Archive for the ‘Stupid’ Category

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Because this is hookersnblow.com, too.

Thursday, July 21st, 2022

Not news: Air Force scientist persuades one of his contractors to hire a woman he knows.

Also not news: contractor has some concerns about his new hire, like her inability to “use basic word processing and document creation software” and “formulate coherent inter-office emails”.

News: she was actually a hooker.

News: not only was she involved professionally with the scientist, but she was also plying her trade with other scientists at Wright-Patterson AFB.

News: when the contractor told the scientist this was unethical, the scientist “stated he would come to Building 5 with one of his many guns to ‘end it all’”.

News:

When AFOSI investigators raided [the scientist’s] office, they seized electronic devices along with a box of condoms, women’s underwear and an empty bottle of Viagra.
A forensic review of his phone found texts between [the scientist] and 27 sex workers in different cities, many of whom were “foreign nationals from countries considered US National Security concerns,” the warrant said.

News: the scientist passed away in September of last year from “unspecified causes”.

The warrant, unsealed on Monday in the US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, seeks access to [the scientist’s] and the woman’s email accounts for evidence of false, fictitious, or fraudulent claims, embezzlement/misuse of government property, extortion of officers or employees of the United States, ethnic intimidation, and aggravated menacing, the Daily Beast reported.
She is reportedly being investigated on charges of prostitution near military and naval establishments, and false, fictitious, or fraudulent claims.

That’s quite a catalog of crimes, some of which I’m unfamiliar with. “ethnic intimidation”? “aggravated menacing”? Is there non-aggravated menacing?

Posted in Law, Stupid | 1 Comment »

Wonko the Sane had the right idea.

Monday, February 14th, 2022

Shot:

It seemed to me that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.

—Wonko the Sane, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Chaser:

Posted in Stupid | Comments Closed

The stupid, it burns…

Thursday, June 3rd, 2021

Florida Man, Florida Man…

Police say a 10-year-old boy approached his father with an unusual request: Could he take him to do a drive-by shooting in Opa-locka with a paint gun? The father, 26-year-old Michael Williams, agreed, detectives say.

Cutting to the chase, the homeowner returned fire. With a real gun. The 10-year-old was injured, and the dad is charged with “child neglect with great bodily harm”.

If the boy is 10, that would make the dad 16 when he had the child. Which may indicate something…

Bonus:

The boy suffered a further injury after losing his balance and getting run over by the van, according to the police report.

Florida Man, Florida Man…

A judge has rejected the “stand your ground” defense of a Florida man who said he beat an iguana to death only after it attacked him, biting him on the arm.

…

Prosecutors say Patterson “savagely beat, tormented, tortured, and killed” the 3-foot (1-meter) iguana in a half-hour attack caught on surveillance video. Prosecutor Alexandra Dorman said that “at no time was the iguana posing any real threat” to Patterson last September and he “was not justified in his actions when he kicked this defenseless animal at least 17 times causing its death.”
Animal control officials said Patterson tormented the animal, which is why it bit him on the arm, causing a wound that required 22 staples to close. Under state law, people are allowed to kill iguanas, an invasive species, in a quick and humane manner. A necropsy, though, showed the iguana had a lacerated liver, broken pelvis and internal bleeding, which were “painful and terrifying” injuries, prosecutors contend.
But Patterson’s public defender, Frank Vasconcelos, wrote that the iguana was the aggressor when it “leaned forward with its mouth wide open and showing its sharp teeth, in a threatening manner” and attacked Patterson. Bleeding from his bite, Patterson “kicked the iguana as far as he could,” Vasconcelos said.

Florida Woman, Florida Woman…

A woman who was missing for three weeks and then rescued from a Florida storm drain found herself in another underground tunnel system in Texas over the weekend, according to media reports.

Paraphrasing someone: “To fall into one storm drain may be regarded as misfortune, to fall into a second storm drain looks like carelessness.”

Houston Woman, Houston Woman…

A Texas mother has been charged after police say she accidentally shot her 5-year-old son while firing multiple times at a dog running loose in a Houston neighborhood over the weekend.

The boy was hit by a ricochet. His injuries are “not expected to be life-threatening”.

Posted in Guns, Law, Lizards, Reptiles, Stupid | 1 Comment »

You see the signs, but you can’t read…

Sunday, March 21st, 2021

Sometimes, the warning signs are lit up with neon and searchlights, and people still miss them.

A married pair of San Francisco entrepreneurs were indicted Thursday on multiple federal charges, the latest twist in the saga of a once trendy, now bankrupt fecal matter-testing startup.
Zachary Schulz Apte and Jessica Sunshine Richman, co-founders of defunct microbiome testing company uBiome, are accused of bilking their investors and health insurance providers, federal prosecutors said. They were indicted Thursday on multiple federal charges, including conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit health care fraud and money laundering.

Now, I’m just a poor dumb white boy from Hampden, but I feel like there’s at least two big warning signs that were missed here.

1.

San Francisco-based uBiome was founded in 2012, and kicked off the company in an unusual way for a biotech startup: via a Kickstarter campaign. Its offering was an at-home test to sequence the DNA of its customers gut microbiome, which could then in turn purportedly be used to improve health.

I’m an absolute believer that you should avoid – indeed, run away from – any crowd funding campaign that is medical or health care related.

2.

In 2018, Richman was even named an “innovator” winner in Goop’s “The Greater goop Awards” and at its peak, uBiome was valued at $600 million.

Goop? Seriously? No s–t.. Again: anything that’s recieved an award from Goop, is promoted on Goop, or has any involvement with Goop: run like hell in the other direction.

Posted in Geek, Law, Stupid | Comments Closed

I haven’t laughed so hard since the hogs et my kid brother.

Wednesday, March 17th, 2021

Ja Rule is getting into the NFT space. The rapper plans to sell a piece of art that once hung at Fyre Media’s headquarters in New York City.

Ah, the Fyre Festival. Brings back memories.

Posted in Art, Stupid | Comments Closed

When a drawbridge comes along, you must whippit…

Thursday, September 17th, 2020

Seemingly taking his Dodge Stratus’s “cloud car” nickname literally, the unnamed 26-year-old went airborne and cleared the gap, but managed to burst all four tires and smash his windshield upon landing and crashing on the other side of the bridge.
“Over he went, blew out all four of his tires, and then he crashed into the other gate,” said Locke, who likened the jump to a similar flight by a Dodge Monaco in 1980’s The Blues Brothers. “That’s a first for me.”
Police immediately received a call reporting a car had “Dukes of Hazzard-ed across” the bridge, and on response, found the driver with a canister of nitrous oxide in his car. Known as “whippits” due to its common use as propellant in canned whipped cream, NO2 is a dissociative sometimes inhaled to experience a “floating” sensation, per Australia’s Alcohol and Drug Foundation.

Based on the story, I think the police did try to detect it, but they didn’t have to try very hard.

There is no word so far on the status of the cream.

Posted in Cars, Law, Stupid | Comments Closed

2020 is a target rich environment. (Part deux)

Wednesday, September 16th, 2020

It didn’t take long to find something even stupider than “Mean Girls” toaster pastry.

For a mere $1,500 you can have a custom built Wilkinson original that features influencer Bella Delphine. The case is plastered in Delphine’s face. Her alleged mugshot is on the front, LEDs with her glare from inside the case, and the system’s liquid cooling pipes run in and out of a little jar said to contain her bathwater.

In the interest of fairness, note the “said” above:

But it’s not an official jar of Bella Delphine bathwater. “I know it’s disappointing,” Josh Wilkinson, the case’s designer, told Motherboard on the phone. “It’s like 400 bucks on Ebay. The more official reason is that these cooling loops, if it was just normal water they wouldn’t hold up after a while.”
Liquid cooled PCs reduce temperatures of a machine with a liquid that’s a mix of distilled water and additives that prevent corrosion. Using Delphine’s dirty bathwater to cool down a machine is probably hazardous to the machine’s health.

Posted in Geek, Stupid | Comments Closed

2020 is a target rich environment.

Sunday, September 13th, 2020

For that reason, I don’t want to say this is the stupidest thing I’ve seen this year, as I’m sure that if I apply myself, I can come up with stupider things. Also, if I do say it is the stupidest thing I’ve seen this year, Lawrence, Mike the Musicologist, or both will provide me with at least 10 stupider things.

That said, I still think this is pretty stupid.

“Mean Girls” themed toaster strudel. Yes, I’ve never seen “Mean Girls”, yes, I do get the fact that it is a reference, but themed pastry for a 16 year old movie? Here’s an idea: an all-black toaster pastry with slightly off-white icing that you can use to draw Stonehenge.

Posted in Bagatelle, Stupid | Comments Closed

Quickie.

Tuesday, August 11th, 2020

If you had more money than sense…you probably bought Fyre Festival tickets.

If you still have more money than sense, you may be interested in this auction of Fyre Festival branded merch.

Or you could just buy The Merch merch.

Or you could just sent your money on fire. At least that would keep you warm. Briefly.

($510 for a hat?)

Posted in Clippings, Clothing, Stupid | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 21, 2020.

Sunday, June 21st, 2020

Michael Drosnin, “Bible Code” guy.

“The Bible Code” opens with a stunning moment: The author, having discovered a biblical passage suggesting that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel would be assassinated, hops on a plane in 1994 to deliver a letter of warning. The message doesn’t alter the course of events — Mr. Rabin was shot and killed a year later — but, as Mr. Drosnin writes, it was “dramatic confirmation” of the Bible code.
That may sound like an Indiana Jones plot, but “The Bible Code” had its roots in science. In the early 1990s, the Israeli mathematician Eliyahu Rips and his colleagues performed an experiment in which they laid out the 304,805 letters of the Torah like a giant crossword puzzle and then performed a “skip-code” computer search. They discovered uncanny combinations. “Kennedy” appeared near the word “Dallas.” Hitler’s name, written upside down, appeared 20 rows from “Nazi,” written backward. And so on.
The findings were published in 1994 in the journal Statistical Science. Mr. Drosnin based his book on that research, adding discoveries of his own.
Many critics found the book unscientific, arbitrary and curiously weighted toward people and events relevant to an American living in the 20th century. Skeptics demonstrated that “Moby-Dick,” or a phone book for that matter, would reveal intriguing word groupings if one went looking for them. Mr. Rips himself denounced Mr. Drosnin’s interpretation of his work.

…

Mr. Drosnin offered more revelations in “The Bible Code II” (2002), another best seller, in which he claimed the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center had been predicted and warned that the world might have only three years left to avoid Armageddon. Then came “The Bible Code III” (2010), but by that time the novelty had worn off; it did not make the best-seller list.
Still, Mr. Drosnin had a high batting average as an author. Of his four books, three were best sellers, including the first, “Citizen Hughes” (1985), a portrait of the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes as revealed through stolen office memos.

Posted in Books, History, Obits, Stupid | 1 Comment »

I don’t buy products that are advertised on podcasts.

Friday, February 7th, 2020

Casper Sleep, a start-up that sells mattresses online, became on Thursday the latest money-losing outfit to get a cold shoulder from Wall Street investors.
The company’s stock began trading on the New York Stock Exchange at $14.50 a share, slipped below $14 in the afternoon and ended the day at $13.50. The lackluster first day of trading did not come close to fulfilling what Casper’s venture-capital investors thought it was worth a few months ago.
The New York-based start-up had been valued at $1.1 billion by private investors last year. But that was before the five-year-old company publicly revealed in January that it lost $67 million on $312 million in revenue in the first nine months of 2019, thanks in part to spending $114 million on marketing.
Casper reduced its proposed share price, valuing the company at less than $500 million. It raised $100 million in the offering.

Posted in Stupid | Comments Closed

Random gun crankery, some filler.

Wednesday, December 11th, 2019

Col. Cooper, call your office, please.

Scout rifles. You know, for kids. Seen at Cabela’s over the weekend.

(Okay, technically, it isn’t a true Scout rifle. Beyond the fact that it is a toy gun, it is also lever action, while a true Scout would be a bolt gun. Cooper discussed the possibility of a lever action Scout, but I believe he considered that a pseudo-Scout. Also, I’m not clear what “caliber” it is “chambered” in. On the other hand, it probably does make weight and length for a Scout, and it does have the Scout style “scope” and mount…)

(Semi-related stupid. By way of Mike the Musicologist.)

Speaking of semi-related stupid, I could spend a lot of time and effort, and increase my blood pressure, by going after the latest stupid statement about guns from Art “Dammit” Acevedo.

But I don’t have to, because Lawrence sent me this handy Twitter thread that does the same thing.

But of course Art’s department was busy executing innocent civilians.

Speaking of the elusive MtM:

I wanted to title this “The Hat Squad”, but I got the picture back, and…where’s my hat? Obviously, I had it on in the other photo, but why wasn’t I wearing it in this one? And what did I do with it?

Posted in Christmas, Cops, Guns, Law, Stupid | Comments Closed

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