AT AMAZON, Storm Preparedness Essentials.

Plus, an Earthquake Preparedness List.

CRAZY: Trump Derangement Syndrome Comes to Seed Art.

AH, WHAT THE HELL, LET’S JUST BE EVIL: Reporter: Google successfully pressured me to take down critical story.

Time for some close antitrust scrutiny.

TERRY TEACHOUT: Steely Dan’s Walter Becker, R.I.P.

I’M NOT SAYING THAT IT’S ALIENS, BUT IT’S ALIENS: 15 bursts of radio emission detected from dwarf galaxy 3 billion light years away.

IRMA: Hurricane Irma picks up strength; threat to East Coast still unclear.

IN LIGHT OF NORTH KOREA’S LATEST: The Unexpected Return of Duck and Cover.

LIFE IN DE BLASIO’S NEW YORK: Italian tourist stabbed by knife-wielding homeless man in Columbus Circle.

DESPITE HIS 85-YEAR LEAD, SHE STILL SCOOPED WALTER DURANTY: Stalin’s starved millions: Anne Applebaum uncovers full horror of Ukraine famine.

TOO LATE, I THINK: Salon: Time to give up on identity politics: It’s dragging the progressive agenda down.

Also Salon: White men must be stopped: The very future of mankind depends on it.

A NOVEL APPROACH: ‘You Have to Know History to Actually Teach It.’ I will note, though, that people have been inveighing against “rote memorization” of facts in favor of big-picture learning since before I was born, and the result seems to be people who are ignorant of facts and don’t grasp the big picture either.

AT AMAZON, End of Summer Savings on Luggage and Bags.

Plus, save big in Health and Personal Care.

IF YOU SAY THIS ON A COLLEGE CAMPUS, IT’S PROBABLY HATE SPEECH:

And that “Molon Labe” shirt he’s wearing would be right out.

THE NARRATIVE SHIFTS, AS SCOTT ADAMS PREDICTED: Trump doesn’t cry or sing, but he knows how to help Harvey victims.

Harvey dumped around 25 trillion gallons of water on Texas and Louisiana, flooding countless homes and wrecking cities.

But the Federal Emergency Management Agency was on site two days before the storm hit. The National Guard and Coast Guard quickly mobilized and have saved thousands of lives.

On Tuesday, Trump went to Corpus Christi, Texas, to survey some of the damage and cheered on the relief effort. He told the local people that “Texas can handle anything” and he held up a state flag to roars of proud approval.

Still, religion writer Anthea Butler said in a New York Times op-ed that Trump’s actions were “devoid of empathy” because he didn’t mention any of the roughly 40 people that died in the storm.

That Trump says, “Wow!” and, “Spirit of the people is incredible. Thanks!” on Twitter makes for long and restless nights for the media. Meanwhile, everyone else is relieved Harvey was managed as best as possible.

Journalists need Trump to sing “Amazing Grace” or wipe away a tear at the White House press podium in order to feel like he’s really doing the job right.

In January 2016, then-President Obama cried while talking about the executive actions he was taking on gun control.

Chris Cillizza, a Washington Post blogger at the time, wrote, “I do have a strongly held belief in favor of men — including male politicians — crying in public if necessary.” He added, “I say this as, yes, a male who occasionally cries in public.”

After the 2015 mass shooting at church in Charleston, S.C., Obama delivered a sermon and broke into song.

The Atlantic magazine was so moved by the moment, it published an entire analysis by Peter Manseau on Obama’s rhetorical pause, calling it a “high-wire act.”

Trump doesn’t cry and he doesn’t sing, but he did pledge $1 million of his own money to the relief effort and the administration saved lives during a record-breaking hurricane.

That’s not enough for the media. But perhaps it meant something to Houston.

Perhaps.

WHY ARE BLUE CITIES SUCH CESSPITS OF ECONOMIC DISCRIMINATION? This grim map shows all the places working-class Americans can’t afford to live. “San Antonio is the only one of the top 10 most populated cities where a working class family can enjoy a decent living without taking on more debt. Out of the top 50, only 12 qualify. Geography obviously plays a big role as well. Newark, New Jersey, Chesapeake, Va., and Jacksonville, Fla., are the only coastal locations where a worker can support his or her family. How many on the West Coast? Shocker: Exactly zero. You probably don’t need a map to tell you, but the more landlocked, the more affordable.”

AND WHO WOULDN’T BE, WHEN “HATE SPEECH” IS JUST “SPEECH DEMOCRATIC SPECIAL-INTEREST GROUPS DON’T LIKE?” Tech companies declare war on hate speech—and conservatives are worried. Time for more antitrust scrutiny, and maybe legislative protections against corporate control of speech.

THE GOODYEAR BLIMP has a mysterious, ghostly past.

YES. NEXT QUESTION? Has Salt Gotten An Unfair Shake?

Participants in a recent study with the highest intake of sodium and potassium actually had significantly lower blood pressure, according to an analysis presented earlier this year at the American Society for Nutrition’s Scientific Sessions meeting in Chicago. The group with the lowest blood pressure averaged a daily sodium intake of 3.7 grams a day, far higher than the guidelines suggest.

The findings echo those of a 2016 study published in The Lancet. The largest of its kind, the review looked at sodium intake and blood pressure data in over 130,000 individuals from 49 countries with varying degrees of salt consumption. Low sodium intake was defined as up to 3 grams a day, just shy of the 3.4 grams a day that Americans average. Four and 5 grams a day was considered “moderate” intake, and 7 or more grams a day as “high” consumption.

The authors found that populations with very low sodium intake seemed to have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and death than those with moderate intake. So did people on high-salt diets, but only those with high blood pressure in the first place. According to the data, moderate to high salt consumption in people with normal blood pressure did not appear to have the dire consequences that might have been presumed.

I don’t mind that the advice turned out to be wrong — that’s always a risk. I do mind the combination of nannyish condescenscion and moralizing with which all this wrong advice gets dispensed.

GOOD: Lasting Merit Found in a Tuberculosis Vaccine Invented a Century Ago. “Tuberculosis kills almost two million people a year. A perfect vaccine could save many of them, but the one now in use — invented in the 1920s and known as BCG, for Bacillus Calmette-Guérin — has so many flaws that some countries, including the United States, have never adopted it. Yet a new study published in the International Journal of Epidemiology concludes that the vaccine protects against tuberculosis for substantially longer than was previously known.”

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Nanomachines that drill into cancer cells killing them in just 60 seconds developed by scientists. Faster, please.

TWO YEARS AGO TODAY: Ordinary Americans lead the way on racial healing.

After the Charleston shooting, citizens of South Carolina, both black and white, joined hands, and more than 15,000 of them marched in a show of love and friendship. As columnist Salena Zito wrote, “They met in the middle; they wept, smiled, laughed, hugged, turned strangers into friends. Homemade signs with messages of outreach, love and solidarity flapped in the wind, as prayers and hymns filled the air. There wasn’t a major network or cable news channel, only local TV crews, rolling cameras to record America doing what it does best — opening its heart; the networks always seem to be on hand for looting or rioting.“

They do, indeed. But many people still noticed, even if the national agenda-setters were, as usual, more interested in spotlighting hate than love.

Today: In devastated Houston, ‘nobody hates anybody’ as people come together. “You hear nothing but bad press, you hear nothing but, you know, this group hates this group, and then you find out: nobody hates anybody. Everybody comes together.”

Why is the press so eager to convince us of the opposite?

UPDATE: A friend comments on Facebook: “It doesn’t take a disaster like Harvey to bring out the best in us; it takes a disaster like Harvey for the press to notice the everyday decency of most people.”

THE INSTAWIFE: Is “Cheap Sex” Making Men Give Up On Marriage?