December 16, 2025

SPACE: ULA Atlas 5 launch puts Amazon’s 180th broadband satellite in low Earth orbit.

United Launch Alliance aced its final launch of 2025, a predawn flight of an Atlas 5 rocket carrying 27 satellites for Amazon’s recently re-branded Leo broadband internet service.

The on time liftoff from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station happened at 3:28 a.m. EST (0828 UTC), as the RD-180 engine on the booster roared to lift alongside five solid rocket boosters. The rocket flew on a north-easterly trajectory upon leaving the launch pad.

The mission, referred to by ULA as Amazon Leo 4 and dubbed Leo Atlas 4 (LA-04) by Amazon, was ULA’s fourth launch for the venture, previously known as Project Kuiper.

That’s almost it for the Atlas V, facing retirement after the existing inventory of 10 or 12 rockets runs out. It’s had a nearly perfect record so far, with 106 launches and only one partial failure.

Impressive.

But it’s also a bit of a relic. The total number of launches for Atlas V, going back to 2002, barely matches the last eight or nine months of launches for Falcon 9.

Posted at 4:51 pm by Stephen Green

BUT THE NARRATIVE! US Homicide Rates Fell as Much As Australia’s, But Without the Radical Gun Confiscation.

There are four critical pieces of evidence missing from the discussion which either significantly weaken or outright defeat the claims that gun control is responsible for Australia’s success on mass shootings and homicide:

1. International mass shooting comparisons usually fail to take population differences into account;
2. Australia has always had a low homicide rate and very few mass shootings, including before its gun law changes following Port Arthur;
3. The United States and Australia have very different demographics;
4. Australia omits assisted suicides from its overall suicide data.

This article will take each point in turn. While the focus here is on Australia, a very similar analysis could be done for European countries and Canada.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 3:55 pm by Stephen Green

HILL GOPERS DEMAND FEHBP STOP FUNDING ABORTION: Members of Congress and their staffers are covered by the same Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) that covers executive branch civil servants. Congress has passed laws barring FEHBP from paying for abortions, but a couple dozen GOP senators and representatives say the bureaucrats found a sneaky way around the ban. And they want it stopped, now.

Posted at 2:35 pm by Mark Tapscott

THE CRITICAL DRINKER: Animal Farm — This was Probably a Bad Idea.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

21ST CENTURY WARFARE:

Posted at 2:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

LANGUAGE: ‘Slop’ crowned Merriam-Webster word of the year, defining era of AI-generated content.

Merriam-Webster said that the word slop originated in the 1700s to mean “soft mud” before the meaning evolved to “food waste” in the 1800s and, eventually, “rubbish” and “a product of little or no value” in colloquial terminology.

“The flood of slop in 2025 included absurd videos, off-kilter advertising images, cheesy propaganda, fake news that looks pretty real, junky AI-written books, ‘workslop’ reports that waste coworkers’ time… and lots of talking cats,” Merriam-Webster said in their announcement. “People found it annoying, and people ate it up.”

I liked the talking cats.

Posted at 1:45 pm by Stephen Green

THIS CALLS FOR TRIALS, AND MAYBE HANGINGS:

Posted at 1:25 pm by Glenn Reynolds

ROGER KIMBALL: America’s free-speech war on the EU.

I think Musk is correct: “The EU should be abolished and sovereignty returned to individual countries, so that governments can better represent their people.”

The EU is desperately attempting to preserve its undemocratic prerogatives by clamping down on free speech and extending its regime of censorship. Meanwhile, the White House just released its 2025 National Security Strategy report. Europe’s economic performance and military posture are dismal. But that is the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Economic decline, the report says, is

eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure. The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence. Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less.

All of which means that the odds favor Elon Musk. The question is not whether the EU will collapse but when. My book has good odds that it happens before the end of Trump’s second term.

Faster please, because the striped trousers crowd in Belgium are getting far too big for their britches:

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

PROBABLY MORE THAN ONE, BUT YEAH: Authorities May Be Covering up a Key Detail About the Brown University Shooting. “Social media has been flooded with reports that the gunman yelled ‘Allahu Akbar.’ That’s not a minor detail.”

Related:

Posted at 1:19 pm by Glenn Reynolds

THIS IS THE SITUATION THROUGHOUT THE WEST:

Posted at 1:15 pm by Glenn Reynolds

“EXPEDIENCY” REMAINS HER WORD OF THE DAY: Wait, Nancy Pelosi Just Said WHAT? “What’s it mean when an impeachment-happy former House Speaker suddenly announces that impeachment is off the table?”

Posted at 1:14 pm by Stephen Green

THEY CERTAINLY DON’T WANT THEM TO: The Left thinks poor kids can’t learn.

“Progressives” seem hostile to the idea that schools can teach low-income students, writes Jonathan Chait in The Atlantic. Once moderate Democrats like Barack Obama backed reforms they hoped would improve achievement and provide upward mobility. Now, critics from the left “tend to dismiss any plan to close the achievement gap between rich and poor students.” They “support public schools as community centers and providers of child care and secure middle-class jobs,” but not as places to educate children.

Mississippi implemented “a set of educational reforms including teacher training, testing, retention (i.e., whether kids move forward or are held back), and a mostly phonics-based reading instruction,” and moved from 49th in the nation to the top 20 in a 10-year-period, Chait writes. “Adjusted for race and income, Mississippi now does a far better job of teaching literacy than do many northern states seen as leaders in public education.”

But left-wing critics of education reform aren’t cheering.

How will they keep them ignorant, dependent, and voting Democrat if they’re educated and upwardly mobile?

Posted at 12:43 pm by Stephen Green