October 1, 2026

NOTHING IS MORE PATHETIC THAN WATCHING A POLITICIAN DEFEND THE INDEFENSIBLE BECAUSE IT’S IN HER POLITICAL INTEREST TO DO SO:

Posted at 9:19 am by David Bernstein

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: The Friend of My Enemy — Iran Wants Americans to Vote for Dems. “There isn’t anything to read between the lines here. The people who refer to the United States as the ‘Great Satan’ and have vowed to destroy us would feel more comfortable with Charles Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries in charge of Congress. We don’t have many dots to connect in this one.”

Posted at 9:08 am by Stephen Green

CAMILLE PAGLIA WEIGHS IN:

Posted at 9:04 am by Glenn Reynolds

THE WNBA THESE DAYS LOOKS LIKE IT WAS PURPOSELY DESIGNED TO SERVE AS RIGHT-WING AGITPROP:

Posted at 8:40 am by Glenn Reynolds

HMM: Google Grapples With Employee Skepticism About New Gemini Model. “While Gemini 4 has performed well on benchmarks the industry uses to gauge model efficacy, it does less well when employees actually put it to work, according to people with direct access to the effort. The model struggles to handle certain coding tasks, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss an internal matter.”

If true, I can’t say I’m surprised. I’m happy to use Grok, GPT, and Claude for their various strengths, but could never find a reason to use Gemini.

Posted at 8:37 am by Stephen Green

FRAUD ALL THE WAY DOWN:

More:

“The doctors who prescribed them would get 6% of the sales cost. And so, they were incentivized to prescribe more expensive products. In Europe, they spend 35 cents a cubic inch. We were spending $135, and that went up to $2,000 a cubic inch.”

“So 2019, we were paying $200 million. Last year we spent 14 billion. All stolen. It’s all stolen. And we were on track to spend 23 billion this year.”

“We put an end to it, and we now have driven that cost down to somewhere around a billion dollars.”

Bravo.

Posted at 8:21 am by Stephen Green

NBC-DFW BURIES THE LEDE: Man released on bond, accused in plot to attack Texas Capitol building, DPS says.

Unless they made it to seven paragraphs into the article, readers wouldn’t have spotted this detail:

Arrest documents further state that [40-year-old Benny Caldera] told his friend that he was angry at AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee) and that “these people have to be exterminated.”

Via:

Related:

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll

HEY, BIG SPENDER: South Korea to invest up to $200B in Alaska LNG pipeline, US power plants, Trump announces.

The investment also includes a natural gas plant in Texas and eight new nuclear power plants across the country, Trump said during remarks in the Oval Office.

Trump said the deal came as part of a trade agreement between South Korea and the U.S. in which the U.S. would lower the Asian country’s tariff rate to 15 percent in exchange for hundreds of billions of dollars in investment.

Trump particularly touted the Alaska pipeline investment, known as Alaska LNG because it would transport liquefied natural gas, as allowing the U.S. to export more gas.

“The United States is already the largest natural gas producer and exporter in the world, and this pipeline will help us expand those exports even further,” he said.

Energy dominance, indeed.

Posted at 7:35 am by Stephen Green

FROM SUMMER GRAYLING:  True Colours.

Jan Van Der Vaart is a legend. The focus of his magical Talent is pain, and he’s spent years in the military, then as a mercenary, making terrorists, cartels, and governments fear him. Finally, he carved out a safe haven for other Talents, and tried to retire… until one last job, cracking a black lab snatching Talents off the streets, went sideways. He’s left staggering down a rainy coastal highway, thumb out and hoping he’ll catch a lift before the kill team realizes they missed…

Aurelia Brinati is on the run. Having escaped five years of hell as an unwilling lab rat, she has a stolen car and a plan to hide from pursuers by taking passage on a cargo ship headed anywhere else in the world. When she picks up a stray sailor headed the same way, she rapidly discovers she’s out of her depths… and safe in the heart of the storm.

The entire world fears him… except her. Powers are gathering to recapture Aurelia, but they’d best beware. Jan and his friends will do whatever it takes to keep her safe… whether it’s murder, mayhem, or last-minute shopping runs to find something called cream of tartar for her snickerdoodle cookies.

Posted at 7:00 am by Sarah Hoyt