THIS HAS TO BE A DEEPFAKE, RIGHT? RIGHT?

GOOD: Military kids will learn Western civ and patriotism in DoD class.

Patriotic values will be taught in schools run by the military, says Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. (That’s not a shocker.) He also wants the school system, which serves children of active-duty military members, to stress classical education.

A new online class on Western civilization will use a textbook on “the ancient world and Christendom,” report AP’s Annie Ma and Konstantin Toropin. The DoD class may use lesson plans created in partnership with Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian school.

“While some classical educators have pushed to incorporate diverse scholars, critics have argued the movement focuses too heavily on foundational texts from Greek, Roman and other Western writers and gives short shrift to achievements in Asia, Africa and the Middle East,” they write.

It appears that learning the classics is now coded as conservative.

That’s because civics and the humanities got hijacked by anti-American Marxists.

SOME OF MY FRIENDS, INCLUDING DALE AMON AND JIM BENNETT, WHOSE WORK HAS OFTEN GRACED THIS PAGE, ARE IN THE SPACE DATA BUSINESS. Unlike Elon, they aren’t providing AI data centers but safe networked black box data storage in space industries. Their company is Immortal Data.

ATHENA THORNE: Data Centers and Flock Cameras and AI, Oh My! “Maybe you’re still recovering from the Great Societal Collapse of Y2K. Perhaps you’re still digging out from the rubble of the Cold War nuclear global apocalypse, or you’re busy smothering in the ozone-pollution-acid rain-cold-heat-weather-climate-greenhouse disaster. As for me, I’m just about done with all the panic and handwringing about the technological breakthroughs washing over us at an ever-increasing cadence.”

HMM: Moderna Shares Double on Success of mRNA Cancer Vaccine.

An experimental mRNA-based vaccine succeeded in preventing cancer from coming back or spreading in a study of high-risk melanoma patients, Moderna and its partner Merck said Wednesday, paving the way for a potentially new life-extending treatment for the thousands of people diagnosed with the deadly skin cancer each year.

The study looked at people who had surgery to remove a melanoma—the point of the treatment was to reduce the risk of it coming back.

The companies said the late-stage study, which tested the personalized cancer vaccine intismeran in combination with Merck’s blockbuster cancer immunotherapy Keytruda, met its main goal of extending the time before cancer returns in high-risk patients. The study also met a secondary goal of preventing the disease from spreading to different organs.

“I have a feeling that this is just the beginning of a new field,” said Jane Healy, a vice president of oncology at Merck, adding the goal for patients is “to give them longer without having to worry about treatments for cancer.”

Developing…

GOODER AND HARDER:

“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop,” the wise man liked to say.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE:

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: The Price of ‘Wait Them Out’ Keeps Going Up for Iran. “I’ve written on more than one occasion that there are two wars going on in the region: the actual war, and whatever the hell it is that The New York Times is writing about. There have been days when it seemed as if the Times were getting editorial directives from Tehran.”

HIS VICTORIES TEND NOT TO GET SUNG A LOT: The Most Unsung Victory of Trump’s Administration. “The Trump administration’s decision to end the political persecution of a South Dakota farming and ranching family didn’t receive major attention. So far, it isn’t a top story for news sites and shows amid a busy week of conversation around President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in his second term. It should be.”

SHUT UP, THEY EXPLAINED: Russian court jails Kremlin critic for 11 years for opposing the war in Ukraine.

A Russian court on Monday convicted a prominent opposition politician for speaking out against the war in Ukraine and sentenced him to 11 years and one month in prison in the latest crackdown leading up to next month’s parliamentary election.

The verdict against Lev Shlosberg, a senior member of the Yabloko party, was another step by the Kremlin to stifle dissent since Russia invaded its neighbor in February 2022. Yabloko is the only official political party overtly opposing the war.

In a separate ruling Monday, Russia’s Supreme Court upheld its earlier decision to bar Yabloko from the ballot in the Sept. 18-20 parliamentary vote, denying an appeal by the party.

The moves against Shlosberg and Yabloko highlight the Kremlin’s intolerance toward any criticism of the war, now in its fifth year.

Stalin required just 14 months to clear the Ukraine SSR of Nazi troops, and the Ukraine military in 2022 wasn’t exactly the Wehrmacht.

GREAT MOMENTS IN IDENTITY POLITICS:

THEY’RE JUST CAUGHT AND RELEASED TO DO THE JOGGER-STABBINGS AMERICANS WON’T DO:

IT’S MY THURSDAY ESSAY FOR VIP SUBSCRIBERS: What’s in a Name, Virginia?

My preferred headline was “Introducing Uncle Sam’s Big-Ass Missile Huts,” but it didn’t pass Standards & Practices.