April 17, 2025

DON’T TOUCH OUR SHIPS IS THE THEME OF THIS WEEK’S THURSDAY ESSAY [VIP]: Houthis, China, and Us: The Great Game on the High Seas. “Most Thursdays, I take readers on a deep dive into a topic I hope you’ll find interesting, important, or at least amusing in its absurdity. These essays are made possible by — and are exclusive to — our VIP supporters. If you’d like to join us, take advantage of our 60% off promotion.”

Posted at 4:22 pm by Stephen Green

DISNEY ACTORS SURE MAKE AUDIENCES WANT TO FLOCK TO THE BIG SCREEN THESE DAYS: Kelly Marie Tran on How Wedding Banquet Empowered Her to Come Out as Queer and Why Star Wars Racism Is a ‘Microcosm for the Social Climate.’

A lot has changed for Tran since “Star Wars.” But as she looks back on her experience with that fandom, she knows that the racism she faced was symptomatic of a larger, continuing issue. When considering what she wants to see change for actors of color who might not receive the support they need when they appear in major franchises, she replies: “The world?!”

“It’s interesting how it seems to be happening pretty consistently to actors of color who find themselves in these spaces,” Tran explains. “And I think these occurrences are a microcosm for the social climate that we’re living in. And it’s really unfortunate.”

Tran points out that people of color are often at “the forefront of storytelling” now and that audiences could perhaps begin to evolve, too. “The hope is that people who are not afforded the ability, maybe, to have access to these communities of queer people or people of color, are able to see through the art that people of color and queer people are also human, and they have hopes and dreams,” she says.

“We live in a world where those identities have been weaponized so that people are not able to see the bigger picture,” Tran continues. “I really just want people to recognize, it’s the system that’s the problem. Stop scapegoating people of color or queer people or anyone who’s different.”

Earlier: John Boyega Says Star Wars Is ‘So White That a Black Person Existing in It’ Is a Big Deal: Toxic Fans Are ‘Okay With Us Playing the Friend’ but We ‘Cant Touch Their Heroes.’

Evergreen: The Critical Drinker: Why Modern Movies Suck — They Hate Their Own Fans (Video; NSFW language):

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll 7

VDH: Will Harvard Go Full Hillsdale?

Harvard University has rejected various demands of a presidential commission on anti-Semitism.

The task force wants to persuade Harvard to ensure Jewish students on its campus are no longer harassed, or else lose its federal funding.

Harvard retorts that it won’t be bullied by Washington.

Among its other requirements, the Trump administration also warned Harvard to cease using race as a criterion in its admissions, hiring, and promotion, contrary to law.

And it also directed the campus to ban the use of masks that, in the post-COVID era of protests, have emboldened violent demonstrators with anonymity.

The administration’s order to stop race-based bias was in accordance with civil rights statutes, and a recent Supreme Court decision specifically banning affirmative action at Harvard and elsewhere.

No matter. Harvard claimed that the Trump administration infringed upon its First Amendment rights.

So, it has temporarily rejected the administration’s orders. At least for now, Harvard has lost its annual $2.2 billion grant of federal funds.

Former President Barack Obama, among others, lauded Harvard’s rejection of the demands of the administration’s anti-Semitism task force. He claimed the Trump administration’s efforts were ham-handed.

But what academic freedom are Harvard and Obama talking about? The freedom to discriminate and segregate by race in hiring, admissions, dorms, and graduations?
…
Hillsdale does not take federal money, period—whether doled out by either a Democrat or Republican administration.

If Harvard cares for its principles, such as they are, more than your money, they’ll have to go Full Hillsdale.

Posted at 3:51 pm by Stephen Green 48

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Why the Left Self-Censors in Trump 2.0 Era. “Stars are either censoring their own work or finding their voices silenced by fellow progressives. This time, it’s all tied to President Donald Trump. The Commander in Chief, they fear, might punish them for speaking up.”

Everybody wants to believe they’re Trump’s Enemy #1.

Posted at 2:49 pm by Stephen Green 42

CALIFORNIA: It’s Detroits All the Way Down.

● Shot: San Francisco Does Detroit.

—The Discovery Institute, May 6th, 2023.

● Chaser: Why Silicon Valley could become tomorrow’s Detroit.

—The Politico, December 18th, 2020.

● Hangover: Hollywood At Risk of Becoming the “Next Detroit Auto.” L.A. Production Insiders Voice Alarm.

The specter of Los Angeles becoming another Detroit, a city built on a specific industry that became a shell of its former self when that business moved out, loomed over a compelling film and TV industry town hall that tackled not only the calamitous drop in production in Hollywood and California, but also the fight to get the state to increase its entertainment production tax incentive.

The event on Monday night drilled down into a later stage of the entertainment production pipeline that is also currently in crisis: scoring and postproduction.

“This is not hyperbole to say that if we don’t act, the California film and TV industry will become the next Detroit auto,” said Noelle Stehman, a member of the “Stay in LA” campaign who spoke at the event.

The push for a proposed increase in tax incentives is hitting a critical phase in the legislative process, and California State Senator Ben Allen and State Assemblyman Rick Zbur were on hand to make an effort to get the necessary votes in.

—The Hollywood Reporter, Tuesday.

How odd — Joe Biden, until last summer the favorite of all Hollywood leftists, said in 2008 that paying higher taxes is a patriotic act. But then, as Conquest’s first Law of Politics states, “Everybody is conservative about what he knows best.”

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll 48

WATCH: From Trees to White Women, Everything Is Racist in These PBS Documentaries.

The 2022 Independent Lens flick Racist Trees, for example, chronicles a black neighborhood in the overwhelmingly liberal “LGBTQ haven” of Palm Springs, Calif. The neighborhood’s residents feel that a “wall of trees” that lines a nearby golf course was “intentionally planted to exclude and segregate” the neighborhood, and want the trees removed.

“They say that these trees are not racially motivated, that they were not racially planted there,” one interviewee says in the film. “They can prove that by one simple act. Remove the trees.”*

Other Independent Lens documentaries similarly center on claims of racism, misogyny, and homophobia. There’s Our League, the story of a transgender woman who “comes out to her old-school Ohio bowling league.” There’s also Ferguson Rises, a documentary in which PBS shadows the father of Michael Brown. And in Breaking the News, PBS documents the “women and LGBTQ+ journalists” who launched nonprofit newsroom The 19th to “buck a broken news media system.” One interviewee in the film argues that it’s easier for a white woman “to vote in space than it is for a black woman to vote in Philadelphia.”

Straight out of Redneck Nation, and more recently, Ryan Long’s “When Wokes and Racists Actually Agree on Everything” video:

* Remove the trees, bomb the Teslas. Fly the private planes and suborbital pleasure flights. As Glenn likes to say, I’ll believe global warming is a crisis when the people who tell me it’s a crisis start to act like it’s a crisis themselves.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll 120

HMM: Astronomers say they’ve found strongest ever ‘hints’ of life beyond our solar system.

Astronomers announced Thursday that they had detected the most promising “hints” of potential life on a planet beyond our solar system, though other scientists expressed skepticism.

There has been vigorous debate in scientific circles about whether the planet K2-18b, which is 124 light-years away in the Leo constellation, could be an ocean world capable of hosting microbial life, at least.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, a British-US team of researchers detected signs of two chemicals in the planet’s atmosphere long considered to be “biosignatures,” indicating extraterrestrial life.

On Earth, the chemicals dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and dimethyl disulfide are produced only by life, mostly microscopic marine algae called phytoplankton.

Developing. Slowly, but developing.

Posted at 1:47 pm by Stephen Green 83

‘GHOST GUNS’ AND ‘HATE CRIME:’ Tulsi Gabbard Declassifies Biden Admin Docs Targeting ‘Domestic Terrorism.’

Biden’s intelligence community zeroed in on firearms — specifically “ghost guns,” “high-capacity magazines” and “assault weapons,” the documents show.

“Rein in the proliferation of ‘ghost guns’; encourage state adoption of extreme risk protection orders; and drive other executive and legislative action, including banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines,” the strategy detailed under a section about “long-term contributors to domestic terrorism.” (RELATED: DOJ And ATF Repeal Biden’s ‘Zero Tolerance Policy,’ Delivering Win For Gun Owners)

Biden’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) cracked down on “ghost guns,” or un-serialized, privately made firearms.

The Second Amendment group Gun Owners of America slammed the document, deeming it “Biden’s secret plan to eliminate the Second Amendment in the name of ‘counterterrorism.’”

After his infamous bitter clingers Kinsley gaffe, in 2008, Obama lied promised, “I believe in the Second Amendment. I believe in people’s lawful right to bear arms. I will not take your shotgun away. I will not take your rifle away. I won’t take your handgun away.”

As Jim Geraghty liked to say, all of Obama’s promises came with expiration dates.

Especially during his third term.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll 95

ANN ALTHOUSE IS UNPERSUADED BY HARVARD’S DEFENDERS: “Professor Connelly sees himself and his New York Times readers as the ‘we’ who look on as Trump breaks things and hope to excite ‘the American people’ to oppose and resist Trump. But the American people have supported Trump because the American people have seen what your ‘we’ has done with its power when it has had the chance. ‘Let the Experts Handle It Again’ is not a great rallying cry these days.”

Related: The Suicide of Expertise.

Posted at 1:27 pm by Glenn Reynolds 40

EVERYONE IN THE FIELD KNOWS THIS. THEY DEMONETIZED ME OVER POLITICS, TOO.

When do I file for damages?

Posted at 1:01 pm by Glenn Reynolds 55

WHAT IS A WOMAN? JK ROWLING IS A WOMAN, A GENUINELY TOUGH WOMAN:

Posted at 12:45 pm by Stephen Green 96

BURGMENTUM, BABY: Burgum Takes the Wind Out of the Empire State’s Plans. “As much as I cracked on Doug Burgum as a presidential candidate, he is going gangbusters as Interior Secretary and is proving to be another of Trump’s inspired picks. All I can say is molto well done to him. As for the offshore waters South of Long Island, I hope the folks really enjoy them now. Things are always better savored when you realize what you almost lost.”

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll 22