Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Lucy Rock: When do you know you're old enough to die? Barbara Ehrenreich has some answers (The Guardian)
With her latest book, Natural Causes, Barbara Ehrenreich notes that there's an age at which death no longer requires much explanation.
Sarah Kliff: The truth about the gender wage gap (Vox)
Understanding the nuances of the wage gap is important to understanding why women in the United States still earn less than men. It helps explain how to fix the problem, too. But it requires going much, much deeper than one statistic.
Josh Vorhees: West Virginia Republicans Are Getting Behind a Candidate So Odious, Even Trump Won't Go Near Him (Slate)
When [Don] Blankenship jumped into the race last fall, many wondered whether his motivation was less about the Senate and more about rehabbing his image after spending a year in prison in connection with a 2010 explosion at one of his mines that killed 29 men. But only a month out from the May 8 primary, Blankenship has emerged as a top GOP contender in a race that could help decide control of the Senate.
Jeremy Stahl: The Report that Trump Is Not a Target of the Mueller Probe Is Actually Terrible News for the President (Slate)
This may sound like a mixed bag for the president. Indeed, the Post reports that Trump has been privately expressing relief at his apparent legal status, telling "allies that he is not a target of the probe and believes an interview will help him put the matter behind him." In actuality, though, there is very little for the president to be relieved about. In fact the entire report is terrible news for the president.
Mallory Ortberg: Tight Quarters (Slate)
I'm a 30-year-old woman, and my parents expect me to share a bed with my brother.
Sam Adams: Isao Takahata, Dead at 82, Was Studio Ghibli's Underappreciated Master (Slate)
Isao Takahata was a visionary, but he wasn't a brand. The best films of his long career, which include 1988's Grave of the Fireflies and 2013's The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, are every bit the equal of his Studio Ghibli co-founder and friendly rival Hayao Miyazaki's masterworks. But where Miyazaki circled around the same set of obsessions-flight, ecological catastrophe, childhood-Takahata's films were each singular, so visually and thematically distinct they might have been created by a different person.
Dan Buettner: Happiness Lessons from Mexico (Blue Zones)
Make no mistake, the people in and around Monterrey have serious problems. In many villages, kids suffer from malnutrition and lack of education. Talented, intelligent men and women are stuck working in breweries or factories that make jeans. Their dreams and aspirations are going unmet. The less fortunate feel they must leave their families and travel to the United State for work. Yet despite all these hurdles-the high levels of corruption and the relatively low levels of development and questionable governance-these Mexicans are blessed with, shall we say, happiness assets.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Bonus Links
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
DANGER! BRIDGE OUT.
"THE ATTACK OF THE MORON PUNDITS".
A PIECE OF SHIT ON THE BOTTOM OF YOUR SHOE.
"THE DEMISE OF THE NATION STATE"
"THESE PRE EXISTING CONDITIONS WILL KILL US."
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Field trip behind the Orange Curtain.
March For Our Lives
Empty Chairs
Student-led protesters around the country are staging town halls to discuss gun violence with their federal representatives, and leaving empty chairs for the politicians who dodged their invitations to attend.
The March for Our Lives protesters - who staged a massive rally last month in communities across the country - are conducting the town halls in order to advocate and discuss gun policy reforms, which Washington has been reluctant to implement.
A list of the scheduled events on the "Town Hall for our Lives" website shows dozens of such events in which the politician declined to attend or did not respond. All told, the website shows more than 100 events in 34 different state. There are events listed in 70 GOP-held districts, and about 30 Democrat-held districts.
Some politicians from both parties have, however, accepted their invitations to go speak with their constituents about the gun control and gun violence epidemic in the United States that has been hotly contested since the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine's Day when 17 people were killed.
Of the ones who declined to attend the town hall event, several have agreed to "office hours" with their constituents to discuss the issue.
Empty Chairs
Landslide of Classic Art
Public Domain
The Great American Novel enters the public domain on January 1, 2019-quite literally. Not the concept, but the book by William Carlos Williams. It will be joined by hundreds of thousands of other books, musical scores, and films first published in the United States during 1923. It's the first time since 1998 for a mass shift to the public domain of material protected under copyright. It's also the beginning of a new annual tradition: For several decades from 2019 onward, each New Year's Day will unleash a full year's worth of works published 95 years earlier.
This coming January, Charlie Chaplin's film The Pilgrim and Cecil B. DeMille's The 10 Commandments will slip the shackles of ownership, allowing any individual or company to release them freely, mash them up with other work, or sell them with no restriction. This will be true also for some compositions by Bela Bartok, Aldous Huxley's Antic Hay, Winston Churchill's The World Crisis, Carl Sandburg's Rootabaga Pigeons, e.e. cummings's Tulips and Chimneys, Noël Coward's London Calling! musical, Edith Wharton's A Son at the Front, many stories by P.G. Wodehouse, and hosts upon hosts of forgotten works, according to research by the Duke University School of Law's Center for the Study of the Public Domain.
Throughout the 20th century, changes in copyright law led to longer periods of protection for works that had been created decades earlier, which altered a pattern of relatively brief copyright protection that dates back to the founding of the nation. This came from two separate impetuses. First, the United States had long stood alone in defining copyright as a fixed period of time instead of using an author's life plus a certain number of years following it, which most of the world had agreed to in 1886. Second, the ever-increasing value of intellectual property could be exploited with a longer term.
The details of copyright law get complicated fast, but they date back to the original grant in the Constitution that gives Congress the right to bestow exclusive rights to a creator for "limited times." In the first copyright act in 1790, that was 14 years, with the option to apply for an automatically granted 14-year renewal. By 1909, both terms had grown to 28 years. In 1976, the law was radically changed to harmonize with the Berne Convention, an international agreement originally signed in the 1886. This switched expiration to an author's life plus 50 years. In 1998, an act named for Sonny Bono, recently deceased and a defender of Hollywood's expansive rights, bumped that to 70 years.
The Sonny Bono act was widely seen as a way to keep Disney's Steamboat Willie from slipping into the public domain, which would allow that first appearance of Mickey Mouse in 1928 from being freely copied and distributed. By tweaking the law, Mickey got another 20-year reprieve. When that expires, Steamboat Willie can be given away, sold, remixed, turned pornographic, or anything else. (Mickey himself doesn't lose protection as such, but his graphical appearance, his dialog, and any specific behavior in Steamboat Willie-his character traits-become likewise freely available. This was decided in a case involving Sherlock Holmes in 2014.)
Public Domain
2016 Mock Front Page
The Boston Globe
A parody newspaper front page featuring Donald Trump (R-Pendejo) as president and created by The Boston Globe's editorial board two years ago turns out to be so dead-on that it's creepy.
The headline screams: "Deportations to Begin; President Calls for Tripling of ICE." A center photo of Trump features a quote from the president: "DEPORT ILLEGALS 'SO FAST YOUR HEAD WILL SPIN.'"
The eerie mirror of reality doesn't stop there. The story in the right-hand column of the newspaper is headlined: "Markets sink as trade war looms." The story begins: "Worldwide stocks plunged again Friday, completing the worst month on record as trade wars with both China and Mexico seem imminent."
Other front-page stories have the headlines: "U.S. soldiers refuse to kill ISIS families" and "New libel law targets 'absolute scum' in press." Another: "Bank glitch halts border wall work." That story starts: "Construction on the new border wall with Mexico stopped suddenly on Friday, dealing a major setback to one of President Trump's key campaign promises after Mexico refused to pay."
An editorial note on the mock front page alerts readers: "This is Donald Trump's America. What you read on this page is what might happen if the GOP frontrunner can put his ideas into practice, his words into action."
The Boston Globe
2 States Vs. 45 States
Sales Taxes
President-for-now Donald Trump (R-Corrupt) has railed against Amazon, falsely claiming the company fails to pay state and local sales taxes on online shipments. But it turns out the Trump Organization retail website collects sales taxes only on goods shipped to two states - while Amazon collects sales taxes in 45 states.
The TrumpStore.com website sells Trump-labeled glassware, baseball caps, luggage tags, spa slippers and key chains, among several other items. It collects sales tax only on orders shipped to buyers in Florida and Louisiana, according to the company's own website, The Wall Street Journal was the first to point out on Friday.
TrumpStore.com, which touts itself as the "official retail website of the The Trump Organization," doesn't even pay sales taxes on its online shipments in New York, according to the information on its site. Its physical store and headquarters are located in the Trump Tower in Manhattan.
Trump, who maintains his ownership of the Trump Organization even while president, has been slamming Amazon on Twitter for dodging sales taxes. He has called it a "no-tax" company and has blasted Amazon for paying "little or no taxes to state & local governments."
According to regulatory filings, Amazon paid a combined total of $412 million in federal, state, local and foreign taxes last year. In 2015, it paid $273 million. Amazon currently charges consumers sales taxes in all 45 states where such taxes exist, plus Washington, D.C. All states except Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon collect sales tax.
Sales Taxes
Across The US
Teacher Protests
Recent protests by thousands of teachers in far-flung parts of the United States reflect a deepening malaise in American education after years of budget cuts and stagnant salaries that have left many instructors feeling their work is not valued.
"We've never seen a brushfire like this," National Education Association president Lily Eskelsen Garcia told AFP.
In the central and southern states of Oklahoma and Kentucky, thousands of public school teachers -- supported by students and their parents -- have been occupying the halls of state legislatures since Monday.
The last time Oklahoma saw such a teacher protest was 1990, and that lasted only four days. But now, hundreds of schools have been closed and the strikes are expected to continue into the coming week.
Teachers in the southwestern state of Arizona are expected to join the protest movement.
Teacher Protests
'Fake News Most Of The Time'
Peter Navarro
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro escalated President-for-now Donald Trump's (R-Crooked) attacks on the news media Sunday morning, characterizing The Washington Post as "fake news most of the time."
Speaking with host Chuck Todd on NBC's "Meet the Press," Navarro brushed off a Washington Post story from Saturday that described turmoil in the White House. He specifically denied the newspaper's report that White House chief of staff John Kelly is threatening to resign.
"Every day of his adult life," Navarro said, "John Kelly's gotten up in the morning to serve America. He's a great man, a courageous man -- he serves the president, he has the president's ear, he runs the West Wing well. That's all I know, that's all I see."
He added, "When you read stuff in The Washington Post, frankly, that's fake news most of the time."
"I think that expression is a pretty unfair thing to say about a major news organization," Todd said.
Peter Navarro
High Chief
Vanuatu
Prince Charles might not have the god-like status of his father Prince Philip on Vanuatu, but he was given an honour of his own on a visit to the island nation.
Gamely donning a grass skirt and a white garland, the heir to the throne was made a high chief in a colourful ceremony on Saturday.
In the tradition of the Malvatumauri Council of Chiefs, Charles took part in a series of rituals as he was given the high chief name of Mal Menaringmanu.
The prince also took a sip from a cup of special kava, known as Royal Kava, before planting two trees on the island.
His visit may have served to cheer up villagers, who were disappointed that the retirement of his father from public duty last year meant that they were unlikely to get another visit from their chosen deity.
Vanuatu
Have Fluorescent Beaks
Puffins
As if puffins - the super cute seabirds know for digging burrows and mating for life - weren't already cool enough, one British ornithologist recently made a stunning discovery.
Jamie Dunning found that the beaks of Atlantic puffins are fluorescent and glow a bright blue when placed under an ultraviolet light. Dunning made the discovery back in February, after shining a UV light on the body of a dead puffin he had at his lab. ("I'm the kind of guy that people send dead birds to," he told Newsweek at the time.)
But though he tweeted the images months ago, the finding started getting increased media attention this week, with multiple news outlets picking up the story.
He told the CBC that there's some quality about their bills that absorbs UV light and re-emits it, but he doesn't know what exactly it is at this point.
He added that birds can see a wider range of colors than humans can, and whatever is going on with the beak must be visible to other birds in a way that it isn't to people.
Puffins
Weekend Box Office
"A Quiet Place"
John Krasinksi's "A Quiet Place" made a thunderous debut at the box office, opening with $50 million in ticket sales and rumbling to the year's second-best weekend after "Black Panther," according to studio estimates Sunday.
The Paramount Pictures thriller far exceeded expectations to land one of the top opening weekends for a horror release. It marks an unlikely breakthrough for Krasinski, the former "Office" star many associate more with inter-office romance and deadpan expressions than silent cinematic frights. Krasinski's third directing effort, which stars himself and wife Emily Blunt is about a family in a future dystopia populated by violent creatures with extremely acute hearing.
But it was far from the only success story on the weekend, which also saw Universal's R-rated comedy "Blockers" open solidly with $21.4 million, Steven Spielberg's virtual-reality adventure "Ready Player One" dip only 40 percent with $25.1 million in its second weekend and the period docudrama "Chappaquiddick" beat expectations with a debut of $6.2 million. In limited release, Wes Anderson's "Isle of Dogs," Lynne Ramsay's "You Were Never Really Here" and Andrew Haigh's "Lean on Pete" all did well, too.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to comScore. Where available, the latest international numbers also are included. Final three-day domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. "A Quiet Place," $50 million.
2. "Ready Player One," $25.1 million.
3. "Blockers," $21.4 million.
4. "Black Panther," $8.4 million.
5. "I Can Only Imagine," $8.4 million.
6. "Tyler Perry's Acrimony," $8.1 million.
7. "Chappaquiddick," $6.2 million.
8. "Sherlock Gnomes," $5.6 million.
9. "Pacific Rim Uprising," $4.9 million.
10. "Isle of Dogs," $4.6 million.
"A Quiet Place"
In Memory
Susan Anspach
Actress Susan Anspach, best known for roles in landmark 1970s films like "Five Easy Pieces" and "Play It Again, Sam," has died in Los Angeles. She was 75.
Born in New York City in 1942, Anspach attended Catholic University and began her acting career in the early 1960s. In 1965, she appeared in the off-Broadway production of Arthur Miller's "A View From the Bridge" alongside Robert Duvall and Jon Voight. She also appeared on Broadway in Terrence McNally's "And Things That Go Bump in the Night," and in 1966 off-Broadway alongside Dustin Hoffman in Turgenev's "The Journey of the Fifth Horse."
Anspach rose to prominence in movies in 1970, making her film debut with a small role in Hal Ashby's "The Landlord." The same year she had a more significant role opposite Jack Nicholson in "Five Easy Pieces."
She went on to play Woody Allen's ex-wife in 1972's "Play It Again, Sam," and hold a starring role in Paul Mazursky's "Blume in Love" (1973).
Other film credits include "The Big Fix" (1978) with Richard Dreyfuss, "The Devil and Max Devlin" (1981) with Elliott Gould and Bill Cosby, the 1981 comedy "Gas," and "Wild About Harry" (2009) with Tate Donovan. Anspach also played Dabney Coleman's ex-wife in ABC's 1987-88 ABC comedy "The Slap Maxwell Story."
Anspach was married to actor Mark Goddard from 1970-78 and to musician Sherwood Ball from 1982-88. She's survived by Caleb Goddard (her son with Jack Nicholson), and her daughter, Catherine.
Susan Anspach
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