HMM: Amazon Patents Drone to Recharge Electric Cars While Driving.

What if electric cars could top up their metaphorical tanks not just faster than internal-combustion vehicles…but could recharge without even stopping at all?

It’s not a new idea—companies such as Qualcomm have explored wireless chargers built into the road surface to provide power on the go—but none of the past ideas have been quite as creative as an electric car-recharging drone system patented by Amazon, which recently received the stamp of approval from the United States Patent Office and was dug up by Greentech Media.

In a nutshell, the patent—which was filed in late June 2014 but was formally granted in early October of this year—describes a method in which electric vehicles would contact a central server when their batteries were running too low to reach their intended destination, prompting a computer to dispatch an unmanned flying machine with a supplementary battery pack. The drone and the car would wirelessly exchange information to sync up their speeds and locations; once they rendezvous, the car would deploy a retractable charger, and the drone would plug into the vehicle while in motion to pass along the needed juice.

I can’t even begin to imagine the liability problems of having a lithium-ion battery flying at highway speeds just feet above traffic.

TYLER O’NEIL: What Did Mueller Know? New Documents Show Clinton-Russia Scandal Dwarfs Anything on Trump’s Side.

BUT OF COURSE: Demonic Clown Drag Queen Does Story Time at Michelle Obama Public Library.

CONGRESSWOMAN: Failure to Ban High-Capacity Magazines ‘Literally Costing Lives.’

THE DAM HAS BURST: Amazon Studios chief Roy Price resigns amid Harvey Weinstein claims.

TONY SHAFFER: Time to Send the Taliban Five Back to Gitmo Now that Bergdahl’s Pleaded Guilty.

BILL WHITTLE: The Story of Friendlyism.

BREAKING: Bob Weinstein accused of sexual harassment by TV showrunner.

That’s Bob, not Harvey.

TONI AIRAKSINEN: Most College Students Clueless About the First Amendment.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Clinton Corruption Update for October 17, 2017.

PROGRESS? How Google’s Quantum Computer Could Change the World.

For nearly three decades, these machines were considered the stuff of science fiction. Just a few years ago, the consensus on a timeline to large-scale, reliable quantum computers was 20 years to never.

“Nobody is saying never anymore,” says Scott Totzke, the chief executive of Isara Corp., a Canadian firm developing encryption resistant to quantum computers, which threaten to crack current methods. “We are in the very, very early days, but we are well past the science-fiction point.”

Companies and universities around the world are racing to build these machines, and Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., appears to be in the lead. Early next year, Google’s quantum computer will face its acid test in the form of an obscure computational problem that would take a classical computer billions of years to complete. Success would mark “quantum supremacy,” the tipping point where a quantum computer accomplishes something previously impossible.

Soon, Google’s AI might have the power to demonetize conservative commentary videos before they’re even produced.

SAN JUAN MAYOR: Whoever Deletes Trump’s Twitter Account Should Get a Nobel Prize.

The Nobel Prize for Stifling Opinions I Don’t Like isn’t a real thing — yet.

WELL, GOOD: The Army is developing navigation tech to help the GPS-denied soldier.

GPS can fail due to turbulent weather, bad communications links or enemy attack. The Army is concerned about how troops on patrol can continue to function without GPS, and it is pursuing a range of initiatives to bolster wayfinding for those cut off from the usual means of guidance.

One effort involves the development of vision-aided navigation technologies. “We are using camera technology and electro-optic imaging sensors and applying them from a navigational perspective,” said Gary Katulka, a lead engineer for vision-aided tech in the Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center‘s Command, Power and Integration Directorate’s Positioning, Navigation and Timing Division, or CP&ID PNTD.

The PNT team is working on systems that combine cameras with inertial measurement units, or IMU, which are made of sensors such as gyroscopes and accelerometers. By joining this sensor data to a camera’s visual feedback, a soldier would be able to navigate effectively, even without GPS.

Exit question: Does the Army still teach map and compass skills?

FANTASYLAND: How Hillary Clinton Can, and Should, Become President After the Trump-Russia Investigation.

This …unlikely… scenario comes from no less than Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig:

If number 1: If Trump is definitively found to have colluded directly with Russia, he would be forced to resign or be impeached.

If number 2: If Trump is removed, Vice President Mike Pence would become president.

If number 3: If Pence becomes president, he should resign too, given that he benefited from the same help from Mother Russia.

If number 4: If Pence resigns before appointing a vice president, Ryan would become president.

If number 5: If Ryan becomes president, he should do the right thing and choose Clinton for vice president. Then he should resign.

Does the left still fancy itself as the “reality-based community?”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): “Mother Russia?”

SPENGLER: Why Europe’s new nationalists love Israel.

NO, HARVEY. ‘Was seeing me naked the highlight of your internship?’

Working as a production assistant, Wachowiak said she mostly had to cash checks at a bank, but was once asked by an auditor working on the project to take a bunch of checks in a manila folder to Weinstein’s hotel room to get them signed.

When she got to the hotel room, Weinstein was holding a hand towel around his waist and she could tell that he was naked underneath, she told the Buffalo News.

When he took her folder, Weinstein dropped the towel and was naked, she said.

Wachowiak thought, “Relax, these are movie people, they think nothing of walking around naked,” she said. “Just keep your eyes on his face and don’t look down. And for God sake don’t let on that you want to run out of the room screaming.”

He sat on the bed with the folder over his groin and went through the checks, asking why they were paying for certain things, she recalled. He then complained about a pain in his shoulder and asked her for a massage, Wachowiak explained. Telling the newspaper that she’d experienced unwanted advances before, Wachowiak shot back, “That’s not in my job description.”

“He tried to encourage me by telling me what a fantastic opportunity it was for me to be part of this project,” Wachowiak related. “I told him that I was happy to be part of the project but I would not touch him. He finally gave up and signed all the checks.”

RELATED: ‘Everybody-fucking-knew.’

THE ONLY WAY TO WIN IS NOT TO PLAY: North Korea Says ‘A Nuclear War May Break Out Any Moment.’

Kim In Ryong told the U.N. General Assembly’s disarmament committee that North Korea is the only country in the world that has been subjected to “such an extreme and direct nuclear threat” from the United States since the 1970s — and said the country has the right to possess nuclear weapons in self-defense.

He pointed to large-scale military exercises every year using “nuclear assets” and said what is more dangerous is what he called a U.S. plan to stage a “secret operation aimed at the removal of our supreme leadership.”

This year, Kim said, North Korea completed its “state nuclear force and thus became the full-fledged nuclear power which possesses the delivery means of various ranges, including the atomic bomb, H-bomb and intercontinental ballistic rockets.”

“The entire U.S. mainland is within our firing range and if the U.S. dares to invade our sacred territory even an inch it will not escape our severe punishment in any part of the globe,” he warned.

Beijing had best keep a close eye on its unstable neighbor.

SPACE: First Glimpse of Colliding Neutron Stars Yields Stunning Pics.

Just stunning.

IS THIS ALL THAT UNUSUAL FOR FLORIDA? Candidate for Congress: ‘I Was Abducted by Aliens.’

RETAIL BLUES: Sears Sinks After Key Investor Berkowitz Plans to Leave Board.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Owner Of Dozens Of Malls Says They Won’t Be Open On Thanksgiving This Year.

SENATOR SUSAN COLLINS: “We do face an extra barrier that men do not. When a man is elected to the Senate it’s assumed that he belongs there.”

MARK PENN: You Can’t Buy the Presidency for $100,000.

This is the same Mark Penn who’s been polling for the Clintons for two decades:

Look at the bigger picture. Every day, Americans see hundreds of ads on TV and radio, in newspapers and magazines, on billboards and smartphones. North Americans post to Facebook something like a billion times a day, and during the election many of those messages were about politics. Facebook typically runs about $40 million worth of advertising a day in North America.

Then consider the scale of American presidential elections. Hillary Clinton’s total campaign budget, including associated committees, was $1.4 billion. Mr. Trump and his allies had about $1 billion. Even a full $100,000 of Russian ads would have erased just 0.025% of Hillary’s financial advantage. In the last week of the campaign alone, Mrs. Clinton’s super PAC dumped $6 million in ads into Florida, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

I have 40 years of experience in politics, and this Russian ad buy, mostly after the election anyway, simply does not add up to a carefully targeted campaign to move voters. It takes tens of millions of dollars to deliver meaningful messages to the contested portion of the electorate. Converting someone who voted for the other party last time is an enormously difficult task. Swing voters in states like Ohio or Florida are typically barraged with 50% or more of a campaign’s budget. Try watching TV in those states the week before an election and you will see how jammed the airwaves are.

Yes, but it’s much easier for Democrats to blame Russia than to admit that Hillary squandered a billion dollars of donor money and her husband’s legacy on the most tin-eared and inept campaign since Mike Dukakis went on sabbatical just as Lee Atwater’s attack machine went into full gear.

Plus: “The only way Russia will get its money’s worth is if Washington overreacts and narrows the very freedoms that make America different in the first place.”

That’s what I’ve been arguing on this page for months now.

BETTERIDGE’S LAW OF HEADLINES, VIOLATED: Are we headed for Turkish-American breakup?

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Trump, McConnell, Weinstein, and Much, Much More.