6.15.2024

This whole pier project is starting to look a little shaky

Wind, rough seas again force US to temporarily relocate Gaza aid pier

The U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) announced Friday that the temporary pier will be removed from its anchored position in Gaza and towed back to Ashdod, Israel for the safety of its service members as high seas may cause structural damage.
After they temorarily used it for a couple of weeks. 

When the water gets bumpy it breaks apart. This is considered poor form, pierwise.

Apparently the UN is not delivering the food that comes ashore over the pier anyway, so the whole project is looking a little bumpy.

Defining unusual

Think cicadas are weird? Check out superfans, who eat the bugs, use them in art and even striptease

Periodical cicadas are strange, with eccentricities that include super-strong urine flow and a zombie fungus infection. But their superfans are unusual, too, or at least highly passionate.

That's it right there, or close enough. 

6.14.2024

A crisis averted

I accidentally consumed 1,000 calories — by licking envelopes for my wedding invitations

But no! Good news! As this NYPost story explains, the frightened bride was using the caloric value of British glue, which can reportedly contain between 5.9 and 14.5 calories on one postage stamp.

Luckily, American envelopes use diet glue. (What else would you expect?)
The Food and Drug Administration initially determined that gum acacia [American glue] obtained about 4 calories per serving, per a 1998 report. However, by the mid-2000s, FDA officials reportedly lowered its measure to around 1.7 calories in each taste — a number that envelope glue experts say now calculates to a paltry 0.1 calories.
Whew. 

And it turns out gum acacia, in addition to being low-cal, can reduce blood glucose and insulin levels.

Bon appetit.

A new low!

Donald Trump disparaged Milwaukee and complained about Taylor Swift during a visit to Capitol Hill.

According to various people in the room, Mr. Trump, during his meeting with House members at the Capitol Hill Club, complained that the pop music megastar Taylor Swift would support President Biden over him. Mr. Trump has previously argued that Ms. Swift, who endorsed Mr. Biden in 2020 but has not done so this year, should back him instead.

The Gray Lady is shocked! (Yes, I'm talking about the New York Times, and on its front web page at that.) 

And never mind Milwaukee, where the GOP convention is to occur in just a couple of months.

The very idea!

6.13.2024

Whales, beware

Washington’s Makah Tribe could once again harpoon whales as US waives conservation law

The Makah, a tribe of 1,500 people on the northwestern tip of the Olympic Peninsula, is the only Native American tribe with a treaty that specifically mentions a right to hunt whales. But it has faced more than two decades of court challenges, bureaucratic hearings and scientific review as it seeks to resume hunting for gray whales.

They're coming for you.

And in other news…

Supreme Court rules California man can’t trademark ‘Trump too small’

 

Elevated to our Work Avoidance Hall of Fame

 Emojipedia


6.12.2024

News you may have missed

India police deny presence of a leopard at PM's swearing-in


[SPOILER: It was just a cat. According to Delhi police.]

And maybe they teach at Harvard

Aliens might be living among us disguised as humans — or in a base inside the moon, according to new Harvard study

These could be disguising themselves as humans to fit in, may have come from Earth’s future or might have descended from intelligent dinosaurs.

Or wait…maybe they live in Hitler's submarine. (That's according to the National Enquirer, although not everybody believes it.)

 (Or you can watch this 1973 TV show on YouTube.)

Or you could just go on about your day…but be careful of anyone with pointy ears.

6.11.2024

And when they say impossible, they mean impossible

Joey Chestnut is out of 2024 Nathan’s hot dog eating contest in beef over vegan franks

Joey Chestnut, perennial winner of the annual July 4th Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Competition, is out of this year’s beef barf over a deal he made to represent a different wiener brand, The Post has learned.

And not just any brand, but Impossible Foods, which recently launched a vegan frankfurter impostor made from plants.

Impossible to eat for Nathan's, that is.

“He’s the Michael Jordan of competitive eating. But imagine if Michael Jordan said to Nike, ‘I love being the face of Nike but I want to do commercials for Adidas too,” the source said.

You can't can you? Imagine that?

Unless they named it the Joeydog or something. Maybe then.

And the plum gig of the century…

 …will be as Trump's parole officer. Whoever it is will appear on every late-night talk show, maybe get their own reality show (instead of The Apprentice, The Convict?), be a celebrity for life. 

There was a report floating around on social media the other day that the lucky person had been named, but it turned out to be false.

The job's still open. Keep your fingers crossed. Think about the movie rights.

Just imagine…

Why have T-shirts gotten so heavy?


…spending $105 for a designer T-shirt.

Crazy, right? But apparently it's a thing. Somewhere, at least.

That's even worse than designer jeans. Maybe you wear designer jeans. Some people do, I guess. Me, I still wear the exact same brand my Mom used to buy for me at Sears when I was in elementary school. Jeans are jeans. That's what makes jeans jeans.

Also T-shirts are T-shirts. But if it's a heavy T-shirt you crave you can get one a whole lot cheaper at Carhartt.

[Sears was Amazon before Amazon was. You can probably look that up on Wikipedia or somewhere.]

[Wrangler.]

6.10.2024

Not what you may think

On The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression's web site there's an article about a legal action being brought in the state of Oregon by free speech and animal rights organizations. The suit is about making surreptitious audiovisual recordings of, in this case, animal abuse:
“The modern-day Upton Sinclair would not conduct his landmark investigation into Chicago’s meatpacking plants relying solely on his written notes, based on memory, and transcribing them into a book,” said Chris Carraway, Staff Attorney at the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project, referring to Sinclair’s groundbreaking work, The Jungle.

Possibly there's a point in there somewhere, but I'm guessing the good staff attorney has never read the book. It's a highly readable and currently relevant novel, an investigation of the brutal treatment of immigrant labor in Chicago in the 1920s. The meatpacking industry is simply the setting for the story.

The reading public, it turned out, was far more interested in the safety of their meat than in the plight of the workers, so that's what the book is remembered for. 

And it did, indeed, lead to substantial reforms in the industry. 

And Sinclair did, in fact, rely on written notes and his memory. 

A digital copy of The Jungle can be obtained free from Project Gutenberg, or for $0.99 at Amazon.


And mis-reports campaign expenses

Mayor’s pricey hair and makeup: In one year, Brandon Johnson's campaign has spent $30K on grooming


But Chicago is not New York.

“The vendor that does our expenditure reports, we gave them the name of the business” for the disclosure filing made to the Illinois State Board of Elections, “and they wrote down the wrong one,” campaign advisor says.

Done and done.

Is reality TV real?

Reality TV or Court TV? Lawsuits Test Limits of Outrageous Behavior


Maybe not. 

We are shocked.

The first rule of war watching…

…is that all the participants are lying.

The second rule is somebody knows the truth.  (It's not me. Maybe it's you, but I doubt it.)

This story from this morning's NYPost: 

Gaza journalist who wrote for Al Jazeera was holding 3 hostages in home with family, Israel says


The journalist in question, now deceased, was also a Hamas official.

The story has been widely reported in Western media. Al Jazeera, not surprisingly, denies it. But their web site says otherwise.

The best the rest of us can hope for is that whoever knows the truth of this situation is somebody we can trust.

6.09.2024

What a great idea!

Iran OKs 6 candidates for presidential race, but again blocks Ahmadinejad



The government decides who can run for president and who can't. Think of all the time that would save.

(OK, it's a chilly rainy grumpy day.)

The newest wrinkle

Some nationalities escape Biden’s sweeping asylum ban because deportation flights are scarce

The policy, which took effect Wednesday, has an exception for “operational considerations,” official language acknowledging the government lacks the money and authority to deport everyone subject to the measure, especially people from countries in South America, Asia, Africa and Europe who didn’t start showing up at the border until recently.

Foremost, some countries of origin won't take deported migrants back.

So there's that.

Large migrations of people are happening all over the world. And due to climate change, wars, and probably other factors nobody's figured out yet they're not likely to end anytime soon. If ever.

It's going to take more than an "executive order" — or a wall — to sort this out. And time.