TONIGHT’S OPEN THREAD. You know what to do!
Archive for 2018
January 10, 2018
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: One in five Germans wants a robot sex doll – and six per cent of adults say they could fall in LOVE with one.
AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Clothing Shoes and Jewelry.
NOW OUT, AND EDITED BY OUR OWN CHARLIE MARTIN: Jackal and the Space Slavers.. Charlie writes: “It’s space opera, funny and a little sexy. Start of a series and I really like it.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Moving Beyond White Privilege Towards Action.
LISTICLE: 10 TV Shows That Should Have Been Canceled But Still Lumber On.
Grey’s Anatomy never should have been greenlighted in the first place, but The Blacklist has fallen further from grace than any other show I can think of.
BACKLASH TO THE BACKLASH TO THE BACKLASH: Actress Catherine Deneuve Being Excoriated for Criticizing #MeToo Movement.
THIS IS PRETTY MUCH THE 21ST CENTURY I’VE COME TO EXPECT: Pole dancing robots go head-to-head with strippers at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
CLAIM: Faculty Do Not ‘Swing For The Fences’ In Their Research After Tenure.
Hmm. Well, this is Economics profs, but I wonder if that’s true. I felt like my paper on military coups was kind of swinging for the fences.
MILT ROSENBERG, RIP: “His career was also described by the arc of a moral conversion, carried out in public via his nightly broadcasts, from the ‘soft mindless leftism of an East Coast academic’ to an embrace of free market economics, traditional social values, and an appreciation of the United States as the world’s best hope for the defense of freedom and human decency in global affairs.”
After being pushed out of Chicago’s 50,000 watt WGN AM in 2012 in his late 80s, he hosted a podcast at Ricochet.com, before passing away at age 92 yesterday.
HEH: How the Free Market Spanked Seattle’s Government After It Tried to Dictate How Its Citizens Lived. “But the people wouldn’t be controlled so easily, and to prove it, the buy-in-bulk mega-store Costco decided to help along a little rebellion…Costco created signs that showed the original cost of the products Costco typically sold them at, but then it added the tax imposed upon it by the city of Seattle, showing customers that the high prices of their favorite beverage were the result of government meddling. And as you can see below, customers took notice. What’s more, Costco added a second sign to inform their customers that their drinks were much cheaper at locations outside of the city of Seattle. As one customer told KIRO, that’s just what she’s going to do.”
Related: Report: Soda tax decreased sales in Philly, boosted sales beyond border.
Damn those hoarders and wreckers – and commuters!
LAURA INGRAHAM TO SHERIFF JOE: “You’ll be 91 after your first term is up!” Former Maricopa County (Arizona) Sheriff Joe Arpaio announced his candidacy for the Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Jeff Flake earlier this week. He is 85 years old.
Today on Ingraham’s radio show, he all but vowed eternal loyalty to President Donald Trump and declared his confidence in the Chief Executive’s negotiating skills in dickering with congressional Democrats on DACA, chain migration and immigration lottery. Amazing how a presidential pardon can soften up a hardliner.
KOREA WAR OLYMPIAD: My latest Creators Syndicate column. (bumped)
CRIME OF THE CENTURY: Florida man caught with ‘full rack of ribs’ in his pants, police say.
REVIEW: 2019 Mercedes-Benz G-class.
PROOF THAT THE MARKETPLACE OF IDEAS WORKS: “Bid To Save Gawker.com Falls Short.”
“Members of The Gawker Foundation, a nonprofit created by former staffers, launched the campaign last month with the hopes of raising $500,000 to buy shuttered Gawker.com and relaunch the site. But the coalition fell far short of the ambitious goal, with nearly 1,500 backers raising less than $90,000 as the campaign expired Tuesday.”
Of course, what got left out of the media’s telling of the Gawker story (and the Netflix documentary “Nobody Speak” which romanticized Gawker as a brave truth-teller) is the fact that as Washington Babylon revealed, Gawker and Nick Denton have Viktor Vekselberg, their very own Russian oligarch/billionaire to counter Hulk Hogan’s patron, Peter Thiel. Why didn’t Vekselberg “save” Gawker2.0?
TUCKER CARLSON: Main Threat to Freedom No Longer Big Government — It’s Big Corporations Like Google.
Instead of “no longer” I’d have gone with “in addition to.”
RETAIL BLUES: Sears warns it will consider ‘all options’ if efforts to refinance $1 billion fail.
While reiterating his belief that the department store has the right strategy to turn Sears around, Chief Executive Officer Eddie Lampert said should the refinancing “not be fully successful, the Company’s Board will consider all other options to maximize the value of Sears Holdings’ assets.”
“If we successfully complete the financing transactions we are contemplating, we will materially improve the financial strength and operating focus of Sears Holdings and provide meaningful reassurance of our viability to our vendors and business partners,” Lampert said.
Sears said its same-store sales dropped between 16 and 17 percent for the first two months of the fourth quarter, or what represents the crucial holiday shopping season.
Further debt restructuring at this point looks like throwing bad money after worse.