December 15, 2025

EXPOSING ‘A STORY OF FRAUD AND BETRAYAL’ IN ACADEMIA. There’s a new book out about the famous “signing first” paper that claimed promising to be honest ahead of time made people more honest in follow-up data gathering. Turns out the data on honesty was faked, which, cosmically, seems like pushing it.

Posted at 4:22 pm by Robert Shibley

HERE COMES DOGE II: Trump administration launches new cross-government recruitment effort to put Silicon Valle technologist/AI stars in key positions to help solve feds’ biggest, most complex digital problems.

Posted at 3:06 pm by Mark Tapscott

THE NEW SPACE RACE: China plans 2026 debut of new rocket for crewed lunar and LEO missions

The Long March 10 and Long March 10A are being developed as part of China’s next-generation human spaceflight plans. The former, a three-stage rocket featuring a triple-core first stage with 5.0-meter-diameter cores, is designed to launch a new crew spacecraft (Mengzhou) and a separate lunar lander into translunar orbit as part of plans to land Chinese astronauts on the moon before 2030.

The latter, the 10A, is a two-stage, single-stick variant for low Earth orbit (LEO) launches, designed to send a LEO variant of Mengzhou to the Tiangong space station. LEO Mengzhou is designed to be partially reusable and can carry more astronauts to Tiangong.

China’s human spaceflight agency, CMSEO, hinted in October at a planned first flight of the Long March 10 and the Mengzhou spacecraft in 2026, with a logo design competition for the Mengzhou-1 crew spacecraft mission.

CALT’s statement does not make clear if the debut flight will be crewed or uncrewed, nor did it explicitly state the mission will be an integrated launch of the Long March 10A and Mengzhou spacecraft.

When’s that next Starship flight test, Elon?

Posted at 2:46 pm by Stephen Green

SAD:

Posted at 2:33 pm by Stephen Green

I’VE HAD MY DOUBTS ABOUT THEM: Man shocks doctors with extreme blood pressure, stroke from energy drinks: His blood pressure was 254/150. Readings of 180/120 are considered an emergency. “Four weeks into his recovery, he was on five different drugs to try to bring down his blood pressure. At that point, doctors pushed for more lifestyle information from the man, who finally revealed that he had a habit of drinking an average of eight high-potency energy drinks every day.”

No. Just no.

Posted at 2:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: This is Why You Should Never Trust a CNN (Or Any Mainstream Media) ‘Expert’ Analyst…About Anything.

CNN’s Chief Law Enforcement and Intelligence Analyst John Miller:

What we’re told from law enforcement sources now is that the seized two firearms from this 24-year-old suspect [in the Brown University shooting]. One of those firearms, we are told, was equipped with a laser sight device.

This has significance because number one, that’s a fairly sophisticated device for a handgun where when you aim it, a red dot goes where you want to target, and if you fire at that point, the bullet goes where the dot is. It’s the kind of thing used mostly by professionals, tactical people, military people.

Are they now?

Posted at 1:44 pm by Stephen Green

A BILLION-DOLLAR LOSS IS STILL CHEAPER THAN STAYING IN NEWSOM’S CALIFORNIA, I GUESS:

UPDATE (From Ed): “Tim Waltz got caught. Gavin Newsom got a presidential campaign.”

Posted at 1:35 pm by Stephen Green

TINIEST TRUMP SCANDAL OF ALL TIME? New State Department FONT Policy!

This could qualify as the tiniest Trump scandal of all time — even smaller than the “Trump dumped all the fish food in the koi pond” scandal. It’s a FONT scandal. NBC News thought this was hot-buns news from the Department of State:

That’s right: we’re supposed be outraged by this: “Calibri font is the latest casualty in the Trump administration’s war on diversity and inclusion.” Admission of guilt: I use Calibri font constantly as I write up articles. I don’t remember anyone on the right railing against Calibri font.

* * * * * * * * *

Then it became more ridiculous: JustMindy at Twitchy flagged Steve Herman, a former White House reporter for the supposedly objective Voice of America, compared this to the Nazis:

The Nazis, in 1941, banned the Fraktur font because it was “too Jewish.”

Could there be a possibility that there is anything Team Trump does that can’t be compared to the Nazis?

At the Free Press, Nellie Bowles jokes, “That font is too woke:”

The State Department is cracking down on woke typefaces. They announced this week that the Biden-era font Calibri is banned from official forms, and we’re back to Times New Roman. A serif, like what this country was built on. Calibri is the streamlined font that has no serifs, and disability activists say it’s better for them, which doesn’t really make sense to me but whatever. I guess they want it to be like braille? Or Comic Sans, to draw in all IQ levels? I write in sans serif font but the lib one (Arial) and not the libertarian one (Helvetica).

Say what you will about Calibri, it has nowhere near the ubiquity that Helvetica had in the mid-to-late 20th century, seamlessly interlinking federal and local governments and the biggest of big corporations into one homogeneous whole. Or as I dubbed it in 2010, “Liberal Fascism: The Font.”

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll