December 1, 2025

WHOOPS: Guy Pearce apologizes to Jewish News after sharing antisemitic conspiracy posts.

Hollywood actor Guy Pearce has apologised to Jewish News after admitting he had shared “misinformation and falsehoods” in a series of social media posts promoting the Palestinian cause.

It follows revelations that Pearce, nominated this year for both an Oscar and a Golden Globe for The Brutalist, had circulated material featuring America’s most notorious white supremacist, Nick Fuentes, as well as posts claiming that the “top three pornography companies are owned by Jewish people”, that Israel was behind 9/11, and that Israeli officials ordered the murder of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Pearce told Jewish News: “It has been brought to my attention that, in my support of Palestine, I have inadvertently re-posted articles, and/or statements, that have contained misinformation and falsehoods. I am aware how sharing inaccurate content can cause confusion and distress; for this I am deeply sorry. I will certainly endeavour to be more diligent in future to verify anything I share online.”

Pearce, whose film credits also include The King’s Speech, The Hurt Locker, LA Confidential, Memento and Iron Man 3, also shared Instagram posts via Twitter earlier this month from an account calling itself “Corefitnessbynaz2”. The posts read: “Remember, when Zionists tell you Islam will destroy America… While several major Las Vegas casinos/hotels that have caused gambling addictions, debt and prostitution were created and owned by Jewish Zionists… The Zionists (not Jews) want you to fear the people who stand against the corruption they are creating.”

Pearce is a longstanding pro-Palestine supporter, tweeting earlier this week: “I’ve never been so disgusted by a group of people in my life as I am by Israelis. Everyday I witness their utter disregard & disdain for Palestinian life. It is shameful & sets humanity further backwards with every vile act like this.”

Earlier this year he signed up to the Film Workers for Palestine boycott of Israeli film institutions considered complicit “in genocide and apartheid”.

In 2010’s The King’s Speech, Pearce played the Duke of Windsor. I had no idea how well-cast he was.

Exit quote from Jim Treacher, who tweets, “I suspect Guy Pearce is most worried about being associated with Nick Fuentes. It’s practically mandatory for a leftist in 2025 to hate Jews, but you can’t praise RIGHT-wing antisemites. That’s giving the whole game away.“

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

2025 IN A NUTSHELL:

Screenshot
Posted at 1:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

WHAT FOLLOWING THE SCIENCE ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE:

Posted at 1:08 pm by Glenn Reynolds

ROBIN HANSON: The Male Gender-War Advantage.

Raising the status of some situation or action, and people will pay more to get it. Lower that status, and they’ll pay more to avoid it. For example, women can raise the price men pay for sex with women by lowering the status of promiscuous “sluts”, while men can raise the price women pay to “henpeck” men by lowering the status of such men.

However, men have a big advantage re this status strategy, as how much other men respect a man counts a lot more to women than how much other women respect a woman counts to men. (Data) So when men look down on hen-pecked men, those men look bad in both male and female eyes, while when women look down on a promiscuous woman, that woman doesn’t look so bad in male eyes.

Hmm.

Posted at 1:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

SPACE: ULA aimed to launch up to 10 Vulcan rockets this year—it will fly just once.

Around this time last year, officials at United Launch Alliance projected 2025 would be their busiest year ever. Tory Bruno, ULA’s chief executive, told reporters the company would launch as many as 20 missions this year, with roughly an even split between the legacy Atlas V launcher and its replacement—the Vulcan rocket.

Now, it’s likely that ULA will close out 2025 with six flights—five with the Atlas V and just one with the Vulcan rocket the company is so eager accelerate into service. Six flights would make 2025 the busiest launch year for ULA since 2022, but it falls well short of the company’s forecast.

Last week, ULA announced its next launch is scheduled for December 15. An Atlas V will loft another batch of broadband satellites for the Amazon Leo network, formerly known as Project Kuiper, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. This will be ULA’s last launch of the year.

SpaceX is also a bit short of its goal for 2025, at “just” 155 out of a hoped-for 180 launches. But they do have a month to go.

Posted at 12:42 pm by Stephen Green

VARIETY: Lilly Wachowski on Right-Wing Misinterpretations of The Matrix: ‘You Have to Let Go of Your Work.’

During a recent appearance on the “So True with Caleb Hearon” podcast, co-director Lilly Wachowski was asked about certain right-wing groups attaching their ideologies to her 1999 sci-fi masterpiece “The Matrix.” Wachowski said she’s unbothered by conservative misinterpretations and knows how to separate herself from her films once they’re released to the public.

“You have to let go of your work. People are gonna interpret it however they interpret it,” Wachowski said. “I look at all of the crazy, mutant theories around ‘The Matrix’ films and the crazy ideologies that those films helped create and I just go, ‘What are you doing? No! That’s wrong!’ But I have to let it go to some extent … You’re never gonna be able to make absolutely every person believe what you initially intended.”

“The Matrix,” specifically the iconic “blue pill or red pill” scene, is the most famous example of the film being appropriated by the right. In the scene, Keanu Reeves’ Neo must take the red pill in order to be freed from the Matrix. In the political context, “red pilled” is a term for someone who has “woken up” to the truth about society and often aligns with radical far-right ideology.

Wachowski has previously explained that the “original intention” of “The Matrix” was to be a transgender allegory. Even so, she said she’s unsurprised the right has latched on to the film since “right-wing ideology appropriates absolutely everything.”

She added, “They appropriate left-wing points of view and they mutate them for their own propaganda, for their own to obfuscate what the real message is. This is what fascism does. And so, of course, that’s going to happen.”

Okay, so let’s review: a transgendered artist can shout “fascism” during an interview with a leading Hollywood trade publication, and nothing at all will happen to either “her,” or the Website that carried the interview. Worst. Hitler. Ever.

But The Matrix is far from the only ideological work to be glommed onto by an audience on the other side of the aisle. At the beginning of Trump’s first term, the left obsessed over a book written immediately after a titanic struggle between two variants of socialism and convinced themselves that it had nothing to do with them. And ultimately, as Kyle Smith wrote in 2017, ”If you feel free to tell everyone you’re living in ‘1984,’ you aren’t.”

In any case, as Will Collier tweets:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

HMM: China’s factory activity shrinks again in November, services cool.

The data reflects manufacturers’ difficulty in sustaining a recovery after COVID-19, compounded by a trade war with the U.S. that has ramped up pressure on businesses.

Output stalled, with the sub-index coming at 50.0. Sub-indexes of new orders and new export orders both improved from October but remained below 50.

Although manufacturing continued to slow in November, “We maintain our view that government may hold off on major policy support until the first quarter next year, since this year’s growth target appears broadly achievable,” Goldman Sachs economist Yuting Yang said in a research note.

The government’s 2025 growth target is around 5%.

For decades, China’s policymakers have had two reliable levers to juice growth: revving up the nation’s huge industrial machine to boost exports when household spending softened, or unleashing state-funded infrastructure projects to drive momentum.

But with a global slowdown, a protracted property crisis and local governments straining under debt, officials are finding it hard to jump-start activity, putting renewed focus on the need for economic reforms.

It’s been said before, but Beijing can either loosen control or accept slower growth. So far, Beijing choses slower growth.

Posted at 10:38 am by Stephen Green

THEY’RE OUT OF THE HEADLINE PHASE:

Posted at 9:56 am by Stephen Green

UGH: Poll finds 51% of young voters prefer democratic socialist in 2028.

A new poll from Rasmussen Reports and the Heartland Institute found that a slim majority of young voters prefer a democratic socialist to win the 2028 presidential election.

The survey of 1,496 likely voters ages 18 to 39 showed 51% favored a democratic socialist, 36% opposed it, and 17% were unsure.

“It is hard to believe that a solid majority of young Americans think democratic socialism is the answer to the deep-rooted economic problems they face given that socialism has utterly failed to uplift the downtrodden every time and place it has been implemented,” said Heartland Institute research fellow Chris Talgo of the poll. “However, when they grow up in an environment surrounded by adults who champion democratic socialism, it starts to make sense.”

The respondents cited parents (27%), online videos or podcasts (17%), and books (10%) as the most influential sources on their support for the ideology. A majority (54%) also said their parents or guardians were favorable towards democratic socialism when they were growing up.

It will at least be interesting to see what — if anything — people learn from what’s about to happen to New York City.

Posted at 9:36 am by Stephen Green

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: The Biden Messes Are Deadly and Difficult to Get Rid Of. “Americans’ trust in so many of our institutions was already weakened by the government’s handling of the COVID pandemic, We didn’t need four years of the Biden Commie Cabal taking a wrecking ball to everything. It’s not just that Biden & Co. got so many things wrong — one expects that from Democrats — it’s that they got them so spectacularly wrong.”

Posted at 9:05 am by Stephen Green