FORGET IT, JAKE — IT’S THE TIMES: Red Century story makes me see red.

“Depending on whom you ask today, my grandfather’s story is that of a partisan, a traitor, a hero or a spy. The revolution asked a terrible amount of those who served it. Those who resisted paid a similarly awful price. It left in its wake countless lives, like my grandfather’s, that cannot be compassed by a single line.”

Such a statement doesn’t make up for the many facts omitted from his story, starting with the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact signed on Aug. 23, 1939, which directly led to Hitler’s invasion of Poland on Sept. 1. A secret protocol of the treaty called for the partition of Poland, with Germany getting the western portion and the Soviets the east. The Soviets invaded on Sept. 17 to grab their half of the spoils.

Also left out is what happened to Poland in the roughly 21 months of Soviet rule. Hundreds of thousands of Poles were deported to Kazakhstan, Siberia and other points east during the occupation. Even worse, more than 22,000 military officers, politicians, professors, priests and other civic leaders were executed in what is collectively known as the Katyn Forest massacres.

Mikanowski writes that the Nazis in 1939 captured his grandfather, then a Polish soldier, but he escaped and made his way to Minsk, the capital of Belarus. Curiously, he doesn’t explain why Jakub didn’t halt his flight in Soviet-occupied Poland instead of going hundreds of miles to the east. Maybe Mikanowski didn’t want to bring up all that awkward partition business and Nazi-Soviet hanky panky.

So Mikanowski says it depends on your perspective whether Jakub, a Soviet pawn, was “a partisan, a traitor, a hero or a spy.”

The Times won’t stop running Communist sympathizer pieces until they stop being sympathetic to Communists.

SCENES FROM RAHM EMANUEL’S CHICAGO: 63 Shot, 8 Dead In Chicago’s 2nd Most Violent Weekend Of 2017.

At least 63 people were shot in the city, and eight of them were killed, police said. More than half of them were wounded over 13 hours from Saturday to early Sunday. At least 16 more people were shot through the day Sunday, including three on the same street in South Austin.

The level of violence exceeded the 52 shot on the three-day Memorial Day but fell short of the 102 hit by gunfire over the long Fourth of July weekend, according to Tribune data. Still, fewer people have been shot in Chicago this year than at this time last year: 2,435 compared to 2,710.

So they’ve got that going for them.

NEW ISIS THREAT TO SPAIN: ‘War Has Not Been Fought and Gone.’

REMEDIAL HUMANITY 101: Evergreen State College Adds Required Workshop on Civil Disagreement.

CHANGE MORE OF THE SAME: Democrats Need a Message, Not a Program.

HEADLINES FROM 2011: It’s Time To Take Bitcoin And Blockchain Technology Seriously.

Going back two decades, James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg predicted cryptocurrency (and much more) in their fin de siècle peek into the future, The Sovereign Individual. Much of their work has held up frighteningly well.

21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Elon Musk backs call for global ban on killer robots.

BLUE ON BLUE: BLM member tells Antifa to take their masks off and get out of his city. They punch him and accuse him of being a cop.

Video at the link.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE: Biology teacher, 45, at LA school packed with celebrity children accused of sex romp with 16-year-old student.

NEW YORK TIMES: Having a dispute with siblings over the family summer house? Try transformative mediation.

They still have that common touch.

CLAIM: Asian-American doctor says white nationalists refuse her care.

Dr. Esther Choo is an Asian-American emergency room physician who has practiced medicine for more than a decade. Yet, she says, a few times a year, a patient will refuse to let her treat them. Solely because of her race.

Choo, who works in Oregon, first shared her experience of dealing with racist patients who shun her care in a viral Twitter thread last Sunday.

Democrat-run Oregon has a nasty history of official racism, but racists who delay or refuse emergency medical care would seem to be one of those self-correcting problems.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Still casting for heroes and villains.

The USS McCain’s mishap though perhaps entirely accidental, naturally raised speculation on social media that infrastructure decay, lowered standards of education, loss of trust in institutions and incompetence were all part of a general decline. But the confluence of events can be deceiving. Perhaps they’re just coincidental. Or perhaps the system has been collapsing for a long time and the “unexpected” and “sudden” character of the clusters is explained by facts long suppressed are escaping the mask of the filter.

If leaders have been kicking the can down the road the palliative benefits of altering the database, fudging the reports, cooking the books, cheating the tests and cultivating the Narrative only guarantee that the dam when it bursts will release a flood, not a trickle. Eventually the self deception fails and fails big time. Sooner or later the filter clogs up and Narrative is propelled face first into the 100 million ton iceberg of reality.

Read the whole thing, which could also have been headlined: “Payment Due in Full.”

WELCOME TO THE NEW NORMAL: Pee-Filled Projectiles A Recurring Weapon Of Choice For ‘Anti-Fascists.’

VOX: The radicalization of white Americans.

The thing is, white Americans have not become radicalized — it’s just that some have started behaving (and many more have started voting) just like any other American victimhood group.

Real radicalization would get ugly, fast, and is more likely than before, now that the Left has succeeded in tearing down so many social norms.

ANDREW KLAVAN AND THE RACIST MAZE: Everyone is welcome, but there’s no way out.

Maybe it’s located next to the lobby of the Hotel California.

UH-OH: The Tesla Model 3 reminds me of all the times the electronics failed in my first car.

get it: things like electronic locks and windows are commonplace in vehicles, and they’re generally reliable. It’s nice to be able to lock the car remotely or not have to crank a window down manually. But electronic systems can break down, and when they do so, it’s a real problem. I’m of a mindset where a mechanical fix is usually a simpler solution. In the case of my MINI’s rear hatch, an elaborate electronic system just seemed like overkill, and when it broke down, fixing it was far more expensive than its low-tech counterparts.

I wasn’t exactly on the bandwagon to go out and get a Model 3 before, but word that it’s relying almost entirely on electronic systems makes me less likely to jump on. You need working electronics for everything with the Model 3 to just just about everything, from opening the door to starting the car. You don’t need a key for the car: you just need your smartphone, a third-party device that means that you’ll be relying on the health of your battery, apps that are up to date, and the like to make sure that you can use the vehicle. I’m sure that it’ll be fine: I’m sure that Tesla has figured out these sorts of contingencies, but it’s complicating something that is pretty tried-and-true when it comes to cars.

Imagine being late for work, but your car won’t start because you haven’t installed the latest security patch on your Tesla app, which can’t be installed without the latest version of your phone’s operating system.

QUESTION ASKED: Google, Facebook, Amazon: Time to Rein Them In?

[Author Jonathan ] Taplin, writes Mahaney, says regulators will increasingly take a hard look at the trio of companies and their power in society.

“During the call today, Taplin discussed his belief in the growing anti-monopolistic and anti-trust sentiment surrounding the big Internet companies.”

“Specifically, he references surveillance capitalism, in which companies collect data from their users and create an addicting, habit-forming service for consumers.”

And Taplin proposes what should be done to rein in the power of the three behemoths:

To improve the status quo and create a digital renaissance for content producers, Taplin argues that going back to a more decentralized Web will unleash the next generation of technology, business and social innovators. He specifically suggests we remove the DMCA safe harbor provisions that Google, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook use to their advantage. For example, Taplin suggests a “take-down and stay-down” policy for music and content on YouTube that Google would be required to enforce.

Google may have already thrown away its safe-harbor protection, when the company decided last week to start picking and choosing which sites it would register. According to a friend of mine in the industry, Google’s move might open up the company to lawsuits and to much closer regulatory scrutiny.

I’m not a lawyer and the major news outlets don’t seem to have picked up on this angle yet, but I will keep looking into it.

KREMLIN STOOGE: US embassy in Russia to scale back visa services amid tensions.

“Capacity for interviews in the future will be greatly reduced because we have had to greatly reduce our staffing levels to comply with the Russian government’s requirement,” the embassy told applicants in a note on its web site.

Visa operations at the U.S. consulates, located in St Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Vladivostok, will “remain suspended indefinitely,” according to Reuters.

“We will operate at reduced capacity for as long as our staffing levels are reduced,” the U.S. embassy said.

In addition to the slowdown, I wouldn’t be surprised if US officials became more (ahem) selective about whose applications moved to the top of the ever-growing stack.

NEVER SAY NEVER: Can Kid Rock Become Michigan’s Next Senator?

A more important question might be whether Senator Rock would bring his rock’n’roll fashion sense to the Senate floor.

THE ROT RUNS DEEP: The Ever-Burgeoning House Democrat IT Scandal.

Had it been the RNC that had allowed this mess, it would be the front-page story, day after day. Instead we’re talking about statues and false charges of racism.

“Democratic operatives with bylines,” indeed.

TRUDEAU TO ASYLUM SEEKERS: Crossing border illegally won’t fast track immigration.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has a message for asylum seekers: crossing illegally into the country doesn’t offer an advantage when it comes to obtaining refugee status in Canada.

“If I could directly speak to people seeking asylum, I’d like to remind them there’s no advantage,” Trudeau said at a news conference Sunday in Montreal.

“Our rules, our principles and our laws apply to everyone.”

Trudeau’s comments come as the government grapples with a surge in asylum seekers crossing into Quebec.

What’s with all the hate and racism from up north?

POWER, UNLIMITED POWER: Zinc-Air Batteries Research Could be a Game-Changer for Consumer Tech.

Zinc-air batteries are powered by a mix of zinc metal and oxygen. Zinc is an incredibly cheap and abundant metal, and oxygen is everywhere. The design allows these batteries to store up to five times more energy than lithium-ion batteries, and, notably, zinc is less harmful on the environment: Because zinc is low in toxicity, there’s not as severe of an impact on the environment when the batteries are trashed or recycled, and little concern that the degradation of those batteries could harm surrounding ecosystems. No special steps are needed (assuming its a mercury-free design) to throw them away. All of this is to say that on paper, zinc-air batteries ought to be wildly popular.

The major obstacle, however, is that zinc-air batteries are difficult to recharge. The discharge and charge process requires “bifunctional oxygen electrocatalysts” to facilitate the reduction and generation of oxygen. In the case of zinc-air batteries, electrocatalysts have proved too expensive for all but a few limited uses, like some hearing aids.

With that problem in mind, a new, cheaper method for creating battery electrocatalysts could be a game-changer. Here’s how they did it: Researchers create catalysts with a three-step process, involving the simultaneous control of a metal oxide’s composition, size, and crystallinity.
Through this approach, an electrocatalyst can be comprised of much more common metals like iron, cobalt, and nickel.

A longer-lasting battery that’s also cheaper to replace would be nice for phones, but could be a game-changer for electric cars.

SELF-DRAINING SWAMP: Congressman ‘Seeing So Many People Bail from NOAA and EPA’ Over Climate ‘Fear.’

IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT: University of Texas Removes Four Confederate Statues Overnight.

University of Texas President Greg Fenves ordered the immediate removal of statues of Robert E. Lee and other prominent Confederate figures from a main area of campus, saying such monuments have become “symbols of modern white supremacy and neo-Nazism.”

Fenves announced the move late Sunday night as crews were in place to begin taking the statues down. The school also blocked off the area during the process, and the statues are expected to be gone by mid-morning Monday, a spokesman said.

The university moved a statue of former Confederate President Jefferson Davis from its perch near the campus clock tower to a history museum in 2015. Fenves now says statues of Lee, Confederate Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston and Confederate Postmaster General John H. Reagan, which were in the same area as Davis, also will be moved to the Brisco Center for American History on campus.

Maybe we could erect generic statues of fake people of various ethno-gender groups, like the nonexistent European-style monuments which adorn euro bills.

HMM: Did China Hack the Seventh Fleet?