WHEN HE’S RIGHT HE’S RIGHT: Bill Maher praises Ron DeSantis: ‘He protected his most vulnerable population,’ unlike Andrew Cuomo.

BRYAN PRESTON: How Oil Saves the Whales—With Bill Gates and Elon Musk.

A PJ MEDIA THREEFER FOR OUR VIP SUPPORTERS: Progressive California Couple Flees from… Low Taxes?

Plus: George W. Bush Is Trying to Have It Both Ways on the Immigration Debate.

Finally: I Can’t Even Anymore With St. Anthony of Covid’s Vaccine Recommendations.

AS USUAL, WOMEN HARDEST HIT: ‘Zoom Fatigue’ May Finally Have an Explanation, And It’s Affecting Women More. “One of the primary drivers behind this video calling weariness seems to be what the researchers are calling ‘mirror anxiety,’ or the mental strain of having to constantly look at yourself, across what might be hours of meetings per day. . . . It also emerged that women feel more trapped by having to stay in the camera’s field of view, tend to have longer meetings than men on average, and typically take fewer breaks. Previous research has shown women are more likely to focus on themselves when looking in a mirror, and it seems a Zoom window is similar, triggering a heightened self-consciousness and awareness of appearance that can lead to negative thoughts.”

LOUIS K. BONHAM:  “UT Austin Approves Orwellian ‘Strategic Plan for Faculty Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity.”

JESUS AND WILLIAM WALLACE HAVE SOMETHING IN COMMON: Well, both are known for their swords, though for radically different reasons. And there are legend issues regarding both.

THE REAL MINIMUM WAGE IS ZERO: No Human Can Match This High-Speed Box-Unloading Robot Named After a Pickle.

DIGITAL THUGGERY: Crowdfunding Data Breach Triggers Witch Hunt Against Cops Who Support Kyle Rittenhouse. “A data breach at the Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo has revealed the identities of law enforcement personnel who contributed to the legal defense fund for Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old boy who opened fire amid the chaos of riots in Kenosha, Wisc., seemingly in self-defense. The Guardian contacted the employers of cops who dared to contribute to Rittenhouse in an apparent attempt to get them fired.”

21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Designed proteins assemble antibodies into modular nanocages.

ANOTHER “DOG BITES MAN” EXAMPLE OF DEMOCRAT HYPOCRISY: ‘Cancel Rent’ Champion Ayanna Pressley Raked in Thousands as Landlord, Records Show.

SLEEP MATTERS: Shift work-induced sleep problems may raise risk for heart health problems.

IN THE TANK? THEY BUILT THE TANK: New Study Shows Just How in the Tank for Biden the Legacy Media Is.

FASTER, PLEASE: New understanding of the deleterious immune response in rheumatoid arthritis.

TEAM BLUE, AS YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED, NEVER ANSWERS FOR ANYTHING: Team Blue Should End Its Unhealthy Obsession With COVID-19 Panic Porn. “But the frustrating truth of the matter is that Team Blue doesn’t want to hear this. Many people—predominantly liberals—who claim to Follow the Science and Trust the Experts no matter what are nevertheless captivated by pandemic panic porn. By asserting, for instance, that social distancing and masks should be mandatory even for the vaccinated, they bizarrely fixate on the minuscule risk of post-vaccination infection.”

Science!

Even the New York Times is on the case: Irrational Covid Fears: Why do so many vaccinated people remain fearful? Listen to the professor’s story. “If you’re vaccinated, a mask is more of a symbol of solidarity than anything else.”

I’M NOT REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING A 12-PACK OF DIET COKE ON CITIZEN KANE’S COFFEE TABLE: How product placements may soon be added to classic films.

Product placement is big business for movies and TV series alike, and items can now be added digitally to films and programmes both new and old.

Fans of classic war flicks will know the scene [from The Great Escape] — actor Steve McQueen revs his motorcycle furiously as he is chased by German soldiers.

Hoping to use the bike to jump over a barbed wire border fence, and reach safety in Switzerland, he pauses to gather his thoughts by a barn.

On the side of the building is a big poster advertising a best-selling beer.

You don’t remember the billboard advert? Well it might not have been there the last time you watched The Great Escape, but it could well be the next.

For TV reruns, it’s not all that new a development, as this 2011 Slate video explores:

Regarding Citizen Kane being colorized, Orson Welles was famously quoted as saying, two weeks before he died in 1985, “Don’t let Ted Turner deface my movie with his crayons.”

His ghost is saying the same thing right now about digitally inserting a 12-pack of Diet Coke into the living room of Xanadu.

I’LL TAKE HEADLINES FROM 2009 FOR $500, ALEX: Can we reflect sunlight to fight climate change? Scientists eye aerosol shield for Earth.

Could we slow down global warming by creating an aerosol reflector to deflect the sun’s rays away from Earth?

This strategy — which is at an early phase of research — is being investigated by the Climate Intervention Biology Working Group. It is co-led by Michigan State University and Stony Brook University in New York, supported by the National Science Foundation, and describes itself as “a team of internationally recognized experts” who study ecology and climate science.

The group has been meeting remotely every month since September 2019 to discuss the aerosol idea, called “solar radiation modification.” While there are a few ways to reflect the sun’s rays back into space, the group suggests focusing on a method that would involve creating an artificial cloud of aerosols in the stratosphere. In theory, engineers could replenish the cloud and change its location to hit a temperature target, although how this would happen is still being figured out.

The article in the third link discusses burning through “a total of about $3.5 billion over the course of the next 15 years to develop the technology. (Most of those funds would go into building planes able to carry big tanks of aerosol spray into the stratosphere, about double the cruising altitude of a Boeing 747.) Once the tech is ready, the researchers found, the project would then cost another $2.25 billion or so each following year (assuming the effort would run for the next 15 years).” But John Holdren, Obama’s Dr. Strangelove-esque “science” “czar” explored the same process using rockets as a delivery mechanism with an “unexpectedly” nonplussed AP back in 2009:

Apparently, despite being told that he only had four years to save the planet, even Obama wasn’t crazy enough to let Holdren go for it, a warning others might want to keep in mind.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A MUCH BIGGER BLOG: Why the Media Deserves a Failing Grade During Biden’s First 100 Days.

HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS LEGION: Hard on the heels of revelations one of the Black Lives Matter poo-bahs recently purchased a costly mansion in a posh nearly all-white California neighborhood comes Collin Anderson of the Washington Free Beacon with news about clean-shaven landlord Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA):

“The progressive congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (D., Mass.) has called rent cancellation legislation ‘literally a matter of life and death.’ At the same time, she has collected cash from her own rental properties.

“Pressley and her husband made as much as $15,000 in rental income in 2019 after purchasing a $658,000 Boston home, according to property records and financial disclosures reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. The income appears to come over the course of four months—the unit was first listed for $2,500 a month in June 2019 and the posting was removed in August.”

Who knew Pressley and hubby would die without collecting that rent?

LESSONS FROM ANOTHER FAILED U.S. WAR: That’s the title for The Federalist piece by Sumantra Maitra on the imminent withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, after 20 years of “stabilizing” the unstabilizable.

This graph captures the essential background:

“It was the same when the British empire retreated from Kabul in 1842, realizing that, unlike other parts of the globe that had some coherent form of civilization, Afghanistan had none, and as a result, had little chance of any genuine improvement. Upon their exit, the British kept a wary eye on the region and on the potential Russian imperial invasion that never came. The empire often took punitive counter-insurgency operations against tribal rebels, but never tried to occupy or pacify the proud region ever again (there are archival photos of the British-Indian air force bombing Afghan rebels in 1937).”

I’m not holding my breath on whether the U.S. elite has learned anything from these past 20 years.

A TALE OF TWO AFGHANISTAN WITHDRAWALS:

President Joe Biden announced this week that he was pulling all remaining American troops out of Afghanistan by September 11 — and the media rushed to frame the decision positively. They are technically correct — it makes zero sense to continue to put American lives at risk and spend taxpayer dollars on a decades-long ‘war’ with no foreseeable end nor desire to ‘win’. But as you can guess, when former president Donald Trump announced he would withdraw troops from Afghanistan just last year, the media hysterically warned that he was emboldening the Taliban and making America less safe.

‘Trump administration to cut troop levels in Afghanistan despite Pentagon warnings,’ the Washington Post reported.

‘The Trump administration says it will pull thousands of troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan by Jan. 15 and aims to have the remaining forces out by Spring 2021 — a drawdown that has military leaders worried,’ NPR wrote.

‘Pres. Trump said “it is time” for all US service members to exit Afghanistan, undermining his administration’s agreement with the Taliban,’ ABC News said.

The public affairs consultant Drew Holden has compiled a full Twitter thread of headlines like these, alongside the current much friendlier headlines about Biden’s announcement.

The symmetry of the GWOT ending as it began, with the same 180 degree pivots from the DNC and its media wing is something to behold:

TYLER O’NEIL: America’s HEARTBREAKING Weekend of Mass Shootings.

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Meet Joe Biden’s CCP-Connected Ambassador to China.

Insanity Wrap needs to know: Ever heard the old story where the SecState asks his new ambassador to point on the globe which country they’ll represent at their new post, and when they point to Germany or wherever, the SecState corrects them by pointing to the US?

Answer: Neither does Nick Burns.

Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.

• Being Livid Marxists is the new BLM (the old one, too)
• Facebook’s private police force is half the size of the SFPD
• Come see the anti-Asian racism inherent in the leftism

Bonus Sanity: Fly the Martian Skies.

And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21st CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Behold! NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity snaps stunning photo from its 1st flight. There’s video from Perseverance, too!

I’M EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: Extended Range Cannon Artillery: Going Boom 43 Miles Away.