I try not to contradict Nate very often but there’s a perfectly valid reason why it takes so long to count votes in California. Here is a typical timeline:
Election Day: everyone votes
Week 1: mail in ballots, absentee ballots, military ballots, overseas ballots, ballots… https://t.co/Pfzew0Vha4
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@christopherrufo) June 2, 2026
INDEED:
There's no more accurate a metaphor for the West than slowly bleeding to death by the hand of barbarians while corrupt authorities tie our hands behind our back.
Just a few years ago, a strange signal was received from the plane of the Milky Way.
It was something astronomers had never seen before, pulsing with a radio beat too slow to fit any known astronomical object.
It may have just come and gone as a one-off anomaly.
But then they found another one.
And another.
To date, around a dozen of these long-period radio transients (LPTs) have been detected from diverse corners of the galaxy, leaving scientists baffled.
Now, a team led by astronomer Kovi Rose of the University of Sydney in Australia thinks they may finally have found their Rosetta Stone, the object that could help them interpret at least some of these weird, pulsating objects.
In the direction of the galaxy’s inner regions, the researchers traced an LPT signal directly to a magnetic cataclysmic variable star – a strongly magnetized white dwarf cannibalizing its companion and belching periodic radiation.
I JUST WANT TO KNOW IF THIS MEANS MORE (AND MORE AFFORDABLE) HOUSING: Berkshire Has $400 Billion in Cash and Just Put $6.8 Billion Into Housing. What That Means for Investors. “Wall Street has been practically holding its breath waiting for Berkshire Hathaway’s new CEO to make his first big move. It is important because Greg Abel only took over the top spot at the $1 trillion market cap conglomerate from Warren Buffett at the start of 2026. The day has finally come: Berkshire just announced it is paying $6.8 billion to acquire Taylor Morrison Home.”
IS BESSENT KILLING CHINA’S CURRENCY? The backstory of why Scott Bessent was President Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary begins with the fact Bessent’s early career included time in 1992 with the Soros Fund Management team that broke the Bank of England.
The ever-observant Rod Martin sees the huge significance of that otherwise little-noted fact in the context of U.S.-China relations:
“Presidents hire people for a reason. Trump did not put Scott Bessent at Treasury because he needed another Wall Street résumé. Trump hired a man who had helped break a major currency from the inside, who understood the role of confidence, leverage, capital flows, interest rates, debt, and political denial, and who knew that governments do not lose control of currencies because traders are clever. They lose control because reality finally catches up with the lie. Bessent is not incidental to Trump’s China strategy. He is one of its central weapons.”
Click over and just keep scrolling.
OKAY, GROOMERS:
Happy #PrideMonth from Sesame Street! Join us in celebrating and uplifting the LGBTQIA+ members of our community. ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜 pic.twitter.com/kO9TAhnqDE
Last weekend saw the most unlikely battle between David and Goliath. The little film that could was none other than the psychological horror film Backrooms. It was made on a microscopic budget (in relative terms) of $10 million, yet went on to gross a staggering $81.4 million in the US alone in its opening weekend. And the big film that couldn’t was the not-so-eagerly awaited The Mandalorian and Grogu, which had a 70 percent drop at the box office from its (relatively) underwhelming opening weekend. Unless something wholly unexpected happens, it will conclude its run as the lowest-grossing Star Wars property, confirming the predictions of those who suggested that Disney have run the brand into the ground spectacularly.
Yet the unpredicted triumph of Backrooms might be the change that the Hollywood industry so desperately needs if mainstream cinema is to evolve and survive. It was directed by Kane Parsons, aka Kane Pixels, a 20-year-old YouTuber who has had a series of successful short films and web series, including a 2022 prototype for what became Backrooms. (And yes, this means that Parsons/Pixels was finding huge success online while he was still a teenager, if you want to feel old.) While there has been some chatter on social media about whether Parsons really was solely responsible for the film himself, given the starry list of producers – including The Conjuring’s James Wan and Deadpool & Wolverine’s Shawn Levy – he has set numerous records, including being the youngest director ever to have a number one hit at the box office.
At her Substack, Justine Bateman explores: The Horror! The Horror! Something new and exciting is happening in film. And it’s scaring the hell out of people.
Horror may be the most consistently profitable genre. Films are made for small budgets, with limited cast and locations. And Elevated Horror, although pricier, provides a reliable return. HEREDITARY, for instance, earned $80m with a $10m budget, and NOSFERATU earned $181m on $50m expenditure. Cregger’s WEAPONS earned $264 worldwide with only a $38m budget.
This is partially due to horror fans being loyal and dedicated. These fans show up. Damien Leone, known for the Terrifier franchise, says, “Horror fans are like drug addicts. We always need that fix.”
Backrooms is also Critical Drinker approved, incidentally:
Scott Pelley knows he’s on borrowed time and has been for quite a while. He’s making himself a pain in the ass so that he can claim to be a victim of “censorship” when he’s let go for a completely different reason — namely, that he’s a leftist hack whose journalistic product is middling at best, that he makes far too much money for the volume of content he produces and the number of eyes it draws, and that his undisciplined and irritating public outbursts are bad for the CBS News brand. Let’s not forget that a much more forgiving CBS News management than this one tried to make Pelley the next Dan Rather or Walter Cronkite back in 2017, and he didn’t last two years before his tenure as CBS News’ anchor collapsed in a heap. They didn’t fire him altogether then; they parked him at 60 Minutes, where he’s drawn a fat check and largely mailed it in ever since. (RELATED: The Agony Of 60 Minutes’ Scott Pelley)
And now that the Ellisons own Paramount, the parent company of CBS, and would very much like to make the company somewhat profitable, they’ve brought in Weiss and a new breed of journalists who have a little less sycophantic relationship to elite leftist power politics. Which means Pelley and the rest of the hangers-on from the old regime are going to get evaluated from an objective perspective.
Which is not good news for Scott Pelley.
Would 60 Minutes still be on the air without the NFL?
If they didn’t put 60 Minutes on immediately after NFL games, how many people would watch? Almost none. Could any 60 Minutes employees make a living off the show independently in media? I don’t think so. It’s astounding to me how entitled & cocky these “journalists” are.
Bari Weiss could try to prove she’s being evenhanded by firing a conservative employee from CBS. . . .except there are no conservative employees at CBS.
— Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) June 2, 2026
Leslie Stahl couldn’t name any conservatives at CBS 23 years ago when asked by Cal Thomas on a Fox News show. I doubt the situation has changed much in the decades since.
Despite a city budget of nearly $14 billion — more than the gross domestic product of NATO member Montenegro — city infrastructure is in terrible shape, blamed on pervasive under-investment for decades. The Los Angeles Times noted that the city hadn’t repaved a single street for a six-month stretch and declared that the city had “surrendered to the potholes.” (Hey, it’s not like Los Angelenos drive much, right?)
Where’s all the money going? In some cases, exceptionally well-paid city employees. In 2024, a fire battalion chief was paid $905,060, including $650,510 in overtime pay on a base salary of $135,306. Now, we all love firefighters, but that is more than quite a few players on the Los Angeles Rams football team will make this season.
As of 2024 — the most recent year available — at least 15 city employees were paid more than $600,000 in compensation, including the Chief Port Pilot of the city of Los Angeles, who was paid $704,027.
Eighty-seven city employees were paid more than $500,000 in a single year. The one-hundredth highest-compensated city employee was a port pilot in Los Angeles Harbor who was paid $495,022. (The league minimum annual salary in Major League Baseball is $780,000, so roughly one hundred city employees are making about two-thirds of what bottom-of-the-roster players on the Los Angeles Dodgers are making this year.)
The options for the city of Los Angeles are to continue the current status quo, move even further to the left with Raman, or try something new with Pratt and his “Common Spence.” If the city does not choose the Pratt option, we’re left to wonder why anyone dissatisfied with the city’s direction would stick around.
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