May 5, 2026

TRUE:

Posted at 5:50 pm by Glenn Reynolds

QUESTIONS NOBODY IS ASKING: Who says Lauren Sánchez Bezos doesn’t belong at the Met Gala?

Sánchez Bezos showed up to the Met red carpet in a navy-blue gown that nodded to John Singer Sargent’s painting of Madame X, a socialite and the wife of a French banker. The painting’s portrayal of a pale, corpse-like, high-society woman was considered indecent because of the single strap falling off her shoulder. Sánchez Bezos’s look featured the strap, designed to fall off her one shoulder, and the same extremely nipped waist, but her skin was tanned.

The dress was a knowing nod to the controversy around her involvement in the Met Gala. Like Madame X, Sánchez Bezos is accused of being indecent, though for other reasons. Outside the Met, people protested over working conditions at Amazon and left vials of urine emblazoned with Jeff Bezos’s face and the words “Boycott the Bezos Met Gala.”

* * * * * * * *

Absurdities abounded. Gigi Hadid described the evening as “our version of high school art class,” before saying how she just felt “like herself” in a transparent Miu Miu gown and matching satin Miu Miu underwear. One interviewer asked Amanda Seyfried if she drank her male goat’s milk.

Speaking of absurdities:

Self-parody alert:

Exit quote:

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

ONLY ONE MAN CAN TOPPLE THE CORRUPT CITY’S CARTOON SUPERVILLAINS — PRATTMAN:

Exit question:

UPDATE: PJM’s Aaron Hanscom asks: Are L.A. Voters Finally Waking Up — Or Headed for the Same Mistake Again?

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

JEFFREY BLEHAR: Tucker Carlson Gets His Big-Media Smooch from the New York Times.

Why is the New York Times so eager to sit down with Carlson for two hours? His closest media friends were out on X over the weekend — in the face of scoffing over that clip of him being called out as a bald-faced liar — to demand that people “watch the whole interview,” as if I’m about devote 110 minutes of my life to this exercise in cynicism. (Reading the partial transcript was bad enough.) What these supporters don’t want to admit is that there is a reason Carlson was given the opportunity to speak at length at the New York Times: He is of use to them ideologically.

Most of the voices on the right that the Times has given elevated coverage to, from Carlson to Marjorie Taylor Greene to Nick Fuentes, share a special characteristic: They are members of a “new right” antisemitic fringe, the faction most enraged by Trump’s preference for Israel over Hamas and Iran in the Middle East. A cynical man might suggest that the Times seeks to craft a political narrative for its readers wherein the Republican Party is safely cast as forever captive to culturally scary hard-right lunatics. An even more despairingly cynical man might suggest that the Times subconsciously realizes that the “anti-Zionism” of the modern right-wing fringe holds a surprisingly comfortable mirror up to the views of their own readers.

Soon?

Actually, I think the man with the Nazi tattoo probably thinks that meeting with Tucker would be too damaging to his brand in an election year.

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

KEEP YOUR PET SAFE: Furbo Mini 360°. #CommissionEarned

Posted at 4:16 pm by Helen Smith

COMMIES RUIN EVERYTHING: Chernobyl Wasn’t a Nuclear Disaster—It Was a Communist Disaster.

The world’s worst nuclear disaster began 40 years ago at 1:23 a.m. on April 26, 1986, when Unit 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power generation facility experienced an explosion and meltdown. Ironically, the explosion was caused by a botched safety test.

The point of the test had been to see what would happen if the power plant lost its main electrical supply: Could spinning turbines generate enough power to run the coolant pumps until emergency backup diesel generators could kick in? The experiment had failed three times previously, but never as catastrophically as it did that night.

Before the meltdown, Soviet officials had bragged regularly about the safety of their nuclear power plants and disparaged those in the West. In 1983, state-sponsored news agency Novosti reported that Soviet scientists had estimated the probability of a nuclear accident involving a radioactive discharge at one in 1 million. In 1984, Minister of Power and Electrification Petr Neporozhny called the country’s nuclear plants “totally safe.” Just two months before the disaster, the English-language propaganda magazine Soviet Life claimed: “Even if the incredible should happen, the automatic control and safety systems would shut down the reactor in a matter of seconds. The plant has emergency core cooling systems and many other technological safety designs and systems.”

Soviet officials initially tried to hide the disaster, but it was detected in the West two days later when an employee’s contaminated shoes triggered radiation alarms at Sweden’s Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 3:49 pm by Stephen Green

PROGRESS:

Posted at 3:33 pm by Stephen Green

NUMBERS DON’T LIE: You may have noticed big-city public school students who were encouraged to protest capitalism on May Day. I did and it prompted me to look at the numbers that tell the story of how public education is a national disgrace. One might expect school districts with the highest per-pupil and teacher salary spending to be doing the best job of preparing our kids for productive, rewarding careers. One doing that would get it exactly wrong, as I report today on The Washington Stand.

Posted at 2:58 pm by Mark Tapscott

SPRINGTIME FOR PLATNER:

Exit quote: “If you ask left-wingers ‘come on, you never really believed that these people were Nazis and racists’, they will just lie to you and tell you ‘yes, I genuinely believe that throwing up the OK symbol was racist and, if you push me on it, I will double and triple down on it. I will insist that I am an idiot even though these people are obviously not Nazis. I’m locked in on this stupid position and I will use any accusation of this kind to ruin your life even though I know it’s not true.’ They expect you to be honest when they absolutely would not and then they will leverage your honesty to advance their own purposes without EVER granting you the same benefit of the doubt or honest assessment.”

Why is the RNC Chairman on Newsmax instead of a DNC-MSM channel with that same message?

Related:

“Then a few years ago, most right-wingers stopped dropping loot. In classic extinction behavior, leftists got angry and called us racists even more. They frantically pushed the racist button, hoping the bananas would resume, getting angrier and angrier when they didn’t. Some leftists are still pushing the button. I’m sure you can make the connection to the sexist button, as well as the homophobe, islamaphobe, and trans-phobe buttons.”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN):

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

PRIORITIES:

Posted at 2:31 pm by Stephen Green

IRAN HILARIOUSLY CLAIMS IT’S A ‘SUPERPOWER,’ BUT THE US ISN’T LAUGHING — IT’S ACTING:

I think it’s safe to say that the Iranian regime made some bad choices on Monday in response to Project Freedom, the U.S. effort to help free navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.

In response, they fired at U.S. military ships, but they didn’t hit our ships, as they claimed. They fired on merchant ships, including a United Arab Emirates ship. They also fired on the UAE oil facility at Fujairah. Three Indian nationals were injured in that action.

You would think Iran would have learned that this is a bad idea, particularly attacking their neighbor. Every time the regime does that, it makes the UAE more determined against Iran, and it makes more countries speak out against Iran.

According to reports, President Masoud Pezeshkian is furious at the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for attacking the UAE, calling it “completely irresponsible” and done without the government’s knowledge or coordination. He called the tensions with regional countries “madness,” according to reports, warning of potentially irreversible consequences.

Yet the Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s statement was ridiculous.

Events in Hormuz make clear that there’s no military solution to a political crisis.

As talks are making progress with Pakistan’s gracious effort, the U.S. should be wary of being dragged back into quagmire by ill-wishers.

So should the UAE. Project Freedom is Project Deadlock.

There is no military solution — for them. There certainly is for the U.S., and that’s likely coming next because of Iran’s actions on Monday.

Then, they have the gall to warn the U.S. and the UAE about “being dragged into a quagmire by ill-wishers”? They’re the ones who wish us ill. They’re the ones firing on the UAE. They’ve managed to turn the whole region against them.

Perhaps because Iran is universally loathed we’re seeing these poll numbers:

“40 percent of Democrats side with Iran” seems a bit on the low side after October 7th, though.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

DR. EVIL FORESEES ALL: Shark lasers could help save vulnerable species. “Sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads!”

I would have thought an ill-tempered mutated sea bass would have been more useful in this application.

Posted at 2:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

AND ANOTHER ONE: Dell Technologies latest to redomesticate to Texas.

In response, Gov. Greg Abbott said, “Welcome home, Dell. For over 40 years, Texas has been where Michael Dell built and innovated. Now, Dell Technologies is bringing its legal home to Texas. This is what happens when job creators and innovators are welcomed, not punished. More businesses are sure to follow.”

Dell is the latest company to announce its redomiciling its legal headquarters to Texas.

ExxonMobil Corporation announced its Board of Directors unanimously recommended its shareholders approve changing its legal domicile from New Jersey to Texas in March, The Center Square reported.

The main reason companies are citing is Texas’ new business court and regulatory framework.

Previously: Elon Musk Didn’t Just Leave Delaware — He Started a Stampede.

Posted at 1:45 pm by Stephen Green

VARAD MEHTA IN 2015: Homage and Imitation in Star Wars – Then and Now.

As I’ve detailed, the mythology [George Lucas] drew on was Westerns, chivalric romance, 1930s sci-fi serials, pulp science fiction, Kurosawa films, and so on. The mythology J. J. Abrams drew on was . . . Star Wars. And this, more than anything, explains the problems with the storytelling in The Force Awakens.

Star Wars’ antecedents harkened back to an entire cultural history. It distilled centuries (millennia, even) of the evolution of the Western psyche (with borrowings from other cultures for good measure). The Force Awakens’ antecedents are, essentially, itself. The mythology it borrows is the mythology of Star Wars. I won’t describe specific plot points to avoid spoilers, but anyone who has seen it and is familiar with its predecessors knows how heavily it recapitulates thematic and narrative elements from Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. The Force Awakens is synthetic, but whereas Star Wars synthesized an entire culture, The Force Awakens synthesizes three movies released in a six-year period which ended just more than thirty years ago.

Star Wars was a pastiche of old things. The Force Awakens is a pastiche of Star Wars. Consequently, The Force Awakens is something Star Wars never was – derivative. And it is derivative not of sources outside itself. It is derivative of itself, of the narrative universe in which it exists. It is not telling an old story in a new way; it tells an old story in an old way. Abrams wants to pay homage, but he lacks the gifts to do more than imitate. The result is a kind of mimicry, the shell of a Star Wars movie without the spirit.

It was obvious watching The Force Awakens in 2015 that it was a near beat-for-beat reboot of the original Star Wars….

…But much like the somewhat under-cooked Star Trek: The Motion Picture, I remember leaving the theater thinking, well, they got the franchise off the ground again; let’s see what the filmmakers do next with it. And in regards to Star Wars, we all know how that turned out: Iconic Star Wars Author Alan Dean Foster Hated The Last Jedi, Calls It a Terrible Film.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

ANALYSIS: MOSTLY TRUE.

City-owned grocery stores are also about graft.

Posted at 1:29 pm by Stephen Green