HOME MUSIC RECORDING UPDATE: I have a review of The Drum Programming Handbook, by Justin Paterson, over at the PJ Lifestyle section.

Exit quote courtesy of Mick Fleetwood: “God knows, if the drums aren’t right, then the song is not survivable.”

CRACKS IN THE FOUNDATION: Clinton Faces Hard Reality Of Unity In Trump Country. Plus, an excuse: “‘Look, here’s the deal. That wasn’t about getting votes,’ says Bill Clinton.”

From the crowd: “Nobody wants you here. Go home!”

HILLARY CLINTON’S FEMINIST MOMENTS: “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies … but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession.”

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: CDC labs cited for mishandled bioterror germs.

Maybe the CDC needs a little more focus.

AT AMAZON, shop the Poolside Leisure Event.

Plus, keep kids active with the Summer Toy List.

FASTER, PLEASE: 3D Printed Spinal Implant Integrates Like Actual Bone.

RESEARCH: Teen Discovers Lost Maya City Using Ancient Star Maps [Updated]. The “update” is a bunch of people saying he’s wrong.

THE RIGHT TO BE FOUND SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE IS THE FOUNDATION OF ALL RIGHTS, RIGHT? Transgender girl says she is rejected by straight guys for ‘having male parts.’ It’s a shame that transphobia stands in the way of that fundamental entitlement.

J.D. TUCCILLE: Hillary Clinton Picks a Doomed Fight With Americans Over Guns.

AT AMAZON, it’s Truck Month.

Plus, new arrivals in Home.

MEET THE MIDDLETONS: James Lileks devotes a new section of his sprawling Website to an industrial film Westinghouse created in 1939 to advertise its contributions to the World’s Fair in New York. We mentioned last week how immediately after WWII, General Motors promoted Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom — and then in the decades to follow forget all of Hayek’s lessons on its own road to serfdom as Obama’s Government Motors.

Lileks’ new section is subtitled “Or, Go Peddle that Bolshie Booshwah Elsewhere, Pal,” as astonishingly, one of the supporting characters in Westinghouse’s film is played by a bow-tie wearing ferret-faced sneering actor who denounces all of the advancements in science made possible by capitalism, democracy, and free enterprise. (He’s there as the token bad guy to have his comments swatted away by the all-American family he accompanies to the Fair.) One of the pages of Lileks’ site features a large photo of Westinghouse’s site at the World’s Fair contrasting the technological achievements of the first four decades of the 20th century with, as the large sign on the wall of the exhibition reads “YESTERDAY: A WORLD WITHOUT ELECTRICITY.”

Flash-forward to 2007, when on the road to creating conditions favorable for the election of a Democrat the following year, the anchor of the evening news of the network Westinghouse acquired in the previous decade likened global warming skeptics to Holocaust deniers. That same year, the network owned by General Electric, another powerhouse at the 1939 World’s Fair, actively promoted a world without electricity; turning all the lights off in its studio (other than sponsor Toyota’s large sign of course) during a Sunday Night Football game and advising Americans to do the same. The cable network that GE owned at the time featured an anchor who said on the air in 2010, “Liberals amuse me. I am a socialist. I live to the extreme left, the extreme left of you mere liberals, okay?”

Someone like that was the designated cartoon heavy at the 1939 World’s Fair; today, TV shows are built around him. Not to mention presidential candidacies. The 1939 World’s Fair promised a world fundamentally transformed, and after WWII, that transformation certainly arrived. But so did its myriad critics, eager to revolt against the masses — and hard.

ANOTHER WIN FOR BERNIE: Sanders Takes West Virginia.

WHAT PASSES FOR ENTERTAINMENT TODAY:

It’s a cop show, but it’s really about the uncomfortable transition an English town is experiences as it turns into a welfare-state matriarchy. The women are mostly Strong, of course; a slight majority are Victims, but even then they’re not only Strong but Resourceful. The men are useless. The male cops are callow. The working men are brutes. The men who don’t work are worthless yobs on the dole. One of the main detectives is a philanderer who is weak and vain. Go to the hospital? It’s run by women. Go to a classroom? When they introduce a new teacher, you can bet it’ll be a woman, because the idea of a male teacher – well, that was the problem, wasn’t it. Nothing but those types, and look where that got everyone.

Of course this show is meant to redress previous injustices – they wouldn’t say so, but you know it’s payback. It’s the shoe on the other foot, one that hasn’t seen a pedicure in a year because the job’s just too bloody demanding. But I still don’t recall the police show where the hero cop kicked a female suspect in the groin in the first season and Tasered a woman in the genitals in the second, and then told the story to great laughter in the squad room, and we were expected to smile along because women getting an electrical charge in the clitoris, c’mon, lighten up, it’s funny.

Matriarchies exist primarily in failed or colonized societies, or in those about to fail or be colonized.

DIVERSITY IS OUR STRENGTH: Muslims Attack People in England for Drinking Beer…?!?

ALSO, IT’S DELICIOUS: The Surprising Benefits Of Spicy Food Include A Longer Lifespan.

SOUNDS KIND OF SEXIST: In Law, Women Need To Help Other Women.

FLOATS LIKE A BUTTERFLY, STINGS LIKE AN ELECTRIC EEL: Trump Paralyzed Hilary’s Campaign.

This boilerplate Democratic campaign strategy would be fine — perhaps even compelling – if deployed against a vanilla Republican candidate. Trump is, however, no Republican cast in the same mold as George W. Bush, John McCain, or Mitt Romney. In fact, as Team Clinton was revealing its intention to attack Trump for his proposal to ease the tax burden on the rich, the news cycle was already dominated by Trump’s decision to buck Republican orthodoxy on taxes in an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd.

In that “Meet the Press” interview, Trump signaled his willingness to surrender his opening bid in the coming fight over tax code reform (well before negotiations had even begun) by insisting that his cuts on the highest marginal rates will likely be pared back by congressional Democrats. “I have a feeling we pay some more,” Trump said of his fellows in the top tax bracket. “I am willing to pay more, and you know what, wealthy are willing to pay more. We’ve had a very good run.”

Despite Trump warning the Clintons for weeks that he intends to borrow heavily from self-described socialist Senator Bernie Sanders’ playbook, Team Clinton was unable, or unwilling, to preemptively reform their message and tailor it to Trump’s populist progressivism. Nor could they adapt and respond to a news cycle dominated by Trump’s remarks on taxes and the stunning departure they represent from typical Republican economic philosophy. If Democrats fear that Clinton’s team has ossified and grown complacent, this episode should confirm those suspicions.

It’s hard to get inside the decision loop of a guy who doesn’t know what he’ll do next himself.

SCIENCE NOT SETTLED: Do probiotics have an effect on healthy adults? It’s too early to tell.

THE PRESS ISN’T MAD THAT BEN RHODES LIED TO THEM, THEY’RE MAD THAT SOMEONE WROTE A STORY ABOUT IT: “And now, the echo chamber is mad—but not at Ben Rhodes for what he said. They’re mad at Samuels for getting the story they didn’t—or didn’t even see was there, and they’re mad at him for what he reported. The Washington Post has published three different pieces on Samuels, none favorable, including one by the editor of the book section. The Post is mad of course because the Samuels piece publicly shamed the paper—after all, its main brief is to cover the local industry—the workings of the government of the United States. And yet as the article makes plain, Post reporters and especially columnists got spun and conned about the Iran deal. But much worse than that is that the Post got scooped on the story explaining how gullible they are. Scooped by the New York Times, in their own backyard on the biggest foreign policy story of the past four years! That’s embarrassing.”

DEHYDRATION: Risks And Myths.

LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Brazil’s WhatsApp Ban Is a Harbinger of International Encryption Battles.

WHY HOLLYWOOD WENT METHOD ACTING CRAZY:

Spencer Tracy, one of the most natural actors to have ever stepped in front of a camera, gave three pieces of advice to every young hopeful who asked for his secret: “Show up on time, know your lines, and don’t bump into the furniture.” Sometimes he’d throw in a fourth, which outlined what he saw as the proper relationship between the audience and the film actor’s craft: “Never let them catch you at it.”

Tracy died in 1967, though his words still bear repeating today, ideally through a megaphone outside Jared Leto’s trailer. In preparing to play Batman’s nemesis The Joker in the forthcoming comic-book movie Suicide Squad, Leto got himself into character partly through a series of in-character tricks and stunts, which were widely described as part and parcel of the 44-year-old Oscar winner’s method acting approach.

One involved sending cast members sex toys, used prophylactics and pornographic magazines flecked with what was hopefully glue. Leto required the crew to address him as Mr. J during the shoot – J for Joker rather than Jared – while after hours, he tormented the actor playing his henchman with phone calls throughout the night.

In Tracy’s day, some studios would have probably turned to the Mob to hush this kind of stuff up. But now it’s a point of pride – a kind of off-screen validation of Leto’s commitment to his art. We’ve heard about it many months before Suicide Squad’s release for the same reason The Revenant’s promotional campaign made so much of its cast’s arctic ordeal*, and Shia LaBeouf talking about turning up drunk to play a moonshine distiller in Lawless, dropping acid for the drug-infused The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman, and pulling his tooth out to play a Second World War tank gunner in Fury.

More than ever, we seem to want to catch actors “at it” – and in return, they seem increasingly keen to be caught.

So much for “never let them see you sweat,” and “always make it look easy.” Fascinating though isn’t it, that as the post-Brando Sturm Und Drang from Hollywood’s actors rises exponentially, the overall quality of the finished product declines in equal proportions?

* Not least of which, the poor besotted bear.

AT AMAZON, new for 2016 from TaylorMade.

IS T-MOBILE violating Net Neutrality?

THERE WAS SOMETHING LIKE THIS IN JOHN VARLEY’S MILLENNIUM, I BELIEVE: A Removable ‘Second Skin’ Could Cover Your Real One. To reduce wrinkles and treat skin conditions.