Quick Hits

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Salmon given cocaine work harder than those without cocaine, according to researchers at the University of No Fuckin' Duh, Chester.

Salmon exposed to cocaine swim almost twice as far as those without, study shows

Salmon exposed to cocaine in the water swim longer distances than those that go without, according to a study released this week.

I love you, Science.

Cocaine use is on the rise worldwide, with the U.N. reporting an estimated 25 million people used the stimulant in 2023 and the drug being increasingly found in waterways.

Joint research released Monday by scientists at Australia's Griffith University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences studied how the drug affected the movements of wild fish in their natural habitats.

Researchers took 105 wild Atlantic salmon in Sweden's Lake Vattern and exposed them to both cocaine and benzoylecgonine -- a metabolite created by the drug in the liver -- and then tracked their movements.

They found the river-dwellers exposed to the drugs traveled 1.9 times farther per week than their clean-living control cousins.

Those exposed to the by-product also swam 7.6 miles farther, the study found.

How much medical-grade cocaine do you think is "naturally" lost in experiments like this? Is a 20% unexplained loss of cocaine a reasonable figure?

Steven Greene had a good headline at Instapundit: THEY ALSO WON'T STOP TALKING ABOUT THEIR NEW IDEA FOR A TECH STARTUP.

Thanks to Chuck Martel.

Also in from the University of No Fuckin' Duh, Chester: Germany's back-to-back abandonment of both coal and then nuclear was a "huge mistake," leading authorities say.

German energy minister calls nuclear phase-out 'huge mistake'

Katherina Reiche, Germany's economy and energy minister, discussed the likely impact on the country's economy if the Iran conflict continues - as well as the need for a "correction" to energy policies in Europe, at a conference in the USA.

Speaking at the CERAweek international energy event in Houston, Texas, she said that prices of petrol, diesel and jet fuels in Germany were spiking "but we don't see any scarcities in terms of volume - but if the conflict doesn't end we [will] see this probably later in April or May".

She added that the longer the crisis continues the more stress will be put on the "fragile recovery of Germany's economy".

Please please please Trump keep the conflict going at least through June. (So close to Pride Month!)

Remember when people used to respect Germans as sober-minded and good at things? Ye Olden Times.

Neat idea about how to gerrymander Virginia from the federal level: Cancel the old, Racist separation of Northern Virginia from DC because they wanted to keep our Black Brothers in chains.

Here's the history. In 1790, both Virginia and Maryland ceded territory to create the new national capital. Virginia's portion -- what is now Arlington County and the city of Alexandria -- remained part of the District of Columbia until 1847, when Congress returned it to Virginia. The reason? To protect slavery. The District had abolished it, and Virginia slaveholders didn't want to give up their slaves. Democrats love to talk about the legacy of slavery to justify tearing down statues, renaming buildings, etc. -- to be consistent, they should give that piece of land back to the District.

The legal questions over this retrocession have never gone away. President William Howard Taft and others argued that it was unconstitutional and pushed to reclaim the land for D.C. However, the Supreme Court has never definitively settled the matter.

Mizelle's proposal is for Trump to issue an executive order declaring that slavery-motivated retrocession unconstitutional. That order wouldn't need to resolve everything on its own -- it would immediately trigger litigation and force federal courts to finally answer the question: Do Arlington and Alexandria legally belong to Virginia or to the District of Columbia?

The legal footing here is rock solid, but the cultural argument is just as strong.

Obviously, with Alexandria and Arlington re-added to DC -- as it should be -- Virginia would be permanently red again. Oh, it would lose a couple of seats in the next redistricting, but worth it.

But wouldn't DC pick up a couple of electoral votes? No, not necessarily. DC's electoral votes are established by legislative fiat, not by a count of DC's population.

Storied men's haberdasher (did I use that right?) Brooks Brothers has gone bankrupt because, as Stephen Green says, "American men now insist on dressing like 14 year olds into their dotage."

So they're trying something new.

But as the 55-year-olds dressing like 14-year-olds say: This ain't it, Chief.

Remember in the late eighties when we thought, for literally five minutes, that two-tone jeans -- half blue, half white or half blue, half black -- were rilly rilly cool? I remember owning a pair just because they went out of fashion so quickly that stores were choked with unsalable jeans and I picked up a pair for like six buck.

And then I didn't wear them, because they're stupid. And what the hell, it was only six buck.

Well Brooks Brothers remembers.

Brooks Brothers, you better Swatch yourself!!!

Old Brooks Brothers: Not exciting but never actually unfashionable

New Brooks Brothers: Will you be a hon and stir my Amaretto Zima with your dick?

Like eight years ago I wanted to buy some new togs so I went into J. Crew, figuring, well, J. Crew will always be J. Crew. Good stuff, overpriced but good.

Nope. It was like Freddy Mercury came all over Richard Gere's hamster and then they pumped Rod Stewart's stomach and found it was literally made of cum-cells.

More whining about extravagantly overpaid USAID workers -- formerly making $272,000 per year, courtesy of the American taxpayer -- now working for $19 per hour in the private sector.

As this guy says: That's perfect evidence that you were always worth $19 per hour.

Geverett11 @Geverett111

50m

If your next best option is $19 an hour, what exactly was on your resume to begin with? And were you ever qualified to be taking in $272,000?

Don't mean to be cruel, but that's the obvious question.

Senator Eric Schmitt @SenEricSchmitt

NYT frames this as if USAID employees had a quasi-property right to high-paying, taxpayer-funded jobs.

In reality, this tells a darker story--we spent half-a-century debt-financing a managerial class of Leftists whose only qualifications were ideological.

If this guy gets bored of being a Senator, I'd like to ask him to be a coblogger. There's no pay but the sex is outrageous.

Oilfield Rando @Oilfield_Rando

When the world shut down over a 99.9999% survivable virus, I had to tell a few dozen rig hands they were out of a job.

Then I had to tell even more frac hands. Then snubbing hands.

Then I went home to wait for my layoff.

Then I spent 6 months applying for jobs with no interviews because corporate America had banned White men in honor of Saint George Floyd, Patron Saint of Fentanyl.

A great Twitter friend who I am indebted to forever got me a job with a 25% pay cut, and I had to work physically harder than I had in a decade.

Anyway. Nobody in news media ever reached out for my story. And it wasn't a unique story, I was one of a couple hundred thousand guys going through this.

This fills the lulzbucketz:

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 06:48 PM

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