MY LATEST SUBSTACK ESSAY: Fly The Plane.

OPEN THREAD: Hump day.

LAWYERS ARE CHEAPER THAN ROCKETS, AND IT’S EASIER TO COMPETE IN A COURTROOM THAN ON A LAUNCHPAD: SpaceX rivals challenge Starship launch license in Florida over environmental, safety concerns.

WORD: We Finally Know What Turned on The Lights at The Dawn of Time.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Ariane 6 Ignites a New Era in Next-Gen Space Launch Technology.

AMERICA UNDER THE DEMOCRATS:

HOLY CR*P.

Remember George Clooney held a fundraiser for Biden where Biden had to be led off stage by Obama after he froze?

Then KJP responded and said the video was a “cheap fake” and “manipulated”

Now George Clooney is admitting that Biden was the same man at that fundraiser… pic.twitter.com/ld0TeEQQ7x

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 10, 2024

In New 'Ocean's 14', George Clooney Pulls Off $30 Million Heist By Tricking People Into Giving Money To Politician Before Revealing He's Demented https://t.co/BnTnp3xeLr pic.twitter.com/kOAX1p10Uq

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) July 10, 2024

Democrats want illegal aliens to vote. Period. It’s despicable. https://t.co/YlNKLZpGV0

— Buzz Patterson (@BuzzPatterson) July 10, 2024

UPDATE (From Ed): I don’t know why anybody is worried — if an anonymous Biden staffer is telling CNN that the 81-year old (p)resident has more energy than 63-year old George Clooney, that’s good enough for me!

President Biden has more stamina than George Clooney, a Biden campaign official suggested, per @kaylatausche. pic.twitter.com/dJ1T3KsI8U

— Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) July 10, 2024

(Tapper’s eye roll at the end of this clip is pretty amazing. When you’re a Democrat who’s lost Jake, it’s game over.)

MICROBIOME NEWS: ‘Unhealthy’ gut microbiome patterns linked to heightened risk of death after organ transplant.

IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Is the 2025 Porsche 911 Hybrid Sacrilege or a Breakthrough?

SELF-DEFENSE: Know Who You Are, And Carry What You Need: There’s more than one way to save a life.

ENVIRONMENTALISM STANDS IN THE WAY OF PROGRESS AGAIN: SpaceX’s Starship may mess up the lunar surface: A Starship landing on the moon could contaminate nearby ice.

I HOPE THIS PANS OUT: 1G Space Propulsion Would Revolutionize Transportation and Energy. However: “The energy aspect is one of the reasons that physicists do not believe this is possible. It would violate fundamental laws of physics.”

“Exodus Technologies wants to perform tests in orbit. Moving a satellite with the drive would eliminate claims of bad experiments and measurement error and fraud. The key next step will be an orbital cubesat and other space missions with the devices.”

If it works in practice, the theory will have to catch up.

SOUNDS LIKE CANADIAN MEDICINE: Hospital program helps ER patients get needed hospice care.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: You could easily be tolyamorous without realising it. Note: Not Polyamorous, but Tolyamorous, which seems to me to be a new name for something very old.

I’M EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: Biden’s Riding the Bomb All the Way Down.

ILYA SHAPIRO: Wrapping Up the Supreme Court Term: Statistics and themes on the term that was, and a brief glimpse at the future.

DISCRIMINATION: Why Are There So Few Conservative Professors?

Higher education is rendering itself irrelevant and sectarian, and will then complain that the inevitable loss of public support stems from “anti-intellectualism.” But there is nothing intellectual about organizations that are organized around the promotion of political dogma. Or about people who are so organized.

I ALWAYS ASSUME AT THE OUTSET THAT THESE SCANDALS ARE LIKELY HOAXES, AND I’M SELDOM WRONG: Ole Miss NAACP won’t share evidence two students made ‘racist remarks’ at rally.

WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING? As The Percentage Of Accommodated Students In A Law School Increases, Its First-Time Bar Pass Rate Decreases.

BADGE OF HONOR: Meet the eleven police leaders sanctioned by Iran for breaking up anti-Israel encampments: The Iranian government sanctioned eleven American police leaders for “suppressing” campus anti-Israel encampments across the country.

There goes that vacation on Kharg Island.

JOHN LUCAS: “This murder of political enemies is what many unhinged Trump opponents seek. It is not a secret — they tell us this is what they want.” “This professor of linguistics, this New York Times wordsmith, presumably chooses his words carefully.”

I wouldn’t rule out a “grand insurrection” if Trump were murdered, though. Look what happened after Martin Luther King was shot. Why should we assume that Trump supporters would be more passive than the supporters of a nonviolent protest leader?

Also, I’m sad about this because John McWhorter is normally a reasonable guy who is willing to break with the Left monolith on many issues. That he’s still fantasizing about Trump being assassinated shows just how far the Trump Derangement Syndrome brain-rot has spread.

LOL:

Writing about US food the way the NYT covers Asian fruit: In a nation torn by racial conflict, one unlikely food unites. To those accustomed to chopsticks, the greasy parcel known as a 'burger', a sort of split bao, is crude and messy. Yet it encapsulates a nation's violent past.

— Soon-Tzu Speechley 孫子 (@speechleyish) June 25, 2020

WELL, HE HAS A BETTER RECORD: Voters, especially independents, pick Trump to ‘handle’ inflation.

IT WAS A TEST. ALL TESTS ARE SUCCESSFUL IF YOU LEARN SOMETHING. Europe’s first Ariane 6 flight achieved most of its goals, but ended prematurely.

SIX YEARS AGO TODAY: FBI agent who mistakenly shot man during backflip in Denver bar can carry gun again, judge rules.

Sums up the relationship between the Establishment, its minions, and the citizenry quite well.

JIGGERY-POKERY: NOPD Creates French Quarter Gun-Free Zone by Designating a Police Station a School. I doubt this will last long. I suspect that it may create a lot of knock-on problems for businesses in the French Quarter, though. At least there’s some adult supervision:

After New Orleans officials were unsuccessful in their attempts to get state lawmakers to designate vast swathes of their city’s popular tourist areas as gun-free zones before Louisiana’s new permitless carry law went live July 4, they came up with their own solution, which is probably unconstitutional, definitely whacky, and certain to be contested in court.

The New Orleans Police Department has designated their Eighth District police station – which is located in the middle of the French Quarter – as a vocational technical school. In other words, they turned a working police station into a vo-tech. That makes everything within a 1,000-foot radius of the “school” is a gun-free zone, including more than five blocks of Bourbon Street, an international tourist destination.

It’s a felony in Louisiana to violate a gun-free zone, which is punishable by up to five years — at hard labor — in a state prison.

Who will actually be attending classes at this new “school” isn’t known. . . .

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill balked at the city’s move, warning officials they could face civil rights lawsuits because of their “made-up designation.”

“I’m working hard to help keep New Orleans safe, but the City cannot avoid state law by unilaterally designating police stations ‘vo-tech locations.’ You cannot just ‘designate’ yourself a vo-tech school. Among other implications, if it was one (it’s not) the police department would be under the jurisdiction of a board of supervisors for higher education, and it would be subject to other oversight requirements. I have no specific plans yet, but would caution the NOPD that it will likely be subject to civil rights lawsuits under Section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act if it arrests people pursuant to its made-up designation, which is clearly not legal or effective. I certainly hope the NOPD isn’t violating people’s rights by making up their own rules, which is why the Department is under a federal consent decree,” Murrill said in a statement posted on social media.

“Schools have classrooms, not booking rooms,” Murrill said in another post.

Even in New Orleans.