“Lol.”
Winnipeg, Manitoba, was briefly the hottest major city in the world.
A weekly dispatch taking aim at the relentless absurdity of the 24-hour news cycle.
In Moscow, Russia signed an agreement with China to build a nuclear reactor on the moon by 2036; and in Istanbul, Russian peace conference delegates told their Ukrainian counterparts that they were prepared to “fight forever.”1 2 3 A Mexican Navy ship on a goodwill mission to New York City crashed into the Brooklyn Bridge, killing at least two crew members; tornadoes hit swaths of Missouri and Kentucky, killing at least 21 people; and Winnipeg, Manitoba, was briefly the hottest major city in the world.4 5 6 7 The sole nuclear power plant in Taiwan was shuttered, the power went out for ten minutes at a press conference held by the Philippines’ energy secretary, and the U.S. health secretary said that he did not think people should “[take] medical advice” from him.8 9 10 The United Nations reported that half a million Syrian refugees had returned to the country since its former president fled to Russia at the end of last year, and South Korea announced that a record high of 211 North Korean defectors were working in its public sector, 17 more than in the previous year.11 12 13 A federal search warrant revealed that three U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers were arrested for accepting bribes from human traffickers smuggling people through the San Ysidro Land Port of Entry, and it was reported that the Department of Homeland Security was developing a pitch for a television show wherein immigrants would compete for fast-tracked U.S. citizenship.14 15
The streaming service Spotify removed from its digital library hundreds of fake podcasts that marketed prescription drugs to listeners with episode titles such as “Order Codeine Online Safe Pharmacy Louisiana,” and fourteen people were arrested in northern Afghanistan for singing and playing musical instruments.16 17 The former Philippine president won a mayoral election in his home city while imprisoned in The Hague awaiting trial for crimes against humanity, including ordering the extrajudicial killings of citizens; and the village of Rosemont, Illinois, announced that it would spend $176,000 to build an animatronic likeness of its former mayor.18 19 China put into operation 100 driverless electric coal-mining trucks in inner Mongolia, a new U.S. restaurant group installed robots in their kitchens that can serve up a hamburger order in 27 seconds, and an Ontario woman was jailed for biting a grocery store security guard.20 21 22 In Boston, a Northeastern University student requested a tuition refund after learning that her professor asked a chatbot to provide her with “really nice feedback”; and in Pennsylvania, EMS was called to an elementary school after a kindergartener was found handing out Jell-O shots to classmates.23 24 An Amazon delivery worker was fired for defecating on a customer’s walkway, and ten inmates escaped a New Orleans jail by crawling through a hole in the wall behind a cell toilet.25 26 “Lol,” they wrote above the opening.27
Sheriffs in Solano County, California, found a spider monkey and two snakes during a raid of the home of a suspected drug dealer; police in Edison, New Jersey, reported that they found in their raid of a massage parlor suspected of prostitution and money laundering a giant teddy bear stuffed with $600,000 in cash; and a Democratic candidate for the Virginia House of Representatives announced that she and her Republican husband were happily married swingers.28 29 30 Police in Slidell, Louisiana, found a naked man with a jar of Vaseline hiding inside a display storage shed in a Lowe’s parking lot; and a man in Texas was arrested for ramming his car into another driver’s vehicle after the latter threw a burrito at him in the parking lot of a Dollar Tree.31 32 Canadian authorities helped lasso a half dozen cows that ran onto a highway in Aurora, Ontario; police in Bangkok rescued two smuggled baby orangutans from a car parked at a gas station; a traffic camera in Switzerland photographed a mallard flying 52 kilometers per hour in the same location that the camera captured a mallard traveling at the same speed and on the same date seven years earlier; and it was reported that neighbors in Richmond, California, had found at least 50 dead birds on the streets and in their yards since February.33 34 35 36 “They just,” said a resident, “explode.”37 —Joe Kloc