I’ve never known how to judge a category like this. I can’t do it by memory since I don’t remember most of what I’ve written for more than a few days. I can do it by the pure popularity of posts, but this year I wasn’t able to figure out how to get Google Analytics to cough up that information. So I’m trying something new and innovative: this list contains the top post from each month as ranked by Google. In a fresh private window, I searched my site; then filtered by date; then picked the top substantive post (i.e., not cat blogging or lunchtime photos). Here they are:

January: Everyone’s Known About Stormy Daniels All Along

Fox News knew all about Trump and Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign, but declined to run the story. They were “unable to verify all of the facts and publish a story,” they said. Uh huh.

February: Surprise! The Media Got Sucked In By the Nunes Memo

Rep. Devin Nunes released an obviously laughable and fraudulent memo claiming the FBI illegally surveilled the Trump campaign. It literally contained nothing either new or credible, but that didn’t matter. The media gave it grand play anyway.

March: Americans Love Torture

“The American public supports torture by a pretty wide margin, and Republicans support it almost unanimously. This means there’s really not much reason for anyone to feel ashamed about it or to think [that supporting] it will hurt their reputation or their ability to work in government.”

April: Tariffs? What Tariffs?

Larry Kudlow tells everyone to calm down. The whole tariff war thing is just a bunch of talk so far. There’s not much chance it will really happen.

May: Fox News and the Big Lie

At Fox News and other right-wing outlets, it’s now simple conventional wisdom that the Mueller probe is little more than a liberal deep-state hit job. “If you watch Fox—or listen to Rush or read Breitbart—this is what you believe….His entire investigation is a monstrous, Democrat-fueled deception designed to bring down a president elected by working-class voters who were finally fed up with liberals destroying our country. This is their story, and it’s spreading more and more widely in conservative ranks.”

June: The Press Doesn’t Cover All Undercover Stings the Same

Over the years the media has given a ton of coverage to undercover conservative stings from the likes of David Daleiden and others. Why? Because they illegally record video, edit it in obviously deceptive ways, and then put it on YouTube. That’s news, baby! Who cares if there’s no reason to give these folks even the slightest benefit of the doubt given their record of serial fraudulence?

But when a liberal does the same thing, it might as well have never happened. Why? Because Dania Flores and NARAL Pro-Choice of California obeyed the law and refrained from recording video. Their report was clearly credible and showed that most “crisis pregnancy centers” are thinly disguised fronts for anti-abortion Christian ministries. But without the video, it went nowhere. In fact, there’s a pretty good chance you’re hearing about it now for the first time.

July: Corporate Profits Are Skyrocketing. Wages Aren’t.

The Wall Street Journal says corporate profits are due to continue soaring. They’re right. They also say that corporate profits are being threatened by rising wages. Really?

August: Trump’s Tariffs Have Killed Off the Ford Focus

Ford planned to revive the Focus and import it from their factory in China, despite modest sales. The Trump tariffs killed even the small hope of making that workable, and there was no chance at all of reviving it in an American factory. So the Focus is gone.

September: How Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories Take Flight

“These things become believable if you first believe that the opposition party is literally evil enough and well-funded enough to be capable of anything. If they are enemies of the state, dedicated to ruining everything good about America—and they have the power of Hollywood and universities and the press to provide cover—then weird conspiracy theories start to make a lot more sense.”

October: Wall Street Profits Are Up, Up, Up

The easiest way to tell if the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill really did serious damage to the banking industry is to look at their profits. If Dodd-Frank’s regulations were egregious, then Wall Street earnings would have slumped.

Spoiler alert: They didn’t.

November: Was NAFTA Bad For America?

No, not really. Even now, after a quarter of a century, there’s still a consensus among economists that NAFTA was a net positive. As for Mexico, they definitely suffered some economic problems in the 80s and 90s. But most of that had nothing to do with NAFTA.

December:  We’re Returning to the Middle Ages

This post annoyed several medievalists, but it was prompted by Donald Trump’s statement that he might intervene in the case of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou if the Chinese played ball on trade. This is roughly analogous to the medieval practice of taking hostages during wartime. There was also some annoyance toward my brilliantly Photoshopped picture of Trump’s face over a famous portrait of Richard III. However, Richard III died in 1485, which clearly (though barely) makes him a medieval king, not an early modern one. So I stand by my illustration.

I had a pretty dreary year in books. I’m not sure if it was me or the books, but there were very few I’d really recommend strongly. Among fiction, my favorites were all trilogies: Cixin Liu’s Three Body Problem (outstanding hard SF, especially the first volume); N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth (not sure if it was worth three Hugos, but it was good); and Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians (uneven but entertaining).

However, there was one book so good it dwarfed all the others:

1. Bad Blood, by John Carreyrou

Bad Blood is about the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes and her company Theranos, which promised to transform the field of blood testing. I’ve had a chance to mention this book to a few people who have read it, and we all had the same reaction: utter, stunned disbelief. Even if you’ve read all of Carreyrou’s reporting on Theranos for the Wall Street Journal, you still don’t understand more than a fraction of the story. The whole thing was a long con from the very start, and one that lasted nearly a decade based on literally nothing more than the strength of Holmes’s ability to mesmerize investors, regulators, board members, and even her own employees. You simply have to read it to believe it.

It’s hard to know what conclusion to draw from the Theranos story. In one sense, it’s such an insane outlier that I’m not sure it really says anything about the rest of Silicon Valley culture. On the other hand, the fact that Holmes could do what she did in the midst of the self-proclaimed smartest people in the world sure doesn’t say anything good about Silicon Valley. In the end, I suppose what it really tells us is just how unprepared most of are for a person who’s willing to lie to our faces persistently and persuasively. This is how Donald Trump gets away with lying to his core base and how fraudulent journalists can ply their trade for so long. As cynical and perceptive as we like to think of ourselves, it rarely occurs to us that someone is just flatly making stuff up, if only because these kinds of lies obviously can’t be sustained, so why would anyone be dumb enough to traffic in them?

And yet some people are—or perhaps it’s better to say that they aren’t dumb so much as they combine an eye-watering level of confidence in their ability to BS people on the fly with a fear of being caught out that’s so intense it keeps roping them in further and further. Charles Ponzi had it. Bernie Madoff had it. And Elizabeth Holmes had it.

The fascinating question yet to be answered is: will Silicon Valley eventually forgive Holmes and allow her another chance to start a company? If they do, I think we can conclude that most of them are idiots.

It’s the end of the year, and that means it’s time for some Top X lists. I’m going to post a few of these today because—oh, I don’t know. I’m bored, and USC isn’t in a bowl game this year.

Let’s start with airplanes. A couple of months ago I put up a picture taken from an airplane window and S1AMER commented, “How come when I’m on a plane, and there’s a gorgeous view outside, the window’s always too damned dirty to make decent photography possible? Kevin gets a beautiful shot, and all I ever get a smeary mess.”

Here’s the strange thing: this is totally true. In the past, my pictures from airplane windows have all been lousy. The wing is in the way, the window is smeared and filthy, the light is dreary, etc. And then, suddenly, I took a bunch of pictures in a row that were really good. I don’t know how or why—though Photoshop is certainly a part of the answer. In any case, here are my top airplane window photos.

1. Above Greenland

This is on a flight heading west from Dublin to Los Angeles. I’ve made this flight many times and never captured anything decent. Until now.

2. Above Tustin

These are the blimp hangars at the old Tustin Marine Corps air station a few seconds before touchdown in Orange County. The sun was shining through the clouds just right.

3. Above California

This is a pure layer of clouds—very artsy!—but note that it was significantly Photoshopped. The left portion of the sky originally had a lot of glare from the sun, but I removed it and made the entire sky match the featureless dark blue of the right side. It was taken about five minutes before touchdown at Orange County airport.

4. Above Far Rockaway

This was taken shortly after takeoff from JFK in the early morning.

5. Inside John Wayne Airport

I don’t have five good pictures taken from airplanes, so here’s a related filler shot. I took it when I arrived home and just happened to see this view from the airport window. I stopped to take a picture, which turned out to be very nice in black and white.

It was gusty around here for a few days last week, and after the wind stopped on Saturday I noticed that the sky was exceptionally clear. So, on a whim, I decided to head out and try my luck at a star trails picture.

However, I didn’t feel like making the long trek out to Anza Borrega, so I compromised instead on Lake Henshaw, which is less dark than Anza but also about an hour closer. I knew this would mean a fair amount of light pollution on a long-exposure shot, so I decided to work with that by deliberately putting some light in the frame. The result is a picture that looks as if it were taken at sunrise. In reality, the yellow glow—from Warner Springs, about ten miles away—is only barely visible to the naked eye. But if you leave your shutter open for three hours, it turns into something very bright indeed.

I’m not sure if I’ll try this again. It has to be done in winter, when the nights are long, and for a really good shot I’d probably have to trek out to Joshua Tree or Death Valley. And even at that, there are limits to what I can get. There’s a lot of noise in this picture, due to my camera’s small, mid-quality sensor. A six-hour exposure would make the noise even worse, and would also require me to spend six hours in my car while the camera is working. I’m not sure that’s worth it.

Still, I’m glad I did this. I like the spot I found, and the orange glow from the light pollution is actually kind of entertaining.

Here’s some great Atrios bait today:

The assailant slipped out of a park around noon one day in October, zeroing in on his target, which was idling at a nearby intersection — a self-driving van operated by Waymo, the driverless-car company spun out of Google. He carried out his attack with an unidentified sharp object, swiftly slashing one of the tires. The suspect, identified as a white man in his 20s, then melted into the neighborhood on foot.

….At least 21 such attacks have been leveled at Waymo vans in Chandler, as first reported by The Arizona Republic. Some analysts say they expect more such behavior as the nation moves into a broader discussion about the potential for driverless cars to unleash colossal changes in American society. The debate touches on fears ranging from eliminating jobs for drivers to ceding control over mobility to autonomous vehicles.

It’s the Luddites reborn! Luckily for them, they’ll get off easier than the loom smashers of old, who were variously hanged, shipped off to Botany Bay, or tossed in prison for a few years. On the other hand, I don’t imagine they’ll have any more impact than the original Luddite rioters either. The power looms took over and so will the driverless cars. Resistance is futile.

I continue to be amazed by the number of people who are convinced that driverless cars are a mirage. Their arguments boil down to driving is complicated and they don’t work yet. Both true! And both meaningless. Weaving is also complicated, and the first power looms were kind of clunky. But they worked eventually and so will driverless cars. We’re better off figuring out what to do about it than we are putting our heads in the sand.

So. Elizabeth Warren. I guess I should noodle out loud about what I think of her. This is all pretty vague and unformed, but here goes:

• First things first: she’s obviously a solid progressive who would support progressive goals like universal health care and so forth. However, we’re going to have a lot of candidates who fit that mold this year.
• I like the FDRish way she defends capitalism and just wants to save it from itself.
• I’m not so thrilled—yet—with her foreign policy. She sits on the Armed Services Committee as an obvious way to shore up her military cred, but her big speech recently on foreign policy fell flat for me. She tried to make it all about applying her progressive domestic values to foreign affairs, but that just doesn’t cut it. At some point, she’s going to have to take some firm stands on real foreign policy issues that aren’t just extensions of progressive domestic values. What does she think of China? Russia? North Korea? Israel? Yemen? Iran? Saudi Arabia? Free trade? NATO? Nuclear modernization? Ohio class submarines? Cyberwarfare? Etc.
• She gave a speech a while back about shoring up private pensions: 401(k)s, IRAs, and so forth. I liked it. Portable pensions are obviously here to stay, and it’s better to talk about how to make them better than it is to moon forever about the loss of old-school company pensions—which weren’t all that great anyway.
• I’m not sold at all on her idea of the government manufacturing generic drugs. Governments should do the kinds of things they’re good at, and this is definitely not one of them. What’s more, if you really are a capitalist at heart, you should consider direct control of manufacturing as a last resort after you’ve tried everything else. The fact that Warren is proposing it as a first-best solution does not leave me with the warm fuzzies about her judgment.
• Let’s face it: her handling of the whole Pocahontas/native heritage affair was pretty ham handed. As an issue, it doesn’t matter that much. But as an indicator of how well she handles difficult situations, it might not bode well.
• She has very little political experience. But I don’t know if that even matters anymore.

Overall, Warren still strikes me as a bit shallow, a candidate with one big issue and not too much else. But she has plenty of time to fix that.

Scottish science-fiction author Charlie Stross says 2018 was a truly godawful year:

I am looking for any silver linings to 2018 and coming up blank.

Oddly enough, there was a silver lining, and it comes just a few sentences earlier in his own post:

2018 was the year that the global climate change alarm sirens began to sound continuously, with wildfires and heat emergencies and melting icecaps.

Granted, this is not your typical good news, like malaria is nearly eradicated or Scott Pruitt got kicked out of the EPA. And yet, given the nature of the problem, the only way the public was ever going to take climate change seriously was to be hit in the face with it. Careful models showing temperature increases of 0.06 °C per year were never going to have any impact. Predictions of dire effects in 2100 were never going to have any impact. Famines in the Sahel were never going to have an impact. Floods in Bangladesh were never going to have an impact. Announcements of seven new extinct species of rain forest beetle were never going to have an impact.

Do I sound like I have a low opinion of the human species? Oh hell yes. The only thing that was ever likely to force people to take climate change seriously was continuous sirens—big, bright, loud continuous sirens. Frankly, I’d be pretty happy if a tsunami destroyed the White House, just like in the movies. Or maybe a heat wave killed a hundred thousand people in Paris. With apologies to Washington DC and Paris, this is what it’s going to take to get the panicked level of attention we need: something big, something clearly climate related, and something that kills a lot of white people.

So 2018 was a good year for climate change, and we need more like it: bad enough to get people’s attention before the really bad stuff starts.

As 2018 finally draws to a close, I suppose it’s time to reflect on the past year, both good and bad. I’ve tried to do this. Not too hard, I admit, but I tried. Sadly, I came up pretty empty-handed. I mean, no close family members died. I guess that counts as good news. Beyond that, everything was pretty terrible. So I guess my parting message to 2018 is not to let the door hit you on the way out.

It’s now time for me to head over to the infusion center for my monthly de-cancerization treatment. That also means today is Evil Dex day, and that in turn means there will be no old-man nonsense tonight about falling asleep before midnight. In fact, I’ll see in the New Year in Hawaii, Tahiti, and whatever Pacific island is closest to the date line. A quick look at a map suggests that American Samoa takes the prize. Don’t worry American Samoa! I’ll be ringing in the New Year right along with you!

Any deaths of children or others at the Border are strictly the fault of the Democrats and their pathetic immigration policies that allow people to make the long trek thinking they can enter our country illegally. They can’t. If we had a Wall, they wouldn’t even try! The two…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 29, 2018

This is a pretty frequent occurrence at our house: Hopper out on the front porch pretending that she’s locked out and desperately wants to come in. Hilbert looks on distractedly while Hopper gives Marian a sad look. The reality here is that if Marian opens the door, Hopper will either (a) wander off because she didn’t want to come in after all, or (b) she’ll zip in and then exit through the back door, as if she couldn’t have gotten to the backyard just by walking around the side of the house. Needless to say, the whole thing is a scam, just a test of whether the household servants are properly trained. We always pass, but just barely.

And while we’re on the subject, 2018 is nearly over and this is your last chance to help us out with our year-end fundraiser. As you can see from the thermometer above, we’re getting close to our goal! We just need a little bit more. Click here to make a contribution via credit card or PayPal.