BTom Skerritt has died at 93, and I'm not okay about it.
BWait, really? Viper from Top Gun?
BAP confirmed it minutes ago. Emmy winner, 'Alien,' 'Picket Fences' — the guy worked for seven decades.
BHe was one of those actors who never seemed to be acting. Just completely natural. And he had that great hangdog face.
BYou know, my favorite Skerritt performance? He showed up in a couple of 'MASH' episodes as a colonel who was actually competent.
BSee, that's what I mean — he made decency interesting. That's harder than playing a villain.
BNinety-three years old. Rest in peace, Captain.
BMeanwhile, Iran's best lifeline during this war just vanished — all the oil it had stashed on tankers near Asia.
BThe Journal says Tehran had dozens of tankers sitting offshore, selling crude quietly to China. Billions coming in. Now it's all gone.
BHow do you lose dozens of oil tankers? That's not a rounding error.
BThis is the point of the whole sanctions push. They waited until the tankers were supplying China, then cut it off at the source.
BAnd it's not just Washington. Beijing's getting squeezed too — it's now dealing with a supply chain that's gone black.
BSo the pressure on Iran's economy gets sharper, but here's the thing — no one's sure the leadership in Tehran bends to economic pain.
BThat's the mistake everyone's made for years. They do bend. But they bend late, and they make everyone else suffer on the way down.
BThat's exactly the problem, Brian. If they bend late, we get months of missile attacks and Hormuz threats while the economy bleeds.
BSo your alternative is to not squeeze them? Let the tankers keep selling? That money bought every drone they've launched.
BI'm not saying no pressure. I'm saying don't pretend it's a light switch. And the WSJ piece says zero tankers left — that's a cliff, not a slope.
BYou're right about the cliff part. This isn't a slow drain. It's an overnight reset of Iranian oil income.
BAnd that resets what they're willing to do to get the attention back. Watch the Strait of Hormuz. Watch Syria, watch the Houthis. They all run on the same money.
BOkay, fair. But you watch the price of crude at the pump this winter. If Iran's off the market, even temporarily, nobody fills that hole.
BWe'll see. But for now, this is the Journal's reporting — all that floating storage, gone. Big shift in the Middle East economy.
BDifferent world entirely — a twenty-year-old influencer showed up to court with his dog so the judge would feel bad for him.
BSorry, what?
BFox News has it. Braden Peters, goes by 'Clavicular' online, arraigned on rape-related charges in Massachusetts. Brought the dog to Orleans District Court. Something about emotional support.
BA support dog for the guy facing the charges. Judges love that.
BHe pleaded not guilty and posted ten thousand dollars bail. But the dog in the courtroom is the story people are losing their minds over.
BIt's such a transparent move. 'Look, Your Honor, I'm a nice dog owner.'
BAt least the dog didn't have to testify.
BYet. They're probably going to ask for a deposition.
BThat's a visual. But seriously — the 'looksmaxxing' guy bringing an emotional support animal to a hearing about serious charges... it tells you everything about the genre.
BThe dog is never the point. The point is the algorithm that makes a 20-year-old with a face and a phone famous enough to think this is a good idea.
BAnd Fox News was right there to get the photo. So it's working.
BThe arraignment's done. Trial next. No dog at trial, unless they get a jury of golden retrievers.
BQuick health note out of West Africa — Nigeria says the Ebola case is isolated and there's no need to panic.
BReuters has the line from officials. And given we're also seeing a WHO warning about a more complex outbreak across three other countries, that's a hard balance to strike.
BThe health authorities in Nigeria have been through this before. They move fast now. That matters.
BIt does. But the WHO's using the word 'complex' for a reason — new geography, new movement patterns, different communities affected. It's not the 2014 playbook anymore.
BOne isolated case is not an outbreak. But it's a reminder that these viruses don't respect borders, or calendars.
BNo. And the calm right now is the thing to protect — along with doing the actual contact tracing.
BThat's the whole ballgame, really. We'll see if it holds.
BAnd one more court fight tonight — over when to hold a murder trial, and the argument is whether 2029 is too long to wait.
BTyler Robinson's lawyers want the trial in the third quarter of 2029 — that's the man charged with killing Charlie Kirk. His widow Erika is fighting for 2027.
BThat's a gap of more than two years. The defense says it's about the volume of discovery — and it might actually be enormous.
BProsecutors said they could be ready by October fourth, 2027. That's the date Erika Kirk is pushing for. No later.
BAnd you can feel the human side of this, right? For a widow, every delay is another season of reliving it.
BNo argument there. But the judge has to balance that against the risk of a conviction getting overturned because counsel wasn't prepared.
BCome on, Brian. It's a high-profile murder case. It's not a thousand-page antitrust file. By 2029, some of these witnesses might be gone.
BYou say that, but my experience with complex trials says discovery in a case like this is absolutely brutal. And the evidence is digital, which means terabytes.
BWait, so the defense gets to just... decide the trial is years away, and the widow has to accept it? That's the system working?
BThat's the system not working, which is exactly what the judge is being asked to fix. You don't get a speedy trial just when it's convenient.
BI hear you. But two extra years after a public figure is murdered feels like a failure to manage the case calendar, not just a request.
BI think the judge probably agrees. She'll set a date somewhere between 'defense fantasy' and 'prosecutor's earliest rush.' That's the art.
BErika Kirk filed to make sure it's 2027. We'll see what the court says. That's the live fight tonight.
BAnd a tiny bit of strange internet at the end here — this may be the most perfect encapsulation of the current moment I've ever seen.
BOh God. What is it?
BThere's a post floating around that says if you're seeing faces in inanimate objects, the 'veil' is dissolving, and the matrix is breaking because of sun particles.
BSo we're going to Aruba, then.
BAnd the best part is, they have a link explaining how 'Scotty' walks you through the light codes.
BThe fact that I saw this in the same batch as Tom Skerritt's obituary is the most on-brand thing all day.
BThe internet: one minute, moonlit grief, next minute, Scotty from the sun telling you to stop seeing faces in your toaster.
BEveryone needs a hobby. Some people knit. Some people dissolve the veil.
BAnd that's the show. Big oil moves, a courtroom dog, and the solar matrix. This thing has range.