ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why Are There Two National Doughnut Days?

LAST NIGHT ED LINKED TO THIS STORY… House Dems mull censure as alternative to impeachment… and headlined it “EXIT RAMP.”

An easy prediction is that if the House does censure, the media will salivate over it as something unprecedented, staggering in its implications, the Democrats taking back the moral high ground, etc, rather than as the embarrassing walk-back from impeachment that it actually would be.

PROTON PUMP INHIBITORS: Overuse of heartburn drugs linked to heart, kidney disease, cancer. “Taking PPIs over many months or years is not safe.”

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: If Seeing the World Helps Ruin It, Should We Stay Home?

—Headline, the New York Times, Monday. (Link safe; goes to Power Line.)

Presumably, the answer is “no,” unless the Times goes out of the private tour business:

Why Travel with The New York Times

Travel Smarter. Gain Understanding. Return Inspired.

Our journeys are selected with New York Times audiences and like-minded travelers in mind, to satisfy their intellectual curiosity and high standards. With curated content from The Times providing history and context for the destinations, these journeys are uniquely designed to

Past excursions have included trips to Iran and around-the-world private jet tours with Times columnists.

CHARLES LIPSON: Mueller’s Sinking Reputation.

His entire investigation was based on two fragile pillars, which Mueller never questioned. If they collapse, Mueller is buried in the rubble. The first pillar is the FBI’s dubious “origin story.” The bureau states, and Mueller explicitly accepts, that its Trump investigation began in late-July 2016 after a low-level campaign volunteer, George Papadopoulos, spoke about Russia to an Australian diplomat in a London bar. Apparently, Papadopoulos also made exculpatory comments, which were not included (as legally required) in a subsequent search-warrant application.

But there is mounting evidence that Papadopoulos was not the first target and July 2016 was not the real starting date. Counter-intelligence investigations of Trump and his associates apparently began earlier and were never disclosed. Neither was widespread illegal spying on Americans by intelligence agencies and their private contractors. Still more surveillance was outsourced to friendly foreign intelligence agencies, which relayed their findings to Washington. Mueller never mentioned these problems — and possible crimes.

These omissions matter. They illustrate bias against Trump and suggest the report’s evidence may be tainted by omission and commission. They show Mueller’s extraordinary efforts to protect the law-enforcement institutions where he served for so many years. That protective shield is a problem because misconduct at DoJ and FBI is central to the inquiry.

Heckuva job, Bobby.

ANTISOCIAL MEDIA: On YouTube’s Digital Playground, an Open Gate for Pedophiles.

YouTube’s automated recommendation system — which drives most of the platform’s billions of views by suggesting what users should watch next — had begun showing the video to users who watched other videos of prepubescent, partially clothed children, a team of researchers has found.

YouTube had curated the videos from across its archives, at times plucking out the otherwise innocuous home movies of unwitting families, the researchers say. In many cases, its algorithm referred users to the videos after they watched sexually themed content.

The result was a catalog of videos that experts say sexualizes children.

“It’s YouTube’s algorithm that connects these channels,” said Jonas Kaiser, one of three researchers at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society who stumbled onto the videos while looking into YouTube’s impact in Brazil. “That’s the scary thing.”

The video of Christiane’s daughter was promoted by YouTube’s systems months after the company was alerted that it had a pedophile problem.

The algorithms are designed to enhance engagement. Pedophiles are very engaged. Someone could write a book on this.

HE SEEMS NICE: Record Co. Founder’s Tweet Inciting Violence Toward 7-Year-Old Raising Border Wall Ca$h.

YOUTUBE TO REMOVE THOUSANDS OF “EXTREMIST” VIDEOS, CHANNELS: I am sure Google will stun us all with its competent, considered, and nonpartisan decisions on such matters, in keeping with its traditions.

YOU’RE REALLY GOING TO NEED A BIGGER BLOG: What AOC Doesn’t Understand About Socialism.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: D-Day By the Numbers, By the Men.

I want you to imagine picking up every resident of a medium-sized city, everything they’ll need to eat and drink and rest for a few days, any vehicles they might need, gasoline of course, plus lots of guns and ammo — did I mention this was a hunting trip? — and then moving them all in a few short hours a distance of anywhere from 30 to 125 miles or so.

Now imagine you have to move all those people and all that stuff partly by air, but mostly across heavy seas in foul weather.

Under enemy fire.

You might want to read the whole thing.

“ABUSIVE CONDUCT BY PLATFORM GATEKEEPERS:” Congressional hearings signal growing antitrust problems for big tech.

THE 21st CENTURY IS NOT TURNING OUT AS I HAD HOPED: How Aspergers and Autism Ruined Dungeons and Dragons.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: How These Balloons Brought Emergency Cell Service to Peru After an 8.0 Magnitude Earthquake.

YES, PLEASE. Protecting Sleep in the Hospital, for Both Patients and Doctors: What if sleep were considered a continuous infusion of a medication that helped patients heal faster? “Sleep is one of the most powerful, freely available health care systems you could ever wish for. But the irony is that the one place a patient needs sleep the most is the place they’re least likely to get it: in a hospital bed on the ward.”

I’ve written about this myself. Here’s what I wrote:

It’s other places where they fall down. Being in the hospital is an exhausting, draining experience even if you aren’t sick. I spent a lot of time, and a couple of nights, there, and I felt like I had been run over by a truck. Imagine how I’d have felt if I had been, you know, a patient with something actually wrong with me.

Sleep interruptions are one problem. The floor below my wife’s housed the sleep-disorder clinic, where they monitor people and try to help them overcome various problems, like sleep apnea, so that they can achieve an uninterrupted night’s sleep. Ironically, it’s probably the only place in the hospital where they let you sleep all night long if you want. My wife was interrupted, on average, about every 90 minutes or so all night long: To have blood drawn, to have vital signs checked, to have her temperature taken, to be given medications (“wake up, it’s time for your sleeping pill” isn’t just a hospital joke) and, most irritatingly, to be weighed.

Now, there are good reasons for a lot of this stuff. Medications have to be given at certain times, temperatures have to be monitored, and so on. Even the weight is important, especially for cardiac patients where fluid balance often matters a lot. (Though not in my wife’s case, as her problems were different.)

But the end result of all of this stuff, especially when it’s spread over the evening, is a huge amount of stress on somebody who’s already under stress from illness. I don’t think that anyone has done the experiment (as has in fact been done with regard to mental hospitals) of hospitalizing some healthy grad students for a couple of weeks and then measuring their condition on discharge, but I’m pretty sure I know what the result would be: Most of them would come out in far worse shape than they were when they entered, even if they managed to avoid other hospital hazards like nosocomial infections or malnutrition from lousy hospital food. And I rather doubt that anyone familiar with hospitals and hospitalization would disagree. That suggests to me that somebody ought to be thinking harder about ways of making the hospital environment more patient-friendly. It’s impossible to make a hospital as stress-free as, say, a spa or a hotel, but it seems to me that with a bit of planning and organization it would be possible to do a lot better than we’re doing now. (And several of the nurses with whom I discussed this problem agreed.) Like the traditional hospital gowns, an awful lot of things seem to be “flimsy, drab, and designed for the practitioner’s convenience rather than for the patient’s comfort.” It’s time for that to change.

More at the link.

OUCH: Venezuela’s oil exports drop 17% in May as sanctions kick in.

Of course, that’s still nothing compared to the damage done to the country’s oil industry by its socialists government.

GREEN NEW STEAL: My colleagues at CEI have a new video out explaining how the carbon tax – one of the cornerstones of the Green New Deal – will cost average American families a bundle.

They have much more on the subject here.

WHEN THE WORLD COMES TO AN END IN 2050, WILL VICE BE AROUND TO SEE IT?

● Shot: New report suggests “high likelihood of human civilization coming to an end” in 2050.

—Tweet by Vice.com, Monday (link safe, goes to Twitchy.)

● Chaser: Vice.com Lays Off Senior Editors in Shakeup:

The company is also still doing its best to emerge from lingering #MeToo fallout after a scathing New York Times investigation into Vice’s workplace culture. The story culminated in the eventual dismissal of both the company’s chief digital officer and president over past accusations of sexual misconduct.

“Listening to our employees over the past year, the truth is inescapable: from the top down, we have failed as a company to create a safe and inclusive workplace where everyone, especially women, can feel respected and thrive,” wrote Vice co-founders Shane Smith and Suroosh Alvi in a public note to Vice employees in December 2017.

“We understand that this had an impact on current and former employees at VICE*, and we want to express our deepest apologies to them, as well as our extreme regret for our role in perpetuating sexism in the media industry and society in general.”

—The Wrap, yesterday.

● Hangover: Disney’s $400M Investment In Vice Media Becomes $353M Write-Down:

Disney made its investment four years ago, when Vice was valued at more than $4 billion. Later, in 2017, Vice’s valuation reached nearly $6 billion, after private-equity firm TPG invested $450 million.

Since then, the company has been hit with rounds of layoffs — in the latest releasing 10% of its workforce, in addition to other cultural problems, such as charges of sexual harassment.

With the round of layoffs last fall, CEO Nancy Dubuc stated that the company was focused on a new strategy that would lead it toward profitability. The new round of investment is intended to bolster that vision.

—Publishers Daily, May 9th.

* Wouldn’t the publication’s name be the first clue to incoming employees?

LAYERS OF EDITORS AND FACT-CHECKERS:

As it turns out, Pothoven was allowed by her family to starve herself to death, which is hardly a good thing. But she was not, as the English-language media reported, put to death under Dutch law.

That’s a huge, inexcusable miss for the press.

THE DOG EATER THAT DIDN’T BARK: Why Did Obama Ignore Reports Of Russian Election Meddling?

BLUE ON BLUE: UK Lesbians Protest Against Transgender Activism. Police Ask Them If They’re a ‘Hate Group.’

I rather enjoyed the “lesbians don’t have penises” protest sign, which you would think would be a given and uncontroversial. But these are, after all, Heinlein’s Crazy Years.

THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE COLLEGE OF LAW WILL BE SEARCHING FOR A NEW DEAN IN THE FALL. If you’re a legal academic who’s interested, start polishing up your resume.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN, “DESPITE?”: Trump Talks Up U.K. Trade Deal Despite Brexit Impasse.

President Trump promised Britain a broad free-trade accord once it leaves the European Union, an offer that would require the U.K. to secure the decisive break with the bloc advocated by prominent Brexit backers in the race to succeed Prime Minister Theresa May.

Such an agreement, though, could take years to materialize even after an abrupt split and would face multiple political hurdles in the U.K. and the U.S.

At a press conference with Mrs. May on the second day of a three-day state visit, Mr. Trump talked up close economic links between the U.S. and its ally and said a free-trade pact had “tremendous potential” to boost trade between the two countries.

“As the U.K. makes preparations to exit the European Union, the United States is committed to a phenomenal trade deal between the U.S. and the U.K.,” he said.

As I’ve said before, Brexit wasn’t about reducing trade, but about regaining British sovereignty from Brussels. Since Brussels isn’t willing to give up the UK as it satrap, Hard Brexit is the only way out, followed by that “phenomenal trade deal.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, CAMPUS ANTI-SEMITISM EDITION: Williams College under federal investigation for discriminating against Jewish students.