I THINK IT’S VAPORWARE: The Truth Behind Russia’s ‘Apocalypse Torpedo.’ Or, possibly, cover for some other program.

THE TRAGEDY OF ELECTRONIC MUSIC: This Atlantic review of “Future Sounds, a new book on the history of machine-made pop and classical songs, suggests that the radical power of the synthetic has largely been forgotten” — and eventually, the reader discovers that it’s all Reagan and Thatcher’s fault:

The book’s preface warps back to the sci-fi excitement of the year 1977, when Star Wars was playing in multiplexes and the Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer single “I Feel Love”—“pure, silver, shimmering, arcing, perfectly puttering hover-car brilliance,” Stubbs writes—was revolutionizing dance floors. Much as the Italian Futurists had agitated for a new canon in the early 20th century, and as the hippies’ rock and roll drowned out their parents’ sing-alongs, electronic music helped turn an entire culture toward wondering, What’s next? David Bowie, Kraftwerk, and others tried to answer the question with still-staggering inventiveness.

The tragedy, as Stubbs tells it, is that giddy anticipation of a paradigm shift ran up against the political regressions of the Reagan and Thatcher eras—and their accompanying oversaturated consumer culture. Even great breakthroughs got hijacked to dreary effect. “When the sampler became an affordable and ubiquitous piece of kit in the mid-1980s, it proved to be as enslaving as it was liberating,” he writes. “Rather than opening up multiple textural potentialities it degenerated into a box of tropes and tics and habits. The same stuttering effects, the same incredibly narrow pool of source material.”

Is there nothing that Reagan, Thatcher, and capitalism couldn’t do? How dare they cause the technological progress that saw the first modern music computers and samplers, such as the Fairlight, which sold for the staggering $40,000 price tag that Peter Gabriel paid in 1979 to the $8,000 E-Mu Emulator in 1982, to the infinitely more powerful DAWs that are now available for both PCs and Apple devices for free.

ENTREPRENEUR MAGAZINE: THE PROBLEM WITH JOHNNIE WALKER’S JANE WALKER SCOTCH WAS PERCEPTION:

For Diageo, the Jane Walker branded scotch is identical to the Johnnie Walker branded scotch, so the new branding wasn’t based on product-related preferences. It was entirely based on a new aspect of the brand promise, but the way it was launched made people question that brand promise. Does Diageo really care about women’s rights, or is the company just trying to gain more exposure with the conveniently timed launch? Based on this consumer confusion and coupled with the company’s own comments about its product and the purpose of Jane Walker, the effort was tarnished with negative perceptions regardless of the company’s actual intentions.

Jacoby later clarified the intention of Jane Walker, saying, “This wasn’t about making a whiskey for women. We would never make anything that’s ‘for women’s palates.’ Taste buds have no gender.” However, the negative perception had already traveled fast and far.

The lesson to learn from Jane Walker is to match your products, marketing and efforts to your brand promise, and if there could be a disconnect, close the gap and massage consumer perceptions before you make any big changes.

Note that this was written 10 months before it was obvious that Johnnie Walker was an anti-Trump brand in bed with a group of rabid anti-Semites.

THE INSTAWIFE: ‘Trying to get your home to look like a hotel room is an impossible task so stop trying.’

THE CATHOLIC BONFIRE AT THE STAKE:

Last night before bed, having only seen those shorter videos, I retweeted a condemnation of these boys. Now I regret that, having seen the whole video, and observing how left-wing activists — some of them Christian — are seizing on this ugly incident to discredit the March For Life, a massive annual event protesting the murder of the unborn.

To be clear, it is POSSIBLE that these boys really did make fun of this old Native American man. If that’s what happened, they should apologize.

I don’t think this is what happened at all, though. These boys were already chanting their high school chants. Nathan Phillips confronted them. They don’t appear to understand what point he was making with his own chanting and drum-beating. And now they are held up to the contempt of the country for something they appear not to have done at all. And, the news accounts conveniently ignore the provocative, racist, foul-mouthed attacks on the boys by one of Phillips’s Native American companions.

* * * * * * * *

From what I can tell from over here, what is being reported about the Covington Catholic boys appears to be almost 100 percent Fake News. I started out ready to condemn those boys, but after watching more videos of the entire incident, I changed my mind. I am willing to revise this opinion if more facts come forward, and I welcome your e-mailing them to me.

Read the whole thing.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: For 2020, Don’t Bet on Beto.

MICHAEL WALSH ON FRIDAY’S BUZZFEED DEBACLE: Schmucks with Underwoods.

COLLUSION: University demands student pay $500 for public records on its Chinese propaganda institute. Something to hide here?

OVER AT USA TODAY, A TRUMP REPORT CARD. Grades range from A to F-. I give him a B+, with the downchecks being on the Congressional side.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Writing prof: Grading based on quality is racist.

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IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID: Entering year 3: Trump’s economy better than Obama’s, jobs highest ‘in decades.’

DEMOCRATS’ PUERTO RICAN JUNKET WENT LARGELY UNREPORTED IN THE MEDIA … BECAUSE IT’S NOT WORTH MENTIONING WHEN IT’S DEMOCRATS WHO DON’T SHOW UP FOR WORK: This is a good example of the tendency Hal Pashler and I documented in Perceptions of Newsworthiness Are Contaminated by a Political Usefulness Bias. This tendency won’t come as a shock to any observant person who pays attention to politics, but it was fun to run an experiment that confirmed it.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): As always:

TO BE FAIR, NOT MUCH TWISTING WAS ACTUALLY REQUIRED: Kimberly Ross: The Women’s March has twisted feminism into toxic femininity.

What began as a response to President Trump’s election and his questionable behavior toward women has morphed into a symbol of another sickness, that of toxic femininity. The organizers of the Women’s March insist they promote equality, diversity, and freedom — while contradicting these values with their words and actions. Included on their page of unity principles are the terms human rights, gender justice/gender norms, racial justice, and reproductive freedom. Meanwhile, women directly associated with the campaign’s very formulation, Tamika Mallory and Sharia law-loving Linda Sarsour, are unabashed anti-Semites. Mallory, who reveres the blatantly racist Louis Farrakhan, refused to publicly condemn his words of hate during a recent exchange on “The View” with Meghan McCain. Mallory even tried to cover up her clear endorsement of hate by making it a gender issue and stating that she “should never be judged through the lens of a man.”

Just another lefty front group.

THE CRUELTY IS THE ATTRACTION: Democrats now in their ninth year of tormenting the Little Sisters of the Poor.

NICE: The marvel of the human dad: Among our close animal relatives, only humans have involved and empathic fathers. Why did evolution favour the devoted dad?

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UNEXPECTEDLY: Democrats Immediately Reject Trump’s Offer to End Shutdown.

SO I’M READING GREG BENFORD’S REWRITE, and it gave me a thought about the theological implications of the “many worlds” version of quantum theory. Theologians have worked on the problem of evil, but I think the many worlds theory either makes it go away entirely, or maybe makes it worse. On the go away entirely side, under many worlds you don’t have to worry about why God lets evil happen, because God lets absolutely everything happen. And it kind of evens out: Maybe you die of pediatric cancer in one universe, but in another you’re a billionaire rock star who lives to 90, or a saint. (On the other hand, on the “make it worse” side, everybody dies of pediatric cancer, or worse, in some universe or another). Somebody’s probably worked all this out somewhere, but it was a new thought to me.

OPEN THREAD: Party like you’re a Bay City Rollers tribute band.

THAT’S NICE, I JUST WISH I TRUSTED THEM WITH MY DATA: Alphabet’s Verily ECG watch gets FDA approval as medical device.