February 3, 2026

HIS SIDE WITH MEN’S RIGHTS ACTIVIST PAUL ELAM: We talk about my book, men’s views on marriage and everything else:

Posted at 3:13 pm by Helen Smith

GOOD: JP Morgan Finally Backs Down, Agrees to Reverse Discriminatory Anti-Gun Business Practices.

That’s a welcome reversal of policy after NSSF met with JPMorgan Chase officials to work to end the discriminatory policy. It’s also the most recent of the big banks, including Bank of America and Citigroup that have shifted banking service policies that previously froze out members of the firearm industry.

Chase Business Banking CEO Ben Walter has issued a letter acknowledging the old banking playbook is no longer sustainable. NSSF is encouraged by the development and like the others, is taking a “Trust, but verify” approach.

For years, lawful firearm and ammunition businesses have faced a quiet but very real threat: being choked off from routine financial services, not because of objective risk, but because of cultural and political animus.

The tactics have been familiar — account closures without meaningful explanation, shifting “policy” justifications, even the catch-all “reputational risk” euphemism used to deny service to constitutionally protected commerce.

Break up the giants and empower local and regional banks. “Too big to fail” too often becomes “Big enough to be a bully.”

Posted at 2:47 pm by Stephen Green

A QUESTION THAT ALL BLUE STATE PROPERTY OWNERS SHOULD BE ASKING:

Posted at 2:42 pm by Glenn Reynolds

GREAT MOMENTS IN VIRTUE SIGNALING:

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

IT’S COME TO THIS: The Film Students Who Can No Longer Sit Through Films.

Everyone knows it’s hard to get college students to do the reading—remember books? But the attention-span crisis is not limited to the written word. Professors are now finding that they can’t even get film students—film students—to sit through movies. “I used to think, If homework is watching a movie, that is the best homework ever,” Craig Erpelding, a film professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told me. “But students will not do it.”

I heard similar observations from 20 film-studies professors around the country. They told me that over the past decade, and particularly since the pandemic, students have struggled to pay attention to feature-length films. Malcolm Turvey, the founding director of Tufts University’s Film and Media Studies Program, officially bans electronics during film screenings. Enforcing the ban is another matter: About half the class ends up looking furtively at their phones.

A handful of professors told me they hadn’t noticed any change. Some students have always found old movies to be slow, Lynn Spigel, a professor of screen cultures at Northwestern University, told me. “But the ones who are really dedicated to learning film always were into it, and they still are.”

Most of the instructors I spoke with, however, feel that something is different now. And the problem is not limited to large introductory courses. Akira Mizuta Lippit, a cinema and media-studies professor at the University of Southern California—home to perhaps the top film program in the country—said that his students remind him of nicotine addicts going through withdrawal during screenings: The longer they go without checking their phone, the more they fidget. Eventually, they give in. He recently screened the 1974 Francis Ford Coppola classic The Conversation. At the outset, he told students that even if they ignored parts of the film, they needed to watch the famously essential and prophetic final scene. Even that request proved too much for some of the class. When the scene played, Lippit noticed that several students were staring at their phones, he told me. “You do have to just pay attention at the very end, and I just can’t get everybody to do that,” he said.

The idea of a two-hour adaptation of a famous novel was an invention of early Hollywood in the first couple of decades of the 20th century. Will the form die once movie theaters vanish?

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

YOU DON’T SAY: Power grid watchdog warns that over-reliance on wind and solar will make winter blackouts likely.

“The overall resource adequacy outlook for the North American BPS is worsening: In the 2025 LTRA [long-term reliability assessment], NERC finds that 13 of 23 assessment areas face resource adequacy challenges over the next 10 years,” the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) report states.

During January’s Winter Storm Fern, many parts of the U.S. grid neared the point where demand exceeded supply. If the grid continues to shut down fossil-fuel generation and tries to meet demand with intermittent wind and solar, according to NERC, more Americans will face blackouts when demand is high.

As electricity demand grows, including data centers, the nation’s grid is relying on intermittent wind and solar resources to meet that growing demand, NERC explains, while plants running on reliable coal and natural gas are slated for retirement over the next five years. “The continuing shift in the resource mix toward weather-dependent resources and less fuel diversity increases risks of supply shortfalls during winter months,” NERC warns.

There’s no reason for a country this rich to suffer electricity shortages, unless the authorities want people to suffer.

Posted at 1:45 pm by Stephen Green

THE SINGULARITY IS NEAR:

Or maybe it’s here.

Posted at 1:32 pm by Glenn Reynolds

CHECKMATE: Native American tribe that owns land under Billie Eilish’s LA mansion has message for virtue-signaling singer.

The Native American tribe that owns the land under Billie Eilish’s multimillion-dollar Los Angeles mansion said celebrities should “explicitly” reference the tribes if they want to use them to virtue-signal.

The Tongva tribe confirmed the “Bad Guy” singer’s $3 million home does sit on its “ancestral land,” after the 24-year-old used her Grammys acceptance speech to rail against ICE and insist that “no one is illegal on stolen land.”

The indigenous inhabitants of the Los Angeles Basin, known as the “First Angelenos,” said they appreciate Eilish’s sentiment, however, they noted that the performer hasn’t contacted them directly — and insisted that next time she explicitly reference them.

“Eilish has not contacted our tribe directly regarding her property, we do value the instance when public figures provide visibility to the true history of this country,” a Tongva spokesperson told the Daily Mail.

“It is our hope that in future discussions, the tribe can explicitly be referenced to ensure the public understands that the greater Los Angeles Basin remains Gabrieleno Tongva territory,” the spokesperson added.

Eilish was widely mocked for her comments on Sunday, as she yelled, “F–k ICE” from the stage while denouncing the US as stolen land.

“Oh, gee, this ‘stolen land’ nonsense again? Maybe she should step up and forfeit her Southern California mansion since it is supposedly on ‘stolen land,’” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wrote on X.’

I’d say that members of the Tongva should at least drop by and have a soak in her hot tub, but as Robert Conquest liked to say, “Everyone is conservative about what he [or she] knows best:” Billie Eilish Gets 3-Year Restraining Order For Trespasser.

Which seems odd, considering, “nobody is illegal on stolen land:”

Related:

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NONCOOPERATION AND OBSTRUCTION: When State Resistance Meets the Constitution. “When obstruction occurs, the Constitution does not leave the federal government helpless. The executive branch possesses a sequenced set of lawful responses, ranging from judicial and criminal to, in extreme cases, military, to restore the execution of federal law. Federal courts may enjoin state interference. Conspiracies to obstruct federal officers are illegal under federal criminal statutes. The National Guard may be federalized when governors misuse it to defeat federal authority. And where organized resistance renders ordinary enforcement impracticable, the Insurrection Act authorizes decisive action to reestablish the rule of law. Much has been made of so-called ‘norms’ against the domestic use of military force. Norms may guide discretion, but they do not override law.”

It’s also a norm that states don’t wage war against the federal government.

Posted at 12:48 pm by Glenn Reynolds

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Over 100 mortar shells found in UNRWA bags in Gaza.

IDF troops located and destroyed a cache of more than 100 mortar shells during mop-up operations on the Israeli side of the Gaza ceasefire line, the military says.

According to the IDF, the 110 mortars, several rockets, and other military equipment were stored inside repurposed UNRWA bags.

The cache was located by troops of the 7th Armored Brigade, who are stationed on the eastern side of the Yellow Line in the southern Gaza Strip.

UNRWA is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hamas.

Posted at 12:43 pm by Stephen Green

THIS HAS BEEN OBVIOUS FOR A WHILE TO ANYONE PAYING ATTENTION, JUST FROM HOW THEY WERE ACTING:

Posted at 12:35 pm by Glenn Reynolds

THE LEFT DOESN’T WANT TO DEFUND THE POLICE, THEY WANT TO BE THE POLICE: Border Control.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll