GOLD ISN’T A PRODUCTIVE INVESTMENT; IT’S A HEDGE AGAINST BIG, STUPID GOVERNMENT: Price of gold surges to all-time high on the back of falling US dollar.

THE HOUSE APPEARS TO BE GONE: Watch the Moment a MASSIVE Explosion Rocks a D.C. Area Neighborhood. “Arlington County Police say they were attempting to execute a search warrant in the 800 block of N. Burlington Street when the suspect discharged a flare gun. According to the most recent tweet from the ACPD, the suspect released ‘several rounds’ inside the home, which subsequently exploded.”

THE ENEMY WITHIN: ‘P’ is for propaganda.

Let’s dump the curriculum and teach Palestinian propaganda instead, said a group of Oakland (CA) teachers. They proposed an all-day “teach in.” Um, no, said district officials.

One early-elementary lesson proposed for the “teach in” encourages children to identify what they “will chant at a Palestine protest,” reports Jill Tucker in the San Francisco Chronicle. In an alphabet book titled P is for Palestine, the letter “I” represented “intifada,” which refers to armed uprisings by Palestinians against Israeli control of disputed land. (The book says the word means”rising up for what is right!”)

“It is the job of educators to teach students how to think critically, not to teach them what to think,” said a district statement. It reminded teachers “to keep their personal beliefs out of the classroom.”

Well, good — but here’s the kicker: “Only one third of students met or exceeded state English standards in Oakland Unified in 2023. One quarter met or exceeded math standards. Enrollment is declining.”

MATT MARGOLIS: Ex-Capitol Police Officer Releases Audio Proving J6 ‘Cover-Up.’

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: 18-20 Handgun Ban Struck Down.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: House Oversight Committee Followed The Money Right to Joe Biden’s Bank Accounts.

AN INSULT TO PRETEND VILLAGES EVERYWHERE: The Potemkin Presidency of Joe Biden.

LESSONS FROM UKRAINE: Quantity Still Has a Quality All Its Own.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy admitted last week that his country’s 2023 counteroffensive “did not achieve the desired results,” and that “we have a new phase of war.” Russian strongman Vladimir Putin could have said the exact same thing this time last year after his country was forced to retreat from huge swaths of occupied Ukraine.

So what can we learn from each side’s successes and failures?

Much more at the link.

SHAKEOUT: No further investments in Virgin Galactic, says Richard Branson. “Sir Richard Branson has ruled out putting more money into his lossmaking space travel company Virgin Galactic, saying his business empire ‘does not have the deepest pockets’ any more.”

NOBODY IS THAT GOOD AN ACTOR: No Oscar for Susan Sarandon’s Apology.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY:

NYT publishes a new article about how a shortage of air traffic controllers is leading to dangerous mistakes. Meanwhile, some in the Federal Aviation Administration are pushing to lower standards for new controllers, like decreasing the importance of the AT-SAT standardized test… pic.twitter.com/TgdyAKSQob

— Yang (@AxiomAmerican) December 3, 2023

What could possibly go wrong?

MEGAN FOX: Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital Declares War on Juror #1.

The day before Thanksgiving, Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital (JHACH) attorneys filed a motion for a new trial based on “juror misconduct” after losing a groundbreaking jury verdict for $261 million. Instead of deciding to cut their losses and pay what the People decided they owed, JHACH ruined Thanksgiving for the Kowalskis and the much-maligned Juror #1 and his wife.

The defense alleges that Juror #1’s wife paid too close attention to the trial and thus must have influenced her former law enforcement officer husband toward the plaintiff. They provided no evidence of the wife influencing her juror husband but did dox the two online for over a week before public outrage forced them to re-upload the motion with private information redacted including names, address, and photographs.

The plaintiff’s attorneys responded accusing the defense of creating a new definition of juror misconduct naming it “misconduct by proxy.” This characterization was ironic considering JHACH falsely accused Maya Kowalski’s deceased mother of having Munchausen syndrome by proxy, which led to the lawsuit in the first place.

Read the whole thing.

THE BABY BUST: Can China’s Baby Bust Be Reversed? Don’t Count On It. “Yet even if China somehow does defy past trends and manages to boost its national fertility rates substantially, it will take nearly two decades to pay off as babies born today finally enter the workforce. Meanwhile, its top-heavy ‘constrictive’ population pyramid thanks to a decades-long one-child policy—which was only abandoned in 2016—will mean increasing old age dependency and the social and economic costs that come with it.”

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Yep, We’re Doomed. “Happy Monday morning, everybody. We just hit another milestone on the road to ruin.”

MAILING IN A DNA SAMPLE NEVER SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA TO ME FOR EXACTLY THIS REASON: 23andMe confirms hackers stole ancestry data on 6.9 million users. “In an email sent to TechCrunch late on Saturday, 23andMe spokesperson Katie Watson confirmed that hackers accessed the personal information of about 5.5 million people who opted-in to 23andMe’s DNA Relatives feature, which allows customers to automatically share some of their data with others. The stolen data included the person’s name, birth year, relationship labels, the percentage of DNA shared with relatives, ancestry reports and self-reported location.”

STARSHIP TROOPERS, MK 1: Back-saving exosuits may someday be standard-issue gear for troops. “For years, military trade shows have featured intimidating “Iron Man” exosuit prototypes that would seem right at home in a Marvel movie. But the US military is now showing interest in a different kind of exosuit: one that won’t incorporate blast armor or a third machine-gun holding arm, but will save troops’ backs when they are loading artillery rounds.”

For now…

BOMBSHELL: Report From First-Ever Audit Shows How Much Power Disney Had in Central Florida. “A newly released report (which I’ve embedded at the end of this column) of the first comprehensive audit of Disney and RCID shows the scope of Disney’s power and influence and how the company used RCID to benefit itself with little to no concern for the region as a whole.”

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Homebuyer conundrum: If mortgage rates fall, bidding wars will follow, expert says.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: George Santos Shouldn’t Have Been Tossed From the GOP Clown Car. “Before we get too far into this, I should make it clear that I don’t think that George Santos is a great guy. I also don’t think he’s history’s greatest monster. Honestly, I wouldn’t leave anything of value unattended around anyone in Congress, so moral posturing by any of them is wearisome.”

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Amazon will now pay Elon Musk’s SpaceX to get its Project Kuiper satellites into space—and compete against his Starlink service. “In October, Amazon launched its first two satellites for Project Kuiper aboard a UAL Atlas V rocket, which took off from Florida. The company’s goal is to put more than 3,300 satellites into low Earth orbit. Amazon needs to launch half of its Kuiper constellation by 2026 in order to be compliant with its license from the Federal Communications Commission.”

With Blue Origin still stuck in neutral, buying SpaceX lift was inevitable.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Prisoner Who Stabbed Derek Chauvin Is Ex-FBI Informant, Planned Attack as Tribute to BLM.

HMM: ‘Everything indicates’ Chinese ship damaged Baltic pipeline on purpose, Finland says.

As the investigation into damage to Baltic Sea critical infrastructure continues, Finland’s Minister of European Affairs Anders Adlercreutz said it’s hard to believe sabotage to the undersea gas pipeline was accidental — or that it happened without Beijing’s knowledge.

“I’m not the sea captain. But I would think that you would notice that you’re dragging an anchor behind you for hundreds of kilometers,” Adlercreutz said in an interview Thursday in Brussels. “I think everything indicates that it was intentional. But of course, so far, nobody has admitted to it.”

Finland and Estonia have been investigating the rupture of the Balticconnector, a 77-kilometer-long gas pipeline that connects the two NATO members beneath the Baltic Sea. The pipeline was damaged around October 7-8, along with two telecoms cables connecting Estonia to Finland and Sweden.

An investigation by Finnish authorities identified as the main suspect Chinese container ship Newnew Polar Bear, which is believed to have dragged its anchor across the Baltic Sea seabed, cutting through the cables and gas lines. The anchor — which weighs 6,000 kilograms — was retrieved a few meters from the site of the damage.

Beijing keeps getting away with these just-short-of-war actions. I’d recommend a little tit-for-tat, but I’m certain this administration would screw it up.

AT 8K MILES A YEAR, I CAN HANG ON TO MY 38K-MILES GAS-POWERED JEEP FOR A LONG TIME: EV Owners Waking Up to the Nightmare of Massive Repair Bills. “As far as repairs go, they may be more expensive than gas-powered cars, but the upkeep of EVs is only a fraction of what a driver pays for maintaining a conventional vehicle. But insurance is much higher and parts are twice as expensive as gasoline cars.”

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: Who Put This Meth in My Underwear? “It’s your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week we have a semi-truck/pontoon hybrid, the Great Underwear Break-In of 2023, and video of a wild airplane escape in Louisiana.”

ALMOST EVERYBODY LOVES THE SHRIMP: Red Lobster says unlimited shrimp promotion was too popular and too cheap. “Red Lobster’s parent company, Thai Union Group, disclosed earlier this month that the seafood chain took an unexpectedly large loss in the third quarter of the year because its $20 shrimp promotion wasn’t very profitable and was more popular than the company anticipated.”

I’m no restaurant industry expert but I could have guessed that $20 unlimited shrimp was going to be A) very popular and B) a money-loser.