WILLIAM A. JACOBSON: Here’s why Rush survived pressure on advertisers while Bill O’Reilly didn’t.

IF ONLY IT DID THAT FOR YOUNG HUMANS: Young Human Blood Makes Old Mice Smarter. “A protein found in young human blood plasma can improve brain function in old mice. The finding, published on 19 April in Nature, is the first time a human protein has been shown to have this effect. It’s also the latest evidence that infusions of ‘young blood’ can reverse symptoms of ageing, including memory loss, decrease in muscle function and metabolism, and loss of bone structure.”

So I guess mark this as support for the hypothesis that there are “youthening” elements in younger blood, as opposed to the hypothesis that there are “pro-aging” elements in old blood. Though there’s no reason why both can’t be true. Either way, faster, please!

WHAT TO DO in the event of an asteroid strike. Well, for starters, don’t stand by the window watching.

SAVE BIG: Shop Amazon Outlet – Clearance, Markdowns and Overstock Deals.

Plus, save on high-speed HDMI Cables from Amazon Basics.

SO I SAW THIS HEADLINE IN THE TIMES AND AT FIRST I THOUGHT IT WAS ABOUT WOMEN BENEFITING FROM TAKING CARE OF THEIR OWN KIDS: How Child Care Enriches Mothers, and Especially the Sons They Raise. But, in fact, it’s about the wonders of day care — preferably government subsidized. I guess “Day Care” has too much of a stigma now, so we need a new, less informative, name.

Of course, if you wanted to put a different spin on it, you could use this headline: Boys Do Better When Raised Apart From Their Mothers. But that would violate the Althouse Rule Of Gender Research.

WHY YOU SHOULD STOP COUNTING CALORIES. Meh. It works for some people, but I think it matters what you eat, too. I don’t think this piece adds much to the discussion.

MOST OF THESE AREN’T VERY PC: 32 Women On The Sexiest Thing A Guy Has Ever Said To Them.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Many Poor Venezuelans Are Too Hungry to Join Antigovernment Protests.

Many of the impoverished residents of the vast slums that ring Caracas and other major cities are angry about a collapsing economy and food shortages. But Venezuela’s political unrest remains mostly confined to middle-class enclaves, underscoring the struggle the opposition here faces in trying to unseat an increasingly authoritarian government.

“All I have is hunger—I don’t care if the people protest or not,” said laborer Alfonzo Molero in a slum in Venezuela’s second-largest city, Maracaibo. “With what strength will I protest if my stomach is empty since yesterday?”

Until the slums rise up, Mr. Maduro will likely hang on, analysts say.

Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.

MARK JUDGE: Forty Years Later, ‘Annie Hall’ Is Still a Work of Genius.

The retort to the film is a movie by one of the Insta-Wife’s filmmaker cronies, Burning Annie.

CONSPIRACY THEORY: Connecting the dots on soon-to-be-former Congressman Jason Chaffetz.

SHOT: North Korea claims ‘Super-mighty pre-emptive strike’ will reduce US to ashes.

CHASER: Satellite images suggest North Koreans were playing volleyball at their nuclear test site last weekend.

Was that “strike” or “spike?”

SAD! I Lived a Week as Ian Mackaye and Found out Most People Don’t Know Who That Is.

But it gets better: “I was crushed. When I discussed the email with my friend James, he asked, ‘Who is Henry Rollins?'”

AFTER VW’S EMISSION SCANDALS, is it all over for diesel passenger cars?

TOURISM: Pence Visits Mosque, Declares Indonesia’s Moderate Islam ‘an Inspiration to the World’

This has been changing, but much of Indonesia still enjoys a more laid-back “beach” Islam, which is syncretic with the aboriginal religions nearly to the point of polytheism.

ANOTHER REASON TO DISTRUST “THE INTERNET OF THINGS:” Bose accused of tracking and sharing customer listening data. “The lawsuit, first reported by Fortune, claims Bose not only collects its customers’ private music and audio selections through its Android and iOS application Bose Connect, but also transmits and discloses them to third parties, including San Francisco-based data mining company Segment.”

THERE IS A REASON NOBODY SAYS, “IF YOU WANT TO STOP A BULLY, GIVE HIM EVERYTHING HE WANTS” – We at FIRE have been getting asked a lot about what the recent events at UC Berkeley say about the state of free speech on campus. Check out my thoughts over on FIRE’s website.

INTIMIDATION: Berkeley Cancels Ann Coulter Speech Over Safety Fears.

BUT WHAT IF THE MONSTERS SWALLOW THE SUN FOREVER? How to Survive the Total Solar Eclipse of 2017.

GIVEN HOW LOW THE BOOMERS SET THAT BAR, THAT’S ESPECIALLY SAD: Most Millennials Are Finding It Hard to Transition Into Adulthood: Report. But it’s as much an economic problem as a sociological one:

“In 1975, only 25 percent of men aged 25 to 34 had incomes of less than $30,000 per year. By 2016, that share rose to 41 percent of young men,” according to the report.

“That is a product of a shrinking blue-collar economy,” said Anthony Carnevale, director of the Center on Education and the Workforce, a non-profit institute at Georgetown University.

Traditionally, men occupied most positions in industries such as manual labor and construction work. With those mostly gone, male wages have been hit harder than “women who started off behind” but excelled in school and college, Carnevale said.

Reduced illegal immigration would help that.

FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS: Starbucks barista loses it over unicorn frappuccino mania.

On Wednesday, a man who said he is Starbucks barista, posted a video on Twitter where he begged the masses to stop ordering the drink. Braden Burson said the drink, which “tastes like a Sweet Tart,” is ruining the lives of Starbucks baristas everywhere.

“I need to rant just a little bit,” Burson said in the video before launching into a full-on tirade against the pink and blue swirled treat.

They’re on sale through April 23, so your local Starbucks should return to normal shortly.

TAKE TWO AND CALL ME IN THE MORNING: South Indian frog oozes molecule that inexplicably devastates flu viruses. “A compound in the frog’s mucus—long known to have germ-killing properties—can latch onto flu virus particles and cause them to burst apart, researchers report in Immunity. The peptide is a potent and precise killer, able to demolish a whole class of flu viruses while leaving other viruses and cells unharmed. But scientists don’t know exactly how it pulls off the viral eviscerations. No other antiviral peptide of its ilk seems to work the same way.”

Let’s turn it into a drug ASAP.

FORMER CIA DIRECTOR JOHN BRENNAN: Mastermind of Kremlingate?

NOW OUT FROM PETER GRANT: Rocky Mountain Retribution. I enjoyed the previous book in this series, Brings The Lightning, and I expect I’ll enjoy this one, too.

MORE POWER TO THEM: Fracking Sweeps Into China.

China has been trying to use fracking to shifts away from traditional sources of energy such as coal power. Shale gas production has risen by 50.4 percent compared to last year, according to the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics.

China produced 3.8 billion cubic feet of shale gas in March. To put this in some perspective, the U.S. currently produces 1,476 billion cubic feet annually.

U.S. experts expect China will continue to push fracking, but don’t see the communist country becoming energy independent any time soon.

“It makes perfect sense for Beijing to push as hard as it can to rely on new domestic sources of energy wherever possible,” Harry J. Kazianis, director of defense studies at the Center for the National Interest, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “And increased shale gas output very much fits into such a strategy.”

China aims to boost natural gas’s share of the energy supply from 6 to 10 percent by 2020. In March, Beijing became China’s first city to have all natural gas-fired power plants.

The Earth might prove more energy-rich than we’d ever imagined.

FOR SELF-DRIVING CARS: Velodyne Announces a Solid-State Lidar.