December 6, 2025

OPEN THREAD: Saturday night’s alright for blogging.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

SHAKEDOWN STREET:

Posted at 9:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

FROM ERIC S. RAYMOND, A POLITE WARNING:

Posted at 8:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

OLD AND BUSTED: “To Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before.”

The New Hotness? To Boldly Go Where Beverly Hills 90210 Has Gone Before:

Needless to say, the cringe is extremely strong in this one. As the Critical Drinker notes in the video below:

This feels like the kind of show that their target audience would have on a second screen while they flick through social media on their phone.

So every so often they can look up and see some really hot, young, muscly, good-looking characters having relationship stuff going on—vaguely connected to the Star Trek universe—and then they can look back at their phone again. That’s honestly what this seems to have been designed for.

And, wow. As you say, Star Trek used to be a show of real intelligence and ideas, something that would expand your view of the world and what was possible. And this is what it is now? Wow.

Gene Roddenberry must be rolling over in his grave. The first show he produced was The Lieutenant, starring Gary Lockwood, who would appear as a guest star in the second Star Trek pilot, before hopping on a plane to London to become the co-star of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Lieutenant depicted Lockwood’s character as being, as Wikipedia notes, the young idealistic “recent graduate of the United States Naval Academy who is assigned his first command, that of a rifle platoon,” at Camp Pendleton in southern California. Roddenberry, a former L.A. cop and WWII bomber pilot, kept the military theme going in the original Star Trek, of course. Even after Roddenberry’s death, Star Trek: The Next Generation could do an episode set in Starfleet Academy that depicted a far more disciplined and serious group of students studying to join a futuristic military origination than the weird L.A. high school class in space depicted in the new trailer.

Oh, and just to put the button on the new series: Stephen Colbert Joins Cast of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, Role Revealed at New York Comic Con.

James Lileks once wrote that whenever Kirk mentioned “we were at the Academy together” about that week’s guest star, it was Trek’s version of “I have a bad feeling about this.” I’ve got a very, very bad feeling about Starfleet Academy. 

UPDATE:

Posted at 7:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

STARVE THE BEAST. EITHER THAT, OR TAKE OFF AND NUKE ALL THE SITES FROM ORBIT:

Posted at 5:53 pm by Stephen Green

ZOOM: First Look: Behold, the All-New Toyota GR GT V-8 Hybrid-Powered Supercar! “The silhouette is something out of the concept garage in the Sony PlayStation Gran Turismo 7 video game But what you’re looking at is neither a racing sim, nor a concept car. The GR GT is a full production vehicle, built by Toyota’s Gazoo Racing (GR) performance brand.”

Posted at 5:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

WE NEED A COMPLETE AND TOTAL SHUTDOWN OF SACRAMENTO UNTIL WE CAN FIGURE OUT WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON THERE: Gavin Newsom’s Twisted ‘Crotch Clench’ Sparks Concern, Baffles Experts.

There’s something wrong with Gavin Newsom. Americans recoiled in horror, then squinted in fascination at the images of Newsom’s appearance at the New York Times Dealbook Summit. There he was, the greaseball California governor, sitting in a chair with his legs crossed impossibly tight, protruding akimbo at improbable angles like a human swastika, a wanton display of “testicle-crushing” contortion. It was the opposite of manspreading, the inverse of kink-splaying, yet Newsom’s gnarled pose, his tangled appendages—like a steel-beamed hedgehog standing guard at Omaha Beach—still managed to intrude upon the public space in a way that many found unsettling.

Still though, it could always be worse: Gavin Newsom bites back with bonkers photo after being roasted for bizarre sitting position.

California Governor Gavin Newsom bit back at detractors for rumbling about his awkward sitting position.

Newsom, 58, was mercilessly trolled online earlier this week after critics took issue with his cross-legged position while he spoke at The New York Times‘ DealBook Summit.

His press office was quick to bite back, releasing an AI-generated image of the Democrat sitting his legs to in the air and his ankles crossed by his face. His hands were raised to his middle and pressed flatly into each other.

‘Democracy requires flexibility,’ his office wrote on X Friday.

Newsom, himself, reposted the image, writing: ‘WOW!’

Conquest’s Third Law of Politics states, “The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.” Particularly those who staff its social media departments.

Posted at 4:48 pm by Ed Driscoll

HUGH HEWITT INTERVIEWS POWER LINE’S SCOTT JOHNSON: The first reporter on the Minnesota fraud scandal on how this iceberg of a story is being revealed.

Posted at 2:20 pm by Ed Driscoll