MICROBIOME NEWS, UNSETTLED-SCIENCE EDITION: Babies May Not Be Born With a Microbiome After All, Scientists Say.

THIS SOUNDS AWFUL: McDonald’s begins testing strawless lids in select markets.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Coming soon to Arizona schools: ‘massive layoffs’ and ‘disaster,’ unless our leaders act.

So wait, what’s the problem?

READER FAVORITE: TurboTax Deluxe 2022 Tax Software, Federal and State Tax Return. #CommissionEarned

WELL, THAT’S COMFORTING: World Health Organization Recommends Stockpiling Meds for Radiological Catastrophe.

Related: The Unexpected Return of Duck and Cover.

Plus: Shhh: Nobody Talk About World War III.

REGARDING THE RNC SHENANIGANS A FRIEND EMAILS: “Omg I wish establishment republicans would take their love of getting beaten into the bedroom and then maybe they wouldn’t get off on losing to democrats.”

She has a point, you know.

SORRY, I’M NOT GIVING UP MY CHAINSAW BAYONET: 3 Defensive Handgun Features You Don’t Really Need.

OF COURSE IT DID: Twitter Files #15: Twitter knew Hamilton 68, a media source for Russian online activity, was ‘bulls**t.’

YOU KNOW YOU WANT ONE: Coofandy Men’s Hawaiian Floral Shirts. #CommissionEarned

I PREDICT LOW ENTHUSIASM: The FDA says get used to COVID-19 vaccine boosters.

A NEW WAY TO SAVE THE PLANET — SURGERY WITHOUT ANESTHESIA: Reducing anesthetics during surgery decreases greenhouse gases without affecting patient care, study shows.

CHANGE: FDA proposes easing blood donation restrictions based on sexuality.

SCIENCE, UNSETTLED: Fresh questions about oxytocin as the ‘love hormone’ behind pair bonding.

HOW’S THAT WELCOME WAGON PROGRAM COMING ALONG? How New York Stopped Fearing the Urban Doom Loop and Learned to Love It. “Covid sends the high-wage workers back to their suburban homes, which kills the restaurant and retail and entertainment industries of the city, which is the entire point of even living in or near a city in the first place, and as those businesses die, people realize there is no reason remaining to be in the city, and begin a mass emigration away that kills the cities. The Democrats’ embrace of violence, crime, and chaos as acceptable substitutes for restaurants, shopping, and entertainment obviously isn’t helping. Covid took away all the advantages for living in the city, and then the Summer of St. George unleashed all the disadvantages of living in the city, with a vengeance.”

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Egghead Inflation Edition.

BE PREPARED: Anker 525 Charging Station. #CommissionEarned

THIS IS THE WAY: DeSantis’ College Appointees Like Chris Rufo Show The Battle For America’s Academies Is Far From Over.

DeSantis’ move proves the fight to reclaim American education is not a lost cause and — institutionally, at least — it may even be less of a conceptual uphill battle to reclaim the academy and rechart the trajectory of our nation’s youth than many may think. After all, it really shouldn’t be that difficult of a task for conservative leaders to appoint conservatives like Rufo to the boards of public schools in red states with Republican majority legislatures.

But even so, that doesn’t mean it isn’t a battle, and engaging in conflict — especially in the current political climate — comes with risk. With the understanding that their appointment to the board would likely ruffle the feathers of those in the predominantly leftist New College community, Rufo and Eddie Speir, another trustee, scheduled two town hall events in which they could address the concerns of students, parents, faculty, alumni, and the general public, which the Sarasota Democratic Party encouraged people to protest.

The night before the events took place, death threats were made against Speir, leading to college faculty, notably Provost Suzanne Sherman, confronting Rufo and Speir and insisting the event be shut down while encouraging students and faculty to “refrain from attending.” Catherine Helean, a public relations officer of the college, stated that the threats “were perceived to be credible.”

Despite the provost’s insistence that the event be canceled for safety, Speir — whose life was explicitly threatened — and Rufo pushed forward and were able to engage students, faculty, and community members in conversations about their concerns for New College in the months and years to come.

Here’s the pregame show before their speech:

Polite. Firm. Bravo. Trustees run institutions not those below them on the org chart. https://t.co/ILziyrdVHP

— Hugh Hewitt (@hughhewitt) January 28, 2023

SO, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING VALUABLE, THEN: Five universities are hiring or have recently hired a chief experience officer (CXO), an administrative position that does for college students what human resources (HR) does for employees.

GREAT MOMENTS IN STATE-RUN TV: MSNBC’s Chris Hayes: Biden Economic Recovery Most Remarkable in U.S. History.

IT’S AN OFFICIOUS WHITE WOMAN ACADEMIC SAYING THIS, OF COURSE: White people need to ‘work’ on their ‘whiteness’: sociologist.

TO BE HONEST, A RETAIL JOB IS PROBABLY MORE HONORABLE THAN WORKING IN MEDIA: Washington Post’s Felicia Sonmez now works in retail. “Frankly, retail work is the backbone of American society. Her new role is also a big middle finger to her old boss Jeff Bezos: what better way to stick it to the man who killed in-person shopping than to work in a store?”

GREAT MOMENTS IN HARSH SENTENCING: Firebomb an NYPD police car during a riot, get a year in prison.

In a dramatic hearing on Thursday, a federal judge sentenced a corporate attorney who firebombed a police car during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests to a year in jail, arguing that his prestigious education — boarding school, Princeton, a law degree from New York University — should have rendered him a peacekeeper, not an instigator.

“You’re not one of the oppressed. You’re one of the privileged,” senior Eastern District of New York Judge Brian Cogan told Colinford Mattis, even as he expressed admiration for what the 35-year-old had accomplished in his life.

The sentencing marked the culmination of a two-and-a-half-year legal battle that saw Mattis and his co-defendant, Urooj Rahman, become symbols of the nation’s political tumult and divisions. Spanning two presidential administrations, their case saw competing imperatives play out in public and in the courtroom, as well as in the media.

To the Heritage Foundation they were “terrorists,” while New York magazine allowed that they could be seen as “civil-rights heroes, even martyrs.” The Daily Mail called them “woke lawyers.” In the pages of the New York Times, they were described by a guest contributor as victims of “deeply ingrained injustices.”

They threw a Molotov cocktail into a police SUV, adding the obligatory “fiery” component to a “mostly peaceful” riot — but fortunately for them, they’re not Andy Ngo or Ted Cruz, both of whom Yahoo’s Alexander Nazaryan has compared to Nazis.

WELL, BYE: Nobody’s Watching: CNN Ratings Plunge Even Further — For Good Reason.

FLASHBACK: WHY NOT A WAITING PERIOD FOR LAWS? “I’d like to propose a ‘waiting period’ for legislation. No bill should be voted on without hearings, debate and a final text that’s available online for at least a week. (A month would be better. How many bills really couldn’t wait a month?). And if the bill is advertised as addressing a “tragedy” or named after a dead child, this period should double.”

PFIZER’S RESPONSE TO PROJECT VERITAS’S STING FAILS TO CONVINCE:

There’s a lot of doublespeak and hiding behind language there. While Pfizer insists it performs no gain-of-function research, it goes on to admit that in a “limited number of cases,” the company engineers the COVID-19 virus to “enable the assessment of antiviral activity in cells.” That seems like it requires a lot more explanation, does it not? Because it seems to be somewhat in contradiction with their initial claim.

The real issue here is what is worth the risk and what isn’t. It’s not completely out of line for a pharmaceutical company to do research toward developing vaccines for possible variants. To completely frame that pursuit as nefarious would be to dismiss and discourage lots of positive research throughout the history of medicine.

With that said, it seems pretty clear, at least in my view, that Pfizer isn’t doing what it’s doing because they fear future variants, and with so many people already having been infected, the efficacy of more and more boosters remains in doubt anyway. COVID-19 vaccines and antivirals are what make Pfizer billions of dollars, and they have every incentive to keep shoving boosters out while insisting they are needed because of “variants.”

Their statement isn’t going to convince anyone on the fence. It’s obfuscatory and confusing at best, and given Pfizer’s history of misleading the public, there’s no reason to take the company’s word for anything.

True.