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Gee, cutting prices increases business. Who knew? (Well, economists….)

And yet The Usual Suspects don’t see how cutting taxes increases economic activity.

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The Supreme Court has granted the Trump administration’s request to temporarily lift restrictions on the President’s travel ban, quashing an opportunity for some 24,000 refugees to enter the country.

And a bunch of Islamist terrorists, potentially. The use of the term ‘refugees’ is tendentious, as one would expect from a Voice of the Crust.

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I know I am.

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Gotta love Australians.

Of course, unless they had the wit to fill the pool with seawater first, the shark will die (different osmotic pressures, which is why there is such a thing as ‘freshwater fish’), but hey, it’s the thought that counts.

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There are a few younger candidates from the margins of the long shots, like Mark Zuckerberg (39 in 2020), or Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (49 in 2020), but the real frontrunners are all well past any normal political sell-by date. Elizabeth Warren will be 71; Joe Biden will be 77; Bernie Sanders will be 78. And people say the Republican electorate is getting old.

Old people with old ideas. It kinda fits.

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If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

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Hah! Knew it all the time.

Check it out.

For those of you who like that sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you’ll like.

Read it.

Well. There it is.

Read it.

The quest to restore the American elm has been underway for more than half a century. Today, with help from The Nature Conservancy’s Christian Marks, success is closer than ever—which is good news for our floodplain forests, as well as our urban communities.

 

Watch it.

We have the technology.

Read it.

This is actually more about pigments than inks, but it’s still fascinating stuff. There are a number of ‘traditional’ formulae for medieval ink; I have tried every one I came across, and it’s incredibly difficult to get right. I can imagine what a pain in the ass it would be to actually grind and prepare your own pigments.

Read it.

Read it.

The Food and Drug Administration called the approval historic, the first gene therapy to hit the US market. Made from scratch for every patient, it’s one of a wave of “living drugs” under development to fight additional blood cancers and other tumours, too.

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Well. There it is.

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I am not making this up.

‘Let’s find a teenage fantasy and monetize it through people with more money than sense.’

Read it.

The Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University just completed a national survey, fielded and tabulated by The Cicero Group, of 1,191 professionals: people aged 25-64 with household incomes greater than $80,000, and who work in education, healthcare, information technology, finance or other professional services jobs. We asked respondents to rate which general non-work factors, which educational and social non-work factors, and which work-related factors were most important to them in determining where they would want to move, assuming an attractive job opportunity presented itself. While there were some differences between different industries, the variances were relative small, in most cases.

Overall, the results surprised us by how young and middle aged professionals —who are almost uniformly said to prefer living in an edgy, dense urban environment— actually opt for far more traditional, or even banal, alternatives. Professionals are more focused on family lifestyle issues as they consider where they would want to live. While they do not want to live in a cultural wasteland, they prioritize outdoor activities, a lack of crowding and an affordable house over exciting nightlife.

Yes, I prefer to live in a neighborhood full of educated white people Just Like Me. You can take your vibrant diversity and stick it where the sun don’t shine.

A free online webzine. Subscribe here.

Hint: P. J. O’Rourke. Need I say more? I think not.

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The road to cleaner, meltdown-proof nuclear power has taken a big step forward. Researchers at NRG, a Dutch nuclear materials firm, have begun the first tests of nuclear fission using thorium salts since experiments ended at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the early 1970s.

Thorium has several advantages over uranium, the fuel that powers most nuclear reactors in service today. First, it’s much harder to weaponize. Second, as we pointed out last year in a long read on thorium-salt reactors, designs that call for using it in a liquid form are, essentially, self-regulating and fail-safe.

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We’re not the Soviet Union quite yet, it seems.

PayPal reinstated the accounts of two conservative websites it banned after receiving blowback over their decision.

PayPal notified Jihad Watch and the American Freedom Defense Initiative (ADFI) on Monday night that they were reversing the decision to ban their accounts following public outcry:

Jihad Watch is not a ‘conservative site’, except insofar as wanting to document the existential danger to Western civilization from Islam is somehow ‘conservative’; I guess a willingness to accept reality is ‘conservative’. Both are certainly anti-proglodyte sites, and hence incompatible with the Narrative, which is undoubtedly why they were targeted. It’s all part and parcel of the common proglodyte meme that those documenting actual hate groups, which Islam obviously is, are somehow hate groups themselves.

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This will be huge.

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A new report touting “green innovation” in California actually shows Texas has done more to cut greenhouse gas emissions and grow its economy, despite not having stringent state global warming programs.

Imagine that.

Read it.

If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

Don’t ever say we don’t have useful stuff here.

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Seventy-two years after two torpedoes fired from a Japanese submarine sunk cruiser USS Indianapolis (CA-35), the ship’s wreckage was found resting on the seafloor on Saturday – more than 18,000 feet below the Pacific Ocean’s surface.

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I still say we ought to send ’em back where they came from.

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I’ll get an electric car when I can go into any gas station and charge the car in the two minutes it takes to fill up a gas tank. Not before.

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Great. One more yuppie hipster First World panic attack problem solved. Hundreds more to go.

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In its ongoing push into retail, Amazon today announced the opening of five “Instant Pickup” locations in the United States, allowing Prime subscribers to choose from a selection of “daily essentials” that are made available for pick up in two minutes or less (via Reuters). The essential items include snacks, drinks, electronics, and Amazon’s own devices.

The Instant Pickup process begins with Prime and Prime Student users visiting Amazon’s iOS or Android app to browse through hundreds of essential and daily care items. Users can then place an order, decide on an Instant Pickup location, and then go to the retail store to pick it up from a self-service locker.

On the employee side of things, when users place an order someone at the Instant Pickup store gathers the items in a back room, and then places them within one of the numbered lockers. After customers place their order, they’re given the number to the locker and a barcode to access its contents at the Instant Pickup store.

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Lately, Salcedo says, there’s another innovation facilitated by the military that has been making its way to the rest of us: cooking food by applying high pressure, instead of heat. Under high pressure, microorganisms burst, and the food is sterilised, a process that today yields preservative-free lunch meats, packaged guacamole that stays green under its wrapper, and fresh-tasting bottled juices (the process is sometimes called cold pasteurisation).

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Abundant Robotics in California has built an automated apple picker, that uses a vacuum system to suck the fruit straight off of the trees.

So much for jobs ‘Americans won’t do’.

“Harvesting apples isn’t an unskilled job. It’s highly skilled and difficult work,” Todd Fryhover from the Washington Apple Commission told NewsHour. “Robotics will help in harvesting the apples at the optimum time to provide the best possible apple to consumers.

And decrease the need for illegal immigrant workers.

Read it.

If you’re into that sort of thing, as I know some of you are.

Read it. And please, please watch the trailer video.

This is going to be well worth seeing.

Read it.

Well, duh.

This is why, historically, armies didn’t include women (except as camp followers) — they suck at it.

Read it.

I am not making this up.

Watch it.

Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

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Got cancer? There’s an app for that.

Owning Apple stock allowed me to retire four years early. Just sayin’….

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And if they all had horses their fertilizer problems would be solved.

Or Bitcoin! Give them each a Bitcoin,  call it Guaranteed Basic Income or something.

You’re welcome.

Nine Best Air Fryers. None of them useful as interrogation tools, unfortunately.

Nifty Strawberry Huller.

Read it.

As usual, Mother Nature scoffs at the Prophets of Doom.

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It was invented by Erin Robertson, from Los Angeles, who said she came up with the idea when she couldn’t stop sweating while getting ready to go on a date.

Is this a great country, or what?

Read it.

West Virginia Democratic Gov. Jim Justice plans to officially switch parties during a local rally with President Donald Trump Thursday evening.

Well. Ain’t that special.

The newly-installed governor is one of the state’s only coal billionaires. He owned 70 active coal mines across 5 states and was also officially endorsed by the United Mine Workers Union during the course of the campaign.

That would explain it.

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Among the many student-led inquisitions that have swept America’s college campuses recently, this one from Evergreen State Collegestands out as especially egregious and ridiculous. The standard elements of these now-typical incidents were all there: outrage over microaggressions, demands for safe spaces, and some students behaving like cartoonish caricatures of social justice activists.

Now Bret Weinstein, the professor at the center of this episode, is filing a $3.8 million tort claim against the school on behalf his wife and himself, saying in part that The Evergreen State College (TESC) “consistently has failed to set and enforce necessary boundaries in the workplace on campus, selectively has chosen not to enforce its student Code of Conduct, and sent the unmistakable message that the school will tolerate (and even endorse) egregious violations (and even crimes) purportedly to advance racial social goals, diminishing the collegiate experience for all, and fostering a racially hostile and retaliatory work environment for faculty and staff.”

Good to see some pushback against these proto-fascists.

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While conventional cancer treatments such as chemotherapy are known to make patients’ hair fall out, the new immunotherapy drugs that were being tested in this case work differently and, as such, have different side effects.

One of which the Spanish study suggests could be the restoration of hair pigment, at least in patients with lung cancer.

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A company called Cabin is offering overnight bus service with “private sleeping cabins” between San Francisco and Los Angeles for $115. The service currently operates about three times a week but in September will begin operating daily. Buses leave at 11 pm and arrive at 7 am from near the Embarcadero in San Francisco and next to the beach in Santa Monica.

Read it.

For those of you thinking about a career change because Trump.

Check it out.

This is really slick. I just wish I could find out how to get rid of the Giant Homer Head.

10-in-1 Survival Kit.  For when the seas rise and drown civilization (i.e. coastal cities).

Anti-Leak Waffle Iron.

Foot Massagers. A great foundation for a Bond-villain techno-trap.

RepairClinic.com. For all your obscure part failure needs.

Read it.

If, of course, that’s what you want to do.

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Assuming you are suffering from the no-doubt-Trump-induced trauma of insufficiently frothed milk.

No mention of whether or not it will magically transport you to the Upper West Side. But at least you can pretend.

Read it.

She’s Jewish? Who knew?