Reading Faces

An estimated 3 billion-plus people worldwide now communicate using emojis, the pictogram cartoon faces sprinkled in text messages and on social media to convey emotions. Fans of the smiley face agree that a picture is worth a thousand words, so much so that The Hill recently asked, “Is It Time to Consider Emojis a Language?” If so, they should transcribe any Joe Biden press conference into emoji. It might make sense that way.

The Hill concedes that one barrier to emojis actually becoming a separate language is that legal briefs cannot be composed with smiley faces. (Although maybe they should.) Nevertheless, “the day will likely come when industry-government collaboration along with artificial intelligence will make it possible to fully communicate through emoji ‘sentences.’” Insert eyeroll emoji here.

July 17 is World Emoji Day, so we can all celebrate by delving into the vocabulary of 3,500-plus standard emojis. If words fail you, Apple has introduced essential new emojis like a vaccine syringe, “gender options for the people with beards,” and an expressionless face staring out from what appears to be fog. Now that one says it all.

Pothouse Gasses

It’s 4:20 somewhere, but left-wing stoners in Colorado are freaked out. The airheads have learned that growing cannabis is polluting the planet — even more than fossil fuels!

Growing pot was once lauded as a crop “greener” than any other. In fact, as recently as February 2020, The Washington Post claimed that Colorado beer brewers and marijuana farmers could together reduce global warming by using up “spare” CO₂. Fast forward to 2021, and researchers at Colorado State University [csu] have debunked that pipe dream.

As related in The [UK] Daily Mail, scientists discovered that growing cannabis plants indoors “produces more than 30 percent more greenhouse gases than the state’s coal mining industry.” csu graduate student Hailey Summers fumes, “The emissions that come from growing an ounce, depending on where it’s grown in the U.S., is about the same as burning 7 to 16 gallons of gasoline.” Most of the extra emissions come from the electricity and natural gas needed to run the lights, heating, and air conditioners for the wacky weed. The devil’s lettuce turns out to be a high-maintenance crop with a huge carbon footprint. You can’t chill out, potheads — you’re worse for the planet than suv drivers. Oops.

Meatheads

And you thought Hunter Biden was dopey for trying to smoke parmesan cheese. According to “Please Do Not Eat Rotten Meat to Get High” at the news site The Takeout, some idiots are apparently attempting to get stoned on putrified meat. They say one man’s meat is another man’s poison, but this meat is poison for everybody.

So-called “high meat” is not well-aged steak; it’s meat that has been rotting for months, or even years — complete with fungi, furry outbreaks, and far-out colors. Yuck. But eaters of rotten meat claim it sends them on a trip. (To the ER, sure.) Some eaters of rotten meat insist they even like the taste, which is supposedly cheese-like. Others report rotten raw meat has a “Viagra effect,” which is hard to believe. Is it any wonder why the U.S. birth rate continues to drop?

Apparently, some people are too baked to notice that rotten meat can cause food poisoning, potentially sending them to the porcelain throne, or even the morgue. Or, they might suddenly become artists of the Hunter impressionism school, and sell their straw-blown watercolors to anonymous buyers for a half a million bucks.

Illustrations ©2021 Allison Smith for The Limbaugh Letter; Reading Faces photo ©2021 Michaela Clark for The Limbaugh Letter; Squid Splurge ©2021 AFP PHOTO/NOTO TOWN; Beer and Brimstone photo: New Belgium Brewing; Meatheads photo ©2021 Getty Images/Nate Spicer/Barcroft Media/Contributor