NEWS YOU CAN USE: Every joke from Airplane!, ranked.

IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? How Alcohol Shaped Our Civilization, According to a Beer Archaeologist.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Rational improvement of DNA nanodevice function.

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IF ONLY THERE WERE SOME WAY TO KILL MOSQUITOES IN LARGE NUMBERS, INEXPENSIVELY: A Better (Smelly) Mosquito Trap, but With Caveats.

THEY SHOULD COME WITH A FREE “INTEL INSIDE” TATTOO: Putting a computer in your brain is no longer science fiction.

FORGIVE THEM, FOR THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO: ‘Ben-Hur’ Remake May Become Summer’s Biggest Box Office Bomb:

Paramount and MGM’s big-budget biblical-era epic “Ben-Hur” is expected to land in theaters this weekend with a Roman armor-plated thud.

Produced for a reported $100 million (which doesn’t count the presumed tens of millions of dollars spent on marketing), multiple trackers are currently setting its opening weekend gross at a paltry $12 million on average.

The studio has more faith, saying its estimates are closer to $20 million — still not great.

Timur Bekmambetov‘s remake of the 1959 hit starring Charlton Heston is the latest in a perplexingly large number of decades-old stories getting dusted off, repackaged and unleashed by Hollywood.

The “perplexingly” is a nice touch, as Fox Butterfield dons his Wayfarers and goes Full Hollywood.

WHEN HISTORIANS WONDER WHAT HAPPENED TO AMERICA IN THE 21ST CENTURY, they should start here.

NEO-NEOCON: TRUMP’S DICHOTOMY—A BRIDGE TOO FAR?

I am assuming many many other people see something similar, and they don’t need the MSM to tell them about it. Trump himself gives them reason to feel that way and very little reason to feel otherwise, and he has no political history that would tell us otherwise, either.

Not to mention his many other character flaws: he defames people (and lies about them into the bargain), and he is impulsive, mercurial, and really does act at times as though he is somewhat unbalanced. He’s not crazy, but he has demonstrated many character traits—even during this campaign season itself—that frighten people and make them not trust him in terms of his basic character as a human being in addition to his character as a political candidate. You may think that shouldn’t matter, but it does matter, and it has always mattered.

Now, you can certainly counter with the idea that Hillary Clinton is a liar and extremely untrustworthy, too. And indeed, she is. And I’m not voting for her, but if I were a liberal in tune with her policy positions, I would actually consider her quite trustworthy in terms of her politics, on which she is consistently liberal/leftist. With Hillary, politically, what you see if what you get, and if you like what you see, you might vote for it despite her flaws. She also has a surface manner (as does Obama) that seems relatively steady and statesmanlike (albeit she is a bit older and more unsteady than before), certainly relevant to Trump, and people care about that sort of thing.

Read the whole thing.

TO BE FAIR, WHAT ELSE DID YOU EXPECT HIM TO SAY? Clinton Campaign Manager Mook: Trump’s Bannon Move Could Push More GOPs to Hillary.

THE REVOLUTION ALWAYS EATS ITS OWN: SJWs Target Ellen DeGeneres Over ‘Racist’ Usain Bolt Tweet.

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IS THE NRC ABOUT TO ENABLE AN AMERICAN CHERNOBYL BY TERRORISTS? Dozens of people died when the Soviet Union’s Chernobyl nuclear power plant malfunctioned, melted down and spewed radioactivity over a broad swath of the Ukraine’s geography. A new Inspector General report includes a terrifying peek at what could happen here.

The problem is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s bureaucracy doesn’t know how many digital information systems it has that handle classified information and thus cannot ensure their security, according to the IG, reports the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Katie Watson.

“Failing to assess a system’s risks appropriately before using it could enable hackers to gain access to classified information, although the IG didn’t find any instances of that happening,” at least not yet, Watson reports. It is possible, of course, for hackers to leave no evidence of their presence.

“If a hard drive with classified information is put into a computer only authorized for unclassified information, there could be an information spill and the information may be vulnerable because the computer does not have the proper protections in place,” the IG said.

Could such an event enable hackers working for ISIS or other terrorist groups gaining sufficient access to a U.S. nuclear plant’s controls to cause it to malfunction? Chernobyl was caused by an unexplained power surge.

FASTER, PLEASE: 8 paraplegics just took their first steps in years, thanks to robots.

COMING TO AUDI: Traffic Light Information Systems.

THE BIGGEST PROBLEM FOR ASTEROID MINERS ISN’T TECHNICAL, it’s legal. This legal analysis, however, is just wrong. You can find a better analysis here — in the same magazine.

STREISAND EFFECT SOON TO WORK OVERTIME IN MINNESOTA: College Democrat Threatens Reporter to Demand Apology for Story.

ANJEM CHOUDARY VERDICT: YOUTUBE AND TWITTER REFUSED TO DELETE RADICAL PREACHER’S EXTREMIST POSTS, COURT HEARS.

To the best of my knowledge, Choudary expressed no negative concerns regarding the new Ghostbusters remake, which may explain why Twitter was so willing to give him a pass.

UPDATE: Great recently arrived Texan minds think alike.

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TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): “A female substitute teacher is facing rape charges after being accused of having sex with two male students, police said.”

BY THE NUMBERS: China (or Mexico) probably didn’t take your job.

At the high water mark in 1999, import competition was responsible for 2.3 percent of total annual job separations. In 2011, the last year of available data, only 0.1 percent of total separations were due to import competition. As a comparison, government regulation accounted for 1,500 separations (0.1 percent) and the end of seasonal work accounted for 393,000 (35.3 percent) in 2011.

Critics also worry that globalization incentivizes American companies to move overseas. This issue has been raised repeatedly during the election season. Donald Trump has repeatedly condemned U.S. firms like Ford and Carrier for opening production facilities in Mexico, while Hilary Clinton has criticized Trump for offshoring the production of his suits and ties. However, similar to import competition, offshoring does not have a large effect on overall job displacement.

Data in the above table was also taken from BLS’s Extended Mass Layoff Reports. Because BLS stopped collecting information on overseas job relocations in 2004, data is only available until 2003. However, the pattern is clear: overseas relocation is not a giant job killer. Even in the aftermath of NAFTA, which took effect in 1994, offshoring never displaced more than 20,000 workers annually. Furthermore, it only triggers around 1 percent of annual job separations.

Lots of data to soak up from Jacqueline Varas at the American Action Forum, although I’d have more confidence in the numbers if BLS hadn’t stopped collecting overseas relocations in 2004.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Is Michelle Jenneke The Anna Kournikova of The Rio Olympics 2016?

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 4 Things Every Man Wants In A Woman. I dunno, “boobies” isn’t on this list.