A couple of interesting articles on the the Abbasids’s view of the Chinese and the Vikings.

The Second-Most Megalomaniacal Dictator on Earth

Name Those Ferries!

Deadmau5 to host TIFF’s Just for Cats Festival.

Just for Cats, co-presented by the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies (CFHS) and Temptations, is a Canadian film fest for the best of international cat videos.

So, if you haven’t had enough Cat Fridays, Youtube cats or Twitch catstreams…well there you go.
While I’m an unabashed Deadmau5 fan, I probably can’t take an extended period of cat videos.

Now playing, meowingtons enables hax

Give me my Daiquiri or give me death!
Via Drudge

But it can’t be real. Cause the Conservatives killed the census, or something.

I don’t see Colorado on the dog show calendar.
Sad face.

@kesgardner No, it's not.

— Katewerk (@katewerk) March 18, 2015

Dave Barry’s Year in Review (h/t Lev)

According to early reports: An Air Asia plane travelling from Surabaya, Indonesia to Singapore has lost contact with air traffic control, Indonesia’s Metro TV reported on Sunday.
Reuters: … the plane had asked for an unusual route before it lost contact.
More info: Airline Reporter
#QZ8501 Twitter feed.
Update.

BREAKING NEWS: INDONESIAN MEDIA REPORTS AN AIRCRAFT CRASHED EAST OF BELITUNGS ISLANS. NO CONFIRMATION TO BE MISSING AIR ASIA #QZ8501

— Breaking News Feed (@PzFeed) December 28, 2014

Michael Totten on Cuba.

It was bound to happen eventually: The United States and Cuba have decided to restore diplomatic relations after treating each other as enemy states since the 1960s.
Some are elated and some are despondent. Both sides can make a strong case.
I visited Cuba near the end of last year and returned home with mixed feelings about the US embargo. Cuba is in no way a strategic or military threat to the United States. If diplomatic relations hadn’t already been severed a long time ago, Washington would have no reason to suddenly sever them now. In that sense, the embargo is an anachronism, a leftover from a now-distant past and a different era of history.
On the other hand, Cuba has the worst human rights record in the Western Hemisphere. Allowing the regime in from the cold gives it a patina of legitimacy it has done nothing whatsoever to earn, and it exhausts whatever scraps of leverage the United States had to convince the island’s overlords to free their people and share power like most other governments in the region.
So is restoring diplomatic ties the right call? I have no idea. I thought I’d return home from Cuba and take a firm stand one way or another, but some things in politics and in life are ambiguous.
What follows are my thoughts as originally published in World Affairs in March, 2014, before this decision was made.

I just think it’s ironic that in the 50 years that have passed under embargo, America has moved closer to communism than Cuba has to liberty.
Reaction at Babalu Blog.

Some flights in and out of O’Hare and Midway airports resumed operations “at a reduced rate” late Friday morning, but only a small fraction of the airports’ normal flight load.
H/t: rd

Via Wacked Out Canada, we learn that big tobacco is losing it’s share of the electronic nicotine delivery market.
Every time I post one of these types of posts, there are questions. In an attempt to kick the ball up-field, I’ll just redirect you to Phil Busardo’s TasteYourJuice.com site. It is a gold mine of information. Phil is also a prolific You Tuber. If you want to switch your nicotine delivery, you can do a lot worse than starting at his site and watching a few hours (days?) worth of reviews, tutorials and commentary.

Bud-Miller-Coors are hardly the beers I know and love.

Morocco and the Western Sahara – a new dispatch from Michael Totten.

Michael Totten – Vladimir Putin’s Next Move