September 27, 2026

THE KINDER AND GENTLER WORLD BEFORE EUROPEAN COLONIALISM: 700-year-old skull in China is first evidence of punitive nose amputation. “Researchers say a roughly 700-year-old skull from China could mark the first archaeological case anywhere of nose amputation used as punishment, and signs on the bones suggest the woman lived through it. If that interpretation is correct, the find would offer physical confirmation of a harsh penalty long described in ancient Chinese writings but not previously identified in human remains.”

Posted at 1:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

ROGER KIMBALL: Varieties of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

There are two things to register about TDS. The first is how virulent it is. The second is how it tends to worsen, not attenuate, with the passage of time. Farr’s Law does not seem to be operative in the career of this virus. During Trump’s first term, we saw things we had never seen in this country before. The parade of women in pink “pussy hats” was just a local variation on the sort of thing that might have plagued George W. Bush. But as Trump’s first term unfolded, the insanity increased. There was the whole “Russia Collusion Hoax,” for example, a caper hatched in the White House in the final days of Barack Obama’s second term. It was meant to delegitimize and ultimately end the Trump administration, and it very nearly did.

Then there came the systematic censorship and deplatforming of the president of the United States. He was booted off various social media platforms—what were then Twitter, Facebook, etc.—and essentially denied an effective means of communicating with his supporters. Pause for a moment to consider how bizarre it was that the president of the United States was censored and denied a place in the national conversation.

It gets worse. “Grok: Is it true that Trump was debanked?” “Yes—in 2021, after January 6, several large banks closed accounts tied to Donald Trump and Trump businesses.”

Beginning in 2028, the rehabilitation of Trump’s reputation will begin in the legacy media, softening him as a wise elder statesman, when a new Hitler emerges — a man far worse than the current Hitler — and campaigns to succeed him.

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Cambridge University abandons full investigation into hiring of plagiarist professor Jason Arday. 

Cambridge University will no longer fully investigate its hiring of Professor Jason Arday. The university had previously said it would investigate the circumstances surrounding the professor’s appointment and his time at Cambridge.

Arday was found dead by apparent suicide last month after facing public scrutiny for allegations concerning plagiarism in portions of his doctoral thesis and other work. Cambridge announced its review would instead look into whether the university had adequately supported Arday amid allegations of plagiarism.

The move is a departure from a promise made by the school’s Vice-Chancellor, Deborah Prentice, who said there would be a “thorough and transparent” investigation into the hiring of Arday. It is now unclear if Cambridge will ever publicly address the vetting process used for Arday to obtain his senior teaching job.

They won’t, or at least not until much more pressure is applied. And thus, nothing will change. Professor Kingsfield and even Dean Wormer left the academy a long time ago:

 

 

Posted at 12:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

HOARDERS AND WRECKERS DESCEND UPON THE LAST DITCH: Paranoid owner of woke Mass. lesbian bar puts big restrictions on mask-free Saturday over ‘infiltrator’ fear.

The first mask-free Saturday since a Massachusetts lesbian bar went viral for descending into a catty culture war was nearly canceled after its last remaining owner claimed the venue was being “infiltrated.”

Greenfield’s Last Ditch Bar caused an uproar when it broke the news last month to its “immunocompromised disabled divas” it was lifting its mandatory mask policy for just one night a week in a bid to boost business — six full years after the COVID-19 pandemic.

More than one dozen patrons gathered at the door shortly after 7 p.m. for a “goth night” with underground DJs “Hannibal Directive” and “Puppy Synthesis” were turned away and told to come back at 10 p.m. because staff was holding a last-minute emergency meeting. Most hadn’t gotten the memo about theme.

When they returned, the by now nearly 100 people rushing to get in were promptly informed by the financially struggling establishment that because of unspecified “safety breaches,” the mask-free dance night they’d been eagerly anticipating for the past three hours was now a private event — and that if they couldn’t name someone they knew inside, they were being 86’d.

Patrons also had to hand over their ID to staff as a supposed “security measure,” and could only pick it up on the way out.

Despite the outcry about the decision to go mask-free one night a week by those who called it a “mass disabling event” and a “eugenicist” attack, on Saturday fewer than a dozen patrons were masked.

“It just feels off-putting,” said Pete, 43, who lives in nearby Northampton, the city that’s been labeled “Lesbianville, USA,” of wearing a mask.

“I thought it would be more inclusive for me to go on Saturdays,” Patricia Sonaike, 24, a Houston, Texas, native who is a junior at UMass Amherst studying biology and member of the LGBTQ+ community, told The Post.

“In my humblest of opinions, the moral grandstanding that is happening right now is like how a lot of these queer and BIPOC spaces won’t last.”

The crowd danced to techno pop music on the black and white checkered dance floor that had a stripper pole in the middle, as anime cartoons played on a projector screen and neon lights flashed.

Yesterday, I described the Last Ditch as a prewritten Saturday Night Live sketch that the show wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot stripper pole. But a story this bonkers deserves a much bigger screen, or at the very least a TV series all its own: Viral Lesbian Bar Article From Boston Globe Is Piquing Hollywood’s Interest.

Of course it’s peaking Hollywood’s interest:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

ALSO, SHE LOOKS LIKE SHE’S HAVING FUN. MOST FAMOUS WOMEN TODAY SEEM LIKE JOYLESS SCOLDS.

Posted at 11:19 am by Glenn Reynolds

A REMINDER OF WHAT IS AT STAKE IN NOVEMBER:

 

Posted at 10:45 am by Ed Driscoll

OUT ON A LIMB: AOC’s team admitted it: The Green New Deal was never about saving the planet.

The Green New Deal is all about power and control.

Shortly after Ocasio-Cortez introduced the Green New Deal, her chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, let the cat out of the bag.

“The interesting thing about the Green New Deal, is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all,” Chakrabarti admitted to reporters. “Do you guys think of it as a climate thing? Because we really think of it as a ‘how do you change the entire economy’ thing.”

With most Americans no longer worried about a climate change apocalypse, I suspect the left will simply invent another scaremongering campaign to justify the Green New Deal.

Whatever they come up with, Americans should remain skeptical because the Green New Deal is just a mechanism for the far Left to exert unprecedented command and control.

As summer wound down, the left seamlessly transferred the “we only have five/ten/12 years to save the planet” rhetoric of radical environmentalism to AI doomsday rhetoric:

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll

THE DNC-MSM’S BATTLEFIELD PREP FOR THE MIDTERMS:

Posted at 7:17 am by Ed Driscoll

FIRST, DO NO HARM.

Posted at 7:07 am by Glenn Reynolds

AWFUL PRESIDENT:

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

September 26, 2026

OPEN THREAD: Party on.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

“IRONY.”

Posted at 9:21 pm by Glenn Reynolds

CRUSADESMAXXING: The Jerusalem Cross is going up on A-road lampposts. Richard the Lionheart kit at Reform rallies. Templars at Tommy Robinson marches. “Christ is King!” cried by Danny Tommo and his lot down in Dover. Crusader crosses are quietly usurping the Cross of St George — itself a crusader cross — at Portsmouth, London and points between. The algorithm is pumping out AI knight reels faster than a medieval pope pumping out papal bulls. England is Crusadesmaxxing.

The crusades were a defensive struggle by indigenous peoples against occupation by settler colonialists.

Posted at 9:07 pm by Glenn Reynolds