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At the Washington Post today, fact-checker Glenn Kessler has a roundup of the biggest Pinocchios of 2019, collecting the top 13 falsehoods that he fact-checked over the past year. Though Donald Trump dominates the list, one item is dedicated to Leana Wen, the former president of Planned Parenthood.

Shortly before Planned Parenthood’s board ousted her — displeased with her desire to focus more on expanding the group’s health-care services than on pro-abortion political activism — Wen was the feature of a Kessler fact-check and received four Pinocchios for her repeated claims that thousands of women died from botched abortions prior to 1973’s Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade.

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For the first time, BBC News published a news story for every constituency that declared election results overnight – all written by a computer.

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Apparently the peasants are more revolting than anybody knew.

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NuScale’s reactor won’t need massive cooling towers or sprawling emergency zones. It can be built in a factory and shipped to any location, no matter how remote. Extensive simulations suggest it can handle almost any emergency without a meltdown. One reason is that it barely uses any nuclear fuel, at least compared with existing reactors. It’s also a fraction of the size of its predecessors.

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At Disco, everything has a price, from office desks and PCs to a spot for your wet umbrella. Teams bill each other for their work, while individuals operate as one-person startups, with daily auctions of work assignments and battles for the best ideas in the aptly named “Colosseum.” Payments are settled in a virtual currency called “Will,” with balances paid in yen at the end of each quarter. “We’ve created a free economic zone, just like what exists outside the company,” says Toshio Naito, who designed the program and has continued to work on it since its implementation in 2011. “Work should be about freedom, not orders.”

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Apparently, not as much as you might think.

In the past decade, as pedometers have proliferated in smartphone apps and wearable fitness trackers, another benchmark has entered the lexicon: Take at least 10,000 steps a day, which is about five miles of walking for most people. As with many other American fitness norms, where this particular number came from has always been a little hazy. But that hasn’t stopped it from becoming a default daily goal for some of the most popular activity trackers on the market.

Now new research is calling the usefulness of the 10,000-step standard into question—and with it, the way many Americans think about their daily activities. While basic guidelines can be helpful when they’re accurate, human health is far too complicated to be reduced to a long chain of numerical imperatives. For some people, these rules can even do more harm than good.

I think about taking 10,000 steps a day and it has the same effect as actually taking them. (See previous post.)

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An experiment was conducted to examine whether the mere possession of a placebo analgesic cream would affect perceived pain intensity in a laboratory pain-perception test. Healthy participants read a medical explanation of pain aimed at inducing a desire to seek pain relief and then were informed that a placebo cream was an effective analgesic drug. Half of the participants were randomly assigned to receive the cream as an unexpected gift, whereas the other half did not receive the cream. Subsequently, all participants performed the cold-pressor task. We found that participants who received the cream but did not use it reported lower levels of pain intensity during the cold-pressor task than those who did not receive the cream. Our findings constitute initial evidence that simply possessing a placebo analgesic can reduce pain intensity. The study represents the first attempt to investigate the role of mere possession in understanding placebo analgesia.

Homeopathy, anyone?

Huh? After Pensacola Shooting, MSNBC Praises British Gun Laws

London Bridge terrorist Usman Khan is buried in family village in Pakistan after UK backlash

Gunmen in cars kill at least 15 and injure scores more in Baghdad protests 

Rage and Brutality on German Playgrounds

Report: Pensacola Shooting Suspect Loathed US As ‘Nation Of Evil’

Desperate Syrian Kurds who fled Turkish incursion head home to uncertainty

London Terror Attack Exposes Deradicalization Programs’ Failures

Isil ‘matchmaker’ who lured British teen bride to Syria deported to France

Israel Threatens Iran With “Own Vietnam” In Syria, Hints At Major Pre-Emptive Strike

Many Nights of the Long Knives

Taliban Abduct 45 Elderly Family Members During Government Employee’s Funeral

After Rockets Hit Baghdad Airport Base, US Says Iran Targeting Americans

Furkan Muslims Fight Islamophobia in Germany

US Military Grounds 300 Saudi Aviation Students After Pensacola Shooting Spree

A Mosque in Every German Village Normalizing jihad.

Mona Haydar’s “Hijabi Cool” Feminism Embraces the Islamist Patriarchy

Hours-Long Taliban Assault On Bagram Repelled By US Airstrikes Days After ‘Peace’ Talks Resume

A Fatal Encounter in Augsburg

SYRIA: Turkey Versus Everyone

The chilling stories from inside China’s Muslim internment camps

India sends troops to Assam and shuts down internet as protesters defy curfew over citizenship law

US warnings over spate of Iranian-backed rocket attacks on its bases in Iraq

Iraq mob lynches 16-year-old after he attacked and killed anti-government protesters  These kids today.

Former beauty queen found guilty of funding terrorism

In Europe, the Muslim Murder of Jews is a Mental Illness  With 1400 years of history behind it.

Ivan Rioufol Confronts the Ummah

Italian Government Numbers Show 42% Of Rapes Are Carried Out By Migrants

Iran says it staved off cyber attack but doesn’t blame US

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How about that GREAT government-provided health care? Don’t you wish we had a system like that in the U.S.?

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There are many ways to desalinate water, but one of the most effective is membrane desalination. In this method, water is pushed through a thin membrane with tiny holes. The water flows through the pores, but the salt ions can’t, leaving only fresh water on the other side.

In his latest research, Barati Farimani explores the potential of a new type of membrane, called a metal-organic framework (MOF). “These membranes consist of both the metal center and organic compound,” Barati Farimani says. The organic compound and metal connect in a pentagonal pattern, leaving a hole in the center that serves as a pore. “If you look at them, they are like a honeycomb,” Barati Farimani adds.

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The robot doesn’t care who or where you are.

Michael Kosanovich, a New Jersey native, was standing between two parked 2002 Lexus IS300s in South Jamaica on Friday evening when one of the cars was “accidentally started by remote,” according to a preliminary investigation. Authorities believe that the remote feature somehow caused the car to roll forward, pinning Kosanovich between the two vehicles on 148th Street.

Guess Elon isn’t the only Justin Hammer out there.

The Arctic may have crossed key threshold, emitting billions of tons of carbon into the air, in a long-dreaded climate feedback  WaPo. Women and minorities hardest hit, no doubt.

Greenland ice losses rising faster than expected

Angry, Whiny, Self-Righteous High-school Dropout Picked as Time Magazine’s Person of the Year

Will Lagarde Pledge To Do “Whatever It Takes” To Fix Climate Change?

Pacific Glaciers Redux

Greenpeace activists set off flares atop new EU headquarters as leaders gather for climate change talks

Nominations Open For ‘The World’s Greatest Climate Hypocrite’ Competition

ABC Anchor Muir LIES, Claims IG Found ‘No Spying’ from FBI

CNN Carried Only 33% of Horowitz Hearing, But Had 99% of Impeachment Hearing

Pounding the IG Report, Cuomo Demands You Believe ‘Zero’ Spying By FBI

Democrats Aren’t Even Pretending They Have A Case For Impeachment Anymore

CNN Newsroom Hosts Bungle Trump-IG Report Fact Check

Obama Attorney General Eric Holder: William Barr ‘Unfit’ For Office  Like being called ugly by a frog.

Late Night Comics Shill for Democrats on Impeachment  Not really news, but a useful reminder.

“Case Agent 1” Was a Major Driver of Fraud and Abuse in Crossfire Hurricane, “Primarily Responsible” for “Most Significant” Abuses, and Yet, Of Course, Remains an FBI Employee  Nobody gets fired, nobody goes to jail.

Impeachment Ringleaders Quietly Panic As Moderate Democrats Bail

Who Is Case Agent 1?

‘Obama Wingman’ Eric Holder Launches Fast, Furious Attack On AG Barr

Matthews Hails Pelosi’s ‘Biblical’ Impeachment Rhetoric; Guest Hits ‘Childish’ GOP

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I guess there’s some hope for the old place after all.

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The near-homogeneity of Silicon Valley political beliefs has gone from wry punchline to national crisis in the United States. The monoculture of virtue signaling and high- and heavy-handed woke corporate leftism at places like Google, Twitter, and Facebook was once a source of chagrin for those who found themselves shut out of various internet sites for deviating from the orthodoxies of the Palo Alto elites. After the 2016 presidential election, however, it became obvious that the digitalistas were doing a lot more than just making examples of a few handpicked “extremists.” From the shadow banning of non-leftist sites and views to full-complement political propagandizing, Bay Area leftists have been so aggressive in bending the national psyche to their will that there is talk in the papers and on the cable “news” channels of “existential threats to our democracy.”

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It’s all about teh Narrative.

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Appaenlty it’s not OK to be white any more.

Freeberg does a deep dive.

The Important part:

So I taught myself, in childhood, how to program computers because I figured out I really don’t like people enough to talk to them. Voting consistently against democrats came later, when I realized I don’t hate people enough to want them to suffer. That is also not unusual. I think if you were to question a lot of political conservatives as to why they are conservatives, a fair answer you’d get back a lot of the time would be “I just don’t hate people that much.” But that’s a bunny trail. The truly frightening question that confronted me now was: Given that I can get along with some people, but not all, can it be that the difference lies completely in their social strengths? Am I only making friends with just the friendliest of people? Just taking from what few relationships I have, and putting nothing back?

And we fellas have to ask that question a lot, because when couples have “friends,” most of them are her friends. That’s just how it works. This gets revealed when it’s time for the couple to split, and it leads to a sense of isolation most women will never know.

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I would be reluctant to characterize Methodists as Christian.

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he two shooters, one male and one female, were both African-American. The male shooter, 47-year-old David Anderson, reportedly posted anti-police and anti-Semitic rhetoric on his social media page and was once a follower of the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, according to the New York Times. Members of the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, per CNN, believe “blacks are the true descendants of biblical Jews.” Both Anderson and Francine Graham were killed during Tuesday’s shootout.

UPDATE: Rashida Tlaib Falsely Blames White Supremacists For New Jersey Shooting

UPDATE: Rashida Tlaib on Black Hebrew Israelites’ Targeting and Slaughter of Jews: “White Supremacy kills”

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Just leave your Blue State attitudes behind, please.

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As predicted.

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It was only January when certain journalists went way out on a limb to give friendly news coverage to the racist and anti-Semitic Black Hebrew Israelites cult. This very odd editorial decision seemed to come in the service of better sticking it to the high school students from Covington Catholic — boys whom Black Hebrew Israelites had taunted on the national mall, inciting what became a famous incident.

So, now that one of the black nationalist cult’s former members stands accused of a deadly shoot-out with police, possibly in an act of anti-Semitic terrorism targeting a Kosher grocery market in Jersey City, we are probably not going to hear much talk about the fringe group in the broader context of radicalization and gun violence. That would be a personal and professional embarrassment for a lot of reporters and editors, some of who are currently in the middle of defending against lawsuits by the Covington teens.

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There’s a lot of ground between puttering around with your face strapped to a snorkel and managing the dangers, equipment, certification and expenses of scuba diving. Surface-supplied diving systems fill some of this space by strapping you to a breathing hose that plunges deeper than a snorkel but without some of the complications of scuba. Typically these systems rely on some form of compressed air, but a new prototype from Austria uses a more sustainable air supply: you. The ExoLung translates the diver’s swimming motions into air movement, keeping breathing air flowing so long as the diver keeps swimming.

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Continuing corporate efforts to support at-risk youth, Apple this week joined forces with talk show host Ellen DeGeneres and former first lady Michelle Obama to hand out new Macs and iPads to students and teachers at Randle Highlands Elementary School in Washington, D.C.

I’m opening a book on how long it takes for this program to disintegrate. The L.A. school district handed out free computers to ‘at-risk’ kids who immediately turned around and sold them on the street, then reported ‘Oh, gee, my computer was lost/stolen, could I please have another?’ I’ll leave you guess how many MILLIONS of dollars this cost the taxpayers.

Exposing The Promoters Of Climate Anxiety

Greenland’s ice losses have septupled and are now in line with its highest sea-level scenario, scientists say

WaPo.

One-third of recent global methane increase comes from tropical Africa

Report: A Cloud Drifting Over a Solar Farm Knocked Out Power for 10hrs

TIME Names Greta Thunberg ‘Person Of The Year’ Whining is its own reward.

Promoters of Climate Anxiety

Nets Grovel Before Greta: She’s ‘Woke’ With a ‘Sweet Voice’ That’s ‘Inspired a Lot of Kids’

Nation Surprised To Learn Time Magazine Still In Print Babylon Bee.

NOAA goes Hollywood with “Arctic Report Card” at #AGU19

The Manntastic climate doom panel at #AGU19

Climate change could make many US homes uninsurable  But Bernie could pay your insurance for you. Hey, it could happen, just like ‘climate change’.

Trump assaults facts to survive impeachment  CNN.

HILARIOUS: MSNBC Blames Fox News for Lack of Public Support for Impeachment The swine.

Matthews Hails ‘Boss’ Pelosi Sending Trump to ‘Infamy’; ‘Chilling’ If He Isn’t Removed

Lavrov Mocks Media Frenzy Over “Secrets” Exchanged During “Normal” Diplomatic Meeting With Trump

Democrats Won’t To Let Lack Of Evidence Stop Impeachment

How Democrats lost the Impeachment War — and probably 2020

Amazon: Trump photon-torpedoed our $10bn JEDI dream because he hates CEO Jeff Bezos  And who could blame him?

‘Are You People Insane?’: CNN’s Don Lemon Reacts To Trump Team’s Meme

CNN’s Chris Cuomo: House GOP ‘Ignored Their Oath’ By Voting Against Impeachment  Fredo is agitated.

Liberals Setting the Stage to Claim 2020 Election Results Illegitimate

Surprise! CNN and MSNBC, Which Have Covered Every Moment of the Fake Impeachment Hearings, Absolutely Refuse to Air the Horowitz Testimony

Joy Behar Upset Majority of Voters Not Backing Impeachment: Trump ‘Tactics’ Are Working!

Will Democrats Accept the Results of the 2020 Elections?

‘Blew This Story’: Even Liberal Writers Are Shredding The New York Times’ Reporting On Trump’s Anti-Semitism Executive Order

‘It’s Pretty Bad’: Michael Horowitz Sums Up FBI’s Surveillance Abuses Against Trump Aide

MSNBC Panel Dismisses Clinton Impeachment: Unlike Trump, He Didn’t Hurt America!  And, unlike Trump, he actually broke the law and abused his office.

Chuck Todd Fears Dems Not Politicizing Impeachment Enough, ‘Trying to Play By the Rules’

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Stay out of That Part of Town and you won’t have a problem. Just sayin’.

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This is why we old farts wish things were the way they used to be.

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Hey, when you need it, you need it badly.

Popular ‘Science’.

If you’re worried about whether your oats are gluten-free, you need to remove yourself from the coast before the rising sea levels drown you.

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Which is why I no longer use it, although I used to.

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I guess you can’t always get what you want. Somebody spread the word on campus.

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People perceive a person’s competence partly based on subtle economic cues emanating from the person’s clothing, according to a study published in Nature Human Behaviour by Princeton University. These judgments are made in a matter of milliseconds, and are very hard to avoid.

Why would you want to avoid them, unless you’re a Grievance Studies professional? People in most cases dress like what they are: Stoners dress like stoners, bums dress like bums, farmers dress like farmers, students dress like students, rich people dress like people in very expensive casual clothes. Most people are Players and dress to tell you who they want you to think they are. Like terrorists, they have no one to blame but themselves if you take them at their word.

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I guess scientific consensus doesn’t really get you that much.

Don’t like your doctor’s advice? Wait five years and he’ll reverse it.

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Looking for the ambulances, I’d guess.

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Feces and needles on the streets — gee, I wonder why?

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Richard Gooding had one of the most famous whisky collections in history. In fact, before passing away in 2014, he spent years at distilleries in Scotland and at auctions building his 3,900 bottle collection, including some of the rarest bottles in the world.

Daily Mail.

Of course she did. They all do. This is news?

Actually, the news here is that the knives appear to be coming out for Professor Umbrage.

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Plenty of room for that in Texas.

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Not as long as Trump is President they won’t.

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

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Wasting YOUR money is what the government does best.

At a previous point in our history (say, when I was a child), kids learned a lot in school. Why don’t we return to the way we did it back then?

Claim: The Montreal Protocol Saved the Arctic From Global Warming

DOJ Watchdog Puts Final Nail In Steele Dossier’s Coffin

MSNBC’s Katy Tur Frets Liberals Not Doing Enough to Dismantle Capitalism

The Woke Media: Apologists For The State

No joke: Russian scientists marked problem Kara Sea polar bear with T-34

Report Reveals The Extent Of Liz Warren’s Past Defending Big Business From Enviro Activists

BREAKING: #ExxonKnew lawsuit crashes and burns

Exxon Defeats Climate Crusading AG’s Attempt To Hold Big Oil Responsible For Duping Investors

Exxon Mobil Prevails Over “Politically-Biased” New York AG In Major Climate-Change Case

At #AGU19, they declare – full “climate crisis mode” – but there’s an inconvenient fact

Mega-Rich Environmentalists Respond To Questions About Their Use Of Private Jets

40 million more people at risk of flooding as Greenland loses ice ‘seven times faster than in 1990s’  Call me when one of them gets wet.

Fireworks Erupt As Matt Gaetz Goes Off On ‘Non-Partisan’ Democrat Impeachment Lawyer

Trump Surging in Polls in Three Battleground States, as Impeachment Seems to be Damaging Biden and the Democrats

Former Ukrainian Prosecutor Exposes Yovanovich Perjury, George Kent’s Motive To Impeach Trump

‘Take Your Donor To Work Day’: Matt Gaetz Rips Democrats For One-Sided Impeachment Hearing

Dems Plan To Focus On At Least 2 Articles In Impeachment Push

CNN Lets Guest Blame Trump for Dems Rejecting 2020 Minority Candidates

ABC Parrots Democrat Talking Points: Impeachment ‘Exactly’ What Framers Would’ve Wanted

Whoopi Says We’re ‘Celebrating’ Our Rights And The Constitution By Impeaching Trump

Democrats Unveil Two Frivolous, Focus-Grouped Articles of Fake Impeachment

Democrats Abandon Poll-Tested ‘Bribery’ In Articles Of Impeachment Against Trump

Trump’s new homeless czar a ‘real-life horror,’ say housing advocates

‘Incredible Bulls**t’: Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger Faces Constituent’s Wrath Over Impeachment Support

Speeding Toward Impeachment in the Absence of Facts

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Professor Umbrage does not appear to be as popular as her Pokemon Victim Point score would suggest.

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Two American favorites.

With thanks to Debbie Witt, a kindred soul.