I need a nap.

• In the Wall Street Journal, Matt Ridley argues that fossil fuels are not going anywhere. In a nutshell: they’re getting cheaper to get, the alternatives are either false or not feasible yet, and the climate catastrophe is probably overstated. This quote struck me:
  

  Although the world has certainly warmed since the 19th century, the rate of warming has been slow and erratic. There has been no increase in the frequency or severity of storms or droughts, no acceleration of sea-level rise. Arctic sea ice has decreased, but Antarctic sea ice has increased. At the same time, scientists are agreed that the extra carbon dioxide in the air has contributed to an improvement in crop yields and a roughly 14% increase in the amount of all types of green vegetation on the planet since 1980. [Bold mine]

• Japan Builds up its Military. I feel as though they’ve been doing this for decades, slowly slipping their internal revulsion of active defense policy. Most of this is aimed at China, as it should be. Odd quote:
  

  One Japanese analyst described the strategy of countering Chinese intrusions as “don’t be the first to pull a knife—like we mistakenly did at Pearl Harbor.”

  Do the Japanese really think that way? Or is that the sort of thing they reflexively say around Americans?

• Vladimir Putin is Not Dead. He Feels Happy!
• “Jesus Loves Winners: How Drop Dead Gorgeous Found Cult Success as a Flop” My wife is one of the few who actually owns a copy of DDG on DVD. We watched it over the weekend. It remains a deeply, brutally cynical film, which was to be expected in the late 90’s, but not in films about teenagers. Pretty funny, though.

I’ll have more to say about the upcoming sixth season of Community later. Happy Monday.