April 13, 2026

REMEMBER, IF YOU EVEN HINTED AT THIS IN 2021 YOU WERE AT RISK OF PROSECUTION OR BEING SUED INTO OBLIVION: The Biden Admin Knew of COVID Vaccine Stroke Risk and Covered It Up. “New details emerging from a Senate investigation confirm that Biden administration officials at both the FDA and CDC knew about a significant stroke risk tied to Pfizer’s bivalent COVID-19 booster in people over 65. They knew. And they said nothing.”

Posted at 10:28 pm by Glenn Reynolds

OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

TO SERVE MAN: The Left’s Favorite Food Is Other Leftists.

Sabrina Carpenter is just another industry elitist who checked almost every leftist box she could on the way up the fame ladder. She puts on hyper-sexualized displays during her concerts, consistently degrading and hating on men, and is constantly curating leftist support. You’ll recall she “bravely” stood up to the Trump administration when they used her song in a post showing off ICE’s success.

Something that the White House turned around and used to promote ICE further.

Yet, during one of her concerts, Carpenter made the mistake of disliking someone doing the Arabic zaghrouta, which is the celebratory sound you hear Islamic women make whenever an Islamic terrorist successfully kills Israelis or Westerners. You’ll recall that sound being heard quite a bit in videos after 9/11.

Someone was doing that at Carpenter’s set during her Coachella performance, which Carpenter didn’t like at all. Even after someone told her that this was a part of her culture, Carpenter responded by saying she didn’t like it.

As you can imagine, the piranhas have begun to swarm.

But the damage is done.

I don’t think it’s going to destroy her career, and I’m pretty sure there are going to be industry reps and their friendly outlets working overtime to sweep it under the rug, but as it stands, Carpenter’s being roasted alive, and there will be a solid chunk of her audience that doesn’t forget or forgive. They can’t, because they have too much to gain by hating on her for her “racism.”

As Steve spotted earlier, in a post headlined, “Now That’s One Well-Played Historical Reference,” there was another path for Carpenter:

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

BAD NEWS: Alarming study reveals the universe will end much, much sooner than previously estimated.

It’s the end of the world as we know it — a lot sooner than we think.

A team of researchers have drastically scaled back the going estimate of how long it will be until the universe ceases to exist.

Previously, scientists believed it would be 10¹¹⁰⁰ years until the very last objects in the cosmos would disappear forever — that’s a 1 followed by 1,100 zeroes, in layman’s terms.

But a new study published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics by a trio of researchers at Radboud University in the Netherlands posits the real figure as closer to 10⁷⁸ years, or a 1 followed by just 78 zeroes, Science Aim writes.

Make no mistake, 10⁷⁸ years is a long, long, long time. But the difference between 10⁷⁸ years and 10¹¹⁰⁰ years is so enormous that it’s unfathomable to the human mind.

Some exceptions, such as Alvy Singer, apply:

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE FUTURE OF LAW ENFORCEMENT – ROBOCOP ROBODOG! Robot Police Dogs Powered by AI Take Over Atlanta’s Streets.

Four-legged robot dog, powered by AI have been patrolling the streets, apartments, parking lots and construction sites in Atlanta as a move to up security. However, the addition of this automated security has raised concerns about the increasing use of private technology by law enforcement agencies.

A video of one such surveillance robot dog walking in Atlanta has gone viral on social media, leaving onlookers in awe as they drive past it.

When someone honks, the robot stops immediately and looks at the person recording it, producing noise that resembles a dog. The robot dog then waves, something that the car’s occupants find adorable.

The caption suggests that the robot dog has been developed by Undaunted, a company that offers such autonomous security to various industries. The robot dog follows a predetermined route for surveillance, judging its path through cameras.

This isn’t creepy or dystopian at all (language alert if you’re playing the video in public):

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

DON’T FALL FOR IT [UPDATED AND BUMPED]:

Updates:

And:

I’m not sure exactly what I expected from the first American Pope, but it wasn’t this.

Posted at 6:42 pm by Stephen Green

OUT: MONEYCHANGERS IN THE TEMPLE. IN: THE MONEYCHANGERS ARE THE TEMPLE.

Posted at 6:40 pm by Glenn Reynolds

TRUMP HAS DEMS IN A ‘STRAIT’-JACKET:

If President Donald Trump really wants to drive crazed Democrats off a cliff, he would burn an Iranian flag on the White House lawn while chanting “Death to Iran.”

That would get the doomsday Democrats and the messianic mullahs in Tehran talking. The two allies could hold a joint press conference to impeach Trump.

They could use the event to add to his alleged “war crimes,” which include threatening to wipe a nuclear armed Iran off the map, something the U.S should have done seven presidents ago.

It could have happened in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter when revolutionary Islamic “students” invaded the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took sixty-six Americans hostage.

Or it surely could have taken place under President Ronald Reagan when the Iranian terrorist proxy Hezbollah killed 241 U.S. marines and sailors with a truck bomb in Lebanon in 1983. It was the largest number of marines killed in one day since Iwo Jima.

While the two Bush presidents—George H.W. Bush and Georg W. Bush—invaded Iraq, which had no nuclear weapons, a couple of times, Iran, which was developing one got a pass.

Besides the Dems, Trump has another far-left totalitarian regime in a “Strait”-jacket as well: “A broken Iran means China has to buy American, and any plans to pose a threat to Taiwan were put on indefinite hold. The Iranian regime keeps doubling down on this nonsense. Because what else can they do?”

Posted at 6:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

COLONIZATION, STRAIGHT UP:

It’s also meant to be intimidating, if I had to guess.

Posted at 5:51 pm by Stephen Green

SWALWELL’S BLANKET PARTY:

The Dems depantsed the repulsive Eric Swalwell over the weekend in an attack with something like the Pearl Harbor effect. It swiftly sunk Swalwell’s gubernatorial campaign. We followed the depantsing, but without quite the humorous detachment of Wall Street Journal Free Expression editor Matthew Hennessey. There are several interesting angles to the story and he inflicts glancing blows on most of them. He doesn’t expressly mention the apparent knowledge of members of the press about Swalwell’s way with women.

But what will become of Swalwell’s campaign merch? Heh, indeed:

Posted at 5:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO SENT EMAIL MESSAGES ON SATURDAY TO DEFEAT THE NEW ACA7:  If you didn’t see my post on Saturday and would like to help me out by sending an quick email to 10 California state senators opposing ACA7, you can still access that post here.  There were several incorrect email addresses in my post on Saturday morning, but they have since been fixed.

I have a second request for those of you who are on Twitter/X.   I need my last four tweets/posts to be “liked” and “re-tweeted/reposted” as many times as possible.  Unfortunately, my tech skill leave something to be desired, and I have forgotten how to embed things, so all I can do is link to them.

Here they are:  Tweet #1, Tweet #2, Tweet #3, and Tweet #4.  (If you’re interested in my issues and want to follow me while you’re at it, that would be swell too.)

Loyal Instapundit readers may recall that I asked you to do this two years ago too, and it worked splendidly.  It was hugely important in showing the California legislators who were tagged that ACA7 was going to face stiff opposition.  These days Twitter/X works a little differently.  Elon Musk’s reforms were actually good, but they make it impossible to bury the tagged persons in little alerts in quite the same way.  Even so, getting a large number of “likes” and “re-tweets/re-posts” will be a big help.

For those of you who just woke up and have no idea what I’m taking about, here is the description, I gave of ACA7 in an earlier post:

THEY’RE BAAAACK!! AND NOW THEY WANT TO DISCRIMINATE BY RACE IN STUDENT FINANCIAL AID!!:  Legislators in the California Assembly are at it again—trying to gut Proposition 209, the history-making ballot initiative that amended the state constitution in 1996 to ban state-sponsored preferential treatment on the basis of race, sex, or ethnicity.  And I literally mean “history-making.”  Paul Johnson’s History of the American People tells the story of America from the late 15th century to the end of the 20th.  Somehow (bless him) he found a wee bit of room to discuss Prop 209.  As the co-chair of that 1996 campaign, I’m darn proud of that.

This is the third time in six years that the Cal Legislature has moved to gut Prop 209’s ban on affirmative-action preferences.  In 2020, the Legislature put a referendum on the ballot to repeal Prop 209 entirely.  But it was THUMPINGLY defeated—over 57% of voters said NO—even though YES Campaign spent 14 times more than we did.  (I’m proud of having co-chaired that campaign too.)  In 2024, the Assembly approved a trickier version that would have empowered the governor to make an unlimited number of EXCEPTIONS to Prop 209.  But that version never made it past the Senate. Cooler heads prevailed there—largely because we descended on their offices, held rallies, and buried them in letters, emails, and tweets.

But they just can’t stop.  The newest effort would exempt public education from Prop 209’s coverage.  Given the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in the Harvard case, this bill does not try to exempt admissions in higher education.  But it exempts everything else.  The big-ticket items would be (1) discrimination in admission to programs for gifted and talented students at the Kindergarten-12th grade level; (2) discrimination funding of K-12 schools based on the racial composition of the students there; and (3) discrimination in financial aid in higher education.

I am confident ACA7 can be defeated in the Senate if we make enough noise.  Given what happened in 2020, they would have to be very silly to want to put this turkey on the ballot.  We will probably win at the ballot box (as we did in 2020).  Even if we don’t, any program established under ACA7 will likely be defeated in court.  And the Trump Administration will undertake to cut off the federal funding of California’s public universities and schools under Title VI.  All we have to do is remind the California Senate of that over and over again until it finally sinks in.

Posted at 5:44 pm by Gail Heriot

GREAT MOMENTS IN SELF-AWARENESS:

I know, Sandy! I was thinking exactly the same thing back in 2019.

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

MR. KISS KISS FANG FANG CRASHES OUT:

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE 21st CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I HAD HOPED: The Rising Tide of Anti-AI Violence.

The attempted firebombing of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s San Francisco home should be a wake-up call. Had the attacker, who also reportedly made threats against OpenAI’s offices, hit a window rather than the side of the house, against which his Molotov cocktail merely “bounced” off, the event could have been far more horrific.

Just a couple of days later, two men were alleged to have fired on Altman’s house, which should have set the conditions for a national conversation about the horrifying prospect of revivified, violent Luddism.

To its credit, the Washington Post editorial board tried to start that very conversation last week when its members raised alarms over a violent attack on an Indianapolis-based lawmaker’s house — an attack in which 13 bullets were fired at his home. “The gunman left a note on the lawmaker’s doorstep,” the Post observed, “NO DATA CENTERS.”

The editorial linked that act of violence to a broader hostility toward the construction of data centers, which facilitate modern marvels like video streaming services, cloud data storage, and, yes, artificial intelligence. “It wouldn’t be the first time in history that deranged Luddites turn to violence to fight the advancement of frontier technology,” the Post’s editors note.

Note that the attack wasn’t just aimed at Altman; “other AI CEOs were also on his hit list:”

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll