DON’T STOP COLD TURKEY THOUGH, OR YOU RAISE YOUR RISK: Though no longer recommended, many older Americans still take low-dose aspirin.
Archive for 2024
March 9, 2024
BACK WHEN I WAS WRITING THE NEW SCHOOL, I TALKED WITH HIM A LOT AND TOURED UDACITY HEADQUARTERS: Software-Defined Humanist Sebastian Thrun Is Always Learning.
SO META! MY “CANCELING OF THE AMERICAN MIND” CO-AUTHOR RIKKI SCHLOTT WAS JUST CANCELED FROM SXSW.
It appears that I’ve been canceled … for speaking up about cancel culture.
Organizers of the South by Southwest (SXSW) film festival declined to approve my participation in a panel of speakers.
The reason? Concern that I’d dared to speak out against cancel culture.
An email from SXSW staff, shared with me by the panel’s organizer, reveals the festival was “hesitant to approve” my participation because my commentary has been “focused on the idea of cancel culture.”
Oh, the irony!
You know Rikki, I heard there is this book about Cancel Culture that you might find interesting…
OH, THE HUMANITY! How the breast was won: The week Sydney Sweeney’s boobs exploded.
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Lifesaving AI in Aisle 12? 3D mammography is coming to the big box store—and it could transform breast cancer screening.
TRAVEL LIGHT: MATEIN Carry on Backpack. #CommissionEarned
As far as guitar collections go, Frampton’s is especially steeped in history. Not only did he effectively have to restart his guitar collection after losing 44 individual guitars – and numerous pieces of other gear – in a flood in 2010, he also experienced what has become one of the most famous tales of lost-and-found guitars in history.
To that end, the most notable instruments in Frampton’s episode of The Collection are the ones whose histories are interwoven with such stories.
The “Phenix”, for example, takes center stage. The mid-’50s era triple-humbucker Black Beauty Les Paul Custom needs no introduction: as seen on the cover of Frampton Comes Alive!, it is one of the most iconic Les Pauls of all time, and made its way on “just about every track [Frampton] recorded between 1970 and 1980”.
However, in 1980, the “Phenix” went down in a cargo aircraft – which crashed while taking off from Curaçao – and it was believed to have been lost forever. Miraculously, 31 years later, the Les Paul was reunited with its rightful owner after it had been picked up and played over the years by a local musician.
“It was just one of the best feelings in the world,” Frampton recalls of being reunited with the “Phenix”.
For guitarists (particularly electric guitarists), this is 90 minutes of pure pornography:
CHRISTIAN TOTO IS PARTYING LIKE IT’S 1999: The Very Best Movies from 1999.
The tail end of the era when Hollywood still had stars, and could make films that weren’t all sequels and superhero movies.
For a contrary take on the current state of Hollywood, Kurt Loder explores: Sunday’s Oscars: Some Worthy Candidates from a Pretty Good Movie Year.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:
Meteorologists Call For Rain Showers This Weekend And A Slight Chance Of Getting Crushed By A Falling Boeing Airliner Part https://t.co/BREdMpGYjK pic.twitter.com/sqSC2UG5Kj
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) March 8, 2024
THEY’RE NOT FLOODING US WITH FOREIGNERS FOR THE GOOD OF THE NATION:
Most Americans do not know that the US census currently counts, for purposes of voting power, all people in a district, regardless of citizenship!
Senate Democrats just voted unanimously to defeat an amendment that would have stopped counting illegals for congressional seat… https://t.co/5gXt4Z1wzP
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 9, 2024
OLD AND BUSTED: Trump’s White House Was ‘Awash in Speed’ — and Xanax.
—Rolling Stone (which morphed into those squares at the Moral Majority so slowly, I hardly even noticed).
The New Hotness? Need More Proof Biden Was Drugged for the State of the Union? Here It Is.
A great deal hinged on Joe Biden’s performance during Thursday evening’s State of the Union address. The White House knew more than anything that Biden had to dispel concerns regarding his age and cognitive decline. Naturally, the mainstream media did its part to help in shore up this narrative affirming Biden’s presidential competence, and wound up choosing the same entry from the thesaurus to characterize his delivery: “fiery.”
I’m sure it was just a coincidence.
But, it didn’t work for those of us who saw and heard Biden’s loud and angry delivery, which was punctuated by constant slurring and slip ups. One expert says that Biden’s performance featured the telltale signs of being medicated.
Dr. Carole Lieberman, a forensic psychiatrist specializing in elderly dementia patients, pointed out that Biden’s increased speed and volume during the address, contrary to his usual slow and stumbling demeanor, could be indicative of stimulant usage, potentially Adderall or another amphetamine.
“[Adderall]’s given to focus someone’s attention so if you give it to someone who is not focused and give it to them ahead of a big event like the State of the Union, it will improve their focus,” Lieberman told the Washington Times. “But it’s treating the symptoms rather than boosting the brain and it’s addictive so it’s dangerous.”
As compelling and convincing as Lieberman’s theory is, there’s actually more evidence Biden was not his usual self during the State of the Union.
I previously pointed to Biden brief encounter with reporters on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews, where Biden had curiously become his trademark low-energy, glitchy self. His explanation for his use of the word “illegals” to describe an illegal immigrant—which irked many in his party—was, to say the least, unimpressive.
But, even more indicative that something had changed in Biden was during his campaign speech in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Friday, which was virtually a carbon copy of his State of the Union speech, and yet it was a disaster.
At one point in the speech, he declared, “Pennsylvania, I have a message for you: send me to Congress!”
I’d take this as another cry for help from Joe — if he’s feeling overwhelmed by the duties of the White House and wants return to the Senate in November, I’m sure that can be arranged. As P.J. O’Rourke once wrote,“The founding fathers, in their wisdom, devised a method by which our republic can take one hundred of its most prominent numbskulls and keep them out of the private sector where they might do actual harm.”
But I don’t think we can blame alleged drug usage on Kamala’s gaffes:
Ah-mazing. https://t.co/sEp2td7n3F
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) March 9, 2024
Related: Byron York: Biden ‘yelled’ through State of the Union to ‘seem younger.’
“Democrats were extremely happy. They were relieved. He stood up there and talked for 68 minutes. And he seemed to yell a lot. Personally, I thought he was yelling a lot. He thought, ‘Well, maybe if I really yell, it’ll make me seem younger,’” York said. “I don’t think it convinced anybody who’s concerned about his capacity to serve till age 86.”
As Jim Geraghty wrote yesterday: President Steroids Shouts His Way through the State of the Union. “Taken as a whole, Biden’s speech started to sound like Howard Beale’s monologue from Network. But keep in mind, the number of Americans who watched the whole speech, beginning to end, is considerably smaller than the number who will see brief excerpts on the television news, or YouTube, or other social media. By shouting through almost the entire speech, Biden maximized the odds that any clip or segment that went viral would have him looking fired up and impassioned rather than like the sleepy, whispery, mumbling octogenarian that Americans have soured on so thoroughly.”
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Quest for ice spurs NASA’s first mobile robotic moon mission. He who controls the ice controls the water; he who controls the water controls the Moon. As well as cislunar space and possibly Mars transits.
The ‘suicidal’ pilot of the MH370 Malaysia Airlines flight perfectly ditched the plane into the sea, entombing it and the 239 passengers aboard at the bottom of the ocean, a flight expert has claimed ten years after it disappeared.
British pilot Simon Hardy has said he believes that the plane was sunk into the ocean at a spot that has never been searched before.
The Boeing 777 aircraft vanished from radar while en route from Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014. Satellite data showed the plane deviated from its flight path to head over the southern Indian Ocean, where it is believed to have crashed.
There are fears that pilot Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, was responsible for deliberately crashing MH370 in a murder-suicide of a shocking scale, which he committed because of problems in his personal life.
Shah had allegedly split with his wife Fizah Khan, and was said to be furious that a relative, opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, had been given a five-year jail sentence for sodomy shortly before he boarded the plane for the flight to Beijing. But the pilot’s wife has angrily denied any personal problems, while other family members and friends said he was a devoted family man and loved his job.
Don Lemon could not be reached for comment.
NOW OUT: B.R. O’Hagan’s book Passage to Moorea (The Thomas Scoundrel Series Book 3). #CommissionEarned
JAAAAAAAG GOES ROGUE! Driver of £80k Jaguar I-Pace reveals moment he realized electric vehicle had gone rogue as it raced down motorway before police rammed it (and this isn’t the first time it’s happened).
A driver who was trapped behind the wheel of an out-of-control Jaguar I-Pace has revealed to MailOnline how he cheated death as his car accelerated up to 100mph on the busy M62 motorway without brakes.
Nathan Owen, 31, was on his way back from his first day at a new job when his 2019 electric car started malfunctioning, sparking a huge police operation to bring his car to a stop after 35 minutes of hell.
But he told how his car had also gone rogue on the motorway in December, this time reaching up to 120mph. He claims Jaguar handed him his car back 24 hours after he had taken it in to be looked at.
Speaking exclusively to MailOnline about his latest run-in, the crisis support worker admitted: ‘In the back of my mind, I was thinking I’m going to end up crashing the car, I’m going to kill myself or I’m going to kill an innocent person on the roads.’
Mr Owen, originally from North Wales, added: ‘The car was in its own world – it just had no brakes. The worst thing about it is that it’s happened before.’
In 2024, Jaaaag owners long for the days when the poor Lucas Electric build quality prevented their cars from becoming self-aware and roaming the countryside looking for paintings to burgle and banks to rob.
MARK FELTON ON NASA’S ARMORED CORPS:
Given the massive risks of each Space Shuttle launch, NASA’s use of armored personnel carriers made sense — if the astronauts had a chance to actually survive the time it would take in a rocket malfunction on the pad to get out of the cockpit and onto the zip lines to take reach the APCs. But as Mark Steyn has written, maybe it would be easier to list which federal agency doesn’t have its own paramilitary arsenal?
WHY ARE SO MANY DIVERSITY OFFICERS SO BIGOTED? Johns Hopkins Medicine Chief Diversity Officer resigns after ‘poorly worded’ email about men, ‘White people,’ and ‘Christians.’
CANCELED FOR WRITING ABOUT CANCEL CULTURE? AND WHY WE ARE WILLING TO “DRIVE THIS BUS INTO A WALL.” Bringing you the latest free speech news.
JON GABRIEL: Sinema exits, leaving behind a divided Arizona.
Sinema joins a long list of frustrated Republicans and Democrats abandoning elective office to the cable-news shouters and ineffectual ideologues. Her own position was previously vacated by Senator Jeff Flake, who couldn’t get a hearing during the Trump era.
Her likely replacement will better fit the angry public mood, whoever wins. Republicans will nominate failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who is currently running against a smattering of barely-knowns. Since her narrow 2022 defeat, Lake has spent most of her time insisting the election was rigged, losing court cases and posting selfies from Mar-a-Lago.
Representative Ruben Gallego, a four-term congressman from a deep-blue urban district, will represent the Democrats. He’s far less known, even in-state, but raised his profile with withering attacks on Sinema. He basically begged her to leave the party then got upset when she did.
Gallego seems an odd fit for Arizona since his progressive views are more in line with the Squad than an average Democrat. His X (formerly Twitter) feed is replete with profane tirades, dropping more f-bombs than Donald Trump on a bad-hair day.
In one of many soliloquys he intoned, “Just to be clear f**k you @tedcruz you f**king baby killer.” Not exactly the Federalist Papers, but that’s politics in the Year of Our Lord 2024.
So where does Sinema heads next? Why not aim higher than the Senate? “What’s next for Sinema after her Senate term runs out this year?… A vanity presidential campaign from corporate-backed No Labels…?”
ICYMI: NATO Officially Adds New Member State. Welcome, Swedes. Putin started a war for fear of NATO encroachment, reaped more NATO encroachment. Smart.
THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: The ‘special relationship’ under pressure: Are Biden and Netanyahu on a collision course over Gaza?
Visible tensions are appearing in the historically close relationship between the White House and Israel, as the war in Gaza becomes a worsening humanitarian disaster and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu resists the Biden administration’s push for a change in course.
While Biden vocally supports Israel’s stated goals of defeating Hamas and rescuing the hostages that the Palestinian militant group took captive during its Oct. 7 rampage in southern Israel that killed some 1,200 people, he and other administration officials have expressed increasing criticism of the way in which Israel is carrying out its operations in the Gaza Strip.
“Visible tensions?” This moment would have stopped traffic on CNN had Reagan, Dubya or Trump been caught on a hot mic uttering it:
Telling Jews to come to Jesus is A+ diplomacy. https://t.co/raHHjyo75f
— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) March 8, 2024