1. If Germany had Floridians....A knight's costume? Still, "more than rude" gets that Florida element in pretty well...
2. Pro-tip: if you have skunks in your basement, a smoke bomb should NOT be on your list of solutions. It's not a solution at all, in fact.
3. IVF: Capitalism's final frontier?
4. Streetlights? We don't need no stinkin' streetlights. 'Cause the trees glow.
5. If you want to debate whether the "get your flu shot!" argument doesn't really serve public health, that's fair enough. But random fabricated stories are subversive not only to public health but to public trust in institutions. Our institutions do quite a bit to destroy our trust on their own, without help from trolls and link-whoring.
6. A year ago, my friend John Hasnas wrote this. He has gotten righter and righter over time. Trump is NOT antidemocratic, but is rather the apotheosis of the democratic, populist ideal. No elites, no experts, no truth, except what the majority decides.
7. This would be ridiculous if it weren't really, really bad. Turkey needs to be a stabilizing force, not a bunch of nut-jobs with a huge, modern army. And this is even worse. Golly.
8. Figure 4 is amazing. Not sure it's replicable. But....gosh.
9. Our Favorite Headlines: Former Freemason, 51, found drunk and naked inside a huge pipe organ with a toy gun and remote-controlled police car says he got lost while trying to hand out cheeseburgers to the homeless (or, another reason to love Australia).
10. Drink beer, throw axes.
11. Kevin Williamson is not always right. But when he's right, he's right.
12. Did you know this? Twitter ditched the egg. Dang. One of the things I loved about Twitter was watching Matt Iglesias mansplain something to an egg with three followers.
13. Wow. The New Yorker made a mistake and published an actual piece of objective journalism. I assume heads will roll....Still, well done.
14. The town tweeter?
15. Tribes.
16. Banks and credit cards have to be neutral, at least on legal products. Ending a "branded" card, which is an endorsement, makes sense. But barring transactions on legal products is just a way of encouraging discrimination on other margins.
17. It's against the law for guns to go to jihadists. And yet they go. A lot of them. We should be optimistic, though, about our ability to keep guns from going to depressed and angry young men. Because....wait, why?
18. Social media and democracy.
19. There are certain facts everyone should know. One is that there has been a DRAMATIC decline in poverty, almost everywhere. Further, it actually IS TRUE EVERYWHERE in countries that use market systems. All remaining poverty is in places where markets are suppressed.
20. Doomed to repeat it....
21. Florida or Ohio? "Man injured in chainsaw fight..." Nope, you're wrong. Ohio.
Grand Lagniappe! A cultural map of individualism, with considerations of innovation. From this paper. (Click for an even more selfish view)