RECURSIVE A.I. IS RECURSIVE: TV news report about unwanted Alexa orders triggers unwanted Alexa orders.

CHINESE DEMOCRACY: China is still deciding whether to allow Pokemon Go.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Here’s Why It Hurts So Much When You Step on a Lego.

I stopped going barefoot when I started being a dad.

DEPARTMENT OF PRE-CRIME: In Missouri, Kids Could Now Go to Jail for Getting into Fights at Recess.

Missouri has lost its damn mind.

TREATING CANCER WITH MARLBOROS: Amid soaring inflation, Venezuela’s Maduro increases minimum wage by 50 percent.

J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: ‘Civil Whites Act’: White-Guilt Sunday Brunch Begins in Philadelphia.

SHOCKER: Taco Bell Is … Healthy?

We’re culturally appropriating stoner health food.

CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN: President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for education secretary has had a key role with her husband in creating a public charter school in western Michigan.

The nonprofit charter school has grown from 80 students in rundown office space at Gerald R. Ford International Airport to its own building with 600 students from seven counties. Some kids ride three public buses to get to the suburban airport. One teen stays with friends in the Grand Rapids area and commutes 150 miles to home on weekends. A public lottery is held each spring if applications exceed openings.

The school seems to fit Betsy DeVos’ philosophy about education and what she’s pledging to promote in Washington.

If Washington must have a role in K-12 education, it should be in reinforcing successes like West Michigan Aviation Academy.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Fracking Protesters Are Putin Puppets.

Fracking is clearly in America’s national interest. There is broad political consensus that the United States would be better off relying on ourselves and our closest allies (like Canada) for energy, rather than on Middle Eastern countries who can be only charitably described as “frenemies.”

In other words, compared to the status quo, fracking is good for the planet and bad for our enemies. Russia’s economy, which is largely dependent on exporting fossil fuels, could face collapse if oil and gas prices fall too far. That is why RT is fearmongering about fracking; it wants to decrease the global supply of fossil fuels (which keeps prices artificially high) as part of a strategy to keep Russia’s economy alive.

Thus, environmentalists like Joe Romm and the protesters who block fracking and the construction of pipelines, such as Keystone XL and Dakota Access, are serving as “useful idiots” for Vladimir Putin. They falsely believe they are doing good for America and the planet when, in reality, they are only doing good for the Kremlin.

Don’t be too sure that they believe it.

IT’S ON: MMA President Not Letting Meryl Streep’s Nasty ‘Not the Arts’ Comment Slide.

As I said on Twitter yesterday, anyone who doesn’t think sport is art didn’t see Willie McGee in Game 3 of the ’82 World Series.

YAHOO? Marissa Mayer to depart; company to be renamed Altaba.

The high-profile Mayer, who was brought in to save the Internet icon in 2012; Filo, who co-founded the company at Stanford University in 1994; board chairman Maynard Webb; and three others are departing. It is unclear, however, if Mayer will remain in some capacity.

Eric Brandt, a new member of Yahoo’s 11-member board, was named chairman immediately.

In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing late today, Yahoo said the resignations are “not due to any disagreement with the Company on any matter relating to the Company’s operations, policies or practices.”

The filing also said the company would be renamed Altaba after the Verizon deal closes.

Altaba?

THIS IS CNN:

That’s how the narrative is crafted.

OF COURSE HE DOES: The Star Witness On Sessions’ ‘Racism’ Has Deeply Troubled History.

ASHE SCHOW: In campus rape cases, colleges to learn sexual advances go both ways.

Thanks to federal guidance documents (which aren’t legally binding but carry heavy threats including the loss of federal funding), schools are forced to adjudicate accusations. Sexual assault is a felony, but campus hearings do not afford accused students proper due process rights such as attorney representation and cross-examination.

These limits, along with a campus culture that insists women never lie about sexual assault and that the issue is so prevalent that schools must take swift action to punish the accused, lead to many male students being expelled.

For the past half decade, more and more lawsuits from these male students have been filed, alleging schools violated the anti-sex discrimination statute known as Title IX by discrimination against male students, ironically in the name of correcting Title IX violations against female students.

Farrer’s case is different for two reasons. One, most male students file as “John Doe” to avoid having their names put in print, and two, Farrer is suing his accuser for defamation and intentional infliction of harm.

Good for him. Male victims of unwanted sexual advances shouldn’t feel any more ashamed than female victims.

STILL NOT GETTING IT DEP’T: Celebrities Head to D.C. for Trump Protest.

How many more new Trump voters will they inspire?

PETER SAVODNIK: The Secret Source of Putin’s Evil.

Dostoevsky foresaw Russia destroying itself with the clandestine, or not so clandestine, support of the West. The clearest illustration of this self-destruction comes in The Brothers Karamazov. The novel, the longest whodunit ever written, revolves around the murder of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov. One of Karamazov’s three legitimate sons, Mitya, is accused and found guilty of the murder. But the real murderer is Karamazov’s mentally challenged, bastard son, Smerdyakov—and the real murderer behind Smerdyakov (the zakashik, or orderer) is Ivan, the most successful and Westernized of the Karamazov brothers. It is Ivan, full of his newfangled Western ideas, who tears apart his family (and, metaphorically, Russia), and it is the last remaining legitimate Karamazov son, Lyosha, who is left to rebuild it. Not incidentally, Lyosha is the youngest, most religious, and most self-effacing of the Karamazov clan. The way forward is actually the way backward—all the way to the ancient, Russian sobornost, the spiritual community that, in the Slavophile mind, used to bind Russia together. This, all these years later, is Putin’s Russia.

The Soviet perplex, viewed through a Karamazov prism, is not the cause of post-Soviet Russia’s woes but the effect of the same calamity that still bedevils Russia: the identity crisis bequeathed to it by its original Westernizer, Peter. Russia spent the 1990s devouring itself—selling off its biggest oil assets, handing over its elections to the C.I.A., allowing NATO to encroach upon its borders—and, only under Putin, has it retaken possession of itself.

Putin is playing a very long game — going back three centuries.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: U.S. troops carry out ground raid against ISIS in Syria.

The troops, who landed on helicopters, spent about 90 minutes in the area, then left carrying Islamic State captives and bodies, according to witnesses quoted by the website Deir al-Zour 24, which monitors Islamic State activity in that province.

According to U.S. defense officials in Washington, the U.S. forces intercepted a vehicle carrying an Islamic State militant whom the U.S. military hoped to capture and interrogate. One official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an operation whose details have not been publicly announced, said that a firefight broke out and the suspect, along with another person in the car, was killed. No Americans were injured.

Well done.

WELL, YES: The Russia hacking report is an indictment of Obama, not Trump.

Did Russia attempt to influence our election? Of course it did. That’s not shocking. As the declassified report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) pointed out, it has been trying to do so since the days of the Soviet Union. The report called the hacking effort “the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order,” adding that “Russia, like its Soviet predecessor, has a history of conducting covert influence campaigns focused on US presidential elections.”

The difference today, the report concluded, was that Russia’s actions in 2016 represented “a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations.”

So why would Putin be so brazen? Simple. He knew that, under President Obama, there would be zero consequences for his actions.

“But Trump!” is the new “But Bush!” and he hasn’t even been sworn in yet.

LEFT BEHIND: Top Six Trump Surrogates Who Were Passed Over for Jobs in the Administration.

You’ll breathe a sigh of relief at four or five of these also-rans — at least.

WHO YOU GONNA BELIEVE: Cory Booker or your own lyin’ eyes?

GIZMODO ISSUES 20-MEGATON CORRECTION.

The frightening intro:

Between the Trump transition team’s infighting, incompetence, and high-profile resignations, any decisions that signaled even a modicum of stability for the country would come as a relief at this point. Unfortunately, the nascent Trump Administration isn’t inclined to calm anyone’s nerves. According to an official within the Department of Energy, the Trump transition team has declined to ask the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration and his deputy to temporarily stay in their roles after Trump takes office on January 20th.

The NNSA is the $12 billion-a-year agency that “maintains and enhances the safety, security, and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile.” It’s unclear when the two officials will be replaced. Their offices will remain vacant until they are.

The correction:

Another NNSA official, speaking on background to Gizmodo and Defense News, has disputed this report as “inaccurate” while confirming that “there have been no discussions between the president-elect’s transition team and any of NNSA’s political appointees on extending their public service past Jan. 20.” In other words, the Trump transition team has not asked the top two NNSA officials to stay on until they can be replaced.

After speaking to our source for clarification, we have updated the story and headline to reflect that, while Klotz and Creedon have submitted their resignations, intend to depart on January 20, and have not been asked by the Trump transition to stay past that date, the Trump team has not explicitly instructed them to leave or “clean out their desks,” as we reported. According to our source, both officials “have expressed [to the Trump team] that they would likely be willing to stay to facilitate a smooth transition, if asked,” as is the tradition for key officials, and have received no response.

To put it in the plain English which Gizmodo couldn’t even bother to do in the correction, two Obama appointees are leaving at the end of the term, and Trump hasn’t named their successors yet.

Frightening.

SICK BURN? ISIS Has a New Weapon: Fire.

“This is a quick option for anyone intending to join the just terror campaign,” says the latest issue of the ISIS magazine Rumiyah.

This tactic requires neither guns such as were used in San Bernadino and Orlando nor vehicles such as were used in other attacks.

“With some simple and readily accessible materials (i.e. flammables), one can easily terrorize an entire nation,” the magazine advises.

Issue #5 of Rumiyah has flames on the cover and a “Just Terror Tactics” section that has in the past called for mass shootings and the use of vehicles to mow down pedestrians. A lengthy article begins with a tribute to the “brothers” inspired by a previous issue of Rumiyah to employ vehicles at Ohio State and in Berlin. It then proceeds to detail an added method to murder innocents.

“ARSON ATTACKS,” the headline reads.

Eventually ISIS might just trigger the civilizational war they say they want, but they wouldn’t like the results very much.

CHANGE: Microsoft is retiring the Blue Screen of Death for some users.

They’ll get a green one instead.

FAKE NEWS: Media trips over itself to make hate-crime narratives converge.

The picture became clearer as police departments and college campuses across the country responded to media and public pressure to address the “post-election hate spike.” Nearly every hate crime detailed in the article, which used the word “alleged” once, turned out to be a hoax or investigations remain ongoing, though some have been suspended due to lack of evidence.

Police suspended the investigation into “the robbery of a Muslim student at San Diego State University who wore traditional religious clothing” in December after no corroborating evidence emerged to confirm her account that two Trump supporters ripped off her hijab and stole her car. “The victim in this case you are referring to decided she no longer wanted to pursue the matter criminally,” a police spokesman told the Daily Caller on Dec. 23, adding that the report of a stolen car was “unfounded as the victim forgot where she parked her vehicle.”

The Washington Post mentioned the alleged incident six times in hate crime posts, including a Dec. 15 article contrasting it with a New York City hate crime hoax: “Muslim advocates expressed concern that Seweid’s episode would hurt the credibility of real anti-Muslim attacks and other hate crimes.” It never mentioned it again after the Caller’s report, nor did it update any previous stories that included the anecdote.

Read the whole thing. Although as you can probably guess, WaPo comes across as either sloppy, partisan, or just another purveyor of leftwing fake news.

BYRON YORK: How Jeff Sessions would change the Justice Department.

Trump promised to put an end to cities defying federal immigration law. To do the job, he picked Sessions, who has called sanctuary cities “one of the biggest, most egregious, and most dangerous wrongs now occurring in our immigration system today.”

“Sanctuary cities are together freeing an average of 1,000 criminal aliens a month,” Sessions said in October 2015. “Countless crimes are happening as a result of these never-ending releases: DUIs, assaults, burglaries, drug crimes, gang crimes, and murders.”

Now, some sanctuary cities are gearing up for a fight to protect their ability to defy federal law. Sessions, who as a senator voted for (unsuccessful) measures to crack down on sanctuary cities, last year called on the Obama administration to “immediately take action to withhold significant federal law enforcement funding” for sanctuary cities. It seems likely Sessions would attempt to do that as attorney general, but what other measures he might take are not clear. What is clear, though, is that he would likely exert significant pressure on defiant cities to observe federal law.

There are many other areas that the Justice Department covers — terrorism, civil rights, business and securities fraud, cyber crime, and still more — that will require Sessions’ attention, if he is confirmed. And finally, beyond those, there is the question of what role an attorney general should play in making sure his boss, the president, follows the law like everyone else.

In addition to being busy with all of that, Sessions will likely face significant pushback from his own Department.