ROCKET REPORT: SpaceShipTwo soars, BFR engine advances, a self-eating booster.

Here’s more on the autophage rocket:

Engineers in Scotland and Ukraine are working on a small “autophage” rocket that consumes itself during ascent. The autophage engine consumes a propellant rod which has solid fuel on the outside and oxidizer on the inside, according to PhysOrg. The researchers say such a rocket could be good for launching CubeSats.

Launch lunch… This is actually kind of a brilliant concept to shed large quantities of mass on the way to orbit and deal with the problem of an empty fuel tank. Whether it’s practical, who knows. At present, the engineers are working with an engine prototype in the lab now and have no direct path to building a rocket around it.

If it works, we’ll at long last have the definitive answer to the question: “What’s the exact opposite of a reusable rocket?”

GRADUALLY, THEN SUDDENLY: How #TheResistance Lost Their Minds.

I think the last civil conversations we had occurred just days before November 8, 2016. You were supremely confident Hillary Clinton would win the presidential election; you voted for her with glee. As a lifelong Republican, I bit down hard and cast my vote for Donald Trump. Then the unimaginable happened. He won.

And you lost your freaking minds.

I knew you would take the loss hard—and personally—since all of you were super jacked-up to elect the first woman president. But I did not imagine you would become totally deranged, attacking anyone who voted for Trump or supported his presidency as a racist, sexist, misogynistic, homophobic Nazi-sympathizer.

Nah, the writing for that had been on the wall since Bush 43 — but do read the whole thing.

RAYMOND IBRAHIM: What Are Islam’s ‘Claims’ to Jerusalem?

Slim and none?

PALEONTOLOGY: Scientists discover ‘Mother of All Lizards’ in the Alps.

Sometimes it’s hard to imagine what the Earth was like when massive beasts like the Tyrannosaurus rex freely roamed the land, but it can be even harder to go all the way to a time before dinosaurs were so fantastically dominant. There was planet Earth, ripe for habitation, with animal life still figuring out what evolutionary path it wanted to take. Now, researchers studying fossils from the Italian Alps have uncovered a true relic from that time, a tiny creature that is now the oldest known lizard to ever walk on this big blue marble.

This ‘Mother of All Lizards,” as it is being called, was a Megachirella. It was only about the size of a chameleon, but it was the precursor to the planet-spanning group of reptiles called squamates, which includes modern lizards and snakes.

The new discovery, which was detailed in a research paper published in Nature, was actually made using a 240-year-old fossil that had been discovered decades earlier. The tiny lizard was originally classified by scientists as an offshoot of the lizard family tree, but new scanning technology allowed the scientists to examine the fossil in an entirely new way.

So the science had not been settled.

FASTER? PLEASE! Arm aims to make your Android phone faster with next-gen mobile chips.

How will Arm’s in-house designs compete with Apple’s? “I expect we’ll do well against Apple,” said Mike Filippo, Arm’s lead processor architect.

But he was clear which company Arm considers its primary rival. “Our real competition is Intel,” he said.

“We’re building for sustained performance,” Filippo said. “The A76 is the biggest leap we’ve taken in our annual roadmap since we started in 2014.”

The 35 percent speed boost is a minimum, Filippo said. Some mathematical tasks will get a boost of 50 percent to 70 percent, and high-performance software that needs fast memory access should get a 60 percent to 95 percent boost for fetching that data, he added. Performance improvements vary depending on which speed test is used, he cautioned, adding that Arm used SPECint for its measurement of a 35 percent performance boost.

The Cortex-A76 has about the performance of today’s Intel Core i5-7300, Filippo said. Configured with more cache memory, it should compete with an i7 chip, he said.

Intel failed to recognize the importance of the mobile market until it was too late, and soon the mobile chipmakers are going to start moving in on Intel’s traditional turf.

ME TOO, AFTER THE WELLS FARGO THING: Millennials trust Amazon and PayPal over banks when it comes to personal data.

CHANGE: Reddit Overtakes Facebook to Become Third Most Visited Website in the U.S. “Are all the scandals starting to catch up with the social media giant?”

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: MSNBC stays silent as Joy Reid comes under more scrutiny.

CURIOUS: George Soros Pulls Out of San Diego’s District Attorney Race. “Soros cancels all media in support of far-left candidate Geneviéve Jones-Wright.”

The California Justice & Public Safety PAC, which was established by Soros to support Geneviéve Jones-Wright, a far-left public defender, recently pulled an advertisement depicting District Attorney Summer Stephan as having a backlog of rape kits that needed to be tested. The ad came under fire for being false and misleading.

Now, the PAC is leaving the race entirely. Soros’s PAC has cancelled all future advertisements in support of Jones-Wright, according to television station managers in the region.

Soros has spent hundreds of thousands on television advertisements, digital advertisements, and campaign literature and mailings in support of Jones-Wright after initially depositing $1.5 million into the California Justice & Public Safety PAC, the Washington Free Beacon previously reported.

Jones-Wright appeared at a secretive gathering held by the Democracy Alliance, a dark money donor network that was co-founded by Soros, last November to sit on a panel discussion on ramping up funding in district attorney races during the 2018 election cycle.

Jones-Wright, who told the Free Beacon in early May that she was “thrilled” to have the support of Soros, now has been dealt a major blow with the withdrawal of all upcoming media spots.

It’s probably just coincidence, but I’d feel remiss if I didn’t mention that Robespierre’s “Committee of Public Safety” governed Revolutionary France during the Reign of Terror.

VIRGINIA DEMOCRAT CAMPAIGN AD: After 9/11 The Greatest Threat To America Lived In A Cave. Now He Lives In The White House. “If the party roles were reversed here, this is a three-day firestorm. As it is, it’s more of a curio for the media. Which makes sense, since many of them doubtless agree with Dan Helmer’s point.”

You know what? I do think of them as Democratic operatives with bylines and it does all make sense.

HOLLYWOOD VALUES: Disney Under Fire for Hiring Convicted Pedophiles to Work on Kids Shows.

A REMARKABLY SCANDAL-FREE ADMINISTRATION: Obama White House Tried to Intrude on FBI’s Russia Investigation. “Also, the FBI began spying on members of the Trump campaign weeks or even months before they had a formal predicate.”

BLUE WAVE? Republicans Might Be Able to Boot Menendez and Pick Up a Senate Seat in New Jersey.

Democrats may come to regret their “win” from his mistrial.

OF COURSE SHE DID: In Old Blog Post, MSNBC’s Joy Reid Attacked Wolf Blitzer For Being Too Nice To Jews.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Samantha Bee Makes A Bad ‘Joke’ and Much, Much More.

HERE COMES THE EXCUSE-MONGERING: Is socialism to blame for Venezuela’s never-ending crisis? “Though ’21st-century socialism’ is implicated in Venezuela’s collapse, so too are many characteristics of capitalism.”

Capitalism is always to blame for socialism’s failures, because reasons.

HMM: Militants Killed in Kabul Attack Were Wearing US Army Uniforms.

“Eight terrorists in a captured Humvee attempted to penetrate the Minister of Interior headquarters in downtown Kabul,” Army Gen. John Nicholson, Operation Resolute Support mission commander, told reporters at the Pentagon.

The attackers were attempting to drive through a checkpoint into the government complex when they were stopped by Afghan security, he said.

“They were wearing old-style Army uniforms,” Nicholson said. “The good news is that the guards at the gate, the Afghan guards, immediately recognized these as old uniforms, called on them to exit the vehicle so they could be checked out and, at that point, the fighting started.”

Nicholson said he was told one of the attackers “detonated his suicide vest and actually killed himself and some of his colleagues as they were conducting the attack.”

One Afghan friendly was killed and several more were injured.

READINESS: More A-10s to get new wings, as Air Force officially launches ATTACK. “A-10 Advanced Wing Continuation Kit buy will deliver 112 new wing sets, keeping A-10 in air through 2022.”

TRIGGERED: Joy Reid’s Blog Published A Photoshopped Image Of John McCain As The Virginia Tech Shooter.

Notice the phrasing? Joy Reid’s blog did it.

WHACK-A-MOLE: New ISIS Cell in Mozambique? Expansion Claimed After Village Beheadings. “Coastal country only experienced its first Islamist extremist attack last October, prompting government to shut down several mosques in Muslim-minority nation.”

THE END OF AN ERA: Canon shutters 80-year history of film cameras.

For what it’s worth, Nikon still lists its F6 and FM10 film SLR bodies — but both show up as “temporarily out of inventory.” Who knows if they’ll come back.

STEPHEN KRUISER: Ohio Cops Lure Addicts to Treatment by Offering to Test Meth for Zika Virus.

SHARKS GOTTA SWIM, BATS GOTTA FLY: Stormy’s lawyer was told to choose between his job and TV appearances. He chose TV.

TCO: Tesla Model S insurance almost $1,800 a year, Autopilot crashes again. “The high cost of repairs has made the Model S the most expensive car to insure.”

21ST CENTURY CRIMESTOPPERS: Vigilante Dads Hunt Sex Predators in Oklahoma City, Streaming It Live on Facebook.