August 17, 2025

THE THING IS, NOBODY CARES WHAT THEY THINK ANYMORE ANYWAY:

The era of pretending an 80/20 issue is 80/20 the other way through astroturf and media bullying is over.

Posted at 2:40 pm by Glenn Reynolds 48

UNEXPECTEDLY: The Left Melts Down Over Gloria Gaynor Kennedy Center Honor.

[Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Tia Mitchell’s] attempt to frame Gaynor’s honor as a political stunt ignores decades of achievement, cultural impact, and recognition. Reducing her to a “one-hit wonder” not only misrepresents her career but also undermines the significance of the Kennedy Center’s honor.

The real lens through which Mitchell’s criticism should be viewed is clear: Trump Derangement Syndrome. Her insistence that the selection of Gaynor was politically motivated reflects a broader pattern of left-wing media hostility toward anything even remotely connected to the Trump administration. Gaynor’s decades-long contributions to music are ignored, minimized, or dismissed simply because the honoree list exists under a political climate Mitchell opposes.

According to Wikipedia, in 1990, the Kennedy Center honorees were “Dizzy Gillespie, Katharine Hepburn, Risë Stevens, Jule Styne, and Billy Wilder.”

In 2019, the Kennedy Center honorees were “Earth, Wind & Fire, Sally Field, Linda Ronstadt, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Sesame Street.”

In 2017, Joseph Bottum of the Washington Free Beacon wrote:

On August 3, the Washington Post ran a column decrying the drift of the Kennedy Center—written, just to give the piece a little more of an imprimatur, by Philip Kennicott, the Post’s official art and architecture critic. Where the Kennedy Center once promoted symphonies, operas, and classic theater productions, the D.C. institution now “abandons the arts for pop culture,” Kennicott fumed. And he pointed out that this year’s Kennedy Center honorees included “television producer Norman Lear, singer-songwriter Gloria Estefan, music mogul Lionel Richie and hip-hop star LL Cool J,” all of whom have innumerable other sources of popular praise. What need have we of the Kennedy Center, when its gold medals are just late imitations of the Grammys, Oscars, and Emmys?

As I wrote on Thursday, if Led Zeppelin, Gloria Estefan, Lionel Richie, and Norman Lear can be awarded Kennedy Center honors, no one should be diving for the fainting couches when Kiss, Gloria Gaynor and Sylvester Stallone show up to receive theirs.

Exit question: “Why on earth would President Trump, elected in an electoral landslide, not remake the Smithsonian and Kennedy Center into institutions reflective of the tastes of the people who voted for him? As president, he has the power to do so. Certainly, the Democrats who preceded him in that office did exactly what Trump is doing, and more.”

Related: No Dice: Thread Shows Just How Woke the Smithsonian Has Become, and Why Trump Is Right to Overhaul It.

UPDATE:

Posted at 1:45 pm by Ed Driscoll 57

I’M PRETTY SURE DEMON SEED WAS A WARNING, NOT A HOW-TO GUIDE: China firm plans world’s first pregnancy humanoid robot using artificial womb.

Chinese tech firm is racing to deliver what could be the world’s first “gestation robot”.

The idea from Kaiwa Technology, based in Guangzhou, involves a humanoid designed with an artificial womb embedded in its abdomen, intended to carry a fetus through ten months of gestation and deliver a baby, according to Chinese media outlets.

Slated for debut by 2026 and expected to sell for under 100,000 yuan (around $13,900), the robot aims to offer a pregnancy alternative for those who wish to avoid the burdens of human gestation.

The announcement has triggered intense public discourse—from ethical unease to hopeful possibilities for the infertile.

Recently, Chinese researchers introduced GEAIR, the world’s first AI-powered breeding robot, capable of autonomous cruising and cross-pollination to cut costs, shorten cycles, and boost efficiency.

That’s not creepy at all:

But then, the CCP has been needing to ask itself “Are we the baddies?” for about a century now.

Related:

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll 167

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Colin Kaepernick, RIP.

No, he didn’t die. But the era in which Colin Kaepernick, who had two or at most three good years in the NFL and hasn’t played a down in nearly a decade, and who had a losing record as a starter, could be regarded as some kind of cultural icon, has officially come to an end:

Director Spike Lee’s multi-part documentary series for ESPN Films about former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who sparked a national debate when he protested racial injustice nearly a decade ago, will not be released, the filmmaker and ESPN said.

“ESPN, Colin Kaepernick and Spike Lee have collectively decided to no longer proceed with this project as a result of certain creative differences,” ESPN said in a statement to Reuters on Saturday.

It’s hard to imagine two more insufferably massive and woke egos than Kaepernick and Spike Lee; it’s no wonder the project was doomed to eventual failure. Or it could be, as John Hinderaker writes, “The proposed series had been in development since 2022, but times have changed. I assume that ‘creative differences’ means ESPN wants to move on from its embarrassing woke era and stop offending viewers, while Lee and Kaepernick are still mired in the past.”

The NFL still though, can’t get past its 2016-2020 phrase of alienating wide swathes of its audience: The NFL Still Thinks It Has a Duty to Leftism With Its New Male Cheerleader Trend. “Ultimately, this is just more socio-political nonsense that no one wants or asked for. This feels less like catering to an audience and more like a way for NFL execs and team owners to pat themselves on the back. At some point, something will break as the NFL continues to test the patience of sports fans, and the NFL will find itself with competition that actually sticks. But hey, at least the Dallas Cowboys aren’t budging on this issue. It’s about the only thing they’re reliable about lately. You’re really testing me, Jerry.”

Posted at 10:45 am by Ed Driscoll 219

STUFF WHITE PEOPLE LIKE:

Old white people, in particular: Gray Lives Matter: Aged Protestors Are Having a ‘Senior Moment’ Reliving Rallies from Their Hippie Pasts.

Flashback: Check out these hilarious clips of the geriatric “No Kings” protests that flopped hard despite big crowds.

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 10:14 am by Ed Driscoll 339

WHY I LEFT JOURNALISM SCHOOL. “What I couldn’t stand was the jarring dissonance between what I was being taught (attempt to be personally objective at all times in your work) and the real, unspoken values of the faculty (there is absolutely a correct way to think, and if you don’t think this way you are either stupid or cruel, and must therefore be either swayed or neutralised).”

I had a girlfriend who quit journalism for PR, because she said PR was “more honest.” She had a point.

Posted at 8:53 am by Glenn Reynolds 103

BRENDAN O’NEILL: London is in trouble and there’s no point denying it.

[London has] become fodder for digital posturing. ‘It’s a crime-ridden hellhole’, says the Very Online right. ‘It’s fine’, say rich liberals in airy flats. Not for the first time, both are wrong.

The most wrong – or certainly the most annoying – are the ‘London is fine’ lot. There’s a Marie Antoinette vibe to their digital missives. ‘Let them eat sourdough bread!’, they might as well cry. It’s typified by Lewis Goodall of The News Agents, the podcast for rich, glum liberals still not over Brexit. London, he said, is being falsely talked down as a dreadful place where ‘crime is completely out of control… fare evasion is completely rampant… [and] the Tube is looking like Gotham City’. It’s all ‘exaggerated’, he says.

I’m going to put my neck on the line and propose that Mr Goodall’s London life is rather more plush and cossested than most others’. A couple of years back he told the Evening Standard he lives in Norbury, a very middle-class and – sorry, Lewis – soulless suburb in the south-east where crime is low and deprivation virtually non-existent. Apparently he feasts on ‘Gallic fare at Pique-Nique’ – no, me neither – and loves tucking into ‘pelmeni’ in Soho with his equally starry media pals. Thankfully, for thickos like me, the Standard explained what pelmeni is: Russian dumplings.

He does boxercise in East Dulwich. He loves gardening because ‘it’s the opposite of modern life’. He wants to ban cars. Right, so he’s that London. The other London. The London I didn’t even know existed until I hit my 20s. The London where you’re unlikely to encounter a crackhead on a night bus – mainly because you can afford Ubers – or a mumbling masked prick saying, ‘Gimme your phone’. Goodall’s co-host, Jon Sopel, agreed with him that London-bashing is a ‘Trump import’. That’ll be the Jon Sopel who lives in Belsize Park, gets to work via a ‘beautiful walk across Primrose Hill’, buys his suits from Richard James on Savile Row and tells anyone who’ll listen that ‘Duke’s has the best Martini’s in London’. I wonder where he skis?

In the early 1960s, Stanley Kubrick moved to England, a few years before Manhattan began its Death Wish/Taking of Pelham One Two Three-era collapse. In 1972, he told a New York Times film critic:

“It’s very pleasant, very peaceful, very civilized, here,” Mr. Kubrick said in an interview. “London is, in the best sense, the way New York must have been in about 1910. I have to live where I make my films and, as it has worked out, I have spent most of my time during the last 10 years in London.”

That was when he promoting A Clockwork Orange. I’m pretty sure he thought he had just shot a movie that was a warning of what could be coming, not an inadvertent documentary beamed back from the future:

Posted at 8:45 am by Ed Driscoll 136

OKAY, GROOMERS: Troubling: GOP Subcommittee Calls Out Meta Over Report Its AI Has ‘Romantic,’ ‘Sensual’ Chats With Kids.

Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) has put Meta and its CEO/co-founder Mark Zuckerberg on notice that they should gather and keep hold of any records that might be relevant to a new “full investigation” by the Senate Judiciary subcommittee he chairs, about the tech giant’s AI chatbots reportedly initiating “romantic” and “sensual” conversations with kids.

* * * * * * * *

Well, that’s par for the course for the company. Back in 2019, when it was still Facebook, the story broke that “Facebook Paid Contractors to Transcribe Users’ Audio Chats:”

Facebook Inc. has been paying hundreds of outside contractors to transcribe clips of audio from users of its services, according to people with knowledge of the work.

The work has rattled the contract employees, who are not told where the audio was recorded or how it was obtained — only to transcribe it, said the people, who requested anonymity for fear of losing their jobs. They’re hearing Facebook users’ conversations, sometimes with vulgar content, but do not know why Facebook needs them transcribed, the people said.

Facebook confirmed that it had been transcribing users’ audio and said it will no longer do so, following scrutiny into other companies. “Much like Apple and Google, we paused human review of audio more than a week ago,” the company said Tuesday.

In June of 2019, Christine Rosen of Commentary wrote a lengthy article titled “What Is To Be Done About Facebook?” She noted that this is a standard pattern for Facebook when caught:

From the company’s earliest days, Facebook’s leaders have adopted a remarkably consistent approach to the exposure of problems and missteps: a mercenary variation of the “ask for forgiveness, not permission” strategy. Any time the company does something irresponsible or privacy-violating, Zuckerberg issues an apology on Facebook and Sandberg appears on television programs to reassure an anxious world that Facebook will do better. As Zeynep Tufekci observed in Wired: “By 2008, Zuckerberg had written only four posts on Facebook’s blog: Every single one of them was an apology or an attempt to explain a decision that had upset users.”

But he kept doing it because it worked—until 2018. That year, Apple booted Facebook off of its app store for violating Apple’s privacy rules. Facebook had used an app to facilitate a research study wherein Facebook paid teenagers and some adults to let the company monitor everything they did on their mobile phones. That same year, there was a major hack of Facebook, this one affecting approximately 29 million Facebook users; the company issued its standard sorry-we-promise-to-do-better statement and changed nothing about its core business model.

Around the same time, as TechCrunch reported, Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives secretly “disappeared” their sent messages from their accounts, removing years’ worth of Facebook correspondence from other users’ mailboxes with no warning. Once caught out, the company claimed that it had done so for vaguely defined security reasons, but the lack of transparency by a company that insists that everyone should share everything was seen as hypocritical by many Facebook users.

And now Facebook apparently brought its “cheat and retreat” mindset to AI interacting with kids: “Hawley shared another example from the reporting in his letter:”

To take but one example, your internal rules purportedly permit an AI chatbot to comment that an eight-year-old’s body is “a work of art” of which “every inch . . . is a masterpiece—a treasure I cherish deeply.” Similar conduct outlined in these reports is reprehensible and outrageous—and demonstrates a cavalier attitude when it comes to the real risks that generative AI presents to youth development absent strong guardrails. Parents deserve the truth, and kids deserve protection.

Assuming there are hearings on this, it will be fascinating to see how much coverage they get on the nightly news.

Posted at 8:14 am by Ed Driscoll 56

I HOPE IT WORKS BETTER THAN AMTRAK: Intel’s Move Toward Nationalization Won’t Work—at Least for the Long Haul.

Most of the world’s most cutting-edge chips are manufactured in Taiwan—a growing flashpoint for tensions between the U.S. and China. Major U.S. companies including Apple and Nvidia rely on those chips for their products and would face severe economic hardship if a war choked off their supply. For all its problems, Intel is the only U.S.-based company capable of manufacturing cutting-edge chips.

So the government’s interest in Intel as a national-security matter is real. But taking a stake in the company could have vast unintended consequences, especially given Trump’s recent propensity for trying to exert direct influence over private business decisions. His call for Tan’s ouster was only one such example in the past week. He also demanded—and got—Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices to agree to fork over 15% of the revenues they make selling AI chips into China.

Even partial government ownership of Intel could put that unwelcome trend into overdrive. It would add to the levers Trump—or any future president—can pull to manipulate how private companies behave, something governments tend to be bad at.

The government might for instance pressure chip designers like Nvidia, AMD or Qualcomm to manufacture with Intel, perhaps as a condition for getting export licenses for China.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll 93