AT AMAZON, Spring Deals on Women’s Swimsuits and Coverups.

Plus, deals on Men’s Swimwear.

DOCTOR SKYNET WILL SEE YOU NOW: Google AI Microscope Can Already Detect Breast Cancer, Prostate Cancer.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: 10 Things Teachers Did Not Have to Deal With 10 Years Ago.

Something is wrong—very, very wrong. Teachers across the country at all grade levels, in all subjects, teaching a wide variety of student populations, can sense it. There is a pulse of dysfunction, a steady palpitation of doom that the path we are on is not properly oriented.

There is a raw and amorphous anxiety creeping into the psyche of the corps of American teachers.

We may have trouble pinpointing the exact moment when something in our schools and broader culture went wildly astray, leaving in its wake teachers sapped of optimism and weighted with enervate comprehension. The following is a small sampling—this list could easily have been twice as long if my conversations with fellow teachers are any indication—of problems that teachers were not facing ten years ago.

Note item number eight on the list:

Politicized Schools: Like it or not, schools have become epicenters of hot-button political issues. From transgender bathrooms to guns and second amendment discussions, schools are now at the intersection of division and discord. American education has always been a “political issue,” but that is a qualitatively different status than being the place where schisms about the culture manifest themselves.

At the risk of going full Cathy Newman, so what you’re saying is that the American culture has been fundamentally transformed, to coin a phrase?

WEIGHING THE PROS AND CONS OF STATINS. “Unlike medications prescribed to treat a symptom or illness, statins are often given to healthy people to prevent a potentially devastating health problem, and the drug must be taken indefinitely to do the most good. . . . Let’s say your risk is 19 percent. That means among 100 people with similar risk factors, 19 are likely to have a heart attack or stroke within the next decade. Is that a risk you’re willing to take? Or would you rather reduce your risk by a third by taking a statin? Only you can make that determination, and it should be based on a full understanding of the known benefits and risks of statins, not something you may have heard from a friend or read online.”

PAUL WALDMAN: Americans don’t pay enough taxes.

Perhaps Mr. Waldman is unaware that the United States Treasury is more than happy to deposit any checks he writes to them over and above what he legally owes.

If he’d like to make a patriotic gift to reduce the publicly held debt, he can write a check to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service and send it to this address:

Attn Dept G
Bureau of the Fiscal Service
P. O. Box 2188
Parkersburg, WV 26106-2188

Or if Mr. Waldman would like to make a contribution to support current spending, he can do so with a check made out to United States Treasury and sent here:

Gifts to the United States
U.S. Department of the Treasury
Funds Management Branch
P.O. Box 1328
Parkersburg, WV 26106-1328

After writing today that freedom “makes life more cruel and difficult” for most people, I’m sure he’ll get right on that.

YIKES: Woman nearly sucked out of plane window after Southwest Airlines engine explodes and sends shrapnel into the glass before she is dragged back by passengers on flight of terror.

21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Harsh or fair? Furious woman reveals a man sent an itemized $40 invoice for a dinner date after she stopped texting him – and Twitter is completely divided over who is in the right.

Seems firm but fair to me.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: How Woke Comedy Is Killing Laughter in Pop Culture.

Well, so long as you’re only counting “laughing with” and not “laughing at.”

CHANGE: Gene therapy treatment for blood disease approved in Europe.

CHANGE: Bipartisan Bill Aims to Protect Hemp Farmers from Federal Pot Crackdown. “Kentucky and Oregon senators join together for bill to de-list hemp as a controlled substance and define it as an agricultural commodity.”

Now that President Trump has pulled the rug out from under Attorney General Jeff Sessions on his marijuana crackdown, it’s time for Congress to get serious about reform, too. The current legal limbo is good for no one, and I’d like to see a return to federalist principles in at least one area — so that maybe more will follow.

THE MEDIA’S ‘SEAN HANNITY STANDARD’ IS A WONDERFUL IDEA! “Now that we are entering the era of the ‘Sean Hannity Standard,’ we will finally be enlightened with full disclosures from every political journalist/commentator about their personal relationships with Democrat politicians and their respective handlers. I am especially eager to hear from Andrea Mitchell, Maggie Haberman, and Joe Scarborough.”

As Kurt Schlichter likes to say, the left are going to hate living up to their own rules.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): As I said earlier, I think we’re entitled to know the names of which “journalists” Fusion GPS had on its payroll. But weirdly, that hasn’t been released. Confidentiality and privacy, ya know.

IMPRESSIVE. MOST IMPRESSIVE. Air Force B-52s shatter Vietnam-era records during two-year ISIS deployment.

According to an April 12 release from U.S. Air Forces Central Command, the 23rd Bomb Squadron from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota last June launched its 400th consecutive B-52 mission without a delay due to maintenance problems.

This broke a B-52 streak that stood since December 1972, when the Air Force carried out 11 days of massive bombing in North Vietnam.

The 69th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron, which arrived in September 2017, then launched 834 straight B-52 missions without any maintenance cancellations.

The ground crews keeping these ancient airframes flying don’t get nearly the respect they deserve.

DECLINE: “Not too fond of Facebook”: A dating app removes its linked-profile requirement.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. The Photo of Protesters at Starbucks Is a Sad but Accurate Representation of Our Times.

We can all agree that racism is bad, and shouldn’t be allowed. The social justice warriors claim this too, but their solution isn’t understanding and togetherness. It’s finding a culprit, generating outrage about said culprit, and finding a way to make said culprit a pariah. That culprit can play any part they need it to as well. Corporations, the rich, white people, men, Christians, police, Trump, Pence, guns, NRA, Republicans, or even women if you’re Hillary Clinton.

It doesn’t matter if you fit any or all of these qualifiers. To the social justice mob, we are all sinners. They demand you repent and apologize for your transgressions against their religion’s version of morality, but unlike Christ, the true definer of morality in our western culture, you are not forgiven after your penance. You’re still a pariah, only now you’re a useful one. An example of how the mob is all-powerful and ready to conquer you at any moment.

It doesn’t matter if you did it or not. You still better fall on your knees and swear obedience.

Read the whole thing. Ironically, as Mollie Hemmingway noted in 2015, Starbucks’ then-CEO (now executive chairman) Howard Schultz wanted Zack and the rest of his baristas to be the ones preaching the ol’ time social justice gospel to the heathens:

The whole campaign reminded me so much of this story from 2004, when an American Airlines pilot got on the loudspeaker and asked passengers who were Christian to raise their hands. Then he suggested to the ones who raised their hands that they spend the remainder of the flight trying to convert those who hadn’t. The passengers were so confused by the request that they wondered if the pilot was a terrorist.

Listen, I love few things more than sharing the good news that Jesus has triumphed over sin, death and Satan with others and I hate racism. But there’s a reason why the American Airlines pilot and the Starbucks approaches freak people out! Yes, part of it is that there’s a time and place to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ and discuss difficult social problems. But also, these things are highly ineffective when done outside of a personal relationship.

I don’t know if Zack was working for Starbucks in 2015, but he (including whatever is left of his hearing) is definitely paying penance for the sins of his boss.

HMM: Mystery death of Russian journalist who wrote about deaths in Syria.

Maxim Borodin was found severely injured by neighbours in Yekaterinburg on Thursday.

He died at a hospital on Sunday.

Local officials said no suicide note was found and the cause of the fall remains unclear.

However a friend revealed that Borodin had said his flat had been surrounded by security the day before.

Vyacheslav Bashkov said Borodin had contacted him at five o’clock in the morning on Wednesday, April 11, saying there was ‘someone with a weapon on his balcony and people in camouflage and masks on the staircase landing’.

More:

In March, Borodin wrote about bodies believed to be those of mercenaries being delivered to a regional village.

Thousands of mercenaries reportedly have been deployed to Syria by a shadowy contracting company believed to be bankrolled by Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Flashback: Families ask Kremlin to admit Russian mercenaries killed in Syria.

And: They were never there: Russia’s silence for families of troops killed in Ukraine.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Purdue University Just Froze Tuition For The 7th Year. Mitch Daniels Explains How.

JOE PAPPALARDO: New ‘Space Fence’ Will Spot Space Junk, Small Sats, and Orbital Weapons.

STEPHEN KRUISER: NY Times Has an Unflattering Review of Comey’s Book Tour Behavior. “May Hurt a Carefully Cultivated Image”

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Massachusetts High Court Strikes Down Stun Gun Ban. “By my count, this means that, since D.C. v. Heller, stun gun bans have been invalidated or repealed in Massachusetts, Michigan, Wisconsin, D.C., the Virgin Islands, Overland Park (Kansas), and Annapolis, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Tacoma, Anne Arundel County, Baltimore County, Harford County, and Howard County (all in Maryland). Stun gun bans remain in effect, to my knowledge, in Hawaii, New York, Rhode Island, and Wilmington (Delaware), plus some smaller towns. The Hawaii and New York laws are being challenged in court.”

FISKING A MEME: Teachers unions using viral media to make demands the average taxpayer wouldn’t have the nerve to ask for. So I fisked it.

Remember, it’s all for the children.

WEIRD HOW A PEACEFUL SOCIETY CHANGES WHEN IT IMPORTS A BUNCH OF PEOPLE FROM VIOLENT SOCIETIES: Sweden’s violent reality is undoing a peaceful self-image.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: K-12: How Our Schools Make Monsters.

OUCH: China Slaps 179% Tariff On US Sorghum Hours After US Bans Exports To China’s ZTE.

GOOD: Ben Shapiro brutally DROPS blue-check blaming him and other Rightists for mosque shooting.

It isn’t quite “punching back twice as hard,” but it is something.

GOVERNMENT IS JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR THE THINGS WE CHOOSE TO DO TOGETHER: “A Jacksonville city inspector walked into a Cedar Hills Estate business to issue a warning citation over the display of military flags and employees said she insulted a customer who turned out to be a military veteran. Surveillance video captured city inspector Melinda Power getting in the face of the customer at Jaguar Power Sports on Blanding Boulevard. Employees told News4Jax on Monday that she was so disruptive and disrespectful to the veteran, they asked her to leave.”

Plus:

“She says, ‘What did you do for this country?’ He says, ‘I took three bullets to the leg. I almost lost my life for this country. I’m retired. I’m a veteran.’ She gets in his face this close and says, ‘You did nothing for this country,'” store employee Katie Klasse said.

Hillary voter, I’m guessing. But maybe Bernie or Jill.