July 29, 2026

WAIT, DO WE WANT A STRONGER GERMAN MILITARY?

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll

BREAKING: ICE performs basic ICE functions, film at 11.

You should probably rate the Community Note as Helpful: “That’s how visas work. Once expired, the holder is required to get a new one to reenter.”

Posted at 7:39 am by Stephen Green

SUPPLY, MEET DEMAND: Ukrainian drone boat deal to build in US could be ‘one of the most consequential partnerships.’

The Ukrainian company responsible for developing and manufacturing an autonomous drone boat used to sink several Russian navy warships has agreed to a deal with an American company to produce them in the United States for the U.S. military.

UFORCE produces the family of Magura drone boats, formally known as unmanned surface vessels, and it has become “one of the most capable platforms for [Ukraine’s] naval dominance of the Black Sea,” Sean Plankey, the company’s Chief Executive Officer for the U.S., told the Washington Examiner.

Ukrainian forces have used Magura drone boats to sink more than a dozen Russian warships and to shoot down Russian aircraft and helicopters as well. Between Ukraine’s use of the Magura USV and other drone boats, they have forced much larger and more expensive Russian warships to retreat from the Black Sea. They’ve also hit oil tankers and bridges.

The company came to a deal earlier this month with ReconCraft, an American-based boat manufacturer, to produce these vessels domestically.

Assuming Ukraine survives this war, they’ll end up a contracting powerhouse.

Posted at 7:34 am by Stephen Green

“MESSAGE: I CARE,” THE NEXT GENERATION. Braindead Politician Accidentally Reads AI Slop That Someone Left in His Speech: “Here’s a More Natural, Flowing Version of That Section That Reads Like a Legislative Speech.”

AI chatbots and politicians who aren’t even pretending to try anymore are a match made in heaven.

Exhibit A: Canadian lawmaker Bill Oliver, who made a strange, cyborgian digression in a speech addressing the New Brunswick legislature last month.

“Public confidence in the office of an advocate matters,” Oliver intoned, before offering a bizarre non sequitur.

“Here’s a more natural, flowing version of that section that reads like a legislative speech rather than a series of short points,” he added.

Oliver, in a distinctly 2026 twist, had accidentally read a prompt from an AI chatbot. Credit where credit’s due: he did it without blinking an eye, betraying either some serious stage composure or that he didn’t even notice the error, half-asleep as he sounded while mumbling through the machine-amalgamated pablum.

In any case, members of the New Brunswick subreddit, understandably, weren’t impressed after people began noticing the error this week.

“If there are no consequences for this, then we hold our high schoolers to a higher standard than our elected officials,” one commenter fumed.

“If he was a lawyer, he’d be sanctioned,” another wrote. “Why should it be any different for an elected representative?”

Others lamented the “depressing” state of affairs Oliver’s lazy AI slip-up evinced, using words like “grim” and “idiocracy.” There were multiple calls for him to resign.

As Charles Krauthammer wrote in 2012:

George H. W. Bush, Romney-like in aloofness, was once famously handed a staff cue card that read: “Message: I care.” That was supposed to be speech guidance. Bush read the card. Out loud.

Not surprisingly, he lost to Bill Clinton, a man who lives to care, who feels your pain better than you do — or at least makes you think so. In politics, that’s a trivial distinction.

Not surprisingly, (P)resident Biden had a similar gaffe in 2024:

If only some staffer had secretly snuck a “Madagascar” into Oliver’s AI prompt:

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

EVERY INSTITUTION HAS BEEN CORRUPTED:

Posted at 7:10 am by Glenn Reynolds

IT VINDICATES WHAT I SAW IN COLORADO ELECTIONS IN 2012:  NJ Republican says motor voter scandal vindicates years of election integrity warnings, pushes for legislative probe.

And seriously, in the name of all that’s holy, who thought allowing people to register to vote without proof of citizenship or sometimes without proof of identity was a good thing? I can’t explain this to my foreign relatives, who have decided there must be something else going on, because the idea is so bizarrely stupid. Even they don’t do that, and let me tell you–

Posted at 4:00 am by Sarah Hoyt

I DISAGREE WITH FRANCIS: Pangram and Substack, why the whining?  My suspicious brain thinks it could be that they don’t want to be found out.

What do I disagree with? Well… first, that using AI detection tools is a good thing. In my experience, including various experiments I’ve run, they are about as good as early COVID tests, and therefore I discourage them for the same reason. If your results are as good as flipping a coin, and if people are going to do the stupid in answer to the test: DON’T DO IT. (Not that I’m going to disable it in my substacks. Couldn’t be bothered.)

Second, I disagree with him on the “tells” of AI. I have found a lot of tells myself (Look, my guilty pleasure if JAFF which at this point is almost all AI written) including an unhinged love for all forms of the verb “perform” used in the most bizarre places and times. Also a certain confusion about how many parents go into making a human which leads to sentences such as “inherited her eyes from one of her fathers.” This stuff seems to crop up consistently, as does an inability to understand physicality or distance. BUT sentence structure and cadence is mostly going to ping all the writers that AI was trained on.  Writers like me whom Anthropic wholesale used as training material. And seriously, people, I was abusing the English language long before AI was a twinkle in a server’s eye. My bizarre tricks of construction are very much the mark of a human being. Also if we’re going to chase sentence structure, there is a lot of room to find witches everywhere.

Mostly I’m tired of all the nonsense. There’s good and there’s bad. There’s entertaining or not. How it’s produced is a matter of complete indifference to me.

Only if you’re using a clanker to write JAFF, can you please for the sake of all that’s holy edit out all the performing? The rest is sometimes hilarious, but the performing is just tedious.

Posted at 2:25 am by Sarah Hoyt

July 28, 2026

THE “CONSPIRACY THEORISTS” KEEP BEING VINDICATED:

Posted at 10:52 pm by Glenn Reynolds

BORE EAGLE:

It’s not 2020 anymore guys, get with the times.

Posted at 9:33 pm by Glenn Reynolds

OPEN THREAD: Tuesday’s groovy.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT:

As Glenn has written, “the breakdown of law and order won’t go as [leftists] hope. Ultimately, the police are there to protect criminals from the populace, not the other way around. Get rid of the police, and armed vigilantism is what you’ll get. And what you’ll deserve.”

Back in 2013, Reason TV released a video about private security forces in otherwise lawless Detroit. It looks like the Pacific Palisades is adopting a similar idea as well.

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll