July 14, 2026

I’D TAKE IT OFF THEIR HANDS FOR HALF THAT MUCH:

Posted at 5:22 pm by Stephen Green

WHY IS THE LEFT SUCH A CESSPIT OF VIOLENCE? Ann Widdecombe ‘murder’ suspect had communist literature at home.

The brutal murder of Ann Widdecombe was last night being treated as a suspected politically motivated terrorist attack.

In a dramatic escalation, counter terrorism officers yesterday took over the investigation into the killing of the former Tory minister. It came after the discovery of Russian communist literature and other items of political ideology at the home of the suspected killer.

And it marked a U-turn after the local force, Devon and Cornwall Police, spent days insisting that there was no link to terrorism. Officers, it is understood, are probing whether the 78-year-old may have been bludgeoned to death in a premeditated attack on Reform UK.

Reform Slams Police Over Botched Probe

They are looking at whether a self-radicalised loner may have considered the pensioner an ‘easy target’ in comparison to more prominent party figures, such as Nigel Farage, who have security.

Last night, Reform accused Devon and Cornwall police of misleading the public in the initial stages of the investigation.

Senior officers were under pressure to explain why they so publicly ruled out terror or a political motivation.

Related: It’s time to talk about left-wing violence. “It used to be hot-headed Islamists who issued fatwas to anyone who blasphemed against their dodgy religious principles. They are still a threat, of course. But now they’ve been joined by radical left-wing activists who spew out death threats to Nigel Farage and JK Rowling, while urging everyone to ‘Be Kind’. Sadly, these are not all empty promises. Last year, Bash Back really did attack Streeting’s office. They sprayed red paint on the building and wrote ‘child killer’ on the windows. And they also disrupted a feminist conference in Brighton by smashing windows and spraying paint.”

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

I SOMEHOW MISSED THIS FROM FRIDAY’S ROCKET REPORT: Impulse Space enters military launch competition.

This week, the US Space Force brought two more companies into the pool of bidders eligible to compete for its launch contracts—Impulse Space and Relativity Space. For a rocket company, cracking into the lucrative US military launch market is both a sign of maturity, as well as an important source of revenue. The inclusion of Relativity Space, which is making credible progress toward the launch of its heavy-lift Terran R rocket, is perhaps not a huge surprise, Ars reports. But the other company, a provider of in-space propulsion, was.

The Space Force gets creative … Impulse Space is developing a “kick stage” it calls Helios, which can provide up to 9 km/s of delta-V to a payload, rapidly boosting it from low-Earth orbit to geostationary orbit about 36,000 km above the Earth’s surface. Essentially, this allows the company to transform a medium-lift rocket, such as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 vehicle, and give it the performance of a larger and more powerful rocket.

Nifty.

Posted at 4:51 pm by Stephen Green

QUESTION ASKED AND NOT ANSWERED:

Posted at 4:44 pm by Ed Driscoll

FAIL, BRITANNIA:

Posted at 4:35 pm by Stephen Green

WHAT’S A FEW MISSING ZEROS AMONG FRIENDS?

In the summer of 2020, NPR gave an approving interview to the author of the book In Defense of Looting. Minnesota’s Somali Pirates are performing larceny on an industrial scale, which they presumably also admire.

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

QUEERS FOR PALESTINE OR WHATEVER:

Posted at 4:04 pm by Stephen Green

UGH: George Floyd in medical journals: Analysis documents rise of ‘woke terminology’ in research.

The analysis covers the use of words such as indigenous knowledge, microaggression, justice, safe space, and health equity in medical journals.

Published recently by James Nuzzo, an exercise scientist and men’s health researcher, it documents “woke medical terminology” found on the PubMed database.

For example, the phrase “lived experience” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 10,631 articles indexed in PubMed, and “transgender” appeared in the titles or abstracts of 15,741 articles.

George Floyd’s death “markedly increased discussions on race in academia, including in health and medical journals,” it states. “In fact, George Floyd’s name appeared in the titles or abstracts of 269 articles indexed in PubMed between 2020 and 2025.”

Nuzzo said the trend is alarming.

“There is no evidence that implementing woke medicine improves health outcomes,” Nuzzo told The College Fix in an email interview. “In fact, the shift away from the individual patient to the patient’s group identity is presumably harmful to the patient.”

You don’t say.

Posted at 3:49 pm by Stephen Green

I HAVE NO CORK TO POP FOR THESE THINGS: Don’t pop the cork yet on Colorado’s renewables ‘milestone.’

The trouble is that this jubilant announcement of a “majority” renewables power grid owes more to a stark drop in coal-fired generation than the wind and solar that was added. Percentages rely on both the numerator — how much wind, solar, and hydropower was generated — as well as the denominator, or how much total generation there was.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Electric Power Monthly net generation by state data, released June 25, demonstrates this. Renewables’ utility-scale generation rose 15.8 percent year-over-year between the first quarters of 2025 (5,934 Gigawatt hours, or GWh) and 2026 (6,872 GWh). However, coal generation dropped by 62% between over that same period, from 4,342 to 1,643 GWh.

Overall, Colorado’s total in-state generation actually dropped by 922 GWh in Q1 2026 compared with Q1 2025.

The state produces less energy, and more of what we do produce is higher-cost — which explains my electric rates.

Posted at 2:47 pm by Stephen Green

ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES:

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

NICE WORK, INEZ:

Posted at 2:32 pm by Stephen Green

VIKING CONQUESTS CONTINUE: Hundreds of Peruvians are naming their babies after Norwegian soccer star Erling Haaland. “Apparently, the people of Peru (which is in South America) are obsessed with the Viking giant. As of Monday, some 500 new babies have been named after Erling Haaland, and you can expect that number to grow.”

Even Old Blighty isn’t safe:

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Turns Out, Big Brother Is Actually a Matronly Euro-Scold. “We need to set the age at which they can, the children can, legally access social media,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said this week, which translates into American (via bad Japanese translation) as “All your screen are belong to us.”

Posted at 2:16 pm by Stephen Green

DISPATCHES FROM THE OCCUPIED ZONES:

Dhimmis are forbidden from repairing old churches and synagogues, and from building new ones.

Posted at 1:59 pm by Stephen Green

THE NEW SPACE RACE: SpaceX targets July 16 for Starship Flight 13, reveals what went wrong on previous launch.

According to a new SpaceX analysis, a sequence change in Ship’s engines, which ignite before the two rocket halves physically detach in a maneuver known as “hot staging,” led to a 90-degree error in Super Heavy’s orientation after separation. Super Heavy’s boostback burn was also cut short when five of its 33 engines failed to relight. SpaceX says it has introduced a modified startup sequence for Ship and hardware updates to Super Heavy to address the orientation anomaly and ignition issues, respectively, “along with updates to engine alarms and aborts to match the conditions seen in the multi-engine flight environment.”

Ship ran into a bit of trouble during Flight 12 but also managed to pull off some firsts. One of the spacecraft’s three vacuum-optimized Raptors was lost 40 seconds after stage separation, but it still reached its designated suborbital trajectory, demonstrating its “engine out” capabilities, according to the SpaceX update. The loss did, however, prevent Ship’s in-space engine relight attempt. SpaceX traced the failure to “interconnected causes” and has introduced a number of fixes for the upcoming Flight 13, “with additional reliability improvements planned in upcoming versions of the Raptor engine.”

Godspeed, Flight 13.

Posted at 1:45 pm by Stephen Green