News Digest

17 Sep 2020

Money Won’t Buy You Hoppiness

Climate change wackos are looking extra bitter and pale. The covid panic has slurped up all the attention, threatening the global-warming gravy train. To get a publicity refill, they’re pouring out a chilling warning: global warming threatens beer. Yes, forget the coronavirus — worry about your Corona.

What’s brewing in the wacko fear factory? They warn that beer will taste “different.” According to The New York Post, this “may be the most serious repercussion of climate change identified to date.” Well, bottoms up. According to Colleen Doherty, associate professor of biochemistry at North Carolina State University, the flavor of hops depends on the climate and soil where it’s grown. Doherty claims nights are heating up, so “the temperature difference between night and day is shrinking. And that can cause an effect in plants similar to jet lag — they find it harder to set their circadian clock … and can become out of sync with the environment.” Well, that’s not good for whatever ales the average hops. But look at the big pitcher. No matter the climate, warm-mongers will find a way to get wasted, while wasting tax dollars. Still, even though activists may wine more than usual, they’re boring the rest of us to cheers.

Freak Chic

What’s trendy on the left these days? Arson, looting, rampaging, and vandalism — and the best threads to wear while making mayhem. The Washington Post just ran a long style-spread celebrating Portland rioters, featuring all-black ensembles, gas masks, homemade shields, and outfits ready for Molotov-ing. While most Oregonian rioters are white college-educated millennials, reporterette Marissa J. Lang showcases model anarchists who check the left’s diversity boxes. Such as “Afro-Indigenous sisters Essence Belle, a horticulturist, and Kia Rae, a healer and licensed massage therapist.” Each race and gender representative is first pictured in an everyday home-and-garden setting, and then dressed to kill in riot gear in a slick studio closeup. The headline declares that “Protest Is What Portland Does Best.” Yes, Portland may be falling apart at the seams as these self-styled Marxist revolutionaries destroy it. But the Democrat-run city takes pride in being the riot fashion capital of the world.

Can’t Take My Eyes Off of Moo

In central Africa, raising cattle next to a conservation area is basically throwing your cows to the lions. The academic journal The Conversation (yes, one of my favorite journals) reports that the fencing around the protected land in Botswana’s Okavango delta region is designed only to keep the local farmers’ cattle and the buffalo apart. While it does its job, the barrier allows big cats to roam freely. Farmers work their tails off tending animals for their livelihoods, only to have predators like lions, leopards, and hyenas pick off livestock bringing up the rear. Liberals hate this rule of nature, but unless a predator gets its fanny kicked, it will go after people’s stuff. So farmers retaliate with gunfire and poison.

This violence bummed out international do-gooders, who came up with a mostly peaceful idea: paint eyes on the cows’ backsides. A group of researchers got behind the notion and conducted experiments. They found that yes, livestock decorated with buttock eyes were less likely to be lion lunch. The big cats are apparently intimidated by the bovine Pic-ass–os “looking” at them. Bottom line: even the king of the jungle hates surveillance.

Mickey-Mouse Mix-Up

Well, isn’t this just ducky — Donald Ducky. Some of Rhode Island’s taxpayers were underwhelmed when they got refund checks in the mail bearing Mickey Mouse’s “signature,” with Walt Disney’s John Hancock where the State Controller’s should have been. According to the state’s Department of Revenue, this was a “technical error in the automated refund check printing system.” The fake signatures were “incorrectly sourced” from their “test print files.” Uh-huh. The fictional monikers appeared on tax credit refunds, tax rebates, and corporate tax refunds. Rhode Island officials say the checks have been voided and new checks mailed to those who got the mickey-mouse mistakes. Rhode Island’s state motto is simply “Hope,” and taxpayers certainly hope revenuers get it right this time. Will receiving a state check signed by a cartoon character make people lose faith in government? One can hope.

TECHNO HECK NO

Franken-Mind

University of Delaware researchers say they’ve figured out how to integrate electronics with the body “to create part human, part robotic ‘cyborg’ beings.” According to The [UK] Independent, these scientists have developed a material that could allow artificial intelligence [AI] to “merge” with the human brain. In the past, researchers tried gold, silicon, and steel, but that caused brain scar tissue, blocking the electronic signal. “We were trying to interface rigid organic microelectrodes with the brain,” says Dr. David Martin, who led the study, “but brains are made out of organic, salty, live materials.”

So they tried a polymer that’s used commercially as an antistatic coating. Voilà: no scarring. Among those sure to capitalize is Elon Musk’s Neuralink company, which is working on marketing brain chips to provide “full-bandwidth data streaming” directly to your brain through a usb cable. Musk warns that within five years humans will face stiff competition from artificial intelligence, so we better get cracking on technology like this to keep up.

But if AI creations start taking over, all mankind has to do is remember where the “off” switch is. Got that, Igor?

Robo-Faller

Talk about keeping the famous English stiff upper lip. A British company, Starship Technologies, is telling the public not to panic if anyone sees one of its robots “in distress.” Fox Business reports the announcement was necessary after a Buckinghamshire resident posted photos of a submerged Starship machine on Facebook. Bex Morgan said she was walking her dog when the delivery robot delivered itself “straight into the canal.”

Even though each robot is outfitted with ten cameras, ultrasound, and radar, the gps occasionally mistakes water for a crosswalk. “If people see a robot not moving, they shouldn’t do anything because we are aware of where every single robot is to the nearest inch, and it may just be having a rest,” said a company spokesman. “However, if on the rare occasion someone sees a robot swimming or in any other odd situation, then feel free to email.”

These cooler-sized robots have been making a splash since they appeared on the scene in the United Kingdom, where they deliver small purchases to residents. I suggest Starship Technologies equip their robots with self-inflating artificial-life preservers.

Buggy Bomb Squad

They’re no longer just a plague and a pestilence. Locusts can protect and serve humanity. Abuzz with science, the American Association for the Advancement of Science recently announced on its platform EurekAlert!: “Researchers One Step Closer to Bomb-Sniffing Cyborg Locusts.” Oh, goody. According to Biosensors and Bioelectronics (also one of my favorites), scientists at Washington University’s McKelvey School of Engineering in St. Louis implanted electrodes into locusts to monitor their neuronic patterns. And it’s a good thing they did, because it turns out locusts have such a keen sense of smell they can tell the difference between various explosives.

EurekAlert! reveals that “explosive vapors were injected via a hole in the box where the locust sat in a tiny vehicle. As the locust was driven around and sniffed different concentrations of vapors, researchers studied its odor-related brain activity.” The plan is that one day, bionic bugs will aid law enforcement in bomb alerts.

But why stop there? In this “defund-the-police” era, why not train the buggy bomb squad to take on other first-responder duties? Riot control, for instance. Swarm-and-rescue. Bug-swat. Even spyware: bugs that bug. It’s a new world.

Reign of Error

Representatives of the party of death — the Democrats — made a special appearance on the streets of Manhattan, in between riots. As reported in The New York Post, New York City teachers, ticked off at being expected to honor their contracts for the 2020-21 school year, carried coffins, body bags, and a homemade guillotine with “doe” [Department of Education] painted on the blade. Marchers croaked that “the current model does not go far enough in terms of safety or logistical specificity.” Which isn’t very catchy, as protest chants go. These paranoid non-essential workers are basically complaining about being exposed to icky germs if they’re forced to actually go to work. Truth is, the worries about “exposure” should go the other way. Students are much safer when they’re kept away from these socialist indoctrinators. With more and more parents everywhere learning what teachers have been up to, heads are gonna roll.

Pretend Friend

BethAnn McLaughlin, founder of MeToostem, was foundering soon after she started the nonprofit to help sexual harassment victims in the science fields. People began quitting the organization left and left. The only two black female employees resigned because “white leadership input was prioritized over our own.” Then BuzzFeed reported allegations that McLaughlin harassed her own staff.

What’s an entitled activist to do? Create a fictional chum of color to prove her wokeness alliances. According to The Daily Caller, McLaughlin made up a Twitter account, Sciencing-Bi. She invented a bio for this account as a Native American professor at Arizona State University [asu]. And then the kicker: McLaughlin pretended Sciencing-Bi kicked the bucket.

McLaughlin posted a eulogy, claiming Sciencing-Bi, who was “more loving than everyone else,” died of covid-19 after her university forced her to teach in-person. Twitter erupted in anger, hurling verbal abuse at asu and (naturally) President Trump, and praising the apex victimhood of this poor female Hopi bisexual professor, sacrificed for the white supremacist systemically racist patriarchy.

But the university noticed that no Native American bisexual prof was dead of covid. And besides, it had no in-person teaching, having gone virtual last March. “Unfortunately, this appears to be a hoax,” said asu spokesperson Jerry Gonzalez. More proof of what I’ve been saying for years, folks: Twitter isn’t the real world!

OUT TO LUNCH

Masks to Go

“Finally, tasteful masks,” tweeted Buzzman, the creative agency behind Burger King’s self-styled mission to “keep customers healthy amid the coronavirus pandemic.” The masks are custom-printed with food orders, reports The New York Post, so diners don’t even have to speak, which means spewing germs. This way the fast food giant can feed customers’ hunger and their corona-phobia at the same time.

The masks can be ordered by commenting on Burger King’s Facebook and Instagram pages — although for now, the promotion is limited to Belgium. But they may soon be coming to a Burger King near you; Ad Age features masks with orders in English like, “A large Whopper combo, fries, and Diet Coke please.”

Burger King has introduced other measures to keep people disconnected. In the U.S., drive-through windows use trays to transfer money and food orders. According to Fox News, Burger King locations in Italy have also added a “social distancing Whopper” with three times the onions. The result would look like a Biden rally.

Bear Minimum

Capitalism is the mother of invention. When Mexico City stuffed a 30 percent capacity restriction down the throats of local eateries, one cafe figured out how to turn the mandate into a beastly good attraction, according to Mexico News Daily. Presentation is everything at the upscale Jaso Bakery, so they filled empty chairs with giant stuffed teddy bears. “We decided to place the bears so that the healthy distance was not so ugly,” said director Isabel Méndez.

You can stuff your face with Jaso croissants and sweet treats, but some patrons like the furry companions as much as the food. “I came for the bears. I still have the one from my childhood more than 70 years ago,” one diner said. The huge teddies “seated” at the outdoor tables draw passersby, and children coax their parents into visiting the bakery to see the bears. The cafe’s social media gets lots of posts of photos of bears sitting in front of doughnuts and cakes, though they’re already stuffed. Beary clever way to help people bear with onerous stupidity.

Dumbwaiter

In Cairo, Egypt, the Kimbo Restaurant & Cafe is providing cyborg service. According to Reuters, Mozo the robot waiter is programmed to take orders, flash an electronic smile, and deliver meals to tables. The front of the robot — a glorified rolling food cart — sports a computer-tablet head, a name tag, tie, and apron; the back holds three trays for delivering food. All well and good, as long as there are no more than three orders. And forget about menu recommendations, answers to questions, custom orders, drink refills, and the interaction human waitstaff provides.

Customer Dana Mohamed praises robotic service, “instead of having another human being come near you… It helps people who are afraid that someone else might touch their food before they do.” Don’t tell her that multiple people prepare the food and place it on the robot’s trays. And certainly don’t mention that computers get viruses.

Illustrations ©2020 Allison Smith; Money Won’t Buy Hoppiness photo ©2020 Shutterstock/somchaij; Can’t Take My Eyes Off Moo photo ©2020 Ben Yexly/UNSW; Micky Mouse Mix-Up screenshot WJAR; Franken-Mind photo ©iStock/Nikola Nastasic; Reign of Error ©2020 Dan Herrick; Pretend Friend ©2020 Shutterstock; Dumbwaiter screengrab USA Today