December 15, 2025

FASTER? PLEASE! 5,000 FPS? “I assume many in the gun community will see a bullet that light out of a barrel that small as nothing more than a novelty, but 5,000+ fps is nothing to sneeze at.”

Posted at 6:18 pm by Stephen Green

FAKE PLASTIC TREES: Fox Business host says Americans need to buy fake trees so Christmas farms can be used for AI data centers.

There’s a winning message for Fox News’ core demographic! As Harris Rigby of Not the Bee writes, “Even Hollywood couldn’t get away with a movie about a cartoonish conservative whose evil plot is to shut down all of the family heirloom Christmas tree farms data centers.”

Classical reference in headline:

Posted at 6:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

57 YEARS AGO TODAY: The story of Philadelphia Eagles fans throwing snowballs at Santa Claus.

The Eagles, only six years removed from an NFL championship, started 0-8 in 1968 under coach Joe Kuharich and seem poised to finish with the worst record in the league and earn the No. 1 draft pick in the draft. That meant a chance at selecting USC running back O. J. Simpson.

Only once the Eagles won two straight games — hadn’t anyone heard of Tankadelphia? — essentially surrendering the top spot to Buffalo, disillusioned fans were fed up headed into the finale. And when the Eagles needed a pinch-hit Santa to fill in for the real-deal halftime act either stranded elsewhere in a snowstorm or simply no-showing because of one, they plucked a fan out of the stands who happened to dress as Saint Nick to toss candy canes into the crowd.

As instructed, 20-year-old Frank Olivo ran downfield past a row of elf-costumed “Eaglettes” and the team’s 50-person brass band playing “Here Comes Santa Claus.” Only fans turned on him in his disheveled outfit, angry over another lost Eagles season, and cold, tired and feeling a bit churlish, they booed and chucked snowballs at the woeful Santa impostor.

“Certainly,” said Eagles fan Ray Didinger, sitting at the Snowball Game in Row 24, “no one was trying to hurt Santa Claus.”

Yet, here they are, 55 years later, still atop the naughty list for sports fans everywhere.

The Eagles themselves sure don’t hate Christmas — they sing all the holiday classics instead. Led by Lane Johnson, Jason Kelce and Jordan Mailata, the Eagles have released Christmas albums in consecutive seasons.

The snowball story, though, stuck to Philly, so when the Eagles host the New York Giants on Monday, the incident surely will be recycled on the TV broadcast, or on local news, or on national sports highlights — Hey! The city that hates Santa played on Christmas!

“It’s never going to go away,” said Didinger, a journalist who went on to cover the Eagles for 53 years. “Just don’t let it bother you anymore. If you don’t think the Philadelphia fans are like that, and I don’t, then just sort of say, ‘oh well.’ It’s not me. It’s not the way I approach things.”

The legend of Eagles fans booing Santa Claus certainly the bar extremely high for rowdiness at Philadelphia sporting events: Eagles Fans Behaving Badly: The Decade-by-Decade History.

And then there was the broadcaster behaving badly at an Eagles game:

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

EXPOSING ‘A STORY OF FRAUD AND BETRAYAL’ IN ACADEMIA. There’s a new book out about the famous “signing first” paper that claimed promising to be honest ahead of time made people more honest in follow-up data gathering. Turns out the data on honesty was faked, which, cosmically, seems like pushing it.

Posted at 4:22 pm by Robert Shibley

HERE COMES DOGE II: Trump administration launches new cross-government recruitment effort to put Silicon Valle technologist/AI stars in key positions to help solve feds’ biggest, most complex digital problems.

Posted at 3:06 pm by Mark Tapscott

THE NEW SPACE RACE: China plans 2026 debut of new rocket for crewed lunar and LEO missions

The Long March 10 and Long March 10A are being developed as part of China’s next-generation human spaceflight plans. The former, a three-stage rocket featuring a triple-core first stage with 5.0-meter-diameter cores, is designed to launch a new crew spacecraft (Mengzhou) and a separate lunar lander into translunar orbit as part of plans to land Chinese astronauts on the moon before 2030.

The latter, the 10A, is a two-stage, single-stick variant for low Earth orbit (LEO) launches, designed to send a LEO variant of Mengzhou to the Tiangong space station. LEO Mengzhou is designed to be partially reusable and can carry more astronauts to Tiangong.

China’s human spaceflight agency, CMSEO, hinted in October at a planned first flight of the Long March 10 and the Mengzhou spacecraft in 2026, with a logo design competition for the Mengzhou-1 crew spacecraft mission.

CALT’s statement does not make clear if the debut flight will be crewed or uncrewed, nor did it explicitly state the mission will be an integrated launch of the Long March 10A and Mengzhou spacecraft.

When’s that next Starship flight test, Elon?

Posted at 2:46 pm by Stephen Green

SAD:

Posted at 2:33 pm by Stephen Green