Onward. Forward. Upward.
Friday, October 18th, 2024
Former president and scourge of the guinea worm Jimmy Carter wasn’t concerned with living to 100. Instead, he wanted to make it to the 2024 presidential election, so he could cast his ballot for Kamala Harris. Now, he’s done it. Next up, he should aim to make it to her inauguration in January.
If a 100-year-old man can vote, you can too. Visit vote.org to make it happen.
Science!
Thursday, October 17th, 2024
Do you have some art in need of restoring? Maybe you can throw some bacteria at it.
As Spanish microbiologist Pilar Bosch was casting around for a subject to investigate for her PhD in 2008, she stumbled across a paper suggesting that bacteria, her field, could be used in art restoration, her mother’s own area of expertise.
Bosch and her mother teamed up to make bacteria work for us.
That’s quite a glitch.
Wednesday, October 16th, 2024
Recently, I had the misfortune of taking a Ryanair flight from Ireland to Poland. Though I’d heard horror stories, it was the only direct flight available, and the price was very low. The cost to my spirit, however, was quite high. To borrow a phrase from Jonathan Swift, Ryanair ill becomes the dignity of humankind. The entire process could best be described as degrading, and I would have gladly paid more to avoid needing to check my soul along with my luggage.
Amusingly, as I sat on the flight regretting my past decisions, the Ryanair app showed the following:
The off-centeredness above comes not from editing, but from the app’s poor alignment itself.
That says my flight, the one I was currently on, was coming up in 18,446,744,073,709,551,614 hours. That’s 18.44 quintillion, which is a long, long, long time. I did some quick math in my head, and later used ChatGPT to confirm my calculations and theory:
2.1 quadrillion is a lot of years.
Space nerds may already be able to see where this is going.
I doubt the distinction here is going to much matter to whom- or whatever is left on Earth.
This is actually perfect, because I estimate that “long after the sun runs out of fuel” is approximately when I’ll want to fly Ryanair again.
Who knew raccoons could swarm?
Tuesday, October 15th, 2024
It’s apparently Pacific Northwest Police social media week here at OFT. Today, we head north to Washington state, where one woman found herself surrounded by too many raccoons:
[Photo credit: Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office]
After decades of feeding these trash pandas, word apparently spread, and this was the unsettling result.
Don’t make a liar out of bags.
Monday, October 14th, 2024
When police in Oregon stopped a stolen car and searched it, the loaded gun and scales were probably enough to arouse suspicion. Still, the accompanying bag definitely didn’t help:
[Photo credit: Portland Police]
Amusingly, Vice’s coverage of this ridiculousness points to an opposing scenario from July. Then, a Florida woman was arrested after being found with a bag of drugs labeled “Bag of Drugs”. It almost seems like no matter what you have written on it, there’s no winning if the cops catch you with a bag full of drugs.
“For sale: baby shoes, never worn” is an amazing six-word story, but it’s probably best to not text it to your pregnancy class group.
Friday, October 11th, 2024
Recently, a man was apparently dumped by his girlfriend via text message, and found the exchange summarized by AI:
On Wednesday, NYC-based software developer Nick Spreen received a surprising alert on his iPhone 15 Pro, delivered through an early test version of Apple’s upcoming Apple Intelligence text message summary feature. “No longer in a relationship; wants belongings from the apartment,” the AI-penned message reads, summing up the content of several separate breakup texts from his girlfriend—that arrived on his birthday, no less.
The content of the summarization seems to be just fine, but its very existence is ghastly. Perhaps some things should just not be summarized. “Dad died; funeral Sunday” may be accurate, but it’s also horrifyingly inhuman.
Stepping back further, it’s also worth considering that some things simply just should not be text messages. Not everything in this life calls for brevity and expediency. If you’ve been dating someone long enough to have belongings in their apartment, you probably owe them the courtesy of an in-person break-up.
The way it was never meant to be heard
Thursday, October 10th, 2024
In 1994, Green Day released their seminal album “Dookie”. It brought both the band and punk music in general into the mainstream, selling tens of millions of copies along the way. Now, 30 years later, they’ve demastered the album. Each of the 15 tracks (14 + 1 hidden) have been placed onto a ridiculous format, like a Game Boy cartridge:
Other formats include 8-track, doorbell, Teddy Ruxpin, and even a bone-conduction audio toothbrush.
From the site, where you can listen to all of the tracks, and enter a lottery to purchase any of the very limited number of real objects created for this:
Instead of smoothing out its edges and tweaking its dynamic ranges, this version of Dookie has been meticulously mangled to fit on formats with uncompromisingly low fidelity, from wax cylinders to answering machines to toothbrushes. The listening experience is unparalleled, sacrificing not only sonic quality, but also convenience, and occasionally entire verses.
The result is Dookie Demastered: the album that exploded the format of punk rock, re-exploded onto 15 obscure, obsolete, and otherwise inconvenient formats, the way it was never meant to be heard.
This is incredible work, and it’s incredibly fun. Kudos to Green Day and their collaborators, very serious art studio Brain.
Also, captive trophy hunting is pathetic.
Wednesday, October 9th, 2024
Arthur “Jack” Schubarth, an 81-year-old Montana man, was recently sentenced to six months in federal prison. His misdeed was the illegal use of tissue and testicles from large sheep, which he used to create hybrid sheep for captive trophy hunting.
In October 2019, court records said, Schubarth paid a hunting guide $400 for the testicles of a trophy-sized Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep that had been harvested in Montana and then extracted and sold the semen, court records said.
When the other inmates ask Schubarth what he’s in for, he should lie.
It’s like tuna fish in a barrel.
Tuesday, October 8th, 2024
I suspect Donald Trump’s ridiculously named social media platform “Truth Social” attracts people who are likely to be more credulous than average. Scammers looking for prey have certainly found it there, as Gizmodo found out via a FOIA request to the FTC. The stories they uncovered are awful. But man, that first one just keeps going.
We’re out of outlaw poets
Monday, October 7th, 2024
A few months back, I stumbled on a profile of singer, songwriter, and actor Kris Kristofferson, written by actor, author, and film director Ethan Hawke. It dates from 2009, but it was a tremendous read 15 years later, and again on the occasion of Kristofferson’s recent passing at the age of 88.
At a minimum, please enjoy the piece’s incredible opening anecdote:
We were there for Willie Nelson’s 70th birthday concert in 2003.
Up from the basement came one of country music’s brightest stars (who shall remain nameless).1 At that moment in time, the Star had a monster radio hit about bombing America’s enemies back into the Stone Age.
“Happy birthday,” the Star said to Willie, breezing by us. As he passed Kristofferson in one long, confident stride, out of the corner of his mouth came “None of that lefty shit out there tonight, Kris.”
“What the fuck did you just say to me?” Kris growled, stepping forward.2
“Oh, no,” groaned Willie under his breath. “Don’t get Kris all riled up.”
“You heard me,” the Star said, walking away in the darkness.
“Don’t turn your back to me, boy,” Kristofferson shouted, not giving a shit that basically the entire music industry seemed to be flanking him.
The Star turned around: “I don’t want any problems, Kris – I just want you to tone it down.”
“You ever worn your country’s uniform?” Kris asked rhetorically.
“What?”
“Don’t ‘What?’ me, boy! You heard the question. You just don’t like the answer.” He paused just long enough to get a full chest of air. “I asked, ‘Have you ever served your country?’ The answer is, no, you have not. Have you ever killed another man? Huh? Have you ever taken another man’s life and then cashed the check your country gave you for doing it? No, you have not. So shut the fuck up!” I could feel his body pulsing with anger next to me. “You don’t know what the hell you are talking about!”
Kris Kristofferson was an amazing bad-ass.
Footnotes:
It was, apparently, Toby Keith. You were going to search the web anyway, right? ↩︎
Worth noting, this is (currently) mistranscribed in Rolling Stone’s online version of this article. Here’s a slightly askew PDF of the magazine:
When I had finished reading the profile, I was certain there was no way Kristofferson had said “What the luck…”, so I tracked down this PDF to prove it. ↩︎
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