I haven’t blogged in three months. I’m not sure what stopped me. So many things have been screwing with our heads. People who assault aircraft flight attendants over wearing masks, others insisting that masks and vaccines are political weapons wielded by an evil cabal. Self-congratulatory politicians who double down on their mistakes.
I could go on, but who needs more of that? Let’s just try to shake it off.
Here are some of the things I might have blogged about this summer, but didn’t. Now that I look more closely, I don’t have much to do here. They write themselves.
PETA Wants Punxsutawney Phil Replaced by a Robot Rodent.
Seems the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) want the spectacle of rodent-powered weather prognostication ended and perhaps replaced by a robot. That leaves Phil to be released, free to forage in a farmer’s cabbage field, there to possibly be shot.
After the initial rush, Phil might rather keep his current gig.
And for God’s sake, don’t tell Disney about the Robot Rodent proposal.
Mysterious Mutated Creature of Krakow Turns Out To Be–A Croissant
In Poland people were told to hunker down and stay indoors after a freakish creature was seen in a tree, scaring onlookers with its creepy looks and strange movements. After two days of terror the Krakow Animal Welfare Society was called in. According to a post on the Society’s Facebook page, the woman who called in the sighting said she thought it might be an iguana.
When the inspectors arrived, they began looking for a mysterious legless and headless reptile stuck high in a lilac tree, but found only—a croissant. Once the pastry was safely retreived they pronounced, “It is difficult to help something that has been previously baked.”
I wish someone had told me that in college.
YouTube Surpasses Network TV Ad Revenue
Alphabet, Google’s parent company has revealed they made a cool $15B, (that’s a “B” for billion) on You Tube advertising for the year 2019. That’s an 86 percent growth over 2018 and THAT is prior to us all becoming housebound video-devouring animals in 2020.
By comparison, 2018 ad revenues for NBC were $7B, CBS $6B and Fox $5B.
Yes, YouTube.
I can almost hear you wondering about Netflix’s revenue in pandemic year of 2020. Just under $25 billion.
You Think You Have A Sh*t Job?
Someone has just done a deep dive (sorry, not sorry) into fecal samples found in a privy at Dartmouth College in Hanover NH. Right in front of the iconic Baker Library you see on all those postcards sent by Dartmouth parents after they drop Chip or Muffy off for their freshman year.
“Our study is one of the first to demonstrate evidence of parasitic infection in an affluent rural household in the Northeast,” says co-author Theresa Gildner. Au, contrare, mon soeur.
It’s Got A Good Beat, But Is It Easy To Dance To?
A periodic flurry of radio waves from deep space have astronomers wondering what’s triggering them. Over 100 such fast radio bursts, or FRBs, have been heard, coming from every direction in the sky, but none exhibited any sort of steady tempo — until now.
This FRB blasts out one to two radio bursts per hour for four days and then goes silent for just over 12 days before usually repeating the cycle. (Insert snarky comment about shiftless millenial hourly employees here.)
Submarine Cables Still Carry Most Of Our Transcontinental Data
I don’t know about you, but when I first learned how difficult and dangerous submarine communications cables were to install and how relatively low tech the first trans-oceanic telegraph cables were (big wound strands of copper with heavy waterproof sheathing), I assumed when we progressed into the post moon landing, Internet, Instagram, smartphone, period of human history, all that data was ping-ponging off a zillion communications satellites orbiting overhead.
Surely it’s not still on long cables like the wild tangles of blue ethernet wire your geeky college roommate ran on the floor and under furniture all over your apartment. Hey, watch your step!
Sorry, 99.9% of all Internet traffic that crosses oceans rides on big-ass underwater cables (now fiber-optic, but still).
It Used To Be Just Some Guy Named Skeeter Who Saw These Things
Earlier this summer there was to be a big long-awaited reveal about unidentified flying objects or UFOs, now unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP). Naval aviation videos and breathless testimony sprouted everywhere.
Then, the big reveal happened: nothing was revealed. Who saw that coming, other than everybody, I mean?
My suspicion? The aliens really were ready to come out of the closet, until our behavior this summer caused their High Command to conclude, “there is no intelligent life on earth. We’ll check back in another hundred years.”
Richard Authier Lee is the author of the technothriller “HIGH GROUND,” available on Amazon.com in paperback or eBook and as an audiobook on Audible.com and iTunes Audiobooks-see below (in iTunes: Audiobooks/Mysteries and Thrillers/Richard Authier Lee).
Richard Authier Lee 