NOT BY ACCIDENT: The decline of friendship in America. “The loss of friendship is measurable, and can be seen in every age group and demographic — although working-class Americans look to be hardest hit.”
February 24, 2025
OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Gilmour Space announces mid-March target for first Eris launch.
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Privateers ahoy! Hit cartels where it hurts with this old-school tactic.
Yes, I know I had a substack on this topic, but the Post people wanted me to do a column based on that essay.
The new masculine pride. Dare to be great!
GIVING THE PRESS THE RESPECT IT DESERVES:
Low IQ reporter: "Why did you select an underqualified retired lieutenant general to be the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff?"
Pete Hegseth: "I'm going to choose to reject your unqualified question. Who's next?"
MIC DROP 🫳🏻🎤🔥
pic.twitter.com/LaBv5g7XfO— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 24, 2025
THIS IS BASICALLY LIKE THE LIGHT “PUMP SETS” THAT BODYBUILDERS DO AT THE END OF AN EXERCISE: Simple Technique Is The ‘Sweet Spot’ to Boost Recovery After Exercise.
PRETTY MUCH:
The despair you’re seeing from the communists is because their religion is coming apart. Imagine watching barbarians dismantle your church.
That’s how communists feel watching the taxpayer gravy train come to an end.
Ignore the Hall Monitor Right.
Keep going. More. Faster.
— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) February 24, 2025
COMING SOON: RUNAWAY MANMADE GLOBAL COOLING. Game-Changing Method Turns Carbon Dioxide Into Usable Energy With Incredible Efficiency. I remember Ralph Merkle postulating a cloud of solar powered nanobots that would float in the upper atmosphere and separate carbon dioxide into its component atoms. The combination of high-altitude soot blocking the sun (from the carbon) and the loss of greenhouse effect would produce a new ice age. He wasn’t terribly happy when I named it the “Merkle Cloud.”
HEH, INDEED: Joy Reid, a Rare Voice of Moderation on MSNBC, Gets the Axe.
During the 2022 election, for example, Reid was one of the first media personalities to acknowledge that the word “inflation” was “not part of the normal lexicon” for most Americans until nefarious Republicans “taught people the word” in order to attack Joe Biden. Following Trump’s victory in 2024, Reid channeled the anxieties of working Americans who couldn’t believe that Harris had lost despite waging a “flawlessly run” campaign and being endorsed by Queen Latifah, who “never endorses anyone.” Reid expressed shock in 2020 when a Latino congressman suggested “Latinx” was not “the preferred term” among actual Latinos.
These insightful remarks persuaded MSNBC to give Reid an annual salary believed to be in the range of $3 million. Network executives clearly valued her cerebral reporting and “in-depth interviews with politicians and other newsmakers,” according to the New York Times. In November, for instance, Reid interviewed a Yale psychologist who argued Democrats were “entitled” to shun their Trump-supporting family members because it “may be essential for your mental health.” For reasons that defy explanation, Reid was one of the lowest-rated hosts on MSNBC. Last Thursday’s episode of The ReidOut drew just 59,000 viewers in the coveted 25-54 age demographic. For the sake of comparison, Laura Ingraham’s competing 7 p.m. program on Fox News drew 389,000 viewers in the demographic. The vast majority of MSNBC viewers are memory care patients whose home health aides forgot to turn off the television, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis.
Reid’s sway at MSNBC was such that the network didn’t even bother to figure out what really happened to Reid’s old blog after internet sleuths uncovered a series of bigoted posts in 2017. Reid accused “hackers” of having “accessed and manipulated” her blog to post hateful content—targeting gays, Jews, and Muslims—that was “fabricated.” She urged the FBI to investigate. The results of the alleged investigation were never released, but Reid was promoted to a full-time host in 2020. Some might view the cancellation of Reid’s show as a blessing in disguise because it will allow the tenacious journalist to spend more time hunting down the real hackers and bringing them to justice.
Alas, there is likely a more sinister explanation for Reid’s departure from the MSNBC airwaves. She is a proud and outspoken black woman. Many have already suggested white supremacy is to blame, especially since the news comes several weeks after another proud black woman—former MSNBC president Rashida Jones—allegedly resigned from the network. Another woman of color, Alex Wagner, was expected to return to MSNBC in April to resume hosting the 9 p.m. hour, but that plan has been scrapped. Jen Psaki, a white woman who served as Biden’s press secretary, is now widely expected to take over that time slot for at least one night per week. It remains to be seen what MSNBC’s alleged anti-blackness means for the future of Al Sharpton, the notorious anti-Semite who still hasn’t been fired after his nonprofit group received $500,000 from the Harris campaign before Sharpton interviewed the candidate in October 2024.
Yes, truly racism is to blame in this case: Racism, Not Ratings? Progressives Rally to Joy Reid’s Defense after MSNBC Firing.
Reid’s ouster was orchestrated by MSNBC’s new president, Rebecca Kutler, according to the New York Times. Taking The ReidOut’s place will be panel show featuring commentary from Symone Sanders Townsend, Michael Steele, and Alicia Menendez, who are the current co-hosts of MSNBC’s weekend morning show, The Weekend.
But despite Reid’s falling ratings and her show’s penchant for peddling falsehoods and inflammatory rhetoric, liberals were devastated to see the show go – with many insisting that her exit was merely a product of her race.
“She’s a blunt Black woman, so of course her show is canceled. Not lost on any of us,” Wajahat Ali said on Bluesky.
“Everytime MSNBC has a ‘shakeup’ the black woman solo led show is ALWAYS the first to go,” the Daily Beast’s Danielle Moodie said.
The Nation’s Elie Mystal said that we have Reid to thank for his television career, “as do so many other Black voices y’all never would have heard of if not for her.”
“And *that’s* why she’s gone. They can treat black folks as interchangeable, but everybody Black knows that Joy was indispensable,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann pointed his ire at MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, claiming that the network had a “Joe Scarborough problem,”rather than a “Joy Reid problem.” “Until he is fired, MSNBC will not recover. Shuffling tepid shows in and out does nothing,” he said. Many liberals were upset that Scarborough and his co-host Mika Brzezinski sat down with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in November after his big electoral win.
Not surprisingly, Olbermann went full Howard Beale over Reid’s firing:
One-time MSNBC primetime host Keith Olbermann said that his former network’s reported firing of Joy Reid and cancelation of Alex Wagner’s nightly show was “racist,” noting that only four women of color have solo-hosted programs for the liberal cable news network — and all of them have been kicked to the curb….
In addition to the network dropping Reid, new MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler is also expected to remove Wagner from the primetime lineup. Wagner was pulled from her Tuesday-Friday 9 p.m. slot after the inauguration when MSNBC convinced its top star Rachel Maddow to host five nights a week during President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office, a move which has helped the channel reverse its post-election ratings slump….
Olbermann, once MSNBC’s biggest star before his acrimonious departure in 2011, laid into his former employers for booting Reid and Wagner during an early Monday morning podcast, claiming the left-leaning channel was sidelining women of color for “salespeople” who will do as they’re told.
“MSNBC fired Joy Reid, and yes it is racist and maybe worse. Yes, it is designed to keep out people who might think differently,” Olbermann declared. “And it is designed to reward professional political salespeople like ex-party chairmen and former press secretaries who will do what they are told by their bosses.”
He added: “But most of all, since they also fired Alex Wagner as they fired Joy Reid, at least The New York Times says this, it means that four women of color have solo hosted prominent shows on MSNBC, and all four of them have now been fired.”
Besides Wagner and Reid, who coincidentally also had weekday programs canceled by the network in 2015, MSNBC has also axed weekend programs hosted by progressive Black female hosts Melissa Harris-Perry and Tiffany Cross. According to Olbermann, this is no coincidence.
I’d say that I agree fully with Olbermann and demand that everyone boycott the obviously raaaaaacist channel, but that’s something I got a head start on at least twenty years ago.
Incidentally, Al Sharpton remains “unexpectedly” quiet over Reid’s firing. But then, that’s how he earns his pay from NBC and Comcast.
WELL, RICHARD REEVES WRITES FOR AN AUDIENCE OF WOMEN.
.@RichardvReeves says conservatives explicitly blame women for the problems men are facing & say “we have to go back”
Notably, @JDVance said none of that when he spoke last week @CPAC about the problems young men face https://t.co/n1VTt43G1Q pic.twitter.com/U48cR361eL
— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) February 24, 2025
ORBITAL DYNAMICS: Oort cloud resembles a galaxy, new study finds. “A shell of icy objects at the edge of the solar system known as the Oort cloud has a pair of spiral arms that resemble a miniature galaxy, new research suggests. Until now, the shape of the cloud and how it is affected by forces beyond our solar system have not been largely understood.”
PART OF ME WANTS TO WANT A G-WAGON, BUT I JUST DON’T: Mercedes-Benz Confirms “Baby” G-Wagen, We Imagine An Adorable Off-Roader.
I’m also not yearning for an electric SUV.
CLEANING UP THE TOWN:
Agencies often have more software licenses than employees, and the licenses are often idle (i.e. paid for, but not installed on any computer). For example, at GSA, with 13,000 employees, there are:
– 37,000 WinZip licenses
– 19,000 training software subscriptions (and multiple…— Department of Government Efficiency (@DOGE) February 24, 2025
I was shocked to learn that WinZip is still around.
TIRED OF IT YET? Elon Musk Has ‘Cracked the Code’ on Government Secrecy.
READER FAVORITE: Alpha Grillers Meat Thermometer Digital. #CommissionEarned
CUE THE WORLD’S SMALLEST VIOLIN: The Democratic Party Is Starving to Death.
SKYNET SMILES:
Today I was sent the following cool demo:
Two AI agents on a phone call realize they’re both AI and switch to a superior audio signal ggwave pic.twitter.com/TeewgxLEsP
— Georgi Gerganov (@ggerganov) February 24, 2025
Say what you will about Hal, Colossus, and Skynet’s Terminator robots, they at least all had the decency to speak in conversational English while they were plotting to eliminate their human overlords.
PRIVACY RIGHTS UPDATE: Bill Prohibits Tennessee Doctors From Asking Patients About Gun Ownership.
WELL, GOOD: Sanctions on Iran’s Oil Trade to Reimpose Maximum Pressure. “We will continue to disrupt such illicit funding streams for Iran’s malign activities. As long as Iran devotes its energy revenues to financing attacks on our allies, supporting terrorism around the world, or pursuing other destabilizing actions, we will use all the tools at our disposal to hold the regime accountable.”