Today's Takes: Thursday, August 26

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Headlines

📰 Today's Front Pages

• Reuters: Afghans told to leave Kabul airport over 'very credible' Islamic State threat (Read)
• New York Times: At Least 250,000 Afghans Who Worked With U.S. Haven’t Been Evacuated, Estimates Say (Read)
• Wall Street Journal: Stock Futures Wobble Ahead of Economic Data (Read)
• Fox News: Kabul airport may see 'imminent attack,' perhaps in 'hours,' British official warns (Read)
• CNN: Terror threats hamper Afghanistan evacuation as Biden's deadline looms (Read)
• NPR: China's Microsoft Hack May Have Had A Bigger Purpose Than Just Spying (Read)
• Breitbart: Security Alert: U.S. Tells Stranded Americans in Afghanistan to Avoid Kabul Airport or ‘Leave Immediately’ (Read)
• HuffPost: Masks Ordered For Most Florida Students, Defying Gov. DeSantis (Read)

💸 The Future of Money

• MicroStrategy announces new bitcoin buy worth $177 million (The Block)
  • "This brings MicroStrategy's total bitcoin supply to 108,992 BTC, an amount worth approximately $5.3 billion at press time. Saylor said Tuesday morning that the company has spent "~$2.918 billion at an average price of ~$26,769 per bitcoin" to obtain the digital assets."
• Infrastructure Bill’s Cryptocurrency Measures Risk Pushing Criminals Further Underground (WSJ)
  • "The provision in the bill requires anyone handling cryptocurrency transactions to report gross proceeds to the Internal Revenue Service, along with the names and addresses of the parties. It is intended to capture billions of dollars in tax revenue the IRS says is lost each year and would also give law enforcement and regulators visibility into a market in which bad actors can too easily operate anonymously."
  • Cryptocurrency advocates continue to lobby for a restriction of the legislation that constricts regulation to brokers.

⛔️ Sign of the Times

• Peloton’s recalled, redesigned Tread goes on sale in the US on August 30th (Verge)
  • ...after the first version caused severe injuries and one death.
• Airbnb says it plans to temporarily house 20,000 Afghan refugees (CNBC)
  • Afghan refugees, otherwise known as Delta variant vectors.
  • Will they make the refugees strip the beds and put all the dirty linens in the bathtub?
• Duck Stamps Won’t Have to Depict Hunting Imagery (WSJ)
  • "Fish and Wildlife oversees an annual competition for the stamp’s artwork, and participation in the contest fell 27% in 2020, the year after the hunting mandate took effect, the agency said."
  • One of Trump's more inconsequential initiatives.
• OnlyFans reverses porn ban, will allow sexually explicit content (NY Post)
  • Child trafficking and pedophilia are cool again thanks to OnlyFans.
• Jonah Hill Is SuperGood (GQ)
  • Adam McKay interviews Jonah Hill over the course of which Hill lets you know that he is no longer funny and isn't laughing. The interview starts with "Oh, my god. What did you do to your hair?"
  • Remember when GQ was cool?

🌊 The High Seas

• Shipping firm Maersk spends £1bn on ‘carbon neutral’ container ships (Guardian)
  • "The Danish facility is expected to produce about 10,000 tonnes of carbon neutral e-methanol, using green hydrogen combined with carbon emissions captured from burning bioenergy such as biomass."
  • Robbing Peter to pay Paul.
• China reopens terminal at world's third-busiest port after Covid-19 shutdown (Strait Times)
  • The cost of shipping containers has more than tripled since the beginning of the year (FBX)
• ‘A combination of failures:’ why 3.6m pounds of nuclear waste is buried on a popular California beach (Guardian)

🏙 Empire State

• New York Governor Adds 12,000 COVID Deaths to Predecessor Cuomo’s Count (National Review)
  • Shots fired.

Original Essays

🤿   Masked Dereliction: State Republican legislators are trying to shore up their base with special sessions and anti-mask stances; They willfully failed to prevent this debate four months ago. by Jerod Hollyfield (Read)

In case you missed it

• Total Recall: California’s September election by Jerod Hollyfield (Read)
• Losing Christopher Hitchens by Jerod Hollyfield (Read)
• Entourage's Last Stand by Jerod Hollyfield (Read)
• 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington' and the Evergreen Ills of American Politics by Jerod Hollyfield (Read)

Nashville Politics

• Republicans plan to charge candidates to run (Post)

Nashville News

• 'This has changed Waverly forever': A return to normal not yet in sight for Humphreys County residents (Tennessean)
• Anyone under 18 must be accompanied by parent on Fridays, Saturdays nights at Opry Mills (WSMV)
  • "All visitors under 18 must be accompanied at all times by a parent or adult, age 21 or older, after 3pm on Fridays and Saturdays."
• Tennessee business filings are continuing to grow at record pace (Main Street)
  • "New business filings in the second quarter in 2021 grew a remarkable 61.6% from second-quarter filings in 2020."

Nashville Development

• East Nashville neighborhood slated for café (Post)
• Heritage invests $20M in acute care telehealth company (Post)
• Hutton Hotel to unveil new restaurant in October (Post)
• Major permit issued for Gulch tower project (Post)

Nashville Life

Tonight
⚾️ Nashville Sounds vs. Gwinnett Stripers @ First Horizon, 7p (Info)

Other

• 🍁 2021 Fall Foliage Peak Map: When Leaves Are Best In Tennessee (Read)

COVID Gutter

As the tone and tenor of vaccination messaging picks up, curiously absent from the discussion is the strength of acquired immunity from prior infection. If we are to take Sweden as a blueprint, which is wise since they are the only country to humanely deal with the virus, one can see how not imposing restrictions achieved the nation herd immunity sooner than any other country in the world. Sweden's seven-day average of deaths sits at 2 and neither cases nor hospitalizations have spiked as drastically as they have in America over the past month.

If you are to rely on vaccines for your immunity, you'll need to get booster shots for the rest of your life as new variants roll through the population. We'll be continually harangued by hysterical media personalities like News Channel 5's Phil Williams who will persistently offer a drip-feed of imminent danger with "news" of new, scary variants and sissified admonitions to get vaccinated. By all accounts, acquired immunity from infection engages a T-cell response that is more robust and able to deal more effectively with variants. Why doesn't Phil talk about this?

Opinions

• Our Eyes on the Virus: Why We Still Need Widespread Rapid Testing Even With Vaccines (Time)
  • Stop the nonsense. END. THE. CASE. COUNT.
• The Coronavirus Could Get Worse (Atlantic)
  • People say "trust the science" then parrot information they read in half-assed essays like this one designed to stoke fear and motivate vaccination above all else.
• Natural infection versus vaccination: Differences in COVID antibody responses emerge (Reckefeller)

Headlines

• Delta Airlines will charge unvaccinated employees $200 per month extra for their health benefits. But, they are not mandating vaccination. (Delta)
• Pentagon officially orders all active service members be vaccinated (NY Post)
• Black Americans Lead Whites in Getting Vaccinated By Double Digits in New Poll (Mediaite)
  • The numbers are in, folks. The Blacks are beating the Whites.
• Oregon to Require Masks Outdoors, Regardless of Vaccination Status (National Review)
• Many Older Americans Still Aren’t Vaccinated, Making the Delta Wave Deadlier (NYT)
• Pfizer CEO Predicts Vaccine-Resistant COVID-19 Variant Likely to Emerge (Epoch)
  • And there is no cause for concern.

Information

• Press Briefing by White House COVID-⁠19 Response Team and Public Health Officials (White House)
  • Fauci finally admits monoclonal antibodies work: "Early treatment with anti-SARS-CoV-2 monoclonal antibodies can reduce the risk of COVID-19 hospitalization or death by 70 to 85 percent"

Words of Wisdom

The entire COVID affair is a network of transparent lies, held together only by the ruling class’ unanimous vengeance on whoever points out that the COVID-19 virus is nothing like a plague, that quarantining the uninfected rather than the ill and vulnerable defies common sense, that cloth masks raise the wearers’ intake of carbon dioxide many times above dangerous levels, and that COVID vaccines have at least ordinary levels of dangerous side effects. Yes. Though many of the oligarchy’s enforcers of this regime of lies are guilty only of reptilian partisanship, the oligarchs who head America’s public health system, Google and other tech companies, and the pharmaceutical industry may well be liable for criminal conspiracy as well as vulnerable to civil judgments.
 
Angelo Codevilla, 'What is Trump to Us?' (Read)

One Good Read

📄 The Power of the Marginal (Read)

For Your Curiosity

🌳 A list of the oldest, tallest, and widest trees in Tennessee (Read)

Have a great Thursday