Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Matthew Yglesias: Trump's latest interview shows he's not really the president (Vox)
He seems unaware of both the origins of the current standoff and the main subjects of disagreement between the parties. He's the one who installed the team of anti-immigration hardliners - Chief of Staff John Kelly, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, and senior adviser Stephen Miller - who appear to be actually driving the process, so he's responsible for what's going on. But he's not actually doing the work and, indeed, seems to have much less familiarity with his own policies and negotiating stances than a typical journalist or member of Congress.
Matthew Yglesias: Corporate America's tax cut celebrations, explained (Vox)
Corporate America is beginning to frame any positive announcement in ways that Republicans say is evidence their tax bill is already boosting the economy. The truth, however, is that the economic trends at work long predate the passage of the tax bill - or even Donald Trump's inauguration. The real change is political.
Elena Ferrante: 'I loved that boy to the point where I felt close to fainting' (The Guardian)
Some time ago, I planned to describe my first times. I listed a certain number of them: the first time I saw the sea, the first time I flew in an aeroplane, the first time I got drunk, the first time I fell in love, the first time I made love. It was an exercise both arduous and pointless.
Mario Russo: A Publisher's Life and Library (NY Times)
"It's a weird thing about book obsessives: We're kind of like thieves, and certainly voyeurs. We go into people's houses and immediately want to scope out their books, to see what sort of creatures they are. I knew Howard pretty well, but one book or another would still catch me by surprise. As in, Wow, how'd he get hold of that? Like his copy of Joy Williams's 'State of Grace' - the Paris Review edition. Hell, she's been a dear pal for 40 years, and I'm her publisher, but I don't have that." - GARY FISKETJON, editor of Alfred A. Knopf
Hadley Freeman: What's the difference between a bad date and a wild night? It depends who you ask (The Guardian)
Almost everyone can imagine an Aziz Ansari situation, because so many of us have been on one side or the other.
Suzanne Moore: Pity the 'hostesses' at this revolting gropefest dressed up as a charity do (The Guardian)
A fundraising dinner at the Dorchester treats women as a petting zoo for captains of industry and business.
Jonathan Jones: "Bayeux tapestry: a brag, a lament, an embodiment of history's complexity" (The Guardian)
It is a miracle of cooperation across borders that brings two peoples, two cultures together and reveals they are the same, after all. I'm not talking about the news this week that France's president, Emmanuel Macron, has given the go-ahead for the Bayeux tapestry to visit Britain. I am describing the tapestry itself.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
answered:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
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Michelle in AZ
Team Coco
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Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
from Marc Perkel
Marc's Guide to Curing Cancer
So far so good on beating cancer for now. I'm doing fine. At the end of the month I'll be 16 months into an 8 month mean lifespan. And yesterday I went on a 7 mile hike and managed to keep up with the hiking group I was with. So, doing something right.
Still waiting for future test results and should see things headed in the right direction. I can say that it's not likely that anything dire happens in the short term so that means that I should have time to make several more attempts at this. So even if it doesn't work the first time there are a lot of variations to try. So if there's bad news it will help me pick the next radiation target.
I have written a "how to" guide for oncologists to perform the treatment that I got. I'm convinced that I'm definitely onto something and whether it works for me or not isn't the definitive test. I know if other people tried this that it would work for some of them, and if they improve it that it will work for a lot of them.
The guide is quite detailed and any doctor reading this can understand the procedure at every level. I also go into detail as to how it works, how I figured it out, and variations and improvements that could be tried to enhance it. I also introduce new ways to look at the problem. There is a lot of room for improvement and I think that doctors reading it will see what I'm talking about and want to build on it. And it's written so that if you're not a doctor you can still follow it. It also has a personal story revealing that I'm the class clown of cancer support group. I give great interviews and I look pretty hot in a lab coat.
So, feel free to read this and see what I'm talking about. But if any of you want to help then pass this around to both doctors and cancer patients. I need some media coverage. I'm looking for as many eyeballs as possible to read these ideas. Even if this isn't the solution, it's definitely on the right track. After all, I did hike 7 miles yesterday. And this hiking group wasn't moving slow. So if this isn't working then, why am I still here?
I also see curing cancer as more of an engineering problem that a medical problem. So if you are good at solving problems and most of what you know about medicine was watching the Dr. House MD TV show, then you're at the level I was at when I started. So anyone can jump in and be part of the solution.
Here is a link to my guide: Oncologists Guide to Curing Cancer using Abscopal Effect
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
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Last Night
Warmer in Long Beach (89°) than Palm Springs (84°).
First-Ever Grammy
Carrie Fisher
Carrie Fisher may be gone, but her impact is still being felt.
The late space princess won a posthumous award at the Grammys on Sunday, getting the nod for the Best Spoken Word Album award for the recording of her memoir, The Princess Diarist.
Fisher beat out other luminaries Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bruce Springsteen, Bernie Sanders And Mark Ruffalo, and Shelly Peiken.
It's Fisher's first Grammy, having previously been nominated for the same award in 2009 for her recording of Wishful Drinking. Fisher's daughter, Billie Lourd, paid tribute to her mother on Instagram following the announcement.
"Princess Diarist was the last profesh(ish) thing my momby and I got to do together," Lourd wrote.
Carrie Fisher
Signals Her Intent
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
In different circumstances, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg might be on a valedictory tour in her final months on the Supreme Court. But in the era of Donald Trump, the 84-year-old Ginsburg is packing her schedule and sending signals she intends to keep her seat on the bench for years.
The eldest Supreme Court justice has produced two of the court's four signed opinions so far this term. Outside court, she's the subject of a new documentary that includes video of her working out. And she's hired law clerks to take her through June 2020, just four months before the next presidential election.
Soaking in her late-in-life emergence as a liberal icon, she's using the court's monthlong break to embark on a speaking tour that is taking her from the Sundance Film Festival in Utah to law schools and synagogues on the East Coast. One talk will have her in Rhode Island on Tuesday, meaning she won't attend the president's State of the Union speech that night in Washington.
She has a standard response for interviewers who ask how long she intends to serve. She will stay as long as she can go "full steam," she says, and she sees as her model John Paul Stevens, who stepped down as a justice in 2010 at age 90.
"I think that Justice Ginsburg has made clear that she has no intention of retiring. I am sure she wants to stay on the court until the end of the Trump presidency if she can," said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley, and a liberal who called on Ginsburg to retire in 2014, when Barack Obama was president and Democrats controlled the Senate.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Raise $7 Million
Fleetwood Mac
Rock 'n' roll's dysfunctional family, Fleetwood Mac, joined with artists paying tribute to their work to raise $7 million for down-on-their luck musicians at a benefit in Radio City Music Hall on Friday.
The annual MusiCares fundraiser, held each year just before the Grammys, like the awards show was in New York for the first time in 15 years. Fleetwood Mac, made whole again recently when Christine McVie rejoined after a 15-year hiatus, have mellowed and grown more appreciative of their career since their drug-taking, partner-swapping heyday.
"Not very far below the level of dysfunction is what really exists and what we're feeling now more than ever in our career, which is love," said member Lindsey Buckingham.
The band capped the benefit with a five-song mini-set, including the sprawling, experimental "Tusk" and Buckingham's classic kiss-off, "Go Your Own Way." Before that, they listened to artists like Lorde, HAIM, OneRepublic and Miley Cyrus perform their songs.
Former President Bill Clinton was on hand, joined by wife Hillary in the audience, to honor the band whose song "Don't Stop" was the theme for Clinton's 1992 campaign. He said the song was played for him more than "Hail to the Chief."
Fleetwood Mac
Oldest Bookseller
Germany
When Helga Weyhe began work at her beloved bookshop, the Red Army was on the march towards her east German town, Hitler still clung to power and Sartre had just published "No Exit".
Fast-forward more than seven decades and the remarkably spry 95-year-old, Germany's oldest bookseller, swats away any talk of retirement, or even slowing down.
Still staffing the store six days a week, Weyhe said books got her through two dictatorships and would see her through her last chapter too.
"I started in 1944 and I'm still here," she told AFP with a smile, sitting in her back office stacked with handpicked volumes.
Weyhe represents the third generation of her family to run the shop, which has occupied the same spot since 1840.
Germany
Alaska Mine Project
EPA
In a surprise move, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reversed itself on Friday and maintained restrictions on the proposed Pebble Mine copper and gold mine project in southwest Alaska's Bristol Bay region.
"It is my judgment at this time that any mining projects in the region likely pose a risk to the abundant natural resources that exist there," EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said in a statement.
President-for-now Donald Trump (R-Pendejo) has championed increased domestic mining and the EPA's decision to maintain restrictions on the Pebble Mine's approval process comes as a surprise.
The Obama administration blocked the proposed mine in 2014 over environmental concerns. Last year, Pruitt started a process to reverse that decision. The Canadian company behind the mine project then applied for a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The Pebble Limited Partnership, comprising Canadian miners Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd and First Quantum Minerals Ltd, is planning to mine 1.2 billion tons of material, including 287 million pounds of copper.
Environmentalists, commercial and sport fishermen, many Alaska Native tribal organizations and even some Republican politicians have all criticized the project, which would be built on land near Lake Clark National Park.
EPA
Hottest On Record In 2017
World's Oceans
The world's oceans in 2017 were the hottest ever recorded, scientists revealed in a new study published on Friday.
The findings were based on an updated analysis of the top 6,000 feet of the world's seas by the Institute of Atmospheric Physics and the Chinese Academy of Science.
"The long-term warming trend driven by human activities continued unabated," researchers said in the study, which was published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. "The high ocean temperatures in recent years have occurred as greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere have also risen."
While ocean temperatures dropped slightly in 2016 because of a massive El Nino effect, the last five years were still the hottest recorded for the world's oceans. The second hottest ocean year was 2015.
According to the study, heat increased in most regions of the world's oceans. But temperatures in the Atlantic and southern oceans increased more than temperatures in the Pacific and Indian oceans.
World's Oceans
Activist Flees
Thailand
A Thai pro-democracy activist said on Sunday she had fled Thailand after learning she would be prosecuted for defaming the monarchy for sharing on Facebook a 2016 BBC article deemed offensive to Thailand's king.
Chanoknan Ruamsap said in a post on her Facebook account on Sunday that she received a summons earlier this month to hear a royal insult charge under Article 112 for posting a profile of the king from the BBC's Thai-language service, which some deemed offensive.
"It appears that I had been charged with 112 for sharing the BBC article in December 2016," Chanoknan said.
"I had less than 30 minutes to decide whether to stay or leave. It was a hard decision because this time I wouldn't be able to come back."
The BBC article was published shortly after King Maha Vajiralongkorn ascended the throne in December 2016 following the death of his father, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who died that October aged 88.
Thailand
Half-Empty Hotel
Washington
Donald Trump's (R-Corrupt) extravagant hotel in Washington, DC was reportedly more expensive and emptier than its peers in 2017.
The establishment - a popular hangout for administration officials and the President's supporters - had an average monthly occupancy rate of about 50 per cent from January through November 2017, according to data provided to CNN.
That occupancy rate is about 33 per cent below an industry average for a wide group of luxury hotels in the nation's capital over the same period, the outlet reported.
At the same time, the Trump hotel charged nightly room rates that were 40 per cent higher on average than comparable hotels in the area.
The President is not one to dine around town. But on rare nights when he does decide to venture out of the White House, he likes to head to his hotel, likely for a steak.
Washington
Weekend Box Office
"Maze Runner: The Death Cure"
"Maze Runner: The Death Cure" is the highest grossing film of the weekend, but according to studio estimates Sunday, many moviegoers also chose the first weekend after Oscar nominations to catch up with some awards contenders like "The Shape of Water" which had its highest grossing frame with $5.7 million.
In first place, "The Death Cure" took in a higher than expected $23.5 million. It's the third and final installment in the "Maze Runner" series based on James Dashner's dystopian young adult novels and the weakest opening of the three (the first opened to $32.5 million and the second to $30.3 million). Part of that may be attributable to stalled momentum and a two-and-a-half-year gap between the second and third film. "The Death Cure's" release was delayed a year by 20th Century Fox after star Dylan O'Brien's on-set injury in early 2016.
It was still enough to push "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle" back down to second place for the first time in three weeks. Down only 16 percent, "Jumanji" added $16.4 million, bringing its total to a robust $338.1 million.
In third place, the Christian Bale Western "Hostiles" expanded wide to 2,816 theaters in its sixth weekend and earned $10.2 million. The Hugh Jackman musical "The Greatest Showman" kept going strong in fourth with $9.5 million, down only 11 percent, and now boasting a total of $126.5 million.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to comScore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1."Maze Runner: The Death Cure," $23.5 million
2."Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle," $16.4 million.
3."Hostiles," $10.2 million."
4."The Greatest Showman," $9.5 million.
5."The Post," $8.9 million.
6."12 Strong," $8.6 million.
7."Den of Thieves," $8.4 million.
8."The Shape of Water," $5.7 million.
9."Paddington 2," $5.6 million.
10."Star Wars: The Last Jedi," $4.2 million.
"Maze Runner: The Death Cure"
In Memory
Dennis Peron
Dennis Peron, an activist who was among the first people to argue for the benefits of marijuana for AIDS patients and helped legalize medical pot in California, died Saturday at 72.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Peron died in a hospital in the city.
Peron was a driving force behind a San Francisco ordinance allowing medical marijuana - a move that later aided the 1996 passage of Proposition 215 that legalized medical use in the entire state.
He argued for the benefits of medicinal marijuana for AIDS patients as the health crisis overtook San Francisco. The Chronicle said the epidemic took his partner, Jonathan West, in 1990.
San Francisco's Board of Supervisors recognized Peron, suffering with late-stage lung cancer, with a certificate of honor last year.
A Vietnam War veteran, Peron spent some of his last years on a farm in Lake County, growing and giving away medical marijuana.
Dennis Peron wrote in his 2012 book, "Memoirs of Dennis Peron," that he was just a "gay kid from Long Island who joined the Air Force to get away from home."
The Chronicle said he then moved to a commune in San Francisco where he befriended Supervisor Harvey Milk and began selling marijuana.
In 1991, Peron founded the first public cannabis dispensary in the country during the height of the U.S. drug war.
He and a friend distributed pot to AIDS patients, got busted several times and was shot in the leg by a police officer, the newspaper said.
The pot club served 9,000 clients before it was closed by a judge.
Dennis Peron
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