When pigs glow

Radioactive wild boar-pigs roam region near Fukushima nuclear disaster

Only two weeks old…summer…

 …and already…

Bill Cosby's conviction on sexual assault charges was overturned by some court in Pennsylvania and he was released from prison. Some 60 women testified against him in court but, hey, the court ruled, he had permission. In Pennsylvania, at leasr, it seems comedians stick together,

The Manhattan DA is poised to indict the Trump Organization (not The Donald himself) and its CFO for white-collar mischief involving reports to the IRS. Forbes magazine opines, here, this may cause Trump's company to go bankrupt, whereupon The Donald will be forced to hunker down in Florida or go live with in-laws in Slovenia, whichever has the most favorable extradition laws, and subsist on his taxpayer-provided Presidential pension, poor guy. In the end, politicians stick together also.

Two U.S. soldiers have been nabbed for Scootering While Intoxicated in South Korea. Scooters, already infesting a number of U.S. cities, are widely expected to invade Boston soon.

Linkedin lost personal data of 700 million users in what ranks as the sixth biggest data breaches of all time. So far.

A fireworks shortage has prices surging and customers racing to stock up ahead of the Fourth of July weekend

And other stuff, of course.

Summer shower

Maybe the little Tucker should go back to wearing a bow tie

 

Despite his somewhat befuddled appearance in this photo he seemed a lot less constipated back in the day.

The little Tucker, as you may have read, is currently feeling picked-on by the NSA, accusing that redoubtable agency of "spying" on him, to which the NSA has recently replied GFY (spy code for "oh, heavens no").

Imagine our relief.

American elections are unhackable…

NYC mayoral primary race thrown into chaos as BOE appears to botch vote count

The disarray marked the latest in a long line of screw-ups by the BOE…

…because what would be the point? You might accidentally fix one,

The good news is that elections are so screwed up, in so many ways and so many places, that the macro-level net error pretty well balances out to zero.

Anyway, it's what we've got. 

Would it have been worthwhile

 People magazine now has, on its web site at least, an entire section dedicated to "the royals."  Yep, and they also have a free "royals" newsletter, jic reading about 'em on the web is not enough. By "royals" they mean that same crowd we kicked out of here in the 18th Century.

I'm sure people in the UK read People too, as well as people in Canada and Australia wherever else the sun never sets, but still. 

This is the price we pay for globalization.

Look, I'm as interested as the next guy in English history and, especially, English literature…but enough is efreakingnough.

Marketing is marketing forever

Drug dealers are peddling ethically sourced ‘woke coke’ now

“I have been shown ads for ‘environmentally friendly sniff,'” UK drug policy expert Neil Woods told the Mirror of the so-called eco-conscious blow.

And you can believe it's the real thing because…it costs more. A lot. 

"Fully representative of the current brand of Republican politics"

14 House GOP members just revealed themselves as modern segregationists

These 14 come from a long tradition of legislators standing in the way of justice and progress. In the 1950's they would've stood in the way of integrated schools. In the 1960's they would've voted against civil rights. They are today's George Wallaces.

True enough, but until Richard Nixon's presidential campaign in the late 1960's, following on Lyndon Johnson's signing civil rights legislation, all the hard-core segregationists in the South were, enthusiastically, Democrats.

George Wallace was a Democrat.

So were Herman Talmadge, Orville Faubus, Huey Long, Lester Maddox, and just about every other southern politician, not to mention every sheet-clad devotee of the KKK. Democrats.

This may seem like a long time ago to you, but to me it seems more like last week.

Some guys just can't catch a break

North Koreans worry over 'emaciated' Kim Jong Un, state media says

SEOUL (Reuters) - Everyone in North Korea is heartbroken over leader Kim Jong Un's apparent weight loss, said an unidentified resident of Pyongyang…

Not sure if this is a bug or a feature…

California, Facing Power Crisis, Frets Over Electric Car Charging Routines

…but it turns out electric vehicle owners in California (and the rest of the West Coast too, I imagine) are needing to compete for charging time with air conditioners during the current heat wave, according to this article in Newsweek.

Meanwhile the Sacramento Bee estimates to go all-electric on its highways California will need 1.2 million charging stations by 2035.