Cut It Out! You’re Bugging Me! Clean Up Your Act!

Call me crazy if you’d like, but for some reason I have a feeling that this unseasoned chicken thing isn’t the first time that this family has had a night like this.

When Deputy Kyle Burns and Corporal Simpson arrived, they were told the situation began when Anthony Harper was asked “why he didn’t season the chicken that was cooking so it could crust up,” the report says.
Anthony replied he didn’t know how to cook and that their grandmother would season it. Hope Harper then called Anthony a ‘dumb dog’, and Anthony became angry, shoving Hope into a table and punching her about five times.
The two continued to fight alongside another victim. Another person in the home then came out of the kitchen and fired a warning shot from a 9 mm handgun into the ceiling to break up the fight.
Hope then went into the kitchen and grabbed a steak knife. Anthony broke free from being held back after this and ran to his grandmother’s door for fear of his life, the report states.
Hope started swinging the knife towards Anthony, then the grandmother came out of her room, grabbed a broom, and started swatting Hope until she walked away and put the knife up.
Anthony grabbed a can of Raid bug spray and sprayed Hope on the face and neck. Hope then grabbed the can from Anthony and sprayed him back.

Hope and Anthony both said they wanted to press charges, so both were arrested, charged and later released on bond.

Hopefully at least one of them has the good sense to realize that both of them going back to the same house right now is a bad idea…what am I saying?

Calm Down, Man. Maybe He’s Just Flirting

Fun fact: Many years ago, I knew someone who was accused, among other awful things, of bestiality. Several of us knew about it, and we had a grand old time making fun of him for it. Thankfully he never tried to beat any of us up, not that he could have. In fact he seemed to enjoy the attention, which made the whole thing even weirder.

I mention that just so I can post this, which reminded me of those days minus the jail and the fighting.

An 18-year-old in Georgia has been in jail for two months, reportedly after his own father and sister told authorities of the alleged sexual assault of a donkey and a bestiality offense against the family dog, a Great Dane. Apparently others in the Monroe County jailhouse got wind of the particulars of the case.

The story so far is that an inmate who was aware of the particulars of the case against Weir started making donkey sounds, which set off the defendant to such an extent that he allegedly followed the inmate into a jail cell, attacked him by hitting him in the eye and ear, and then subsequently blamed the flare-up on the mocking noises.
The report said that the inmate didn’t fight back as the enraged bestiality suspect allegedly escalated the verbal altercation to a criminal battery offense.

Somewhere, Someone Is Kicking Himself For Only Asking For Six Grand

Stories about bank scams are getting to be a lot like stories about fireworks. It’s hard to find a really good one especially now that scammers have gotten more sophisticated and are able to fool people much more easily without a lot of those people having to be astoundingly dumb. But that doesn’t mean that now and then you can’t still strike it rich in the stupid mines.

This one starts out normal enough. Fraudulent activity has been detected on your account, we need you to move a bunch of money to a different account to protect it, please add this random person to your Apple Wallet, wind up losing $6000. A fairly obvious scam, but sometimes people panic and things happen.

But then.

When she got home the same man posing as a bank employee called her on Facetime. She said he told her they needed to do a full body scan to verify her identity due to a failed transaction. The woman told police she undressed and spun in circles on Facetime. When she heard the scammer laughing that’s when she realized it was all a hoax.

I think we’re done here. I cannot improve on this.

Meanwhile, Walkoff Made It Down Without Incident

This is very sad especially since she sounds like such a lovely person, but I can’t lie to you people. Even in my older, mellower state, someone named Rohloff…well…rolling off is still going to get a laugh and a post out of me.

By the time Grace Rohloff reached the top of Half Dome, smiling from ear to ear, the 20-year-old college student had experienced thousands of miles of hiking. 
The aspiring high school math teacher was no stranger to challenging hikes requiring cables, like the one at Angels Landing at Zion National Park, which she did in the snow. For the iconic hike at Yosemite National Park, which is around 16 miles, on July 13 with her father, Rohloff bought new hiking shoes to ensure she had the correct footwear.

But a storm appeared, turning the descent down the most difficult part of the hike —  the 400-foot section with cables — deathly slippery.

Rohloff lost her balance and slipped, sliding and tumbling down the granite mountain, said her father, Jonathan Rohloff. It wasn’t until rescuers arrived that he learned his daughter, whom he described as “fearless,” died.
She fell an estimated 200 to 300 feet, likely hitting her head on the rock on the way down, according to Jonathan.

Better Than Eating Them, I Suppose

I don’t know what prompted Joseph Weaver to resign from his position at the Jacksboro Tennessee police department, but clearly, he’s upset about it. A very odd kind of upset, but definitely upset.

Weaver, according to police, admitted to throwing several cans of Vienna sausages at the home of the town’s vice mayor Jimmy Snodgrass, breaking two windows in the process. He is also said to have only paid for seven of the fifteen cans in question, choosing to obtain the rest free of charge by not putting them through the self checkout at the local Walmart before heading for the exit.

According to police interviews with others who were with Weaver that night, alcohol may have been a factor. He was apparently agitated about his resignation while having dinner and drinks, and told them that he needed to stop at Walmart once they left and that “it was going to be funny.”

He wasn’t wrong, I’ll give him that.

Probably less funny, however, are the charges of vandalism and theft he’s dealing with now.

Tackett said he got a call on July 11 to investigate the incident, adding he was told that JPD Chief Daniel Smith had said it involved “disgruntled ex-employees.”
While on the scene, Tackett said he found evidence of the vandalism: ran-over cans of Vienna sausages in the street and two of the home’s windows, broken.
The CCSO sergeant also spoke with Snodgrass, who said he woke up around 11 p.m. to several “loud thumps.” Snodgrass reportedly looked around his house after waking up, finding the broken windows and “various cans of Vienna sausages lying around his residence.”

Do I Have A Mind That’s Degrading? Or Maybe Degrading?

Here is another example of Carin’s mind is screwed up. I was watching TV when a commercial came on that got the exact wrong reaction from me. It said “Do you have boxes of videos and DVD’s that are degrading?” My first thought was “Whaaaat? Nooo! Why would I have those? Gross! And even if I had them, why on earth would I send them to you?” Then I realized that what they meant was degrading, the verb not degrading, the adjective. Oh! So sorry, Legacybox!

They totally used the right word…but maybe buying that ad during a particularly gory episode of Forensic Files might have been a bad idea. Or maybe it’s just me. I mean, we already established that my mind was messed up by the pandemic. Maybe it just bled over to other things.

I Hope You Like Cords

Huh. Who could have ever seen this coming? Oh that’s right, me!

Streaming appears poised to undergo what some have called “The Great Re-Bundling,” with services merging, combining or forming alliances that will essentially reconstruct the cable “bundle” that consumers relied upon for decades.
While that makes sense for studios eager to offer “more robust and streamlined content,” as Disney CEO Bob Iger said earlier this year, subscribers have every reason to wonder “What’s in it for me?,” and if all these high-stakes corporate announcements will really benefit them.
Will it make access to at-home viewing options cheaper? More plentiful? Easier to navigate and find what you want? Less of a chore to manage in terms of juggling multiple subscriptions?

That’s the goal, but honestly, we can’t really know.

What has become increasingly obvious, though, is for all the knocks on cable, starting with the fact consumers paid for lots of channels they never watched, its one-stop-shopping approach eliminated some of the challenges springing up now.

That old system worked because the “bundle” actually created a mechanism to financially support a vast number of choices serving various tastes.
Simply put, paying for ESPN if you don’t like sports, or CNN and MSNBC if you don’t watch news, might have been irritating, but those millions of cable subscriptions spread out the revenue in a way that made dozens and dozens of channels available and affordable.
The dream of a more a la carte system, where you pay for what you watch, has turned out to elusive, primarily because there’s no way – at least yet – to adopt that where the cost doesn’t become onerous, and maybe even prohibitive, for many consumers.

Here we are, just like I said, repeating history with a different wire. It’s just a shame that we had to gut all of the TV stations in our race to nowhere, because now cable is doomed either way. The people who have been lost are likely never coming back, and those who remain are finding less and less worth sticking around for all the time. They’re also being insulted constantly, especially by the sports networks.

TSN, for example, carries All Elite Wrestling. They air Dynamite on TV every week, but if you’d like to watch Collision and Rampage you’ll need to shell out for TSN+. This in spite of the fact that you’re likely already paying TSN for five stations that are often airing the same thing simultaneously. That’s not the sort of thing that should be making anyone want to fork over more money. In fact, it often has me wanting to downgrade from five channels to zero just to make a point.

I don’t know what comes next, but if history is our guide, I hope someone is already figuring out what comes after streaming. If not, everyone responsible for ruining it like they ruined traditional television might finally be in some real trouble.

Look, Guys! It’s The Inside Of My Skull Where My Brain Used To…Never Mind

After all these years, I’ve gotten to the point with fireworks injury stories where I’ve seriously caught myself thinking “meh. Guy blew his hand off. Whatever.” I’ll read them just in case there’s a funny detail buried somewhere, but most of the time they get a quick scan and then it’s on to the next thing.

But sometimes…sometimes there’s a this guy to make me remember why I bother.

One person has died from a fireworks incident on the 4th of July in Summerville, SC.
The Dorchester County Coroner says Allen Ray McGrew, 41, ignited a large firework and placed it on his head around 10:20pm.
The device exploded on top of his head, causing massive injuries.
McGrew was pronounced dead at the scene at 11:10pm.

According to the report, his wife told police that he had been drinking since about six that evening and even though people told him he should stop, he was determined to show off.

What he was drinking wasn’t mentioned, but there’s no way it was regular American beer unless this was his first day.

I’m Not Joe Biden, And Someone Approved This Message For Me

Since the AI boom or whatever this actually is got started, I have come up with exactly three good uses for the technology. Here they are, in no particular order.

  1. Giving people who are losing their ability to speak a chance to preserve their voices if they’d like.
  2. Helping advance scientific research by analyzing data on a scale that humans can’t.
  3. Describing pictures to blind people.

The list of awful uses for it is, of course, much longer than that. And to that list we can now add using it to smooth out Joe Biden because the public is too shallow and stupid to understand good policy that doesn’t look and sound exactly right.

Joe Biden is old and has had a lifelong stutter. He acknowledged in a fiery rally following his debate performance: “I might not walk as easily or talk as smoothly as I used to.” This has impeded his ability to communicate with mass audiences with consistent success. AI augmentations and video renderings could serve to smooth out these bumps while allowing the Biden campaign to effectively disseminate true information about the state of our democracy and the Biden administration’s accomplishments. The president has limited time to campaign as he also focuses on running the country, and AI would be a cost-effective and efficient way to communicate his message personally and directly to voters.

Despite an ambitious and widely praised first term in office, he is currently trailing in polls to a man who incited an insurrection and was recently convicted on 34 felony counts. Something needs to change, and much to the chagrin of West Wing fanatics in the beltway, it won’t be the Democrats’ 2024 nominee. Modern technology offers a clear solution. AI can be used to polish how the president comes across, allowing voters to focus on his substance. How many times have we heard voters and pundits alike gripe that “Biden would be the perfect candidate if he were just 10 years younger?” With modern technology, this exact deliverable is possible.

Um…uh…er…yeah…no.

Shockingly, and I mean that sincerely, Kaivan Shroff (the author of this piece) doesn’t seem to work for an AI company. I had to Google that, because normally when you encounter something as ridiculous as this it’s pretty obvious where it’s coming from and why.

It’s ridiculous for all kinds of reasons, but one sticks out to me immediately.

Let’s say that using an AI Biden to craft campaign messaging is a thing that anyone should actually do. And let’s say that maybe it even works a little. What happens when he has to speak live? He’s still the president. He’s everywhere. Meeting with other politicians, talking to reporters, giving speeches, greeting regular folks. You can’t AI your way out of all of that, and a lot of it is going to be on video. That video is going to be seen, often by millions of people. And when it is, you’re right back where you started. The same old man has the same shortcomings, and now not only does he have those, but his campaign has a completely preventable credibility problem.

And don’t even get me started on putting generated by AI disclaimers on whatever the campaign produces. The moment I figure out that something that shouldn’t be is generated by AI, one thing happens. I don’t trust it. Make that two things, because I also resent it. Maybe I’m a naive fool, but I still feel like there are a few reasonable people left out there and that they feel the same way. If you’re trying to make your guy look like the honest one, that’s not the reaction you want.

And speaking of reactions you don’t want, if your goal is to convince me that AI is the answer, maybe sound less like a Republican talking about guns.

The use of AI renderings in political campaigns is becoming increasingly common, and the Republican Party has already embraced this technology and is using AI in their attack ads against the president. Instead of a race to the bottom, the Biden campaign could consider an ethical way to deploy the same tools. I have no doubt that should Trump reenter the White House, AI will be weaponized to generate MAGA propaganda. Just as the Obama White House missed an opportunity to demonstrate appropriate use of platforms like Twitter, failing to properly engage with advanced technologies will not stop their abuse and misuse by bad actors who follow.
Biden’s campaign could instead set the standard and norms for what should be reasonable use of AI tools in the campaign arena.

The only way to stop a bad guy with AI is a good guy with AI.

Yes, the threat of Trump is real. I understand feeling desperate. But this is 100 percent the wrong kind of desperate measure. The right thing to do is still what it’s always been. Put the focus on Trump and the rest of them. Much of their agenda is, despite appearances to the contrary sometimes, deeply unpopular. Make them run on it. Also, run on yours. There’s data that says things are better than they were under Republican control. Highlight that. And if you must de-emphasize Biden some, have others talk about him and the good the Democrats have done and will continue to do.

Will it work? I don’t know, obviously. But it’s a better option than trying to out Trump Trump and taking the risk of alienating voters who still find that sort of blatant dishonesty gross.

Deja Vu (But Worse)

If I’m being generous, I think I watched two minutes of the Trump Biden debate a couple weeks ago. I caught enough to know that Biden looked extra elderly and was probably sick with something and that Trump was still absolutely repulsive and completely full of shit. So I saw all I was ever going to see even if I had stuck around for the whole thing, in other words.

I felt bad for Biden at the time, and I still do. Everyone in the media is yelling and screaming that he needs to drop out of the race because he had a bad night and loses his train of thought sometimes, but nobody seems to be saying a damn thing about the rapist felon who helped stage a coup based on a lie and is completely unfit for office for so many other reasons beyond those being allowed to run in the first place? What a stupid country America can be. I’m ashamed of this entire spectacle, and I’m Canadian!

I was hoping that this songified Weird Al recap video would help me feel better about it, but it didn’t work. Somehow, I actually feel worse. Perhaps you guys will have better luck with it.