May 8, 2026

NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU DESPISE THE MEDIA…:

Posted at 10:26 am by Stephen Green

ROBERT SPENCER: The New York Times Interviews Tucker Carlson, and It Gets Worse From There. “The fact that the New York Times would interview Tucker Carlson in the first place is an indication of how much the former Fox host has gone off the rails. The Times only interviews people who support its far-left worldview, including its endless vilification of Israel for alleged war crimes in Gaza, and Carlson was ready with the good. In his interview, which was published Saturday, Carlson adopts the pose of a moral philosopher to attack the Jewish state, and Judaism as well, from a new angle.”

Posted at 10:11 am by Stephen Green

DID MARKETWATCH MEAN TO MAKE HIM SEEM SO BAD-ASS? The ‘SpaceX mafia’ is here. Elon Musk’s big IPO could launch a constellation of new companies.

During the past two decades, SpaceX has hired thousands of staff and granted them boatloads of restricted stock units, incentive stock options and nonqualified stock options that have vested over time. With the IPO milestone reached, employees can soon sell their equity in the company and pocket the proceeds in cash.

Some former SpaceX employees have already gone on to create their own companies, such as reusable-rockets company Relativity Space and Base Power, which owns and operates home batteries.

SpaceX alumni have created at least 150 companies that have collectively raised $12.6 billion from investors and created more than 8,000 jobs, according to AlumniFounders, a website that tracks projects created by people who have worked at the company for at least a year. The website also helps connect SpaceX employees-turned-founders to discover investors with their own ties to SpaceX, including staff at more than a dozen venture-capital firms.

“There are a lot of companies out there that were founded by people who left SpaceX but took the engineering practices and know-how to get things done,” Garrett Reisman, a former astronaut and former director of space operations at SpaceX, told MarketWatch. “It’s kind of cool because you see this whole ecosystem of startups and space experts that are doing some amazing work and are leading to kind of a whole renaissance of very dynamic business activity.”

Musk might already be the most productive human being in history. What his alumni might do with all that capital… wow.

Posted at 9:40 am by Stephen Green

MINNESOTA NOT-SO-NICE:

Posted at 9:24 am by Stephen Green

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Here’s an Idea — Let’s Just Redistrict Democrats Out of the U.S. “I do want to provide you with a list of some of the dumb things Democrats have done or said in just the last 48 hours or so. Keep in mind that it’s not a comprehensive list — it’d take me at least five days just to compile two days of Democrat idiocy, and ain’t nobody got time for that.”

Posted at 9:09 am by Stephen Green

MEANWHILE THE DEMS HAD CONFEDERATE FLAGS. LITERALLY. This Tennessee Republican Had the Best Reaction to the New Congressional Map…and It Drove Dems Crazy. “State Rep. Todd Warner did a victory lap, wearing a MAGA flag like a cape and strolling around the Capitol.”

You don’t really have to drive them crazy. Even the best ones are already close enough to walk.

UPDATE:

Flashback:

Well, Steve Cohen just was.

UPDATE:

Posted at 8:57 am by Glenn Reynolds

DON SURBER: Trump saved Indiana in 2016. “The message from voters to Republicans was clear—you have a supermajority, use it. Maybe Rove and WSJ think redistricting was trivial but Republican voters wanted it bigly. They want Congress to be flooded with Republicans. 9 is more than 7. The RINOs voted for 7. Ten years ago, the message was the same—you have a supermajority, use it.”

Posted at 8:47 am by Glenn Reynolds

SAD: I De-transitioned. My Body Will Never Be the Same.

The men in my family recognized I was gay, and treated me cruelly. My brother forcibly shaved my head when I decided to let my hair grow long. My grandfather told the parents of a kindergarten friend that I was a faggot, and it was contagious. In a town that small, his words spread quickly, and I lost friends who didn’t want to touch me in case they caught whatever I had. My uncle changed the channel whenever a gay character came on the TV.

By the time I was 12 and hitting puberty, I hyper-fixated on every small change in my face and body. Every new hair. Every shift in my jawline. I was becoming a man, and that felt catastrophic. I was desperate for a way out. And the internet delivered an answer.

I discovered trans influencers.

What happened next was far worse than the family or school bullying.

Posted at 8:38 am by Stephen Green

WE’RE DOOMED, RIGHT? Rat-borne virus outbreak not the start of new pandemic, says WHO.

The outbreak of a rat-borne virus on a cruise ship is not the start of a new global pandemic, health officials have said.

A global hunt is underway to trace 29 passengers of 12 nationalities who left MV Hondius last month before it continued its journey to Cape Verde.

Their departure came before the first case of hantavirus was confirmed and isolation measures were introduced, sparking fears they could have spread the deadly disease around the globe.

Among the passengers who disembarked were seven British nationals, two of whom are currently self-isolating at home and do not have symptoms.

Four more are being “monitored” on St Helena, sources told The Telegraph, while officials are trying to track down the seventh, who is likely a dual national.

However, the World Health Organisation played down fears of a wider outbreak.

“This is not the start of an epidemic. This is not the start of a pandemic,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention director. “This is not Covid.”

Still though, why take chances?

Posted at 8:35 am by Ed Driscoll

LEARNED NOTHING AND FORGOTTEN NOTHING;

The bond market likes Starmer’s — and Labour’s? — pending defenestration:

Still in denial:

Posted at 8:29 am by Glenn Reynolds

THIS IS WHAT YOU GET FOR RELYING ON THE BULWARK AND THE DISPATCH:

Posted at 8:27 am by Glenn Reynolds

PEOPLE WHO CAN’T BE TRUSTED WON’T BE TRUSTED:

Posted at 8:22 am by Stephen Green

CHRISTOPHER RUFO: “Spencer Pratt grew up in a California that delivered all of the public services in the background without much fuss, and consequently, one could live out the California archetypes of the surfer, the burnout, or the party animal, and it was more or less as depicted in the movies…Pratt has a better understanding of the California Dream than a rigid, humorless apparatchik like Nithya Raman, who views the state as raw material for an ideological formula.”

As Jonah Goldberg wrote in 2024 regarding Chicago’s Mayor Daley:

Daley was a real New Deal-style liberal, but he would have no use for Shorism or Lakoff-ism. He barely spoke American. He once declared he was proud to welcome the “poet lariat” of Chicago. He complained of his enemies, “They have vilified me, they have crucified me, yes, they have even criticized me.” He famously defended the Chicago police (which, we should concede did some indefensible things) by saying “Gentlemen, get the thing straight once and for all—the policeman isn’t there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder.”

But he knew how to get snow cleared.

Again, I’m not trying to romanticize Daley, but I guarantee you a great many current residents of Chicago (or New York, Portland, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.) would be far, far, happier to pay taxes for Daley-style government than to pay for what they have now—even if you convinced people that taxes are really just membership fees.

Democrats in Los Angeles would similarly accept a lot of corruption in their local government — if it still delivered basic services, such as putting out fires and repairing roads:

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll

IT DOESN’T LOOK GOOD:

Posted at 7:51 am by Stephen Green

LIKE A HURRICANE:

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll

THE NEW SPACE RACE: ‘Whatever Russia is testing, it’s sophisticated’: Satellites pass within 3 metres of each other.

Astronomers have observed two Russian military satellites passing within 3 metres (10 feet) of each other in an unexplained manoeuvre.

The COSMOS 2581 and COSMOS 2583 satellites, launched by Russia’s space agency Roscosmos in February 2025, performed the operation last week while orbiting at an altitude of around 585 kilometres.

The incident. which was tracked by US-based space situational awareness firm COMSPOC. has raised concerns about space-based surveillance and orbital collisions .

“This week we observed a complex proximity event involving Russian satellites,” COMSPOC wrote in a post to X, alongside a simulation of the event.

“This wasn’t a coincidental pass – COSMOS 2583 performed several fine manoeuvres to maintain this tight configuration… Whatever Russia is testing, it’s sophisticated.”

Russia has not disclosed the specific purpose of the satellites, though space analysts noted that one of them released a “sub-satellite” referred to as Object F.

They are believed to be part of a program involving “inspector satellites”, designed to test or perform surveillance operations of other spacecraft in orbit.

I’d guess they can do more than just observe.

Posted at 7:36 am by Stephen Green