Jim Lakely

Things like this absolutely mesmerize me. What is WRONG with me?

“One message we have for the #COP31 is that our only chance to minimize overshoot and avoid a disastrous, unmanageable outcome, is to start reducing global emissions by 6% per year from this year onwards,” says PIK's @jrockstrom on CNN’s Amanpour: edition.cnn.com/2026/11/10/t…

JUST IN: Maryland activist helps block a $5B AI data center planned for the site of an abandoned shopping mall that closed 24 years ago, after gathering over 25,000 signatures.

As @SecretaryWright always says, energy isn’t just part of the economy. It IS the economy. That’s why China’s oil market manipulation is concerning. After losing cheap oil from Iran and Venezuela, China resumed buying at higher prices before the midterms, raising US gas prices.

California’s energy policies have gutted its refining industry. In the early ’80s, CA had over 40 refineries. Today, just five produce gasoline and diesel under its extreme mandates. That’s the real cost of the “green” agenda: less energy, higher prices, less reliability.

Are you kidding me? Look at what this lunatic is saying about the Senate permitting bill (BAAJA)—and Republicans are voting for this? BTW, SEIA? That is the trade association for solar panels from Communist China.

Jenna Ortega's new movie played in 880 theaters on Thursday, and the average theater sold about one ticket the entire day. It made $17 per theater. A regular adult ticket runs around $13 this year, so you can picture how empty those rooms were. This movie has Amy Adams in it too, and the financing documents Deadline saw put its direct cost at $44.3 million. Sony quietly stopped reporting the grosses a few days ago, which is about as close as a studio gets to admitting a movie is dead, but Thursday's number got out anyway. So how did the director take it? Taika Waititi went on Instagram on Halloween, posted the film's 78% audience score, and called critics "sad lost souls" who were irrelevant and obsolete. He said he doesn't read reviews, he listens to the people. Problem is, the people checked out before any critic said a word. Deadline reported the movie's tracking six weeks before release was in the low single digits, which is industry speak for basically nobody planning to go. That was before it premiered in London and before the reviews came in at 24% on Rotten Tomatoes. Sony saw the same numbers and cut the release from about 1,900 theaters down to 880 two days before opening. And the people had already gotten their way once. Waititi's original cut ended the way Kazuo Ishiguro's book ends, which is sad, and a source close to the test screenings called it a bummer. So in April 2025 they brought Ortega back and reshot it with a much happier ending. Test scores went from 83% positive to 87%. They rewrote the ending of a Nobel Prize winner's novel for four points, and the audience still stayed home. Ortega was supposed to save it. Wednesday made her one of the biggest young stars in the world, and the smaller release was basically a bet that her fans would carry the movie. Exit polls found people under 25 made up just 19% of the opening weekend crowd. Honestly, the warning has been out there since 2010. The last big Ishiguro movie, Never Let Me Go with Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield, made $2.4 million in the US. His books win prizes and sell to readers, and Hollywood keeps finding out the hard way that none of that turns into ticket sales. Klara is an Artificial Friend, built so a lonely kid never has to sit by herself. On Thursday night, across 880 theaters, most of the people who came to see her did exactly that.

My quote-tweets are full of gloaters saying they'll send me to jail.

You can give one athlete a completely injury-free career. Every injury they ever suffered is erased. You get to see how great they could’ve been. Who are you choosing?

The single, overriding question of our politics is whether Democrats will shatter our constitutional order in 2029-30. All other questions are secondary.

Tomorrow’s Honorary Captain is Tom Tumulty!! • Pitt LB (1991–95) • 1995 Team Captain • 4-Year Starter • 2x First Team All-Big East • 1991 Big East Rookie of the Year • 413 Career Tackles (4th All-Time at Pitt) • 1996 NFL Draft Pick; Played 4 Seasons with the Bengals #H2P

This is probably the best tweet of the election cycle so far. As I argued at greater length a few weeks ago, every two years we're told that this is the most important election of our lifetimes. Then, when Republicans somehow manage to hang on to this or that, we're told that nothing can actually be done because we have to think about the next election, at which point we're once again told that this is the most important election of our lifetimes. And so the cycle continues, with every election being an existential emergency and every period between elections being an excuse to do absolutely nothing.

Rest in Peace to an absolute Pittsburgh Legend The city just won’t “sahnd”’as cool without him Donnie Iris (1943-2026)

Slow Horses è diventata la serie-manifesto di Apple TV. Ci ha messo "solo" quattro anni, sei stagioni e trentasei episodi. Oggi, però, è innegabile che sia una delle serie più riconoscibili (e viste e commentate) della piattaforma. E questo per un motivo abbastanza semplice: funziona. Funziona per il pubblico più verticale, che cerca qualcosa di più complesso e strutturato, e funziona per il pubblico più ampio, che al contrario cerca una storia più immediata e facile da seguire, con personaggi ben caratterizzati e un'ambientazione che non cambia mai - o che, se cambia, cambia di poco. Il merito è di Will Smith, il primo che ci ha lavorato. Ma anche di Mick Herron, l'autore dei libri da cui Slow Horses è tratta: vi consiglio di recuperarli, perché contengono già tutto. La più grande differenza tra carta e televisione sta nel linguaggio e nello spazio che viene offerto al lettore/spettatore. Quando leggiamo un libro, siamo noi che alla fine decidiamo com'è fatto un personaggio - certo, abbiamo le indicazioni della scrittura, ma sono indicazioni. Con la televisione, invece, il nostro ruolo si comprime e quello che dobbiamo fare è - riassumendo brutalmente - guardare. Nel caso di Slow Horses, nonostante la passività del ruolo di spettatore, resiste una tensione di fondo che invita alla partecipazione. E poi, ovviamente, c'è Gary Oldman. Se Slow Horses è la serie-manifesto di Apple TV, Oldman è l'attore-simbolo. Il suo Jackson Lamb è l'antitesi di tante cose: per esempio di un'idea più classica di spia e di eroe (e anche di antieroe). Soprattutto, è la riaffermazione di una serialità più consapevole, che non ha bisogno di molti episodi per raccontare la sua storia. Slow Horses non è una rivoluzione. O almeno, non è una rivoluzione tumultuosa e travolgente, intenzionata a distruggere il "vecchio" sistema. Slow Horses è l'ennesima incarnazione della tv di qualità. Tv che si basa sulle idee, non sugli eccessi, che si fonda sulla scrittura e sulle interpretazioni degli attori, non sulle mode passeggere o sulle trovate narrative più prevedibili. È la televisione inglese al suo meglio ed è la dimostrazione di quello che, con visione e libertà, si può fare in streaming.

💯 Perfect summation. But this stood out to me: “Over 40% of games industry workers under the age of 25 identified as LGBT or nonbinary on recent surveys.” If that statistic is true it’s absolutely insane. Such a high percentage could not possibly be organic. It’s simply pathological.

Wish it didn’t need to be said over and over. Women are not a joke, not a punchline. Women’s bodies, and the clothing women choose to wear are not topics for men to debate or criticize. Not on a stage, not in private.

Day 4