September 10, 2026

LAWRENCE PERSON: My Friend Was Murdered On Labor Day. “Andrew Wimsatt, a friend for over thirty-five years, a regular member of the Saturday Dining Conspiracy (and the movie night afterwards) and an all-around standup guy, was murdered on Labor Day.”

More:

I looked into whether some of the themes covered by this blog applied to Andrew’s murder, but as far as I can tell Ogbodiegwu was not an illegal alien and does not appear to have been released on bail for previous offenses in Travis County.

Even more, from another old online acquaintance:

“Based on preliminary evidence and information developed so far, investigators believe the attack was a random act and that the victim and suspect were not known to one another,” according to the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office.

UPDATE: He was a friend of David Burge, too. It seems like everyone in and around Austin knew and liked Andrew.

Posted at 3:51 pm by Stephen Green

THE GERMANS ARE FUNNY, JUST NOT HA-HA FUNNY:

Same goes for Brussels:

I’ve never understood why Europeans vote to join the EU, because it’s the last time their vote really counts.

Posted at 3:35 pm by Stephen Green

SALENA ZITO: Flight 93 crash in Shanksville on 9/11: ‘The first Americans to fight back against terrorists happened here.’

In the days, months and years that followed, it was discovered that the passengers and crew of Flight 93 believed the plane was heading toward the White House or the Capitol and, to stop that tragedy, they revolted against the four hijackers in midair. All 40 of them died along with their captors.

Duppstadt and her sister-in-law closed the store early that day and went straight to the local school to collect her three children. She went home and held them close.

“You never think something would happen in a place like here. You hope if it does the community comes together.”

The whole country did then.

Posted at 2:49 pm by Stephen Green

TWANLOC (CONT’D):

Posted at 2:33 pm by Stephen Green

VIRGINIA POSTREL: The invention of the MMO. Despite running on computers with just 64 kilobytes of memory, Habitat became the first massively multiplayer virtual world in 1982.

Behind the first massively multiplayer virtual world was a home computer that was comically underpowered by today’s standards. Introduced in November 1982, the Commodore 64 was named for its then-generous 64 kilobytes of memory. In its twelve years on the market, it became the best-selling desktop computer in history. A conservative estimate puts its sales at 12.5 million machines worldwide.

The C64 sold for $595 in the US, compared to about $1500 for an Apple II with just 48 kilobytes of memory, and £399 in the UK. The computer, which looked like a thick keyboard, could use a TV as a monitor. Its operating system and the BASIC programming language were built into its hardware, requiring no disk to boot up. Typical for the time, an external drive to store and read software on floppy disks cost extra. Commodore, declared CEO Jack Tramiel, made ‘computers for the masses, not the classes’.

The C64’s low price was made possible by an unusual selection of chips. The CPU was a cheap, efficient, stripped-down industrial controller. The sound chip was designed for music synthesizers, the graphics chip for video games. The result was an inexpensive machine whose sound and 16-color palette were ahead of their time.

You know it had to be good when it was endorsed by one of the top representatives of Starfleet Command:

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

DOJ: Report Illegal Aliens Or Lose Welfare Funding. “With Trump47, normal Americans are back in charge again, and illegal aliens are being deported just as the law requires. Now the DOJ is telling state welfare agencies that if they want to keep receiving welfare funding, they have to report illegal aliens on their rolls.”

Maybe we’ll find out what those rolls are really worth.

Posted at 1:47 pm by Stephen Green

WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH BOY GEORGE IS A VOICE OF SANITY:

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

GOT WOKE, GOING BROKE: Jaguar Land Rover is stuck in a doom loop of its own making.

June’s big investor-strategy day, at which PB Balaji, JLR’s new boss, pledged to focus on “propulsion flexibility”, was yet more confused corporate waffle from an organisation that has turned vacuous jargon into an art form.

At times, the nonsense coming out of Solihull (JLR’s West Midlands office) has been so profoundly silly that one wonders whether even the poor souls tasked with articulating it to employees and customers understand what it means.

A company whose bold advertising once enticed motorists with the promise of driving a “12-cylinder animal” now trots out slogans such as “live vivid” and “copy nothing” as part of a credulous, unnecessary and self-destructive embrace of diversity.

Indeed, JLR has been so enthusiastic about adopting fashionable causes that it seems to have forgotten its primary function: making cars.

At times, it has been hard to escape the impression that this woke crusade has come at the expense of the day-to-day running of the business.

Perhaps it’s nothing more than a coincidence that JLR was the victim of a devastating cyber attack just months after it committed commercial harakiri with the launch of a “Barbie pink” car.

However, it is a simple fact that time spent needlessly obsessing about how to be progressive is time not spent on more important matters, such as ensuring customer data are safe from criminals.

Jaguar went from promoting this car branding in 2015…

…To this, less than a decade later:

In Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg wrote, “There’s a reason liberal economists joke that General Motors is a health-care provider that makes cars as an industrial by-product.” Jag went one better — they decided to stop making the cars as well.

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

NOVEMBER PREVIEW: Beto Talarico Was Outraged That Texas ‘Ignored God’s Messengers’ and Refused to Limit Gun Rights.

They rejected former U.S. Rep. Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke at the ballot box in 2018 when he ran against U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz on a platform that included strict gun control. National Democrat voters rejected him again in 2020 when he tried his hand at a White House bid. That campaign went so badly for him that he was forced to drop out before any primary election ballots were cast. Then he was crushed in the 2022 gubernatorial race against incumbent Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, with Texas voters again rejecting him by more than 10 points.

It turns out that yelling, “Hell yeah, we’re going to take your AR-15s,” from the debate stage isn’t a particularly effective way of winning over Texas voters.

Now, in 2026, Texas Democrats are once again running a candidate who proudly spouts the “ban modern sporting rifles” gun control mantra, hoping that maybe this time Texas gun owners will somehow vote differently.

Yeah, I have a hard time believing polls showing Beta-But-Weirder neck-and-neck with Paxton.

Posted at 12:45 pm by Stephen Green

THAT’S A HAPPY SPANIEL: James May drives his favorite Grand Tour car.

 

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

WHEN BEING “CONVENTIONALLY SEXY” MAKES SOMEONE NEARLY UNIQUE…:

…they’ll get rich, too.

But can America truly be great again without Old Milwaukee bringing back the Swedish Bikini Team?

Posted at 12:28 pm by Stephen Green

HEH. INDEED.

Posted at 12:11 pm by Glenn Reynolds

MUCH MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: This “land acknowledgement” from Rep. Brandon Gill at last night’s convention is the best thing you’ll see today.

It’s only appropriate that we kick this off with a land acknowledgment. I’d like to acknowledge that we stand here today in the great state of Texas and the United States of America– the ancestral homeland of great American patriots, pioneers and explorers who put down roots, fought for freedom all over the globe, and bled and died to build the greatest civilization known to man.

My friends, we live in the finest country in the history of the world. And we’re no longer going to apologize for that.

This is the way.

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll