I FEEL SAD FOR THE ALTERNATE-GLENN WHO HAS TO LIVE IN THAT UNIVERSE: Hillary Clinton imagines an alternate universe in which she is president.

YEAH, IT’S NOT LIKE THE IRREVERSIBLE TRAUMA THAT OCCURS WHEN IT’S A COLLEGE FRAT GUY: Girl Scout Who Confronted Neo-Nazi Admits Immigrants May Rape Her, Says She’ll Get Over It.

FASTER, PLEASE: Is it really possible to live until you’re 146? The science of ageing.

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MORPHED INTO A STALIN APOLOGIA SO SLOWLY, I HARDLY EVEN NOTICED:

Ladies & gentlemen, I give you “Anthropology in Practice” from The Scientific American. https://t.co/jWbIjz3aCa pic.twitter.com/WFgHP6JE4Z

— Charles Murray (@charlesmurray) May 5, 2017

Perhaps it’s those legendary Russian hackers again — and if I were Scientific American, I’d run pretty hard with that theory. Because otherwise, somebody’s layers and layers of fact checkers and editors are really falling down on the job.

AS VENEZUELA IMPLODES, NBC AVOIDS NAMING THE CAUSE: SOCIALISM.

To be fair, they wouldn’t want to risk triggering the audience or the executives of their sister network, whose purpose exists to advance it.

I THOUGHT THE CLOCK SCIENCE WAS SETTLED: Clockmaker John Harrison vindicated 250 years after ‘absurd’ claims.

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Plus, save in Automotive Tools and Equipment.

I HAD A COLUMN PROPOSING JUST THIS A WHILE BACK: Dem touts bill to ‘decentralize’ the federal government.

If the GOP is smart, they’ll go along, but make the move in a way that takes federal employees out of Virginia, and puts them in the run-down parts of blue states. Fresno! Bakersfield! Utica! Lower costs, and a firsthand view of economic decline.

Here’s my column.

And I recently read Garrett Graf’s Raven Rock, a history of Cold War (and post-9/11) “Continuity Of Government” operations and a recurring theme is how vulnerable we are by having so many eggs in the Washington, DC basket.

I THOUGHT WE DIDN’T CALL IT THAT ANYMORE BECAUSE OF CULTURAL ISSUES: Female Genital Mutilation: What It Does To A Woman.

AIDED BY THE MEDIA’S UNRELENTING ATTACKS ON NATIONALIST MARINE LE PEN, Projections Show Macron With a Comfortable Win in French Election.

JOURNALISM:

AND SPEAKING OF NIGHTMARISH DYSTOPIAN FUTURES: The “Frork”…It Is Un-American And Clearly A Sign Of The End Times:

It’s an all-too-familiar scenario. A bit of ketchup drips from your hamburger onto your placemat, and you’re left with only one choice: to use your fingers and a few French fries to sop up the mess.

McDonald’s is here to change that with their new “uselessly useful” invention–a “frork.” Basically, it’s a fork. But instead of metal prongs, it sports three French fries.

Decline is a choice, America.

CHOOSE YOUR HOLLYWOOD DYSTOPIA: Hillary Clinton Warns of a Handmaid’s Tale Future.

As opposed to The Giver: A Chilling Cinematic Peek into Hillary Clinton’s Infamous Village.

EVERGREEN HEADLINE: University Sit-in Results in Administration Caving to All Demands.

GEORGE WILL: THINK YOU’RE LIVING IN A ‘HELLHOLE’ TODAY? TRY BEING A BILLIONAIRE IN 1916.

Boudreaux says that if you had Rockefeller’s riches back then, you could have had a palatial home on Fifth Avenue, another overlooking the Pacific, and a private island if you wished. Of course, going to and from the coasts in your private but un-air-conditioned railroad car would be time-consuming and less than pleasant. And communicating with someone on the other coast would be a sluggish chore.

Commercial radio did not arrive until 1920, and 1916 phonographs would lacerate 2017 sensibilities, as would 1916’s silent movies. If in 1916 you wanted Thai curry, chicken vindaloo or Vietnamese pho, you could go to the phone hanging on your wall and ask the operator (direct dialing began in the 1920s) to connect you to restaurants serving those dishes. The fact that there were no such restaurants would not bother you because in 1916 you had never heard of those dishes, so you would not know what you were missing.

If in 1916 you suffered from depression, bipolar disorder, a sexually transmitted disease or innumerable other ailments treatable in 2017, you also would not know that you were missing antibiotics and the rest of modern pharmacology.

In 1924, Calvin Coolidge’s son died at age 16 of a staph infection a week after developing a blister on his foot while playing tennis – because Penicillin’s invention was still four years away. And as P.J. O’Rourke once wrote, “In general, life is better than it ever has been, and if you think that, in the past, there was some golden age of pleasure and plenty to which you would, if you were able, transport yourself, let me say one single word: ‘dentistry.’”

Related: Give Sam Walton the Nobel Prize.

HMM: Nissan’s Distracted Driving Fix Is a Faraday Cage in Your Car.

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THE INSTA-WIFE: 13 Reasons Why Not.

MICROBIOME NEWS: Bacteria Could Be Responsible For Shifts in Brain Structure in People With IBS.

DARK STARS: Ethan Siegel speculates on the appearance of “black dwarf” stars.

…by time the first black dwarf comes to be, our local group will have merged into a single galaxy (Milkdromeda), most of the stars that will ever live will have long since burned out, with the surviving ones being exclusively the lowest-mass, reddest and dimmest stars of all. And beyond that? Only darkness, as dark energy will have long since pushed away all the other galaxies, making them unreachable and practically unmeasureable by any physical means.

FRANCE: Macron projected to win.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Building a Live-Ammo-Firing Han Solo Blaster.

IF BARACK OBAMA HAD A SON, would he be sitting on this giant pink flamingo pool float? It does kinda look like a younger, buffer Barack. His companion, however, doesn’t look much like Michelle.

PROGRESS: A Second Drug Is Approved to Treat A.L.S.

PLAYING CATCH UP: With StrategyPage’s WW2 aircraft series (really a WW2-era series).

The Brits great workhorse bomber: The Avro Lancaster. As the caption notes, it tended to work at night.

Fighter conveyor: Post-WW2 actually, though the B-36 was developed during the war. I recall seeing this photo or a similar one when I was a kid in the late 1950s. I was amazed. A B-36 rigged to carry an F-84 jet in the bomb bay. Note the F-84 model in the photo is an RF-84F, meaning it’s the recon variant. (A Thunderflash, according to the wikipedia entry.) Ostensibly the strategic bomber would haul the jet close to the recon target area and release it. The jet would dash over the target, take photos, then have the fuel to make it back to base.

Th F-84 was an interim jet design and a poor one in comparison to other early jets. However, this late WW2 British jet design rates among the best of its era: The Canberra, typed in the U.S. as the B-57.

The B-52 exemplifies longevity, but so does the Canberra. I understand two or three RB-57s are still used for high altitude research. In fact, in 2014 StrategyPage reported one of NASA’s RB-57Fs was spotted at the France-U.S. airbase in Djibouti. As the post notes, Britain retired its last operational Canberra in 2006. FWIW, I saw an Afghanistan air force Canberra fly over Kabul in 2005 and do a couple of tricky turns before landing. A career USAF friend of mine flew the RB-57 version in the 1970s and early 1980s. (The recon variant has extended wings.) He told me he flew several 12-hour-plus missions in the western Pacific. His aircraft carried various recon packages; on some missions it carried a suite of radiation “sniffer” sensors. He confirmed most of the western Pacific missions took him up to 70,000 feet (another datum in the StrategyPage post). I’ve encountered military forums where folks debate the “Ten Greatest Bombers Of All Time” and the like. The Canberra has fans, for good reason.

CLARIFICATION: Meant to say the Canberra had roots in WW2 British jet bomber designs. As the wiki points out, the requirement was issued in 1944.