IN TODAY’S AMERICA, nothing more shameful than bad teeth? “The liberal proponents of Occupy Wall Street are often the same people who think Southerners are inbred and Walmart shoppers slovenly miscreants. . . . Upper-class supremacy is nothing new. A hundred years ago, the US Eugenics Records Office not only targeted racial minorities but ‘sought to demonstrate scientifically that large numbers of rural poor whites were genetic defectives.’”

Progressives have always sought to exterminate class enemies.

JUST NBC THE SMUGNESS. Clueless NBC Gymnastics Announcer: Simone Biles’ Adoptive Parents ‘NOT Her Parents.’

“Aimee Boorman, Simone’s longtime coach, didn’t mince words: “Actually they are her parents.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Having a Baby Doesn’t Entitle You to Take Over the World.

MACROAGGRESSIONS: Coding “White Trash” in Academia.

EQUALITY: U.S. Male Gymnasts Want to Be Objectified.

When the United States men’s gymnastics team came to the site of the Olympics earlier this year for a reconnaissance training camp, the American athletes did what anyone in Brazil with a carefully sculpted body would do. They went to the beach, stripped to their Speedos and whipped out a selfie stick. The soaring peaks of Sugarloaf Mountain in the background have never looked so meek.

What happened next was exactly the reaction the U.S. team imagined. The Internet went gaga for the ensuing Instagrams.

That wasn’t an accident. It’s one of the ways they think they can get attention in a country that showers glory upon gold-medal-winning women gymnasts while ignoring America’s less-successful men’s team.

If it’s any consolation to Team USA, my wife has been objectifying male gymnasts for years.

HUNKA-HUNKA: BMW restored Elvis Presley’s 507 and oh my goodness it’s perfect.

VENUS AIN’T THE KIND OF PLACE TO RAISE YOUR KIDS: But climate models show it might once have been hospitable to life.

While Venus now has very little water in its atmosphere, it could have had oceans as deep as 525 meters (1,700 feet) billions of years ago. The atmosphere was likely far less thick and toxic, too. The Goddard team plugged all of those factors into climate models used for Earth, and they showed that it had a mean surface air temperature of 11 degrees C (52 degrees F), with max temperatures at 95 degrees F. That means that several billion years ago it could have been just as likely to support life as Earth, if not more so.

Climate models are notoriously unreliable, even about the planet we can measure directly. But this is at least some fascinating conjecture about our solar system neighbor.

LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: This Bizarre, Full-Body Mesh Suit Was Invented to Stop Zika-Infected Mosquitoes.

AT AMAZON, deals on Video Equipment & Accessories.

Plus, save in Sports & Fitness.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Let the Greens and Libertarians into the debates: Our third parties are fielding credible candidates as Democratic and Republican parties give us shady characters.

NAME THAT PARTY! Virginia Mayor Richard Silverthorne Resigns After Meth-for-Sex Bust.

The mayor of Fairfax, Virginia, has resigned following his arrest last week for allegedly trying to exchange methamphetamine to undercover detectives in exchange for sex, city officials said Monday.

Mayor Richard “Scott” Silverthorne’s resignation will take effect on Thursday, according to a statement on the City of Fairfax website.

Silverthorne, 50, was arrested and charged with felony distribution of methamphetamine and misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia after a sting operation that had been underway since July led an undercover detective to the mayor, who provided detectives with methamphetamine.

The detectives had contacted Silverthorne through a website, where he promised them a “group sexual encounter” with men in exchange for the drugs, according to the Fairfax City Police Department.

I really don’t care what Silverthorne does in his free time, but NBC News apparently cares enough to hide the fact that he’s a Democrat.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Daily Beast Suggests FBI ‘Egged On’ 2015 Jihad Attack on TX ‘Draw Muhammad’ Contest.

BENJAMIN SLEDGE: A Letter To My Daughter About Young Men.

VEXING QUESTION ON PATIENT SURVEYS: Did We Ease Your Pain? “Like countless other businesses, hospitals use customer surveys to improve their reputations, target areas for improvement and provide measures for determining employees’ promotions and raises. But as the country struggles to control the epidemic of overdoses and deaths from prescription opioids, many medical professionals and policy makers are challenging the wisdom of asking patients to rate how hospital employees manage pain. Doing so, they argue, creates a dangerous incentive for doctors to prescribe powerful and potentially addictive painkillers.”

HIP TO BE SQUARE: How the hipster aesthetic is taking over the world.

Everywhere you go, seemingly hip, unique spaces have a way of looking the same, whether it’s bars or restaurants, fashion boutiques or shared office spaces. A coffee roaster resembles a WeWork office space. How can all that homogeneity possibly be cool?

In an essay for the American tech website The Verge, I called this style “AirSpace”. It’s marked by an easily recognisable mix of symbols – like reclaimed wood, Edison bulbs, and refurbished industrial lighting – that’s meant to provide familiar, comforting surroundings for a wealthy, mobile elite, who want to feel like they’re visiting somewhere “authentic” while they travel, but who actually just crave more of the same: more rustic interiors and sans-serif logos and splashes of cliche accent colours on rugs and walls.

Truly hip hipsters will say that they were anti-hipster before it was hip.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Trump Voter Shot After Bar Political Debate Turns Violent.

TO BE FAIR, I’M NOT SURE IF IT QUALIFIES AS LIVING OR BREATHING THESE DAYS, BUT OTHERWISE, ANALYSIS, TRUE. Trump: Detroit is ‘living, breathing example’ of Clinton’s economic plans.

SIX TOOLS to cut your painting time in half.

TURKISH RESET: Turkey’s president heads to Russia amid improving ties.

Tuesday’s visit to St. Petersburg for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin will be Erdogan’s first foreign trip since the abortive July 15 putsch, in which a group of renegade Turkish military officers attempted to seize power using fighter jets, helicopters and tanks in a night of violence that left more than 270 people dead.

Both Turkey and Russia, which once described themselves as strategic partners, have been hurt by their roughly seven-month rupture in relations: Russia’s ban on the sale of package tours to Turkey and an agricultural import embargo dealt a painful blow to the Mediterranean country, while Moscow also paid a price as the spat shelved a much-touted Russian natural gas pipeline to Turkey and other lucrative projects.

So both Erdogan and Putin are interested in mending the rift and reviving economic and trade ties, a process that began in June following Ankara’s apology for shooting down the Russian plane, which had been running bombing sorties in neighboring Syria.

I’m still paranoid enough to wonder if Putin’s fingerprints aren’t somewhere on the failed “coup,” or that perhaps Moscow has been useful in providing intel and advice for Erdogan’s successful post-coup purge.

APPROPRIATELY ENOUGH: CP/M Creator Gary Kildall’s Memoirs Released as Free Download.

RESET: Ukraine on alert awaiting start of Russian army offensive.

“We’re expecting it at any time,” Lysenko said, answering a question about the possible aggravation of the conflict. Officials have noted the repositioning of equipment and the rotation of the military along the entire contact line from the enemy’s side, along with border crossings at uncontrolled sections.

“In the north of Crimea, Russian troops are also carrying out their maneuvers, and for a while the movement at checkpoints was suspended on the initiative of the Russian side. This means the occupiers are conducting their maneuvers, and we need to be aware that at any moment, at any hour, they can start a large or small-scale offensive,” Lysenko said.

Moscow’s window of opportunity likely closes on January 20, 2017.

CHECK YOUR PREMISE: Summer’s civil war: How did pop culture get so negative?, asks USA Today.

Isn’t the much more interesting question how did pop culture get so awful? Major film studios producing nothing but comic book movies with budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars? A national newspaper defending them without seeing the irony of how intellectually bankrupt the industry has become?

This isn’t the 21st century I was promised.

LIAWATHA’S TONGUE BRIEFLY UNFORKED: Elizabeth Warren criticizes DNC on emails,  calls scandal an “embarrassment to the nation.”