JIMMY KIMMEL: Losing Republican Viewers Is ‘Not Ideal’ but ‘I probably wouldn’t want to have a conversation with them anyway.’

When Spinal Tap’s appeal became more selective, at least it wasn’t on purpose.

HMM: Could Hypersonic Weapons Make Nuclear War More Likely?

The extremely high speeds hypersonic weapons travel at reduce an adversary’s ability to react to them. Suppose two nuclear-armed countries—let’s call them India and Pakistan—have hypersonic weapons and nuclear weapons. Both weapons are located in each country’s capital. A hypersonic missile launched from Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, will reach the Indian capital of New Delhi in just over six minutes.

Under this scenario, India has just six minutes to decide whether the attack is real, what to do about it, and to do something before the missiles hit. That’s virtually no time at all. India might well choose to launch its own weapons as soon as it detects an incoming attack to prevent them from being destroyed on the ground. But what if the attack is the result of an early warning system malfunction, or was launched by accident? By the time India figures that out, the retaliatory strike — and perhaps a nuke — is already underway. The United States, China, and Russia could all have similar problems with one another.

The good news is that hypersonic weapons are far more difficult to develop, build, and deploy than even nuclear-tipped ICBMs — putting them out of reach of rogue nations or terrorists for the foreseeable future. And the major powers have decades of (admittedly tense) experience of dealing with the End of the World on a hair-trigger alert.

That said, the US, Russia, and China need to get serious about faster and more-reliable warning systems (and perhaps upgraded hotlines) before we hit the first crisis of the coming hypersonic era.

SARAH HOYT: The dangerous writings of Robert A. Heinlein.

Look, it’s my duty as a blogger to sample as much danger as I can.

TRIGGER ME: The Five Most Triggering Halloween Costumes of 2017.

STEPHEN KRUISER: Twitter Founder Announces Strict New Thought Police Rule.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: FBI Forced to Admit It Has 30 Pages of Clinton-Lynch Tarmac Meeting Documents.

WOW: Alphabet’s Waymo demanded $1 billion in settlement talks with Uber.

Waymo’s tough negotiating stance, which has not been previously reported, reflects the company’s confidence in its legal position after months of pretrial victories in a case which may help to determine who emerges in the forefront of the fast-growing field of self-driving cars.

The aggressive settlement demands also suggest that Waymo is not in a hurry to resolve the lawsuit, in part because of its value as a distraction for Uber leadership, said Elizabeth Rowe, a trade secret expert at the University of Florida Levin College of Law.

Waymo recently persuaded a San Francisco federal judge to delay a trial to decide the dispute from October to early December, citing the need to investigate evidence Uber had not disclosed earlier.

Waymo is also demanding a public apology.

THERE’S NOTHING TOXIC ABOUT IT: Masculinity Is the Solution to Weinstein-Like Scandals in Hollywood.

CHICKS ON THE RIGHT: Hillary Clinton Says There’s A ‘Sexual Assaulter In The Oval Office.’ She Clearly Forgot Who She’s Married To.

DC MCALLISTER: UNC Off the Hook for Academic Fraud.

SURE HE DOES: Jerry Brown Hastens Death of the Internal Combustion Engine.

ELIZABETH WARREN: Fighting for a single-payer healthcare system is a “winning issue” for Democrats nationally in the 2018 midterm elections.

TAKE A PASS: These Oreo Beer Shakes Are Taking Over the Texas Fair.

OOPS: Tesla recalls 11,000 Model Xs because the second-row seats have a problem.

During testing, Tesla found that cables in the seats might not be in the right place, so the back left-side seats could move forward during a crash.

No incidents have been reported by customers, but the company is offering free repairs either through its mobile service or at a service center. The company’s mobile service means a service van comes to you.

The Model X CUV has been a headache for the company (and consumers). More worrisome? Since 2015, Model X production has totaled less than 10% of the number of Model 3 sedans the company claims it will manufacture just next year.

NOBODY IS FORCING ANYONE TO DO ANYTHING: Rishard Matthews ‘done playing football’ if forced to stand for national anthem.

That’s an ESPN link, so click at your own discretion.

THE MYSTERY DEEPENS: What Was It That American Diplomats Heard in Cuba That Made Them Sick?

IS THERE EVER A GOOD TIME TO GET CAUGHT EAVESDROPPING ON YOUR CUSTOMERS? The Google Home Mini secret-recording fiasco is a black eye at the worst possible time for Google.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: School Gives Kids ‘Shooting at Trump’ as Option in Multiple-Choice Quiz.

FLASHBACK:

SHARKS GOTTA SWIM, BATS GOTTA FLY: Media Matters Continue War Against the Right.

THAT’S WHY WE’LL PROBABLY HAVE TO SETTLE FOR JUST A TAX CUT, IF THAT: Tax reform can finally drain the swamp by getting rid of lobbyists.

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT POTUS HAS DONE WITH THE IRAN DEAL WITHOUT ANY MEDIA SPIN, Liz Sheld has the full text.

THE DAM HAS BURST: The Weinstein Co. Nears The Brink As Agencies Cut Off Talent Supply.

Agents did not want to be on record, but reactions ranged from not wanting to risk the wrath of clients in the event of more fallout by putting them into TWC projects, and others said that if there was evidence of Weinstein benefiting directly or indirectly in projects, the agencies wanted no part of it. They felt even a re-branded company will carry a tarnish, and hoped that projects would be sold off. This wasn’t unanimous; at least one said that if Bob Weinstein and Glasser could change the messaging, and make it clear that Harvey Weinstein’s indiscretions were not in fact covered up, forgiveness could come over time.

But with a splintered board of directors and financiers that were already upset that a TV sale to ITV got derailed in the wake of that NYPD investigation that focused on Harvey Weinstein but didn’t yield charges, with another live sale prospectus possibly harmed by these latest allegations, does TWC have that time? We have heard that some financiers are already poring over the list of plum projects they might pry loose. And agents are looking for outs for their clients on projects that are percolating.

Who wants to work for a company where one of the founding partners had a sexual harassment clause in his contract?

LICENSED TO ILL: Harvey Weinstein’s Contract Allowed for Sexual Harassment.

BUT OF COURSE: Equifax says code on its website ‘was serving malicious content.’

Late Wednesday night, independent security analyst Randy Abrams said in a blog post that while he was trying to download his credit report from the Equifax site, he clicked a link that kicked him to a third-party website with “one of the ubiquitous fake Flash Player Update screens.” His post was first reported by technology news site Ars Technica.

Equifax said Thursday afternoon that the problem stemmed from code provided by a third party.

“The issue involves a third-party vendor that Equifax uses to collect website performance data, and that vendor’s code running on an Equifax website was serving malicious content,” the company said in a statement. “Since we learned of the issue, the vendor’s code was removed from the webpage and we have taken the webpage offline to conduct further analysis.”

Equifax emphasized that its “systems were not compromised” and said that despite early reports, the problem “did not affect our consumer online dispute portal.”

Its spokespeople did not answer questions about when the company learned of the problem or how many website visitors clicked the link.

Nobody should be using Flash for anything, because it is essentially malware masquerading as a multimedia platform. Even Adobe has belatedly decided to end-of-life it. If Flash is on your system, here’s a link to Adobe’s removal tool.

ED MORRISSEY: Dems Grumble as Perez Tanking At The DNC.

Democrats have a legitimate gripe about their new party chair — and probably his deputy, too. Despite having what should be a great environment for fundraising, neither Tom Perez nor Rep. Keith Ellison have performed nearly as well at the DNC as other party organs have in 2017. The DCCC has outraised the NRCC by tens of millions in direct contributions, while the DSCC has outpaced the NRSC by just about $10 million. Not only has the RNC outraised Perez and Ellison, they’ve beaten them in small donations alone this year by $12 million — normally a Democratic strength.

As The Hill’s Amie Parnes reports, Democrats are starting to revolt.

Plus:

Perez won on the strength of his service to Barack Obama, but shows little if any of Obama’s talent for outreach and electoral organization. His idea of talking to people outside the Democratic Party’s urban core is mainly to express himself in scatalogical and profane vocabulary. Unsurprisingly, that approach has not resulted in an avalanche of donations, even in an environment as ripe for success as Democrats have at the moment.

Democrats can continue with the lousy fundraising, or they can revolt and remove an Obama-approved person-of-color from power.