December 16, 2025

AUSTRALIA IS A SAD PLACE THESE DAYS:

Posted at 7:29 pm by Glenn Reynolds

IT REALLY IS:

Is it corruption, or incompetence? Why not both?

Posted at 7:07 pm by Glenn Reynolds

TIME WAITS FOR NO ONE: Rolling Stones Call Off 2026 Tour.

The Rolling Stones have called off plans for a 2026 stadium tour of the United Kingdom and Europe, a source close to the band confirms to Variety, following reports that guitarist Keith Richards was unable to “commit” to it.

While never officially announced, the group’s touring pianist Chuck Leavell and a spokesperson recently told press in the U.K. that the band has nearly completed a new album — their second with 35-year-old producer Andrew Watt — and planned on touring the U.K. and Europe. However, Richards, who turns 82 on Thursday, is said to be unable to commit to the rigors of another tour. Live dates in recent years have shown that he has faced challenges due to a long battle with arthritis, which he has called “benign” and said has forced him to change his style of playing.

Perhaps even more so than the death of Charlie Watts in 2021, this feels like the beginning of the end of the group (or the birth of its holographic touring version). In decades past, Keith was the Stones’ touring obsessive; even when the band was off the road, he toured with Ronnie Woods as part of the New Barbarians in 1979 and with his own X-Pensive Winos group in 1988 and 1993. And in 1986, when Mick Jagger decided tour to promote his own solo album rather than head out on the road with the Stones, Richards was quoted as saying, “If [Mick] was to [tour] without the Stones? I mean, it would be one thing to say he don’t want to go out on the road, but if he was to say he don’t want to go out with the Stones and goes out with Schmuck and Balls band instead?… I’ll slit his f***in’ throat.” So to read that Keith Richards “is said to be unable to commit to the rigors of another tour,” it sounds like time has finally caught up with the man who in his younger days, could “not be killed by conventional weapons:”

Posted at 6:49 pm by Ed Driscoll

YE PROPHETS OF DOOM: The Economist 2 years ago:

The Economist this week:

And who can forget, from March:

Posted at 6:09 pm by David Bernstein

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