June 30, 2026

ANY ELECTED OFFICIAL UNWILLING TO VOTE FOR SECURE ELECTIONS SOUHLD MAKE YOU WONDER HOW THEY GOT ELECTED:

Posted at 7:17 am by Stephen Green

NATE SILVER: Is the vibecession real — or is the survey broken? A shift to online polling and undersampling of Republicans are skewing America’s most-cited measure of consumer sentiment.

Hiring for new college graduates is pretty grim. And, adding insult to injury, not only are their applications screened by AI, but now the initial interviews are conducted by AI. Sometimes it’s even an AI avatar. That can be demoralizing:

Even though it’s a video interview, I’m still keen to impress.

When I log on, my interviewer, whose name I didn’t catch, looks relaxed and friendly.

He asks carefully articulated questions, listens intently, and even asks follow ups regarding particular examples I mention.

But then, strange things start happening.

He takes a while to process what I’m saying, and his facial expression remains unchanged. Then, halfway through asking me to explain a particular work scenario, he disappears without another word. He’s an AI – and he’s crashed.

Bad vibes there for sure.

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

VANCE-RUBIO SPLIT ON IRAN: Richard Pollock, writing on Substack, sees substantial evidence that Vice-President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are pursuing widely different paths in the unfolding Iran drama. Could be a significant prelude to the 2028 GOP presidential nomination battle?

Posted at 6:53 am by Mark Tapscott

June 29, 2026

OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

SONY DELETES 551 STUDIOCANAL MOVIES PLAYSTATION OWNERS PAID FOR:

The titles all come from StudioCanal, the distributor behind Terminator 2, Total Recall, Rambo: First Blood, The Deer Hunter, Bridget Jones’s Diary, From Dusk Till Dawn, and Cliffhanger.

Anyone who hit “buy” on one of them will open their library that morning and find a hole where it used to be. PlayStation’s notice states it without apology: “You will no longer be able to access your previously purchased content from Studio Canal, and it will be removed from your video library.”

The justification Sony offers runs to six words, “due to our content licensing agreements.”

A licensing deal between Sony and StudioCanal expired or shifted, and the people who paid are the ones losing their films over it. None of them signed that contract and none gets a vote in it.

X user somatyk surfaced the news on June 25, posting the notification they’d received. The message signed off with, “Click here for a full list of affected titles that will no longer be supported. Thank you.” Sony has since reproduced the same warning, and the full roster of 551 titles, on the PlayStation website.

Nobody rented these movies. The store put a “buy” button next to them, charged the purchase price, and dropped them into a library it called yours. Sony can empty that library the moment a contract somewhere upstream changes, and the terms of service you scrolled past on first boot already say you agreed to this.

If the movie case feels abstract, the games industry just made the same point with its biggest release in over a decade. GTA 6 arrives November 19, and the boxed copy you can buy at Walmart or GameStop contains no disc. Take-Two confirmed it in a press release: “The physical version of Grand Theft Auto VI, containing a download code inside the box, will be available starting November 12, 2026 to support pre-loading.”

As Steve would say, “Buy. Physical. Media.”

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

A COOL AND LOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE BICYCLE MENACE: Los Angeles man arrested for shooting BB gun at naked bike riders taking over the city.

Well, “Pride” month is going out with a bang this year.

A “Naked Bike Ride” took over LA and there were arrests made. Not of the public perverts, but of a man who decided to voice his opposition in a legally dubious manner.

Assault with a deadly weapon for pegging a couple of naked dudes in the middle of a large city with a BB gun.

If you’re a public nudist riding your bike in LA you get a police escort. If you’re a normal dude with a BB gun you get a different type of police escort.

Exit quote:

Spencer Pratt, call your office! You too, Adam Carolla:

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

NY-13’S NEXT CONGRESSCRITTER: Deleted tweets on Darializa Avila Chevalier’s account had favorable references to communist leaders and Marxism.

Darializa Avila Chevalier, the Democratic congressional nominee endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who ousted longtime Rep. Adriano Espaillat in Tuesday’s primary, maintained a since-deleted Twitter account with repeated sympathetic references to communism, Marxist ideology and Soviet figures, including Vladimir Lenin.

Avila Chevalier, a sociology PhD student whose victory sent shockwaves throughout the Democratic establishment, has been under fire for a since-deleted Twitter account, previously reported by CNN, that included phrases such as “seize the means of production,” along with calls to abolish police, prisons and borders. Other controversial tweets include one that said Black and Arab men are both “Fetishizing ugly colonizer women” and another that described wiping her dirty hands on the American flag in lieu of a napkin.

As an undergraduate, Avila Chevalier attended Columbia University, where she organized with Students for Justice in Palestine, and after graduation became involved in pro-Palestinian campus protests over Israel’s war in Gaza. She also attended a controversial October 8, 2023, pro-Palestinian rally in Times Square — one day after Hamas’ attack on Israel — that featured speeches and rhetoric praising the attack.

She previously told CNN, “I have grown considerably in the years since these tweets, and I am focused on our community and our community’s future.”

Translation: Still a commie.

UPDATE (From Ed): How big of a commie? This big:

Posted at 8:30 pm by Stephen Green

ANOTHER MAJOR CABLE TV PROVIDER IS PREPARING FOR BANKRUPTCY TOMORROW:

EchoStar Corporation’s satellite television subsidiary Dish DBS is set to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as early as Tuesday, marking a significant step in the company’s long-running effort to restructure its heavy debt load amid declining traditional pay-TV subscribers and ongoing regulatory challenges, according to the Wall Street Journal. The popular satellite TV service providing access to cable TV networks has struggled to find a way to be profitable in the world of cord-cutting. The move, which has been anticipated for months, would allow the Englewood, Colorado-based company to implement a pre-negotiated deleveraging plan while seeking to stabilize its operations in a rapidly evolving telecommunications landscape.

EchoStar, led by founder and chairman Charlie Ergen, has faced mounting financial pressure for years. The company carries approximately $25 billion in debt across its various entities, including its core satellite television businesses under the Dish Network and Sling TV brands, as well as its wireless operations through Boost Mobile. Subscriber losses in the traditional linear television segment have accelerated as consumers increasingly shift toward streaming services, cord-cutting trends, and alternative entertainment options. This erosion of the customer base has squeezed revenue and heightened the urgency for a comprehensive financial reset.

Other than for live sports, who is still watching legacy television?

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

CHECKS OUT:

Posted at 6:50 pm by Stephen Green

ABE GREENWALD: The Queering of the Purge.

[Scott] Wiener is the Democratic front-runner looking to replace Nancy Pelosi in the House. He’s also a gay, pro-trans leftist who’s described Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide and called for the U.S. to stop giving military aid to Israel.

So he attended the trans march, as he does every year, to stand with those he thought of as his people.

But Wiener is Jewish, and he took a bit too long in deciding that he needed to mimic faithfully the hardcore anti-Israel monomaniacs. So they’re now teaching him an important lesson: A Jew who shows any ambivalence about destroying the Jewish state will not be tolerated by the left.

What was supposed to be a festive stop along the way to a Pride Shabbat with a trans rabbi became something else.

Wiener’s chief harasser at the march was one Dimitry Yakoushkin, whom the New York Times describes as a “49-year-old sex and intimacy coach.” (The Times also generously provides a link to Yakoushkin’s website, where we learn that he is “a Sexological Bodyworker and trained in the Hakomi Method – a body-based, mindful experiential therapy method that helps clients get in touch with and live from their deepest self.”)

As the clip opens, Yakoushkin begins by telling Wiener how much he admires the latter’s stance on trans issues. And then he gives voice to his deepest self, yelling that Wiener is “terrible on Gaza” and does “not belong here.” An aggressive crowd—including one individual in keffiyeh and gold hotpants—steadily gathers and contributes to the abuse. They call Wiener a “genocidal piece of shit” who’s under the control of “Zionist handlers,” and so on. Within a minute, Wiener—and by extension Israel—has become the focus of the gathering.

“Scott, I want to support someone who’s so positive on trans rights,” Yakoushkin pleads toward the clip’s end. “But you’re a piece of shit on Gaza. How could you do that? How could you do that? How could you betray queers?” Another sees Wiener off with this: “You stopped being queer the moment you started supporting Israel, you piece of shit.”

As “The Mossad: Satirical and Awesome” account notes in a lengthy essay on X, “The people who spent years telling Jews ‘just be anti-Zionist and you’ll be fine’ are now demonstrating, in high definition, that it was always a lie. The alligator was never going to be satisfied with table scraps. It wants the whole Jew.”

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

I’LL TAKE HEADLINES FROM 1943, ALEX: How German trains became the shame of a nation.

When the 10pm service of Berlin’s U2 metro line failed to set off from the station, its frazzled driver finally snapped.

“Get away from the doors!” he bellowed, leaping out to berate a young woman as she pawed at the broken, flashing-red buttons on the side of the train. “Don’t touch the doors!”

Unbeknownst to the driver, who seemed to think the woman’s button-mashing had caused the breakdown, Germany’s entire rail system had just been crippled by a software glitch.

For the next two hours, hundreds of thousands of Germans were left stranded on platforms or sweltering in packed carriages as the metro, intercity and commuter networks all failed at once on Tuesday.

In some regions the delays lasted even longer, with passengers forced to seek out hotel rooms or sleep on benches in the train station.

You might think that travel chaos on this scale in Germany, a nation famed for its love of efficiency and punctuality, is unusual – but you would be sorely mistaken.

After decades of underinvestment, Germany’s crumbling rail network has become a source of national humiliation for a country that was once the gold standard in engineering.

Speaking of humiliating, Col. Hans Landa vants to know, are you are hiding any wallboxes under ze floor? Ve have ways of finding out! German State Media Campaign Against Air Conditioning as Country Faces Record Summer Heat.

Related:

UPDATE: It’s good to be in the nomenklatura:

Posted at 4:55 pm by Ed Driscoll