DON’T BE EVIL: EU hammers Google with $2.7 billion antitrust fine for illegal search manipulation.

SPACE: SpaceX Is Making Commercial Space Launches Look like Child’s Play: Two successful launches in a weekend, one using a recycled rocket—and the booster landed successfully each time.

BE GRATEFUL FOR A PLEASANT TRIP: Man hit by bus as he crosses road – before dusting himself down and walking into pub.

UM… DON’T? Seattle’s Painful Lesson on the Road to a $15 Minimum Wage.

Megan McArdle:

Leading labor economist David Autor told the Washington Post that “This strikes me as a study that is likely to influence people,” saying the study is “very credible” and “sufficiently compelling in its design and statistical power that it can change minds.” In other words: if you thought it was settled science that raising the minimum wage is good for workers, be prepared to think again.

And particularly be prepared to rethink very high minimum wages, like those supported by the “Fight for $15” folks. For as the authors note, the first round of hikes had relatively small impacts, while the second round had huge ones, suggesting that the effects may be nonlinear. And that makes sense. Relatively few people in this country make the minimum wage, so a small increase doesn’t make that much difference to most workers, or most employers. But a large jump affects more people, and the wage increases are much bigger for the lowest-paid staffers. If you make $9 an hour, but generate $10.50 in revenue for your boss, a law that raises the wage to $10.45 may cause her to shrug and decide it’s easier to keep you on as long as she’s making something. But a wage that forces her to pay you far more than you bring in…. Continuing to employ you would just be bad business.

Bad luck, that.

SPYING: What Does Your Smart Meter Know About You? “An ordinary smart meter gives your local utility useful information about how much energy you are using—every hour, or even as often as every minute. This helps utility planners efficiently adjust electricity generation to meet demand or encourage reductions in demand when necessary. But machine learning systems, looking at that data, can tell something else about your home besides its energy use—they can tell if you are home, or if you are not. That’s what University of California at Berkeley researchers Ming Jin, Ruoxi Jia, and Costas Spanos found out. That information, Jin says, is also useful for utilities—they can call or show up to perform necessary maintenance when you are home, and not waste personnel time trying to reach you. But they aren’t the only ones who can access this information, given the data is transmitted wirelessly, and isn’t necessarily encrypted at every stage of its journey.” The Internet Of Things is looking terrible.

TONI AIRAKSINEN: California University Hit With Lawsuit Alleging ‘Hostile Anti-Jewish Environment’

Why are progressive schools such cesspits of official antisemitism?

ROBERT POLLOCK: Let Consumers Repeal Obamacare.

What consumers need is the ability to shop for policies they can afford. Why not let young people, for example, buy inexpensive policies with high deductibles so that they are covered in case in case of accidents but pay out of pocket for routine care? And why should the 21st century health insurance system be broken up into 50 separate economies when efficiencies and convenience could be had by offering insurance options on a nationwide scale?

One easy way to make this happen is to create an Optional Federal Charter to regulate health insurance. Congress certainly has the power to do this under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. It could be placed under the authority of the Department of Health and Human Services, which would be tasked by Congress with writing simple rules that ensure the availability of low cost policies nationwide. There would be no coverage mandates and no rules governing the shape of policies such as limits on deductibles and co-pays. Insurers could still be required to cover those with pre-existing conditions and subsidies could still be offered to help those who need them.

The beauty of the Optional Federal Charter solution is that none of the existing rules governing state regulated insurance policies would have to change. Consumers would simply be offered a new choice: purchase a state regulated policy or a federally regulated policy.

States and insurance companies love having their little insurance fiefdoms, for the opportunities presented for corruption and graft.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT: US Pilots Made the Call to Shoot Down Syrian Aircraft.

THE STATE OF JOURNALISM TODAY, according to Drudge:

LAYERS OF EDITORS AND FACT-CHECKERS: Someone made a ridiculous video about NASA finding aliens. News outlets took the bait.

PATRICK POOLE: Tunisia’s ‘Moderate Muslim Brotherhood’ Leader Accused of Assassinating Rival.

IT WAS NEVER INTENDED TO: Why Didn’t ObamaCare Make Us Healthier?

All of America has been participating in an experiment since 2010 to see if a federal effort to extend government-mandated insurance coverage to millions more people can improve our lives. Last year the Obama Administration bragged that 20 million adults had gained health insurance as a result of Mr. Obama’s so-called Affordable Care Act.

Given the Sanders logic, one might have expected to see a corresponding improvement in public health. But so far evidence that ObamaCare made us healthier has proven elusive, to say the least. In December the New York Times was among the many news outlets that had to share the embarrassing news.

What ObamaCare did accomplish was to concentrate more more money and power in Washington — which is most everything you need to know about why it has proven so “difficult” to repeal.

I’M SO OLD I CAN REMEMBER WHEN PEOPLE WORRIED ABOUT PEAK OIL. RELEASE THE KRAKEN.

North Sea oil and gas production has been waning for years now, leading to major energy security concerns for the United Kingdom. But as fields mature and companies face down the technically difficult and extraordinarily expensive task of decommissioning inactive offshore rigs, bright spots still remain for production in the region. The latest comes to us courtesy of the FT, which reports on the Kraken, a new field that has come online just in time to save the British oil company Enquest from insolvency. . . .

We live in a new oil reality, characterized by low prices and a heightened focus on increasing productivity while reducing expenses. The shale boom has made the global oil market much more competitive, and companies have had to become leaner and meaner to survive. That’s been borne out in the North Sea, where producers have fought tooth and nail to cut costs to stay afloat plumbing a resource well past its prime. Average operating costs in the North Sea have fallen 45 percent over the past few years, and EnQuest’s Kraken project has been similarly streamlined.

I remember when anyone who expressed even modest doubts about “Peak Oil” claims was tarred as a science-denier in the pay of Big Oil.

I’M NOT SAYING IT’S ALIENS, BUT IT’S ALIENS: Something big is warping the outer solar system.

In a new paper, scientists present compelling evidence of a yet-to-be- discovered planetary body with a mass somewhere between that of Mars and Earth. The mysterious mass, has given away its presence—for now—only by controlling the orbital planes of a population of space rocks known as Kuiper Belt objects, or KBOs, in the icy outskirts of the solar system.

While most KBOs—debris left over from the formation of the solar system—orbit the sun with orbital tilts (inclinations) that average out to what planetary scientists call the invariable plane of the solar system, the most distant of the Kuiper Belt’s objects don’t.

Their average plane is tilted away from the invariable plane by about eight degrees. In other words, something unknown is warping the average orbital plane of the outer solar system.

Who put it there and what do they want?

21ST CENTURY DATING: Who Pays on the First Date? No One Knows Anymore, and It’s Really Awkward.

There was a time when Tinesha Zandamela would dig around for her wallet at a first date, anticipating that the guy would insist on paying.

That was before she went out with one who “forgot” his wallet, or the one who requested to split the check 50-50 after eating nearly all the food. Now when the bill arrives, she sits still, not even attempting what some call “the reach.”

“If you reach, you could end up with the entire bill,” said the 23-year-old in Provo, Utah. “No one is going to stop you.”

Love in the time of Tinder is upending an age-old tradition between men and women: that moment when the bill arrives and the woman feints for her wallet—but expects the guy will insist on paying.

The only awkward part is the confusion created by women who want to be seen as willing to pay when they actually aren’t — and skinflint beta males eager to exploit the chaos.

NOW OUT FROM MARK LEVIN: Rediscovering Americanism: And the Tyranny of Progressivism.

ANNALS OF EXPLICIT RACIAL DISCRIMINATION: Indiana College Fires Three White Employees for Posing on Parody Rap Album Cover. Let the lawsuits commence. And I hope the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights will investigate this outright racism.

AT AMAZON, fresh New Releases, updated hourly.

Plus, today’s new Kindle Daily Deals.

And shop the Digital Deals of the Day.

UPDATE: Late last night I posted a short item about a CNN producer admitting on hidden camera that the Trump/Russia story was “bullshit” designed to “increase ratings”. It turns out that John Bonifield (the same producer caught on tape) is knee-deep in an ongoing libel lawsuit brought against CNN by a Florida pediatric surgeon who accuses the network of libel and wait for it…wait for it…also airing an ambush video. The court denied CNN’s motion to dismiss the case (the ambush video was not part of the claim) and the parties are apparently waging war about discovery.

SUPER IRONY BONUS: “The Most Trusted Name in News” sought and obtained a protective order preventing any of the parties from talking to the public about discovery. Because, you know, champions of transparency and the right to know.

JOURNALISM: CNN producer: Trump ‘probably right’ about Russian ‘witch hunt.’

A producer for CNN admitted in a newly released undercover spy video that President Trump is “probably right” in accusing his opponents of engaging in a witch hunt as it relates to collusion with Russia.

The video, published online Monday night by conservative sting activist James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas website, shows John Bonifield, a CNN producer who covers medical issues, saying, “I just feel like they really don’t have it [proof of collusion] but they want to keep digging.”

He continued, “And so I think the president is probably right to say, ‘Look, you are witch hunting me.'”

Bonifield also says in the video that that federal investigation into whether Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with the Russian government “could be bullshit” and that it’s “mostly bullshit right now.”

Weird that with all its resources Fox never gets these kinds of stories like O’Keefe does.

A MEXICAN CARTEL IS SHIPPING COCAINE THROUGH ARGENTINA: At least that’s what Argentine police say. A lot of cocaine.

THE END IS NIGH: Senate Dem. Compares Supreme Court Justices to ‘Horsemen of the Apocalypse’

SYRIA PLANNING A NEW CHEMICAL ATTACK?: The White House says it has intelligence suggesting that the Assad regime may be preparing to launch a new attack using chemical weapons.

…the activities resembled preparations for an April chemical weapons attack that was blamed on Damascus.

“As we have previously stated, the United States is in Syria to eliminate the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria,” Spicer concluded. “If, however, Mr. Assad conducts another mass murder attack using chemical weapons, he and his military will pay a heavy price.”

The announcement tells Assad we’re watching.