TIRED OF T-SHIRTS THAT BASH BOYS, an InstaPundit reader has created Boy Positive Shirts, with slogans like “Boys Rock” and “Strong Like Dad.” Check it out.
It was an overnight response to this post. And if you have any suggestions for slogans, put ’em in the comments! (Bumped).
PARIS IS WORTH A MASS(ES): Can Populism Take Paris?
MONEY TALKS, WOKE-NESS WALKS. Go figure: New free agent Colin Kaepernick decides to stand for national anthem next season.
As Jim Geraghty tweets, “Colin Kaepernick’s going to stand for the national anthem next season? Wow, Trump really is making America great again.”
Heh, indeed.™
CHANGE: Lawmakers move to start ‘intellectual diversity’ office at UT.
A year after the General Assembly de-funded the Office for Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Tennessee’s flagship campus in Knoxville, a panel of state lawmakers voted Wednesday to create an “intellectual diversity” office there.
Sen. Joey Hensley, R-Hohenwald, recommended the office while the Senate Education Committee was reviewing the UT budget as proposed by Gov. Bill Haslam. Hensley proposed an amendment that would set aside $450,000 from the budget to fund the office on the Knoxville campus, a move some senators suggested would encourage more people with conservative views to speak their minds.
UT President Joe DiPietro, who had been fielding questions from the committee for more than an hour, seemed blindsided. But he urged the lawmakers to give university leaders a chance to consider other options.
“I have not seen your amendment. You’ve caught me flat-footed,” DiPietro told the lawmakers. “It’s not a good thing for you or for us to be in these circumstances with these kinds of amendments.”
The education committee unanimously approved Hensley’s change, sending the budget on for consideration in the Senate Finance, Ways and Means Committee. It was the latest provocative action from a panel that has repeatedly put UT administrators on the defensive by taking aim at day-to-day campus operations.
They did a good job of keeping it quiet, as I’d heard nothing about it. I found out about it from a former student on Facebook, who posted this story and said she wished UT had had this office when she was an undergraduate.
USEFUL, BUT STILL SAD. Adulting School Teaches Young Adults Grown-Up Skills. “Get your car’s oil changed? That’s adulting. Cook dinner instead of order takeout? That’s adulting. And now a new school in Maine, called the Adulting School, is dedicated to teaching skills like these to fledgling adults so they can become successful grown-ups. The school offers private social media groups and live events at local bars and restaurants. At these events, attendees can learn skills like how to network as a pro or how to fold a fitted sheet. Carly Bouchard, 29, sat among a couple of dozen young adults sipping drinks at a Portland restaurant and hoping to uncover their true financial self. ‘I’m a financial cripple,’ Bouchard said. Although she went to business school, Bouchard said, she now needs the Adulting School.”
At 29. My mom had 3 kids and ran a household in Germany — cooking, cleaning, shopping, learning the language — by that age.
ANN ALTHOUSE ON THE SESSIONS KERFUFFLE: “I’ve read the new material and don’t think it adds up to anything.”
J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: US Senator Colludes With Russians to Influence Presidential Election.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Civilization Was Built On Coffee And Alcohol.
NOW HE’S GONE TOO FAR: Florida Man Arrested For Allegedly Impersonating Nickelback Drummer.
WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-RUN CITIES SUCH CESSPITS OF CONTAMINATED WATER? Boil water alert takes downtown Detroit by surprise.
AFTER PROMETHEUS I MIGHT NEED MORE THAN FIVE: 5 Reasons the New ‘Alien: Covenant’ Trailer Gives Us Hope.
REPORT: Congressional Black Caucus PAC Spends Big on Luxury Resorts, Restaurants.
The CBC PAC, which is the fundraising arm of the Congressional Black Caucus, puts far more money towards administrative and fundraising purposes than it donates to candidates, the intended purpose of the political action committee.
The CBC PAC claims its mission is to increase “the number of African Americans in the U.S. Congress” and to “support non-Black candidates that champion our interests, and promote African American participation in the political process-with an emphasis on young voters,” according to its website.
The PAC spent hundreds of thousands throughout the 2016 election cycle on administrative expenses that included bills for lavish trips that were paid by the committee.
A $5,000 payment was made in January 2016 from the PAC to the Buccaneer Hotel located in St. Croix, Virgin Islands, one of the “world’s top 50 tropical resorts.”
Later, on March 21, 2016, the PAC made another payment to a resort in the Virgin Islands. This time, the money went towards a stay at the “one-of-a-kind” Renaissance St. Croix Carambola Beach Resort and Spa also located in St. Croix. The Renaissance is situated “among the foothills of a lush tropical rainforest and only steps away from the pristine sands of Estate Davis Bay.”
The PAC spent $820 on taxicabs while in the Virgin Islands. More than $2,000 was spent at Sweeny’s St. Croix Tours in the town of Christiansted, considered “the most beautiful town in the West Indies.” Sweeny’s provides an open-air bus for its guests as they embark on safari tours of the island. More than $4,500 was also spent by the PAC on catering at Un Amore, an Italian restaurant.
To be fair, it doesn’t matter what color a congresscritter is — this is exactly what many (most?) of them get themselves elected to do.
Allen West has more, including details on how he ran his PAC when he was in Congress.
WELL, I STRONGLY AGREE WITH THE “RESPECT” PART: Every successful relationship is successful for the same exact reasons.
CYBERSECURITY: Old Windows malware may have tampered with 132 Android apps.
Google has already removed the apps from its Play store. But what’s interesting is the developers behind the apps probably aren’t to blame for including the malicious code, Palo Alto Networks said in a Wednesday blog post.
Instead, the platforms the developers used to build these apps were probably infected with malware that looks for HTML pages and then injects the malicious coding, the company said.
Many of these tainted apps offered design ideas for things like cheesecakes, landscaping a garden, or laying out a patio. The most popular had more than 10,000 downloads.
When installed, the apps would display seemingly benign webpages. However, in reality, the pages shown contain a tiny hidden iframe that links to two suspicious domains.
The malware is so old that the suspect domains went defunct several years ago, so this is more a case of sloppy development work than an actual security risk.
ABOUT TIME: McDonald’s vows to win back patrons with better burgers.
I noticed a couple years ago that the higher-quality buns and veggies on the company’s new specialty burgers didn’t do much more than highlight how low-quality the meat was. Better veggies and better beef, and pretty soon you’re talking quality fast food.
Now if they’d just put the beef tallow back in the fries.
DON’T GET YOUR NEWS FROM FACEBOOK AND PROBLEM SOLVED: Did You Fall for This ‘Fake News’ Bogus Baby Wipe Recall?
NOBODY TELL NOTORIOUS ROBOPHOBE MATTHEW YGLESIAS: Get ready for robots made with human flesh. “The 600 series had rubber skin. We spotted them easy, but these are new. They look human… sweat, bad breath, everything. Very hard to spot. I had to wait till he moved on you before I could zero him.”
Skynet smiles.
THIS IS UNSURPRISING: Study finds hospital floors pose significant health risk.
IT’S THE NEW “DOG WHISTLE” AND ONLY SALON CAN HEAR IT: Trump advocated white nationalism with an “indoor voice,” and pundits loved it.
Never change, Salon.
QUESTION ASKED: Why Is Twitter a For-Profit Platform, Anyway?
The root of Twitter’s troubles — up to and including all the Social Justice Warring — stems from one fatal conceit. Microblogging is a low cost/low margin business, which Twitter’s management has spent the last several years trying to over-monetize and overstimulate into a multibillion-dollar Facebook competitor.
Last year I asked a sysop friend who runs data centers for a living what it would cost to run something like Twitter, but streamed down. His ballpark guess was that he could do it for two million dollars annually. That would be an easy sum to cover with banner ads, data mining etc, with enough left over for a modest profit — provided the investors didn’t expect that by some miracle the service could ever be anything more than that.
I suspect Twitter spends more than two million each year just on corporate extravagances.
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