To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
Causeway connecting Florida mainland to island washed away
Storm surge from Hurricane Ian washed away part of Florida’s Sanibel Causeway.
The causeway is the only way to get to or from Sanibel and Captiva Islands to the state’s mainland.
The only way, as boats and aircraft (and hovercraft) do not work in that particular region, a phenomenon known as The Lazy Journalist’s Triangle.
You know, I’ve driven over that span as I drove from a distant airport to Sanibel Island eight years ago. Eight?!
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Modern journalism is 24-year-olds putting Twitter into paragraph form sometimes.
Ace says in his fashion:
You know, back in 2001-2002, cable “news” stations used to fill up cheap minutes by paying some Brooklyn idiot $28,000 per year to scroll through Twitter and highlight tweets for them to “react” to during short segments.
But soon, they decided that they would expand this pilot program, and that idiots babbling on Twitter would become their main “research tool.” Now Twitter would become what city hall and the courthouse and the police department used to be — the place you go to find “stories.”
And so they just go to Twitter to find some absurd “microagression” that some axe-grinding, attention-whoring leftwing lunatics are complaining about today, and bang, that’s a “news” story.
Imagine this 20 years ago — that what Stacy in Brooklyn is complaining about, that they’re not properly texturing the milk in frappuccinos lately, or that someone “misgendered” her because she doesn’t feel like a “she” today, she feels like a “shim,” is now “news” which “professional” “news” outlets now make “lead stories” on their actual broadcast “news” shows.
Imagine that.
No one could have imagined such a bizarre and dark world twenty years ago.
But that is the media we have now.
Because it’s just easier for the lazy, unprofessional, stupid, lazy, barely-educated, pig-ignorant “journalists” to get “stories” this way, so this is how 90% of “news” outlets’ “stories” are now “researched.”
True for the big dailies. Not so much the small papers I take.
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‘The Phantom of the Opera’ to close on Broadway next year:
“The Phantom of the Opera” — Broadway’s longest-running show — is scheduled to close in February 2023, the biggest victim yet of the post-pandemic softening in theater attendance in New York.
The musical — a fixture on Broadway since 1988, weathering recessions, war and cultural shifts — will play its final performance on Broadway on Feb. 18, a spokesperson told The Associated Press on Friday. The closing will come less than a month after its 35th anniversary. It will conclude with an eye-popping 13,925 performances.
In news that some people pretend is unrelated because it is the result of the ongoing policy failures of the elite, Two pedestrians — including European tourist — shot while refusing muggers in separate NYC incidents and McDonald’s ax swinger had just been ‘rejected’ by woman, witness says. Key note:
Robbery and other major crimes have increased by about 40% in the city recently, NYPD data show.
One might think that it was not the virus nor the draconian authoritarian and ultimately inconsequential government actions that have led to the decline of downtown life in downtowns that are becoming no-go zones. But that would mean that the current officeholders and bureaucrats and their ongoing decisions are continuing to contribute to this problem.
But if it was COVID, man, that was the last governor and the last mayor of New York. Nothing the current crop can do about it. No need to hold them accountable!
(First New York City crime link via Instapundit who has another example. But I read the New York Post daily, so I see stories like these every day.)
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Bass Pro Shops wants a special transportation taxing district to improve the infrastructure around Big Cedar Lodge and its various golf courses just south of Branson.
Projects include something called duel drop right lanes.
How far our society has fallen. I mean, lanes so you can just pull over and settle your score? I have seen dystopian films with more optimism.
But it should perhaps drive some people to the Big Cedar Lodge shooting academy. At least once. Maybe only once.
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MicroRNA found to regrow 90% of lost hair, new study finds:
People affected by moderate hair loss turn to topical treatments like minoxidil (antihypertensive potassium channel opener) and finasteride (dihydrotestosterone-suppressing 5α-reductase inhibitor), the only Food and Drug Administration–approved treatments for inducing hair regrowth. Both are designed not for hair loss treatment but serendipity.
Researchers from North Carolina State University have identified a microRNA (miRNA) that could promote hair regeneration. This miRNA – miR-218-5p – plays an important role in regulating the pathway involved in follicle regeneration, and could be a candidate for future drug development.
Yeah, I know, miRNA (Micro RNA) differs from mRNA (Messenger RNA). However, I have become very cautious about anything that deals with my personal nucleic acids. So although I am beginning to notice that I am bald, and old, none of this for me. Yet.
(Link via Instapundit, with whom I share a large percentage of my DNA.)
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GOP’s Graham unveils nationwide abortion ban after 15 weeks
Now why after a celebration of leaving it to the states would you go out and make it a national issue, nationalizing every midterm election?
Not to win. Not to win.
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Michigan castle seeks to court new owners for $2.5M
It has secret passages, of course. The New York Post article linked above has a couple sample pictures, but the Zillow sales listing has many, many more.
It’s only $2.5 million, which is a lot less than some of the real estate listings that catch my wistful eye.
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Three alligator stories I saw in the news today:
Coupled with the story about the triathlete attacked by a gator from ten days ago, that’s a lot of news about alligators recently.
Ya know, since the shark story frenzy in the news in 2001 that was knocked out of the headlines by the events of September 11, any time I see too many different stories with the same animal in them in the news too frequently, I fear we’re about to get a wake up call from the trivia.
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Forgotten bodybuilder named kids after Egyptian gods and fed them meat for breakfast
Of course, the man’s son Equanimeous St. Brown used to play for the Packers (but now plays for Chicago) and his other son Amon-Ra plays for the Lions.
Of course, I was too young to know who the father was when he was in his body-building heydey, so I could not forget something I never knew. But I know now.
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It features at least one Renoir, “The Reader”. I would hide it in the living room on the wall with all the Renoir prints.
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You know, I have not done a 5K in a while, so I am definitely not up for this: Proposed Ozark Run Scenic Byway to unite communities and highlight Ozarks region.
My god, how many hundreds of miles is that?
UPDATE: I have just been handed a note. Apparently, this is not a run run; instead, Ozark Run is the proposed name of the tax spending entity or something. Still, I had better take it easy.
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Actually, I have only done (small) triathlons with pool swims; no open water swims or practices for me.
And although I have an indoor triathlon, with a pool swim, coming up in five weeks, I have not swimmed swam swum (pick the right one) since February 21.
So I’m not sure how easier I can take it.
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The headline oversimplifies a bit: Man left in coma after tearing bicep at gym wakes up to find he’s lost his arm:
Holy cats, he strained so hard he put himself in a coma? Not so much:
“I tore my bicep in the gym, and had some surgery a couple of days later,” he remembered.
“Two weeks after that I had a postoperative infection called necrotizing fasciitis, which gave me 11 major surgeries during a 10 day coma.”
He caught an infection in a National Health System hospital in Britain.
I would comfort myself and say that couldn’t happen here, but who knows?
I’d better take it easier.
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Videos show Jason Momoa unscathed after head-on motorcycle crash
Mimosa was in a 1970 Oldsmobile. One would guess he would be okay unless the rider came through the windshield and landed on his lap.
The motorcyclist was taken to the hospital with minor injuries, which indicates that it was a relatively low-speed collision.
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One wonders what kind of fiction a writer such as myself would create with a with a writer’s retreat like this:
In what looks like a scene out of Martin Scorcese’s “Shutter Island,” a decommissioned World War II fort in the middle of the ocean is being auctioned off for first time, starting at just $60,000.
Located in the Humber Estuary of Northern England, the concrete vessel was initially constructed between 1915 and 1919 for naval defense during World War I, though it wouldn’t go into use until WWII.
Considered a historic listing, the property is defined by the United Kingdom as a “grade II” building or structure that is “of special interest, warranting every effort to preserve it.”
It’s about sixty thousand dollars, but probably more to have it fixed up. It has water from its own artesian well, which means you don’t have to have it brought in. N
So it’s like Sealand except a little more sheltered from the open sea, it would seem, and a tad less than the billion dollar asking price.
But my beautiful wife says no, so I guess we’ll stay landlocked.
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Teen turned away from water slide because of weight, family says:
A family in Illinois said their 13-year-old daughter was turned away from a ride at Raging Rivers Waterpark after being told to step on a scale in front of strangers.
* * * *
The scale read 205, but Batton said they were told there was a 200-pound weight limit.
A spokesperson for Raging Rivers said the decision was made to prioritize the safety of guests.
Jeez, Louise, this story is out there to ding The Man, in this case the operators of an amusement park with safety rules that single people out based on physicism, which takes into account things like mass and gravity to stigmatize individuals of a certain size and to prevent them from plunging to their deaths or turning their little rafts over in dangerous conditions.
I mean, it’s been months since we were seeing the opposite story in the news (Adjusted sensors on ride contributed to Fla. teen’s death in fall) wherein the large teen in question died instead of ran crying to the news about being embarrassed.
Full disclosure: This summer I was in a water park whose new rotating water slide wheel had a weight limit. I don’t remember whether it was posted on every landing climbing to the ride or whether it was just at the top, but my family was too heavy cumulatively to ride in one raft. And, yes, the staging area for getting into the raft was a scale, with the numbers where everyone could see them.
I’m not here to pick on large people.
I am here, however, to decry sensationalist media who will run both stories in succession: The story of dangerous theme park rides killing kids who are too large for them, and then running stories about mean theme parks not allowing kids on rides which would pose an extra danger for them.
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Clearly, the media and its friends have picked the weakest candidate for the general election for Senate in the state of Missouri, and, now, they’re pumping him for all its worth to try to get him to win the primary
Greitens fans shrug off scandals threatening GOP Senate seat
Eric Greitens resigned as Missouri governor amid criminal charges and legislative investigations, is accused by his ex-wife of abuse and bullying, and has run a widely condemned ad suggesting he was hunting members of his own party with a gun. And the Republican is still a leading contender for election to the U.S. Senate.
Yeah, no. And by “Yeah, no,” I mean, I really hope not.
But it’s worked before: Claire McCaskill bragged that she got Todd Akin onto the ballot.
Jeez, I hope it does not work again.
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Here’s why teens are dressing up in suits to see ‘Minions: The Rise of Gru’
It answers:
It’s unclear why this trend has taken off, but TikTok users are saying it’s just for fun. Many groups have not caused issues.
No, it is clear: It’s TikTok.
Full disclosure: My boys dressed up to go see the film on the first. We thought that is one of the notions that gets into the older boy’s head from time-to-time until I saw the son of friends on Facebook also dressed up to see the film in the theater. So then I thought TikTok. In an unrelated note, when talking with my boys, I call it the TikTok to emphasize how old and out-of-touch I want them to think I am.
Man, that Chinese application can get the kids to do some crazy things! How scared should I be?
I would also normally riff a bit on how this might be a 20-something journalist getting something wrong and being ignorant of things he or she is too old for, but reading these little AP filler stories, I am not completely convinced that they’re not written by AI. I mean, this story and another I read this morning (Self-checkout growing even though no one likes it) follow a similar template. A trend mentioned with a non-specific example followed by a counterpoint of sorts. No actual reporting involved, and the headline is pretty much all you need to read.
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I mentioned in passing, I went to Rolla in June to take my son to robotics camp.
As is my wont, I went to Google maps to get manly turn-by-turn directions (on the occasions where my beautiful wife is my co-pilot and sets a destination whilst I am driving, I am often subject to disappointing the AI; I am sure that I am on its/their list somewhere as someone who does not obey machines), and I saw that a main thoroughfare through Rolla leading to the residence hall where I was to deposit my offspring was marked Barack Obama Expressway.
I accepted that (believing the machine), but apparently, it is not true: No, Bishop Avenue was not re-named ‘Barack Obama Presidential Expressway
No. Bishop Avenue was not re-named the “Barack Obama Presidential Expressway.”
For the past few days, there’s been posts and confusion on Rolla-focused social media as to why Bishop Avenue was suddenly and seemingly renamed the “Barack Obama Presidential Expressway” on Google Maps.
According to many comments, there were other accounts of the glitch happening in other Missouri cities as well such as Cuba, St. Louis, St. James, Ballwin and possibly others.
Well, we found it, anyway.
And I believed it because Rolla is a college town, and, ya know, college towns.
I don’t know if I would have seen this article before driving to Rolla if I were reading my hometown newspapers (10 or 12 at last count) in a timely fashion, but probably not.
However, we here at MfBJN can very well keep you up-to-date on the news from three weeks ago or 2016.
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Then, the stories were all about how Missouri’s gas taxes were low compared to other states, and it’s a bad thing.
Now, the papers are all aflutter: Missouri’s gas tax going up again Friday as hike in Illinois suspended for 6 months.
I always note stories that talk about low taxes as though raising tax rates should be a competition between taxing authorities (note I did not say “governments,” as through the miracles of modern “governance,” non-elected authorities can tax citizens, which I thought led to a revolution sometime in the distant past, before Thefacebook), with the media acting as cheerleaders for more taxes. Until they don’t, and their little minds have no hobgoblins, no sir.
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