December 14, 2025

AUSTRALIA’S BONDI BEACH SHOOTING: What we know so far about Hanukkah attack.

Twelve people have died — including one gunman — following a shooting at Australia’s Bondi Beach which targeted the Jewish community on the first day of Hanukkah.

According to police, 29 others were taken to hospital and two officers were shot during the incident, which has since been declared a terror attack by officials. The surviving gunman is in a critical condition.

More than 1,000 people were attending an event on the beach celebrating Hanukkah.

Chris Minns, the premier of New South Wales, said: “Our heart bleeds for Australia’s Jewish community tonight.

“I can only imagine the pain that they’re feeling right now to see their loved ones killed as they celebrate this ancient holiday”.

Its origin and purpose, still a total mystery:

UPDATE: From last December: How Australia went from ‘goldene medina’ to ‘vitriol and vilification’ of Jews.

Posted at 10:54 am by Ed Driscoll

WELL, THIS IS THE 21st CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Orbital Data Centers Will “Bypass Earth-Based” Constraints.

Last week, readers were briefed on the emerging theme of data centers in low Earth orbit, a concept now openly discussed by Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Jeff Bezos, and Sam Altman, as energy availability and infrastructure constraints on land increasingly emerge as major bottlenecks to data center buildouts through the end of this decade and well into the 2030s.

Nvidia-backed startup Starcloud has released a white paper outlining a case for operating a constellation of artificial intelligence data centers in space as a practical solution to Earth’s looming power crunch, cooling woes, and permitting land constraints.

Terrestrial data center projects will reach capacity limits as AI workloads scale to multi-gigawatt levels, while electricity demand and grid bottlenecks worsen over the next several years. Orbital data centers aim to bypass these constraints by using near-continuous, high-intensity solar power, passive radiative cooling to deep space, and modular designs that scale quickly, launched into orbit via SpaceX rockets.

“Orbital data centers can leverage lower cooling costs using passive radiative cooling in space to directly achieve low coolant temperatures. Perhaps most importantly, they can be scaled almost indefinitely without the physical or permitting constraints faced on Earth, using modularity to deploy them rapidly,” Starcloud wrote in the report.

Starcloud continued, “With new, reusable, cost-effective heavy-lift launch vehicles set to enter service, combined with the proliferation of in-orbit networking, the timing for this opportunity is ideal.”

No word yet how SID is holding up these days.

Posted at 10:45 am by Ed Driscoll

CARLSON GOES FULL CANDACE OWENS: Appealing to low-IQ credulous conspiracy theorists is a sure way to destroy a political movement, and Tucker seems to be giving it the old college try. Here’s the background: The communist anti-American government in Venezuela naturally hates Israel, while the opposition leadership is friendly. This is hardly a secret. The Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom has a story about this. A nutty anti-Israel leftist posted an excerpt from the story, with the caption, “Israeli publication, Israel Hayom, says it was ISRAEL that pushed Trump to bring about regime change in Venezuela.” Except that the story does not say anything remotely like that. Which didn’t stop Tucker from going into his “just asking questions mode,” to provide more oxygen for this non-story.

Posted at 10:09 am by David Bernstein

YEP.

Posted at 8:33 am by Glenn Reynolds

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK AND HOW: There are gotcha questions, silly questions, rhetorical questions and pointed questions. That’s just for starters. Michael Foster, an Ohio pastor handed a Sunday bullhorn by Rod Martin, uses that momentous question posed by Satan to Eve to launch an incisive analysis of the modern weaponization of the question.

Posted at 8:21 am by Mark Tapscott

I MISS SOME THINGS ABOUT 1995, BUT NOT THE MEDIA ENVIRONMENT:

Posted at 8:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

THE LEFT WOULD DO THIS HERE IF IT COULD:

UPDATE:

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

December 13, 2025

LOTS OF UNANSWERED QUESTIONS ON THE BROWN SHOOTINGS:

Posted at 10:49 pm by Glenn Reynolds

WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY: Animal Farm review: Director Andy Serkis softens George Orwell classic for family animation. “Originally conceived by George Orwell as a satirical allegory for the Russian Revolution and the subsequent struggles of the USSR under the rule of Joseph Stalin, Animal Farm’s political ire is redirected in this lively CG-animated adaptation directed by Andy Serkis. Rather than Stalinism, Serkis takes aim at greed, rapacious consumerism and corporate corruption and malfeasance. There’s also a timely dig at populist political movements.”

This isn’t the first attempt at a mirror universe Animal Farm; Roger Waters did the same thing nearly 50 years ago on Pink Floyd’s Animals: “Whereas the novella focuses on Stalinism, the album is a critique of capitalism and differs again in that the sheep eventually rise up to overpower the dogs.”

(Via, appropriately enough, Small Dead Animals.)

UPDATE:

“Has anyone considered the possibility that the real issue why theaters are shutting down nationally is that no one in Hollywood outside of Tom Cruise has made an entertaining movie in like oh… I don’t know… ten years at least?” Speaking of movies ten years ago, that’s when it all started to go wrong, but few knew it at the time: 

 

Posted at 10:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

HEH:

UPDATE (From Ed): Personally, I think a man of Biden’s stature deserves a much more permanent structure:

ANOTHER UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Heh. Indeed.

Posted at 7:37 pm by Glenn Reynolds