October 31, 2026

THEY HAVE A STRONGER STOMACH THAN I. I QUIT READING IT ALMOST TWO DECADES AGO:  Neo-kremlinologists still find value in The E-Communist, er, I mean The Economist.

For us neo-kremlinologists, the magazine has been unduly generous in the last week, providing two interesting snapshots into the neuroses and instincts of the lumpenintelligentsia at the present moment. Before I go any further, it is important to add that these people are not uniformly specious or slow on the uptake — like the Soviet intelligentsia in the 1970s, it includes many highly intelligent and perceptive people, who may be thoughtful or even forthright about the crises that beset us, but only discreetly and on an individual basis. In the atmosphere of stultifying intellectual conformity that they inhabit, what matters is what they feel comfortable discussing and admitting to one another in public, because it is that which shapes the direction of policy. And it is on that that the Economist‘s cachet can be helpful, by virtue of the freedom it lends its unbylined writers to think aloud.

It was the more recent of the two articles that has garnered the most attention. An article titled “Do immigrants from some countries commit more sex crimes?” on 25th October admitted that, yes, they do. The piece was accompanied by a graphic showing — on a logarithmic scale — the rate at which immigrants in Britain were convicted of sexual crimes, by nationality, relative to that of British nationals. The graphic showed very clearly that nationals of countries in non-EU Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East were substantially more likely to be convicted of sexual crimes than British nationals, with people from Afghanistan way out ahead of any other group. EU nationals, meanwhile, were slightly less likely to be convicted of such offences, and East Asians and Australasians even more underrepresented in the statistics. People from the Americans and the Caribbean were, on average, roughly equal to British nationals in their prolificness.

Posted at 3:00 am by Sarah Hoyt

October 30, 2026

HOW IT STARTED: Bad News, Abdul. Tucker Carlson Wants to Be Your Bestie.

[O]n his podcast, Carlson heaped high praise on El-Sayed. In an interview Carlson was conducting with Saagar Enjeti, the two talked about the El-Sayed campaign for the Senate in Michigan.

Carlson and Enjeti were talking about how El-Sayed has very obviously and very disingenuously moved to the middle to run in the general election against Republican Mike Rogers. You can bet your last dollar that he will revert back to his Islamic socialist roots if elected. But that’s not how Carlson framed it.

Enjeti said the quiet part out loud when he pointed out that El-Sayed is doing a bit of “shape shifting.” Anyone with an eye for politics can see that should El-Sayed win in November, he’d enter the Senate to the left of Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), and he’d be just as radical an Islamist politician as Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).

—Tim O’Brien, PJ Media.com, September 3rd, 2026.

How It’s Going: Dems In Disarray After Abdul El-Sayed Features Tucker Carlson In Campaign Ad.

Michigan Democrats are clashing over Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed decision to feature conservative commentator Tucker Carlson in a campaign ad, with prominent party figures demanding that he pull the spot days before Election Day.

The ad, released last week, features Carlson saying he “wouldn’t vote for Mike Rogers at gunpoint,” referring to El-Sayed’s Republican opponent. The spot also includes clips of Fox News personalities praising El-Sayed, part of the Democrat’s effort to appeal to voters who might otherwise support President Donald Trump.

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), whom El-Sayed narrowly defeated in the August Democratic primary, said Friday that she hopes the nominee will take down the advertisement, calling its use of Carlson an insult to the black congregation where the two Democrats are scheduled to appear Sunday alongside Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC).

Former Obama administration official Van Jones also condemned El-Sayed’s use of Carlson.

“No Democrat should ever celebrate the words of a white nationalist who actively undermines the safety of black people and Jewish people,” Jones posted on social media. Jones also condemned Republican attacks on El-Sayed’s Muslim faith.

Earlier: Is This the Most Antisemitic Ad to Ever Air for a Senate Race?

Evergreen question: Seriously, What the Hell Is Wrong With Tucker Carlson?

UPDATE:

Posted at 11:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

OPEN THREAD: Ring in the weekend.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Posted at 9:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

OLD AND BUSTED: Tea, Earl Grey, Hot.

The New Coldness?

 

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

HOLY SMOKES: Looks Like Poland Might Be in the Middle of a Tusk-Orchestrated Coup.

God bless America – what is in the water in EUROPE?!

This past January, former professional boxer and now Polish President Karol Nawrocki put a shot across the European Union’s bow and finally opened the schism in the fragile truce existing between himself and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

The populist and popular president said a government is supposed to protect freedom, not restrict it. And he vetoed the EU’s censorship bill much to Tusk’s fury.

Read the whole thing.

Tweet concludes, “Poland is about to get weird.”

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

OPENAI CEO SAYS IT’S ‘QUITE TERRIBLE’ FOR YOUR PC TO HAVE RAM: Sam Altman says data centers offer better utilization.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has data centers full of memory, but seemingly it’s the 32GB of RAM in your desktop that’s the problem. In an interview over beers with the YouTube channel Cheeky Pint, Altman said that local inference, and, by extension, people having DRAM in computers at home, is “quite terrible.”
When discussing local inference on home computers with open-source models, Altman discussed the assumption that people will be able to run local AI on their own computers, the ones they may already own or want to build. Then he explained why that’s a bad idea (at the 29-minute mark):

“From a global allocation perspective, actually, it’s quite terrible to have everybody have a bunch of the world’s limited supply of DRAM sitting in their own computer and being used 5% of the time,” Altman said. “You want maximum utilization in the cloud if you’re trying to deal with this very supply-constrained environment. And somehow many people’s intuition is the opposite of that.”

The general public alternately loathes or his terrified of AI, so I’m really thrilled to see the industry barons making an effort to ingratiate themselves with the masses:

Related: Tech Stocks Plunge as Wall Street Enters ‘Show Me’ Phase.

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

VET ORGANIZATIONS AGAINST VETS:

“Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing,” the wise man once said.

Posted at 5:39 pm by Stephen Green

YEAH, MY EMPATHY FOR THAT KIND OF THING RAN OUT BEFORE I EVER HAD ANY:

Posted at 5:09 pm by Stephen Green