| Sir, we have to land over there so I can use the bathroom. A non-stop flight from New York to Seattle had to divert to Billings, Montana because its toilets were full, the Billings Gazette reports: But, because a gate was not available, the airplane had to taxi to a cargo area where pilots were again told there were several “passengers that needed to find a lavatory very urgently.” Ground crews rolled a stairway to the airplane so passengers could “disembark to find relief of built-up pressures,” the Delta report said. Jonathan V. Last, Pro-Natalist... JVL's given all the good quotes in this Atlantic story about America's baby bust. (Note to boss: I am doing my part.) Here's a good excerpt, but do stay for the kicker: Jonathan Last, The Weekly Standard’s digital editor and author of What to Expect When No One’s Expecting, takes a more somber view: If people in authoritarian societies have more children than citizens of liberal democracies, “over the long haul, those people inherit the earth,” he said. The economics of a shrinking global population could lead to chaos and desperate political acts, he predicted: “In the course of the next 50 or 100 years, you could wind up in a world that is unstable and unpleasant and illiberal.” "Wow, that b**ch is crazy!" This is a title of a real doctoral dissertation. It's about "exploring gendered performances in leisure spaces surrounding reality television." If this sounds like a sham where the author got to write about watching The Bachelor, that's because it is. Mamaw Reviews is your new favorite YouTube show. Former TWS intern Hannah Long talks with her grandmother about movies, and it's a fantastic (not to mention adorable) watch. Subscribe and tell your friends. Great Shoeleather Reporting at the Examiner. Our friends & colleagues at the Washington Examiner came through with a big scoop Tuesday night: Court records suggest Roy Moore dated wife while she was still married. Here's why it matters: Amid an outpouring of misconduct allegations, Moore’s campaign has clearly set the standard that details are important and should be vetted rigorously. Why, then, should the inconsistencies surrounding Moore’s story not draw his own credibility into question? I'm sure Moore will be able to get a pastor or seven to tell us all why this was a-okay. Influencing the foodfluencers! Washingtonian has a neat look at the length to which Washington-area restaurants go to impress Washington Post food critic Tom Sietsema. Here's, if you'll forgive me, a taste: To communicate about a critic, some restaurants have their own code words. One Italian joint called Sietsema “Neapolitan,” because it didn’t sound too weird to say out loud in the open kitchen. Others, including the kitchens of Fabio Trabocchi, refer to Sietsema as “Papa Bear.” “I heard ‘Papa Bear in the house,’ and it’s like a fire drill,” says a sous chef for one of Ashok Bajaj’s restaurants, which include Rasika and Bibiana. The sous chef was in the middle of butchering 150 pounds of salmon for a large banquet that night, but when the alert came in, sous chefs kicked line cooks off their stations and began preparing Sietsema’s lunch themselves. (In other kitchens, the executive chef might take over complete prep of a dish. That way, only one person is to blame if the review is terrible.) “It is a huge wrench in the operation, because what you’re basically doing is interrupting the regular flow of service to stop and concentrate on one table and the other tables surrounding.” With the executive chef orchestrating, the sous chefs prepared triplicates of every component of every dish. Nerves, as always, ran high. “I’ve burned more shit trying to cook something perfect for Tom Sietsema than I ever would have if I didn’t know that he was there,” the sous chef says. Read the whole thing. —Jim Swift, Deputy Online Editor Please feel free to send us comments, thoughts and links to dailystandard@weeklystandard.com. -30- | 