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Afternoon Links: Bitcoin Billionaires (lol), a Missing Sub, and the Return of the McLaughlin Group

By Jim Swift
Published December 22, 2017 9:16pm ET
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Afternoon Links: Bitcoin Billionaires (lol), a Missing Sub, and the Return of the McLaughlin Group
Are you a bitcoin billionaire? After today, probably not (too soon?), but Remy has another instant classic over at ReasonTV. Peak shipping? It seems that every Christmas my front desk person is assaulted with greater and greater waves of packages. With all the growth in shipping, naturally, you’d expect to see growth in returns. Bloomberg […]

Are you a bitcoin billionaire? After today, probably not (too soon?), but Remy has another instant classic over at ReasonTV.



Peak shipping? It seems that every Christmas my front desk person is assaulted with greater and greater waves of packages. With all the growth in shipping, naturally, you’d expect to see growth in returns. Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports:

It’s an expensive ritual. According to the National Retail Federation, returns account for around 8 percent of total annual retail sales. Online retailers face an even heavier burden, with returns averaging 25 percent of all goods purchased and as much as half of apparel. If those percentages hold through the 2017 holidays, online retailers could face $32.1 billion worth of returns on projected holiday-season sales of $107 billion, according to the consulting firm CBRE.

If you’re like me and pretty much never return things, 25 percent to 50 percent of orders resulting in returns doesn’t seem like it’s true, but apparently it is.

Maritime mystery solved: A 103-year-old missing submarine has been found.

Early in World War I, Australia’s first submarine, HMAS AE1, and its sister ship, AE2, were employed in an operation to capture German New Guinea. It was a Sunday in September of 1914 when AE1 helped secure the surrender of Rabaul in East New Britain, according to the Royal Australian Navy. But the next day, the boat and its crew vanished — leading to a 103-year-old maritime mystery. “No trace of AE1 was found, not even the telltale shimmer of escaping oil floating on the surface of the water,” according to a historical account from the navy.

“A gender scholar analyzes a boxing gym.” That’s the latest find from New Real Peer Review, and it’s as great as you’d expect.

Through scripted performances of “mimetic” violence and self-bullying, the boxers were able to experience this discursive naturalness and carve out a masculinity-validating social enclave. As such, they accessed a “patriarchal dividend” by securing a local pastiche hegemony in which discourses surrounding men’s natural place as physically and psychologically dominant remained largely uncontested. Through the reflexive appropriation of “science,” within appropriate subcultural codes, these men could negotiate taboos and restrictions that are characteristic of late-modern social worlds

If you want to read the whole thing, be my guest. But you’re better off enjoying the highlights.

ISSUE ONE! The McLaughlin Group, the American Original, returns to the airwaves in 2018. Our colleague Tom Rogan of the Washington Examiner, a mentee of the late Dr. John McLaughlin, will continue the tradition. Next issue!

Hillary takes over Teen Vogue, what comes next will surprise you. At the Wall Street Journal, Jillian Kay Melchoir has a great item on what happened when Hillary Clinton guest edited Teen Vogue.

Mrs. Clinton commissioned several articles about herself. Staff writer Lauren Duca proclaims that “zooming out on Hillary’s 2016 loss reveals the broader contours of women’s oppression,” while Gloria Steinem says that when a woman is elected president, “she will be climbing steps that were carved out by Hillary.” The issue also features contributions from Chelsea Clinton and Betsy Ebeling, identified as Mrs. Clinton’s “BFF.” There’s a two-page spread of “Love Letters to Hill.” Readers are assured they are “personal notes” selected from more than 100,000 post-election missives Mrs. Clinton received from young women, including singer Miley Cyrus and actresses Chloë Grace Moretz and Lena Dunham. The magazine helpfully advises: “Read with tissues in hand!”

Does this sound like a TWS Parody to you? That’s because a few weeks ago, it was.

Shots fired at Nakatomi Plaza. What would the journalists of Twitter’s response be if Die Hard happened in 2018? Ryan Parker watched the (Christmas) movie with his wife and live tweeted it:

Source tells me lead perpetrator may be a man by the name of Hans Gruber. Also hearing the person on the inside helping police is “Roy.” No last name. #diehard2017coverage

It’s amusing.

James O’Keefe believes Roy Moore’s accusers. But pulled his shenanigans anyway. “You think posing as a [rape] victim is hardcore? You should see a lot of the other aliases we use.” So edgy!

Press Release Lottery! We have another deserving winner in the press release lottery: video maker Michal Orsava. Orsava sent us this well edited parody of Home Alone, starring Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and based in… Prague?



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