Free copies of this book for Coney, Isab, Cousin, and Dave B.... Send your USPS to CridComment at Gmail. Amy and Lenona too, if they're into it. NicoleK as well. Whoever, send me an email and we'll work it out. (I haven't read the book yet, but Shlaes has always been impressive.)

Or listen to this podcast... Which covers an enormous amount of ground. So far as I can tell, everything she says is true. And all of America's post-war stupidities are being put on steroids for the 21st century.

Steroids, a continuing series.

I enjoyed Shlaes' The Forgotten Man and I'm looking forward to reading this one.

When mom's away, the mice will play.

https://www.reddit.com/r/JordanPeterson/comments/f2amb3/father_and_son_roughhousing/

Apparently, there is a shortage of Florida Man. Fortunately, we're able to import Michigan Man.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/pulled-up-to-the-bumper-603485

We had assumed the 70's would be like this.

I was all butthurt this morning when, while watching the live freaking video, it turned out that they'd missed a first stage catch.

A fun read about metallurgy in a fantasy setting:

http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/71012886/

Favorite: "Dorito."

Other people's jobs look easy if you've never had to do them.

https://twitter.com/CamEdwards/status/1229168973264171008

Thiel is as abjectly self-interested as anyone in public life, but this is about the twentieth interesting thought I've heard from him in the last year.

And it's in this last year that the structural weaknesses of American public thinking in postwar decades have become so apparent.

The problem isn't that there isn't new wealth to be created: There's no boundary to the service and comfort we can bring to each other, so long as we're allowed to. O'Rourke: "The economy is expandable and, in any practical sense, limitless."

But *people* fucked this up... Specific people, with specific misbehavior.

Faster, please.

Scientists have discovered a new kind of antibiotics that take a unique approach to attacking and killing bacteria.

...

"Bacteria have a wall around the outside of their cells that gives them shape and is a source of strength," Beth Culp, the study's first author and a doctoral candidate in biochemistry and biomedical sciences at McMaster University in Canada, said in a news release. "Antibiotics like penicillin kill bacteria by preventing building of the wall, but the antibiotics that we found actually work by doing the opposite -- they prevent the wall from being broken down. This is critical for cell to divide."

Cells are programmed to grow, divide and expand. If cells can't break down their walls, they can't grow.

https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2020/02/13/New-antibiotics-have-a-unique-way-of-killing-bacteria/2911581626138/?sl=1

Six.

Oh. Will the rioting Bernie Bros burn Vegas?

https://pjmedia.com/election/its-looking-more-and-more-like-nevada-will-be-another-democratic-clusterfark/

Well, crime must be solved in Merry Olde *checks notes* Wales.

A teenager with Asperger’s was handed a hefty fine and placed under house arrest for asking a trans police support officer, “is it a boy or is it a girl?”

Declan Armstrong, 19, allegedly offended the transgender support officer, Connor Freel, who was reportedly left “upset and embarrassed” by the question.

https://nationalfile.com/uk-teen-fined-under-house-arrest-for-asking-trans-police-officers-gender/

Oh wow, Alan Dershowitz has decided to commit suicide:

https://twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/1229510910739279873

Some will see just one more — entirely predictable — expression of AOC's political tawdriness.

Others will see two new reasons to admire her emerging prominence.

C'mon, that was funny, in a sort of 7th-grader's Rat-Pack-in-Vegas kind of way.



Speaking of which:

> Will the rioting Bernie Bros
> burn Vegas?

California's going to be interesting, too. Even California.

How many Democratic voters are meaningfully inclined to socialism nowadays? There're probably very few who over age 35 or so. But there are a lot of people supporting the toddling geriatric Biden, the Republican-until-age-47 Warren, and the Independent-until-last-Thursday Sanders.

Biden's renouncing everything he ever said (or that he ever repeated after hearing someone else say it), all the way through his "service" in the Obama administration. Warren will say anything, Sanders does say anything, and Bloomberg will, in essence, describe farmers as deplorable while looking them in the eye, seeking their votes.

Is there any unifying theme between them? Every now and then some seemingly sober Democratic eminence will say 'THE most important thing is to defeat Trump'… Which advances their project not at all.

Specifically— With twenty digits, ten each of fingers and toes, I can count the number of Americans in public life who've accepted the greatest gift afforded by the Trump presidency: Humble recognition that vast numbers of American voters, if not the majority of those who voted for him, see that the machinery of American public life cares not at all about their interests, or even their dignity. None of the candidates appears to have sought a Trump vote in any context.

Last week, Carville took one of my toes, and it was one of the last ones. For that, the sophisticates of The New Republic described him as an addled old man.



I don't do predictions, especially in years of flourishing novel viri.

But it's entirely possible that Trump will have a cheerful Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas, affirming nothing good of capitalist democracy in the years to follow.

Other people's jobs look easy if you've never had to do them. ~ I R A Darth Aggie at February 17, 2020 10:20 AM

... and Bloomberg will, in essence, describe farmers as deplorable while looking them in the eye, seeking their votes. ~ Crid at February 17, 2020 4:35 PM

Somebody needs to tell Bloomie that Green Acres was not a documentary; and the farmers don't just wait around the general store for Doris's lumbago to tell them what to plant. It's just a bit more complicated - and sophisticated - than that.

Coronavirus Live Thread 2/17 to 2/18