PALEONTOLOGY: Meet the new heavyweight champion of dinosaurs: Patagotitan.

At 76 tons (69 metric tons), the plant-eating behemoth was as heavy as a space shuttle.

The dinosaur’s fossils were found in southern Argentina in 2012. Researchers who examined and dated them said the long-necked creature was the biggest of a group of large dinosaurs called titanosaurs.

“There was one small part of the family that went crazy on size,” said Diego Pol of the Egidio Feruglio paleontology museum in Argentina, co-author of the study published Tuesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The researchers named the dinosaur Patagotitan mayorum after the Patagonia region where it was found and the Greek word titan, which means large. The second name honors a ranch family that hosted the researchers.

Six fossils of the species were studied and dated to about 100 million years ago, based on ash found around them, Pol said. The dinosaur averaged 122 feet long (37 meters) and was nearly 20 feet high (6 meters) at the shoulder.

A cast of the dinosaur’s skeleton is already on display at the American Museum of Natural History. It’s so big that the dinosaur’s head sticks out into a hallway at the New York museum.

I’d planned to take my sons to New York in three years, when my youngest turns ten — but maybe I should bump that up.

WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS: A Paracord Survival Kit Grenade.

EXERCISE as a weight-loss strategy. Mostly it motivates me to pay closer attention to my diet, because of all the work I’ve invested in the exercise.

DISARMAMENT AT YALE: “If you were especially observant during your years on campus, you may have noticed a stone carving by the York Street entrance to Sterling Memorial Library that depict a hostile encounter: a Puritan pointing a musket at a Native American (top). . . . Says head librarian Susan Gibbons, she and the university’s Committee on Art in Public Spaces decided the carving’s ‘presence at a major entrance to Sterling was not appropriate.’ The Puritan’s musket was covered over with a layer of stone (bottom) that Gibbons says can be removed in the future without damaging the original carving.”

HUGE IF TRUE: The Nation says DNC “hack” was actually an inside job. “The Nation, hardly a bastion of right-wing conspiracists, picks up the story that the alleged Russian hack of the DNC was in fact an inside job. This notion has percolated on the right for a while but now the Democracy Dies In Darkness crowd will need a bigger pillow. Between this and the Awan-Wasserman non-story they have a lot to not cover.”

From The Nation: “There was no hack of the Democratic National Committee’s system on July 5 last year—not by the Russians, not by anyone else. Hard science now demonstrates it was a leak—a download executed locally with a memory key or a similarly portable data-storage device. In short, it was an inside job by someone with access to the DNC’s system.”

HEH: FOR GOOGLE TO BE PURE, IT MUST PURGE MORE FULLY. “Now look: some innocent people are going to get caught up in this. Some people might even name names just to hurt enemies or to try and save their own skin. But that’s okay! It’s a small price to pay for ensuring ideological purity while also pretending to believe in the free exchange of ideas. The noble ends of a blacklist always justify the occasional abuse.”

The 21^st century left has done an excellent job of making a generation worth of Hollywood blacklist movies obsolete.

JAPANESE DEFENSE MINISTER: Japan could legally intercept a Guam-bound North Korea missile.

Onodera told a lower house of parliament committee that Japan would be allowed to hit a missile headed towards the U.S. Pacific territory if it was judged to be an existential threat to Japan, Kyodo said. This is a reiteration of the Japanese government’s position.

Experts say Japan does not currently have the capability to shoot down a missile flying over its territory headed for Guam.

Then Congress should fast-track selling them the THAAD systems to give them the capability.

OLD GOOGLE: We hire the smartest people we can get.

New Google: We hire the smartest people we can get to parrot social-justice twaddle.

CUE WORLD’S SMALLEST VIOLIN: Halle Berry Says Her High School Was Racist. Her Classmates Lit Up Facebook to Set the Record Straight.

FOREVER’S A MIGHTY LONG TIME: Big Oil Is Planning to Produce at $50 Forever.

The Middle East still produces a huge amount of oil, and a war or other disruption there could still send prices soaring — temporarily. But, yes, with North America’s proven reserves and lower-cost fracking technologies, the days of $100 oil aren’t coming back to stay any time soon.

So go on and hug a fracker today.

HE BECAME A REPUBLICAN, NOT A CONSERVATIVE: West Virginia Gov. Justice Asks Trump for $4.5 Billion to Save Eastern Coal.

The governor, who days ago switched parties to Republican from Democrat, said in an telephone interview Wednesday that Mr. Trump’s elimination of burdensome regulations have been very helpful in starting to get the U.S. coal industry back on its feet. But he said Appalachian region coal mines specifically—and the thousands of jobs they provide—remain at risk because of rising competition from natural gas and less-labor-intensive coal mines in Western states such as Wyoming, the nation’s leading coal producer.

If the Eastern coalfields were to disappear altogether, he said, then any disruption to the power grid in the East because of terrorism or other reasons could lead to tragedy because there would no longer be a nearby, abundant and easily-accessible energy source.

“The survivability of the Eastern coalfields is very, very iffy,” he said. “And if you lose the Eastern coalfields, you are putting the country at risk beyond belief.” He insisted his funding proposal isn’t for a subsidy, but rather a “homeland security incentive.”

That’s almost always the excuse.

TIM KUBERT: MY SIDE OF THE STORY. “The claim made against me was that as president of my fraternity I instructed members of my fraternity not to cooperate with the police as they investigated an incident at our chapter house. That claim is blatantly and objectively false. . . . After the county attorney cleared me, I asked the University—specifically Chancellor Green— for some kind of review of my situation and/or statement to clear my name. I received a dismissive response and was directed to their general counsel (Oh, the irony!). The news coverage of my exoneration was nonexistent in comparison to the cover stories that ran when I was accused. . . . Up until today, a Google search of my name presents a one-sided perspective on the situation based on blatantly false information. In addition to bringing myself some personal closure, I’m hoping this post will help to provide a broader perspective on the situation for employers, colleagues, and anyone else who may come across the story in the future. The more traffic this post gets, the more likely it is to be bumped up in a Google search. Thank you for taking the time to read my side of the story- you’re helping me out!”

SEX ROBOT MANUFACTURER: Our products have “saved lives” of lonely customers.

LARRY ELDER: The Shameful Blackout of Thomas, Sowell and Williams.

The African-American Museum’s discrimination against Thomas provides just one example of the black anti-conservative bigotry. Here’s another. Every year, the black monthly magazine Ebony lists its “Power 100,” defined as those “who lead, inspire and demonstrate through their individual talents, the very best in Black America.” Each year Thomas is conspicuously absent. Apparently, as a sitting black justice on the Supreme Court of the United States, Thomas does not “lead, inspire and demonstrate … the very best in Black America.”

Ebony not only excludes Clarence Thomas but also shuts out prominent conservatives Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams.

As for Sowell, he’s only an economist and writer whom playwright David Mamet once called “our greatest contemporary philosopher.” Sowell, who never knew his father, was raised by a great-aunt and her two grown daughters. They lived in Harlem, where he was the first in his family to make it past the sixth grade. He left home at 17, served as a Marine in the Korean War, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, earned a master’s degree at Columbia University the next year, followed by a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Chicago.

Sowell, at 87, authored some four dozen books (not counting revised editions) and wrote hundreds of scholarly articles and essays in periodicals and thousands of newspaper columns. In 2015, Forbes magazine said: “It’s a scandal that economist Thomas Sowell has not been awarded the Nobel Prize. No one alive has turned out so many insightful, richly researched books.” Yet, thanks in part to the Ebony shutout, many blacks have never heard of him.

It’s sad to see Ebony and so many others others stool for the guards on the Left’s black plantation.

ROGER SIMON ASKS, “What do Google, Evergreen State College and Middlebury have in common?”

Answer: They’re all filled with free-speech hating snowflakes destroying their institutions’ brand names. And that of “Progressivism” in general. Read the whole thing.

KURT SCHLICHTER: Politically Correct Hollywood Is Doomed.

SUNSET LAW: Rand Paul Urges ‘One of the Easiest, Most Common-Sense Steps’ to Rein in Government Waste.

OUT: “I fucking love science, unlike those dumb hicks in Flyover Country.”

IN: Science is problematic because it says things about gender that hurt my feelz.

THE SUN WON’T COME OUT — TOMORROW: The end of the world is always 10 years away.

POLITICO: Blowback from staffer scandal burns Wasserman Schultz.

One year after the Florida congresswoman’s resignation as national party chair at the Democratic National Convention — where activists booed and shouted “shame!” at her during a Florida delegation breakfast speech — the once-rising star’s political fortunes continue to fade, beset by critics on all sides.

Wasserman Schultz is again on defense after steadfastly refusing to explain why she continued to employ Imran Awan, an IT staffer who was under a federal investigation for alleged equipment and data scam in the U.S. House since February. She finally fired him on July 25, one day after authorities arrested him on a seemingly unrelated mortgage fraud charge. He was at the airport leaving for Pakistan, after wiring $283,000 there.

The firing came a full six months after about two dozen House Democrats dismissed four of Awan’s relatives and a friend, all of whom were under investigation with him.

Wasserman Schultz broke her public silence on Awan last week, portraying herself as the victim of “right wing media” attacks rooted in anti-Muslim bigotry aimed at Awan and the IT group.

But fellow Democrats are as confounded and disbelieving as ever by her penchant for making puzzling and stubborn political missteps.

“We wish she would go away and stop being so public by doubling down on negative stories,” said Nikki Barnes, a progressive DNC member from Florida, who believes Wasserman Schultz left the national party “in shambles” while chair, culminating with the hack of DNC servers and the release of embarrassing internal emails by WikiLeaks in the 2016 campaign. As for Wasserman Schultz’s defense, Barnes said “none of this makes sense. It doesn’t sound like racial profiling … there must have been something for her.” . . .

Barnes said she couldn’t understand why Wasserman Schultz made herself a target of attention by becoming the lone Democrat to employ Awan. Wasserman Schultz then drew even more negative attention to herself by publicly threatening the Capitol Police chief with “consequences” in a dispute over an office laptop under examination from investigators.

Indeed.

Flashback: House IT Aides Fear Suspects In Hill Breach Are Blackmailing Members With Their Own Data.

THE DEMOCRATS’ DISTORTED COALITION:

The root of the Democrats’ woes is that their strength is concentrated in dense House districts and big, urbanized states even as the Constitution deliberately puts a brake on the accumulation of political power by geographically concentrated majorities. . . .

In other words, even if the Democrats manage to carve out a lasting popular vote majority at the national level, that majority might not be reflected in America’s political institutions.

Democrats see data like this and cry foul. If they come up short in the 2018 midterms even as Democratic candidates win more votes, expect a series of treatises against the injustices of territorial representation. Indeed, Wasserman’s framing—that Congress has a “GOP bias”—seems to implicitly endorse the view that the way our institutions are set up is fundamentally unfair.

It’s worth unpacking the (powerful) assumptions that lead to this conclusion. One way of looking at politics is that parties exist to champion a set of beliefs and present those beliefs to voters. In this view, the Democrats stand for, among other things, social liberalism, environmentalism, and high immigration levels. The Republicans stand for, among other things, social conservatism, the development of home-grown sources of energy, and nationalism. Those are the parties’ values, and they are more or less unchanging. Because the voters who tend to support the Democrats’ worldview tend to be clustered in non-competitive blue districts in major metropolitan areas, their votes are “underrepresented.” This amounts to a systemic bias against the Democratic Party.

But this is not the only way of understanding at political competition. In a more “realist” view of politics and parties, there is no bias here—just a failure on the part of the Democrats to compete effectively. In his 1942 treatise, Party Government, Elmer Schattschneider famously wrote that “a political party is an organized attempt to get control of the government.” For Schattschneider, politics isn’t so much about values and ideals as it is about devising a strategy that can win according to the rules of the game. Parties don’t “stand” for anything so much as they constantly adapt their agenda so that it can reliably deliver them to power.

By doubling down on an agenda that plays well in metropolitan centers but flounders in key states and districts, the Democrats have in a sense ceased to operate as “an organized attempt to gain control of the government,” acting instead as a vehicle for certain ideals—and in so doing, created their own handicap. There is nothing stopping the party from adopting a more Bill Clinton-esque cultural stance that could win more seats in the Midwest.

Well, nothing but hate.

OF COURSE IT DOES: The Real Story Of That Lynch-Clinton Tarmac Meeting Gets Even Stranger.

Jazz Shaw:

Two obvious questions leap to mind immediately. The first is a no-brainer which somebody at Justice should be addressing for us. Lynch had, by that point, already essentially recused herself from the question of possible prosecution of Hillary Clinton, saying she would leave the decision entirely up to the FBI, so why was her staff sending a blizzard of information and press talking points to the FBI after the secret meeting was revealed?

The second question is even more puzzling and deserves a thorough scrubbing if anyone in the MSM can be bothered to ask. There are generally accepted rules for when the government can or should redact information being released to the public. These can include privacy considerations if the personal information of individuals (such as their Social Security number) are included. Also, the government can withhold sensitive information which might endanger national security. But this was a document which contained a list of talking points to be used if they had to answer questions for the press. In what version of reality would a set of press talking points qualify for redaction?

The more we learn about this the worse the general odor coming from the story becomes.

It doesn’t stink at all, provided you’re also willing to believe that Hillary Clinton deleted 30,000 emails about wedding cakes and yoga routines.

ANDREW KLAVAN: Google Has Done a Horrible Thing to its Employees.

Read the whole thing.

‘MURICA: EV Domination? US Sets New Gas Consumption Record.

Gas is cheap and plentiful, so why not?