FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM AND TWITTER HURT MOST:  Millennials are starting to hate social media, too.

OR IT WILL ALL END UP IN A BIG BOONDOGGLE, OF THE SORT COMMON IN SOCIALIST AND COMMUNIST COUNTRIES:  China is going to build a $1.5B panda conservation area.

HOW TO TELL IF YOU’RE A CRIMINALLY LOUSY PARENT (HINT, YOU PRETEND TO CRY AT AN EIGHT MONTH OLD AND DON’T EXPECT HIM TO LAUGH):  How to tell if your child is a future psychopath.  People who think children are born anything but little balls of Id waiting to be turned into humans do a lot of evil in the world.

AT AMAZON, Shop Amazon Warehouse Deals – Deep Discounts on Open-box and Used Products.

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

OPEN THREAD: It’s late because of Daylight Savings Time. Yeah, that’s it. That’s the ticket.

HMM: States’ rights rancher Ryan Bundy to run for Nevada governor.

NEXT IN VOX: WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE IN MARRIAGE: MY WIFE KEEPS PRESSURING ME TO GET AND HOLD A JOB. Well, it’s no stupider than this piece, likening a husband’s desire for sex to rape.

Also, don’t marry feminists.

THE MANY LIVES OF LES PAUL:  At some point in late 2017 after numerous Insta-lanches, the current management at Blogcritics chose to remove all of my articles without notifying me, and have yet to respond to my email requests for an explanation, or to let me know how to restore them there. (Accidents happen on the Internet; perhaps it was just a glitch?) In the interim, I’ll slowly be reposting my more interesting pieces at Ed Driscoll.com. 

My 2002 interview with Les Paul (1915-2009) certainly qualifies. It had one of the longest comment threads at Blogcritics, as readers alternately swapped their own encounters with Les, or reminded themselves that they needed to make the pilgrimage to watch him play in New York before it was too late, or simply mentioned that they owned one of his namesake Gibson electric guitars.

(Bumped.)

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Left and Right Agree that Russiagate is Hogwash, So Why Does It Live On?

Read the whole thing.

RADIO FREE EUROPE: Why Putin wants a huge voter turnout in the upcoming presidential election.

THE RETURN OF THE PRIMITIVE: Millennials, NPR, and Omnipresent ‘Baby Up-Talk.’

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:

As Jim Treacher has said, “Modern journalism is all about deciding which facts the public shouldn’t know because they might reflect badly on Democrats.”

BLESS HER HEART: Valerie Jarrett compares attending Farrakhan event to meeting with the Koch brothers.

With the passing of Richard Mellon Scaife, I understand the desire of the left to have a pair of boogiemen to counter the right’s fascination with George Soros. But perhaps they should have researched the Kochs’ libertarian ideology a bit more carefully, given that they’re pro-legalized drugs, pro-open borders, pro-gay marriage and anti-Iraq War.

AT AMAZON, spring deals on Gas Grills.

Also, shop the Pressure Washer Buying Guide.

UNEXPECTEDLY: The projected cost of California’s bullet train from San Francisco to Los Angeles has jumped to $77 billion and the opening date has been pushed back four years to 2033, according to a business plan released Friday.

Sportswriter Scott Criscione tweets, “According to math at that price it’ll be roughly 201-Million dollars per mile. Someone is pulling off the greatest heist of all time.”

It’s the graft inherent in “The Desire Named Streetcar”  taken to its most extreme.

21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: A Review Of The Shape Of Water, From A Guy Who Had Sex With A Dolphin.

Troy McClure could not be reached for comment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yz2DYaMJ4ss

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Let the record reflect that women boink dolphins too. “Peter the Dolphin was just 6 years old when he fell in love — with a human. The bottlenose dolphin met research assistant Margaret Howe just as the free love movement was emerging in 1965. . . . After the experiment ended and the lab was closed, Peter was shipped back to Lilly’s lab in Miami and his health quickly deteriorated. A few weeks later, Peter committed suicide, with veterinarian Andy Williamson ruling his cause of death a broken heart.”

GIVE LIBERTARIANS CREDIT: Welcome to the Golden Age.  Steven Pinker’s new bestseller, Enlightenment Now, is a remarkably broad and deep — and readable — rebuttal to the pessimism that passes for profundity among progressive intellectuals. While the Cassandras keep predicting disaster, things keep getting better for everyone else. For all the concerns about capitalism and its discontents, like income inequality, people at all levels of society keep getting happier as they get richer. Pinker nicely sums up the data about wealth and happiness with a joke:

A dean is presiding over a faculty meeting when a genie appears and offers him one of three wishes—money, fame, or wisdom. The dean replies, “That’s easy. I’m a scholar. I’ve devoted my life to understanding. Of course I’ll take wisdom.” The genie waves his hand and vanishes in a puff of smoke. The smoke clears to reveal the dean with his head in his hands, lost in thought. A minute elapses. Ten minutes. Fifteen. Finally a professor calls out, “Well? Well?” The dean mutters, “I should have taken the money.”

I highly recommend it in my review in City Journal, but I do quibble with his treatment of libertarians. Although the book is a paean to the Enlightenment’s libertarian values — free minds and free markets — he takes a few digs at modern libertarians that seem to me at odds with the data (including his own). Otherwise, it’s a great book for us Cornucopians to enjoy, as is Gregg Easterbrook’s new one, It’s Better Than It Looks.  

YOUR DAILY TREACHER: If Trump Can Make Peace with North Korea, That’ll Be Great.
“The people who hate him are determined to remind me why so many Americans voted for him.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Five Great Libertarian Movies (Video).

THE WHITE ALBUM:

Thomas Yamamoto had only seen it in a photograph, but the retired corporate finance executive was so enthralled by Mary Corse’s monochrome white canvas that he bought it first and then hopped on a plane to New York from Shanghai to inspect his newest treasure.

He glimpsed the $350,000 work up close for the first time Wednesday in the booth of Kayne Griffin Corcoran gallery at the Armory Show, the largest modern and contemporary art fair in New York.

“Normally, we’d put it on reserve, come here, see it and then buy it,” said Yamamoto, 69, who began collecting art with his wife seven years ago. “We were a little afraid that if we didn’t commit to it, it would go away.”

Such is the competitive nature of the global art market, with demand from new collectors, especially in Asia, driving up prices. As certain areas of the market become overheated, dealers and collectors are looking for value — and finding it among overlooked artists, many of whom are women.

Dirt Road

That’s the case with 72-year-old Corse, a pioneer of the West Coast Light and Space movement in the 1960s. Corse treats light as a subject and material of her paintings, activating them by using refractive glass microspheres that are common in highway paint. Working in the same studio off a dirt road for 50 years, she has been overshadowed by male peers such as James Turrell and Robert Irwin. That’s quickly changing.

Geez, wait until Yamamoto discovers Kazimir Malevich.

(Found via Kate of Small Dead Animals, who notes, “The Emperor Has No Paint.”)

UNEXPECTEDLY, NON-FARM PAYROLL EMPLOYMENT INCREASES BY 313,000 VERSUS THE EXPECTED 200,000.

DEVELOPING: Scanner traffic from police on site at Veterans Home of California reporting at least 2 hostages. Law enforcement snipers have been given the go ahead. Up to 30 shots fired at police.

SO HOW DO YOU LIKE THE AMERICA WHERE EVERYBODY IS A VICTIM: Former Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich isn’t real thrilled with it, either, as he explains in LifeZette.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WHY DON’T THEY MAKE PINK PUSSY HIJABS?:
This is one of those res ipsa loquitur thingies. Linda Sarsour could not be reached for comment.