July 29, 2026

CAN SCIENCE DO THAT?

As always, America’s Newspaper of Record™ nails it.

And something a little more serious on the subject from John Nolte:

I suppose nobody understands the risks to Fauci better than Fauci, and he decided accordingly.

Posted at 2:01 pm by Stephen Green

LOL, CHRIS CILLIZZA:

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): To be fair, that’s what they pay him for.

UPDATE (FROM STEVE VIA GLENN):

And he’s been a willing (and well-paid) servant for a long time.

Posted at 1:57 pm by Stephen Green

SOCIALISM IN ONE SENTENCE: Austin’s Secret Amazon Land Grab. “All Austin City Council members are lefty Democrats these days, and nothing says ‘service to the downtrodden’ like bulldozing some peon’s house to satisfy an international megacorporation.”

Posted at 1:46 pm by Stephen Green

SORRY, BUT “INFAMOUS” IS THE BEST WE CAN DO:

Posted at 1:29 pm by Stephen Green

YES, BUT…: China’s reported chip breakthrough comes with some big caveats.

“Any machine built by an unknown state-backed company are starting from a much worse spot. Reliability takes years of iteration in the field, which ASML has [and] China still has yet to achieve,” Patience added.

Another challenge for China is scaling these machines. The Information reported that the Chinese firm developing the DUV tool is aiming to produce five units this year and around 20 in 2027.

In comparison, ASML said it plans for a capacity of around 130 DUV immersion machines in 2026, and is planning to add 30% in 2027.

“Tool performance, scaling production of the machine itself, fleet performance, surrounding ecosystem and poor economics against fully depreciated ASML machines all stack up against China DUV,” a team of analysts at SemiAnalysis told CNBC.

“Scaling production of the machine itself [is] the most underestimated part.”

Yes, but if there’s one thing China does well, it’s scale up.

Posted at 12:44 pm by Stephen Green

WAIT, IT’S STILL AFLOAT?

It’s a spaceship and a ship-ship.

But you haven’t really seen the soft splashdown until you’ve seen this just-released drone footage of the soft splashdown:

Impressive. Most impressive.

Posted at 12:28 pm by Stephen Green

ED MORRISSEY: Fauci Takes the Fifth.

“Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion,” he continued. “Therefore, although it pains me to do so because of the respect that I have for the legislative branch of government and my decades long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the 5th Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions.”

That presents Paul and the Senate with an opportunity to pursue contempt charges. The Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination is not without boundaries. It applies when potential criminal liability exists, which – for most people, most of the time – is always present. In fact, it’s a very good idea to stand on one’s right to remain silent in most circumstances when hostile questioning takes place, at least until you get a good lawyer to figure out what the potential liabilities might be.

However, pardons create the rare exception to the use of the Fifth Amendment. Joe Biden granted a full pardon to Fauci shortly before leaving office for any federal crimes he may have committed during a ten-year period prior to 2025. That covers all of the COVID-19 pandemic, and then some. Fauci cannot be prosecuted or charged for any federal crimes that took place in that period, so he has no criminal liability in testifying. That puts Fauci in the rare position of being unable to refuse to testify under oath in any legitimate trial or hearing, including those in Congress.

Fauci claims that Paul is trying to spring a perjury trap on him today, but the Fifth Amendment cannot be used to avoid it, especially when a pardon exists. All Fauci has to do to avoid a perjury trap is to testify honestly. And as long as the questions focus on the period covered by the pardon, Fauci is required to testify.

Josh Hawley had plenty of fun with Fauci: Senator Hawley Hilariously Forces Fauci to Plead the Fifth on His Tie Color and the Day of the Week.

Related:

Tweet continues, “The chairman has DENIED your assertion of privilege and directed you to ANSWER, but you nonetheless refuse and stand on privilege despite the existence of the pardon. It’s AGAINST THE LAW to obstruct an investigation of Congress. There will be repercussions to your refusal to testify today.”

But will there?

UPDATE:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

IT’S A FAR CRY FROM JAIL TIME, BUT AT LEAST HE HATED EVERY MOMENT OF IT:

Posted at 11:57 am by Stephen Green

ALIENS? JWST Just Examined Two Stars Suspected of Harboring Dyson Spheres. Here’s What It Found.

“A civilization can hide its star behind a shell of solar collectors, but thermodynamics always collects its tax, and all that captured starlight has to come back out as a warm mid-infrared glow.”

That glow would be unavoidable. Just as a laptop or lightbulb gives off waste heat, so too would any machine that harvests a star’s energy. The larger the hypothetical megastructure, the brighter that excess infrared radiation should become.

That excess is exactly what Project Hephaistos, led by astrophysicist Erik Zackrisson of Uppsala University in Sweden, set out to find. Even false positives could teach us how to better search for alien tech – by revealing the many ways the Universe can mimic it.

The search sifted through roughly five million Milky Way stars looking for exactly this kind of infrared excess – more mid-infrared light than an ordinary star should produce.

Seven stars survived the team’s increasingly stringent tests, with the two studied here emerging as the search’s most compelling candidates.

JWST quickly exposed the two candidates as Dyson sphere impostors – and the explanation was brilliantly simple. The light from both stars was being boosted by a distant galaxy almost perfectly lined up behind them.

So not aliens then.

Posted at 11:42 am by Stephen Green

SPACE:

Faster? Please!

Posted at 11:26 am by Stephen Green

RACE-BASED SCHOLARSHIP SHOT DOWN AGAIN IN COURT, BUT MANY STILL REMAIN. Look, this is not hard. If we don’t want colleges to have awards like a Ku Klux Klan Scholarship for Excellence in Whiteness–and, contrary to what some on the left would have you believe, virtually no American wants to live in a society that does–you also can’t have awards meant only for black people, Latinos, or (in the linked case, oddly) Asians from Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia but not Thailand (because screw Thailand, I guess?). Just stop with the race discrimination already. We’re done. It’s over.

Posted at 11:25 am by Robert Shibley

JONATHAN TURLEY: Mamdani’s grocery stores will be the most expensive markets in NYC — paid for by you, the taxpayer.

Rather than deliver discount groceries, Mamdani is selling New Yorkers a bill of goods that will cost them millions.

It is not a description of a competitive grocery but a public charity. It is a quasi-food bank where taxpayers subsidize the cost.

As usual, Mamdani turns this into a class war, demonizing business owners. He suggests that real grocery stores are simply price gougers hoarding windfall profits from consumers. He ignores that they must pay rent, upkeep and fees — all things the city-run stores may simply write off.

He proclaimed, “May the most affordable grocery store win.”

Of course, the test is not which grocery is the most affordable, but which is the most sustainable. If you are willing to take a bath on sales, you can always offer the most affordable prices for as long as your excess cash holds out.

The first city-run grocery, in East Harlem, will cost $30 million to build — and perhaps more. It will never need to pay this money back nor factor it into its prices. The “warmth of socialism” will cover it; that is, you.

In reality, Mamdani will be selling apples at a far greater cost than any competitor, but those true costs will be buried in the city budget and paid for by the taxpayers.

There’s a new word for net taxpayers who stay in New York: Suckers.

Previously: Begun, the Class War Has.

Posted at 10:40 am by Stephen Green

“THEY ARE ALL DIFFERENT FACES OF THE SAME MANIA”:

Posted at 10:24 am by Stephen Green