April 14, 2025

THE DIVINE SECRETS OF THE SUBORBITAL YA-YA SISTERHOOD: Blue Origin’s all-female space flight was a step backwards for feminism.

Far be it from me to spoil the party, but this is not space exploration. Sanchez is a former TV presenter, about to get married to one of the world’s richest men who just happens to own the space rocket.

Katy Perry has also been drinking from the same fountain of delusional self-indulgence: ‘I’m really excited…We are all made of stardust and it’ll be exciting to see them twinkle from that site and have such an appreciation for Mother Earth when we see it that way’. She went on to suggest the trip would encourage young girls to go into space in the future with ‘no limitations’. Really? Previous passenger trips with Blue Origin have cost more than $1 million (£760,000) a seat. Only for rich girls, then.

It has been reported that the crew trained for all of two days ahead of the trip. Rather depressingly, much of the coverage of their journey into space featured talk of flared jump suits and other fashion accessories. The female crew appeared more than happy with this agenda, saying that lipstick, eyelash extensions and hair styles matter. The bible of female empowerment, according to Katy Perry, goes like this: ‘Space is finally going to be glam…We are going to put the “ass” in “astronaut”’.

Is it churlish to point out that she is not an astronaut, or certainly not in any conventional sense of the word?

No, it’s accurate. In December of 2021, NBC-DFW 5 reported: No More Commercial Astronaut Wings, Too Many Launching: FAA. Just as sitting in a seat on a 737 doesn’t make you a pilot; sitting in a seat on a fully automated suborbital flight similarly counts as passenger status. Or as former MTV VJ Kennedy writes:

These chicks aren’t astronauts. They’re leg-humping fabulists who ingratiated themselves with a billionaire for a little publicity. They’re space tourists, and their dumb stunt does nothing for humanity or space exploration, regardless of their gametes.

Sorry, sisters, but you’re no Valentina Tereshkova — the first woman in space, who flew on a solo mission in a flimsy Russian craft in 1963 during the Cold War.

That took some real asteroids. And no make-up.

University of Birmingham space scientist Dr Garrett Dorian said it best: ‘Let’s call it what it is and not tell ourselves that this is contributing meaningfully to science or space exploration. I am afraid I do still think these flights are essentially just joyrides for the super-rich.’

Hear hear! Or should I say, Her Her?

Heh, indeed.

Posted at 6:45 pm by Ed Driscoll 93

THE NEW SPACE RACE:

Reflights of rockets not built by SpaceX still stand at 0.

CORRECTION: Orbital reflights. Thanks to Ranten N. Raven for the heads up.

Posted at 5:31 pm by Stephen Green 86

SEE BITTER SCOLDING: Woke. In. Space! CBS Host Apologizes for Saying ‘Mankind:’ ‘I’m Sorry. I’m Sorry.’

In space, no one can hear you scream; but the aliens can apparently pick up your virtue signals on their scanners. CBS Mornings co-host Vlad Duthiers was sending out distress calls during Monday’s show after he was scolded by Dr. Mae Jemison (the first black woman in space) because he used the highly offensive term “mankind” to refer to the entire human species.

* * * * * * * * *

Duthiers immediately stepped in it again with his comments about space travel being a benefit to “mankind.” Again, he drew a swift scolding from Jemison:

DUTHIERS: So, explain to our audience why even a trip like this one, all the trips that we take into space, benefit mankind.

JEMISON: Um, so, it benefits humankind.

“Humankind, I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Duthiers pleaded.

She then proclaimed that she was, “going to keep correcting the mankind and the man-made, and the man-missions because this is exactly what this mission is about, is expanding the perspective of who does space.”

Jemison’s high horse had legs that stretched up past the Karman line (international line that denotes where outer space begins).

As Thomas Sowell wrote 30 years ago in The Vision of the Anointed, on the left’s sustained attack on “The Generic ‘He:’”

Trivial as such crusades may seem, they have been very successful in changing the way people talk in the media, in academia, and in government. Not only is the generic “he” taboo in many quarters, the speech controllers have pressed on to new conquests, attacking such words as “layman,” “craftsman,” “actress,” or “matron,” which violate their unisex view of the world, and also proscribe such phrases as “to master a language” because it uses a sex-specific word. These examples are from an official guidebook put out by the Australian government, which shows how far such crusades have spread. An American guidebook, distributed internationally, declares that there is “a perfectly scientific, completely foolproof, and highly theoretical model for avoiding sexism on the job.” As so often happens, pretensions of “science” are the last refuge of those who offer neither the evidence nor the logic that are integral to science.

The net effect of all this is that young women, especially in educational institutions where they are bombarded with radical feminist propaganda, are led to believe that every use of the generic “he” in books of the past is proof of disdain or hostility toward women, when in fact such usage simply avoided cluttering up the language or forcing writers into strained constructions and awkward phrases. In short, the anointed are helped to make yet another group feel like victims and to regard the anointed as their rescuers.

At the conclusion of her 10-minute suborbital jaunt, CBS’s Gayle King gushed, “You look down at the planet and you think that’s where we came from? To me it’s such a reminder about how we need to do better, be better.”

Indeed — excellent advice for Jemison to take to heart.

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll 176

BE CAREFUL OUT THERE: FDA warns about fake Ozempic in U.S. supply chain. “Novo Nordisk, the maker of Ozempic and the weight loss drug Wegovy, told the FDA on April 3 that counterfeit 1-milligram injections were being distributed outside its authorized supply chain in the U.S., the agency said in a news release. That means it likely entered the market through unofficial means, like unauthorized distributors or resellers.”

Posted at 4:50 pm by Stephen Green 25

EUROPE IS THE SICK MAN OF EUROPE THESE DAYS:

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll 104

THE PROBLEM, AS OUTLINED BY DATA REPUBLICAN:

The Left is structured as a network of NGOs: ruthlessly efficient and ready to act the moment power changes hands.

The Right has no equivalent infrastructure. If I sit down and ask myself, “How would I start an NGO to implement a conservative agenda in D.C.?” … I draw a blank. Because the dominant instinct on the Right isn’t to build, it’s to dismantle. Most conservative goals center on shrinking or limiting the federal government.

That creates a fundamental asymmetry. NGOs on the Left are designed to expand state power through policy scaffolding, and once federal funding flows in, it’s nearly impossible to tear down. It would take an act of Congress to defund these mechanisms, and Congress rarely votes to shrink its own power.

So, we can’t fight fire with fire.

As I see it, there are only three paths forward (not mutually exclusive):

1. Keep scaling the existing DOGE efforts.
2. Replace the majority of Congress with people willing to shut the spigot.
3. Trigger a Convention of States and rewrite the rules from outside the system.

Each path demands broad public support, which, again, NGOs don’t need. That’s part of what makes them so dangerous. They just have to win the influence of a few.

What Musk is doing with DOGE is great. But the next step needs to be building out a conservative informational infrastructure. That isn’t a new idea but if the best time to build it was 20 years ago, the second-best time is right now.

Posted at 3:48 pm by Stephen Green 194

BECAUSE THE NYT ISN’T ON AMERICA’S SIDE. NEXT QUESTION?

Posted at 2:46 pm by Stephen Green 170

KURT SCHLICHTER: The Pentagon Must Go on the Offensive to Defeat Politicized Officers.

Your politics don’t matter when you are a military leader. At all. Politics have no place in the military. None. I was becoming more and more prominent politically and in the media as a civilian while I was becoming a senior field grade officer as a reservist, but I was actively apolitical around the troops. I never talked about politics on duty. I never asked about it or told anyone about it. You know the command sergeant major I mentioned? I have no idea who he voted for. None. That’s because he was a consummate professional, and I tried to be the same. When we put on the uniform, we did our job whether the President was named Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush again, or Obama.

But apparently, some officers these days think there is a Trump Exception to their duty as officers to be apolitical, just as there appears to be a Trump Exception to every other rule, regulation, norm, and standard in our society and government. They are wrong, and their utterly bass ackwards conception of their duties as leaders is poisonous to the organization. If you aren’t loyal to the commander-in-chief, who are you loyal to? Your own personal conception of right and wrong? Well, Soldier, you are in the wrong career field. There are a wide range of jobs you can do where you can freely share your thoughts about our political leadership and its policies, but being a military leader is not one of them.

What’s stunning is the sheer cheesiness of their tiresome acts of resistance. The commander of Fort Igloo decided to throw away her career by mass emailing a cloying letter that emphasized how she didn’t support the political leadership’s initiatives re: Greenland. What was she thinking? Another officer at NATO headquarters refused to post pictures of the new commander-in-chief and vice-president, as is a rule on military installations. That’s almost too petty to believe (I initially did not believe it – too insane – but my sources tell me it’s true).

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll 110

NVIDIA STOCK LEAPS AFTER MASSIVE U.S. INVESTMENT SURPRISE:

Nvidia unveiled plans for a massive investment in its U.S.-based manufacturing Monday as the ripple effects of President Donald Trump’s tariff gambit, as well as China’s retaliation toward the tech sector, continue to reverberate.

Nvidia said it planned to produce an American-made supercomputer from a U.S. platform, and planned to produce as much as $500 billion in artificial-intelligence infrastructure over the next four years as part of a partnership with Foxconn  and Taiwan Semiconductor.

The plants are expected to be built in Arizona, to test Nvidia Blackwell chips, and in Texas, to test AI supercomputers.

“The engines of the world’s AI infrastructure are being built in the United States for the first time,” said CEO Jensen Huang. “Adding American manufacturing helps us better meet the incredible and growing demand for AI chips and supercomputers, strengthens our supply chain and boosts our resiliency.”

Meanwhile, in recent Apple news:

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll 40

IT’S COME TO THIS: As Concert Ticket Prices Soar, More Than Half of Coachella GA Attendees Are Buying Tickets Through Payment Plans.

Tens of thousands of music fans will descend on the California desert this weekend for the first of two iterations of the Coachella Music and Arts festival outside of Palm Springs, Calif.

Approximately 80,000 to 100,000 fans each weekend will have coughed up the $599 ticket price to see headliners Lady Gaga, Travis Scott, Green Day and Post Malone. But ticket price is often just the cost of entry — many of those fans will spend more than a $1,000 per weekend on lodging and cough up hundreds of dollars more for food, drinks and merchandise. It’s a substantial spend for any of the 20-somethings in Coachella’s target demographic. But festival organizers have increasingly helped finance their purchase through payment plan programs.

Approximately 60 percent of general admission ticket buyers at this year’s festival opted to use Coachella’s payment plan system, which requires as little as $49.99 up front for tickets to the annual concert. The desert festival isn’t alone — Lollapalooza, Electric Daisy Carnival and Rolling Loud all sell the majority of their tickets using some kind of payment plan system.

Representatives at Goldenvoice, which puts on Coachella, declined to comment for this story. One source, who asked to remain anonymous because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media, told Billboard that payment plans have fundamentally changed how festivals are marketed to the public.

“Festivals are now marketing a cheap down payment as their main call to action,” the source says. “The messaging is $20 down gets you in the door, or $50 down gets you started. It’s no longer about the artists, or the festival lifestyle — the message is, ‘You can afford this if you act today.’”

Yes, but it’s not just Lady Gaga, Travis Scott, Green Day and Post Malone. There was also this brilliant veteran rap star spitting bars, and dropping some dope verses, straight fire: Bernie Sanders urges Coachella crowd to stand up against ‘US oligarchy.’

Senator Bernie Sanders held celebrity-backed rallies across the US as he emerges as one of the most vocal opponents to Donald Trump’s presidency.

Appearing for his war on extreme wealth tour – called Fighting Oligarchy – at the exclusive Coachella festival this weekend, he said: “This country faces some very difficult challenges and the future of what happens to America depends on your generation.”

Taking to the stage after a performance by the British pop singer Charli XCX he told the 36,000-strong crowd: “We need you to stand up.”

“You can turn away and ignore what goes on but you do it at your own peril. We need you to stand up to fight for justice.”

“Fighting Oligarchy” is definitely Bernie’s greatest hits package, crafted from years of extensive jamming on the road, and presumably went down well with the young potentially violent socialists in the crowd:

Related: Festival guests report stolen belongings from hotel rooms during Coachella.

Multiple Coachella festivalgoers contacted News Channel 3, saying their belongings were stolen from their hotel rooms while they were away at the festival.

Ellie Brownridge said she’s attended Coachella for years with her best friend, Zoe Grober.

Grober said they’ve stayed at La Quinta Resort & Club before.

“We always love this property,” Grober said. “It’s just so disappointing that something like this happened and it’s totally tainted the experience.”

Brownridge and Grober, staying with their husbands, said they returned Saturday morning after the first day of Coachella to find personal items missing — including vintage bags, jewelry, family heirlooms and sunglasses.

They told News Channel 3 they called hotel management and the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department — and quickly learned they weren’t alone.

“We met two other groups. In total, I think it’s like 15 people that we know of that this has happened to,” Brownridge said. “I think we’re looking at over $100,000 worth of stuff that’s gone.”

I was told in 2020 by Bernie’s supporters — including the New York Times and NPR — that this sort of five-fingered wealth distribution was perfectly acceptable. I’m glad to see that’s apparently no longer the case.

UPDATE: California punk rockers call for an ‘army of Luigis’ during brash Coachella set.

Shortly after ending a blistering rendition of “Coup D’Etat” during their Coachella set, Circle Jerks frontman Keith Morris made a clarification to the moshing crowd. Although that last song ended with the words “kill all,” he made a point to say that the band does not condone what it describes, including kidnapping government leaders for ransom and leading a coup. “That song, that last line, ends with ‘kill all.’ That’s a pretty f—king ugly statement,” Morris said. “In ugly times. Do not think that we encourage that.”

Then, Morris went in a different direction. “What we do encourage — what would be totally f—king happening — would be an army of Luigis,” he said, in reference to Luigi Mangione, who is currently facing both federal and New York state charges for the alleged killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson late last year.

Tay-Tay and Donie smile.

Posted at 1:55 pm by Ed Driscoll 198