October 26, 2026

ICYMI: Good Guys With Guns Save a Whole Lotta Lives. “More than one-third of “active shooter situations” in recent years were stopped by good guys with guns, according to a new study by the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) — completely blowing away the FBI’s official stats.”

Posted at 4:19 pm by Stephen Green

SKYNET LICKS ITS DIGITAL CHOPS: How Agentic AI Could Destroy Civilization.

Enemies always aim at chokepoints and weaknesses. Aerial bombardment goes for railroad stations and bridges. Communists and Islamists exploit the soft hearts and minds of liberals. Criminal cartels and the West’s strategic rivals are exploiting the infrastructure of commerce and convenience. The techies are running around like HVAC engineers in a heat wave, and they’re warning that they’re struggling to keep up. The lights may not have gone out yet, but Black October is a warning.

While AI sharpened new weapons through recursive self-improvement, the federal government, which is neither recursive nor self-improving, dozed at the switch. Silicon Valley vaunts its bold operations on the frontier, but it failed to post sentries. Corporations such as Stop & Shop, which went offline for more than a week after a breach at its Dutch parent company, Ahold Delhaize, took your money without fully securing their virtual premises. The phish stinks from the head.

We are all going to need degrees in PHP and digital self-defense, just as Covid-19 obliged us to become expert in viral loading, spike proteins and, for advanced students of Fauciology, furin cleavage sites. Perhaps it’s no bad thing that we prep for digital blackouts as we prep against the liabilities of our weak infrastructure by storing up for real ones. It might do us some good, as people and as a society, to take back some responsibility. The home is the most important private sector of all.

Quien no quita gotera, hace casa entera, the Spanish say: “Fix the gutters, or fix the whole house.”

Read the whole thing, which could explain this:

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

HEY, BIG SPENDER: Meta announces $95 billion stock offering to fund AI expansion.

Meta said Monday that it is planning to raise a total of $95 billion to support its investments in AI infrastructure and superintelligence.

The stock was up 1.6% in premarket trading after the announcement.

The tech giant will initially raise $35 billion in underwritten public equity offerings, before later raising an additional $60 billion with an at-the-market program.

Meta’s planned investments will support “emerging AI opportunities” including its family of apps, its AI agent Muse and its data center business.

Last week, investors retreated from big tech on fears that AI spending is unsustainable. This week, they’re buying Meta on news of massive new AI spending.

So who knows?

Posted at 3:48 pm by Stephen Green

STOLEN:

UPDATE (From Ed):

Posted at 3:40 pm by Stephen Green

WALTER KOENIG, RIP:

Posted at 3:32 pm by Stephen Green

WELL, THAT 60 MINUTES DEPORTATION SOB STORY SURE BLEW UP IN A HURRY:

A 2026 BBC undercover investigation documented a network of UK legal advisers and firms charging thousands of pounds to coach migrants, particularly those from Pakistan and Bangladesh, to falsely claim they are gay in order to obtain asylum.

The advisers provided guidance on fabricating evidence such as staged photographs, support letters, and medical reports, prompting arrests and Home Office action against those involved in the scheme.

In the United States, sexual orientation is a recognized basis for asylum or withholding of removal. Federal authorities have prosecuted attorneys and preparers for coaching clients to fabricate persecution claims, including those based on LGBT status.

Well into the 60 Minutes report, they acknowledge that “the U.S. had a right to deport him, but not to Mali.”

They didn’t. They sent him to Ghana. Aside from the entire premise being false, the outlet did a bang-up job reporting here.

By ignoring the fraudulent core of his asylum file to run a sympathetic family package, 60 Minutes got completely caught spinning a false narrative that collapsed rather swiftly.

And once again, a 60 Minutes story cannot survive contact with the real world.

UDPATE: Elderly former 60 Minutes anchor forgets why he hasn’t worked for CBS in over 20 years:

 

Posted at 3:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

HMM: The Fed thinks it’s fighting inflation. It’s starving the cure.

Kevin Warsh has described business investment as “the seed corn of future economic growth.” He is right. The Fed’s September statement described robust capital investment and strong productivity growth alongside resilient spending. Those investments represent businesses putting their money behind America’s future. Their success can mean better jobs, lower production costs, and more opportunity. That future belongs in the Fed’s calculation alongside the spending those investments generate today.

That is why a pause makes sense when officials meet on Oct. 27 and 28. September’s rate increase remains in place. Before raising rates again, the Fed should explain how much further inflation relief it expects, how long that relief would take, and what investment and employment it could put at risk. The benefits and costs deserve the same scrutiny.

Leaving rates unchanged during rising inflation goes against expert advice, but the experts also told us stagflation was impossible — right up until it happened in the ’70s.

Posted at 2:46 pm by Stephen Green

THAT THING THAT NEVER HAPPENS?

Yep, happened again.

Posted at 2:29 pm by Stephen Green

STEPHEN SOUKUP: Thanks Again, Obama.

Obama? The guy who left office ten years ago? Why is this multi-deci-millionaire running around the country trying to get socialists and socialist-adjacent candidates (including Abdul El-Sayed) elected to high office? Shouldn’t he be off enjoying his oceanfront mansion on Martha’s Vineyard or his other oceanfront mansion on Oahu? Or playing basketball on the NBA regulation-size court at the aforementioned “library”? Isn’t that what most ex-presidents are doing a decade after their terms ended, enjoying retirement?

Well… yes, but Obama hasn’t been gone ten years yet. Technically, it’s only been nine years, nine months, and six days (not that anyone’s counting). More to the point, as I say, Obama can’t stand not being the center of attention. He and Michelle just celebrated their 34th wedding anniversary, and because of his ongoing obsession with politics and being in the spotlight, they might not make it to 35. As the former president himself admitted this past spring, his political fixation “does create a genuine tension in our household, and it frustrates [Michelle].” Still, that’s what he does. That’s all he does. Because he can’t help himself. As Obama also noted last spring, “no other ex-president was the main surrogate for the party for four election cycles after they left office.” Maybe there’s a reason for that?

Nevertheless, Republicans should be grateful.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 1:44 pm by Stephen Green

A MODEST PROPOSAL:

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

TO BE FAIR, SHE NUKED THE TATTERED REMAINS OF THE MAGAZINE’S REPUTATION A DECADE AGO:

Posted at 1:28 pm by Stephen Green

SARAH ANDERSON: She’s Back! So What’s Next for Venezuela? “Opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner (and, with any luck, the country’s next president) María Corina Machado arrived back in Venezuela on Sunday. She posted the following on X before videos of her in Santa Rosa, surrounded by the people who adore her, began surfacing on social media: ‘I am here. With you.'”

Posted at 1:13 pm by Stephen Green