July 2020 Archives

Kanye West explains why he's pro-life.

West said he was still living the "rapper's lifestyle" when Kardashian found out she was pregnant with baby North, the couple's eldest child. The musical talent-turned-politico admitted that he did not want the baby, but Kardashian stood up and said she was going to have the child, for which West offered his wife immense praise.

"She brought North into the world, even when I didn't want to," he said. "She stood up and she protected that child."

West likened Kardashian saving baby North to his late mother saving his life from abortion some 43 years ago.

"And she said I'm pregnant," West recalled Kardashian finding out she was with child, adding that she was crying when she left the doctor's office.

"I was living the rapper's lifestyle," West disclosed.

"For one month, and two months, and three months, we talked about her not having this child," he said. "She had the (abortion) pills in her hand. You know those pills, where you take the pills and it's a wrap, the baby's gone."

"I'm in the apartment in Paris," West continued, "and I have my laptop up, and I have all my creative ideas ... and the screen went black and white. And God said, if you f*** with my vision, I'm gonna f*** with yours." ...

"You know who else protected a child?" he asked the crowd. "Forty-three years ago, who do you think protected a child?"

"My mom," he said. "My mom saved my life."

Earlier this month, West told Forbes that he is "pro-life because I'm following the word of the Bible."

Are primordial black holes common in the universe? It doesn't seem like it.

What would a universe flooded with primordial black holes look like? That's the million-dollar question, which we need to answer if we want to test this hypothesis.

For one thing, the black holes may randomly crash into other things, gravitationally attract other things, and just generally cause mayhem. Kilogram-mass black holes hitting the Earth could trigger earthquakes. A silent black hole may pull apart binary pairs of stars or disrupt entire dwarf galaxies. A black hole ramming into a neutron star could ignite a terrible explosion. Even the hypothetical Planet Nine could be a black hole no bigger than a tennis ball. ...

Alas, despite all our attempts, we cannot reconcile the existence of primordial black holes with the universe that we see. For every possible observational avenue, the primordial black holes cause so much mayhem that it would be noticeable to us.

In other words, as difficult as it is to explain the masses of the merging black holes that LIGO witnessed, if you want a universe with those black holes to be primordial, it would be detectable in other ways.

Ok, may as well quote from the "Planet nine black hole" story also, even though Pluto is already planet #9. I guess the Space.com folks got confused and meant planet ten.

Over the past few years, researchers have noticed an odd clustering in the orbits of multiple trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), which dwell in the dark depths of the far outer solar system. Some scientists have hypothesized that the TNOs' paths have been sculpted by the gravitational pull of a big object way out there, something five to 10 times more massive than Earth (though others think the TNOs may just be tugging on each other).

This big "perturber," if it exists, may be a planet -- the so-called "Planet Nine," or "Planet X" or "Planet Next" for those who will always regard Pluto as the ninth planet. But there's another possibility as well: The shepherding object may be a black hole, one that crams all that mass into a sphere the size of a grapefruit.

I sure hope there's a tiny black hole in our solar system -- that's practically the only way we humans would ever have a chance to examine one up close.

Thomas L. Friedman suggests that Joe Biden should put conditions on the Presidential debates in an attempt to constrain Trump.

First, Biden should declare that he will take part in a debate only if Trump releases his tax returns for 2016 through 2018. Biden has already done so, and they are on his website. Trump must, too. No more gifting Trump something he can attack while hiding his own questionable finances.

And second, Biden should insist that a real-time fact-checking team approved by both candidates be hired by the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates -- and that 10 minutes before the scheduled conclusion of the debate this team report on any misleading statements, phony numbers or outright lies either candidate had uttered. That way no one in that massive television audience can go away easily misled. ...

He should not go into such a high-stakes moment ceding any advantages to Trump. Trump is badly trailing in the polls, and he needs these debates much more than Biden does to win over undecided voters. So Biden needs to make Trump pay for them in the currency of transparency and fact-checking -- universal principles that will level the playing field for him and illuminate and enrich the debates for all citizens.

But what prevents Trump from pushing for similar conditions? Would Biden be willing to publicly undergo a test of his mental competence?

It's not obvious to me that refusing to debate would turn out to Biden's advantage.

I'm not on Twitter much, and from what I see most social media seems to be pretty toxic for its users. Still, social media is ubiquitous, so you'd be forgiven for thinking that Twitter is essential for any media personality... but apparently not. Tucker Carlson is dominating cable news despite his meager use of Twitter (or because of it?).

As was the case in total viewership, Fox News led by Carlson, dwarfed the competition in the 25-54 demo.

1. Tucker Carlson Tonight (791,000), Fox News
2. Hannity (754,000), Fox News
3. Special Report (668,00), Fox News
4. The Five (655,000), Fox News
5. The Ingraham Angle (655,000), Fox News
6. The Story (603,000), Fox News
7. Cuomo Prime Time (587,000), CNN
8. Anderson Cooper 360 (568,000), CNN
9. CNN Tonight (524,000), CNN
10. Erin Burnett OutFront (502,00), CNN

For some context, Carlson's average is more than what sports shows, which tend to have a younger audience, draw in total viewership. ...

Executives are led to believe that the two demographics are highly influenced by Twitter and other social media platforms. Carlson, the media's biggest star, provided a brutal counterpunch to that belief.

Carlson tweets once or twice a week. He sent just one tweet in the entire month of April, a month he dominated the competition in. He excels absent of the microphone his competition views as a necessity to capture the demographics he just won.

What's more, when advertisers succumb to demands to boycott Carlson they're leaving money on the table.

Carlson is the antithesis of what the vast majority of media is today. He's the threat they warn you about. He's recently been under more fire for his stance on Black Lives Matter and the nationwide riots. Hopefully, by this point in the column, you'll know you can guess the results.

You guessed it, decision-makers, again, listened like cowards. Executives at Disney, T-Mobile, Papa Johns, and SmileDirectClub took the demands and pulled their advertisements from his show. The viewers, who the companies advertise for, did the opposite. Viewers of all ages flocked to him in record-setting numbers.