October 13, 2026
TREAT THE PAIN FROM SITTING: Seat Cushion for Tailbone & Sciatica Pain Relief. #CommisisonEarned
READER FAVORITE: Walker’s Razor Slim Electronic Muff. #CommissionEarned
NIFTY: Meet Steelfin—Anduril Says It Can Deliver 80% of PAC-3 Capability for Less Than Half the Price.
Steve Milano, an Anduril representative, told The War Zone that the version intended to perform PAC-3-type missions could deliver roughly 80% of the interceptor’s capability for less than half the cost.
That price difference is central to Anduril’s pitch. Modern air defense systems face growing pressure from large missile and drone salvos, making the cost and availability of individual interceptors increasingly important.
Anduril says it intends to manufacture several thousand Steelfin missiles annually, using a common production base for multiple variants rather than building each configuration around an entirely separate industrial line.
If they can pull off that ramp-up, that would be truly impressive.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Publisher removes 200 papers University of Chicago statistician wrote in under 1 year.
A tenured professor, Polson’s papers primarily focus on advanced math and statistics such as statistical parameterization and financial markets. Some of his research highlighted on the University of Chicago’s website includes measuring the “energy cost” of using AI and analyzing the odds of cheating.
Recently, however, concerns about the large number of articles Polson was producing prompted SSRN, a pre-print server for academic papers, to retract 253 papers that he wrote or co-wrote within the past year, The Washington Post reported.
In comparison, he wrote 10 published papers in 2018, 14 in 2017, and 12 in 2016, according to the “Research” page on his website.
When asked why it removed his papers, SSRN told the Post, “The most significant issue was the unusual submission activity.”
Hmm.
TRUMP NOT SERIOUS ABOUT NATIONAL DEBT: Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent insist economic growth is the solution to the National Debt that just hit $40.3 Trillion. But, as I report in my Substack column this morning, a new Fiscal Lab on Capitol Hill report makes it clear that depending on growth isn’t going to hack it.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:
Divinity Schools have shown the same radical shift to the left as other schools in higher education. That was evident this week at Point Loma Nazarene University, where Dean of Students Jason Cha warned students that saying “in Christ alone” is a sign of “white privilege.”…
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) October 13, 2026
“BLACK MARXISM.” So it’s stupid and vicious, but also flavored with blackness.
THE JUDICIARY’S ONGOING CAMPAIGN TO DESTROY ITS OWN CREDIBILITY IS PROCEEDING APACE.
One can debate whether the Senate’s advice and consent role under Article II, Section 2 has anything to do with scrutinizing the judicial philosophy of nominees. But one thing it is unquestionably supposed to do is prevent insane and otherwise mentally unstable people from… https://t.co/PQrShcWWNz
— Hans Mahncke (@HansMahncke) October 13, 2026
ME NEITHER. THAT SAID, THE UNDERLYING POINT HAS SOME VALIDITY, ESPECIALLY AT FANCY PRIVATE COLLEGES:
My daughters have NOT “run absolutely feral.” To blame ME because other people don’t raise their kids right — no, not allowed. Stop this broad-brush collective blame bullshit. https://t.co/DIGy4VDM7z
— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) October 13, 2026
Related:
All we hear all day every day is how men should “be better.” But the moment you mention how women could “be better” too, the internet breaks and there’s a wave of rage.
I got a heavy round of insults this afternoon for simply saying we should have a conversation about how, in…
— Lisa Britton (@LisaBritton) October 12, 2026
MAKE THIS HAPPEN, ELON:
If we aren’t going to be able to block foreign accounts on here by region at least put a little flag next to their avi so I don’t bother with these South Asia accounts. https://t.co/BOd5DgP9VK
— EducatëdHillbilly™ (@RobProvince) October 12, 2026
But geo-blocking would still be better.
SELECTIVE OUTRAGE? Of course, IMHO the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is absolutely right about this, but I can’t help but remember that they were conspicuously silent when the Obama/Biden admin actually hired that nutjob Nina Jankowitz to become the Disinformation Czar.
It’s too easy to attribute political fear or agendas to organizations (which is 96% of social media) but it bears noting nonetheless.
“Disinformation” you’ll remember was the reason that Biden pressured FB and others to censor the Post‘s Hunter Biden laptop story, which turned out to be completely true, despite the best efforts of Blinken, Brennan and Gen. Michael Hayden of “NewsGuard” fame.
Censorship of any kind is pretty much political authoritarianism, no matter who does it.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Ilhan Omar Had a Rough Non-Indigenous Peoples Day. “There might have been a time when I lamented Democrats and Republicans going back-and-forth at each other like this. That’s heavy on the ‘might’ there, by the way. That’s probably just me imagining that I was a lot more gracious at some point in the past.”
APPLYING OCCAM’S RAZOR TO THE TEXAS SENATE RACE MYSTERY:
The generational pussy shit explanation may indeed be the real one. https://t.co/FHwfVDsHhx
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) October 13, 2026
OLD HABITS DIE HARD: The Arrest of a OK Guardsman for Carrying a Gun Shows More Adult Supervision Needed in Washington, DC. “According to an account from the Associated Press, on September 28, a 22-year-old off-duty specialist with the Oklahoma Guard deployed to Washington, D.C., as part of an ongoing safety task force was traveling in an SUV with another National Guard member when they were stopped by U.S. Park Police over an expired tag. Upon approaching the vehicle, the officer reportedly saw an empty holster inside. When the guardsman was asked if there was a firearm in the vehicle, he responded in the affirmative.”
21st CENTURY HEADLINES: Reanimated AI Greta Garbo stars again … in a ball-bearing advert.
She shimmered in Hollywood’s silent movie era and lit up the first talkies – now Greta Garbo may be about to star in cinema’s new AI age.
More than a century after her screen debut and decades after her ashes were laid to rest in a Swedish woodland cemetery, the Hollywood superstar’s descendants are ready to consider an AI version of her taking a 21st-century film role.
Her likeness has already been reanimated for an advert for a Swedish industrial company, using AI generation technology. The practice some critics call “ghostploitation” has also been used in the case of the actor Val Kilmer, who died last year.
Asked if the AI Garbo could be cast in other roles, Craig Reisfield, one of three relatives who manage her legacy, told the Guardian: “I won’t say no, especially having seen what I’ve seen. It’s pretty incredible and lifelike. So what’s to say that you can’t bring Greta Garbo back in some kind of fashion in a film role?”
Reisfield said he was “flabbergasted” when he saw the AI version of his great-aunt created for publicity for the ball-bearings giant SKF. The connection comes because Garbo’s second-ever screen role was in a 1921 promotional film involving the Gothenburg-based company.
In 1986 when he cowrote July 20, 2019: Life in the 21st Century, Arthur C. Clarke could foresee 21st century technology that would be able to reanimate the appearances and voices of long-dead actors. But he didn’t anticipate how 60 years of negative PR concerning AI – not least of which the epochal 1968 film he cowrote with Stanley Kubrick that gave the world one of the first movie supercomputers running amok and trying to kill every nearby human. And thus, the above Grauniad article gives AI Garbo a one star review, and the video is getting absolutely hammered by negative comments on YouTube:
WHY MAKE HASAN INTO A VIDEOTAPED MARTYR? Trump ‘losing enthusiasm’ for live-streamed execution.
He’s not alone: Scott Jennings and Van Jones Agree Islamic Terrorist Nidal Hasan’s Execution Should Not Be Broadcast.
WELL, THAT WAS UNEXPECTED:
BREAKING: In new ad, James Talarico calls out Joe Biden “for failing us at the border” pic.twitter.com/MgGCUJFy33
— Kalshi Politics (@KalshiPolitics) October 12, 2026
THE INTERNET OF DANGEROUSLY CONNECTED THINGS:
I’m sorry, but hackers remotely turning off refrigeration systems at hundreds of supermarkets and destroying all their fresh and frozen food is INSANE. We’ve connected so much of our physical world to the internet that apparently even keeping milk cold is now a cybersecurity… https://t.co/4g9SYvTlsb
— Rushi (@rushicrypto) October 12, 2026
UPDATE. (FROM GLENN):
UPDATE (FROM STEVE): Glenn’s embedded post refused to embed, so please enjoy this lovely screencap.
DISCOVERY DAY — Or, why I keep Columbus Day.
[Howard] Zinn was right about Columbus, but he never once turned the critical lens he applied to the Spanish colonists to the native people of the New World. In Tenochtitlan, the Aztecs sacrificed war captives by the thousands, cutting out their hearts atop the Templo Mayor, and stacked the skulls in a tower of more than 650 heads cemented together, including women and children, while captors ate parts of the bodies in ritual feasts. Around 1450 on Peru’s coast, the Chimú cut open the chests of children, some as young as five. In South Dakota around 1325, attackers at Crow Creek slaughtered villagers, scalped and dismembered the corpses, and carried off the young women. In Colorado around 1150, Ancestral Puebloans at Cowboy Wash butchered and cooked people. And across the continent, slavery was widespread. None of this excuses Columbus. He was a savage. But so were these indigenous people.
Nor did Zinn turn the lens he trained on Columbus Day toward Martin Luther King Day. He was happy to put on his historian’s hat for the uncomfortable truths of Columbus the man, but he did no such thing for King, who plagiarized portions of his doctoral dissertation, serially cheated on his wife, rejected the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection that his Baptist congregants took on faith, and according to an FBI surveillance summary, may have looked on and laughed while a fellow minister raped a woman in a Washington hotel room. None of this approaches the scale of Columbus’s crimes, but it’s the principle that matters. We acknowledge the truth of the words King delivered at the Lincoln Memorial, and we honor the man even though he doesn’t live up to the symbol. But more importantly, we would never assume that someone celebrating MLK Day is celebrating being a scumbag husband, just as we don’t assume that someone celebrating Indigenous Peoples’ Day means celebrating eating children. Rather, these holidays celebrate the good parts, and we don’t sit around debating whether we can separate the good from the bad either. We just separate them. Readers familiar with my history may be wondering, what about someone like Vladimir Lenin? Do we get to celebrate him too? But with King and Columbus, we celebrate specific achievements worth honoring, and set the sins of the men aside. With Indigenous Peoples’ Day, we celebrate an ethnic identity, which I find less deserving, but not inherently immoral. But with someone like Lenin, the atrocities were not distinct from the achievement. When we celebrate King, we celebrate his antiracism. When we celebrate Columbus, we celebrate his discovery. But when people celebrate Lenin, they celebrate his revolution.
The decisive push for Indigenous Peoples’ Day came on the same anniversary when I was sitting in homeroom, learning about the real Columbus and what he did to the people of my mother’s homeland. In the Bay Area, activists formed a group called Resistance 500 and lobbied the Berkeley City Council, which voted unanimously to make Indigenous Peoples’ Day an official city holiday. In 2014, Seattle and Minneapolis adopted it too. And in 2021, President Biden formally recognized it.
Curiously, the author misspelled then-President Obama in that last sentence.
LIMITED TIME DEAL: HOSHANHO Cleaver Knife 7 Inch,. #CommissionEarned
