June 14, 2025

BLUEANON AT BLUESKY:

How much of Lorenz’s schtick is performative to generate clicks, and how much of it does she actually believe?

Related: Bluesky is backfiring. Mark Cuban says the ‘lack of diversity of thought’ is actually pushing users back to X.

Between November 2024 and this May, Bluesky grew from about 10 million users to 30 million, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. Many news influencers—people who regularly post about current events on the platform—lean left politically, according to the analysis.

One such figure was billionaire Mark Cuban, who supported former Vice President Kamala Harris during her presidential run in 2024, although he didn’t give her a penny for her campaign, he said in October. Cuban became a regular Bluesky user, having posted nearly 2,000 times since November 2024. When he first joined the platform, he famously posted: “Hello Less Hateful World.”

But Cuban has changed his tune. In a series of posts this week, Cuban argued Bluesky has become too much of an echo chamber, and is sending more users back to X.

“Engagement went from great convos on many topics, to agree with me or you are a nazi fascist,” Cuban wrote. “We are forcing posts to X.”

The former Shark Tank star and Dallas Mavericks owner also said he thinks Bluesky users have “grown ruder and more hateful.”

“Even if you agree with 95% of what a person is saying on a topic, if there is one point that you might call out as being more of a gray area, they will call you a fascist etc.,” said Cuban, whose current net worth is about $8.33 billion, according to Bloomberg.

As President Reagan has famously been quoted, “The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is an 80 percent friend and not a 20 percent enemy.” That doesn’t seem to be an idea that’s been adopted by today’s “progressives,” despite their legendary — just ask them! — tolerance for ideological diversity.

Posted at 12:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE CRITICAL DRINKER: Production Hell — Heaven’s Gate. 

Exit quote: “Roger Ebert called [Heaven’s Gate] ‘the most scandalous cinematic waste I’ve ever seen, and remember, I’ve seen Paint Your
Wagon.'”

How big was the blast radius? This big: Why Michael Cimino’s Disastrous Epic Western Heaven’s Gate Was Blamed for Ruining United Artists.

The film has undergone quite a significant critical reassessment, however, spearheaded initially by Hollywood’s legendary Z Channel:

In 1982, Z Channel aired the 219-minute 1980 premiere version of the film on cable television – the first time that the longer version was widely exhibited – and which Z Channel dubbed the “director’s cut.” As critic F.X. Feeney noted in the documentary Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession, Z Channel’s broadcast of Heaven’s Gate first popularized the concept of a “director’s cut.”

Flashback to my article from 2022: Z Channel: Closed-Circuit TV for Hollywood’s Ruling Class.

Posted at 12:14 pm by Ed Driscoll 17

STORY UPDATED: UPDATE: Gunman Targeting State Lawmakers Kills Former Minnesota House Speaker.

UPDATE:

UPDATE (From Ed):

MORE: Minnesota Star Tribune

“There was a list of individuals and the individuals that were targeted were on that list,” said Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans.

“When we did a search of the vehicle there was a manifesto that identified many lawmakers and other officials, we immediately made alerts to the state, who took action on alerting them and providing security where necessary,” Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley added.

Posted at 11:14 am by Charlie Martin 381

BREAKING: Two Democrat Lawmakers Shot in Minnesota.

UPDATE (From Ed): More details here: Two MN State Officials Shot in the Homes by Gunman Dressed as Law Enforcement.

Posted at 10:55 am by Charlie Martin 328

BOOMERS RUINED ACADEMIA?

Posted at 10:30 am by Glenn Reynolds 144

HEH:

Posted at 10:14 am by Ed Driscoll 8

READER FAVORITE: TUMELLA Strongest Windproof Travel Umbrella. #CommissionEarned I have a couple of these in my car and they are very good in wind or rain. They are compact but feel very sturdy.

Posted at 10:02 am by Helen Smith 0

BATMAN, SPECTRE, AND GERRY ANDERSON HAVE NOTHING ON ISRAELI ENGINEERING BRILLIANCE!

I’ve got to say that (spoiler alert) the Star Destroyer in the basement was not entirely unexpected:

Posted at 8:45 am by Ed Driscoll 67

GETTING THE RECEPTION THEY DESERVE:

Posted at 8:41 am by Glenn Reynolds 102

AND TODAY BERNIE IS CALLING FOR INSURRECTION:

Posted at 8:38 am by Glenn Reynolds 22

THESE PEOPLE ARE RISIBLE, BUT STILL DO A LOT OF HARM:

Much of the harm could be eliminated if people would simply ignore and mock them, as they so richly deserve.

This is the way.

Posted at 8:35 am by Glenn Reynolds 35

OUT ON A LIMB: Iran is everything they accuse Israel of being.

For decades, an aggressive, quasi-imperial state has been at the centre of conflict in the Middle East. It has consistently antagonised its neighbours and in some cases threatened their very existence. And through its shadowy military operatives, it has sought to impose its will on allies and enemies alike.

That state is the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is everything the West’s bourgeois leftists imagine Israel to be. It has a genuinely ‘rogue’ and far-right government. A regime that, through its infamous Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and heavily armed regional proxies, has sought to project its power and influence throughout the Middle East. Unlike Israel, it even has a genuinely genocidal objective – namely, the eradication of the Jewish State, or the ‘Zionist entity’ to use its leaders’ own patois. As its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, put it in 2020, Israel is a ‘cancerous tumour’ that ‘will undoubtedly be uprooted and destroyed’.

That is why the prospect of the Islamic Republic developing nuclear weapons has always terrified Israel’s leaders. Because for a regime ideologically committed to the destruction of Israel, nuclear weapons are much more than a deterrent – they are a means to a Jew-annihilating end.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 8:14 am by Ed Driscoll 34

WANT TO MAKE BEAUCOUP BUCKS? Set up shop with a moving company to help the millions of Americans who are waving bye-bye to the 10 states, plus the District of Columbia, that top the list of Sanctuary jurisdictions. That is, those jurisdictions that refuse to allow local and state law enforcement work with federal immigration authorities against illegal immigrant criminals.

Data featured by Issues & Insights pegs the number of movers from those areas since 2020 at 3.1 million. Here’s a partial breakdown:

“New York alone saw 966,209 leave. Illinois lost 418,056, and Minnesota lost 47,930. California is the all-time leader – it suffered a net loss of more than 1.2 million over those years. In fact, the top five population losers are all sanctuary states.

“Just two sanctuary states – Vermont and Colorado – eked out population gains … a mere 37,000 in total. In contrast, of the 12 states ranked by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center as having the least friendly to illegal immigrants, 10 had huge net gains in population from 2020 to 2024 – totaling 2.9 million.”

Posted at 8:09 am by Mark Tapscott 23