November 10, 2026

NIFTY:

Posted at 5:37 pm by Stephen Green

I READ AN ADVANCE COPY, AND AMELIA HAMILTON’S LATEST IS ENDLESSLY CHARMING: Myrtle Saves the Boston Tea Party. “When a mysterious time ripple threatens to change the history of the Boston Tea Party, the American Revolution could be ruined before it even begins. It’s up to Myrtle, a specially trained Labrador retriever, to leap through time and keep history on track.”

It’s the start of Amelia’s new “Myrtle Saves America” series aimed at middle school readers who also love dogs — as it was more than charming enough for this middle-aged dog lover.

Posted at 5:22 pm by Stephen Green

REQUIEM FOR A TRUCK:

I mean sure, it’s striking, and unique, and does appear to be straight out of the Tron franchise, if that’s your cup of tea. But would it kill these EV manufacturers to tap into colorful nostalgia instead of cold cyberpunk aesthetics for once? Literally just one time?? Seriously guys, what is stopping you from building electric vehicles that look like this:

Still, it would be unfair to solely chastise Elon for a design pattern reflected across the entire EV industry… even if the Tesla CEO pushed it to the extreme. Besides, the man is already facing enough criticism from folks like Shitstain Scott Galloway, who, upon wiping his ass, will once again resume calling for Elon’s summary execution.

Instead, we should admire our brave Rocket Man for once again daring to build something awe-inspiring (if a bit odd). In Cybertruck, he created something bold and unique, unlike any vehicle we’ve ever seen. That ambitious, risk-taking spirit is something we will always admire at Pirate Wires.

As we mourn the passing of Cybertruck (2019-2027) — the brave electric engine that could — let us remember what it taught us about ourselves, and always strive to be the best version of what we saw in that angular, stainless steel mirror.

To quote the words of one Hogarth Hughes to another Iron Giant (Warner Bros. 1999) who also met an untimely end amidst humanity’s bitter division and turmoil — “You don’t have to be a gun…

…you are who you choose to be.” 

Alas though, Galloway can’t:

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

DOG BITES MAN: Nets Hype Hegseth Impeachment Chatter, Ignore Senate Dems in Disarray. “Correspondent Caitlin Huey-Burns helps Massie advance the leftist talking point of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro being kidnapped, along with the other reasons for the punitive impeachment of Hegseth. The item includes a soundbite from Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon, who says ‘Hegseth was not the right choice,’ and a soundbite from an incoming Democrat freshman saying it’s not a matter of if but when.”

Related (From Ed):

Posted at 4:51 pm by Stephen Green

WILL NO ONE REMEMBER THE ORANGE JULII OF DAYS GONE BY?

Somewhat more seriously, Sam Lyman adds: “The woman pictured here credited the viral success of her campaign to the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a China proxy organization operating here in the United States.”

Posted at 4:35 pm by Stephen Green

JOHN NOLTE: Disney Sells Out to AI (Again) with Adobe Deal.

Pure gobbledygook. So I asked Grok what it meant. Grok’s first explanation made no sense. So I asked Grok to dumb it down. Now we’re getting somewhere…

“Disney’s teams (especially the people who design theme parks) already sketch ideas on paper. The AI can quickly turn those rough sketches into polished concept art that looks like official Disney style (Mickey, Star Wars, Marvel, etc.),” Grok explained. “They’re also building private AI models that only know Disney’s characters, worlds, and art styles. That way the AI won’t invent weird or off-brand stuff, and everything stays under Disney’s control.”

Bottom line: “It speeds up the early design process for parks, rides, movies, and ESPN stuff so ideas can move from ‘rough sketch’ to ‘ready to show the bosses’ much faster.”

Grok then falls for the spin with the claim that none of this will replace Disney artists or create AI-designed movies or rides.

Except it will.

Of course it will.

Former Cheers producer Rob Long has a better suggestion for using AI in Hollywood: The Showbiz Jobs AI Should Replace.

If David Ellison, the new owner of the Antietam battlefield called Warner Bros., replaced every single executive tomorrow, no writer in town would realize that the call was no longer coming from an office on Colorado Boulevard in Santa Monica but a data farm in the Nevada desert instead. It would be like swapping out the Darrins on Bewitched. After a day or so, no one would notice.

And what would the server rack need to learn? Not much. After every pitch, it would learn to say this: Fun stuff, let us talk internally and get back to you. In every notes session, this: Is there a way to show more of the quirks of the female character? A consistent body of language has been created that a large language model can master in an hour. What I’m proposing is a next-token prediction engine: It produces, one word at a time, whatever response is statistically most likely. If you’ve ever sat through a notes call, you’ll recognize that as the job description.

I know, I know: Crazy Modest Proposal stuff, right? But in 1729, when Jonathan Swift published A Modest Proposal, his satirical pamphlet that calmly suggested the Irish poor solve their poverty by selling their children as food to the rich, the poor weren’t actually doing it. Not so in Hollywood. Several studios already run scripts through AI coverage before a human reader ever sees them. There’s a new tool that tells a studio, within nanoseconds of uploading new script drafts, whether a writer took the studio executives’ notes. Hollywood has spent three years worrying that AI is coming for the writers and artists and Mystery staff, but it hasn’t yet; meanwhile, the Spreadsheet side has invited its own replacement into the meeting and taught it how to say, There’s lots here in this pass we love, but we have a few places that bump for us.

Rob’s article was written prior the November midterms; leftist politicians and activists are curiously, “Progressives” who find technological progress rather frightening, and are counting on voters to feel the same: Everything is Stupid Now.

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

THREE THINGS VERY MUCH WORTH YOUR TIME:

First, Heather Berlin’s new Substack, Berlin on the Brain. She’s a neuroscientist who cares about free speech, skepticism, and the scientific method.

Second, her brand new TED talk, which is fabulous.

Third, our work on the Reality Test project

But what does neuroscience have to do with freedom of speech and knowledge creation? Well, tune in to find out!

(Yes, I am old and I still think about tuning radio dials. It’s a nice image.)

Posted at 4:27 pm by Greg Lukianoff

BUKELE JUST DID MORE TO HELP HAITI THAN THE CLINTONS OR JILLION-DOLLAR NGOS EVER DID OR WILL:

Posted at 4:04 pm by Stephen Green

REUTERS TODAY:

“Investors ​had previously discussed a valuation of ​as much as $2 trillion for ⁠Anthropic, but expectations have since come down, with the $1.5 trillion figure viewed as the high end of the range.”

Battleswarm Blog yesterday: Anthropic IPO Sounds Like Total Bullshit.

Posted at 3:33 pm by Stephen Green

SHE REALLY WILL BE MISSED:

Somehow, I don’t think photos of my Aerogarden basil would do as well.

Posted at 3:02 pm by Stephen Green

HUGH HEWITT: Three big legal fights are looming, and Trump needs answers before January.

Everyone should expect President Trump to follow the examples of Presidents Clinton, Obama and Biden and play full-court defense against what have already been announced as sweeping inquiries into executive branch conduct by such members as Garcia and Congressman Jamie Raskin, D-Md., who will chair the House Judiciary Committee. Both committees have subpoena powers.

President Trump may require a legal opinion from the attorney general under 28 U.S.C. § 511, and when such a demand is made, the AG turns to OLC. Before OLC is deluged with requests from President Trump and AG Blanche in 2027 on the scope of executive privilege across the executive branch, the president could secure some important OLC opinions between now and January 3, when the new Congress is sworn in.

Three such questions come to mind in light of last week’s sweeping Democratic wins across the country and the often very extreme positions put forward by Democrats campaigning for House or Senate seats.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 2:47 pm by Stephen Green

BRADLEY THOMPSON: You Can See Nothing.

As a “documentary,” you learn nothing about how or why Holmes started Theranos, you learn virtually nothing about Theranos’s development of their wonder device, and you learn nothing about the trial in which Holmes was found guilty of defrauding customers and investors. Instead, you get to hang out for four weeks with a neutered ménage à trois of self-absorbed, millennial strivers at a California beach house. Can you imagine anything more tedious or interminably boring!?!?! In the end, the film is a cross between François Truffaut’s 1962 Jules et Jim and Robert Klane’s 1993 Weekend at Bernies II.

The self-promoted premise of this not-true-to-life “documentary” is radical transparency but in a dark, shadowy, brooding, film-noir sort of way. But there is nothing transparent about this fictional account of reality other than the utterly depraved worldview of postmodern millennials and millennial postmodernism. The whole thing has that edgy, avant-garde, NYU film-school vibe to it. It’s all about being clever, all-too-clever.

Here’s the storyline.

Thirty-four days before she is about go off jail to serve her 11-year sentence, Elizabeth Holmes and her live-in boyfriend, Billy Evans, invite Fielder and his film crew into their home virtually 24-7 right up until the moment she goes off to prison. Half of the film (and yes, I’m calling it a film rather than a documentary) is set at the couple’s rented Del Mar, California beach house. The couple has a toddler and a nursing baby, who, you might think, deserve the full attention of their self-obsessed parents.

Let’s stop right there and ask the obvious question: Who does that? Seriously, what kind of human being would want a film crew and a creepy interlocutor encamped in their house ‘round the clock as they’re about to experience the worst moment of their lives? Normal people would, of course, want privacy. Normal people would want to spend every remaining second with their children, but we’re not talking about normal people. We’re talking about postmodern millennial narcissists.

Every scene of this tawdry melodrama screams, “Look at me, look at me, look at me! I’m important, don’t ya know?”

From Let It Be to Gimme Shelter to Hail, Hail Rock & Roll, to The September Issue, the 2009 look back at Vogue and the sneering pomposity of Anna Wintour just before the dead tree publishing industry hit the big iceberg, as Kyle Smith wrote, the magic of the documentary format is simple: “Convince somebody that you’re going to make them a big-screen star, then let them hang themselves.”

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

MUH DEMOCRACY™ IN ACTION:

Posted at 2:32 pm by Stephen Green