREAD: Enjoy!

TYPICAL EU — NOT MUCH SPACE PROGRESS, BUT A SPACE LAW. WHICH ALSO ISN’T MAKING PROGRESS. Further delays and hurdles for EU Space Law.

HMM: Chronic Coughs Could Be Genetic – Which May Transform Treatments.

UGH: Pain Without Inflammation? Scientists Uncover Surprising Viral Connection.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Dead Terrorists Are a Good Thing.

ANDREW SULLIVAN: Rachel Levine Must Resign: A case study in politics and ideology overruling science. With children as victims. “The broad contours laid out in the brief were already known. But, with discovery, the specific details of private, internal emails make this medical scandal even more vivid.”

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: New Mexico Governor’s Unconstitutional Anti-Gun Power Grab Consigned to the Ash Heap of History.

WHAT WENT WRONG IS, THEY DOUBLED DOWN ON DEI: NY Times: The University Of Michigan Doubled Down on DEI. What Went Wrong?

SPACE: Rocket Report: Bloomberg calls for SLS cancellation; SpaceX hits century mark.

Meanwhile, a friend writes:

Why this op-Ed now?

I’m sure we’ve all seen the Bloomberg attack on Artemis. Some folks who are concerned about expensive parts of the program like SLS have been praising his piece.

Bloomberg may or may not be wrong, but he has been pro-Dem, anti-Trump, anti-space and pro-China for years.

In 2018 his PAC targeted Dana Rohrabacher (CA), Steve Knight (CA) and John Culberson for elimination. All the most solid space supporters. All China hawks (that may have been his real goal). All friends of ours. He put in over $10m to take out Rohrabacher, who normally raised a few hundred thousand in his campaigns run by his wife, Rhonda.

He even funded ads attacking space spending specifically like this one:

Bloomberg has been a “friend of China” for years. His cringiest moment might have come a couple years ago when he apologized to Beijing over the UK PM calling China “authoritarian.” Bloomberg tweeted, “”Some may have been insulted or offended last night by parts of the speaker’s remarks referencing certain countries and their duly elected leaders … To those of you who were upset and concerned by what the speaker said, you have my apologies.”

Again, not an argument for SLS, but beware messengers with other agendas.

Good point. SLS is stupid and should be canceled, but. . . .