Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Joe Bob Briggs: The Joe Bob Briggs 168-Hour Workweek (Taki's Magazine)
Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, is a big believer in the twelve-hour workday and the six-day workweek. He's basically a guy who forgot to read Charles Dickens in junior high. Jack believes the 72-hour workweek makes people happy. If you don't put in that twelve hours, you don't have a chance to fall deeply in love with your lathe, your welding torch, your sewing machine, or your customer-assistance headset. But wait a minute. Aren't these guys, uh, Communists? Isn't China the biggest "Workers Unite!" organization in the world?
Paul Waldman: What Ocasio-Cortez gets about coal that Republicans don't (Washington Post)
The point is, including help for people in districts like Barr's is something Democrats always talk about when they discuss action on climate change but never get any credit for. You remember how Hillary Clinton got in trouble when she said that "we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business." Barely mentioned was the rest of what she said, about how we "don't want to forget" the people who "labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories." The second reason Barr is wrong is that coal jobs aren't threatened by the Green New Deal, because they're almost gone already.
Alexandra Petri: There are so many good reasons not to talk about impeachment! (Washington Post Satire)
- Now, when there is a cobra rampaging through the Oval Office, would be the worst time to unleash a mongoose there, too. Think how disruptive it was all those times when a mongoose got loose in the Oval Office with no cobra to catch. Imagine how much more disruptive a cobra and mongoose fighting would be!
Jonathan Chait: Proven Liar Sarah Sanders Asked About Lying, Lies Again (NY Mag)
The legal significance of her lies is that Trump's firing of Comey is a piece of a broad attempt to obstruct justice, and Sanders was engaged in an effort to craft a false cover story. Because it happened to touch on a criminal investigation, she was interviewed under oath and had to admit that she made the whole thing up. But it's a petty fair guess that, if the FBI could interrogate Sanders upon pain of perjury about all of her claims, this would not be the only lie she would confess.
Andrew Tobias: Billy Is Such A Tool
Bill Barr was three years behind me at Horace Mann. He must have missed the motto: Magna Est Veritas Et Praevalet. [Great is the Truth, and It Shall Prevail.] Contrary to his view that Trump is vindicated by the Mueller investigation - with which, Barr says, the President fully cooperated (a blatant, exhaustively documented lie) - The Mueller Report Should Shock Our Conscience. That's not the wailing of some left-wing rag, it's the headline of the country's leading conservative journal.
Dana Milbank: Mitch McConnell undid 213 years of Senate history in 33 minutes (Washington Post)
Actually, Vice President Aaron Burr started "it" - the Senate tradition of unlimited debate, that is. That tradition has prevailed, more or less, in the Senate since 1806. Over that time, senators had the right to delay votes on presidential nominees they found objectionable. But McConnell undid 213 years of history in 33 minutes on Wednesday afternoon, holding a party-line vote to rewrite the rules of debate.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
took the day off.
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In memory.
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from Bruce
Anecdotes
• En route to a poker game at the County Building, Chicago Herald-Examiner reporter Bob Fraser saw a weeping washerwoman. He asked why she was crying, and she explained that she had learned from a letter posted several days ago that her father was ill back home in Poland and she did not know whether he was alive or dead. At the time, telephone long-distance calls to other countries were very expensive, and few individuals could afford them. Bob wondered whether he could put through a long-distance call at the County Building. It turned out that there was no problem - the long-distance telephone call went right through and the weeping washerwoman learned that her father was alive and getting well again. This was a good deed, but the reporters playing poker abused their newly discovered long-distance calling ability. They racked up a bill of $7,000 that the county officials did not want to pay. The county officials were going to force the reporters to pay it. Of course, the reporters also did not want to pay the $7,000 bill. Reporters publish a lot, but they know more than they publish. One reporter mentioned that it was time that he broke a story about a land deal that would be embarrassing to the county officials, and other reporters mentioned breaking other stories that would be embarrassing to the county officials, and the county officials paid the bill. Thereafter, however, reporters were not permitted to make long-distance - or local - telephone calls from the County Building.
• When young-adult novelist Robert Cormier was the 8th grade, his house burned down, and the suit that he was going to wear to his 8th-grade graduation ceremony burned up with it. Fortunately, the Cormiers' neighbors contributed money to buy clothing for them, and young Robert was able to wear a suit to his graduation ceremony. As an adult, Mr. Cormier did good deeds for other people. His novel I Am the Cheese contained a telephone number, which happened to be his. He once received a call from a girl in a psychiatric institution who felt that she could identify only with the protagonist in the novel. Mr. Cormier says that he and she "had a long talk about how this Adam [the protagonist] in the book was really a reflection of her own life, even though the circumstances were much different." In the novel, Adam calls his friend Amy Hertz three times. That is the telephone number that the girl in the psychiatric institution called, and many other young people also called it. Sometimes they would ask for Amy. If Mr. Cormier answered the phone, he would pretend to be Amy's father. If his youngest daughter, Renee, answered the phone and was asked if Amy was there, she would say, "Speaking."
• Richard Bellof North Carolina has a trick for dealing with harassing telephone callers: "One of my all-time favorite tricks for any harassing phone caller is to get a tape or mp3 of the late Alexander Scourby reading some esoteric verses from the Old Testament handy to play into the handset." And Tom Brennan of California received a telephone call from a debt collector in 2006. The caller asked, "When do you think you will repay this debt?" Mr. Brennan replied, "No comment." In fact, that was his reply to every question the debt collector asked. Eventually, he did say something different; he said that "No comment" was the only reply he would ever make to the debt collector's questions. Mr. Brennan says, "He laughed and I laughed and we said good night and they never called again."
• Jack Benny and George Burns were best friends, and Mr. Benny laughed at Mr. Burns more than he laughed at anyone else. Once, Mr. Benny called Mr. Burns to invite him to dinner at a restaurant. During the call, they were disconnected. When Mr. Burns showed up at the restaurant, Mr. Benny started laughing. Mr. Burns asked, "What are you laughing at?" My Benny replied, "You're the funniest man in the world. You hung up on me in the middle of a phone conversation." Mr. Burns said later, "After that I always hung up on him. I wanted him to go on thinking I was the world's greatest comedian."
• Tony Hillerman wrote mysteries set in the west. Although vastly talented, he sometimes made mistakes in his novels. He once said, "I always put safeties on guns that don't have safeties and leave them off ones that do." One night at about 10 p.m. he received a call from a reader who told him, "I used to have a lot of respect for you until I've just been reading Dance Hall of the Dead. Don't you know deer don't have gall bladders?" Mr. Hillerman said that is the best telephone call from a reader that he has ever had.
• In 1960, jazz guitarist Jim Hall couldn't afford a telephone. Jazz tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins was reclusive and didn't want or have a telephone. Nevertheless, they communicated. A note by Mr. Rollins appeared in Mr. Hall's mailbox one day. Mr. Hall then put his own note in Mr. Rollins' mailbox. They exchanged notes for a while, and when Mr. Rollins decided to start playing jazz in public again in 1961, he offered Mr. Hall a job playing in his pianoless quartet.
• Songwriter Sammy Cahn, who won Oscars for "Three Coins in the Fountain," "Call Me Irresponsible," "All the Way," and "High Hopes," is often asked, "What comes first - the music or the lyric?" He always answers, "The phone call." (Whenever he answers the phone, he says cheerfully, "Here I am!")
• After Margot Fonteyn had retired and was ill, Rudolf Nureyev was speaking with her on the telephone. Worried that her illness might tire her too much, he said, "I should go, or I tire you out." Ms. Fonteyn replied firmly, "Listen. You never tire me out. Never."
• As a young teenager and an elite gymnast, Kerri Strug often trained away from home. However, she did manage to keep in close contact with her family. Frequently, the monthly bills for her long-distance telephone calls home were over $300.
• David Byrne of the Talking Heads knew that some of his fans were rather odd, so he frequently had his telephone number changed.
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Fire Their Agents
7,000 Writers
The Writers Guild of America established a new normal Monday, announcing that it had delivered "a first batch of over 7,000 termination letters from WGA members" to non-signatory talent agencies.
That's out of 8,800 current (i.e., active) members who had agents as of April 12, according to the guild. The WGA also said that most who haven't signed are retirees or not actively working.
None of the major or mid-tier talent agencies are signatory to the guild's Code of Conduct, making them off-limits to current members.
"The primary source of pressure on agencies to sign the Code of Conduct is their lack of writer clients," said the announcement, an email to members from the WGA's agency negotiating committee. "Therefore, adherence to Working Rule 23 [requiring members to be represented only by signatory agents] remains the main responsibility of all Guild members."
The guild's code prohibits packaging fees and affiliate production, two mainstays of the largest agencies. Both sides are resolute. The WGA has also sued the top four agencies, seeking to halt packaging fees in a judicial forum as well.
7,000 Writers
Winterfell Soup Line Cameo
'Game of Thrones'
If the guy in the Winterfell soup line on Sunday's episode of "Game of Thrones" looked familiar to you, you probably either work in the U.S. intelligence community or watch a lot of cable TV news.
David S. Cohen, the former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency under President Barack Obama, was one of the men who got a hot meal from Davos Seaworth (Liam Cunningham) - and then drafted into the army defending Winterfell, the agency said on its Twitter account Sunday night. The second man in line, Cohen wore a hood but didn't speak.
"Little birds, be on the lookout for a former deputy director of ours wandering through Westeros in tonight's episode," the CIA tweeted, referencing the term used to describe agents of former spymaster Lord Varys (Conleth Hill).
"As Arya might say, a man with no name," Cohen noted, before teasing the agency, "Way to blow my cover."
His cameo came a week after comedic actors Rob McElhenny ("It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia") and Martin Starr ("Silicon Valley") played Iron Born sailors killed when Theon stormed Euron's ship to rescue sister Yara.
'Game of Thrones'
Memoir To Be Released In October
Prince
Prince's unfinished memoir, "The Beautiful Ones," will be released in October, its publisher announced Monday -- three years after the singer's sudden death in April 2016.
The "Kid from Minneapolis," who died of an accidental fentanyl overdose aged 57, had announced a month before his death he would tell his story in his own words in a book originally set for release in 2017.
Publisher Penguin Random House said the book -- now to be released on October 29 -- would contain previously unseen photos, scrapbooks and lyric sheets, as well as the memoir Prince had started to write.
The memoir will also feature an introduction by Dan Piepenbring, who collaborated with Prince on the book in the months before he died.
Prince
Wife Of Four Days Seeking Spousal Support
Nicolas Cage
Nicolas Cage may have filed for an annulment but he could still end up paying his ex.
The 55-year-old actor's wife of four days, Erika Koike, is seeking spousal support after the actor filed for an annulment in March, according to court documents obtained by TMZ.
She argues their marriage doesn't qualify for an annulment but agrees to a divorce, the outlet reports. The makeup artist claims she missed out on job opportunities due to her relationship with the actor and that her reputation has suffered.
She is also asking Cage to pay her legal fees, TMZ reports.
Nicolas Cage
Judge Refuses To Free
Chelsea Manning
A US judge kept Chelsea Manning locked up Monday for refusing to testify in the secret grand jury investigation of WikiLeaks, despite its founder Julian Assange having already been charged in the case.
A panel of judges rejected Manning's appeal against her March 8 jailing for contempt after she refused to give testimony in the case, on the grounds that she believes the grand jury system is unfair and used to persecute activists.
Manning "failed to properly address the issue of grand jury abuse" and other issues she raised in her appeal, the judges said in a statement.
The court ruling means Manning will remain locked up in a detention center until she agrees to testify or the grand jury investigation ends.
The ruling came 11 days after the federal court in Alexandria, Virginia unsealed charges against Assange related to his publishing in 2010 hundreds of thousands of secret US war and diplomacy documents and communications that were stolen by Manning.
Chelsea Manning
Losing Ice Six Times Faster
Greenland
We live in an era of accelerating climate change, and the Greenland ice sheet is Exhibit A. A rapid meltdown is occurring due to rising temperatures, and the rate of loss is quickening.
A new paper published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows after decades of near equilibrium, Greenland began losing ice in the 1980s and it's accelerated sixfold since then. That has sped up its contribution to sea level rise and raises concerns about what the future holds.
Our understanding of what's happening to Greenland's ice today has largely been confined to past few decades of detailed satellite imagery. But older data has been out there waiting to be mined, and the new analysis does just that. It draws on Landsat data that began pouring in from satellites in orbit above Earth in 1972.
"Over the entire period, even though we have more and better data now than in the 1970s, we are able to construct a robust, comprehensive and very precise record of mass change," Eric Rignot, an ice researcher at the University of California, Irvine who worked on the study, told Earther.
The results show that Greenland's mass stayed mostly within its natural range of variability in the 1970s before slimming down steadily in the 1980s and then more rapidly in the next few decades. The biggest losses have come in the northwest, which has shed 1,578 gigatons of ice into the sea. That's enough to fill Lake Erie more than three times over, though it represents a small fraction of all the ice stored in that region, which would raise sea levels more than four feet if melted. Add in the rest of the island's ice, and you have enough water to raise sea levels 24 feet. The research shows all parts of Greenland are now losing ice and that the rate of loss has sped up. It doesn't mean we'll be canoeing through New York or Shanghai tomorrow, but the speed up shows the ice sheet is definitely feeling the impacts of climate change.
Greenland
Insanely Warm Spring
Alaska
This spring in Alaska has been more like summer, or like the same season for somewhere much warmer. What it has not been like is the usual March and April above the Arctic Circle. The consequences are being felt in devastating effects on the local wildlife, but are taking a severe toll on humans as well.
In March the average temperature of Kotzebue, on the north-west coast, was -5ºC (23ºF), 12ºC or 21.9ºF above normal. The rest of northern Alaska was not far behind. The Alaska Climate Research Center (ACRC) reports this is 4.1ºC (7.4ºF) higher than the previous March record, and the majority of the state had its warmest March ever.
People from the rest of the world, used to temperatures without a negative sign in front, might think this sounds like an improvement, but the consequences have been severe for a region built on the confidence of when there will be ice.
Two people driving on the normally frozen Kuskokwim River fell through insufficiently thick ice with their snowmobiles and died of exposure, a third barely survived. Thankfully so far the number of deaths has been low, but many remote communities depend on supplies delivered via ice roads. Increasingly people may be forced to choose between starving and risking the stability of the ice. Meanwhile, sled dog races, including the famous Iditarod, have been canceled or rerouted.
The warmer temperatures are connected to, and partly resulting from, the loss of sea ice in the Bering Sea. On the other side of the Bering Strait, the same sea ice is the reason members of the world's largest walrus colony are dying falling off cliffs in one of the most harrowing moments of David Attenborough's new Our Planet series.
Alaska
Unconstitutional In Some States
Marking Tires
Marking tires to enforce parking rules is like entering property without a search warrant, a federal court said Monday as it declared the practice unconstitutional in Michigan and three other states.
Alison Taylor had received more than a dozen $15 tickets for exceeding the two-hour parking limit in Saginaw. The city marks tires with chalk to keep track of how long a vehicle is parked. Her lawyer argued that a parking patrol officer violated the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches.
A three-judge panel of the appeals court agreed. The purpose of marking tires was to "raise revenue," not to protect the public against a safety risk, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said.
"The city does not demonstrate, in law or logic, that the need to deter drivers from exceeding the time permitted for parking - before they have even done so - is sufficient to justify a warrantless search under the community caretaker rationale," the court said.
The decision sets a new standard for Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, the states covered by the 6th Circuit. The court overturned an opinion by U.S. District Judge Thomas Ludington, who had called the legal theory "unorthodox" and dismissed the case in favor of Saginaw.
Marking Tires
Mueller Report Tops Best Seller Charts
Amazon
Special counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 election is topping the Amazon best-seller charts.
Paperback versions of the Mueller report, which was released publicly on Thursday, figure in the number one, two and five spots on Amazon US's list of best sellers.
The three versions are to be released on April 30.
In third and fourth position on the Amazon US list are "Where the Crawdads Sing" by Delia Owens and former First Lady Michelle Obama's memoir, "Becoming."
Topping the Amazon list is a version of the Mueller report being published by Scribner in collaboration with The Washington Post, which is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Amazon
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