August 26, 2026

JUST IN CASE YOU WANTED ANOTHER REMINDER OF WHY EVERYONE LOVED DOLLY:

Posted at 12:28 pm by Stephen Green

MORE DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: State spins shockingly bad Colorado education testing data.

Any of the following would be perfectly accurate and appropriate headlines for testing data released August 19 from the Colorado Measures of Academic Success:

“Most students grades 3–8 behind in all subjects according to state testing.”

“State testing shows overall low student scores increase in just over half of categories by grade and subject.”

“Nearly two-thirds of Colorado students struggle in math despite small testing gains.”

“Large majority of Black and Hispanic students continue to struggle in language and math.”

Here is an actual headline from the Denver Post that’s reasonable: “2026 CMAS results show Colorado students making gains in math, falling behind in reading.”

A comparable headline from Chalkbeat, posted May 29 based on preliminary data, reads: “Student math proficiency rises but literacy results are mixed, preliminary Colorado test scores show.”

Spin, spin, spin.

Posted at 10:40 am by Stephen Green

WHAT COMES AFTER GIGA?

More:

The production site is over 2km long, and the Starfactory alone has a floor space of over 7.6 million square feet (629,000 sq m). The Gigabay (if, it is still called that!) is over four times the area of the existing Gigabay design.

The whole site measures over 12 miles (20km) in length and takes up an area of roughly 14,000 acres.

Starbase, Lousiana is set to begin construction next year, with the first launch in 2029.

“Impressive” doesn’t begin to cover it.

Posted at 10:24 am by Stephen Green

VIRGINIA POSTREL: In the Land of AI and Bamboo Forks.

You know you are in a different world when you go to the (one person, non-gendered) bathroom at Anthropic. Next to the sink, there is a lavish display of items you might need, just in case. I am old enough to be impressed by bathrooms with free tampons instead of machines that may or may not work, may or may not be filled, and will definitely require exact change. Anthropic has tampons and pads, as is now the norm. It also has razors and shaving cream. It has little lint rollers and tiny deodorants so adorable I swiped one. It has toothbrushes, toothpaste, mouthwash, dental floss, and dental picks. The toothpaste is Tom’s and the toothbrushes are, according to their brown paper packaging, made of bamboo.

For a place that prides itself on tolerating—and making billions from—the peculiarities of the “neurodiverse,” San Francisco is remarkably determined to make you stick bamboo in your mouth. Uncoated wood hitting my teeth makes my skin crawl. It is an involuntary response and horrible—a reaction that is not unique to me.1 I spent my days in San Francisco slurping yogurt off bamboo spoons and trying to get lettuce off bamboo forks without letting the bamboo hit my teeth. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

San Francisco’s rage for bamboo cutlery seems to be a result of a 2019 ordinance combined with local mores. It’s a signal that the city is culturally removed from normal life. This is a place that worships the “natural” (hence the Tom’s) while exploring new frontiers in artifice. It is a very specific cultural bubble. Cultural bubbles aren’t bad per se, but you need to be aware that you’re living in one.

Read the whole thing. As James Lileks once wrote, “You realize: no one in a dystopia probably thinks they’re living in a dystopia.”

Posted at 10:22 am by Ed Driscoll

FLORIDA, MAN: New College reports record enrollment after conservative takeover.

New College of Florida welcomed its largest student body in the school’s history last week, three years after a conservative overhaul of the institution’s governing board.

This week, the Tallahassee Democrat reported that the public college surpassed its 1,000 enrollment goal for the 2026-2027 academic year.

Classes began Aug. 17 with 1,015 students – although “final official headcount won’t be determined until after a drop and add period for class registrations” in about two weeks, according to the report.

“New College is operating with exceptional momentum,” the college said in a statement to the newspaper. “Ultimately, this growth creates a more vibrant campus and positions New College students as a robust pipeline meeting both higher education and immediate workforce needs of the Sarasota community.”

A public liberal arts institution, New College never was a large school. However, those now leading the board have made enrollment expansion a goal.

Well done — and good luck going forward.

Posted at 9:38 am by Stephen Green

THEY AREN’T INTO THAT KIND OF STUFF:

It would be nice to see the GOP get serious about impeachments. Alas.

Posted at 9:22 am by Stephen Green

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: America Isn’t Ready for a Post-Dolly Parton World. “Her brilliance as a singer and a songwriter were enough to launch her to superstardom. It was how she handled the superstardom that put her in a category of her own. She managed to be both supremely self-confident and self-effacing at the same time. I’ve never seen anything like it; one of those qualities usually pales in comparison to the other. That’s if they can coexist at all.”

Posted at 9:07 am by Stephen Green

ALEX, I’LL TAKE “THINGS EVERYBODY FIGURED OUT BACK IN MARCH” FOR $400:

Posted at 8:51 am by Stephen Green

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Maryland felony cases against Zizian trans death cult members abruptly suspended.

The cases against cult leader Jack “Ziz” LaSota and subordinates Michelle “Jamie” “Alex” Zajko and Daniel “Hastur” Blank were made inactive on Aug. 14; All scheduled future trial dates were canceled.

LaSota, Zajko and Blank were arrested together following a national manhunt on Feb. 16, 2025 in rural western Maryland. They were found with a cache of weapons in their two box trucks. They had spent years moving around the country as members of the Zizians, a radical transgender cult who has been linked to at least eight violent deaths.

The three initially faced only misdemeanor trespassing, firearms and obstruction charges after an elderly Frostburg-area property owner reported that they had arrived in box trucks and asked to camp on his property.

Authorities later added charges involving the alleged illegal possession and carrying of concealed and loaded firearms.

And: “The reason prosecutors chose to suspend the Maryland cases has not been publicly explained.”

LaSota and Zajko still face other more serious charges.

Posted at 8:36 am by Stephen Green

BRITAIN, BEFORE ITS ABOLITION:

Earlier: Fenway Park Video Shows the America We Lost:

“After receiving almost 10 million views, the video was so flooded with pointed comments that Fenway had to lock it. The message was clear: The America in the video exposed the unmistakable decline of our current nation. Millions of viewers saw it and immediately understood why.”

Predictably, the first instinct of critics on the left was to cry racism over these heartfelt reactions to a lost America. It is true that the crowds in the footage were overwhelmingly white. Therefore, the argument goes, any longing that scene stirs in people must be rooted in racism and xenophobia, rather than a recognition of the defects of our current cultural reality.

This is a lazy, intellectually dishonest dodge. Race is not the point; assimilation is. The people in that 1950s footage were, in many cases, themselves first- or second-generation Americans—Irish, Italian, Polish, Jewish, among others. They were people whose parents or grandparents had arrived here through Ellis Island. They did not come to recreate the old country on American soil, transforming it. They came to become American—to transform themselves. They learned the language, embraced the civic norms, cheered on the same teams as their neighbors, and played by the same unwritten rules that made public spaces safe and orderly. Baseball was not merely entertainment. It was a sacrament of a shared American identity.

That unifying force is precisely what is missing today. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu—who was booed loudly along with Governor Maura Healey on the field at Opening Day—recently declared that “you cannot talk about any achievement that the city of Boston has had … without talking about the Somali community that has lifted our city up.” The Fenway video is a devastating rebuttal to her. There are no Somalis visible in those 1950s stands—nor could there have been, given the timeline.

Boston was already a thriving, safe city then—long before the mass migration waves of recent decades. Wu’s historically inaccurate boast is not just pandering, but a symptom of our so-called elites’ refusal to acknowledge that America’s greatness was built by those who bought into its culture, not by those who were imported to transform it.

Make America this again:

(Classical allusion in headline.)

Posted at 8:35 am by Ed Driscoll