“Snakes increasingly struggle to locate mates.”
A surge of pizza delivery orders was reported around the Pentagon hours before the Israeli government began bombing on Iran.
A weekly dispatch taking aim at the relentless absurdity of the 24-hour news cycle.
A surge of pizza delivery orders was reported around the Pentagon hours before the Israeli government began bombing Iran, setting off an exchange of missile fire between the two countries that killed more than 224 people in Iran and 24 in Israel; and the Israeli prime minister later released a video justifying the attack by saying he had obtained intelligence indicating that the Iranian government would build a nuclear weapon in “less than a year,” a claim he first made some version of 16 years ago.1 2 3 4 5 In Washington, D.C., the U.S. military paraded troops and tanks through the streets on the president’s birthday; and in Los Angeles, the U.S. military detained a civilian following days of protests attempting to stop federal agents from forcibly removing residents from their homes and sending them to foreign countries.6 7 The U.S. Army swore four tech executives into the Army Reserve as lieutenant colonels, and the U.S. director of national intelligence told an audience at an Amazon Web Services conference that the federal government used artificial intelligence to determine which JFK assassination files to withhold from the public.8 9 A researcher at Cornell University reported that New York State more tightly regulates taco carts than it does artificial intelligence, one DoorDash delivery person in Washington State was arrested for using a firearm to demand a cash tip, and another in Chicago was stopped by police for driving onto the tarmac at the Chicago O’Hare International Airport and parking next to a jet to drop off an order.10 11 12
Residents of Ahmedabad reportedly flocked to the crash site of a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner to take selfies after the plane plummeted to the ground moments after takeoff, killing all but one of the more than 240 passengers onboard; the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration announced that its air-traffic control system will upgrade from Windows 95; and a man in Florida was convicted of wire fraud for pretending to be a flight attendant to obtain free seats on more than 120 flights.13 14 15 16 Hong Kong’s national security department ordered citizens to uninstall a Taiwanese mobile game app that it claims promotes independence from China through an “overthrow” of “the communist regime”; and the governor of Florida told residents that “if a mob comes and surrounds your vehicle and threatens you,” they have the right to “hit one of these people.”17 18 A baby hammerhead shark fell from the sky and onto a South Carolina disc golf course, Swiss authorities banned farmers from using donkeys to protect sheep and goats from wolves, and global temperature spikes were reported to be forcing venomous snakes in Kathmandu to adapt to life at higher altitudes.19 20 21 It was reported that the gas clouds produced by the feces of penguin colonies in the Antarctic Peninsula may block sunlight and cool the Antarctic climate; scientists at Yale restored cellular activity to the brain cells of a dead pig; and in Miami, a Galápagos tortoise turned 135 years old.22 23 24
In the United Kingdom, a man convicted of conning 39 elderly and vulnerable people out of 500,000 pounds for shoddy home-repair work was ordered to pay back more than 7,000 pounds; and the Polish-owned British discount store Poundland sold its 825 stores to a U.S. investment firm for 1 pound.25 26 A corporate lawyer in a suburb of Bangkok claimed ownership of a trash bag containing 12 million Thai baht that was found in his condominium’s dumpster, a judge in Vermont dismissed the case of a man who sued his local newspaper for failing to cover his teenage son’s basketball games, a United Kingdom appeals court ruled that a rehearing would be given to the case of a 14-year-old boy who claims his parents tricked him into moving to Ghana, and a woman in Detroit attending court via Zoom was kicked out of the session for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.27 28 29 30 The leaders of a women’s wellness company that taught “orgasmic meditation” were convicted of forcing clients to have sex with potential investors, a German city councillor invited constituents on an eight-day trip to the south of France to research sex tourism, a man in Florida called 9-1-1 to report that the woman he paid $300 dollars for sex refused to sleep with him, and the Conservancy of Southwest Florida announced that in the past 12 years it put to death 40,000 pounds of pythons.31 32 33 34 “Monitoring has shown signs of positive effectiveness of these efforts,” said the organization. “Snakes increasingly struggle to locate mates.” —Joe Kloc