April 23, 2026

CHANGE:

Posted at 7:50 am by Stephen Green

MAYBE THEY CAN CATCH UP TO THE POLES BY THEN, IF THEY WORK REALLY HARD AT IT: Germany unveils strategy for becoming Europe’s strongest military by 2039.

Titled “Verantwortung für Europa” − Responsibility for Europe − the military strategy identifies Russia as the primary threat and sets out scenarios for potential attacks on NATO territory. Pistorius declined to detail the classified threat assessments, quipping that releasing them would be tantamount to “adding Vladimir Putin to our email distribution list.” The strategy also marks a doctrinal shift toward a “one theater approach,” treating NATO territory, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific as interconnected security spaces rather than discrete theaters.

The accompanying capability profile moves away from rigid hardware quotas − the number of tanks, aircraft or ships − toward a flexible, effects-based planning model. The question is not how many battalions the German army needs, but what effects it must be able to produce, said the defense minister. He cited deep precision strike, air defense against hypersonic missiles, and drone capabilities as priority areas, stressing that Germany was essentially starting from scratch on long-range strike.

The personnel growth plan foresees expanding from 185,420 active-duty soldiers today to 260,000 by the mid-2030s, alongside a parallel reserve buildup from around 60,000 currently assigned reservists to at least 200,000, for a combined total of 460,000 combat-ready troops.

The 13-year timeframe ought to make you wonder how serious they really are.

Posted at 7:35 am by Stephen Green

IT WOULD TAKE A HEART OF STONE NOT TO LAUGH:

Posted at 7:19 am by Stephen Green

NEW CIVILITY WATCH:

Paul Krugman could not be reached for comment.

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

ROBERT SPENCER: Hey SPLC, Where’s My Check? “There is another striking aspect of the recent revelations about the SPLC secretly funding ‘right-wing extremist’ groups and providing a bogus foundation for the Biden regime’s ridiculous claim that ‘white supremacists’ constituted the biggest terror threat the nation faced. And that is that neither I nor others that the SPLC included on its spurious and defamatory “hate list” for years ever received a penny. The payouts were apparently reserved for the real hate groups, not for the patriotic groups the SPLC was trying to destroy by including them on its list.”

The whole SPLC enterprise was about propping up dwindling hate groups like the KKK, and them using them to smear the entire right.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN):

Plus:

Tweet concludes: “In other words, it’s accused of funding white supremacist groups, and then pointing to these white supremacist groups to get people to give it money. That’s not ‘paying informants.’ That’s a massive fraud.”

And:

Posted at 7:04 am by Stephen Green

BECAUSE THIS IS THE YEAR OF FINISHING EVERYTHING THAT HAS SAT ALMOST FINISHED FOR YEARS:

RELEASE DAY FROM SARAH A. HOYT:  Witch’s Daughter (Empires of Magic Book 2).

Some letters come from the living. Some come from the dead. This one comes with a formula that turns a rowboat into a miracle.

Seventeen-year-old Lord Michael Ainsling — youngest brother of the Duke of Darkwater, builder of mechanical marvels, survivor of fairyland — receives a letter from a man sixteen years dead. The inventor Tristram Blakley has not perished; he has been imprisoned by his own genius and begs the one mind in all of Avalon brilliant enough to understand his work to set him free. All Michael has to do is find seven missing brothers first and walk a magical path..

Fifteen-year-old Albinia Blakley has spent her whole life under her mother’s iron thumb — and her mother is a witch. The day Al finally escapes down a rope of knotted sheets, she lands in a world she doesn’t recognize, with no money, no magic kit, and no idea that the stranger who catches her is about to become her greatest ally.

Together, a girl with more secrets than she knows and a boy who builds machines that try to murder him must outwit a sorceress, navigate the treacherous courts of Fairyland, and unravel an enchantment years in the making — before a family is lost for good.

Witch’s Daughter is a gaslamp fantasy brimming with wit, warmth, and wonder, for readers who love their magic wrapped in velvet and their adventures served with morning tea.

Posted at 7:00 am by Sarah Hoyt

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

WHAT HE SAID:  Unmasking.

Posted at 6:05 am by Sarah Hoyt

April 22, 2026

ON “EARTH DAY:” Oysters With STDs, Witch Executions, and How More and Fewer Clouds Are Good and Bad News.

Still, these voices are trotted out as “experts,” and we are to heed their directives as they declare that “the science is settled,” all because “there is scientific consensus” about global warming. That is, um, climate change. Well, actually, it is a Climate Crisis now. But be assured, every scientist agrees — they just do not agree on what to call it.

Welllllll — in actuality, it is really more the consensus of the media covering the scientific community — but this is serious stuff! So long as you don’t analyze their claims, that is. This is because in the mad rush to report on anything and everything that can be connected to planetary calamity, the people who tell us to follow the science never manage to actually do the research.

Beginning from the very first Earth Day in 1970, there were issues. Much of the propaganda and sermonizing coming from that event concerned us freezing to death from the inevitable approaching ice age. Also, famine was due to wipe out billions by the end of the century, pollution would block the sun, citizens would need gas masks, acid rain would kill all plant life, and we were on the verge of running out of oil… uh, 30 years ago. So far, most of the starvation has been due to Venezuelan political policy.

There are problems with the creation of this day beyond being 180 degrees out of phase in predicting what today’s degrees would be. Now, some may want to highlight how the founder of the event, Ira Einhorn, murdered his girlfriend, but it is important to understand that he lived by example — he did compost her body. He followed his own sermons, as it were.

It’s also worth pointing out the environmental revolution that had taken place at the beginning of the 20th century that “Earth Day” ignored. As Jimmy Carr told Joe Rogan in 2023:

Carr: You know what the biggest industry in the world was in 1903?

Rogan: Beavers?

Carr: Very close. I’ll pass you—I’ll give you a C. Whaling was the biggest industry in the world in 1903. And it disappeared almost overnight. In about a year and a half, it was gone. Those towns were just emptied because whale oil wasn’t required anymore. Suddenly, we discovered petrochemicals.

Rogan: Electricity too.

Carr: Petrochemicals was really the thing. Yeah—whale oil, electricity, Edison, all of that, Tesla. It’s really interesting how that industry just fell away. It’s like the story of horse manure in New York City. You know this?

Rogan: No.

Carr: So, horse manure—do you know why brownstones have steps up to the front door? Ever wondered why the ground floor isn’t actually on the ground floor?

Rogan: Why?

Carr: Horseshit.

Rogan: Really?

Carr: There was horseshit everywhere. They’ve always got those metal scrapers by the side—

Rogan: Yeah, to get the horseshit off.

Carr: Exactly. You know how old movies always talk about smelling salts? There are loads of references to them. The smell was horrific. If a horse died in the street, you had to wait for it to decompose before cutting it up and taking it away. New York was chaos—cobbled streets, metal wheels on carts, horses everywhere. So they made laws:  “Right, we’ll tax horses.” Didn’t change anything.

Next year: “We’ll double the taxes.” Then more rules—if you have a horse, you have to do this, do that. They kept trying, over and over.

And what actually stopped it?

Henry Ford. Cars came along—[and then, horses in the streets] gone. Almost instantly. There are, what, five horses left in Central Park? That’s it. Whaling disappeared overnight. So did that whole system.

The first “Earth Day” in 1970 coincided with the beginning of a lengthy period of engineering stagnation, Glenn wrote a decade ago in USA Today:

Despite the rise of computers and the Internet, most of my lifetime has been spent in what has otherwise been a time of technological stagnation, compared to the “golden quarter century” between World War II and the Moon landings. During that era, things were getting better at breakneck pace: Jet planes! Spaceships! The Pill! Antibiotics! Nuclear Power! Computers! The future was coming at us fast, and there was a sense that things would keep improving.

Still on the hand, “Earth Day” was and is definitely “stuff white people like,” as Norman Podhoretz wrote in 1970:

Posted at 11:29 pm by Ed Driscoll