THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING IN PERSONAL MED-TECH: Fitbit May Have a New Way To Detect an Irregular Heartbeat.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE: Biology teacher, 45, at LA school packed with celebrity children accused of sex romp with 16-year-old student.

USS INDIANAPOLIS: After 72 years, wreckage of stunning U.S. Navy loss found 18,000 feet down.

NEW YORK TIMES: Having a dispute with siblings over the family summer house? Try transformative mediation.

They still have that common touch.

CLAIM: Asian-American doctor says white nationalists refuse her care.

Dr. Esther Choo is an Asian-American emergency room physician who has practiced medicine for more than a decade. Yet, she says, a few times a year, a patient will refuse to let her treat them. Solely because of her race.

Choo, who works in Oregon, first shared her experience of dealing with racist patients who shun her care in a viral Twitter thread last Sunday.

Democrat-run Oregon has a nasty history of official racism, but racists who delay or refuse emergency medical care would seem to be one of those self-correcting problems.

THE INSTA-WIFE: Are Nice Guys Really That Bad?

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Still casting for heroes and villains.

The USS McCain’s mishap though perhaps entirely accidental, naturally raised speculation on social media that infrastructure decay, lowered standards of education, loss of trust in institutions and incompetence were all part of a general decline. But the confluence of events can be deceiving. Perhaps they’re just coincidental. Or perhaps the system has been collapsing for a long time and the “unexpected” and “sudden” character of the clusters is explained by facts long suppressed are escaping the mask of the filter.

If leaders have been kicking the can down the road the palliative benefits of altering the database, fudging the reports, cooking the books, cheating the tests and cultivating the Narrative only guarantee that the dam when it bursts will release a flood, not a trickle. Eventually the self deception fails and fails big time. Sooner or later the filter clogs up and Narrative is propelled face first into the 100 million ton iceberg of reality.

Read the whole thing, which could also have been headlined: “Payment Due in Full.”

AT AMAZON, deals in Hunting & Fishing.

THESE ARE THE CRAZY YEARS, CONT: MoonPie and Hostess are engaging in a Twitter war over who is the official snack food of the eclipse.

WELCOME TO THE NEW NORMAL: Pee-Filled Projectiles A Recurring Weapon Of Choice For ‘Anti-Fascists.’

NOT TOO CLOSELY, I HOPE: Tennessee duo replicates 1976 ‘Atomic Man’ incident. “A postgraduate student intern and an Oak Ridge Associated University researcher teamed up to replicate the 1976 McCluskey Room Incident, in which a chemical worker now known as ‘the Atomic Man,’ survived the highest known exposure to the radioactive isotope Americium-241 at Hanford Plutonium Finishing Plant in Washington. The pair is trying to measure the physiological effects of chronic low-dose radiation and establish new data for first responders and clinicians to reference after a radiation incident.”

VOX: The radicalization of white Americans.

The thing is, white Americans have not become radicalized — it’s just that some have started behaving (and many more have started voting) just like any other American victimhood group.

Real radicalization would get ugly, fast, and is more likely than before, now that the Left has succeeded in tearing down so many social norms.

THESE ARE THE CRAZY YEARS: Pregnant fitness model shamed for flat stomach responds to social media critics.

ANDREW KLAVAN AND THE RACIST MAZE: Everyone is welcome, but there’s no way out.

Maybe it’s located next to the lobby of the Hotel California.

OH, THAT LIBERAL FASCISM: Antifa Declares: ‘F**k Your F***ing Constitution, We’re Here to Punch Nazis.’

UH-OH: The Tesla Model 3 reminds me of all the times the electronics failed in my first car.

get it: things like electronic locks and windows are commonplace in vehicles, and they’re generally reliable. It’s nice to be able to lock the car remotely or not have to crank a window down manually. But electronic systems can break down, and when they do so, it’s a real problem. I’m of a mindset where a mechanical fix is usually a simpler solution. In the case of my MINI’s rear hatch, an elaborate electronic system just seemed like overkill, and when it broke down, fixing it was far more expensive than its low-tech counterparts.

I wasn’t exactly on the bandwagon to go out and get a Model 3 before, but word that it’s relying almost entirely on electronic systems makes me less likely to jump on. You need working electronics for everything with the Model 3 to just just about everything, from opening the door to starting the car. You don’t need a key for the car: you just need your smartphone, a third-party device that means that you’ll be relying on the health of your battery, apps that are up to date, and the like to make sure that you can use the vehicle. I’m sure that it’ll be fine: I’m sure that Tesla has figured out these sorts of contingencies, but it’s complicating something that is pretty tried-and-true when it comes to cars.

Imagine being late for work, but your car won’t start because you haven’t installed the latest security patch on your Tesla app, which can’t be installed without the latest version of your phone’s operating system.

QUESTION ASKED: Google, Facebook, Amazon: Time to Rein Them In?

[Author Jonathan ] Taplin, writes Mahaney, says regulators will increasingly take a hard look at the trio of companies and their power in society.

“During the call today, Taplin discussed his belief in the growing anti-monopolistic and anti-trust sentiment surrounding the big Internet companies.”

“Specifically, he references surveillance capitalism, in which companies collect data from their users and create an addicting, habit-forming service for consumers.”

And Taplin proposes what should be done to rein in the power of the three behemoths:

To improve the status quo and create a digital renaissance for content producers, Taplin argues that going back to a more decentralized Web will unleash the next generation of technology, business and social innovators. He specifically suggests we remove the DMCA safe harbor provisions that Google, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook use to their advantage. For example, Taplin suggests a “take-down and stay-down” policy for music and content on YouTube that Google would be required to enforce.

Google may have already thrown away its safe-harbor protection, when the company decided last week to start picking and choosing which sites it would register. According to a friend of mine in the industry, Google’s move might open up the company to lawsuits and to much closer regulatory scrutiny.

I’m not a lawyer and the major news outlets don’t seem to have picked up on this angle yet, but I will keep looking into it.

HEAVEN’S GONNA BURN YOUR EYES: What Happens to Your Eyes If You Look Directly at the Sun During a Solar Eclipse?

KREMLIN STOOGE: US embassy in Russia to scale back visa services amid tensions.

“Capacity for interviews in the future will be greatly reduced because we have had to greatly reduce our staffing levels to comply with the Russian government’s requirement,” the embassy told applicants in a note on its web site.

Visa operations at the U.S. consulates, located in St Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Vladivostok, will “remain suspended indefinitely,” according to Reuters.

“We will operate at reduced capacity for as long as our staffing levels are reduced,” the U.S. embassy said.

In addition to the slowdown, I wouldn’t be surprised if US officials became more (ahem) selective about whose applications moved to the top of the ever-growing stack.

NEVER SAY NEVER: Can Kid Rock Become Michigan’s Next Senator?

A more important question might be whether Senator Rock would bring his rock’n’roll fashion sense to the Senate floor.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Trump Hysteria and An Eclipse: Welcome to the “Crazy Years.”

VIDEO: MARK STEYN AND PJTV ALUMNUS LIONEL CHETWYND DISCUSS DIEPPE 75 YEARS ON.

Three-quarters of a century ago – August 19th 1942 – the Allies staged what became known as “the Dieppe Raid”, a daring assault on the French port of Dieppe, then held by the Germans. It was a predominantly Canadian operation: the 2nd Infantry Division provided 5,000 troops, supported by the Royal Navy and RAF, a thousand UK commandos and about 50 US Army Rangers. It was a necessary operation, but also an all but foredoomed one. In the end, of the 6,086 men put ashore at Dieppe, 3,623 were killed or wounded or carted off to German PoW camps.

The bravery of those young Canadian men cannot be overstated. In this reprise of The Mark Steyn Weekend Show from earlier this year, I talk to the screenwriter, producer and director Lionel Chetwynd – born in Hackney, raised in Montreal, but long resident in Hollywood. We discuss politics and popular culture, but the great weight of the conversation is about the Dieppe Raid, with which Lionel has a personal and regimental connection, and about what happened when he pitched a tale of wartime sacrifice with a dash of Ian Fleming to Hollywood studio execs.

Click over to watch the hour-long video. Chetwynd, co-hosted the excellent Poliwood series on PJTV with Roger Simon, and directed the 2004 History Channel movie Ike: Countdown to D-Day, starring Tom Selleck in the titular role. Chetwynd tells Steyn the story he once told the late Cathy Seipp about trying to get a movie about Dieppe produced:

Many years later, when Chetwynd was a successful Hollywood writer specializing in historical dramas, he told the Dieppe story during a Malibu dinner party–as a sort of tribute to the men who died there so people could sit around debating politics at Malibu dinner parties. One of the guests was a network head who asked Chetwynd to come in and pitch the story.

“So I went in,” Chetwynd told me, “and someone there said, ‘So these bloodthirsty generals sent these men to a certain death?’

“And I said, ‘Well, they weren’t bloodthirsty; they wept. But how else were we to know how Hitler could be toppled from Europe?’ And she said, ‘Well, who’s the enemy?’ I said, ‘Hitler. The Nazis.’ And she said, ‘Oh, no, no, no. I mean, who’s the real enemy?’”

“It was the first time I realized,” Chetwynd continued, “that for many people evil such as Nazism can only be understood as a cipher for evil within ourselves. They’ve become so persuaded of the essential ugliness of our society and its military, that to tell a war story is to tell the story of evil people.”

If you wonder why Hollywood product has sunk so low, and how much Hollywood hates middle America, that quote speaks volumes about its nihilistic and often ahistoric worldview. As Glenn noted at the time, the trailer for the anti-War on Terror 2007 box office dud Lions for Lambs, directed by Robert Redford, and starring Redford, Tom Cruise, and Meryl Streep, has Redford angrily saying into the camera, “The problem with this war isn’t the people who started it – the problem is with us…”

THE ROT RUNS DEEP: The Ever-Burgeoning House Democrat IT Scandal.

Had it been the RNC that had allowed this mess, it would be the front-page story, day after day. Instead we’re talking about statues and false charges of racism.

“Democratic operatives with bylines,” indeed.

TRUDEAU TO ASYLUM SEEKERS: Crossing border illegally won’t fast track immigration.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has a message for asylum seekers: crossing illegally into the country doesn’t offer an advantage when it comes to obtaining refugee status in Canada.

“If I could directly speak to people seeking asylum, I’d like to remind them there’s no advantage,” Trudeau said at a news conference Sunday in Montreal.

“Our rules, our principles and our laws apply to everyone.”

Trudeau’s comments come as the government grapples with a surge in asylum seekers crossing into Quebec.

What’s with all the hate and racism from up north?