Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Coal, Cash, and Bad Faith (NY Times Blog)
If there is any lasting benefit from the Trump era - which is by no means a sure thing, since democracy may not survive the experience - it will lie in the Great Unmasking: the revelation of just how much bad faith pervades modern conservatism.
Ysenda Maxtone Graham: Lucy Mangan has enough comic energy to power the National Grid (Spectator)
In her delightful memoir of childhood reading she admits to a deep distrust of Babar's obsession with smart suits.
Will Oremus: Teens Are Abandoning Facebook. For Real This Time. (Slate)
The large silver lining for Facebook, of course, is that it owns Instagram, and Instagram is doing just fine. But it should still concern the company that just 15 percent of teens say they spend more time on Instagram than other platforms. Facebook was built on hooking users at a young age and keeping them hooked as they grow up. Now it has to hope that young people who are growing up on rival platforms change their habits as they age.
Jed Shugerman: How Trump's Dinesh D'Souza Pardon Should Backfire (Slate)
If it pushes New York to change its double jeopardy laws, it could be a big defeat for the president.
Lucy Mangan: Does 'peak prosecco' spell the end of bubbly slogan tees and fizzy crisps? (The Guardian)
Prosecco sales are slowing - let's hope the ridiculous merchandise is on the wane, too. No one needs wine-themed doormats, clocks or lip balm
Anonymous: The twist in the tale of my parents' malicious will (The Guardian)
My sister and I escaped our abusive parents. But then she died and their vindictive influence returned…
E. Reid Ross: 6 Famously Awful Televangelists Who Are Somehow Still Around (Cracked)
Just because wacky televangelists aren't a staple of the news cycle anymore (the Joel Osteen follies notwithstanding) doesn't mean that this particular breed of huckster has become a thing of the past. Some of these guys who became wealthy faith-healing superstars in the '80s and '90s are still around ... and their act has gotten much weirder.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
wrote
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
AN ASSAULT ON OUR REPUBLIC!
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and hot.
Praised For Tackling
Benedict Cumberbatch
The food-delivery firm Deliveroo thanked Benedict Cumberbatch on Saturday after a newspaper reported that the "Sherlock" star had fought off muggers who were attacking one of its cyclists.
Uber driver Manuel Dias told the Sun newspaper that he was driving Cumberbatch and his wife Sophie Hunter along London's Marylebone High Street when they saw a cyclist being hit with a bottle.
He said Cumberbatch jumped out of the car and grabbed one of the attackers.
"I had hold of one lad and Benedict another," Dias was quoted as saying. "He seemed to know exactly what he was doing. He was very brave."
"Here was 'Sherlock Holmes' fighting off four attackers just round the corner from Baker Street," he added.
Benedict Cumberbatch
Retreating From Military AI Project
Google
Google workers on Friday got word that the internet titan will retreat from a deal to help the US military use artificial intelligence to analyze drone video following an outcry from staff, according to reports.
The collaboration with the US Department of Defense was said to have sparked rebellion inside the California-based company.
An internal petition calling for Google to stay out of "the business of war" garnered thousands of signatures, and some workers reportedly quit to protest a collaboration with the military.
The New York Times and tech news website Gizmodo cited unnamed sources as saying that a Google's cloud team executive announced told employees on Friday that the company would not seek to renew the controversial contract after it expires next year.
The contract was reported to be worth less than $10 million to Google, but was thought to have potential to lead to more lucrative technology collaborations with the military.
Google
Shoes Form Memorial
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico residents began leaving pairs of shoes outside the island's Capitol building in San Juan on Friday after learning this week that the death toll from last year's Hurricane Maria might have been 70 times higher than the official government tally of 64.
The shoes, arranged in neat rows, formed an impromptu memorial for the dead as people held protest signs nearby.
The island's government is facing criticism from residents angry at the lack of transparency surrounding the official death toll, which remains murky. Nearly six months after a New York Times report suggested 1,052 deaths may have been linked to the hurricane, a research team led by Harvard University put the figure even higher, at 4,645.
Late Friday, the Puerto Rico Department of Health released data that showed a sharp year-over-year increase in fatalities in the months after the hurricane hit. There were at least 1,400 additional deaths from September through the end of December 2017 compared to the same time period in 2016.
Maria's devastation was not limited to drownings and debris. The storm knocked out power to nearly the entire island, with repair efforts stretching several months, and it cut off access to clean drinking water for more than half the population. Researchers say many of the deaths resulted from inability to access medical care, particularly affecting those who were elderly or sick.
Puerto Rico
Seek To Limit
Danes
A Danish group says petition seeking to set a minimum age of 18 for non-medical male circumcision in the country has gathered the required 50,000 signatures to send the proposal to Parliament for debate later this year.
Lena Nyhus of the group Intact Denmark told The Associated Press on Saturday that her children's welfare organization believes "we need to respect a person's right to decide for themselves" on a possible circumcision when they become an adult.
The American Academy of Pediatrics says the health benefits of male circumcision outweigh the risks but not by enough to recommend universal male circumcision. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says doctors should educate infant boys' parents about the health benefits of circumcision, which it says reduces the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV.
A recent poll commissioned by Danish TV2 broadcaster found that 83 percent of respondents supported such an age limit on circumcising boys.
Earlier this year, Icelandic lawmakers initially backed a plan to ban circumcisions for minors and to give those who performed the procedure possible jail sentences. But after an outpouring of criticism, including from European Jewish leaders, the proposal was dropped.
Danes
'Tragic' Policies
Child Poverty
The Trump administration must pay urgent attention to the shockingly high number of children living in poverty in the US, the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty declares in a heavyweight report on the condition of America today - warning of the prospect of the American dream "becoming the American illusion".
Philip Alston, who acts as the UN's watchdog on poverty and inequality around the world, spells out in blunt and unremitting terms the damage wrought by child poverty in one of the world's richest countries. In his findings on conditions in the US, he highlights the personal suffering of millions of children who are left without food, homes and futures and warns that such deprivation is killing the American dream.
He lays out the brutal statistics:
18% of American children - some 13.3 million - were living in poverty in 2016, making up almost a third of the total poor;
more than one in five homeless people are children, including 1.3 million school students who were without a home during the academic year;
infant mortality, at 5.8 deaths per 1,000 live births, is almost 50% higher than other advanced nations;
the US ranks 25th out of 29 industrialised countries in terms of the amount it invests in young children.
"This is tragic and unconscionable, to treat so many children in this way, but it is also a totally self-defeating economic policy," Alston said in an interview with the Guardian. "The ramifications are clear and considerable - the US is building a future citizenry that is under-nourished, under-educated, under-stimulated, and that in turn will rebound dramatically on the society itself."
Child Poverty
History
Inaccurate Claims
President-for-now Donald Trump (R-Fabulist) falsely claimed the Korean War was the "longest war" in history. It was one of a host of inaccurate or puzzling statements he made to reporters Friday.
"We talked about ending the war. And you know, this war has been going on - it's got to be the longest war - almost 70 years, right?"
False.
The Korean War began in 1950 and an armistice ended the fighting in 1953, but no peace treaty was officially signed. Still, Trump is wrong that the uneasy 65-year truce could constitute the longest war.
It is difficult to definitively say what was the longest war ever. Some involved a continuing fight while others were a series of conflicts with periods of peace. But no matter the parameters, there are numerous examples of wars that ran longer than the Korean War.
Inaccurate Claims
Blasts 'Highly Abnormal Behavior'
John Brennan
Former CIA Director John Brennan sharply criticized President-for-now Trump in a Washington Post op-ed published on Friday.
The president "has shown highly abnormal behavior by lying routinely to the American people without compunction, intentionally fueling divisions in our country and actively working to degrade the imperfect but critical institutions that serve us," Brennan writes.
Brennan says Trump's actions are based on how they will "personally help or hurt him."
"For more than three decades, I observed and analyzed the traits and tactics of corrupt, incompetent and narcissistic foreign officials who did whatever they thought was necessary to retain power. Exploiting the fears and concerns of their citizenry, these demagogues routinely relied on lies, deceit and suppression of political opposition to cast themselves as populist heroes and to mask self-serving priorities," Brennan adds. "It never dawned on me that we could face such a development in the United States."
In the Post op-ed, Brennan says he will "continue to speak out loudly and critically until integrity, decency, wisdom - and maybe even some humility - return to the White House."
John Brennan
Fabrications
T-rump
The week in review:
TRUMP: "African-Americans vote for Democrats for the most part. You know, vast majority. They've been doing it for over 100 years." - Nashville rally Tuesday.
THE FACTS: Not 100 years or anything close. Most African-Americans for much of U.S. history were disenfranchised, then prevented from voting until the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which outlawed racial discrimination in voting. Before then, those who could vote mostly backed Republicans until the 1932 election of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Deal programs of economic relief helped spur a longer-term shift of black support from Republican to Democrat.
TRUMP: "Some of these states, I won by 44 points." - Nashville rally.
THE FACTS: Not some. One. He won Wyoming with 70 percent of the vote in 2016, exceeding Hillary Clinton's 22 percent by nearly 48 points, according to Associated Press election data. His next biggest win came in West Virginia, where he won by 42 points.
Nationwide, Trump lost the popular vote. He garnered 46 percent to Clinton's 48 percent, but ultimately won the election based on an Electoral College system in which the votes of smaller rural states that generally backed Trump are weighted more heavily than big, Democratic-leaning states such as New York and California.
T-rump
Weekend Box Office
'Solo: A Star Wars Story'
"Solo: A Star Wars Story" is losing momentum quickly at the box office, even with a relatively quiet weekend free of any new blockbuster competition. After an underwhelming launch, the space saga fell 65 percent in weekend two with $29.3 million from North American theaters, according to studio estimates on Sunday.
"Solo" has now earned $148.9 million domestically, which is still shy of "Rogue One's" December 2016 opening weekend of $155.1 million and over $135 million short of where "Rogue One" was in its second weekend.
"Solo's" tumble brought it even closer to "Deadpool 2," which is now in its third weekend in theaters and still managed to reel in an estimated $23.3 million to take second place. With a domestic total of $254.7 million and a crowded marketplace with both "Solo" and "Avengers: Infinity War" surrounding it, "Deadpool 2" is still only about $30 million behind where the first film was in its third weekend.
Shailene Woodley's lost-at-sea drama "Adrift" fared the best of the three newcomers, which included the horror pic "Upgrade" and a Johnny Knoxville comedy "Action Point." ''Adrift," from STX Entertainment, washed up in third place with $11.5 million, while the others struggled to make a significant impact.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to comScore. Where available, the latest international numbers for Friday through Sunday are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1."Solo: A Star Wars Story," $29.3 million ($30.3 million international).
2."Deadpool 2," $23.3 million ($41.6 million international).
3."Adrift," $11.5 million.
4."Avengers: Infinity War," $10.4 million ($24.3 million international).
5."Book Club," $6.8 million ($1.1 million international).
6. "Upgrade," $4.5 million.
7."Life of the Party," $3.5 million.
8."Breaking In," $2.8 million ($300,000 international).
9."Action Point," $2.3 million.
10."Overboard," $2 million ($1.5 million international).
'Solo: A Star Wars Story'
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