FAREWELL TO THE ‘FRIENDLY SKIES:’ And welcome to the new normal: animals, both human and domestic, for your traveling misery.

The 21st century isn’t turning out the way I had hoped, to coin an Insta-phrase.

THE FIU BRIDGE COLLAPSE: “This company prides itself on how many women they hire, saying that it’s a big step towards gender equality.”

Ahh, it’s the Howell Raines technique of putting diversity over quality, or as the former New York Times editor admitted in 2001, in a classic Kinsley-style gaffe: “This [hiring] campaign has made our staff better and, more importantly, more diverse.”

FASTER, PLEASE: Researchers uncover framework for how stem cells determine where to form replacement structures.

GREAT MOMENTS IN OBJECTIVE DISPASSIONATE MEDIA: Andrea Mitchell Suggests How Andrew McCabe Can Save His Pension.

Just think of Andrea as a Democratic operative with a chyron and it all makes sense.

SPACE: SpaceX BFR should be launching into orbit in 2020.

NEW CIVILITY UPDATE. Rage-Democrats return: Eric Holder vows to knife the GOP. “The whole statement calls to mind President Obama’s campaign statement about knife fights, one of the very few things he ever said that was memorable.”

AT AMAZON, save on Office Supplies.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? The Hilarious (and Terrifying?) Ways Algorithms Have Outsmarted Their Creators.

SOD OFF, SWAMPY: Arnold Schwarzenegger Calls for Warning Labels on ‘Every Product That Has Fossil Fuels.’ Toothbrushes, nylon, LEGOs, crayons, nail polish — implicated in “first-degree murder”?

21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS. Gay sex robots: Demand skyrockets at brothel as heterosexuals ‘want to try male cyborgs.’

HMM: World’s First Head Transplant Volunteer Could Experience Something “Worse Than Death.”

THE COMPANY YOU KEEP: Louis Farrakhan Releases New Album Featuring Stevie Wonder, Common and Snoop Dogg.

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan just dropped a seven-CD album series — and some of your favorite artists may be on it.

Farrakhan, who has been accused of anti-Semitism for decades, released his “Let’s Change the World” musical box set late last month after years of planning and recording. Farrakhan himself plays on the album along with many prominent artists, including Stevie Wonder, Snoop Dogg and Common, according to Nation of Islam publications.

Common’s record label, Snoop Dogg’s agency and Wonder’s press representative did not immediately return requests for comment.

In addition to associating himself with a man who has said “Jews are my enemy,” and “white folks are going down,” I’m rather surprised to see Stevie Wonder volunteering to appear on a series of plastic CDs, given that last September at a hurricane relief fundraiser he blurted out:

“Anyone who believes that there’s no such thing as global warming must be blind or unintelligent,” the musician said during the “Hand in Hand” telethon.

“Lord, please save us all.”

Farrakhan doesn’t sound like he would approve of the “all” in that above statement. But in any case, shouldn’t Wonder be voluntarily cutting back on his output as well to save the planet?

STEPHEN L. CARTER: Farewell to Toys ‘R’ Us, and an Era of Play.

For a while, Toys ‘R’ Us prospered. Still, the handwriting was on the wall. The chain continued to dominate the toy industry for another decade and a half, but then began to slip. In 1990, 25 percent of all toys sold in the U.S. were purchased at Toys ‘R’ Us. A decade later, as the figure slipped well below 20 percent, Walmart Inc. surged ahead. The stores themselves were aging, and the company took a $495 million charge against earnings to spruce them up. 2 Worried about the rise of EToys (does anyone remember EToys?) and American Girl (sold at the time exclusively through the mail), Toys ‘R’ Us moved expensively and not very successfully into online and direct marketing. Meanwhile, high-volume, low-margin retailers like Walmart and Kmart were discounting toys to get consumers into the stores, then offering them a full-service experience that Toys ‘R’ Us couldn’t match.

In 2006, the chain was taken private, but the new owners were never able to reinvigorate its sales, or, for that matter, to get it out from under $5 billion in debt. In September, the company entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and now, after a disastrous holiday season, the owners are giving up. Seeking a cause for its demise, Toys ‘R’ Us has cast the blame upon its competitors — particularly Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart — which is a little like saying I’d have won the golf tournament if not for all those guys with the lower scores.

But the chain’s biggest foe was neither nimbler retailers nor that heavy debt load. It was the undermining of the very concept of the toy. . . .

Well, toys that talk and blink a chain could still stock, albeit at a fearsome discount to compete with online retailers. But when a toy as a tangible thing to be manipulated yielded to a toy as a digital presence with which a child interacted via a multipurpose device, the idea of a toy store was in its death throes. As we learned from the demise of video and record chains, that which is downloadable needs no physical presence to be sold. And nowadays even very young children prefer the touchable screen to the touchable toy. Apart from a niche here and there, toy stores no longer serve any discernible function.

Sad.

I THINK IT SHOULD BE 18 FOR EVERYTHING: No, it’s not you, Peter Pan. It’s the law that prevents you from growing up.

AT AMAZON, Save on Hot New Releases – Updated Every Hour.

Plus, Shop Amazon Outlet – Clearance, Markdowns and Overstock Deals.

Also, Kindle Daily Deals, and today’s Digital Deals.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Background to Trump’s Korea gamble. My latest Observer essay.

RELATED: A HIMARS in South Korea demonstrates the ability to “strike targets with minimal notice.” It’s called a show of force.

DON SURBER: Why The Press Defends McCabe’s Crime. “For a long time, the media covered McCabe’s scandal with its Cloak of Invisibility. Now they circle wagons to protect him.”

MARIE HARF: ‘I’M OFFENDED’ PEOPLE THINK ‘THE LEFT’ DISLIKES CHRISTIANITY.

Wait until she discovers who her boss was…

CALIFORNIA: The Physical Collapse Of A Social State: “Under the one-party Democrat rule, spending on fairness tops $100 billion every year. Meanwhile, the basic infrastructure of the state, so necessary for the economy long and short term, is collapsing.” This seems to happen everywhere Dems are totally in charge. Weird.

GOOD: Women’s March members bail over ties to Farrakhan. But they didn’t have any problem with the execrable Linda Sarsour.

BROWARD COUNTY’S jail-to-school pipeline. “At the same time the Broward County school system was dismantling the ‘school-to-prison pipeline’ under policies that failed to stop accused shooter Nikolas Cruz, it was building another pipeline, funneling back into regular classrooms thousands of other potentially dangerous students released from local jails, county and school district records reveal. Through a little-known ‘re-engagement’ program for serious juvenile offenders, the Florida district has ‘transitioned’ back to school almost 2,000 incarcerated students, a number comparable to student bodies at many high schools, according to district data obtained by RealClearInvestigations. Local probation officers warn that these offenders have a high risk of reoffending.”

THERE’S A SHOCKER: I sat through the entire Yale sexual-assault trial. The media aren’t giving you the full story. “Like one of the jurors with whom I spoke, I could not ‘fathom’ why the state had pursued the case when there was no testimony or other evidence the accuser had been assaulted. . . . Student ID card activations called into question the accuser’s narrative that Khan forced himself into her dorm room after dinner, became angry when she asked him to leave, and ‘crossed a boundary.’ Khan’s ID card actually swiped into his dorm entry seven seconds after she swiped into her own, making the accuser’s version impossible.”

Khan is an Afghan refugee. Why so much xenophobia at Yale?

GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Media Hit With Massive Layoffs in 2018.