STRANGER THINGS HAVE HAPPENED: Wait… Is China Actually Doing the Smart Thing I Just Told Them to Do?

I QUESTION THE TIMING: Edible Bug Sales Projected to Spike the Same Year in Which You Will Own Nothing and Be Happy.

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: ‘Philadelphia is a war zone’: Moment thug casually strolls up to parking officer and shoots him in the head in broad daylight in Dem-led city.

ON A LONG ENOUGH TIMELINE, THE LEFT CANCELS EVERYONE: Will The Left Cancel Mr. Rogers Now?

EUROPE’S GREEN POLICIES AS OUROBOROS: ‘Practically Unviable’ for Volkswagen to Build EV Batteries in High-Cost Europe. “It takes a lot of energy to produce a lithium-ion battery large enough to power a car or truck, and Europe’s high energy prices drive up the cost of making the batteries that were supposed to reduce costs.”

GUN BLOG SILENCED: Blogger Censors Borepatch. “What Google hopes to accomplish by censoring a 14-year old post to gun cleaning solvents is unclear.”

ANALYSIS: TRUE: California Is Transitioning Into a Sanctuary State for Pedophiles.

JOHN NOLTE: How Woke Hollywood Killed the ‘Oscar Movie.’

Here is the domestic box office for this year’s titles enjoying the most Oscar talk.

• Till – $8.7 million
• The Banshees of Inisherin – $7.9 million
• TÁR – $5.1 million
• She Said – $4.3 million
• Triangle of Sadness – $4 million
• Bones and All – $3.8 million
• The Fabelmans – $3.5 million
• Armageddon Time – $1.9 million
• Aftersun – $756,000

Top Gun: Maverick and Everything Everywhere All at Once might be nominated, but their status as box office successes had nothing to do with Oscar talk. If anything, it’s the other way around: their box office success won them some Oscar heat.

The most shocking title on that list is The Fabelmans. Those of us of a certain age can remember when Oscar talk around a Steven Spielberg movie would have had people flocking to theaters, especially over Thanksgiving weekend (when Fabelmans opened). Spielberg guaranteed that magic cinematic experience we all crave.

There are only two movies on that list I’m interested in seeing: TAR, for sure, and The Banshees of Inisherin. Other than that? Nope, nope, nope… Life’s too short, and I have too many Blurays sitting around.

So why are these movies flopping?

Short version: They aren’t entertaining.

Hollywood has gone from “Let us entertain you” to “Sit down and eat your peas.”

And the peas are spoiled.

IT’S ONLY FOOD: Dutch Government Demands ‘Compulsory Purchase’ of 3,000 Farms to Comply With EU Environmental Rules.

Previously: How The Netherlands Has Become The World’s Second Largest Food Exporter.

An awful lot of food exports are going to be withdrawn from a very hungry world.

CHANGE: Bachelor’s degrees have become optional for more jobs across industries.

HMM: There Once Was A Prez on Nantucket, and Each of His Cars, a Fire Struck It.

THIS IS A DIRECT RESPONSE TO TWITTER RE-EMBRACING FREE SPEECH: Google, YouTube spend MILLIONS to launch Global Fact Check Fund.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Government COVID Fascists Can’t Grasp That We’ve All Moved On. “The people tasked with doing everything they could to protect the public health did almost anything but that and most of the public is now aware of that. We aren’t in a state of early COVID panic and now have a lot of experience with them getting things very, very wrong.”

IT’S WORKING! American EVs reduced gasoline consumption by just 0.54% in 2021.

MEGAN FOX: 4 Reasons Police Haven’t Arrested or Named a Suspect in the Idaho 4 Murders. “For the sake of the families who just lost four beloved children on the cusp of their adult lives, this is a developing story that should be handled with extreme care. Already, just nineteen days into the investigation, the parents are starting to question the forthrightness of the police and their emotions are raw going into the first holiday season without their children. It would be helpful for them if the true crime die-hards didn’t fan the flames of upset for clicks and views. I’ve spent the day going over the facts of this case and to me, it’s looking like very good police work in a very difficult situation.”

LICENSED BARBARISM: The Most Passionate Science Deniers Are Pro-Trans ‘Experts’ Who Profit From Carving Up Kids.

Of course, the elephant in the room is that studies on transition, and especially transitioning children, are overwhelmingly conducted by those whose careers depend upon proving the benefits of transition. The doctors who are chemically castrating teenage boys, or amputating the healthy breasts of adolescent girls, are all-in. To admit that these procedures are a mistake would be a confession of horrific, possibly even criminal, medical malpractice that would end their careers.

Likewise, many of the formerly respectable gatekeepers of medicine and scientific research have been deeply compromised by transgender ideology. From medical associations to hospitals, there is a multitude of people who are in too deep to admit error, even as transgender ideology collapses.

The fact-free nature of transgender ideology is apparent in the latest standards of care issued by WPATH (World Professional Association of Transgender Health), a pro-trans group that is treated as the leading authority on transgender medicine. The organization eliminated many of its recommended age restrictions for medical transition in order to protect from malpractice claims physicians who were transitioning children younger than the previous standards — after all, doctors can’t violate a standard of care that doesn’t exist. And bizarrely, WPATH declared “eunuch” to be a valid gender identity, a decision reached, in part, by relying on online forums filled with violent fantasies of child sexual abuse.

These cranks and creeps have captured the establishment, from medicine to academia to the Democratic Party. And they intend to use their power to intimidate and silence critics. They do not care that their attempts are dishonest and incoherent. For instance, the NEJM writers admit that the scientific “consensus is ever evolving,” yet they posit this as a reason to shut down debate and deregulate transitioning children.

Future generations will look back on ours as butchers of children, because that’s exactly what’s happening.

UH-HUH: Senate Report on Domestic Terrorism Names White Supremacy As the Chief Problem.

SOMETIMES IT TAKES A SHOEHORN AND AXLE GREASE TO FIT A STORY INTO THE PROPER NARRATIVE: Focus on the Family Blamed for Club Q Shooting Despite Jim Daly Condemnation, Suspect’s Non-Binary Identity.

I HAD BEEN ASSURED BY POTUS HIMSELF THAT COVID WAS OVER: White House COVID Doc: The Way to ‘Move on’ From COVID Is Endless Boosters.

ED MORRISSEY: NBC’s Mystery of the Week: Where in the world is Miguel Almaguer after Pelosi-report retraction? “The feds don’t want to correct the record in their indictment for a reason. They don’t want to have to raise that question in court, or in the court of public opinion either. Why? We certainly can speculate on that point.”

IT’S UNWISE TO ADOPT LEFTY GOODTHINK PHRASES LIKE “AFFIRMATIVE SURGERY”: Transgender Women Now Issued ‘New Vagina Manuals’ Following Affirmative Surgery.

SWITCH TO RENEWABLE ENERGY, THEY SAID. IT’S CLEAN AND RELIABLE, THEY TOLD ME:

THE LEFT WILL TRY TO DESTROY WHAT THEY CAN’T CONTROL: Leftists Crow About Chasing 50 Major Advertisers Off Twitter. “By opening Twitter up to diverse points of view, Musk has rendered it ‘brand unsafe,’ meaning the platform is no longer fit for the precious advertisements of companies that wish to remain in good standing at the Kool Kids Klub.”

SURE WOULD BE NICE IF THAT DEVELOPMENT SPENDING AND OIL OUTPUT INCREASES WERE HAPPENING HERE: UAE Plans $150 Billion Spending Spree To Boost Oil Output To 5MM Barrels By 2027.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Don’t Be Fooled — Antifa Is America’s Nazis.