CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Of course Biden admin is interfering in Biden Inc corruption probe.

THE GUTFELD EFFECT: Given the sky-high ratings for “Gutfeld!” you’d think movie stars, singers, comedians and more would be flocking to the show.

HAHA: Europe Worries That America Fights Climate Change Too Much: Companies are crossing the Atlantic to soak up green-energy subsidies, prompting fears of a new trade war.

The Inflation Reduction Act ranks among the most dishonest pieces of legislation ever passed in the U.S. How ironic, then, that the law is causing new rays of truth to burst forth—in Europe.

Europe’s complaint is that the act will work too well. The Continent has been barraged by reports of one company after another shifting investment to the U.S. from Europe in a mad dash to soak up the new law’s generous climate-related subsidies. This week it’s the prospect of a battery manufacturer ditching Scotland in favor of America. The long and growing list of companies diverting green investments to the U.S. includes German auto makers BMW and Volkswagen and Italian energy firm Enel.

This is prompting desperate calls from politicians and industry for European governments to do something. Their first choice is for Europe to expand its own green subsidies to keep up with Washington. The European Commission is making a game attempt with the €250 billion Green Deal Industrial Plan unveiled in February.

But Europe is running out of money for such flights of fancy. The EU plan mostly repurposes unspent pandemic aid, because that’s all the cash that’s available. When British Chancellor Jeremy Hunt says his government will focus on regulatory reforms rather than subsidies to entice green investment, he’s pleading poverty, not free-market virtue. The U.K. can’t afford the government spending it’s already doing, let alone a more aggressive climate-subsidy regime.

Barring that, Europe will start a trade war. The Inflation Reduction Act conditions many of its most generous handouts on local-content rules requiring that goods be manufactured in North America. These probably run afoul of U.S. commitments under global trading rules.

I remember when people were telling me that Trump was going to plunge us into destructive trade wars.

OPEN THREAD: Now with extra open-threadiness!! Double-salted with fat added!

R.I.P., TOAD. A public Facebook post by reader Bart Hall, which I don’t think he’ll mind me sharing here:

Farewell to “Toad.”

When I moved to Lawrence [Kansas] a quarter century ago, a few years before buying my farm, he was already the main “character” along the Massachusetts St downtown business area. In my youth, most towns of any size had one or two such folks, but these days Lawrence [pop 110,000] is nearly unique not only for the vitality of its downtown, but also in its genuine love for its small handful of genuine characters, of whom Toad was the chief.

He was not very bright, but made up for it in his kindness, playfulness, servant’s heart, and quiet joy. Everybody loved him, and he worked honestly in return for being looked after wherever he went. In winter he would shovel sidewalks for the stores before they opened, and be fed a good breakfast, or given a jacket.

All year long he’d pick up trash, run errands for multiple busy shopkeepers, and shoo the hard-core slob type homeless away, but share his food with them in exchange for their departure from “his” downtown.

I knew him from John’s barber shop, which I first visited 30 years ago when working in the area. Three Amyx brothers have barber shops on Mass [as we call it], and with John they are the fifth generation of downtown barbers in that family.

John’s was Toad’s lunch spot nearly every day, which is why I almost always timed my visits for midday. He’d take the barbers’ orders and purchase what they wanted. Apparently he’d never messed up an order, and the barbers made sure he had enough cash for his main meal of the day, which he would then eat happily on one of the main waiting benches, where he would tease customers, and we would tease him back — none of it in the slightest way unkind. Rather loving, in fact.

One time there was a 7 yo boy, very unhappy. Toad asked him what was the matter, to which he blubbered “I’ve lost all my teeth and I can hardly eat !” Toad offered a nearly toothless smile and said “You’ll grow new ones, but I never will.” and showed him how to use his tongue to shove food to where he did have teeth. Then handed the kid his own lunch cookie and said “Now you try it.” I gave John an extra tip for Toad’s meals, and I greatly doubt I was the only one.

Today as I sat in the chair I asked John “Where’s Toad?” … “He died yesterday, after a week in the hospital. Some driver hit him, and we all were pulling for him, but he was too smashed up.” He had stopped cutting my hair, and each of us could see in the mirror that the other was dabbing his eyes.

Such a man was the simple, sincere Toad. He had no next-of-kin, but hundreds of us mourn the man’s passing. He took what he had and with loving hearts all around him he made a different sort of life, but a profoundly successful one. Downtown merchants are already discussing where to install a significant bronze plaque in his honor, but it will be somewhere in his kingdom, pictured below.

Having such a fine small city only 20 km away greatly enhances my life out here … beyond the sidewalks.

Lawrence is a nice little town.

HOW ABOUT JUST GET US TO MARS: Our pledge to diversify the space industry workforce continues.

NO, BUT IT’S EASIER AND MORE REMUNERATIVE: Shoddy Research Won’t Help People Who Actually Have Long Covid. “I’m going to tread carefully when it comes to long Covid because it’s a very fraught subject. Some people think they have it and are very frustrated that they are not taken more seriously, or given more useful advice, by the medical establishment. This is understandable. But if we don’t know much about a subject, we don’t know much about that subject. We should be particularly careful and methodical about advancing our knowledge of it, rather than leaping to conclusions before much evidence is in. . . . I feel like if my AP Psych teacher had handed out this paper just a month or two into our first semester and asked what was the major flaw with it, everyone would have shot their hands up to point out that people might not be able to accurately diagnose themselves with a medical condition, and that they also might not be excellent judges of the effect that condition has on how others perceive them.”

I THOUGHT SCIENCE HAD DECIDED IT’S ALL SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED NOW: A Single Gene Determines Sex in Most Animals, According to A New Analysis.

YES: SpaceX’s development process is messier, but it’s also much faster. “For those who know a bit more about the launch industry and the iterative design methodology, getting the Super Heavy rocket and Starship upper stage off the launch pad was a huge success. Why? Because one could sit in meetings for ages and discuss everything that could go wrong with a rocket like this, with an unprecedented number of first stage engines and its colossal size. The alternative is simply to get the rocket into a ‘good enough’ configuration and go fly. Flying is the ultimate test, providing the best data. There is no more worrying about theoretical failures. The company’s engineers actually get to identify what is wrong and then go and fix it. But you have to accept some failure.”

LUBE ‘EM UP, THEN: Hair becomes gray with age as stem cells get stuck in hair follicles, study shows.

BEEGE WELBORN: Avoiding Sudanistan.

“The American mission in the capital warned Thursday that ‘due to the uncertain security situation in Khartoum and closure of the airport, it is not currently safe to undertake a U.S. government-coordinated evacuation of private U.S. citizens.’ If that wasn’t a horrific deja vu moment of international disgrace and national tragedy, I don’t know what one would be.”

Related:

The Last Helicopter scene againhttps://t.co/hxU8p3AtiO

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) April 21, 2023

HMM: Easier access to marijuana may increase suicidal behavior.

CLEAN ENERGY: Farmer: Wind turbine fire in rural Western New York caused contamination to family, livestock, and land.

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY: She Said, ‘You’ll Be a Dentist!’ “This week we have the strange case of the itinerant dentist, something even better than a bitchin’ Camaro, and Michigan Man’s excellent forklift adventure.”

JUSTICE BREYER ON JUSTICE THOMAS: “A man of integrity.”

ROBIN HANSON: “Compared to some, I am less worried about extreme near-term AI doom scenarios. But I also don’t like policy being sensitive to my or anyone else’s risk estimates. I instead prefer robust policies, ones we can expect to promote total welfare for a wide range of parameter values.”

READER FAVORITE: Crocs Unisex-Adult Classic Clogs. #CommissionEarned

I GUESS THE ECONOMY ISN’T DYING FAST ENOUGH AS IS: Biden to sign order prioritizing ‘environmental justice.’

SKYNET SMILES: Drones can fly themselves with worm-inspired AI software.

BETTER PUT UP MY UMBRELLA: Old NASA satellite plunges to Earth over Sahara Desert.

CATCH AND RELEASE IS FABULOUS: Illegal aliens who are LGBTQ ‘may not be detained’ under Democrats’ new bill. “The Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act, from Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., is aimed at setting minimum standards for detention facilities where thousands of illegal aliens are kept as they await processing. Among other things, it would bar the use of private detention facilities and make sure government-run facilities meet minimum standards as defined by the American Bar Association.”

WELL, GOOD: A renewable, engineered cell product shows potential for treating neurodegenerative and retinal diseases.

REVEALED: Biden Campaign and Tony Blinken Orchestrated Letter From Intel Officials Disputing Hunter Biden Laptop.

READER FAVORITE: JLHT 40X60 Monocular Telescope High Power Monocular for Adults. #CommissionEarned

JOE PAPPALARDO: Why yesterday’s Starship test was a success.

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