Archive for 2024

OPEN THREAD: Party on.

MORE ON THE NRA’S unanimous Supreme Court victory.

Related: “The ruling was 9 to 0. This included wise brown and black women with lived experience. Watch for gun-industry lawsuits against those who initiated strategic anti-gun lawfare a decade ago.”

Make them pay, then make the rubble bounce. Also, I think the Court’s strong and unanimous line on the First Amendment impact of government coercion aimed at private entities bodes well for the Murthy case.

DOES SUNSHINE HELP? A New Way To Treat Obesity? UV Light Found To Prevent Body Weight Gain. “Recent evidence has suggested that UV exposure limits body weight gain in mouse models of obesity. Subcutaneous fat is a critical organ in regulating energy homeostasis. Alongside previous studies on the effects of UV exposure on obesity and metabolic disorders, our team was inspired by our prior discovery that, although UV rays do not directly reach subcutaneous fat when exposed to the skin, they can regulate the metabolism of subcutaneous fat. . . . They found that UV radiation inhibits weight gain by enhancing the secretion of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine, which not only decreases leptin but also increases energy expenditure through the ‘browning’ of subcutaneous fat.”

THERE’S AN ISSUE WITH THESE: Lithium-ion battery explodes in Chelsea apartment: ‘This could have been a very different story.’

Firefighters across Massachusetts are facing the “nearly impossible” task of extinguishing lithium-ion battery fires more than ever, according to data the state released last month. The figures showed how such blazes have spiked sharply since last October. Roughly 38 cities and towns identified 50 lithium-ion battery fires between last October and the middle of April, more than double the annual average detected by a national fire data reporting system.

They’re extremely difficult to extinguish.

FRUSTRATED WITH THE CHEAP RHETORICAL DODGES THAT PARTISANS USE TO SHORT CIRCUIT DEBATE? Rikki Schlott & I tried to create a comprehensive list of these dirty tricks in “The Canceling of the American Mind.” Before the paperback comes out, we’re looking for your feedback. Let us know what we missed!

GRADUALLY AND THEN SUDDENLY: How ‘Vice’ Went from a $6 Billion Media Empire to Bankruptcy.

The walls of Vice’s sprawling Brooklyn headquarters were lined with magazine covers charting the company’s transformation from insouciant Canadian post-punk magazine to money-printing media colossus. In early 2018, long before college students discovered that dispatching problematic statues into canals would be reliably met with institutional approval, a group of employees demanded that the covers be removed from the walls.

Not a specific cover. All of them.

The supposed offense varied by complainant. Some referenced covers shot by the recently defenestrated photographer Terry Richardson, an occasional Vice contributor accused of using his position to sexually harass his subjects. Or maybe it was the half-ironic “We Love Cops” cover, a sentiment inconceivable to a generation uncomfortable with both irony and the police. But likely it just was the general unease of working for a publication that once lived up to its name, proudly embracing sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll.

The covers were swiftly removed, now sequestered in co-founder Suroosh Alvi’s basement office, where a number of longtime Vice employees gathered to express a collective incredulity. “The resistance starts now,” one of them said hopefully. But we all saw it for what it was: a surrender.

Vice used to be fun. Then it went woke and… you know the rest.