Pun Salad

I'd like to offer whoever wrote this headline at the New York Times a job at @TheBabylonBee pic.twitter.com/krJYrownuk

— Kyle Mann (@The_Kyle_Mann) January 7, 2025

(Kyle is editor-in-chief of the Babylon Bee.)

Robby Soave cheers the news: Mark Zuckerberg was right to fire Facebook's rogue fact-checkers.

That amusingly-headlined NYT post quotes two fact-checking folks:

I won't relitigate the bias charges (which only Neil Brown mildly tries to deny, not Lori Anderson). The facts, as they say, are well-known.

But not everyone is impressed by Zuck's change of heart. For example, Tristan Justice at the Federalist thinks Zuckerberg Owes Restitution To Those He Tried To Destroy.

I just use FB to follow far-flung friends and family; and I pretty quickly unfollow people who try to babble overmuch about their politics. And I'm much better for it.

Also of note:

• Please pass the popcorn. Jerry Coyne provides More fallout from the Big KerFFRFle: Freedom from Religion Foundation dissolves its entire Honorary Board (and other news)

  The conclusion, of course, is that the FFRF does not WANT an honorary board at all. Why? The only conclusion I can reach is that other honorary-board members could, in the future, cause “trouble” in the way that the three of us did, publicly criticizing the organization for its mission creep and adherence to woke gender ideology. Ditching the other 15 (I hope they’ve been told!) is an often-seen aspect of wokeness: any index of merit that conflicts with “progressive” ideology must be effaced. (Similarly, many American colleges have dropped requirements for applicants to submit standardized test scores, like those from the SAT and ACT.) It seems that the FFRF doesn’t want to take a chance with people on the honorary board publicly espousing the “wrong ideology.”

  Let me resurrect a Pun Salad post from way back in 2025 where I excerpted an interview of George H.W. Bush with Robert I. Sherman of (I am not kidding) American Atheist Press back in 1987. (My source link from 2025 has rotted.)

  RS:

  "Surely you recognize the equal citizenship and patriotism of Americans who are atheists?"

  GB:

  "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."

  RS:

  "Do you support as a sound constitutional principle the separation of state and church?"

  GB:

  "Yes, I support the separation of church and state. I'm just not very high on atheists."

  I didn't care for GHWB's first response, but "not very high on atheists" made me grin back then, and does now.

  I recommend the Google query to Jerry: why do atheists act like jerks all the time?

• Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and nannies gotta nag. Unfortunately, some nannies have political power to do more than nag. Another example of "Gee, we forgot to do this in the past four years, so…", as described by Jeffrey A. Singer at Cato: The Black Market Beckons: Biden’s Last-Minute Move on Nicotine.

  Axios reports that the Biden Administration is planning an 11th-hour move to order cigarette manufacturers to reduce the nicotine content in the tobacco cigarettes they market to consumers—possibly by as much as 95 percent. The FDA proposed the rule in 2022, and the Office of Management and Budget cleared the rule proposal on January 3, 2025.

  The Food and Drug Administration has not yet issued the rule but may do so within the next two weeks.

  Nicotine is the addictive component of tobacco cigarettes, but by itself is relatively harmless. The harm comes from carbon monoxide, a poisonous gas, and tobacco tar that contains carcinogens and other chemicals that harm the lungs and circulatory system. Britain’s Royal Society for Public Health claims nicotine is “no more harmful to health than caffeine.” As I have written here, what differentiates nicotine from caffeine is that it has calming as well as stimulative effects.

  Nicotine and caffeine are also possibly addictive, although it's claimed that nicotine is worse in that regard. Still, this FDA move promises to do more harm than good.

• Perhaps statists are addicted to statism? Kevin D. Williamson begins a multi-part series on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. What the ATF Does—and What It Doesn’t Do. Excerpt, containing a key point:

  Do we need an ATF? There is a reasonable—and strong—case to be made that we do not. At least as far as the question of regulating firearms goes, much of what the ATF does is unnecessary, and its necessary work would be better done by other federal agencies or by states and municipalities. (Other items in the ATF portfolio, such as alcohol and explosives, are beyond my scope here.) The ATF is a hodgepodge agency that has been overseen by different departments over the years ranging from Treasury to Homeland Security—its agents and leaders by their own account really want to spend their energy fighting organized crime, but its main firearms-related activity is the regulation of sporting goods stores. And it is not clear that the agency fighting transnational drug cartels should also be the agency regulating Dick’s Sporting Goods. What is clear from the data is that the activities of licensed firearms retailers are only indirectly and tangentially related to violent crime at all. American gun shops are not a major provider of firearms to American criminals, with more than 90 percent of them getting their firearms from other sources, mainly through theft and black market sales.

  Hope the folks at DOGE have Kevin's articles on their desks.

• I have mixed feelings about this. Harrison Richlin reports on something we missed, thanks to the Woke Mouse: David Fincher Pushed Back When Disney Didn’t Get His ‘20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’ Vision: ‘You’ve Read Jules Verne, Right?’.

  There have been many potential projects that haven’t come to fruition for David Fincher, from his take on Aaron Sorkin’s “Steve Jobs” starring Christian Bale to his “Black Dahlia” mini-series led by Tom Cruise. But one failed vision people were clamoring for, perhaps above all others, was his adaptation of Jules Verne’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”

  [… alas …]

  Fincher intended on working with Disney, who still own the IP, and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns to make a newer, more modern version in the early 2010s, but faced issues after desired lead Brad Pitt (who would have played harpooner Ned Land) passed on the script. Disney wanted Fincher to cast Chris Hemsworth, hot off his starring roles in “Thor” and “The Avengers,” but Fincher wanted Channing Tatum. In a recent interview with Letterboxd, Fincher also pointed to not being able to get on the same page as Disney when it came to the story they were trying to tell.

  “You can’t make people be excited about the risks that you’re excited about,” said Fincher. “Disney was in a place where they were saying, ‘We need to know that there’s a thing that we know how to exploit snout to tail, and you’re going to have to check these boxes for us.’ And I was like, ‘You’ve read Jules Verne, right?'”

  Given Disney's penchant for taking a PC wrecking ball to its beloved intellectual properties, one can only imagine what "boxes" they demanded that Fincher "check".

• A bit of good news. TV has followed Sturgeon's Law for a long time. But one show I really enjoyed was David Janssen's "Harry O". It was a private eye series done right, with wit and intelligence.

  But sadly unavailable. Until now!

  <voice imitation="professor_farnsworth">Good news, everyone!</voice>. I stuck "Harry O" on my TiVo's "wishlist" years ago, and this week, it finally paid off, recording Season 1, Episode 1. Future episodes are queued up.

  (My TiVo has been in declining use recently, so I'm happy this worked.)

  Unfortunately, for those without a DVR: it's on "MeTV", Mondays at 4AM.

  But for those with a DVR: check it out, and enjoy. And would some streaming service out there just put up the entire series, plus the pilot/movies?