The FBI email story continues to get even more ridiculous. Here is the LA Times:

Investigators came across the emails while investigating whether Weiner violated federal law when exchanging sexually explicit texts with a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina, one official said….The emails were not to or from Clinton, and contained information that appeared to be more of what agents had already uncovered, the official said, but in an abundance of caution, they felt they needed to further scrutinize them.

There is literally nothing here. We have a bunch of emails from Huma Abedin to other people. The FBI has not read them yet and has no idea what they’re about. At first glance—presumably from scanning the subject lines and names of recipients—they appear to be duplicates of stuff we’ve already seen. And it will likely take several weeks before we know anything more.

There. Is. Literally. Nothing. Here.

WTF was Jim Comey thinking when he wrote his suggestive but ambiguous letter about these emails to eight congressional Republicans—each of them practically slavering for Hillary Clinton’s scalp—11 days before an election? And all of it based on absolutely nothing—a fact that he very carefully avoided admitting. Has he gone completely around the bend?

Well, it turns out the “unrelated case” that led the FBI to more Hillary Clinton emails was an investigation into Anthony Weiner’s sexting. Because of course it was. It is what we all deserve.

But it’s even stupider than that. In the past, I’ve found Pete Williams to be a pretty reliable guy, and here’s what he has to say:

.@PeteWilliamsNBC—In looking at Weiner’s laptop, investigators discovered Huma also used the laptop—which contained some Huma/Hillary emails pic.twitter.com/v1FKrYtrJD

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) October 28, 2016

If Williams is correct, investigators looked at Weiner’s laptop and discovered that Weiner’s wife—Clinton aide and all-around conservative boogeyman Huma Abedin—had also used it. So there are some emails from Abedin to Hillary Clinton on the hard drive. Here’s Williams:

Now they’ve got to go get court process to get the right to…take a wider look at these emails and begin that process. You said earlier this probably won’t be wrapped up before Election Day? Scratch probably.

In other words, nobody has even looked at these emails yet. The FBI has to get a court order first. So: are these emails that have already been turned over? Maybe. Are they routine emails about schedules and so forth? Maybe. Nobody, including the FBI, has the slightest idea. But there’s certainly no reason to think there are any bombshells here.

Needless to say, that didn’t stop every news outlet in the country from blaring this at the tops of their front pages. They never learn, do they? Email stories hyped by folks like Jason Chaffetz never pan out. But news orgs get suckered every time anyway. So just to make sure their shame is preserved for posterity, here they are:

Please let it be over. Please please please. I can’t take any more of thi—

Ahem. Shall we do cat blogging a few minutes early? Yes we shall. Here is Hopper doing her very best impression of a concrete rabbit. Not bad!

For more on our furry feline companions, check out “Good Thing Cats Are Adorable, Because They Get Away With a Lot of Crap.” It’s an interview with cat enthusiast and science writer Abigail Tucker to discuss her new book, The Lion in the Living Room. The title sort of reminds me of this tweet.

I slept badly last night and feel kind of crappy this morning. I was hoping I could just stare at the ceiling for a while and then put up some catblogging and call it a week. But no. Email mania is back. Here’s the letter FBI Director Jim Comey sent to a rogue’s gallery of committee chairmen this morning regarding its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server:

In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation. I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as assess their importance to our investigation.

Although the FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant, and I cannot predict how long it will take us to complete this additional work, I believe it is important to update your Committees about our efforts in light of my previous testimony.

Translation: We have some emails we got from somewhere. That’s all I can tell you. NBC’s Pete Williams adds this:

NEW: NBC’s Pete Williams reports that the e-mails Comey announced today were NOT originally withheld by Clinton or campaign.

— Tom Winter (@Tom_Winter) October 28, 2016

Pete Williams sources say in course of a separate investigation, FBI came across “a device.” found emails there. but emails NOT from HRC

— Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) October 28, 2016

Paul Krugman is PISSED:

Comey needs to provide full info immediately. Otherwise he has clearly made a partisan intervention, betraying his office.

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) October 28, 2016

Journalist Twitter is full of shock at FBI behavior here. That same shock should make it into news reports; not doing so misleads public

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) October 28, 2016

Donald Trump is CHUFFED:

“We must not let her take her criminal scheme to the Oval Office,” Trump said, adding, “I have great respect that the FBI and Department of Justice have the courage to right the horrible mistake that they made. Perhaps finally, justice will be done.”

Wasn’t Trump saying just a few weeks ago that the FBI was hopelessly corrupt and couldn’t be trusted? I’m pretty sure he did.

Bottom line: There are some emails. They aren’t from Hillary Clinton. They weren’t withheld from the investigation. The case isn’t being “reopened.” That is all.

Speaking for myself, I’m willing to back any bet that anyone wants to make that this whole thing is a complete nothing. Republicans will be lathering away for the next 11 days, but there’s no there there.

Sam Wang’s meta-margin has Hillary Clinton leading Trump by 4.1 percentage points, down slightly from last week:

Wang’s current prediction is that Clinton has a 99 percent chance of winning and will rack up 334 electoral votes. He still has the Senate tied, 50-50, but the Democratic meta-margin is down a bit to 1.2 percent and the probability of Democratic control is 76 percent. On the House side, he has Democrats up by about 4 percent, which is not enough for them to win back control. Here’s Pollster:

Clinton is 7.3 percentage points ahead of Trump, exactly the same as last week. In the generic House polling, Pollster has Democrats ahead by 4.3 points, down a point from last week.

Overall, Trump vs. Clinton has barely moved, but the Democratic lead in congressional races seems to have ticked down a point or so.

Oh FFS:

FBI Dir just informed me, “The FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation.” Case reopened

— Jason Chaffetz (@jasoninthehouse) October 28, 2016

Let me guess: someone at the State Department wrote a note to Huma Abedin asking if someone at the Clinton Foundation could loan them a hammer so that Hillary Clinton’s latest broken BlackBerry could be smashed. And the kicker: It turned out to be a hammer from Benghazi!

With only 11 days left in this year’s presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton has vastly more money in the bank than Donald Trump. It’s not even close. So Trump has finally decided to pitch in a few dollars of his own money:

Donald Trump, seeking to boost momentum in the last days of the presidential election, wired $10 million of his own money into his presidential campaign Friday morning, two advisers said….Mr. Trump’s cash infusion brings his total contributions to his campaign to $66 million….Mr. Trump’s latest donation to his cause still falls $34 million short of the $100 million he has repeatedly said he will give to his campaign—a pledge he reiterated as recently as Wednesday.

Well, I guess he’s still got another week to light his final $34 million on fire. In the meantime, consider this: Election Day can fall between November 2 and November 8. This year, just to add to our pain, it falls on the last possible day. If, instead, it fell on November 2, we’d have only four days of hell left. They say that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and I sure hope that’s true.

Real GDP grew at an annual rate of 2.9 percent in the third quarter. This is a fairly healthy number, driven largely by a big increase in purchases of durable goods (cars, refrigerators, etc.). Purchases of nondurable goods fell, and investment in residential housing also fell, for the second straight quarter. Exports were up considerably.

Politically, this is good news for Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump wants this to be a change election, but if inflation is low, unemployment is low, and economic growth is healthy, an awful lot of people are going to think that an extension of the Obama presidency sounds pretty good.

Short version: I’m fine. Longer version: I just saw my oncologist, and he’s pretty satisfied with everything. My M-protein level—the primary measure of cancerous plasma cells in my bone marrow—has been sneaking upward for the past few months, but in October it plateaued at the same level as September. Here’s a special expanded version of my usual M-protein chart:

I started out at 4.38 when I was first diagnosed with multiple myeloma, and the initial chemotherapy got that down to about 1.0. The maintenance meds got it down to 0.3, but after we halted the evil dex¹ it drifted up to 0.58. Higher is worse, but as you can tell from the chart, the entire past year has been fairly stable, and the minor ups and downs don’t mean a lot. An M-protein level of 0.58 grams is roughly equivalent to a cancer load of about 3-4 percent, and my body can tolerate that basically forever. Eventually my M-protein level will rise above 1.0 or so, and then it will be time to switch to a second-line med.

However, my oncologist’s satisfaction was mostly based on other stuff that I don’t usually write about. There are three types of plasma cells: G, A, and M.² My cancer happens to be of the G cells. However, my A-type cells have increased quite a bit over the past few months, and apparently that’s an indication that my immune system is returning to normal. So that’s good. Also, my Kappa light chains are pretty low, and my Kappa/Lambda ratio is nice and stable.³ That’s also good. Put it all together and I’m in pretty stable shape.

However, the med I’m taking now can produce rashes in some people. It turns out I’m one of them. In my case, they’re little red dots that showed up on my lower legs last week, then spread to my upper legs, and are now invading my stomach. How far will they go? Beats me. But if they go much further, they’ll invade my face and I’ll look like I have a permanent case of the measles. Oh well.

¹That’s dexamethasone, a corticosteroid that helps fight multiple myeloma. However, it has bad long-term side effects, so it can only be used for a few months at a time.

²This is not precisely the right terminology, but it’s close enough.

³For the record, I have IgG Kappa light chain multiple myeloma.

Here’s a weird—and yet totally unsurprising—story. It starts like this:

Martin Kelly Jones, a co-owner of Shipping & Transit, said the tracking of e-commerce packages relates to an idea he came up with in the 1980s to notify families of arriving school buses….Mr. Jones, who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, said he came up with the idea for a “vehicle notification system” in 1985 in Atlanta, after seeing a young girl waiting for a school bus on a rainy morning. He later formed a company to develop technology, involving hardware for buses, that could notify people their bus was arriving.

Apparently this idea went nowhere. But that doesn’t mean it was a waste of time. Not at all. Jones then started up a company called ArrivalStar, later renamed Shipping & Transit:

Claiming patents “for providing status messages for cargo, shipments and people,” the company or a predecessor have sued dozens of major retailers as well as delivery giants FedEx Corp. and United Parcel Service Inc., according to court records. The companies have extracted millions of dollars in payments, said people familiar with the legal actions.

….Anthony Dowell, a patent attorney who used to represent ArrivalStar, said he helped it win more than $15 million in license fees between 2009 and 2013 from over 200 parties, including municipalities and providers of shipping services. He said the patents he focused on expired in 2013.

The success of this business is unclear. UPS decided to buy a license, and apparently FedEx did too. The Postal Service didn’t. Local transportation agencies maybe did and maybe didn’t. It’s unclear. In any case, S&T is currently focusing all its attention on tiny little companies that don’t have the means to fight back:

Spokesmen for UPS and the Postal Service said their agreements with ArrivalStar, Shipping & Transit’s predecessor, should cover their customers’ use of technology….[Jones] said using FedEx’s or UPS’s notification system would cover a shipper, but it might still need to buy a license if it provided any additional information, such as telling buyers an order has been filled.

“The second you are using technology beyond what a licensee has, you need a license from us,” he said.

So if you send notifications telling customers that their orders have been filled, S&T will sue you for $25,000. Why? Because they claim to have patented this idea if it’s done via some kind of computer network. In all this time, however, the patent has never been tested in court. It’s never been worth anyone’s time.

This. Is. Ridiculous. If you call your customer on the phone, it’s fine. If you send them an email, you’ll get sued. It’s hard to conceive of anything stupider.

Get rid of software patents. All of them. Right now.