Read it.

We have the technology.

Read it.

Or just stop having pets. That works, too.

First World problem….

Read it.

But you have to remember that the tax cut bill was a TOTAL GIVEAWAY to The Rich ™ and actually STEALS MONEY from The Poor ™.

John Hinderaker shakes his head.

The Democrats are doing the same thing to Donald Trump that they did to Ronald Reagan–questioning his sanity, claiming he is senile and unstable, denying his fitness for office. There are two differences: the Democratic Party controls the press more monolithically today than it did durning the 1980s, and the Democrats hate Trump even more than they hated Reagan–something I never expected to see.

Take comfort. If you’re taking flak, it means you’re over the target.

Read it.

Tablets are in many ways just like physical books—the screen has well defined boundaries and the optimal number of words per line doesn’t suddenly change on the screen. But in other ways, tablets are nothing like physical books—the text can extend in every direction, the type can change size. So how do we reconcile these similarities and differences? Where is the baseline for designers looking to produce beautiful, readable text on a tablet?

One of the very nice things about the Kindle (and the Kindle app on digital devices) is that they consistently look for ways to make your reading experience better. I see them sitting down in a big room on Monday around a whiteboard with a page-full of text and saying ‘What would a user want to do from this point? Okay, let’s implement that.’ They are constantly making improvements, to the point where they are adding things I didn’t know I needed until I saw them. That’s innovation. I now prefer reading on the Kindle (app) to reading an actual physical book.

I’m a phobic, you’re a phobic, he’s a phobic, she’s a phobic, wouldn’t you like to be a phobic too?

Read it.

The real question is, Affordable for whom?

Hint: Union labor, which almost all government activities require.

Read it.

Hah! Bacon makes everything better.

The Other McCain poses an interesting question.

Occam’s Razor dictates that we ought not seek an obscure or complex explanation when an obvious and simple one is at hand. At some point during the past half-century, Democrats became the anti-white party, not necessarily because of their beliefs, but because of their interests.

You may dispute this interpretation, but what is the alternative theory?

Read it.

As I sit here at my desk I hear a faint susurration of the air-conditioning system and a few random clicks and pops from various disk drives in the computer and the NAS. I don’t mind the air-conditioning noise because I spent my formative youth in the Navy where the sound of moving air meant that we could breath (and that was a good thing) — you didn’t ever want that noise to stop. (Now there’s the lawn mower from my neighbor next door but that’s an occasional thing, very comforting to we who live in suburbia. Plus the occasional plane over head and who knows what the Hell that is all about?)

I don’t mind a little noise; total silence would say to me ‘The world is dead’ and that would be an uncomfortable thing. There is a reason that those noise machines that supposedly help you to sleep have settings like SURF and WIND and RAIN. When I was younger and working I had a little all-in-one unit about six inches in diameter that contained a radio, a single-disk CD player, and a bunch of built in ‘relaxation’ sounds that were a great help in closing out a noisy office and allowing me to concentrate on my work.

Read it.

I am a utilitarian. Many (most?) utilitarians are progressives. So why am I not a progressive?

…

My view is that (at the current margin) more government spending does not solve these sorts of problems, it just ends up being wasted. Rather we should focus on boosting the efficiency of the economy.

Government and efficiency don’t live in the same universe.

I suspect that if Bannon wants to have some credibility he not wander around looking like a derelict. I’d be happy to buy him a suit and set him up with a barber. I’d even send him a gift subscription to the Dollar Shave Club.

Read it.

But of course you have to remember that the so-called tax reform was only to help the rich and oppress the poor. Just listen to Chuck & Nancy, they’ll tell you.

Read it.

Just after Trump tweets about how his nuclear button is bigger. Purely a coincidence, I’m sure.

Read it.

Pakistan’s government called for a meeting with U.S. Ambassador David Hale the day after President Donald Trump blasted its government in a tweet Monday morning.

This is the sort of Normal Political Maneuver that made Obama and his minions very nervous. It indicated that he might have to take a position or make a decision or something, which is not what he was President to do.

Trump said it is time the U.S. stop giving Pakistan money in the tweet and claimed the country has given shelter for terrorists from Afghanistan. He said that the country has only given “lies & deceit” in return for U.S. aid.

All public knowledge.

The president’s tweet sparked instant reaction from Pakistan, as the government summoned Hale to its foreign office Monday to explain Trump’s tweet, according to Reuters.

This is the ‘normal’ diplomatic reaction to such a ‘gaffe’, in which government functionaries from the administrative state are encouraged to rein in elected politicians who are rocking the boat. Hale is supposed to walk back from what the President said and explain that it was ‘taken out of context’ etc. etc. I’m hoping Hale is a Trumpkin who will explain that the President meant what he said, and that the Pakistani government had better get used to the idea that there’s a New Sheriff in Town. We’ll see.

Trump cut off funding to Pakistan, according to a National Security Council official who told Fox News Monday that the White House has decided to hold the $255 million of approved aide to Pakistan.

That certainly sounds promising.

Read it — watch the video if you want, but you’ll be disappointed; Charlie isn’t a very polished public speaker. His talk reads better than it sounds.

Charlie Stross is one of the greatest living science fiction authors (and one of my Recommended Writers — see right). This talk is a very personal look into his view of where we are and where we are going. Although a Fashionable Socialist, as you can tell by the shaved head and chin-beard, Charlie can see around a number of very interesting corners.

Read it.

The Internet is in the proverbial tizzy about Audi’s “feminist” Super Bowl advertisement, in which the automaker comes out in favor of equal pay for women.

Audi is merely doing what every marketing department flacks do: Finding a trend they can ride, which beats actually working. Watch MAD MEN for the details.

Well, if you’ve been reading along, I think you’ve figured out what the real message of this Audi advertisement is, but just in case you’ve been napping I will spell it out for you: Money and breeding always beat poor white trash. Those other kids in the race, from the overweight boys to the hick who actually had an American flag helmet to the stripper-glitter girl? They never had a chance. They’re losers and they always will be, just like their loser parents. Audi is the choice of the winners in today’s economy, the smooth talkers who say all the right things in all the right meetings and are promoted up the chain because they are tall (yes, that makes a difference) and handsome without being overly masculine or threatening-looking.

The ancient struggle between Cloud People and Dirt People. Audi wants to appeal to the Cloud People because the Dirt People don’t have any money and if they did they would spending in on an F150, not an Audi.

Read it.

I don’t know why this is, but hospital corridors, lobbies and the warren of doctors’ offices and clusters of buildings that house them are like a giant maze, so I often got lost and disoriented, but I saw a lot, too. And what I saw that impressed me the most were the hospital placards commemorating the donors who made these enormously expensive facilities possible as well as the hospital’s main contributors whose names are astride the broadside of the buildings, names like Mary Birch, Conrad Prebys (no relation to Reince), Scripps…names that meant little or nothing to me, much less how they accomplished such towering acts of philanthropy.

…

I don’t care how many Ferraris, multi-million-dollar houses on tropical islands — or entire islands — ultra-wealthy people own, I felt a refreshing faith in humanity for their gifts. What would we do without the top one percent and those likeminded generous individuals? You certainly won’t see my name on the signage of a medical pavilion anytime soon — or doubtfully ever at the rate I’m going. But they fill a huge void for which I am grateful.

Read it.

This study examines exposure to the police drama television genre and its impact on perceptions of crime and racial criminality. Content analyses of three seasons of Law & Order were examined to evaluate the show’s portrayal of race and crime compared to actual crime statistics for New York City during the same periods. A survey was also conducted to examine perceptions of personal safety and the influence of television’s depiction of race and crime. Results suggest whites are disproportionately portrayed as criminals five to eight times more often on police dramas compared to actual crime statistics for the city of New York, exposure to police dramas increases beliefs of threats to personal safety, and exposure to police dramas leads to elevated perceptions of white criminality among non-whites. Results provide additional support for cultivation theory and “Mean World Syndrome,” and implications for delimitation and racial distrust.

Eric S. Raymond does music.

I’ve been diving into the history of rock music recently because,
quite by chance a few weeks ago, I glimpsed an answer to a couple of
odd little questions that had been occasionally been bothering me for
decades.

The most obtrusive of these questions is: Why does nothing in today’s
rock music sound like the Beatles?

It’s a pertinent question because the Beatles were so acclaimed as
musical innovators in their time and still so hugely popular. And yet,
nobody sounds like them. Since not long after the chords of the “Let
It Be” died away in 1969, every attempt to revive the Beatlesy sound
of bright vocal-centered ensemble pop has lacked any staying power
among rock fans. It gets tried every once in a while by a succession
of bands running from Badfinger to the Smithereens, and goes nowhere.
Why is this?

Another, related question is: Why does so very little in today’s rock
music sound like Chuck Berry?

I just listened to James Gang’s YER ALBUM on YouTube and he’s absolutely right.

I also wasted a day pining for 1969. Sigh.

Holman Jenkins understands the dialectic.

For this viewer, the meaning of the Trump show began to change with last week’s tax bill. Donald Trump normalizes nothing new and outré in our politics after all. He is but an effective parody of the politicians we have, and have long had.

We are also learning something about the relationship, in our age, between the political show and movement, however fitful, on the nation’s business.

Told you so. It’s coming.

Read it.

Pity the poor liberal Democrats. Once upon a time leading Democrats understood the need for tax reform. It’s not necessary to go back to John F. Kennedy or even the bipartisan tax reform of 1986 to see this. If you paid close attention to Hillary Clinton ten years ago when she was still in the Senate, she noted publicly that our corporate income tax system needed reform, and even Obama declared that he thought the corporate income tax rate should be lowered to around 25 percent. But he never pursued the idea, even though it would have been an easy bipartisan achievement for him. What explains this resistance?

The mystery deepens when you realize that if even eight or 10 Democratic senators had decided to support tax reform and bargain with Republicans, they might well have been able to keep the state and local tax deduction beloved of insolvent blue states everywhere, and probably the Obamacare individual mandate. One thing a handful of Democrats would easily have preserved is the prohibition on oil exploration in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), which has been the holy grail for environmentalists for nearly 40 years. By their intransigent opposition, Democrats were completely routed. What explains this shortsightedness, if not political incompetence?

Read it.

Pages from a remarkable book entitled Mira calligraphiae monumenta (The Model Book of Calligraphy), the result of a collaboration across many decades between a master scribe, the Croatian-born Georg Bocskay, and Flemish artist Joris Hoefnagel. In the early 1560s, while secretary to the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I, Bocksay produced his Model Book of Calligraphy, showing off the wonderful range of writing style in his repertoire. Some 30 years later (and 15 years after the death of Bocskay), Ferdinand’s grandson, who had inherited the book, commissioned Hoefnagel to add his delightful illustrations of flowers, fruits, and insects.

Read it.

Fountain pens have always served as the quintessential combination of beauty, tradition, and dexterity. But did you know they’re also tools of environmental consciousness? Join our tour of the fountain pen’s history, infinite varieties, and remarkable powers. With tips for shopping and maintenance.

Read it.

Coming to a San Franciso near you.

Money has value because people want it: gold, silver, cows, etc.

Fiat money has value because a government can force people to take it.

Bitcoin and other ‘cryptocurrencies’ have value because the people who brought you the Dot-Com Tech Bust say so.

Take whatever action you deem appropriate.

Morgan Stanley says the true price of Bitcoin might be zero  I rather suspect that Morgan Stanley knows more about this than you or me.

Read it.

Are the Democrat spinmeisters or the mainstream media (pardon the redundancy) correct in believing that Roy Moore’s loss in Alabama means that 2018 will see a “Blue Wave”, in which Democrats retake one or both houses of Congress? Wasn’t Moore’s loss a continuation of the Dems’ “stunning” sweep of statewide offices in Virginia? Doesn’t all of that portend a repudiation of Trump in 2020?

The answers are “no”, “no”, and “no”. Moore’s loss was a one-off event that had everything to do with Roy Moore and nothing to do with the political leanings of Alabamans. It is ludicrous to believe that Alabama has suddenly become a Purple State when Trump’s 64-percent share of the two-party vote surpassed the share received by any GOP candidate since Richard Nixon in 1972.

It is similarly ludicrous to believe anything about the elections in Virginia other than their consistency with that State’s burgeoning blueness. Bush II, for example, took 54 percent of Virginia’s two-party vote in 2000 and 2004, but McCain, Romney, and Trump won only 47-48 percent in 2008-2016. The Old Dominion is increasingly dominated by the rapidly growing cities and counties of Northern Virginia that are political appendages to Washington DC. (The same is true of Maryland and its rapidly growing appendages to DC.)

The 2018 elections will hinge manly on how voters feel about what the GOP-controlled Congress has done for them. And by election day 2018, most of them will be feeling a lot better because the government is taking a lot less from their paychecks. Continued revival of the economy will also help to buoy voters’ spirits. Unless something very bad happens between now and election day, a pro-incumbent mood will sweep most of the land. There will be exceptions, of course, as this or that Representative or Senator is exposed as a philanderer, swindler, or something unseemly. But those exceptions tend to affect Democrats just as much as Republicans.

Adam Thierer shows you how.

If you want to sell a book about tech policy these days, there’s an easy formula to follow.

First you need a villain. Google and Facebook should suffice, but if you can throw in Apple, Amazon, or Twitter, that’s even better. Paint their CEOs as either James Bond baddies bent on world domination or naive do-gooders obsessed with the quixotic promise of innovation.

Then you repackage some old chestnuts about commercialism or false consciousness. Add a dash of pop psychology and behavioral economics. Be sure to include a litany of woes about cognitive overload and social isolation.

Finally, come up with a juicy Chicken Little title. Maybe something like World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech.

Read it.

Intellectuals have uncommon tastes and with them comes an inclination to put down the ordinary person, who has ordinary tastes. But instead of feeling happy at being different, intellectuals feel unduly isolated, neglected, and unrecognised in their endeavours and their passions. They thus equate a better society with a society in which common people are somehow forced to acquire such “superior” tastes, too. But such a society is difficult to build, if decision making is not centralised. A decentralised system–in which consumers decide what books and movies they want to consume, and producers decide what books and movies they want to publish and broadcast–may allow small niches for the intellectuals’ superior tastes, but would tend to spend many resources to give people action movies and comic books. So, it becomes almost inevitable to blame the system–which is more comforting than blaming the people.

Joe Bob Briggs deals with controversy.

If you’re having a gay wedding, and your cake has been baked by a man who thinks gay marriage is an abomination against God, do not eat the cake.

I’m surprised I have to tell you this.

Good point.

We keep hearing that Trump is an ignoramus, that Trump is a clown, that Trump is a moron, that Trump is an idiot — and yet he keeps winning. Wonder how that happens. When a drunk wanders through a minefield without getting blown up, we mark it down to luck. When he does it a dozen times and still doesn’t get blown up, the whole ‘luck’ thing starts to wear pretty thin. If he offers to bet you $100 he can do it again, which way do you bet?

We now have a ‘Tax Reform’ plan that will soon be law. A prominent left-wing think tank admits that 80% of taxpayers will be paying less. My question is: What do we know about the other 20%?

Democrats keep slagging the plan as ‘tax cuts for the rich’, but we all know that rich people are more likely to be Democrats than Republicans these days. Where do rich people live? Blue states, like California, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts — and the D.C. Beltway suburbs of Maryland and Virginia.

Where do rich people live specifically? In very expensive houses … in Blue states like California, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts — and the D.C. Beltway suburbs of Maryland and Virginia.

What is one of the most unusual provisions of the new tax plan? A cap on the amount of state and local taxes and the mortgage interest deduction, which will not hurt middle class people but will clip rich people pretty hard … people like those who live in Blue states like California, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts — and the D.C. Beltway suburbs of Maryland and Virginia.

Think about that. Most people will be getting a tax cut — except rich people in Blue states, people who hate Trump and would jump off a bridge before voting for him. Trump will be signing into law a tax plan that gives his supporters a tax cut but his enemies a (pretty carefully targeted) tax increase.

That didn’t happen under any previous Republican President — not Nixon, not Ford, not Old Bush, not Young Bush, not even Reagan. None of them thought of such a clever trick. I’m sure Trump is laughing all the way to the bank.

Next time you hear somebody call Trump an idiot, haven him check his wallet; it might be missing.

Read it. And watch the video.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

Read it.

f you didn’t die after the U.S. pulled out of the Paris climate accord and you didn’t die after the courts suspended President Trump’s travel ban, or you were bummed about losing the opportunity to die when Republicans couldn’t seal the deal on a healthcare bill, you have one more chance. Some critics of the tax bill that just passed Congress and is expected to be signed into law today say this is the policy that might end your life.

Better call the undertaker now. We’re all gonna die! Or not.

The left-leaning Tax Policy Center estimates that 80 percent of taxpayers will see a cut next year. (The numbers change abruptly in 2027, when much of the tax bill expires.) Hardly tales from the crypt. But that hasn’t stopped the apocalyptic rhetoric.

Bet you didn’t know that 80% of the country was rich. But here’s proof, from an Agency of the Crust.