December 11, 2025

I AM CONTINUOUSLY BEWILDERED BY WHAT PEOPLE THINK IS AI:  This will be the new -ist and -phobe by freaks who just want to hate. We see it with artists on x already being falsely accused. The accusers do not care about the damage they will cause.

Look, there are indeed AI tells — not that I care, if the thing is readable. Only mostly it isn’t — but it certainly isn’t stuff like m dashes which are used by every fiction writer, and twice as hard by those with ADD.  Again, ultimately the only question should be “do you like it?” Not “how was it made.” On the other hand, deciding — mostly wrongly — that things are AI and hating them for it is very on point for people who only love books if they’re written by people on the approved list, or there’s a male name on the cover, or the cover is purple, or whatever. So, there’s that.

Posted at 2:31 am by Sarah Hoyt

ON THE ONE HAND BOTH NETFLIX AND PARAMOUNT ARE WOKE AS ALL GET OUT:   Movies and Other Things.

On the other hand, so is WB. And on the third hand, these are the desperate actions of drowning men. Ain’t no merger gonna save them. They are falling apart. The way forward is not mergers for the ever dwindling market for woke movies. The future is small, fractured, and indie.

Posted at 1:00 am by Sarah Hoyt

December 10, 2025

THE “NON PARTISAN” CIVIL SERVICE IS A PROPAGANDA MYTH:

Posted at 11:19 pm by Glenn Reynolds

OPEN THREAD: Hump Day.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

THINK OF IT AS EVOLUTION IN ACTION:

Posted at 9:22 pm by Glenn Reynolds

STEP ONE: You’re racist to even suggest this.

STEP TWO: We didn’t stop it for fear of being called racist.

STEP THREE: We were doing the raping too all along.

STOP RAPING PEOPLE!!!

Posted at 8:58 pm by Glenn Reynolds

HERO:

Full details at the thread.

Posted at 8:49 pm by Stephen Green

TRIGGERNOMETRY: Jimmy Carr: A Revolution is Coming!

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

THEY WANT WOMEN MISERABLE, ANGRY, RESENTFUL, AND VOTING DEMOCRAT. BUT I REPEAT MYSELF.

Full article is here.

Posted at 6:49 pm by Glenn Reynolds

NEWS YOU CAN ABUSE: The Dave Barry 2025 Holiday Gift Guide. This year, give the gift of: Huh?

Thus we can assume that the mood in the stable was already pretty tense when the three Wise Men showed up. The New Testament tells us that they brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Gold makes sense as a gift, but we have to wonder about frankincense and myrrh, which according to Google are kinds of tree resin, a “thick, sticky, semi-liquid substance” excreted by conifers. No doubt the thought was sincere, but this does not seem like a super-appropriate gift for a newborn infant. The last thing you want, as a parent, is for your baby to get his hands on a blob of tree goo.

The New Testament does not say how Mary reacted to these gifts, but if I know anything about women, by which I mean my wife, Mary was mortified that she didn’t have any gifts to exchange with the Wise Men, so she pulled Joseph aside and ordered him to go out immediately, find a conifer and bring back some gift resin. She probably also wrapped the gold in different paper and regifted it to the Wise Men. And thus the holiday tradition of exchanging gifts was born.

Thousands of years later, we’re still dealing with the stress of holiday gift-giving — the constant nagging worry that we won’t have enough gifts to retaliate against everybody who will be giving gifts to us. Wouldn’t it be great if you could drop out of this insane holiday competition? Well you can! The trick is to stop trying to give your loved ones thoughtful and appropriate gifts. Instead, you want to give them gifts that are so stupid or inappropriate that they will never want to exchange gifts with you again, and in fact may enter the Federal Witness Protection Program to avoid running that risk.

Where can you find gifts that bad? Right here, that’s where, in my annual Holiday Gift Guide. This is a carefully curated selection of real products that you can actually buy; in fact these products are all 100 percent tax-deductible if you write about them for business purposes in your professional humor Substack. So grab your credit card and prepare to be underwhelmed, because here comes this year’s lineup of gift candidates, starting with:

THE ORIGINAL TOILET MIRROR

Don’t be fooled by copycat toilet mirrors: This is the original toilet mirror, which is a mirror that comes with some adhesive strips so you can mount it on your toilet lid.

Needless to say, read the whole thing.

Posted at 6:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE TIPPING POINT: Democrat Congressman: Yes, the US Is the ‘Great Satan.’

In a sane world, propagandists like Dean Obeidallah would try to find somebody a bit less retarded than Hank Johnson to make the moral case to his audience that Orange Man is being bad by killing terrorists, but we now live in a world where it is pretty normal for lefties to describe America as a Nazi country filled with roving bands of white supremacists killing brown people for sport.

Classical allusion in headline:

Posted at 6:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

NOT LOVING IT: McDonald’s Pulls Christmas Advert After Criticism.

The Netherlands’ division of McDonald’s has pulled its Christmas advert following online backlash over its AI-generated content.

The advert, which was titled “the most stressful time of year,” featured a number of AI-generated people who all experience mishaps in the lead up to the festive season, including an exploding Christmas tree and presents falling off roofs.

In an email shared with Newsweek, a spokesperson for McDonald’s Netherlands said: “The commercial was produced for McDonald’s Netherlands, but we have decided to remove our AI-generated Christmas advert.”

What To Know

The advert faced criticism after it was published and quickly went viral online.

Matt Walsh, a conservative political commentator, wrote on X: “It sucks. It’s awful. There’s no artistry. No wit. No charm. No warmth. No humanity. You can tell it’s AI from a million miles away. I hate it. You should hate it. We should relentlessly mock and deride and bully anyone or any company that uses AI like this.”

The visuals are cringe-inducing, and the message is even worse — why is McDonald’s dismissing the Christmas season as “the most terrible time of the year?”

Merrill Markoe, David Letterman’s former longtime girlfriend and producer, who created the format of his classic NBC late night show, said a decade ago that the postmodern irony that Letterman trafficked in throughout the ’80s had become so omnipresent on TV that it was “the language of advertising and corporate P.R. now:”

It is the voice of what [musician Andy Prieboy of the rock group Wall of Voodoo, her longtime companion] calls “Your buddy the corporation.” Everyone’s hip. Everyone’s ironic. Everyone who is selling you something wants you to know they have the same limitations and daily strife that you do. You definitely should be wary when you hear this voice now. It’s not to be trusted. Unless you’re in the market for an aluminum cookware set or an Apple watch.

The new McDonald’s ad begs the question: How long can that style of corporate irony keep twitching away in the advertising world like a long-dead zombie?

In terms of its visuals, this is the second Christmas-themed AI-generated ad by a world mega-corporation that’s bombed. Will advertisers abandon this format in the short-term until AI becomes harder to detect, or at least smoother in its execution? Great Moments in Quality Control: Coca-Cola’s AI ad just ruined Christmas… again.

Oh, and while we’re on the subject of AI:

If true, Skynet, Hal, and Colossus are all flashing smiles that would make Gordon Gekko proud.

Posted at 5:45 pm by Ed Driscoll