August 25, 2026

SPACE: NASA Sets Coverage for Roman Space Telescope Launch from Florida.

Named for NASA’s first chief astronomer, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will pair sharp infrared vision with a field of view at least 100 times larger than the agency’s Hubble Space Telescope. Its crisp, sweeping surveys will help scientists investigate dark energy and dark matter, discover and characterize exoplanets, map billions of galaxies, study black holes, and explore objects from our own solar system to the edge of the observable universe.

After launch and separation from the rocket, Roman will travel to the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point, or L2, about one million miles from Earth. The mission has a five-year primary lifetime with a goal of operating for 10 years, and Roman’s science data will be publicly available after processing.

Plus: “NASA and SpaceX are targeting Roman’s liftoff for no earlier than 7:26 a.m. EDT Sunday, Aug. 30, aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Launch coverage begins at 6:20 a.m.”

Those Falcon Heavy launches are something to see, and there aren’t many of them.

The core on this launch will be expended, but SpaceX plans to recover both side boosters and the fairings.

Posted at 4:51 pm by Stephen Green

THEY WERE WARNED:

Glenn noted years ago that lefties suck at understanding second-order effects, and I’ve seen nothing to contradict that.

Posted at 4:35 pm by Stephen Green

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

WHEN SECONDS COUNT, THE POLICE ARE ONLY MINUTES AWAY: Homeowner’s Gun Works When Restraining Order Doesn’t. “Police later confirmed the obvious: the dead man had an active protective order barring him from the very address he’d chosen to invade. Paper and ink meant nothing to a genius who thought ‘restraining order’ was just a polite suggestion. Then again, a restraining order doesn’t enforce itself. Armed self-defense proved harder to ignore.”

Posted at 4:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

NIFTY: Data centers become ‘killer application’ for new power transformer tech.

Several US companies, including Amperesand, Heron Power, and DG Matrix, have collectively raised more than $280 million in funding over the past year to commercialize solid-state transformer technology.

Solid-state transformers could also greatly reduce the amount of copper and other materials needed by data center projects, while their smaller physical footprints allow data center developers to do other things with the available space, Lukic explained.

In the long run, successful commercialization of solid-state transformers could even help ease the broader supply chain shortage affecting power transformers. That would make transformers more readily available for power grid upgrades and expansions beyond data center projects.

“There are relatively few specialized companies that manufacture [conventional] transformers, while solid-state transformers are like an electronics device,” Lukic said. “It completely opens up the space for who can play in the transformer space, and also opens up where transformers can be manufactured.”

Faster, please.

Posted at 3:49 pm by Stephen Green

FREE ALBERTA!

But — oh, Canada — there’s always more:

Posted at 3:33 pm by Stephen Green

LIES, DAMN LIES AND $40 TRILLION NATIONAL DEBT: Issues&Insights nails the Mainstream Media’s attempts to blame Trump and tax cuts for the $40 Trillion national debt (that is actually $176 Trillion).

Posted at 3:15 pm by Mark Tapscott

OBAMA SAID HE’D MAKE COLLEGE MORE AFFORDABLE AND YOU CAN GUESS THE REST:

Posted at 3:02 pm by Stephen Green

SMALL-TOWN CRIME: Ungodly Doings In Godley. “In a small city of some 5,000, you would expect there to be some overlap between the city council and other institutions in town, like the volunteer fire department, the PTA, or the Kiwanis Club. One thing you wouldn’t expect city council overlap with: a prostitution ring.”

Posted at 2:47 pm by Stephen Green

THAT SEEMS RIGHT:

Related thoughts from George MF Washington:

Posted at 2:32 pm by Stephen Green

ED MORRISSEY: Today’s Deep Question: Why Is El-Sayed So Curious About Watters’ Genitalia?

Get ready for 83 seconds of pure … ick.

Actually, today’s truly deep question is what Abdul El-Sayed thought would happen when he agreed to appear on Jesse Watters’ show in the first place. The decision to do an interview on Fox News makes some sense when fighting to win a statewide election in a state Donald Trump won two years ago. Sean Hannity would probably have been the choice there, who routinely offers grace to political opponents, or maybe Bret Baier, although his calm and cool demolition of Kamala Harris deserves legendary status. The Five might have been El-Sayed’s best format.

Instead, El-Sayed chose to tangle with Watters and his naturally combative-yet-amusing style. It didn’t take long for Watters to demolish El-Sayed on the question of sex-change surgeries for minors, a question that El-Sayed thought he’d prepared for by asking about … Watters’ penis.

This will become legendary for all the best reasons:

Noah Rothman adds, “El-Sayed’s Circumcision Quip Was Too Clever by Half:”

Surely, El-Sayed’s revealed confusion over the practice of circumcision and how it is distinct from genital mutilation will do nothing to dispel the allegations of antisemitism swirling around his campaign. More damaging to him, perhaps, is the candidate’s flat-footedness on the controversial issue of youth gender transition therapies and the harm they do.

The minimally curious should by now have grappled with the medical literature that finds young people suffering from gender dysphoria do not, on balance, experience positive mental health outcomes as a result of surgical or pharmaceutical interventions. Indeed, their conditions often worsen. El-Sayed and others should be expected to have surveyed the landscape in Europe, where the public health apparatus expresses increasing uncertainty about the value of those interventions.

They should recognize, at the very least, the political peril associated with their incuriosity, especially if they’re running for office. It’s not too much to expect candidates to familiarize themselves with the public’s anxieties toward biological males playing in women’s sports or the increasing episodes of violence attributed to gender dysphoric personalities.

Noah adds, “You know that a Democrat has done or said something indefensibly asinine when the political press covers the reaction to it with more vigor than the precipitating event.”

But that’s an everyday occurrence in the DNC-MSM:

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Yeah, About That ‘Famine’ in Gaza…

Most of the coverage, such as it was, was the result of an IPC report from July of last year including this dire warning:

Through June 2026, at least 132,000 children under five are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition—double the IPC estimates from May 2025. This includes over 41,000 severe cases of children at heightened risk of death. Nearly 55,500 malnourished pregnant and breastfeeding women will require urgent nutrition response.

Well, now it’s August. So let me be crude and ask, “Where all the dead kiddos at?”

Full details at the link.

Posted at 2:20 pm by Stephen Green

THE NEW SPACE RACE: ‘You’ll see lights on the moon’: Billionaire space executive predicts moon commutes in the 2030s. “Voyager Technologies founder and CEO Dylan Taylor says off-world jobs could emerge much sooner than many people expect. Taylor told Fortune that spaceflight is nearing a new stage, shifting away from brief missions and toward a reality wherein living and working off Earth is routine. In his view, the next milestone is a lunar outpost, which he expects could arrive in the early 2030s.”

Posted at 2:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES: Who’s Paying for Climate Reporting in the Mainstream Media?

Over the years, the lack of trust in journalism led to fewer subscribers, resulting in fewer newspapers and, naturally, fewer outlets subscribing to the Associated Press news service.

To fend off complete obliteration, the AP adopted a model that includes accepting “support” to help fund its reporting. For instance, a recent story on an appeals court ruling against the Trump administration regarding Biden-era clean energy projects included this note: “The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy.”

The Walton Family Foundation is an organization devoted, in part, to environmental causes. Its political position is clear – back in 2022, it applauded passage of President Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act, a giveaway of billions to the climate crusade.

“The challenges of climate change have and will continue to impact every aspect of our lives,” the Walton Foundation declared at the time. “Government, business, tribal nations, philanthropy, advocates, and others will all need to build on this historic investment together to continue to build momentum for a more resilient future.”

The AP insists, of course, that it is editorially independent and “solely responsible for all content” of its climate stories. But consider this – the Walton Foundation’s original two-year $785,000 grant in 2021 funded three AP reporters (and, presumably, related expenses), according to the foundation. Just two years later, the grant had grown to a three-year commitment totaling $2.5 million.

From there, things get worse.

Posted at 1:45 pm by Stephen Green

IT ALSO HELPS IF YOU DON’T KILL THE KIDS THAT YOU HAVE:

Posted at 1:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds