WELL, THAT WAS CONVENIENT: Humans simultaneously evolved the ability to use tools, teach tool usage.
Archive for 2020
November 19, 2020
SHOCKER: Switching to e-cigarettes from smoking reduces toxic chemical exposure. “Switching to pod e-cigarettes significantly reduced exposure to toxins which cause disease, [and] smokers who made a complete switch experienced the greatest reduction in exposure, [while those] who made a partial switch also experienced reduced harm.” Obviously, we need to ban these immediately.
OLD AND BUSTED: “Listen — strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!”
The New Hotness? Armed Medieval Soldier Found at Bottom of Lithuanian Lake.
AL GORE HAS YET TO COMMENT: Team Trump: Evidence Shows ‘More Than Double’ the Vote Margin in Swing States Is From Illegal Ballots.
THE WAY I SEE IT, THERE’S NO POINT HAVING ONE OF THESE UNLESS YOU ALSO HAVE A DRIVER: 2021 Mercedes-Maybach S580 Luxury Liner Has It All, and Then Some.
FOR A GUY WHO THEY SAY LOST, TRUMP SURE HAD STRONG COATTAILS, AND FOR A GUY WHO WON, BIDEN SURE DIDN’T: Republicans won all 27 House races listed as ‘toss-ups’ — and then some.
VIDEO: THE INSTAWIFE TALKS ABOUT HER TIME ON “SNAPPED.”
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: University of Wisconsin Declares Large Rock to be Racist; Votes to Remove.
RAISING KANE REVISITED: Herman Mankiewicz, Pauline Kael, and the Battle Over “Citizen Kane.” The New Yorker walks back some of their own critic’s 1970s-era revisionism:
When “Raising Kane” was published, the piece outraged Welles himself—who was busily working on movies, including “The Other Side of the Wind”—and caused an outcry among critics who appreciated Welles’s entire œuvre and among historians who knew the fuller story. In October of 1972, in Esquire, the filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich rebutted Kael’s findings with his own ten-thousand-word piece, titled “The Kane Mutiny.” In it, Bogdanovich demonstrated that, in reporting her piece, Kael had failed to speak with Welles or anyone who’d worked with him on the script, or, for that matter, with anyone who might have provided a different point of view. Bogdanovich interviewed the screenwriter Charles Lederer, a close friend of Mankiewicz’s, who said that Mankiewicz complained to him about Welles’s many changes to the script. Welles’s secretary from the time, Katherine Trosper, hearing of the charge that Welles wrote nothing of “Citizen Kane,” told Bogdanovich, “Then I’d like to know what was all that stuff I was always typing for Mr. Welles!” Among the other sources Bogdanovich spoke with was a U.C.L.A. professor, Howard Suber, who claimed that Kael had cajoled him—with a promise of a book contract that never materialized—into sharing his copious research on “Citizen Kane” with her, only to use it in her piece, uncredited, while distorting its findings—“After months of investigation I regard the authorship of Kane as a very open question,” he said. Bogdanovich wrote, in 1998, that although he had done “all the legwork, research, and interviews” for the piece, Welles himself—a close friend and associate—“had taken a strong hand in revising and rewriting” it. (In a recent e-mail, Bogdanovich said that there were “bits and pieces that Orson added or subtracted—added, mainly.”)
Well worth a read in its entirety for Welles and Kane aficionados.
Earlier: Orson Welles: American Maverick.
IF YOU POINT OUT REPORTS LIKE THIS ONE IT’S BECAUSE YOU’RE ANTISCIENCE: Doctors Say Man Who Died After Falling off 10-Foot Ladder Actually Killed by COVID.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Skills Check Live: The Placement Test.
JUST THE SAME AS THE OLD MARSHMALLOW MEDIA: Meet the new marshmallow media in the Biden era.
Reporter 3, Question 1: “Thank you very much, Mr. President-elect. I want to kind of piggyback off of that. I want to get your thoughts on the president’s tweet over the weekend, where he first seemed to acknowledge that you won, then he said he won’t concede, then he said, ‘I won.’ How did you interpret that? And at the end of the day, do you want him to concede?”
You get the idea: Trump will be the center of the media universe for the foreseeable future, even after the inauguration. For Biden, it’s the easiest question to receive: “Trump said this; Trump tweeted that. How do you respond?”
It should be noted that Kamala Harris, the most invisible vice-presidential candidate in modern history, has yet to hold a press conference or press gaggle in any capacity since being chosen as Biden’s running mate months ago. She did make a statement before Monday’s press conference and was on stage with her boss during the presser. But not one reporter bothered to ask her even one question.
Compare the media’s kid-gloves questioning of Biden to their interrogation of then-President-elect Donald Trump at his first press conference during his transition. (Note: Two days before the press conference, the heads of intelligence agencies at the time released a report stating that Russia had interfered with the 2016 election, leading many reporters in the room to make that the singular focus of the press conference.) From that first Trump presser:
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense. The media don’t love Biden the same way they swooned over Obama, but they’re determined to prop up their boss as long as he’s still alive and making public appearances.
BIDEN’S ANTICOATTAILS: A Look At The State-Level Democratic Crash. “With the final results of the presidential race still up in the air, let’s look at the horrible job the Democratic Party did in down-ballot races.”
Previously: Politically, America is looking increasingly like Tennessee.
THIS HYSTERICAL HEADLINE DOESN’T SUGGEST CONFIDENCE, AND ALSO DOESN’T SOUND LIKE SOMETHING THAT SHOULD BE ATOP A “NEWS” STORY, BUT HEY, IT’S THE NYT IN 2020: Trump tries to subvert the election, inviting Michigan G.O.P. lawmakers to the White House.
ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Can eating mangoes reduce women’s facial wrinkles?
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Why Dennis Quaid’s ‘Reagan’ Biopic Can’t Arrive Soon Enough. “Hollywood’s latest hit piece on The Gipper comes from, where else, Showtime.”
The Left will never forgive Reagan for winning the Cold War.