AND THIS IS ACTUALLY GOOD NEWS:  Our Unsustainable Universities. That sucking sound you hear is higher education circling the drain.

WHEN IT COMES TO SACRIFICING LIVES, IRAN IS MORE THAN WILLING TO SACRIFICE WOMEN’S LIVES:  Iran trains women to take up arms against new US offensive.

FINE IS WRONG. IT’S WORSE THAN THAT. SURE THEY HATE TRUMP. BUT MOST OF ALL THEY HATE AMERICA:  Florida Republican Randy Fine: Democrats are Siding With Iran Because They Hate Trump.

SO IT ALWAYS IS:  Los Angeles ‘Mansion Tax’ has Become a Weapon of Fiscal Mass Destruction.

THAT THING THAT NEVER HAPPENS, KEEPS HAPPENING:  DOJ Charges 16 Aliens With Election Crimes, Including Illegal Voting.

GOOD. IT’S TIME AND PAST TIME TO STOP THE ABUSE:  New H-1B Bill Would Hit Employers With $250,000 Fines.

I WAS HOPING WE’D BURIED THE FESTERING CORPSE OF COMMUNISM IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY:  Communism and the DSA.

THIS IS INTERESTING:  The end of software secrecy is almost upon us. The death of closed source, and the final triumph of open source. I should have realized this a few months ago when I successfully decompiled the game of Firefighter from an ancient DOS shareware binary. My robot friend was able to tell it had been written in Borland Pascal from looking at the data layout; it gave me back very readable Pascal code with sensibly chosen function and variable names. I transpiled it to Rust and now ship it as part of my heritage games collection.

IN WHICH JAPAN SHOWS SELF-PRESERVATION INSTINCTS:  Japan Tightens Guidelines for Granting Permanent Residency, To Take Effect in April 2027.

BY THE TIME YOU GET TO BE MY AGE, YOU START TO FEEL LIKE YOU’RE STUCK WATCHING RERUNS:  Deja Poo.

OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

'BOOOOO!' Shouts Tucker Carlson At The TV As He Watches Indiana Jones Defeat The Nazis https://t.co/QZqMLRIYIG

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) October 5, 2026

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Blue Origin unveils huge ‘Power Tower’ to boost solar electricity on the moon.

BYRON YORK: The political path of the Cornell rape allegation.

It seems likely the case will become even more political in coming days and weeks. And, as with everything else in our society, it will become to some degree about Trump. A media narrative, and a social media debate, will emerge in which the fraternity members become associated with Trump, and the woman becomes associated with the forces of good and decency standing up to Trump.

On ABC News’s This Week on Sunday, the New York Times’s Michelle Cottle pointed to a series of noxious social media messages the fraternity members sent about the woman. “You can’t send those messages, no matter how drunk you are, as a frat boy without having some kind of misunderstanding about what women are there for and whether this is a real person you’re dealing with,” Cottle said. And who might be to blame for that? Cottle pointed to Trump. “And that, I think, starts, you know, we can go to the president for this one,” Cottle continued. “I mean, we are in a moment in this culture where the glorification of being thuggish and swaggering and mistreating women is kind of making you a cool kid.”

It took just a couple of weeks from the lawsuit being filed to a newscast explaining that Trump was somehow involved. And it’s likely that the politicization of this case is just getting started.

Speaking of which, this will drive TV talking heads insane: ‘Cornell 7’ frat bro claims he was too wasted to consent to sex with accuser — and that he’s the real victim: records, reports.

A “Cornell 7” frat bro accused in the alleged gang-rape of a young woman claimed to campus cops that he was too wasted to consent to sex with her — suggesting he was the real victim, according to records.

Matthew Ingalls — one of the seven Chi Phi fraternity brothers at the center of the explosive Ivy League case  —  told Cornell University police that he was the one too intoxicated from booze and ketamine to consent to sex that fateful 2024 night, records obtained by ABC News showed.

Ingalls suggested that the alleged victim — a then-20-year-old student only identified as Jane Doe in court papers — was the one who therefore assaulted him during the debauched and drunken night and not the other way around, as she has claimed.

Related: Question asked and answered:

I sat my 7-year-old down and explained to him that dying industries (legacy media, academia, DNC politics) ride algorithmically driven cultural hysterias both because it’s the only way they can stay relevant and because their business models demand it.

He looked up at me and… pic.twitter.com/TFnIXRzQWi

— Coddled Affluent Professional (@feelsdesperate) October 4, 2026

WHAT IF TRUMP’S BIGGEST STRATEGIC WEAKNESS IS THAT HE CAN’T STOP HIMSELF? The same instincts that made him a media phenomenon can become liabilities when presidential power, government lawyers, and the First Amendment enter the picture. 

THE FLYDUBAI ATTACKER’S MOTIVE WAS EVEN DARKER THAN WE THOUGHT:

Hammami reportedly told investigators that after killing the captain, he had intended to continue towards Israel as though making a normal landing approach, then divert at the last possible moment and crash into Ben Gurion airport. He also considered high-rise buildings in Tel Aviv. His calculation was straightforward and chilling: get close enough before revealing his intention that Israeli fighter aircraft would have no time to intervene.

That explains why Hammami did not attack at the beginning of the flight. He struck when the aircraft was already over Jordan,  much closer to Israel, when the distance between an apparently routine approach and catastrophe had narrowed dramatically.

Ben Gurion would have been a target with consequences far beyond the immediate massive death toll. A passenger aircraft driven into a crowded terminal during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot could have killed people in the air and on the ground on a scale Israel has rarely experienced. The flight was due to arrive at around 9:30 a.m., during one of the busiest travel periods of the year. Tens of thousands of people could have been passing through the airport complex.

Then there is the wider purpose. Ben Gurion is Israel’s principal physical connection with the world. It carries Israelis, tourists, diplomats, businesspeople, foreign workers, families and freight. A successful attack would have hit far more than a building. Airlines would have reconsidered flying to Israel. Insurers would have reassessed risk. Tourism, already badly damaged after years of war, could have collapsed further. The practical and psychological isolation of the country would have deepened immediately.

* * * * * * * *

The details are telling. Hammami prayed, then began his attack. This attack is a definite part of a pattern in which Islamist extremists have fused religious conviction with the deliberate murder of civilians. The ideology has a name. Its adherents have repeatedly told us what they believe, whom they consider enemies and what forms of violence they consider permissible.

Machchar, meanwhile, had no luxury of ideology or analysis. He understood that if he could not open the cockpit door, everybody would die. Badly injured, with his memory fragmented and his vision blurred, he found what he described as ‘one last fight’. The crew outside had been trying to gain access using the cockpit code (though the Israelis on board have said in interviews they did not know whether to trust the crew and were later assigned to shadow their every move until landing), while Hammami prevented the door from opening. Machchar forced himself towards the manual mechanism, reached the knob and twisted it. The door opened.

People outside were ready. That act may have saved nearly 180 people on the aircraft. If Hammami’s reported confession is accurate, it may also have saved hundreds or thousands more at Ben Gurion. And even before the full facts were known, another ugliness appeared.

Related: Flydubai crew allegedly told passengers release terrorist co-pilot after they prevented hijacking: report.

According to Manes and Schlichter, some crew members then demanded that the passengers release him. Manes said crew members told them, “You are not God, you are not going to kill him.”

“We didn’t want to kill him, we just wanted him not to kill us,” Manes said.

Schlichter said the passengers even provided the wounded suspect with oxygen because they wanted him alive to be investigated.

The passengers nevertheless became suspicious enough of the crew that they ordered flight attendants away from the cockpit. “We told them, ‘Now the policy is we’re in charge and you do what we say,’” Manes said. “We didn’t know what to think; we were in a suspicious mode for every steward.”

The pilot himself has quite a trail of social media posts: ‘Stomp on Her Head:’ Flydubai Hijacker Shows What Islam Really Thinks of Women.

WELL, GOOD: Scientists May Have Found a Way to Make Damaged Adult Retinas Repair Themselves.

FOLLOW THE SCIENCE:

NY Post claimed to "exclusively" report that the University of Utah is the most rape-plagued campus in the USA, but failed to note that 81% of these purported rape reports were made by a single "survivor/victim" who reported being "raped by their intimate partner" 260 times pic.twitter.com/TRbtaZmnww

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) October 5, 2026

STRENGTH: Why Do Muscles Weaken With Age? Scientists May Have Found an Important Missing Piece.

THIS IS THE FUNNIEST TIMELINE:

Plot twist! https://t.co/lNH1kAE5wI

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) October 5, 2026

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Scaled-up seawater system produces both hydrogen and fresh water with higher efficiency.

MAKES SENSE:

Scoop: I have heard from a source familiar with the RAF Fairford story that the US feared a drone a attack similar to Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb last year which destroyed 10 Russian aircraft. They fear Iran might copy the tactics and that drones might even already be in UK,…

— Dan Rivers (@danriversitv) October 5, 2026

THAT WAS A DIFFERENT AND STILL VERY CONFIDENT BRITAIN: The Day Britain Conquered Pop Culture — Twice. “It’s hard to avoid the ‘British Invasion’ when you’re talking about the pop culture of the early ’60s, and two of the longest-lasting aspects of that phenomenon launched on this day 64 years ago. October 5 is officially ‘James Bond Day,’ and it’s also the anniversary of the Beatles’ first major single, ‘Love Me Do.'”

IRAN CALLS UP THE DISTAFF VOLKSSTURM: Iran trains women to take up arms against new US offensive.

Iran is training women to use weapons and engage in urban warfare to defend against a possible US offensive.

Images and footage circulated by Iranian media outlets show women, some in uniform, learning to handle assault rifles at open-air training centres in Tehran.

Organisers say the courses cover urban defence, familiarisation with weapons from the Kalashnikov to the Dragunov sniper rifle, RPGs and shoulder-fired air-defence launchers, alongside rescue, firefighting and navigation modules designed specifically for women.

The drive is part of “Jan-fada” – Persian for “those who sacrifice their lives” – a mass-mobilisation movement launched this year after the US and Israel launched a bombing campaign against the country.

Sasan Zare, the campaign’s spokesman, said military training had begun under the Basij militia and that more than 500,000 people had registered within 100 minutes when enrolment opened for its “national resistance” battalions, filling the first 1,000 units.

Authorities have since approved a second 1,000 units. Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, who has not been seen since he was injured in the US-Israeli bombing in late February, praised the turnout in a message last week.

I’ve seen this movie before – at least during the last go around, it played on a double-feature before Downfall:

More details here: Many Military and Government Officials Oppose Expansion of “Jan-Fada” Campaign.

THE EV BUBBLE CONTINUES TO DEFLATE: Aston Martin Says V8s and V12s Are Staying as EV Plans Slip.