July 24, 2026

YES: We can read hard things — if we put away the phones and try.

People are reading (or, at least, buying) The Odyssey, thanks to Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster movie. They’re arguing about whether the many-sided Odysseus should be seen as a heroic adventurer, a sword-shocked vet, a crafty killer or a dozen other interpretations. Emily Wilson’s modern translation has sold one million copies, and three other translations are on the top 10 list.

Young Americans can learn to read complex, challenging books, writes Natalie Wexler. Those who do will have an advantage over AI’s cognitive cripples.

What a perfect phrase there at the end.

Posted at 2:50 pm by Stephen Green

CHANGE:

Posted at 2:35 pm by Stephen Green

NELLIE BOWLES ON THE ANDREW AND TRISTAN TATE FASHION SHOW:

But for our purposes, the top news in the world is that the wildly popular influencer Andrew Tate has finally been arrested in the U.S., with plans to extradite him to his former home, the United Kingdom. Tate, the man your sons and grandsons are probably obsessed with, is charged with rape, sex trafficking, it goes on for a total of 42 counts of that kind of unpleasant stuff. In bonny England he will, I assume, face a tribunal run by bitter, exhausted professional women (my girls!). This is only so interesting because Andrew Tate had been investigated before, suspected of trafficking and rape in Romania, and was barred from leaving that country. But then, in February of last year, seemingly after pressure from someone in the Trump administration, Tate was allowed to leave and took a private jet from Romania to, where else? Florida. (It seems as though Barron Trump was a fan.) When asked if Trump would intervene this time, Karoline Leavitt gave an emphatic “No.” Anyway, it’s also interesting because it gave us a photo of Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan being arrested. And I don’t know how to explain to you that these men are considered to be the pinnacle of masculinity by right-wing American Zoomers. This is the hardened male that they aspire to become. He has over 10 million followers on X alone.

The purple silk “shirt”—legally, I feel a shirt must cover the nipples—matches the purple transition lenses. There are the capris, the slip-on shoes. It looks like they’re dragging him out of Fire Island. Put a wig on this person and she’s late for her mimosas at Club Med. Put a wig on and it’s my quirky drunk aunt Annie Tate whose bra is always showing. His brother Tristan, in a three-piece suit and a hat that is both too big and too small, is almost as bad. Andrew Tate and his brother are actually a return to the male animal as a flamboyant, colorful thing, the brilliant male mallard next to the dull brown female. In that way we’re actually made for each other, as I, in Tevas and with limp hair, am a return to the female duck. Andrew, call me.

Heh, indeed:

Also:

Wow, we eventually won Iraq, didn’t we: U.S. companies signed roughly $60 billion in agreements and partnerships with Iraq late last week, including deals to build alternative oil shipping routes bypassing the Strait of Hormuz amid the ongoing U.S.-Iran war. Goddammit, Dick Cheney, you lunatic, you did it. Credit where it’s due. Mission accomplished.

We eventually won Vietnam as well: How Capitalism Beat Communism in Vietnam.

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

REALITY BITES AGAIN: Here she goes again! Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) claims Trump domestic and foreign policies explain the Affordability Crisis. Check out my latest PJMedia column with the necessary corrective from Just Facts Daily.

Posted at 2:30 pm by Mark Tapscott

THE PRESS TRIED TO SHAME ELON. HE PUT THE ENTIRE MEDIA CLASS ON TRIAL:

During an interview with The Economist’s editor-in-chief, Zanny Minton Beddoes, Beddoes tried to paint him as “far right,” because of his criticism of how the government has approached things like immigration in the United Kingdom. Musk shot that characterization down, saying it was normal to want secure borders, safe cities, and sensible spending.

“If people are coming to a country with antithetical views, I am against that,” he said.

“I’m against rape and murder, I’m against the imposition of rules and laws that are contrary to what we’ve come to accept in the West,” he continued, criticising the media for not understanding or reflecting this.

Beddoes tried to attack Elon Musk over that, saying, “You don’t even live there!” She asked if he understood how some people “loathe you.”

Exit quote: “The extremist didn’t like being told that she’s the actual extremist.”

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

GOOGLE IS SO BAD (AND BING, TOO) THAT I ACTUALLY PAY FOR KAGI SEARCH:

“Don’t be evil” morphed into “Be lame” so slowly, most users never even noticed.

Posted at 1:34 pm by Stephen Green

JOHN NOLTE: Elon Musk’s AI ‘Odyssey’ Could Launch a Revolution that Sinks Hollywood.

Margaret Mitchell wrote and published exactly one novel in her life, a little Pulitzer winner called Gone with the Wind. Sure, prior to that, she’d written short stories and worked as a reporter in Georgia. Still, she basically came out of nowhere with a story that has enthralled hundreds of millions for 90 years.

There are Margaret Mitchells out there today who don’t even know they are Margaret Mitchells, and would never know were it not for the power of AI. No longer will a budding storyteller give up before he begins because he doesn’t know where to begin to convince a producer to finance his project. No more will a budding storyteller have to convince a left-wing studio to distribute his project. All the bottlenecks that keep the gatekeepers guarding the gate will be swept away by AI and YouTube.

Look at how giving Normal People access to national distribution (via the internet) disrupted and disgraced the national media.

Look at how the music and publishing industries have changed for the same reasons.

True movie fans should be ecstatic over competing versions of The Odyssey. Competition breeds greatness and Hollywood has become a groupthink cult with no cultural or political competition. For that reason alone, people should be encouraging Musk, not laughing at him.

I’m happy to see competing versions of The Odyssey, but only if the right director is attached. Who better to direct the adaptation of a 2700 year old story than the 2000 Year Old Man?

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

BILL WALTON: The Crusades Test “We were talking about why the West no longer defends its own culture, and whether the fading of Christian conviction explains it. And I said, half testing him, half testing myself: why don’t we think of ourselves as the Christians who fought the Crusades? Christians defended Western Europe for centuries. Successfully. Then one day we decided to hold the door open.”

Posted at 1:17 pm by Stephen Green

YOU ALWAYS NEED MORE DURING WAR THAN YOU PLANNED FOR DURING PEACE: Unlimited AI tokens aren’t unlimited after all as US Army burns through supply. “The Army uses Ask Sage, a multimodal generative AI platform where users can run different large language models (LLMs), including Alphabet’s Gemini, Meta’s Llama, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. ‘Apparently the whole Army burned through the whole year of tokens for just one service,’ says an Army employee who spoke to WIRED anonymously because they were not authorized to speak to the press.”

Posted at 12:46 pm by Stephen Green

I’M AFRAID ROB IS CORRECT:

Posted at 12:32 pm by Stephen Green

THIS IS CNN: Dana Bash’s Brad Lander Blunder: How CNN Let Facts Slip Through the Newsroom.

Lander’s accusations were part of a wider pattern of misinformation in the broadcast. In many cases, Bash failed to challenge his misinformation and even offered her own glaring historical revisionism regarding the Holocaust.

When asking Lander about attacks he has faced from various groups, Bash noted that some in the Jewish community had labeled him a “kapo,” a term from the Holocaust era used to describe Jews who betray their fellow Jews. Astonishingly, Bash defined kapos as “Jews who were helping keep the peace, so to speak, in the Nazi concentration camps.”

In reality, the SS deliberately designed the kapo system to incite conflict. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum notes that beating and punishing subordinate prisoners was a required duty for kapos, with many committing murders to meet SS expectations, a brutal reality Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel documented in his memoir Night.

Even the Biden administration’s envoy to combat antisemitism, Dr. Deborah Lipstadt, whom Bash quoted authoritatively during the segment, previously signed a letter alongside esteemed Holocaust scholars defining kapos as Jews forced to serve as “unwilling tools of Nazi brutality.”

As of publication, CNN has not corrected the error despite CAMERA’s communication.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

SHE’S AN OLD LADY, GIVE HER A BREAK:

Posted at 12:14 pm by Glenn Reynolds

UNSUNG HERO:

His spiritual descendant:

Posted at 12:13 pm by Glenn Reynolds

ED MORRISSEY: WSJ: No, Really, Trump’s Had It With Iran Negotiations.

Really? Really really? Color me a bit skeptical about this, but given the events of the last two weeks, perhaps more open to the concept now than I have been for months.

According to Wall Street Journal reporters Annie Linskey and Josh Dawsey, Donald Trump has finally gotten “fed up” with the IRGC’s carpet-merchant tactics at the negotiating table. He has soured on talks with the regime in Tehran entirely, their sources claim, even though Jared Kushner and Steven Witkoff want to keep pursuing diplomatic solutions to the war. Their sources claim that Trump was neither bluffing nor attempting to negotiate through the media when he told Axios’ Barak Ravid that he’s about to order a massive scale-up in kinetic action. Trump intends to communicate in the only language Ahmad Vahidi understands:

Has anyone in Trump’s inner circle planned out an endgame?

Tweet continues, “Yet while the IR merely laughs at the blows it is exciting the pity of the entire civilized world who are disgusted at the meting out of such a one sided beating, warning that the worse the thrashings the greater the reparation which must eventually be paid.”

“Of course in this case there will be no A bomb, but some as unforeseen development is needed to provide the same out.”

UPDATE:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll