Category: News

The story Someone Modified A Drone So That It Looks like Snoopy Flying Around On Top Of His Doghouse begins:

One of the most memorable scenes from The Peanuts Movie (2015) was where Snoopy imagines himself riding his flying doghouse in his quest to take down the Red Baron. Now you can have the chance to see this iconic scene in real life with this flying Snoopy doghouse. It features the figure of Snoopy sitting on top of his red doghouse. But the most amazing thing is, it actually flies.

The source, you see, is a five-year-old movie for kids. Not the comic strip that began in 1950. That’s when the Boomers were babies, man. Ancient history with Romans and stuff.

Nobody tell this kid about the 1966 Royal Kingsmen song.

I own the original single as my mother was of single-buying age in 1966.

(Link via Instapundit which only seems to be the only site on the Internet that I read.)

Bragging rights fall to Mrs. Steinman as she bested her husband’s vote total in the Democrat Primary for President this year:

It’s not the first time they’ve run against each other. And, near as I can tell, Leonard has run as a Republican, a Libertarian, and a Democrat at various times and in various races whereas Velma has kept it Democrat.

A public health poster you can print out and hang in your workplace:

I’m familiar with John Cage’s 4’33”, but I’ve never heard it.

Also, the question is why are so many businesses closing at the mere thought of coronovirus?

Because lawyers. Couple on Grand Princess cruise sues for over $1 million:

A Florida couple on board the coronavirus-stricken Grand Princess cruise ship that has begun to disembark passengers off the California coast is suing the ship’s operator for more than $1 million — claiming the company lacked proper screening protocols to protect them from the deadly bug.

Meanwhile, a pair pilloried in St. Louis for breaking quarantine to, you know, live their lives, have also lawyered up for the eventual lawsuits against them:

Family members of the 20-year-old Ladue woman who tested positive for coronavirus were not told to quarantine themselves, according to their attorney.

In a timeline of events, attorney Neil Bruntrager outlined several calls and texts between the woman’s mother and the St. Louis County health department from Thursday, when the woman first experienced symptoms, to Saturday, when county officials announced the positive test results at a news conference.

Good to know some sectors of the economy will do just fine.

Well, not a news update; I’m only scanning the headlines of the stories of the virus as I don’t think I’ll get much information from the Internet about it now. I don’t even trust actual “authorities.” I have to assume I’ll get it at some point and will likely recover.

However, I did visit Sam’s Club this morning and laid in a couple extra boxes of frozen meals and whatnot for us if we’re under quarantine of some sort. I mean, I have beans and soup to last a little while, but about a week into it, I am sure my family will be very sick of beans and soup. So we’ve got frozen pizzas and chicken nuggets to supplement the pasta and jarred sauce.

I mentioned on Facebook:

Media coverage of the current coronavirus won’t hit its stride until it breathlessly reports people in quarantine eating each other.

I’ve seen a lot of people comparing media coverage of the current infection to the Swine Flu of 2009-2010 (see Lileks today) and making the point that the difference in political parties in power and presidents explain the difference in coverage, and this is probably true. However, consider that today’s journalist was in middle school and doesn’t really remember 2009-2010 except in terms of middle school concerns about what brands they’re wearing and whether Abby likes you.

So keep calm and carry on.

UPDATE:I guess I should have checked the New York Post first. I see we’re getting closer. People fighting over ‘rotten’ food on coronavirus-stricken Grand Princess cruise: passenger.

The harbinger effect:

The study of harbingers emerged from a 2015 analysis of purchasing patterns at a national convenience store chain. (In exchange for the data, the researchers agreed not to reveal the identity of the chain.) Drawing on six years’ worth of data from the chain’s loyalty card program, a team of marketing professors led by Eric Anderson of Northwestern University classified customers according to their affinity for buying new products that were later pulled from the shelves because of weak demand. Of the roughly 130,000 customers whose purchases were logged, a sizable fraction (about 25 percent) consistently took home products that bombed.

“It was really an accident,” says the economist Catherine Tucker of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the study’s authors. “We looked in the data and saw there were some customers who were really good at picking out failures” — so good, in fact, that a newly introduced product was less likely to survive if it attracted these buyers. (And if they bought it repeatedly, its chances of survival were even worse.) Professor Tucker called these people harbingers of failure because, statistically speaking, their fondness for a product heralded its demise.

The harbinger effect has since been shown to apply not just to individuals but also to geographic locales.

Also to investment portfolios.

(Link via Instapundit.)

NASA photo reveals mysterious hole in Mars ‘that may contain alien life’:

Alien life may be lurking within a mysterious caver under the surface of Mars, scientists claim.

An eerie crater on the dusty slopes of Mars’ Pavonis Mons volcano was picked out by two space scientists as a prime spot for extraterrestrials.

* * * *

“Analysis and follow-up images revealed the opening to be about 35 meters across,” NASA scientists Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell wrote in the post.

“The interior shadow angle indicates that the underlying cavern is roughly 20 meters deep.”

Given the size of the ‘cavern,’ I expect that they’re expecting more microbes than Dejah Thoris.

Until they see the door.

The world’s first VR gym is opening in San Francisco. We tried it.

Lewis set me up with an account on the Black Box app, which tracks fitness stats like rep intensity and weight, then velcroed two hands-free controllers onto my forearms. The comfortable headset didn’t weigh down my neck or shoulders, but put some pressure on my cheeks and forehead. It connects to a cable from the ceiling, ostensibly to prevent exercisers from dropping and breaking the device — or stealing it.

With the headset on, I was transported to a virtual waiting room and then catapulted into the first of 10 virtual “battle arenas.” I started in the base-level arena, which looked like a warmer version of Planet Krypton.

The high-quality graphics made the environment appear as real as an animated game could hope to look, while the detail and vastness of my virtual surroundings helped distract from some of the discomfort of the headset — and the awareness of being alone in a room with a stranger, squatting and punching with no vision of my real-world surroundings.

The game dropped me onto a field with two pink crystals, placed on opposite ends, the goal being to destroy the opponent’s crystal before he destroys mine. Here’s where the exercise comes in. To fire off an attack or defense, I had to complete a series of traditional exercises. There are six to choose from — chest press, overhead press, row, lat pulldown, squat and deadlift — with each corresponding to a different weapon. A chest press, for example, shoots off a fire beam; a shoulder press emits a meteor strike. The more reps I completed, the more damage I inflicted on the enemy.

It sounds expensive and repetitive. I don’t expect this to be a viable gym model. I expect most gym models are predicated on selling memberships that go unused for a while before cancellation and on catering to a crowd who knows a good workout, and tarting the experience up with high-cost electronics and high-overhead processes will outstrip the money spent on the novelty of it, and the cost of a membership would be noticeable if you’re not using it even in San Francisco.

I don’t like the gym so much that I bought the company. And I would totally buy a Prop Cycle game for my home gym. So maybe VR gyms are the wave of the future, and I’m a Luddite.

From the article Corona beer brand is impacted by the coronavirus news:

We’d like to take a moment to repeat: The coronavirus has nothing to do with Corona the beer; the virus is named after the Latin word for crown thanks to an exterior structure that features little crown-like spikes, while the beer is named for the Sun’s corona.

The sun’s corona? Named for the Latin word for crown.

Completely different etimologies there.

(Link via Instapundit.)

Firearm violence not far from the old homestead in Casinoport: Woman shot, killed at community center by co-worker who was ‘angry’ about being sent home from work:

More information has been released into the deadly shooting at a St. Louis County community center.

The shooting happened at the Maryland Heights Community Center Monday around 8:10 p.m. One woman was killed, and the suspected gunman was injured after he fired his gun at an officer. That officer returned fire. The officer was not injured.

My beautiful wife sang with the community choir there, and I attended one or two meetings of a writer’s group there.

So, as with many local crime stories of this ilk, I checked to see if I know anyone involved. Apparently not, but sometimes it is the case.

In the new neighborhood, I’m running with a different crowd and am more likely to recognize people who appear in the local society pages or who buy ballparks.

Meghan and Harry reportedly barred from using ‘Sussex Royal’ label going forward:

According to the Daily Mail, the two had hoped to leverage “Sussex Royal” into not just a new website but a “global trademark for a range of items and activities, including clothing, stationery, books and teaching materials” and a new charitable organization with the name. The pair began using the term in early 2019 after their branch-off from Prince William and Kate Middleton’s household, Kensington Royal.

Kind of how you got Trump steaks, Trump University, Trump Homes, et cetera.

However, Meg and Har’s venture would be really classy and not mockable because they’re right-thinking folk.

Amid the actual economic repercussions from a disease outbreak (Cathay Pacific flags “significant” drop in H1 profit, capacity cuts due to coronavirus, Singapore downgrades 2020 economic forecast amid coronavirus outbreak, Japan manufacturers remain pessimistic as coronavirus fears grow, etc.), academics remind us that climate change might someday have a cataclysmic economic impact:

A shocking new study says extreme weather events caused by climate change could result in an economic recession “the likes of which we’ve never seen before.”

The research, published in Nature Energy, notes that financial markets are not taking into account the risks that catastrophic events such as floods, droughts and other extreme weather events will have on the economy.

“If the market doesn’t do a better job of accounting for climate, we could have a recession — the likes of which we’ve never seen before,” the study’s author, University of California, Davis accounting professor Paul Griffin, said in a statement.

Griffin added the amount of “unpriced risk” in the energy market is significant, noting this is what caused the Great Recession. “Right now, energy companies shoulder much of that risk. The market needs to better assess risk, and factor a risk of extreme weather into securities prices,” he explained.

You know the only way to avoid the economic impacts of climate change? Economic impacts–taxes and new economic incentives/subsidies/fees–that benefit climate change activists and governments.

Let’s just see how well humanity does after the current actual threat before we move onto ones that we make up.

(Coronovirus links via Instapundit.)

In a column Chiefs’ Super Bowl legend needed to overcome one last obstacle, a New York Post sports writer indicates his ignorance of Kansas City:

It ended 31-20. It ended with red-and-yellow confetti littering the field, and with Kansas Citians pouring into the places that make their town so unique, the Fire and Light District, Westport, the Country Club Plaza.

Except it’s the Power and Light District.

I am not a big fan of Kansas City (the city), and I knew that.

And I know you’re asking, am I a Chiefs fan?

You bet I am.

Victoria’s Secret boss Leslie Wexner may step down, sell company

I bought stock in Intimate Brands, Incoporated, around the turn of the century based on Peter Lynch‘s advice to invest in what you know or like. When Limited Brands (later L Brands) bought out its former child brand, I bought into L Brands.

It’s done well for me. I don’t know if it’s been a ten-bagger, but it’s done all right.

But if L Brands is selling it, I am likely to sell my L Brands and pick up some stock in whomever buys Victoria’s Secret. My experiences in buying general mall retailers (Wet Seal, Chico’s/Charming Shops, JC Penney) have had mixed results at best.

Report: ‘Kevin and Liz’ Springfield morning show canceled as iHeartMedia slashes staff nationwide:

Liz Delany, longtime host of a popular morning drive time show on KGBX along with co-host Kevin Howard, confirmed Wednesday morning that “The Kevin and Liz Show” was canceled.

“Before you hear it elsewhere, the Kevin and Liz show was canceled as of today,” read a post on Delany’s Facebook account. “I love this community and I’ve been proud to serve it during these last 21 years. Thank you all for supporting us for so long. I’m going to miss talking to you every day. God bless you, Liz.”

Broadcast radio is definitely facing serious competition with Spotify and other media, not to mention the occasional audio book or course in my vehicles. No doubt.

But I’m not sure firing the local personalities that radio audiences know is the right strategy.

The show’s cancellation came on the heels of major cuts nationwide by KGBX’s parent company, iHeartMedia, which announced a corporate restructuring earlier this week. The goal, officials said in a news release, was “to take advantage of the significant investments (iHeartMedia) has made in technology and artificial intelligence.”

So, instead, we’re going to get broadcast radio that sounds more like Spotify, but with smaller playlists selected for you by artificial intelligence that you don’t control.

I suppose it’s the sort of thinking that makes short-term sense. Cash outlays are down. But the decline in listenership will hasten.

Kansas man requests ‘trial by combat’ with swords to settle custody battle with ex-wife:

A Kansas man has asked an Iowa judge to let him engage in a sword fight with his ex-wife and her attorney so that he can “rend their souls” from their bodies.

. . . .

He also asked the judge for 12 weeks’ time so he could secure Japanese samurai swords.

As there’s no armor, I would recommend the rapier.

As I am sure I have mentioned over and over again, when my martial arts class was studying swords and sparring, I was a relative master because I fought rapier-style and poked my opponents far faster than they could swing a psuedo-katana at me.

(Link via Instapundit.)