November 6, 2026

THAT’S NICE, BUT WE STILL NEED A SPACE TELESCOPE CAPABLE OF DETECTING ORION SLAVE GIRLS: Software squeezes more data out of Webb Telescope for imaging exoplanets. “While telescopes can be fitted with devices called coronagraphs that block out much of a star’s light, there are limits to their effectiveness, caused by noise from subtle variations in the telescope’s configuration and pointing between observations. Now, researchers have developed a new software package that optimizes a physical model of the telescope in a way that allows us to better model these differences, producing low-noise imaging of exoplanets.”

Posted at 2:50 pm by Stephen Green

COLLEGES TEACHING STUDENTS TO HATE AMERICA. Yeah, this is a dog-bites-man story now, but it’s still worth being concerned about. If all this focus on “critical” studies had meant students were learning to think critically, we might be OK. Even if that had been the intent (which I doubt), that clearly isn’t what actually happened, and the failed experiment needs to end ASAP.

Posted at 2:46 pm by Robert Shibley

IT’S TIME FOR VICTORIA TAFT’S West Coast, Messed Coast™: California Failin.’ “Things got worse after Tuesday’s election, when California’s fall gained full velocity, worthy of a Magic Mountain roller coaster. Not to be outdone, Washington State made moves to become California’s mini me, and Oregon rehired truly one of the worst governors in its history.”

Posted at 2:19 pm by Stephen Green

I DON’T LIKE THE SOUND OF THESE BONCENTRATION BAMPS:

Posted at 2:03 pm by Stephen Green

HEY, BIG SPENDER: Claude can now analyze your spending with its new Personal Finance tool.

Anthropic announced Thursday that Claude is getting a new tool called “Personal Finance,” designed to help users keep track of their money. With it, users can connect their bank and credit card accounts through Plaid and ask Claude questions about their finances. Anthropic says access is read-only, meaning Personal Finance can’t move, manage, or invest users’ money.

By letting Claude connect directly to bank and credit card accounts, Anthropic is positioning its chatbot as a financial companion that can help people understand their spending and make sense of their money, rather than simply offering them generic advice.

Hard pass, even if it is “read-only.”

Posted at 1:48 pm by Stephen Green

JULIE BURCHILL: Beware the fauxmosexual.

Does it start with Panto Dames? At Christmas, in flighty old Blighty, little Brit girls are introduced to the idea of a matronly man in a dress who gets most of the laughs and isn’t remotely interested in any of that soppy love stuff that the plucky heroine and the principal boy (played by a girl, of course) get up to. The Pantomime Dame is a place of safety in the dark-scary-forest-world of “Behind you!” that little girls are already aware of at this early age.

And then, when we’re older, pop culture takes over. The Gay Best Friend is the natural go-to for the female casualties of the Love Wars; think of Sex and the City’s Stanford Blatch, always there for Carrie to cry on when Mr Big treats her like a side-piece.

But we’re on trickier territory when it comes to what might be called “fauxmosexuals”, straight men who act gay to get girls. Before Russell Brand was found guilty of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault, his trial featured a telling moment. After hearing that one of the complainants testified that she had presumed Brand to be gay when they met at a Labour Party conference and thus felt “safe” asking him back to her hotel room, the prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones KC whipped out the accused’s unfortunately-titled 2007 memoir My Booky Wook and confronted the leering Lothario with a photograph of himself at the age of seven, with the caption: “This is the exact moment when I decided to act gay to attract girls. It took 15 years to produce results.”

Though he claimed under cross-examination that this was a “joke” (wouldn’t be the first unfunny joke he’d told in his long career of alleged comedy — the only time he made me laugh was when he couldn’t find the verse from Isaiah he was looking for on Piers Morgan Uncensored, while thumbing through the Bible for close to two minutes) and denied he had ever pretended to be gay in order to put women at ease, it wasn’t as convincing as it might have been. There is a long tradition of such behavior in this country although, of course, not necessarily leading to any crime. Indeed, one of Brand’s comedic contemporaries — who most people believed to be gay because of the flagrant way he camped it up — is currently undergoing a right royal canceling due to his highly “bloke-ish” attitude towards women.

“Actor and comedian Russell Brand found guilty of rape and sexual assault,” CNN reports, adding, “Brand faces a lengthy prison sentence after he was found guilty in a London court on Thursday of raping a young fan and sexually assaulting three women.”

Wait, the Brits still actually investigate and arrest people for that sort of thing?

UPDATE: Russell Brand’s Right-Wash. “Whose idea was it to make Russell Brand a right-wing celebrity?…You can be pretty sure you won’t hear much from Messrs. Musk, Trump and Carlson about Mr. Brand now—except perhaps to argue the conspiracy against him is ongoing. But Volodymyr Zelensky didn’t make Mr. Brand a bad person. The Covid vaccine didn’t render the now ostentatiously performative Christian Mr. Brand, interviewed by Piers Morgan while wearing a cross necklace and holding a Bible, unable to recall the verse from scripture that he claimed was his comfort. Some on the right with large followings, however, did conspire to transform a washed-up, degenerate celebrity into a supposed victim of left-wing persecution. They let pure oppositionalism consume them to the point that they abandoned both common sense and morality. And all because siding with Mr. Brand made them feel they were siding against the ‘establishment.’”

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

BAIT & SWITCH:

Posted at 1:32 pm by Stephen Green

CHANGE: Elon Musk admits defeat as Tesla ends production of recall-plagued Cybertruck.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a shock announcement on Friday, declaring that the electric vehicle brand’s iconic Cybertruck would no longer be produced next year.

Musk revealed on X that Tesla’s ‘Gigafactory’ in Texas would begin winding down construction by mid-2027.

One fan called the news ‘the end of an era,’ which caused Musk to reply that his Cybertruck fleet would still be ‘around for a long time.’ Roughly 70,000 vehicles have been purchased since the launch in 2023.

Musk’s announcement sparked backlash from an unlikely group on Friday: Tesla and Cybertruck fans angered by the decision to retire a vehicle they say performs well.

One person said: ‘This is a terrible plan unless you’re coming out with another large vehicle.’ ‘This is madness, Elon. People want a vehicle that we can control off-road that is a Tesla,’ another Tesla fan said.

Musk did not say whether Tesla would continue providing maintenance support or supplying replacement parts for the Cybertruck after production ends in mid-2027.

The Cybertruck sparked controversy and criticism since it was unveiled in 2019, starting with the vehicle’s so-called ‘unbreakable’ window being shattered by a metal ball during Musk’s public presentation.

Customers waited another four years for deliveries to begin, and the rollout was marred by higher prices, a shorter driving range, multiple recalls and disappointing sales.

Hopefully its replacement will have aesthetics that are a bit more graceful:

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

HE CERTAINLY DIDN’T HELP:

Posted at 1:01 pm by Stephen Green

THE NEW SPACE RACE: ELON MUSKSpaceX’s next Starship flight set to make history on Friday the 13th.

The date lands inside the window Elon Musk sketched out last month. Speaking at Giga Texas on October 10, Musk said the flight would “probably launch a little bit before Thanksgiving,” as Teslarati reported. On SpaceX’s third quarter earnings call ten days later, he confirmed that Flight 15 would try to catch both the Super Heavy booster and the ship, and put the odds of a successful ship catch at “more likely than not.” SpaceX also aired an animation of the maneuver during that webcast, showing the ship swinging vertical over Starbase before dropping into the tower’s chopsticks.

The hardware is ready. Booster 22 fired all 33 of its Raptor engines for a full duration static fire at Pad 2 on October 25. Ship 42 followed with a single engine burn simulating a deorbit maneuver on October 26 and a 60 second firing of all six engines the next day, according to NASASpaceflight. Ship 42 had already rehearsed the catch in September, when the Pad 2 arms lifted it into position and crews connected the quick disconnect arm while the vehicle hung from the tower.

The remaining hurdle is regulatory.

That last item is just one of the many places a Dem president could start squeezing Musk, next time they take the White House. His best hope is to wed SpaceX even more deeply into our defense infrastructure over the next two years.

Posted at 12:46 pm by Stephen Green

JOHN SEXTON: Salon Is No More, Pass the Champagne.

Salon writers all seemed to have a strong dislike for anything American. I pulled this quote myself a decade ago.

But my real interaction with Salon happened over what may truly be one of their most famous stories. It was titled, “I’m a pedophile but not a monster.”

The story was pulled down long ago but here’s a bit of what it said:

Those individuals who have the courage to come forward and lay claim to this affliction with the understanding that they only want to use their pedo powers for good should be commended, not hated and feared… So, please, be understanding and supportive. It’s really all we ask of you. Treat us like people with a massive handicap we must overcome, not as a monster.’

Seth Dillon of The Babylon Bee asks the obvious question about Salon’s demise:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

WELL PUT IN ANY LANGUAGE:

Posted at 12:28 pm by Stephen Green

BY CALCULATION OR IGNORANCE?

Posted at 11:59 am by Stephen Green

SCENES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Mediocrity on the march: A poster on kindness isn’t ‘critical thinking.’

When goals are mushy and impossible to measure, “anything goes,” writes Buck, a former teacher who’s now a research fellow and the director of the Conservative Education Reform Network at the American Enterprise Institute.

Nobody’s held accountable for whether students can add fractions or name the three branches of government if the standard of excellence is building a spaghetti tower.

“How can a school foster grit?,” he asks. “Maintain demanding academic gauntlets. How can schools create self-discipline? Set behavioral standards and hold students to them. How can schools enable critical thinking? Provide them the knowledge of history, science, literature, grammar, and the arts that become the tools of critical thought.”

Students don’t become”global citizens” — or just a plain old good citizens — “through kitschy activities where they make posters about how kindness is cool,” Buck concludes.

Yes, but they’re well on their way to septum rings and endorsing political violence on TikTok.

Posted at 11:44 am by Stephen Green