IT IS TIME FOR US TO DO WHAT WE HAVE BEEN DOING. AND THAT TIME IS EVERY DAY:

Truly, she is the Alben W. Barkley of our time https://t.co/wZLXdV8w63

— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) December 9, 2025

I THOUGHT THEY FOUGHT A WAR TO KEEP THE GERMAN HAIRY SNAILS OUT: German hairy snails are disappearing from London’s River Thames.

DON’T GET COCKY: Joe Concha makes bleak prediction for ‘unserious candidate’ Jasmine Crockett.

DEFINE “SMARTER”: Spending on AI Infrastructure Could Top $1 Trillion in 2026. Will All This Cash Make AI ‘Smarter’?

WELL: If you want that tattoo erased it’s going to hurt and it’s going to cost you.

IT SEEMS LIKE MOST PEOPLE ARE, EXCEPT FOR A MAJORITY OF NYC VOTERS: NYC Mayor Adams Dubious of Mamdani ‘Idealism’ on Homeless.

JIM GERAGHTY: Hollywood Only Has Itself to Blame for Industry Woes.

Speaking of superhero blockbusters, we should take a moment to stare in amazement at how Disney has managed to take not one but two of the all-time most popular franchises, a pair of toy- and merchandise-selling golden geese, and run both of them into the ground. There was a time not that long ago — 2019, when Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame was released — when it looked like the Marvel superhero movies and the Star Wars films would make billions, year after year, for the foreseeable future.

Chalk it up to the “M-She-U,” or the retirement of popular characters and actors, or the rapid proliferation of Marvel shows on Disney Plus, but the magic is gone; there’s nowhere near the sense of a Marvel movie being a must-see as there was before the Covid-19 interruption.

Your mileage may vary, but I actually feel like Marvel has enjoyed a comeback in quality this year with Thunderbolts and The Fantastic Four: First Steps. By the standards of other movies, they did okay; Thunderbolts is the 12th highest-grossing movie of 2025 with $190 million in the domestic box office, and Fantastic Four ranks 7th at $274 million. But by the standards of previous Marvel movies, they’re flops.

Star Wars hasn’t released a movie in theaters since before the pandemic. In May, we will get The Mandalorian and Grogu, featuring characters from a Disney Plus television show that was beloved by fans for about two seasons, then bizarrely careened off the rails in its third. Again, your mileage may vary, but the trailer for the forthcoming movie looks astonishingly “meh” for a Star Wars movie.

Finally, this complaint is the most nebulous, but I feel like the entire storytelling culture of Hollywood’s creative class is broken. This tweet from Riley Hale spoke to me:

Hollywood removed the hero’s journey, masculinity, redemption, sacrifice, and beauty standards in 2025, then wondered why global box office fell 18 percent and no film cracked $1 billion. . . . The same industry that spent a decade lecturing audiences on “problematic” tropes now releases 400 movies a year that nobody wants to watch. They didn’t just kill the blockbuster. They sterilized the entire reason humans ever told stories in the first place.

I notice that Amazon’s Reacher was one of the biggest streaming hits of the year, and in a lot of ways, it’s an “old-fashioned” show. A big burly hero, played with a lot of charm by Alan Ritchson, gets ensnared in a mystery and constantly runs into thugs and villains who look at the 6’3”, 240-pound former military police investigator Jack Reacher and think, “Oh yeah, I can take this guy in a fistfight.” As you can imagine, it almost never goes well for them.

So, yes, Hollywood and the movie business have a lot of problems. But one of the biggest and most glaring ones is that they stopped making movies that people enjoy watching.

Marvel and Star Wars at Disney, and Star Trek at Paramount, are reminders of how badly the producers of these originally male-oriented franchises absolutely hate their core audiences with a white-hot passion…

…And then they feign cluelessness when the feeling is mutual:

IT’S A BAD IDEA: A massive, Chinese-backed port could push the Amazon Rainforest over the edge.

IT’S A MIXED UP, MUDDLED UP, SHOOK UP WORLD, EXCEPT FOR LOLA: Netflix Mocked For Film About Trans-Identifying Coal Miner Fighting The Patriarchy.

GOOD: Hopeful Update on Guardsman Andrew Wolfe’s Recovery.

SOUND ADVICE: Californians warned not to eat wild mushrooms after poisonings.

GREAT PANTS: G Gradual Men’s Sweatpants with Zipper Pockets. #CommissionEarned

PEOPLE: WHY IS SCIENCE SO MUCH LESS RESPECTED NOW?

“Science” in Nature: Crip guts, stomas, and the violence of ‘returning to normal’: a feminist queer crip approach to the gut.

Related:

Hmmmm …. Could it be the fault, in large part, of scientists?

“ Nearly three-quarters of biomedical researchers think there is a reproducibility crisis in science, according to a survey published in November”

https://t.co/qeduJK8dUL https://t.co/9oC0rSXHJy pic.twitter.com/sIdy0H6tsO

— Diana Villiers (@DianaVilliers1) December 9, 2025

CORN, POPPED:

I look forward to discovery — especially the CAIR finances. Should be illuminating! https://t.co/2ONFTrVnDh

— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) December 9, 2025

DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY:

Besides the underlying racism of the text of your meme you have repurposed a picture from a demonstration of one of the first uses of anesthesia. That would be generally known as a breakthrough that greatly reduced pain for human beings https://t.co/7tZxbD49cF cc @BoulwareH2 https://t.co/40MCx0vSD9

— (((Aaron Walker))) (@AaronWorthing) December 9, 2025

WINNING: UK Nurse Scores Court Win After Saying ‘Trans’ Doc Shouldn’t Share Facilities With Her.

“YOU’RE NOT REALLY BLAMING IT ON WHITEY, ARE YOU? YOU’RE BLAMING ISLAM ON WHITEY?” Bill Maher ignites fiery clash with guest as he asks which Middle Eastern city would let her dress like that.

THAT WOULD EXPLAIN A LOT: Is Nick Fuentes A Foreign Op? New Evidence Suggests Maybe. “The study analyzed Fuentes’ social media activity. It found engagement patterns the researchers say are consistent with bot-farm amplification rather than genuine audience support. The Network Contagion Research Institute released the report Monday in partnership with Rutgers University’s Social Perception Lab.”

TURNS OUT, THERE’S A LOT OF OPPORTUNITY CREATED WHEN ILLEGAL LABOR IS REMOVED OR DISINCENTIVIZED*:

"Unexpectedly".

They really don't see the booming economy expanding under their feet. It's a great time to make money as most people believe the doomers in the media and aren't prepared for what is happening and what will happen. The smart ones are hiring now before they… https://t.co/eJBjJZby61

— unseen1 (@unseen1_unseen) December 9, 2025

*Who knew?

SARAH ANDERSON: Regime Meltdown: Another High-Ranking Maduro Insider Provides Trump with a Shocking Tell-All.

READER FAVORITE: Apple AirPods 4 Wireless Earbuds. #CommissionEarned

ROUTINE BUT NEVER BORING: SpaceX launches Starlink satellites on record 32nd re-flight of Falcon 9 rocket.

The company’s Booster 1067 lifted off on Monday (Dec. 8), accelerating an upper stage and 29 broadband internet satellites skyward. The 5:26 p.m. EST (2226 GMT Dec. 8) launch from Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida proceeded as planned after a one-day stand down due to poor weather conditions.

The first stage climbed towards space for about two and a half minutes before separating from the upper stage and then making a propulsive return to Earth. It landed on the autonomous droneship “Just Read the Instructions”, which as stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.

The 32nd reuse is another step towards SpaceX’s goal of flying its Falcon 9 first stages 40 times.

I’m so old, I remember when rocket re-use was thought to be nearly impossible, or at least too uneconomic to pursue.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Mizzou professor accused of racism after she asked student for update on work.

ATHENA THORNE HAS AN EXCELLENT CHRISTMAS LIST: All I Want for Christmas From Team Trump.

LOL: North Carolina State Board of Education chair claims Border Patrol is disrupting classrooms.