August 20, 2026

SOME OF MY FRIENDS, INCLUDING DALE AMON AND JIM BENNETT, WHOSE WORK HAS OFTEN GRACED THIS PAGE, ARE IN THE SPACE DATA BUSINESS. Unlike Elon, they aren’t providing AI data centers but safe networked black box data storage in space industries. Their company is Immortal Data.

Posted at 1:15 pm by Glenn Reynolds

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:

Posted at 1:05 pm by Glenn Reynolds

MARX CAME FROM A SUCCESSFUL FAMILY AND SQUANDERED IT:

Posted at 1:02 pm by Stephen Green

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Trump DOJ’s Path for Restoring Prohibited Persons’ Gun Rights – Here’s How it Will Work.

For more than 30 years, federal law has provided a way for certain people prohibited from owning firearms to petition the government to get their gun rights back. Well, technically.

In reality, you had about as much chance of getting your rights restored through 18 U.S.C. § 925(c) as I have of getting an invite to walk the red carpet at the Met Gala. (Important note: For the record, I would never go.) The process existed. You just couldn’t use it. But that’s about to change.

Exit quote: “Congress created a process for restoring your gun rights and then prevented the agency responsible for administering the process from spending any money to actually carry it out. Or, in today’s terms, they de-funded the ATF when it comes to restoring your rights.”

Typical.

Posted at 12:45 pm by Stephen Green

WELL SAID:

Cowardice, conformity, corruption…

Posted at 12:29 pm by Stephen Green

METAPHOR ALERT: Prospective Vendors for Mamdani’s Low-Cost Grocery Get Tour of Vacant Lot. “The city is on the road to socialism at least for as long as Mamdani is in Gracie Mansion, and so on Wednesday, in a fitting display of what socialism actually gets you, representatives of outfits that may actually run Mamdani’s Santa Claus grocery store got a grand tour of its prospective location: a garbage-filled vacant lot.”

Posted at 12:14 pm by Stephen Green

THIS IS A REAL PROBLEM:

And:

What’s that a scene from? Mao’s China? Stephen King’s “Women of the Corn?”

Posted at 11:58 am by Stephen Green

SAD: These 6 Artists Censored Their Own Work.

The only way to protect yourself from censored art? Buy the film or TV show on physical media. Except fans of the 1998 film “Pleasantville” will get a rude awakening if they do just that.

Shout! Factory’s new 4K Blu-ray edition of director Gary Ross’s drama snipped a line from the original film. The theatrical version finds Reese Witherspoon’s character saying, “I did the slut thing, David. It got kind of old,” to her brother, David (Tobey Maguire).

The “slut” line got the heave ho in the latest version. World of Reel says Ross himself approved of the censorship. Entertainment Weekly reached out to the director for comment, but the story has not been updated.

If Ross approved the censorship, he’s not alone. Here are five other examples of artists who have censored their own work.

More good stuff from Christian Toto at the link.

Posted at 11:43 am by Stephen Green

THIS HAS TO BE A DEEPFAKE, RIGHT? RIGHT?

Posted at 11:27 am by Stephen Green

GOOD: Military kids will learn Western civ and patriotism in DoD class.

Patriotic values will be taught in schools run by the military, says Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. (That’s not a shocker.) He also wants the school system, which serves children of active-duty military members, to stress classical education.

A new online class on Western civilization will use a textbook on “the ancient world and Christendom,” report AP’s Annie Ma and Konstantin Toropin. The DoD class may use lesson plans created in partnership with Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian school.

“While some classical educators have pushed to incorporate diverse scholars, critics have argued the movement focuses too heavily on foundational texts from Greek, Roman and other Western writers and gives short shrift to achievements in Asia, Africa and the Middle East,” they write.

It appears that learning the classics is now coded as conservative.

That’s because civics and the humanities got hijacked by anti-American Marxists.

Posted at 10:41 am by Stephen Green

ATHENA THORNE: Data Centers and Flock Cameras and AI, Oh My! “Maybe you’re still recovering from the Great Societal Collapse of Y2K. Perhaps you’re still digging out from the rubble of the Cold War nuclear global apocalypse, or you’re busy smothering in the ozone-pollution-acid rain-cold-heat-weather-climate-greenhouse disaster. As for me, I’m just about done with all the panic and handwringing about the technological breakthroughs washing over us at an ever-increasing cadence.”

Posted at 10:10 am by Stephen Green

HMM: Moderna Shares Double on Success of mRNA Cancer Vaccine.

An experimental mRNA-based vaccine succeeded in preventing cancer from coming back or spreading in a study of high-risk melanoma patients, Moderna and its partner Merck said Wednesday, paving the way for a potentially new life-extending treatment for the thousands of people diagnosed with the deadly skin cancer each year.
…
The study looked at people who had surgery to remove a melanoma—the point of the treatment was to reduce the risk of it coming back.

The companies said the late-stage study, which tested the personalized cancer vaccine intismeran in combination with Merck’s blockbuster cancer immunotherapy Keytruda, met its main goal of extending the time before cancer returns in high-risk patients. The study also met a secondary goal of preventing the disease from spreading to different organs.

“I have a feeling that this is just the beginning of a new field,” said Jane Healy, a vice president of oncology at Merck, adding the goal for patients is “to give them longer without having to worry about treatments for cancer.”

Developing…

Posted at 9:39 am by Stephen Green

GOODER AND HARDER:

“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop,” the wise man liked to say.

Posted at 9:23 am by Stephen Green