CASSIDY WHO? Cassidy Hutchinson’s Book Claims Fall Apart After Man in Story Speaks Out. I’m hearing similar things from other people mentioned in her book.

HIGHER EDUCATION’S BLOODY HISTORY: Oxford Was The Murder Capital of Late Medieval England, And It Was All Because of Students. “A deep dive into historical documents reveals that during the late medieval period in the 14th century CE, Oxford had a per capita murder rate four to five times higher than other high-population hubs like York and London. And the reason? Bloody students.”

OLD AND BUSTED: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

The New Hotness at the WaPo? The rise of ‘Chinese Communist Party’ as a pejorative.

A TRIUMPH FOR DIVERSITY, BUT PEOPLE ARE UNHAPPY: “My Ancestors Rolling In They Graves:” White Woman Wins 2023 Miss Universe Zimbabwe Over ‘Melanated’ Candidates. “The country boasts a population of more than 14 million, with non-Black people making up roughly two percent.”

YOLO: British Pilot Snorts Coke Off Topless Woman, Parties & Gets Fired Before Flying Home To UK: Report.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG, TOTALLY NORMAL: What’s Going on in Arizona? 4th in Line Steps in As ‘Acting Governor.’

RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE: Mohamad al Bared guilty of terror offence after designing ‘kamikaze’ drone for ISIS.

FASTER, PLEASE: Gene therapy may restore mobility after spinal cord injury, animal study finds.

GREAT MOMENTS IN SELF-PROMOTION: Instagram personality ‘Meatball’ arrested after live-streaming participation in Philadelphia looting spree. “Pro-tip: Don’t actively film and publish videos of yourself mid-crime. Because apparently that needs to be said.”

THE 21st CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I HAD HOPED: Trans-identified male violently beats female student in Oregon middle school: video.

https://twitter.com/Riley_Gaines_/status/1707370160909115460

ACE OF SPADES: Fox News Again Rigs A GOP Debate, Asking Questions That Leftwing Voters (and Fox “Journalists”) Care About But Which Actual Republicans Do Not.

SHOCK VIDEOS [VIP]: Trans Student Assaults Three Girls at Oregon Middle School.

LAW ENFORCEMENT: Security researcher warns of chilling effect after feds search phone at airport: Sam Curry says a grand jury subpoena ordering him to testify was later canceled.

GREAT MOMENTS IN CRIMINAL GENIUS: Thief Returns to Scene of Crime to Demand Return of Dropped Cell Phone.

READER FAVORITE: Men’s Wrist Watch, Automatic Mechanical Stainless Steel Sports Diving Watch. #CommissionEarned

RIP: Michael Gambon was so much more than Professor Dumbledore.

Gambon was predominantly a stage actor until middle age, working in a mixture of classical roles and with contemporary writers such as Harold Pinter and Alan Ayckbourn — with whom he collaborated frequently. But then around the early Nineties, his inimitably craggy looks saw him cast in a range of parts in both television and film as everything from dissolute aristocrats to crime bosses. The parts were often beneath him, but Gambon, who was a keen collector of everything from antique weapons to complex timepieces, was indiscriminate about the work he took on, working for everyone from Tim Burton to Wes Anderson. He also voiced the character of Great Uncle Pastuzo in the Paddington films; his inimitably rich tones, which had hints of his Irish and working-class London ancestry, meant that he was always in demand for voiceover work.

Gambon was often an outrageously untruthful interviewee, making up absurd stories about everything from his past homosexuality (he claimed to give it up because “it made my eyes water”) to his former career as a ballet dancer: abandoned, in his telling, because one evening, during a particularly complicated move, he overbalanced and fell into the orchestra pit. Few took him over-seriously, but he was a remarkably successful actor who made a very consistent living in a difficult profession and whose death leaves us all considerably poorer as a result.

So many great roles, but for me, this will always be his finest moment:

BUT HEY, AT LEAST YOU HAVE HIS WORD “AS A BIDEN:” Breaking: Scale of Alleged Biden Foreign Influence Peddling Unprecedented in History of D.C. Corruption, Impeachment Witness Testifies.

SHOCKER: Instead of Enforcing Current Laws, California Passes New Ones Aimed at Law-Abiding Gun Owners.

UM, NO: Fake belly buttons sold as quick fix for women who want legs to look longer.

KRUISER: Senate Forces Fetterman to Wear Big Boy Pants, Passing a Formal Dress Code.

LOTS OF PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW: What the Heck Was Fox News Thinking? “Not to say some candidates didn’t acquit themselves very well, including Ron DeSantis, Doug Burgum, and Vivek Ramaswamy (in my opinion), but it is to say that the overall production hovered somewhere between a dumpster fire and testicle cancer. All of that can be traced back to the moderators. As was mentioned in my post-debate article about Univision’s Ilia Calderón, who was inexplicably allowed to be a moderator by Fox News and the Ronna McDaniel-led RNC, it felt like you were watching an MSNBC primetime show at points.”

TECH CROOKERY: Meta Rips Off The Author And Passes The Savings On To Skynet. “It turns out that Meta, AKA Facebook, used a giant database of pirated books known as ‘book3’ for their AI generative training efforts. Indeed, you can now search an index to see who was ripped off. . . . The fact that Meta is not only training AI on author’s works without their permission, but using pirated copies to do so adds insult to injury.”

IT’S CERTAINLY THE MOST COMICAL: Is This The Worst Fact Check From the GOP Debate?

FASTER, PLEASE: Brain implants could restore paralyzed patients’ arm movements.

BUT THE SCIENCE WAS SETTLED: Risks of long COVID have been ‘distorted’ due to ‘flawed research’: study.

Scientists from the US, UK and Denmark are pointing to overly broad definitions and a lack of comparison groups, among other factors in studies looking at the incidence, prevalence and control of long COVID for the distortion.

The paper, published Monday in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, investigates the working definitions of the condition provided by multiple global health organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization and the UK National Institute for Health.

None of the definitions required a “causal link” between the virus and a range of symptoms.

The “flaws” have led to consequences such as increased public anxiety, misdiagnoses, increased health-care spending and a “diversion of funds” from those who are actually suffering from long-term effects of COVID-19, researchers suggest.

Exit quote: “Researchers argue that the umbrella term ‘long COVID’ should be replaced by different terms for the specific long-term effects.”