Move over Fat Bear Week, because it’s time for rotund rodents to shine. Here’s Dawn, the inaugural winner of Fat Marmot Week, hosted by the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory’s Marmot Project:

The Marmot Project also announced that Dawn was the competition’s “true” winner on Saturday, based on researchers’ estimation of the animals’ actual size. Clocking in with a 4.5lb weight gain for a total of 13lbs, congratulations to Dawn for gaining the most weight!

Ahead of his big hibernation, Dawn gained more than 50% of his body weight, and that’s impressive.

Less impressive, however, are the ill-conceived government cuts to the National Science Foundation, which ravaged the Marmot Project’s funding. As a result, the Marmot Project’s leader Daniel Blumstein turned to OnlyFans to continue funding the work.

In desperation, researchers in June decided to put the marmots on OnlyFans, the adult-content website, to raise funds. Since then, posts on the new account, named OnlyMarms, have shown marmots scurrying across rocky landscapes and entering their burrows, rather than anything sexually explicit.

Excuse you, The Guardian, but who are you to say that’s not sexually explicit?!

Nude marmots on OnlyFans! Subscribe to OnlyMarms to see for yourself!

Previously in unconventional OnlyFans fundraising: How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sabrina?

Julia Curlee is a trans woman who ably served the CIA under four presidents. That ended last year, after the second Trump administration decided she was the wrong kind of American. Now, she’s sharing her story publicly.

Speaking of terrible things that have stuck in my mind¹, I’ve been hung up on something I read a few weeks ago. Following Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s moronic reference to “DEI bike lanes”, the Department of Transportation began stripping evidence-based tools and information on bike safety from government websites. Never mind that data shows bike lanes make roads safer for all users, including drivers, all without causing congestion. This idiotic new front in the cultural wars must be fought, truth be damned.

It gets dumber. When NPR inquired about these website changes, they received a response from a DOT spokesperson which included the following:

“Since nearly 80% of the population uses cars to get to work and
their important medical appointments, we are taking a closer look at federal guidance to ensure American families have the infrastructure they need,”² the spokesperson said. “This is a common sense approach despite the Left’s belief that everyone should ride a bike to their shoebox-sized apartment to eat crickets to achieve a phony climate agenda.”

I’ve added emphasis to that last sentence, because it’s so profoundly stupid that it makes me want to scream.

The spokesperson who provided this quote was not named in the piece. I would argue they also should not have been quoted at all. Doing so elevated a completely ridiculous reply in a way it did not deserve. It would serve no useful purpose to quote the ravings of a dementia patient, and that’s the level we’re on here.

The media should strive to be unbiased, and they’re not actually doing that very well lately. When one side perpetually acts in bad faith, lazy both-sides journalism is just a weapon for them to spread their misinformation. Journalists aren’t supposed to be mere stenographers, and putting falsehoods on equal footing with facts and data is bad for society.

In other words, printing that quote without calling it out normalized nonsense. When someone attempts to pass off bullshit as reasoned discussion, reporting it as straight news isn’t being unbiased. It’s just being used.

Footnotes:

1. After that post, I heard from multiple fans of the hummingbird moth. I’m sorry to have yucked your figurative yums. I can only say that I know what I don’t like, and I don’t like that bug! But hey, more hummingbird moths for you folks to enjoy. *Shudder* ↩︎

2. I feel compelled to note that of course a huge percentage of Americans currently use cars frequently, because decades of transportation policy has privileged cars at the expense of our health, our safety, and our sanity. That doesn’t mean we have to continue the folly forever. ↩︎

Mitch McConnell is, purportedly, still alive. Given that, the Louisville Courier Journal has pre-published a scathing obituary, while no one can complain “How dare you write that about a dead guy?”.

Clarence Darrow (not Mark Twain) said “I have never killed anyone, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.”

Anyhow, Lindsey Graham died on Saturday. Here are a couple of his best quotes.

On Donald Trump in 2015:

“If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed…and we will deserve it.”

On the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol:

“Trump and I, we’ve had a hell of a journey. I hate it to end this way. Oh my God, I hate it. … All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough.”

“Enough is enough” indeed.

The war in Iran has apparently disrupted the supply of printing inks in Japan. As a result, Calbee snack packages are losing their color. The difference is stark:

Those are perhaps not the most appetizing bag of chips I’ve ever seen. Still, they do look sort of cool, in a bizarre way.

Is it just me, or does paying $1 billion to not get renewable energy seem like a bad deal?

The headline for Tom Ley’s piece on Donald Trump’s vile threat to Iran really nails it:

• I Guess We’re Just Waiting Around To See If This Demented Psychopath Kills Everyone

This is an awful way to live.