The Times (UK).

Written examinations with a pen and paper “remain the purest test we have”, according to the head of the exams regulator Ofqual.

Sir Ian Bauckham said: “Pen and paper will always matter in the classroom and in exams. The written examination, sitting in an exam hall with a pen and paper, remains the purest test we have of a student’s command of their subject.”

He was speaking after Ofqual began a consultation into more typed assessments for GCSEs and A-levels on Thursday.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

“Cacophony of grifters”: MAGA infighting erodes real-world power (Tal Axelrod/Axios)

Donald Trump is losing. (Garrett M. Graff/Doomsday Scenario)  And if we repeat it enough times it might come true.

20 states lodge lawsuit against Trump’s $100,000 H-1B visa fee (Christine Mui/Politico)

Trump Wants to Dominate Venezuela, Not Liberate It (Quico Toro/Persuasion)  Because that’s what Democrats would do.

Advocacy Groups Say Trump’s AI Order Could Be Illega  They hope, they hope,  they hopw….

SCOTUSblog Falls Into the MAGA Orbit (Jonathan Zasloff/Legal Planet)

In Trump’s Justice Dept., Failing in Court Might Be Better Than Bucking the Boss (New York Times)  Because that’s what Democrats would do.

President Trump Is Now Triggering His Very Own MAGApocalypse (David Rothkopf/The Daily Beast)

The Bondi Memo’s Quiet Rewriting of Domestic Terrorism Rules (Thomas E. Brzozowski/Lawfare)

Trump’s Beloved Beauty Queen Prosecutor Set to Suffer Fresh Humiliation (Janna Brancolini/The Daily Beast)

Hooray for Hoosiers, cynical GOP redistricting fails (Mitch Daniels/Washington Post)  Bias? What bias?

Trump was unable to insult his way to victory in Indiana redistricting battle (Associated Press)  Bias? What bias?

Trump Is Already Discussing Preemptive Pardons For His Lawless Administration (Zeteo)

Firm fighting Trump receives bipartisan praise (Politico) “Bipartisan” meaning Democrats + RINOs.

National Trust Sues to Block Trump’s White House Ballroom Construction (Luke Broadwater/New York Times)

Colorado Officials Reject Trump’s ‘Pardon’ of a Convicted Election Denier (Jack Healy/New York Times)

Trump seems to wave the white flag on his US attorneys gambit (Erica Orden/Politico)

Trump attacks on political opponents spur a surge of threats, NBC News review finds (NBC News)

Victor Davis Hanson.

Each administration, at some point in its first or second year, has a strategic assessment, a strategic strategy of what the United States’ economic, diplomatic, political, and military objectives will be in foreign affairs.

Ours just came out. And one of the more controversial sections—which I think, otherwise, was a pretty sound strategy—was simply saying that our partners, the founders of Western civilization, the Europeans, are in dire trouble. And then the authors of the strategic assessment said they face “civilizational erasure.”

Well, you can see what that did to the Europeans. Nothing is more humiliating or makes the Europeans angrier than we upstart Americans—who our founders came from Europe and many of us did as well—to be lecturing the Europeans on what they’re doing wrong.

So, they’re very angry at us. But why are they angry at us? Because the assessment outlined why Europe’s in trouble. Its radical green proposals, their New Green Deal version is much more deleterious than ours. They have ample amounts of gas in the North Sea and oil. They have gas, natural gas, in France and other places. And yet, they’re hell-bent—if I could use that term—on wind and solar that’s costly and unreliable.

Read it.

Democrat Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz started criticizing white men on Friday in response to whether Somalis will be held accountable for a massive fraud scandal.

Somalis in Minnesota have been involved in several fraudulent schemes, including dozens of Somalis who have been charged for stealing $1 billion in taxpayer money for state and federal social services programs, including those intended to feed children from low-income households.

In response to a question on whether Somalis should hold themselves accountable, Walz stated that there are many white people who have also committed crime.

The Foundry.

It has been almost one year since Joe Abraham learned an illegal alien was responsible for his daughter’s tragic death. The father says he is still waiting to hear from Illinois Democrat Gov. JB Pritzker.

“President [Donald] Trump shook my hand, looked me in the eye, said ‘It’s a mess, and we’re going to clean it up,’” the father said, referring to America’s border and immigration policies. “I’m still waiting for anything from Governor Pritzker,” Abraham added.

On Jan. 19, firemen arrived at the scene of the car crash in Illinois and “pried open like a tuna can” the Honda Civic Katie Abraham was riding in and pulled the 20-year-old’s dead body from the car.

Read it.

What is now unfolding in France may soon drag the entire Eurozone into deep turmoil. The country is staggering through a fiscal crisis while locked in a political stalemate that seems impossible to break. In the bond market, the clock is ticking loudly as France’s public debt spirals out of control.

Read it.

The Trump administration said on Dec. 10 that it would transfer roughly 760 acres of public land along the U.S.-Mexico border in California to the Navy for three years to support border security operations.

While announcing the decision Wednesday, the Interior Department said the land would become part of a “National Defense Area,” or militarized zone, to bolster immigration enforcement.

The land stretches from roughly a mile west of the California-Arizona state line to the western edge of the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area in San Diego and Imperial counties, according to the Interior Department.

Read it.

According to the Association of the U.S. Army, the crisis of doctor shortages has been increasing for years, which negatively affects military readiness. Their own report cited the inability of the Army, Navy, and Air Force to recruit and retain enough doctors. As the number of military physicians has consistently decreased, the armed services have been forced to close some hospitals, to lower other hospitals to clinic status, and to use nurses and technicians as “physician extenders.”

More recently, leading U.S. physicians have spoken out about the largest healthcare monopoly in the country that we have ever seen, which also involves our medical residency programs. This too affects military readiness.

A renowned doctor recently wrote an OpEd in the Wall Street Journal scratching the surface on this crisis. He described how the private American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) acts like a regulator, hamstringing physicians with endless fees, paperwork, and testing.

Read it.

If you asked, ‘Name a top Democratic contender for president in 2028 who has a nepo-baby, transgender godson,’ pretty much everyone would immediately say Gavin Newsom… and they’d be correct. A few might throw out Tim Walz as a guess, but let’s be real—it’s Gavin, and the only real debate is which of these two is the bigger clown.

The Telegraph (UK).

The Green Party is tearing itself apart over internal trans guidance, a leaked dossier has revealed.

The 53-page report on legal and reputational risk to the party, leaked to The Telegraph, exposes an extraordinary row over the party’s policies on transgender and LGBT rights.

It poses material legal and financial risks to Zack Polanski’s movement, the dossier reveals.

The report, drawn up by the party’s own lawyers, raises concerns over “expulsions” of members who question gender ideology.

One might ask what business “trans rights” have in the activities of a party nominally concerned with environmentalism?

The answer, of course, is that both “environmentalism” and “trans rights” are integral components of the ongoing proglodyte attempt to radically transform (and, in course, destroy) Western culture.

The Telegraph (UK).

University of Cambridge students allegedly carved the word “Terf” into a fellow undergraduate’s door after she showed interest in gender-critical books.

Thea Sewell, 20, says she was ostracised by friends at Christ’s College and condemned as a “bigot” for possessing literature which disputed gender theory – the notion that gender is changeable.

The second-year philosophy undergraduate, who is a survivor of childhood sexual assault, says she continues to be shouted at in the street for allegedly holding “reprehensible” beliefs on gender.

Ms Sewell has now co-founded the Cambridge University Society of Women (CUSW) with other gender-critical students to fight for the right to express their views.

Good luck with that.

The Telegraph (UK).

Men who correct women could face disciplinary action under plans being considered by the Green Party.

Party bosses are considering a proposal to broaden the Greens’ definition of misogyny to the point that “any disagreement” between the sexes could lead to the man facing a sanction.

The revelation is included in an internal 53-page report on legal and reputational risk to the party, which has been leaked to the Telegraph.

The dossier also exposes a wider row over the party’s policies on transgender and LGBT rights, posing material legal and financial risk to Zack Polanski’s party.

The report – produced by the Greens’ own lawyers – warns that internal guidance on identifying transphobia and “queerphobia” risks discriminating against members who question disputed gender theory.

The Green Party Council also was “very close” to adding a document called Guidance on Identifying Misogyny and Sexism to its ethics framework, according to the report.

Read it.

The National Consumers League is America’s oldest consumer advocacy organization and a group trusted by the left, especially, to stand up for consumers’ interests.

But according to a review of its tax filings by the Washington Examiner, it has also become part of a web of astroturf groups shilling for the corporate interests of PhRMA, the massive drugmaker trade association that operates in Washington, DC, which donated close to $1 million to it just last year.

The organization’s 2024 tax form, which became available a few days ago, shows that the non-profit spent close to $600 million last year advocating for Big Pharma’s financial interests and policy agenda in Washington, DC, and state capitals across the country.

And a key way in which that advocacy was accomplished was through the National Consumers League, also known as NCL.

The Examiner reports that “PhRMA donated roughly $2 million to NCL between 2020 and 2024, including $875,000 in 2024 alone.”

Read it.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has made reducing the homelessness crisis in California a top priority, saying the scale of the state’s efforts is “unprecedented” and calling for the continued expansion of his signature effort – Project Homekey – that has already cost $3.75 billion.

But in a state with more than 181,000 homeless individuals, or about one-third of the U.S. total, Homekey has been marred by failures and scandals, including a lack of government oversight and accountability as well as a federal investigation into allegations of fraud in Los Angeles.

Newsom, who appears to be preparing for a presidential bid in 2028, could make Homekey, which he calls a “national model,” a talking point in his campaign. The state claims the program has created almost 16,000 permanent housing units that will serve over 175,000 people. But since the state doesn’t track outcomes – whether people placed in housing saw their lives improve or if they returned to the streets – the program’s effectiveness is unclear, according to a critical 2024 state auditor’s report.

Rep. Ramirez Seeks Impeachment Hearing Into Noem

How Many Members Does Antifa Have? Where Is Its Headquarters? The FBI Has No Answers. (Matt Sledge/The Intercept)  One might just as well ask “How many members does communism have? Where is its headquarters?” You don’t need a conconspiracy, and you certainly don’t need a ‘headquarters’, when everybody involved knows what to do.

Why Alaska’s GOP senators broke party lines on Obamacare (Robert King/Politico)  Not hard to tell. Because they’re RINOs. The death of John McCain and the retirement of Mitt Romney left an ecological niche to be filled, and Nature abhors a vacuum (other than Paul Krugman).

Trump Pardons Tina Peters

The Curse of Trump 2.0 — What does it say that the President doesn’t even feel he needs … (Susan B. Glasser/New Yorker)

Top Democrat: Murder Of DC National Guard Just An ‘Unfortunate Accident’

The Trump administration’s authoritarian house of cards is starting to fall down (Chris Geidner/Law Dork)

Federal judge orders FEMA to restore billions in canceled disaster mitigation funding (Gabriela Aoun Angueira/Associated Press)

The Sleeper Issue That Could Destroy the Economy (Catherine Rampell/The Bulwark) Hint: Orange Man Bad.

Court Blocks Release of Immigrants After Chicago Crackdown  Stepping on Democrat District judges one cockroach at a time.

The minority voters who powered Trump to a second term are drifting away (Washington Post)  They hope.

The Shakedown: Trump’s DOJ Pressured Lawyers to “Find” Evidence That UCLA Had Illegally Tolerated Antisemitism (ProPublica)

Donald Trump, Security Threat (Paul Krugman)  The vacuum speaks.

We’re the baddies now. Our new Security Strategy shows it. (Lisa Needham/Public Notice)  Sure, let’s just let proglodytes run our foreign policy.

3 theories that explain Trump’s collapsing support (Christian Paz/Vox)  Supposed collapsing support.

Worst. Senate. Ever. (Jill Lawrence/The Bulwark)

Trump Rages at Cratering Polls as GOP Losses Reveal Surprise Weakness (New Republic)  Not a day goes buy that the Chattering Class doesn’t serve up this brand of wishful thinking. The Little Journo That Could: “I think he’s dead, I think he’s dead, I think he’s dead,  I think he’s dead….”

National Trust sues to stop Trump’s ballroom construction (Washington Post)

FBI: Man, woman drive to police station with Homeland Security agent trapped in vehicle (Matt Sepic/MPR News)

Trump’s approval rating on the economy hits record low 31% (Madison Mills/Axios)  Count me in as one of that 31%. Gas at Walmart was $2.09 yesterday.

Trump ran as a friend of the working class. Now he’s selling $1 million immigration ‘Gold Cards.’ (Philip Bump/MS NOW)  Philip Bump loses his shit.

Trump’s White House ballroom construction draws lawsuit from preservationists (April Rubin/Axios)

BREAKING: Judge Blocks ICE From Re-Detaining Abrego Garcia (David Kurtz/Talking Points Memo)

Trump team email to Epstein: ‘Pedophiles, I want you to know how important you are to me’ (Alexander Willis/Raw Story)

Most say Trump administration covering up Epstein information: Survey (Ashleigh Fields/The Hill) A Narrative Media survey,

The Washington Post’s Sunday Slobber Over Rosie O’Donnel

Top ADL civil rights litigator quits, accusing group of being ‘useful idiot’ for Trump

Read it.

Uruguay is one of Latin America’s safest and most prosperous countries. It is known for its political stability, tax-friendly policies, and high quality of life. This South American gem has become a haven for multiple expats, including digital nomads, investors, and retirees.

With its healthcare system and robust infrastructure, Uruguay is a country where expats can comfortably and rewardingly live full-time. What’s more, obtaining citizenship in Uruguay is straightforward!

That said, while many people choose Uruguay for residency or citizenship, this isn’t a recommendation to relocate there. The goal here is to outline how the process works so you can make your own informed decision.

After a few years of residency in Uruguay, you can obtain one of the strongest passports in the world, with visa-free and visa-on-arrival access to over 150 countries. This article will walk you through the timeline and steps to acquire Uruguayan citizenship.

If, of course, that’s what you want to do. It seems preferable to California.

Read it.

The Polish border guard has discovered a tunnel beneath the Poland-Belarus frontier, with officials confirming that more than 180 migrants entered Poland on Thursday, December 11th, through the underground passage. The tunnel, located near the village of Narewka in the northeastern region, is the fourth such structure detected along the border in 2025. Authorities report that over 130 people have been detained so far, while searches for the remaining migrants continue.

Poland has heavily reinforced its border with Belarus since 2021, after authorities in Warsaw and other European capitals accused Minsk of deliberately directing migrants toward the European Union as part of a hybrid operation. Border Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Andrzej Ju?wiak said officers discovered the passage during routine patrols.

According to Ju?wiak, “the several-dozen-meter tunnel under the barrier and the technical road was about 1.5 meters high. Its entrance, hidden in the forest, was located about 50 meters on the Belarusian side of the border, and the exit was about 10 meters from the barrier on the Polish side.” He added that electronic monitoring systems allowed officers to determine how many people had crossed.

The New Neo.

That’s the headline of this piece by Matt Margolis at PJ Media. My first thought on reading the title was: well, join the club. If that’s her goal, she’s got plenty of company on the right – or the former right.

There’s a history to this sort of thing, although the details vary. We’re all familiar with erstwhile conservatives Bill Kristol, and the Cheneys. They didn’t just leave the fold, they decided to turn on it and unite with their former opponents on the left and far left. Two more recent examples are Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, pundits who at least for a while seemed to be solidly on the right and now are in flagrant “tear it down, ha-ha-ha” mode, and although they haven’t joined with the far left they are certainly helping it along by being every bit as awful as the left always claims the right is.

Read it.

Minnesota is now facing one of the largest documented government service fraud scandals in United States history. Under Gov. Tim Walz’s evidently unwatchful eye, federal prosecutors have estimated that approximately $1 billion in taxpayer funds have been siphoned from multiple state- and federally funded social service programs over the last five years.

As of this writing, 87 individuals have been charged in connection with the scheme, with 61 convictions already secured and more charges continuing to be filed against these fraudsters. The bulk of the fraud scheme centers around two government programs.

The first target was the Minneapolis-based not-for-profit Feeding Our Future, which distributed federal child nutrition funds during the COVID-19 pandemic. Beginning in April 2020, the organization’s founder and executive director allegedly oversaw an elaborate fraud operation that involved over 250 fake meal sites throughout Minnesota, siphoning over $250 million in taxpayer funds.

Read it.

Josep Borrell’s latest outburst as former High Representative—accusing the United States of wanting “a white Europe divided into nations”—has triggered a political shockwave that reveals far more than he intended.

Rather than describing an external threat, his message exposes how, for years, a substantial part of the EU’s governing elite has stopped viewing Europe as a constellation of distinct peoples with their own identities and has instead reimagined it as a post-national, multicultural space managed technocratically from Brussels. The mere fact that Borrell frames the historical existence of European nations as something negative illustrates just how far the institutional narrative has drifted from the continent it purports to represent.

The former EU foreign policy chief (a role now held by Kaja Kallas) posted on X words that leave little room for doubt: “Vance already made clear in Munich his disdain for Europe, now elevated by Trump to the level of a National Security Strategy. It is a political declaration of war against the EU. He wants a white Europe divided into nations, subjected to his demands, and voting for whoever he wants.”

Read it.

economy. To pay for it, heirs, high performers, and savers are being drafted into service. The end of the eco-socialist nightmare will be convulsive and chaotic.

Last Friday, the federal cabinet agreed to introduce a new EV subsidy. Roughly three billion euros are set to flow into this bloodless market segment over the coming years—a drop in the bucket compared to the vast sums used to artificially keep the green patronage complex alive. But it is a signal.

The decision joins a long list of political misfires in recent months—a list unlikely to end with subsidized industrial electricity, heat pumps, or refinancing packages for wind turbines. The state simply has too much money at its disposal to be forced to abandon its wasteful, destructive project.

Read it.

Note that the fat ugly black chick in the Build Large Mansions t-shirt has the trigger discipline of a five-year-old.

Read it.

The European Union must expand legal migration channels and intensify pressure on the criminal networks behind illegal border crossings, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday at a global migration conference in Brussels.

Sure, ship in more of the people who have already trashed their own native countries. What could go wrong?

Read it.

Elite universities are training their students to be good Democrat apparatchicks, i.e. corrupt grifters. This ought to come as a surprise to nobody.

Read it.

The litany of reasons California is broken is well documented. The highest cost of living and the highest taxes. The highest percentages of homeless people and people living in poverty. Unaffordable homes and unaffordable rent. High crime and failing schools. A hostile business climate and record migration out of state as people and businesses flee.

But not often enough are we reminded of the countless small things that have gone wrong. Small things that add up to a big problem: a state legislature that is out of touch with the people it represents; a state legislature that, for all practical purposes, holds its constituents in contempt; a state legislature that is doing everything in its power to make life difficult.

Just a few days ago, the latest in this long train of abuses arrived. No more plastic bags. Although 2026 is still a few weeks away, this grocery store has already converted to paper only—heavy, fragile paper bags with handles that tear off under the slightest stress. Everything was double-bagged just to lower the probability of catastrophic failure of the handles.

Read it.

On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump promised to end federal taxes on tips and overtime. Democrats dismissed it as an election-year ploy to win votes, but Trump delivered on that promise when he signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on July 4, which eliminated taxes on tips and overtime for service and hospitality workers.

However, blue-state Democrats like New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis are, in the words of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, “deliberately blocking their own residents” from accessing the “historic benefits” promised under the law.

“President Trump’s tax cuts bill is the most pro-worker, pro-family legislation in a generation,” Bessent said. “It puts more money directly into the pockets of hardworking Americans through No Tax on Tips for dedicated service industry staff, No Tax on Overtime for linemen and factory workers, and a new tax deduction for seniors who depend on Social Security.”

Democrats are Friends of the Working Class when it comes to passing out free stuff in exchange for votes, but not so much when it means less money for them to pass out or financial independence for ‘working families’.

Read it.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, was sharply rebuked Thursday for calling the ambush-style shootings that killed one National Guardsman and critically injured another in Washington, D.C., on the night before Thanksgiving an “unfortunate situation.”

Thompson was questioning Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on worldwide threats to the United States. The hearing aired live on Newsmax and on the Newsmax2 free online streaming platform.

“Madam Secretary, you and the gentleman from NCTC [Joseph Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center] referenced the unfortunate accident that occurred with the National Guardsman being killed,” Thompson said when beginning a line of questioning.

The whitest ‘black man’ you’ll ever see.

Financial Times, a Voice of the Crust.

(The Financial Times is the British analog of the Wall Street Journal—if the Wall Street Journal were run by the staff of Mother Jones.)

It is early October and Srinivasan is hosting what he’s called the Network State Conference, an event targeting “those interested in founding, funding and finding new communities”.

For years, the entrepreneur has preached to clubby tech gatherings that they should gather their online comrades and set up a physical homeland — a network state, be that a city or a country — by joining together to buy land. He has hailed this as the “ultimate exit” by Silicon Valley from “failing” US institutions and democracy.

But what was a fringe concept a matter of years ago is now attracting more interest as scrappy start-up chief executives and aggrieved billionaires contemplate the allure of tech-friendly havens unbound by legacy rules and regulation. While some are aspirational, reliant on their founders securing hard-to-come-by special economic zone status, there are now about 120 “start-up societies” in the works, according to an open-source database shared by Srinivasan. A few have received hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital from funds backed by the likes of investors Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, OpenAI founder Sam Altman and Brian Armstrong, Coinbase chief executive.

The basic problem is that there is no space on earth left that is not subject to an existing government, and governments are run by politicians, and politicians live to meddle. There is no escaping that fatal fact. The best you can do is pick a country that is less bad than the alternatives. Nomad Capitalist has an entire business model based on this painful truth.

Read it.

When Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced The Line on January 10, 2021, he promised a radical reimagining of urban life. “We need to transform the concept of a conventional city into that of a futuristic one.”

Tucked into the upper corner of the kingdom’s Tabuk province, the city would run like a ruler through the Neom region, housing nine million people, the population of Austria, within just 34 square kilometers, all powered by renewable energy. It imagines a world where every need sits within a five-minute walk, yet one can cross the entire city in twenty minutes. But even in a country wealthy enough to seed rain clouds and bankroll vast infrastructure, reality is colliding with ambition. The city that promised to “deliver new wonders for the world” is struggling to deliver its own foundation.

By 2030, only 2.4 kilometers of the 170-kilometer project will be completed, with the rest delayed as the government prioritizes energy infrastructure and scrambles for funding. The project’s leadership has been reshuffled, with the head of the sovereign wealth fund, The Public Investment Fund, now steering the effort amid deepening financial uncertainty. This is unsurprising. The Line was imagined as an engineering object, an architectural marvel, rather than a city that must grow from real human demand. The economic foundation beneath that vision is equally unstable. Saudi Arabia’s fiscal fortunes depend on oil, a commodity that swung from over $110 a barrel in 2012 to $42 in 2020 and now hovers near $70. The financial bedrock for this trillion-dollar city is, like the desert beneath it, shifting.

The Guardian, a Voice of the Crust.

For all motorists, but perhaps the Ferrari-collecting rocker Rod Stewart in particular, it will be music to the ears: researchers have developed a road surface that heals when it cracks, preventing potholes without a need for human intervention.

The international team devised a self-healing bitumen that mends cracks as they form by fusing the asphalt back together. In laboratory tests, pieces of the material repaired small fractures within an hour of them first appearing.

“When you close the cracks you prevent potholes forming in the future and extend the lifespan of the road,” said Dr Jose Norambuena-Contreras, a researcher on the project at Swansea University. “We can extend the surface lifespan by 30%.”

The Guardian, a Voice of the Crust.

own an easy-to-miss turnoff on the A48 just outside Chepstow on the Welsh border, the gentle rumble of trucks, cranes and people at work mixes with birdsong in what is an otherwise peaceful rural setting. It is a crisp and sunny winter morning when I visit and, at first glance, the site appears to be little more than prefab containers and a car park. Yet, behind the scenes a group of men and women with expertise in diving, marine biology, technology, finance, construction and manufacturing are building something extraordinary. They have come together with a single mission statement: to make humans aquatic.

Their project is called Deep (not The Deep) and the site was chosen after a global search for the perfect location to build and test underwater accommodation, which the project founders say will enable them to establish a “permanent human presence” under the sea from 2027.

So far, so crazy sounding. Yet Deep is funded by a single anonymous private investor with deep pockets who wants to put hundreds of millions of pounds (if not more) into a project that will “increase understanding of the ocean and its critical role for humanity”, according to a Deep spokesperson. Its leadership team remains tight-lipped not only about the amount (they will only say it is substantially more than the £100m being invested into the Deep campus near Chepstow), but also about the investor’s identity. Whoever is behind it, the size of the investment means that an ambitious-sounding idea appears to be swiftly becoming a reality.

Read it.

This must make Tucker feel pretty good. I know it would me.

As my dad (WWII Air Corps) used to say, “When you’re getting flak, you know you’re over the target”l

Read it.

A University of California, Santa Barbara employee — allegedly disguised in a mask — helped inflame a hostile mob of anti-Israel demonstrators against a Jewish student leader, according to a federal lawsuit filed Thursday.

The complaint, which was obtained by the New York Post, accuses the university of repeatedly ignoring the student’s pleas for protection as the harassment escalated.

The suit was brought by 23-year-old Tessa Veksler, a Manhattan resident who recently graduated with degrees in political science and communications.

Veksler said she became the target of a sustained antisemitic campaign after publicly condemning the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attack that killed more than 1,200 Israelis.

According to the lawsuit, tensions peaked in February 2024 when Veksler — then serving as the school’s student body president — approached a large group of masked anti-Israel protesters in an effort to diffuse tensions.

“And she believed she was making progress until a UCSB representative — defendant Doe 1, and also wearing a mask — joined the meeting and began harassing Tessa and purposefully inciting the crowd’s antisemitic animus toward Tessa,” the filing stated.

Read it.

members of the alliance to drastically step up joint defense efforts, in order to face down a coming conflict with Russia that could be “on the scale of war our grandparents and great-grandparents endured.”

It in the “keynote speech” he chastized those alliance partners who don’t feel the urgency of the ‘Russian threat’ to Europe. “We are Russia’s next target. I fear that too many are quietly complacent,” he said. “Too many don’t feel the urgency. And too many believe that time is on our side. It is not. The time for action is now.”

“Conflict is at our door. Russia has brought war back to Europe. And we must be prepared,” he added while warning of the next world war.

Yup.

Read it.

Attorney General Pam Bondi and Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon announced Tuesday that the Justice Department will no longer have “disparate impact” regulations.

“For decades, the Justice Department has used disparate-impact liability to undermine the constitutional principle that all Americans must be treated equally under the law,” Bondi said in a statement.

“No longer. This Department of Justice is eliminating its regulations that for far too long required recipients of federal funding to make decisions based on race.”

All part of The Death Of Woke.

Oh—and I want twelve inches of belt armor instead of a roof.

Read it.

Democrat meme and congresswoman Jasmine Crockett is running for the US Senate in the deep red state of Texas, and Republicans are cheering. Notorious for providing some of the worst political takes of the past year, Crockett is widely considered to be the embodiment of leftist DEI – A low intelligence person artificially elevated into law and politics because of her minority status. Her presence on the national stage has produced endless comedy gold, but it’s about to get better.

Watch it.

Rips the mask off of colorism in the “brown world”.

Those who think that the U.S. is uniquely “racist” need to educate themselves.

The number of people around the world who prefer light skin color to dark skin color include Indians (watch the video), American Negroes (look up the “brown bag and ruler test“), south Asia, east Asia, and (for all I know) in Africa. I doubt that Obama would have been elected President had he not been half white.

Unfortunately it’s almost impossible to get any objective information on this issue because of These Degenerate Times. This video is a case in point—at one part the podcaster makes the explicit assertion that “Varna does not equal color”, which is flat BS. Varna absolutely means “color”; it is, in fact, the literal Sanskrit word for “color” (look it up on Wictionary if you doubt it). So you have The Usual Suspects clinging to the notion that “colorism” is a Product of Western Colonialism and Racism, whereas in truth in started long before “white” people left Europe. (Whenever I’m asked for my “ethnicity” on a Form, I always specify “pink”.)

“Whiteness” is only a problem in the minds of white liberals and non-white people who need a boogeyman on which to blame all of the world’s problems, the way dimwits blame Capitalism for everything even though, as I have explained at great length elsewhere, There Is No Such Thing as Capitalism.

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I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.” – William F. Buckley, Jr.

For a glimpse into the timelessness of Bill Buckley’s almost 64-year-old observation, consider the different worlds inhabited by the credentialed and elite class of Americans versus working-class Americans. One tends to be more isolated from the effects of their pet policies and causes, while the other lives with the consequences of those policies every day. It’s essentially the difference between theoretical solutions to luxury problems and reality, and at the moment reality is sending the cloistered elite so far out of their minds that their last functioning brain cell just filed for unemployment.

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Jury selection begins on Thursday in the trial of a Wisconsin state judge charged with helping a migrant appearing in her courtroom evade an immigration arrest in a case stemming from President Donald Trump’s initiative to prosecute individuals accused of resisting his immigration enforcement policies.

Hannah Dugan, an elected judge on the Milwaukee County Circuit Court, is facing federal criminal charges brought by Trump’s Justice Department of concealing a person from arrest and obstructing federal proceedings. Dugan has pleaded not guilty.

Milwaukee-based U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman, overseeing the trial, is set to begin the process of selecting a jury on Thursday, with opening statements due to begin on Monday.

The case reflects tensions surrounding Trump’s immigration enforcement policies, including the presence of federal agents in courthouses. It also reflects the Justice Department’s efforts to criminally prosecute individuals it accuses of unlawfully impeding immigration enforcement.

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A Minnesota State University student has sparked outrage and a federal investigation after posting a video on TikTok in which he explicitly threatened to shoot Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

“ICE, I actually heard you guys pulled up to Owatonna, the big O, and you pulled up when I was not there? Y’all so p–s-ass s–t, boy. You’re gonna get popped next time I see you,” the student, identified by the New York Post as Hasan Mohamed, said in the clip, which was later deleted. “Bring the whole cavalry. Yeah, boy, you guys are scared.”

I second that emotion.

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The esoteric programming language Velato uses music as its source code. The first note of a composition establishes a “command root” note, and the intervals that follow specify instructions. The command root can be changed between statements, and the notes that make up a chord can be interpreted in a specified order, so there’s some latitude to help a composition sound “musical.”

I am not making this up.

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There are two kinds of antisemites in the world: Those that hate Jews and know it, and those that promote the hatred of Jews and don’t. I learned about both on one tragic October day in 1983. And on another tragic October day 40 years later.

Strictly speaking, this is not ‘anti-semitism’—after all, the Arabs are Semites, too—but more accurately Judenhasse, ‘Jew-hatred’.

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Greenpeace appears to think European courts have pre-eminence over US courts, even for events which happened in the USA.

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On Monday, December 8th, the European Union took a decisive step in the reconfiguration of its migration policy by approving a package of measures that tightens border control, speeds up returns, and allows the externalization of asylum application processing.

The agreement, backed by the interior ministers of the 27 member states, confirms the political shift the bloc has been experiencing in recent years and which responds, to a large extent, to the rise of patriotic and conservative parties and the progressive decline of traditional forces.

The new provisions, which include the creation of processing and return centers outside European territory and the expansion of the list of ‘safe countries,’ represent one of the biggest reworkings of the asylum system since the so-called migration crisis of 2015. The European Commissioner for Migration, Magnus Brunner, acknowledged after the meeting that Europe is at “a turning point” and that the current system “cannot continue tolerating abuses or unsustainable pressure.” Brussels thus admits, for the first time with this level of clarity, that the current framework is overwhelmed and that the priority is to regain control.