NEWS FROM ANOTHER UNIVERSE:  Boston Mayor: Somalis are Lifting the City Up, Setting Example for Rest of the Country.

AND OUR ANSWER IS VERY SIMPLE:  Don’t touch our boats. OR our free speech:  Everyone freaking out over European sanctions today simply hasn’t done the reading. What is happening now is the resolution of a 60-year-old question that the world has not (yet) answered: in a world where law is confined to borders, who gets to write the laws of the Internet?

And for the x-cancelled. 

NOISOME THINKS HE’S RULING ZIMBABWE:  Newsom Loses More CA Business and Wants to Take Away the Farm.

DEMOCRATIC STATES HATE CHILDREN, ANYWAY:  Democratic states sue to block cuts to US children’s gender-affirming care. 

HAPPY “WE CROSSED A FROZEN RIVER IN THE DARK TO KILL OUR ENEMIES IN THEIR SLEEP” TO EVERY USAIAN OUT THERE:  Praying is a good idea too. Like praying we’re not forced to do it again:  Washington’s Resounding Prayer at Valley Forge

DANCES WITH ALIENS IS MOSTLY STUPID, BUT WELL OBSERVED:  Zoe Saldaña sparks backlash for claiming her ‘Avatar’ character is ‘racist’.

FROM JACK BARUTH:  Cat Tales: Short Stories Of Friends And Ferals.

Four years ago, writer and racing driver Jack Baruth left the suburbs, with his wife, to build a home in rural Ohio. Their twelve empty acres proved to be anything but. In this collection of short stories, he details a bitter and bloody feline struggle for control of field and forest between scar-faced, furtive Albino Kitty and muscular, pitiless Tiger Dad. Against a dark background of deadly winters and relentless coyotes, Albino and Tiger fight tooth and nail against each other, a few formidable interlopers, and their own ambitious sons. Each believes that only one of them can survive, and they are right.

IT NEEDED DOING:  Into the Woodshed for Long Past Due Education.

THE RULERS OF AIR STRIP ONE SEEM TO HAVE DECIDED TO COPY THE GERMANS:  A Cheerful Message of Yuletide Tyranny. Baby, it’s cold pretty much everywhere.

MERRIEST OF CHRISTMASES TO ALL: From us here at Instapundit headquarters.  And from me and Indy-cat as well. (I tried to put a Santa hat on him.  The bleeding has stopped. But no Santa-hat-cat picture for you. Sorry.)

NO, REALLY:  Let It Go.

FUN STUFF:  Curiosity’s exploration of boxwork on Mount Sharp.

OUR COLLEGES ARE A PROBLEM. THE FASTER WE MAKE THEM IRRELEVANT, THE BETTER:  Toxic ideas fueling far-left terrorists came straight from our college campuses.

PEOPLE’S “PARADISES” ALWAYS MAKE THEIR PEOPLE PRISONERS:  Stopping The Drain.

THIS IS URGENTLY NEEDED:  GOP governor lays out plan to ‘purge’ terrorists and terror supporters from state. ‘Any organization that supports terrorism, that harbors people who have provided material support for terrorism, is not allowed to exist in our state,’ said Abbott.

WHAT IS BEING DONE IN OUR SCHOOLS IS MORE EFFECTIVE AT PREVENTING THE KIDS FROM READING:  Inside the Massive Effort to Change the Way Kids Are Taught to Read.

AT LEAST THIS ONE WAS CAUGHT?  Chinese Researcher on US Visa Charged with Smuggling E. Coli Into the Country.

THE FED GIVETH, THE FED TAKETH AWAY:  Trump official freezes millions in SBA aid to Minnesota, slams Walz’s policies as breeding ‘endemic’ fraud.

Which is why you should never ask the fed for anything.

WHAT EVERYONE KNOWS IS NOT NECESSARILY TRUE:  For everybody saying that the United States doesn’t have a working railgun we do. “The system works. It stopped because it wasn’t, you know, fieldable in an operational environment. The reliability aspects of it, right? But in terms of the technical challenges, the technical challenges have been solved. It’s pulling it all together and making it so soldiers and sailors can operate it”.

AND FOR THE X-CANCELLED:  

OF COURSE IT IS A PEOPLE PROBLEM:  People Problem, not a Gun Problem.

FOR BOOK LOVERS:  Books for Thought (and Christmas Gifts!)  Know a book lover? Here is one author’s picks of some of his favorite books covering history and science that would make perfect Christmas gifts.

SURELY DREADFULLY ABUSED BUT THANK GOD THEY’RE BACK:  Christmas miracle: Kidnapped Catholic school kids in Nigeria freed.

HIRING FOR ANY REASON THAN COMPETENCE ALWAYS RESULTS IN INCOMPETENCE:  Savage’s ‘Lost Generation’, or: Thoughts on the DEI scam and what happened after 2015.

APPARENTLY WHEN IT COMES TO UK CENSORSHIP, SUBSTACK IS CHOOSING TO BE GOOD GERMANS:   This Torygraph article is good as a piece that points out how bad the UK is, and AIUI, how bad Australia is becoming as they go down a similar path.  But… Not entirely to my surprise, substack appears to be being good germans and going along with the laws instead of actively resisting them.

ON SALE FOR THE NEXT FEW DAYS:  Lights Out and Cry.