September 20, 2026

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Nikole Hannah-Jones Just Wrote the Best Case for School Choice She’ll Ever Publish.

The neighborhood school system in New York is atrocious. She knew this before sending her child to one. This is a mother who visited the cafeteria herself, who pulled fighting kids apart, who sat down and read through the ungraded homework page by page. She saw it happen, in real time, year after year. And she kept her child in that system anyway, all to make a point.

Middle school didn’t fix it. At Urban Assembly Unison, the school eliminated homework outright and adopted an “Algebra for All” policy that pushed advanced math onto students, Najya included, before they’d mastered the material underneath it. An outside tutor later found Najya hadn’t even mastered long division or fractions, the building blocks the algebra was supposed to rest on. Najya got A’s at Unison. She also, by her own account years later, “didn’t know anything.”

Hannah-Jones wants readers to see this as evidence of a broken, racially rigged system that owes her daughter something it never delivered. Some of what she documents is real: underfunded schools, high teacher turnover in high-poverty buildings, and the well-established fact that screened, selective public schools skew whiter and wealthier in a city like New York. That part of the argument isn’t fiction. It’s also not the part that determined what happened to Najya.

What determined what happened to Najya is that her parents, fully informed and financially able to choose otherwise, chose a demonstrably struggling school for seven consecutive years, and admit, in the mother’s own essay, to reading every warning sign along the way.

Then something remarkable happens in the piece, and it’s the part that should have led the article: as an eighth grader, Najya finally got the freedom to choose her own high school, guided by her own criteria rather than her mother’s cause. She picked a rigorous, selective school her mother had spent a career arguing against.

Related: Question asked and answered:

UPDATE:

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS: Avio seeks to cash in on Falcon 9 retreat.

Italian launch services provider Avio has seen an influx of customers who were unable to secure launch opportunities with SpaceX, European Spaceflight reports. “I can tell you SpaceX has already gone captive because we have a whole bunch of customers coming to us and saying, ‘Oh my God, can you fly us?’” Avio CEO Giulio Ranzo said during the company’s September 10 earnings call. In recent months, SpaceX told multiple prospective customers that it was no longer accepting new orders for commercial Falcon 9 launches.

Europe’s answer to this, a subsidy? … According to Ranzo, some customers who had been turned away by SpaceX used the International Space Summit in Paris last week to lobby European institutions for financial support that would help offset the higher cost of launching with a European provider. Although prices for Avio’s Vega C rocket are not public, it likely costs about $60 million for a launch on the solid-fueled rocket. In our view, subsidizing launches on expendable launch technology is a poor plan. The continent should increase investment in developers of more competitively priced rockets.

Doing things the same way but with subsidies is what they do in Europe instead of innovate.

Posted at 5:11 pm by Stephen Green

EAGLES-TITANS GAME TURF WAS 157 DEGREES, PER FOX TELEVISION BROADCAST:

A heat advisory and temperatures in the mid-90s in Nashville had players from the Tennessee Titans and Philadelphia Eagles pulling out all the stops to keep themselves — and their cleats — cool on Sunday.

The Fox broadcast reported the Nissan Stadium turf was 157 degrees in the third quarter. Cameras showed Titans players getting their cleats sprayed with water on the sideline, a strategy the team may have prepared for after playing in similar temperatures in its Week 1 loss to the New York Jets. The Eagles eventually won Sunday’s game vs. the Titans 24-20.

Titans safety Amani Hooker told team writer Jim Wyatt that his cleats melted during the season opener.

“It was hot, it was really hot,” Hooker said. “My cleats actually had melted; the midsoles melted completely off, so I had to change cleats right before halftime.”

Roger Goodell wants to make the NFL a global concern, with games this season locations such as Australia, Brazil, London and Paris. Apparently he wants to go interplanetary as well, what with today’s game having been played on the surface of Venus.

Posted at 4:55 pm by Ed Driscoll

TRUMP STARTED A DEREGULATORY REVOLUTION, AND IT IS GLORIOUS:

Posted at 4:45 pm by Stephen Green

SPACE: ‘We are on our way to groundbreaking science’: Stars turn neon-green in first test image from NASA’s Roman telescope. “The telescope, which launched to space on Aug. 30, is partway through a months-long commissioning process, with NASA scientists testing and tuning each of the spacecraft’s instruments as it undertakes a million-mile (1.6 million kilometers) journey to Lagrange point L2 — an orbital ‘parking spot’ where the competing gravity of Earth and the sun will hold Roman in place, alongside the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and other scientific spacecraft.”

Best part: “But in a final piece of good news, that 10-year mission now looks likely to double. According to NASA, a successful thruster burn (combined with bonus fuel loaded onto the spacecraft at launch) means that Roman may be looking at 22 years worth of power rather than 10.”

Bravo to the SpaceX launch team and Falcon Heavy.

Posted at 4:07 pm by Stephen Green

I’VE READ THIS STORY BEFORE BUT IT NEVER GETS OLD:

More:

Elon’s response was: “We literally have them. Drive one yourself. Pepsi is using them right now.”

Bill Gates still kept insisting: “No, it doesn’t work.”

And this is the funniest part.

Elon asked him what exactly about the engineering made the Tesla Semi “impossible.”

Gates couldn’t really explain the engineering behind his claim.

Fast forward to today:

• Tesla Semi production has started
• 500-mile estimated range
• Einride plans to add 500 Semis
• 330+ Semis are already reserved around one California charging depot
• Tesla is rapidly expanding Megacharging infrastructure
• And Semi is now moving toward Europe

Elon literally built the entire truck and proved it in the real world

Imagine being that confidently wrong about the technology while still getting treated as a climate expert.

“Always listen to experts,” the wise man once said. “They’ll tell you what can’t be done and why. Then do it!”

Posted at 3:40 pm by Stephen Green

DON’T WRITE MAJOR LEGISLATION IN A PANIC:

More:

In every case a genuine problem exists, but the threat is inflated out of all proportion and the costs of overreaction are overlooked. The resulting hysteria blocks clear thinking and closes off rational discussion. Consequently, individuals never notice that self-appointed experts are distorting the facts for their own gain.

Companies with billions in AI stakes are perfectly capable of staging “rogue LLM” incidents to stampede politicians into regulation that keeps out competitors or simply reduces their own liability.

Previous panics have already damaged trust in institutions and among ourselves. They have also intensified the political polarization that now endangers American democracy. We should resist the current panic rather than feed it. The costs of getting this one wrong dwarf those of the last several.

PATRIOT Act, CARES Act, TARP, etc.

Posted at 2:51 pm by Stephen Green

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Posted at 2:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP: Minnesota anti-ICE relief fund shut down after 2/3 of applicants flagged over fraud. “Hennepin County, Minnesota, approved $2 million in funding to local businesses in response to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operation, Operation Metro Surge. The county received over 300 applications and ended up distributing $500,000 to 82 applicants. However, over 200 applications were flagged for potential fraud, according to KARE 11.”

Posted at 2:20 pm by Stephen Green

MARK JUDGE: The New Yorker: Conservatives are Bringing Sexy Back.

The New Yorker just published a piece by Jennifer Wilson about America’s new ideas of what’s sexy. The trend is driven by conservatives, who’ve claimed breasts, lingerie and hotness in the wake of the left’s transgender, feminist and #MeToo madness.

Here’s the amazing thing about The New Yorker piece: it takes the side of the right. Wilson tries to protest, but her tone reveals that she thinks the left has become too rigid. “How had everything been turned so upside down?” she asks. “Had conservatives taken sexy back, or was this all just an optical illusion, not unlike the kind created by a padded bra or a pair of Spanx?” In response to popular athlete Sophie Cunningham wearing an Arby’s t-shirt, Wilson writes: “How did this happen? How did the right get the meats?” The conclusion: “While we were pretending not to be looking, breasts had somehow become Republican-coded.”

Wilson then turns her attention to Sydney Sweeney and the history of lingerie. Sweeney made feminists flip their wigs by doing a recent ad promoting gambling where she’s nude except for sports balls. Others are feeling equally bold, notes Wilson: “In 2024, Victoria’s Secret, under its new C.E.O., Hillary Super, had announced the return of its signature fashion show, which had been paused indefinitely in 2019. The year before, Ed Razek, the event’s producer, told Vogue that he had no plans to begin casting plus-size or transgender models (whom he called ‘transsexuals’) because the show was about ‘fantasy.’”

Super told Fortune that Victoria’s Secret would now be less “performative” when it came to diversity and would no longer “check every box and make sure every single thing someone could think of is covered.”

Flashback to the Kavanaugh hearings: Did conservatives win the culture war?

And physical fitness: Crazy Town: Masked Woman at ‘Socialism 2026 Conference’ in Chicago Explains Why Fitness is Fascist (Video).

And pretty much everything else:

Screenshot

Posted at 2:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

THREE DECADES, BUT OK:

Posted at 1:38 pm by Stephen Green

10 TIMES LEFTIST PRESIDENTS LOCKED OUT THE PRESS:

Posted at 1:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Washington’s new gun permit system moves ahead as one sheriff calls law ‘insane.’

“I think this is insane,” Raymond said in a phone interview Wednesday with The Center Square.

Raymond said he believes the new permit requirement is unconstitutional because law-abiding Americans already have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

His criticism centers on what he sees as another layer of government approval for people who have already passed existing background checks.

“It’s another level of control,” Raymond said.

The permit application itself will include fingerprints, proof of the required training and an application fee. The law allows the State Patrol to charge fees intended to cover the direct and indirect costs of administering the permit program. The Legislature’s bill report outlines the permit’s five-year validity and fee structure.

The new permit-to-purchase application will cost $126 — a $90 permit fee plus a $36 fingerprint-processing fee. Local law enforcement agencies may also charge an additional fee to collect fingerprints. The permit will be valid for five years.

Renewals will cost $90 if submitted before the permit expires. A renewal filed within 90 days after expiration will cost an additional $25 late fee.

Looks infringe-y.

Posted at 1:14 pm by Stephen Green

WELL, WHEN YOU PUT IT LIKE THAT…:

Posted at 11:39 am by Stephen Green

BY THE TIME THEY COMPLETE THIS, SPACEX WILL BE THE INTERNET:

Hyperbole… but maybe not by much.

Posted at 10:44 am by Stephen Green