NEWS YOU CAN USE: Fallout 76 Is So Awesome It Causes Time Travel.
But not in a good way. Bryan Preston has mixed emotions over the latest iteration of the long-running Fallout videogame.
Archive for 2018
December 20, 2018
MATTIS OUT: Mattis “retiring” in February, Trump says; Update: Resigned in protest?
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): There have been rumors that Mattis was going to leave at the end of the year for months, but nonetheless it’s hard not to connect this with the Syrian withdrawal. I’m agnostic on that, as I’ve said, but I’m entirely willing to agree that Mattis’s opinion is better than mine.
ANOTHER UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Here’s Mattis’s resignation letter. He clearly disagrees with Trump on the direction things are going, policywise.
Related: Pulling troops from Afghanistan?
Well, Fox was right about Obama and Iraq.
Thought: #Mattis2020?
MATT RIDLEY: Why Is It Cool To Be Gloomy?
SOCIALIST DOING WHAT SOCIALISTS DO: In Venezuela, Yet Another Socialist Government Crushes Dissent: People getting starry eyed about socialism should look to Venezuela for some important warning signs. If you’re still getting starry eyed about socialism at this point, you should be looking to your brain scan for warning signs.
J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS ON THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD: Peter Jackson’s Masterpiece War Memorial.
Jackson’s film portrays the World War I soldier as you have never seen him: in color, in high definition and with sound. They Shall Not Grow Old painstakingly cleans up the old jerky films of the Great War. . . . We journey forward to the trenches, where the rats and the corpses and the men all live as one. They eat, and live and die on top of each other, all in high definition color. Men slip into the mud and vanish forever. Brown iodine is swabbed on bleeding arms shot cleanly through by German bullets. A parade of the gassed march by with their arms on the shoulders of the man ahead. These are real people, something the old black and white films of course contained. But somehow, that medium dehumanized them. They Shall Not Grow Old brings them alive, like we have a pass to visit them in Flanders and Passchendaele. The film is a memorial to the World War I solider perhaps more profound than the Cenotaph.
You’ve got another chance to see it in theaters on December 27th. Highly recommended.
WHAT, AND GIVE UP SHOW BUSINESS? L.A.’s Housing Crisis Hits Hollywood: The Entertainment Workers Living in Their Cars.
(Classical punch line in headline.)
ON THIS DAY IN 1803, FRANCE OFFICIALLY TURNED OVER LOUISIANA TO THE UNITED STATES AT A FLAG-RAISING CEREMONY IN NEW ORLEANS: The Louisiana Purchase added 828,000 square miles to the United States as well as control of the Mississippi River (which made already-existing territories in Mississippi and Ohio River watersheds that much more valuable). We got it for the bargain price of 50 million francs plus the cancellation of debts worth 18 million francs. At the time, that would have been $15 million–a bargain, even then, for such a vast territory.
The whole thing took President Jefferson a bit by surprise. He had wanted negotiate the sale of New Orleans and its environs. But on April 11, 1803, Foreign Minister Talleyrand told the American minister to France Robert Livingston that Napoleon was willing to sell all of the Louisiana Territory. Truth be told, Napoleon had abandoned his earlier plans for North America and needed to raise some money quickly for his other activities.
Jefferson worried that as President he did not have the authority to commit to such a deal. But his advisors told him he’d be crazy to turn it down. So he took it. The rest is history.
21ST CENTURY WORKPLACE ISSUES: Surprise DNA Results Are Turning Customer-Service Reps Into Therapists. “How do you tell someone that her brother is not her brother?”
WELL, FOR STARTERS THEY BURN HYDROGEN: Here’s How Hydrogen Engines Work.
I drove a GM hydrogen car for Popular Mechanics a few years back. I still have the same reservations about the hydrogen fuel cycle. To wit: “The car advertises itself as petroleum-free, which is true. But—and here’s my problem with hydrogen cars—it’s not really fossil fuel free. Most hydrogen is made by ‘steam reformation’ of natural gas, which is still a fossil fuel. You can also make it out of water, via electrolysis, but unless you’ve got a non-fossil source of electricity the hydrogen is really just functioning as an energy-storage medium, rather than a source of energy. Of course, build lots of nice, clean nuclear plants, or orbiting solar power plants, or whatever, and that problem goes away.”
Maybe the abundance of fracked natural gas changes this calculation a bit, but I’m not sure.
GREAT MOMENTS IN COSPLAY: Antifa Lady’s Attorney Confused That Court Isn’t Treating Her Like A WWII Hero.
WHAT, NO RESPECT FOR THE MESOLITHIC? Out: Paleolithic Diet. In: Neolithic Diet.
SOMEBODY’S GOING TO GET SUED: Syracuse Cops Force Doctors to Probe a Man’s Rectum for Drugs, Then Bill the Man For It.
According to the story, Jackson was arrested after a pretextual traffic stop where officers found a baggie of marijuana and detected cocaine residue on his car seat.
Jackson has a long rap sheet and was combative with police in jail, but the encounter crossed into dubious ethical and legal territory when police compelled doctors to perform a medical procedure they saw as unnecessary.
Previous cases like this have resulted in police and hospitals paying out huge amounts of money to settle lawsuits.
Jackson was clearly trouble, resisting and taunting the police, but: “At least two doctors resisted the police request. An X-ray already had indicated no drugs. They saw no medical need to perform an invasive procedure on someone against his will.”
I wonder why the doctors gave in, and just how much the city will have to pay out to settle.
WELL, GOOD: Diabetes drug may also treat common heart failure syndrome. Interestingly, it’s metformin, which is cheap and well-tolerated in most people, and is also being looked at as a general anti-aging drug.
WHAT, HIM WORRY? Comey channels Alfred E. Neuman.
CHANGE: MSNBC Winning December in Primetime With Most Viewers Overall and Demo.
It’s far too early to say “Get woke, go broke” about Fox News, but it’s past the time when people noticed that Fox has been working hard on occasion to alienate its core viewers.
BORING: Elon Musk and Gayle King test drive the tunnel he hopes will solve L.A. traffic.
“Unless we can make tunnel digging at least 10 times cheaper, then digging tunnels will not be an effective means of alleviating traffic. It’ll just cost too much,” Musk said.
Musk’s vision depends on him being able to do it all faster and cheaper than current industry standards. While modern subway tunnels in Los Angeles cost around $900 million per mile, he says he built his for about $10 million. One way he saved money: he literally made it dirt-cheap.
“When digging tunnels…it’s quite expensive to have all this dirt trucked off somewhere. And we’re like, well, why don’t we try to use that dirt for something useful? So we are creating bricks on-site…and you can pick ’em up for, they’re very cheap; 10 cents a brick,” he said.
That’s quite clever, but this is brilliant:
At only 12 feet in diameter, it’s much more claustrophobic than most transportation tunnels. According to Musk, cars will be able to travel up to 150 mph in the tunnel but must be on autopilot.
“Because the autopilot has radar and cameras that will automatically slow you down before you impact another car…you would only be allowed to go through the tunnel on autopilot,” Musk said.
As tech blogger Dave Mark noted, “Only properly outfitted cars will be allowed in these tunnels. Someone who can build such cars efficiently can make a lot of money.”
Someone like Elon Musk.
LOOKING FOR LOVE IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES: Women sending love letters to convicted killer Chris Watts.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Evening workouts may be best for men with high blood pressure.
THE TROUBLING PARALLELS BETWEEN TODAY AND THE WATERGATE ERA: The media was determined to “reverse the verdict of the election by non-constitutional means”; Trump 2016? No, Nixon 1972.
CORN, POPPED: Prepare for a Long, Chaotic Presidential Primary Fight.
Josh Kraushaar has six big bullet points, but I found the second one the most interesting:
With a massive field, candidates will play to niche constituencies at the expense of a national message. Without a juggernaut in the field and a limited pool of financial resources, many candidates will focus on their strengths and limit their scope to a handful of favorable states. So Cory Booker could skip Iowa and New Hampshire to make a bet on the African-American vote in South Carolina, Kamala Harris could make a home-state play in California, and a blue-collar candidate (like Sherrod Brown) may decide it’s worth waiting until March 10 to make a Midwestern pitch for Michigan and Ohio. Candidates trying to win a narrow niche of the electorate usually are unsuccessful, but the dynamic will be different with such a large field.
Primary election pandering to small groups of niche — and I do mean niche — voters could end up being a real turn-off for the Obama-to-Trump voters who decided the last election.