NEWS YOU CAN USE: Zika Infectious in Semen Mostly in First Few Weeks: RNA detectable for months, but does not appear to be cause for concern.

NEWS YOU CAN USE? Facebook quitting advice from a professional internet quitter.

FASTER, PLEASE: Researchers find genetic cause for Alzheimer’s, possible method to reverse it.

YES, THIS BAD: We knew the news about European birthrates, right in the cradle of Western civilization, was bad, but this bad?

“HERE’S A FUN LESSON IN MEDIA MANUFACTURED OUTRAGE,” Stephen Miller writes, in a Twitter thread collated by Twitchy. CBS runs headline “Woman’s gun-toting ‘graduation photo’ sparks backlash online.” The short article “features several tweets,” Miller notes, adding, “Two of the three accounts CBS uses to prove online outrage have a combined twitter following of 8 people. 8.”

TRUMP TO BOOST ETHANOL?

Paula Bolyard adds:

Propping up corn producers (and GOP lawmakers from corn-dependant states) makes little sense now that shale oil drilling has pushed U.S. oil production to a 47-year high. There is no oil shortage and certainly no crisis that justifies continuing the mandate. Pandering to corn states like Iowa is the worst kind of special interest policymaking. It distorts the free market and hurts consumers. End it.

Diverting food production to gas tanks was a dumb idea even before the fracking revolution.

WHY THE RIGHT SHOULD THINK TWICE ABOUT BACKING FACEBOOK REGULATION: Can you spell “regulatory capture?” LifeZette’s Brendan Kirby has more.

UNLESS YOU’RE MARK ZUCKERBERG, THEN IT’S MORE: Here’s How Many Cells in Your Body Aren’t Actually Human.

LET’S HOPE SO: Is the 3D Movie Trend Finally Dying?

DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE AND THE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARY: The Battle Over Pronouns Coming to a College Near You.

Last year, Jordan Peterson, a professor at the University of Toronto, made news when he refused to use the invented pronouns of the transgender movement as prescribed by Canadian law (see chart).

Pronouns these days are a new battleground, as recommendations admonish us all that the standard English pronouns, which traditionally distinguish she from he, him from her, are discriminatory and must now be reassigned or reinvented upon request.

Still, it’s worth asking: By changing nouns and pronouns, is one changing one’s sex? If I force you to refer to me as he when all anatomical and biological signs indicate I’m a she, have I thereby consolidated a new identity? Does saying it make it so? But then, if physical reality has no traction, why should a “woman” get outraged at the uninvited display of a “penis” in one setting (such as a late-night meeting in a hotel room), but not at precisely the same intrusion in another setting (say, a bathroom or shower room now accessible to all those who “identify as female”)?

You may not be interested in the pronoun wars, but the pronoun wars are interested in you.

(Via Newsalert.)

HMM: The way we regulate self-driving cars is broken—here’s how to fix it.

The key issue is this: the current system is built around an assumption that cars will be purchased and owned by customers. But the pioneers of the driverless world—including Waymo, Cruise, and Uber—are not planning to sell cars to the public. Instead, they’re planning to build driverless taxi services that customers will buy one ride at a time.

This has big implications for the way regulators approach their jobs. Federal car regulations focus on ensuring that a car is safe at the moment it rolls off the assembly line. But as last month’s crash makes clear, the safety of a driverless taxi service depends on a lot more than just the physical features of the cars themselves.

For example, dash cam footage from last month’s Uber crash showed the safety driver looking down at her lap for five agonizing seconds before the fatal crash. Should Uber have done more to train and supervise its safety drivers? Should Uber have continued to put two people in each car, rather than switching to a single driver? Not only are there no federal rules on these questions, at the time of the crash the public was completely in the dark about how Uber and its competitors were dealing with the issue.

Driverless cars are interesting from a technological and regulatory perspective, but as someone who really enjoys driving, they seem like a solution in search of a problem.

ANTISOCIAL MEDIA: ‘Your Data’ Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means: Facebook’s definition of what belongs to you is designed to suit its needs, not your privacy.

MY Splitsylvania: State Secession and What to Do About It, is still #1 on SSRN. It will be published in the fall by the Notre Dame Law Review. Thanks to everyone who downloaded.

Meanwhile, in California, more splits.

DIAMOND AND SILK: Zuckerberg Lied, ‘We Have Not Been Contacted.’

JEFF DUNETZ ON HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY 2018: The Hatred Is Mainstream Again.

The 21st century is not working out as I had hoped, to coin an Insta-phrase.

UPDATE: “Brutal mustached dictators who use poison gas and giant crematoriums seems like something worth discussing on Holocaust Remembrance Day.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Best Cheeses For Grilled Cheese, According To People Who Truly Know.

It’s National Grilled Cheese Day, and I’m pulling out the panini press just as soon as I break for lunch.

FALLEN ANGELS WAS JUST A SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL, RIGHT GUYS? RIGHT? GUYS? Solar activity crashes – the Sun looks like a cueball. “Right now, the sun is a cueball, as seen below in this image today from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and has been without sunspots for 10 days. So far in 2018, 61% of days have been without sunspots. . . . This is the first time we have seen a short and weak cycle since scientists began tracking the solar cycle in the 1700s, following the last grand minimum in the 1600s when there were almost no sunspots.”

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Governance In The 21st Century. “While many agree that institutions are in a crisis there is less consensus about what happens afterward, if and when the crisis is resolved. How will the brave new world look? To answer this question is necessary to advance a hypothesis about the causes of our present troubles.”

GOOD NEWS FOR TENNESSEE: Sunday liquor sales pass despite ‘wicked liquor’ objection.

FASTER, PLEASE: Airlines Know You Hate the Airport, and Are Trying to Do Something About It.

American Airlines Group Inc. signed on last month to a $8.5 billion renovation at O’Hare International Airport after bristling for months at what it argued was preferential treatment for the Chicago gateway’s largest tenant, United Continental Holdings Inc.

American, United and other carriers at O’Hare agreed to new airport leases that will underpin funding plans for an expansion that is being mirrored at other big hubs across the country. From Los Angeles to New York to Atlanta and dozens of other airports, airlines and local officials are planning $100 billion in renovations over the next few years, according to the Airports Council International-North America trade group.

They hope to address what passenger surveys suggest is one of the most frustrating parts of air travel: navigating crowded, aging U.S. airports.

This could shape up to be a real-world example of why privatizing our airports would be a good idea.

THE VIRUS HAS SPREAD TO LAW SCHOOLS:  Students at CUNY Law protest and heckle Prof. Josh Blackman’s lecture on campus free speech.

NO. NEXT QUESTION? How about housing some homeless in your backyard? “Here’s an idea that wouldn’t survive the laughter in most U.S. communities. But this is California and more specifically, Los Angeles. So, local government is moving ahead with a plan to move some of the county’s exploding homeless populations off the streets and — wait for it — into your backyard.”

DANIEL GREENFIELD: Watergate Every Week: Using the FBI to Suppress a Political Revolution; From Steele to Mueller, the cost of overturning the 2016 election.

PROHIBITION: Indonesia Alcohol Deaths Exceed 100 as Police Vow Crackdown.

It’s unclear how effective the crackdown will be. Curbs on sales of legal alcohol in Muslim-majority Indonesia, including a ban implemented in 2015 on sales at tens of thousands of convenience stores, have created a significant black market for bootleg liquor among the country’s poor.

“If what is needed is limited in the legal market because of (government) policies, then the need would be fulfilled by those who want to make a profit” from the black market, said Sugianto Tandra, a researcher at the Center for Indonesian Policy Studies.

“The current incidence of rampant bootleg alcohol is because there is a need to drink but the product is not available in the legal market,” he said.

Nannystaters never learn.