Sunday Funday! [DOT 8/8/21]

Hi gang! I hope you all are having a fabulous weekend thus far. I’m making crab bisque, watching Letterkenny, and chorin’.

Let’s see what else is going on…


UGHHHHHHHHHHH!

Officials split on masking children in schools as pediatric hospitals fill up with Covid-19 patients
https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/07/health/us-coronavirus-saturday/index.html


Why we can’t have nice things…

Sturgis Motorcycle Rally revs up, drawing thousands and heightening delta superspreader fears
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/08/06/sturgis-motorocycle-rally-covid-superspreader/


Interesting and infuriating, especially the parts about corporations just destroying perfectly fine goods instead of donating them.

The woman who rifles through New York’s garbage – exposing the city’s excesses
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/07/new-york-city-garbage-trash-walks-anna-sacks


Stonks!

Berkshire Hathaway’s operating earnings jump 21% as recovering economy boosts railroad, energy units
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/07/berkshire-hathaway-brk-earnings-q2-2021.html


Sprots!

Glory Days: Jessica Springsteen helps USA to Olympic showjumping silver
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/aug/07/jessica-springsteen-show-jumping-olympics-tokyo-2020-silver-medal


It’s like herding…elephants…

Have a great day!

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23 Comments

  1. I used to have a Cairn terrier who had phenomenal herding instincts. At the dog run (so this was our first dog, we’re now on our fourth, and there was some overlapping) she would manage to corral a group of hounds 10X her size–I think she weighed all of 12 pounds at her heaviest. A friend of mine has parents who breed Shelties (Shetland sheepdogs) and they are fearless in their devotion to herding. Corgis are also good for this. 

    Have the Chinese ever considered bringing a small pack of these kinds of dogs, three or four would probably do it, to the destination intended, and then bringing them back and letting them loose among the elephants? The elephants would be home in no time. There would be no sleeping in roadways or making unscheduled stops.

  2. this is my favourite dont smoke pic on cigarette packs…..im probably not quite taking the message as intended tho

    OMG!
    looks to me like mister clean lungs there is equally dead
    *shrugs*
    anyways
    hi good morning!

  3. Also interesting and infuriating, I live in NJ, where recycling is the law, since the 80s. And yet plenty of other states, Florida,for one, there is no law. It makes no sense. It also shouldn’t mean my mailbox gets filled with junk mail 6 days a week.

  4. News from Down Under:

    In Australia there is a show called “Big Brother VIP,” part of the vast global franchise. They have just announced their star-studded line-up. When I go to Hell it will be like Sartre’s “No Exit” and I’ll be condemned to spend all eternity with three of its stars: Thomas Markle, Jr. (Meg’s big brother, presumably part of the reason why he was chosen for this stint); Omirosa Manigault, the nutjob who briefly had a career as a White House adviser to President Trump, with duties ill-defined; and Caitlyn Jenner, perhaps you’ve heard of her.

    Aside from how unsavory this cast of characters is, I have many questions. How did the Americans get in? How did the filming go? Are they confined to a remote ranch in the Outback or something? Because Melbourne is now under its sixth lockdown and Sydney its fourth, and an Australian lockdown is 10X as severe as anything America has ever experienced. I guess this was filmed a while ago, and at the beginning of the pandemic Australia was pretty much Covid-free and there were no mandates whatsoever, except that they refused to let in anyone from abroad and refused to allow foreign travel for Australians, more or less.   

    So many questions. I suppose the Australian outlets have many more details, but that’s a rabbit hole (or a wombat hole; wombats burrow) I really don’t want to enter. 

    Here, have a wombat on me:

    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/facts/common-wombat

  5. This is a really interesting, mostly well written article in the NY Times about the coverage of Cuomo by the Albany Times Union.
     


     
    The Times Union essentially rejected off the record contacts with Cuomo and crew, realizing that they were operating in unreliable, bad faith ways, not to mention abusive, and avoided schmoozing with sources.
     
    The article also lists a lot of well earned praise for the paper’s coverage of Cuomo.
     
    What is weird is that the article describes the paper’s approach as “particularly unsuited” to covering Cuomo. I included the tweet above, because the Times’ former Albany chief says she adopted the same policy — I’m really puzzled how the writer of this Times article seems so out of touch with his own colleague.
     
    At any rate the message mostly comes through, and it’s a model DC bureaus, including the Times, desperately need. Ben Smith has written how Tucker Freaking Carlson is a major off the record source in DC. All during the Trump years, reporters flocked to talk off the record and schmooze with Bannon, Giuliani, Kellyanne Conway, including the Times DC bureaus, and it hurt their coverage. But they show no sign of improving this year either.

  6. The garbage article really is depressing. Every time I go grocery shopping i wonder what they do with the old stuff when they get new stuff in. Donate, if it hasn’t expired yet? Or just chuck everything into the dumpster? 

    • Grocery stores have gotten a lot better in recent years about handing off food to nonprofits. There is still a lot of waste, but it’s been cut down.
       
      Restaurants tend to waste a ton, though. It’s relatively easy for a big centralized store to coordinate this stuff compared to 20 small restaurant kitchens. Some restaurants also often make a lot more than they need to in order to make sure they can meet a possible  surge in a customers quickly. If a possible lunch rush doesn’t materialize, that extra soup goes in the garbage disposal.

      • Yeah restaurants are probably worse because stuff has been prepared or touched. They won’t even let employees eat it. So much crap grown just to go into a garbage bag. Humans are the virus.

    • Can I tell you one of my favorite stories about my (late) mother-in-law? She was active in her church, which was small and had an elderly and ever-dwindling congregation. Nonetheless, it ran a very popular food pantry. I think once a week, maybe more, she would take the church’s enormous “vintage” staton wagon and drive around to local supermarkets, small markets, sometimes restaurants I think. She got them to give her everything they were even remotely thinking of getting rid of that was still edible. They would bring the wares out to the car. Then, mission accomplished, she’s drive in a circuitous path back to the church and if she saw two or three teenage boys just hanging out she’d command them to get into the car with her to help, and they never said no. No one would ever say no to that woman, whom I loved very much, and I certainly never said no to her. At the church the boys would carry the stuff in to the pantry and they and the congregants would arrange things and make up to-go bags.

      I know she’s up in Heaven looking down on me and thinking, “It’s bad enough you talk about my son with these perfect strangers but now you’re dragging me into this?”

    • I’ve worked in restaurants and grocery stores (though not either for a very long time) and the amount of waste always depressed me to no end.  Perfectly good food–and I mean perfectly good–right in the trash because God forbid they allow some “takers” to get it for free.  They don’t give a shit about the write-off and the benefit to their bottom line by donating–it’s all about the spite of not “giving it away”.

    • About a decade ago I worked for a Target and they were really good about coordinating with food pantries to pick up expiring or lightly damaged foods (bananas riper than they wanted to sell, but still edible, etc). They also would bag up toiletries that were either expiring soon or discontinued to make care kits for local domestic violence shelters. 

  7. *unlocks every trolley at the supermarket*
    wooo!
    liberator of trolleys me!
    saviour of shopping
    anyhoo…guess who just figured out how to unlock shopping trolleys with his bike key

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