Isaac Asimov turned 100 years old yesterday. It’s a shame he didn’t live to see it, because we could use a man like him right now. My admiration for Asimov started when I was very young. I read everything of his that I could get my hands on, since his highly accessible writing made it…
Are Jews smart? This is a really stupid question, but New York Times columnist Bret Stephens asked it anyway. His December 27 column “The Secrets of Jewish Genius” puts forth the theory that Jewish geniuses are different from other geniuses because of their Jewishness. It included a link to a racist and discredited study that…
New York Magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi wrote a devastating article on her interview with Donald Trump’s lawyer and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, including writing about his fly being unzipped. Is writing negatively about a political figure’s appearance appropriate? I’m not sure. Go read Nuzzi’s article, “A Conversation With Rudy Giuliani Over Bloody Marys at…
Last week, the Hallmark Channel pulled ads for the wedding planning site Zola that featured two brides kissing. Yesterday, it reversed itself. No matter what happened in this episode, Hallmark was going to be at the center of controversy and lose viewers. At that point, you might as well do what you think is right….
CBS This Morning did a profile taking viewers inside the home of Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan. It was a big wet smooch. Will this help Zuckerberg and Facebook? Sure. Now we know that rather than being a robot with an evil product, he’s a human. Every CEO has an image, and tech…
via GIPHY Did Disney insist on taking down GIFs of Baby Yoda? It looks that way. If so, it’s the stupidest move ever. Baby Yoda (or at the very least, a baby that looks just like him) is a character in The Mandalorian, the new Star Wars series on Disney+. And he’s popular, because he’s…
Google will stop targeting political ads based on behavior. That’s a start. I call on every platform to end all targeted political ads (except by geography) — and for Congress to make this the law. Here’s what happened with political ads so far in 2019: Twitter banned all political ads. Google just announced that for…
South Dakota spent nearly half a million dollars on its anti-drug campaign slogan “Meth. We’re on it.” The ridicule spread far and wide. Ha, ha! We’re from South Dakota and we’re telling everyone we’re on meth! Those stupid hicks. Yeah, it looked pretty silly to me, too. Because I’m not on meth. No one I…
On Sunday, the New York Times published a critique of the way that the shipper FedEx cut its federal tax bill to zero. Rather than defending itself, FedEx lashed out at the finances of the Times. While such tactics may be working for politicians, they’re no way for a public company to behave. Here’s the…