October 10, 2026

ELON MUSK’S ENEMIES MAKE HIS BEST CASE:

In 2023, Alex Gibney, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker, announced that he was working on a documentary about Elon Musk. He asked Musk for an interview. The answer was delivered on X: “Gibney,” Musk informed his 241.5 million followers, “is a douche.”

You could take the world’s richest man at his word. Or you could spend three hours and 55 minutes watching Gibney do his best to prove Musk right.

* * * * * * * *

The real America, the one we know from discernible and observable facts, is nowhere on display. In Gibneystan, no record exists of Musk the champion environmentalist, hailed by the left until he refused to continue and parrot its platitudes. Nor is there any mention of Big Tech’s frequent and egregious collusion with Democrat-controlled administrations; the sin of seeking proximity to political power is unique to the devilish Musk himself.

And Gibneystan might’ve been an amusing place to visit for a few hours if it weren’t for the fact that its denizens wish to impose their strange worldview on the rest of us. As each of Gibney’s interviewees makes clear, theirs is an America in which we oughtn’t to be proud, oughtn’t to work hard, oughtn’t to attempt audacious things. Walking out of Musk, one suspects that had Gibney turned his attention to the moon landing instead, he would’ve given us a portrait of Neil Armstrong as a privileged cisgender white male tragically colonizing the moon.*

None of this, however, is to say that Musk isn’t an effective or an entertaining film. See it, and it’s very likely that even if you entered the theater skeptical about its subject’s achievements, you’ll leave it with a strong, inexplicable desire to dash down to your local Tesla dealer or Starlink retailer and spend some cash to support Elon Musk.

That’s because whatever else he may be, Alex Gibney is a proficient filmmaker, and the choice he gives us in his latest epic is simple: We can live in a world governed by mutually accrediting mediocrities who obfuscate to enforce their strange and zealous ideological beliefs on the rest of us, or we can live in a world where ambitious, curious, and patriotic Americans dream big and go for broke. For most of us, the choice is easy.

* Don’t worry, Hollywood has already made that movie: First Man: One Giant Flop for Moviekind.

Posted at 12:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

DAVID THOMPSON: The Urge To Call You Names.

It turns out that if you’re unhappy about the demographic displacement currently underway – say, in your own, modest neighbourhood, Cate Blanchett questions your humanity and thinks you need educating by actors.

Ms Blanchett, needless to say, is unlikely ever to face any of the issues illustrated above. Living, as she does, in a five-million-pound Victorian manor on a thirteen-acre estate near the overwhelmingly white town of Crowborough in East Sussex. And her other properties, including what is referred to as a holiday cottage in Cornwall, are similarly insulated from any untoward diversity.

As Ms Blanchett doesn’t have to use public transport for a daily commute, she isn’t likely to find herself sitting next to a masturbating African. And she isn’t likely to find all that vibrancy and enrichment crouching on her doorstep and taking a shit.

And Ms Blanchett isn’t likely to find exotic newcomers, these supposed bringers of our betterment, creeping into her garden at night and peering through her windows to watch her, and film her, for erotic purposes.

Well, of course Blanchett chose the path of least resistance for thesp in 21st-century England. Consider the alternative: The Monty Python legend, who has spent decades mocking religious dogma, was reported to Britain’s Prevent program for criticizing Islam. Andrew Doyle explains in The Washington Post why confusing offensive speech with a terrorist threat is a dangerous road to go down.

Similarly, in America, another aging actress reads the script to remain employable in Hollywood: Actress Ellen Barkin Says ‘Burn ICE to the Ground’ After Shooting of Violent Illegal Alien.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

TYLER O’NEIL: Rubio’s Rousing Athens Speech Highlights the Infrastructure Demonizing the West.

Rubio contrasted the ancient Greek “thumos”—the “fire of passion, strength, courage, pride” that helps civilizations succeed—with the current malaise often associated with the “woke” movement.

“Over time, we in the West came to feel ashamed of the very things that made us exceptional,” he warned, noting the tearing down of monuments. “We felt embarrassed that our achievements set us apart from the rest of the world. Our prosperity somehow became a source of guilt. We no longer believed we deserved and had earned our greatness.”

Rubio warned that modern ideologies seem to aim at “a world of perfect safety, devoid of risk or failure, with neither the glory of victory nor the shame of defeat.” He lamented that such an approach leads the West to “design our standards to ensure that no one will lose,” and ultimately “hold the most exceptional things among us hostage to the average, the ordinary, the mediocre.”

It was an excellent condemnation of the ideology behind “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Rubio wasn’t just rejecting the mentality that says we must count every university applicant or every member of a corporate boardroom by race, sex, and sexual orientation; he was condemning the underlying assumption that America is inherently biased against certain groups and that we must atone for this national sin by elevating them.

This critical race theory isn’t cloistered away in some isolated ivory tower. It recently held sway in the commanding heights of American culture, and its institutional framework persists even today.

Earlier, from Glenn at his Substack: Marco Goes Hard — About what really matters.

Posted at 12:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

WE NEED MORE REFINING CAPACITY:

Particularly in California.

Posted at 11:08 am by Stephen Green

FASCINATING:

And here’s X’s auto-generated translation, which for whatever reason doesn’t embed:

Russia successively attacks Ukraine’s data centers
↓
President Zelensky declares retaliation. Successively attacks Yandex’s data centers
↓
Services partially shut down. Due to economic sanctions, acquiring new GPUs is difficult, and recovery seems hopeless
↓
For some reason, this attack causes half of Russia’s bots to stop functioning, making X a bit more peaceful←NOW HERE

Did anyone have “Russian drone strike sets off a small chain of events resulting in cleaner X timelines” on their 2026 bingo card?

Posted at 10:21 am by Stephen Green

THUG NATION: Conservative student says he was threatened after pressing El-Sayed on Iran. “A conservative student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor says he received threats and harassment after questioning Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed about his refusal to directly condemn Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).”

Posted at 10:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

WHAT DID Y’ALL THINK GLOBALIZE THE INTIFADA MEANT? VIBES? PAPERS? ESSAYS? LOSERS.

Classical reference in the headline.

Posted at 9:12 am by Stephen Green

DECLINE IS A CHOICE: Britain is Heading Towards Blackouts. “No large grid anywhere has yet run mostly on wind, solar and batteries with so little spinning plant behind it. NESO’s Chief Executive calls its stability programme ‘world-first’, and means it as praise. Britain is running a colossal experiment on a system that cannot be allowed to fail.”

Fascinating look at what makes grids work, and why Net Zero doesn’t.

Posted at 8:47 am by Stephen Green

I KNOW, I COULDN’T STAND TO WATCH HIM, EITHER:

In other Colbert-related news, the Critical Drinker fires up the Dacia Sandero:

 

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll

#JOURNALISM:

The Wall Street Journal is having a bad decade.

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

SHE’S BASICALLY IMPOSSIBLE NOT TO LIKE:

Posted at 7:26 am by Stephen Green