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September 21, 2019

The Weekly Whatever: Earth, Wind and Fire Day edition

Quote of the week

That’s when I realized that while this might have been the first time I was allowed on social media, it was far from the first time my photos and stories had appeared online. When I saw the pictures that she had been posting on Facebook for years, I felt utterly embarrassed, and deeply betrayed.

There, for anyone to see on her public Facebook account, were all of the embarrassing moments from my childhood: The letter I wrote to the tooth fairy when I was five years old, pictures of me crying when I was a toddler, and even vacation pictures of me when I was 12 and 13 that I had no knowledge of. It seemed that my entire life was documented on her Facebook account, and for 13 years, I had no idea.

Woodpecker engineering

  • Man breaks into shooting range online POS system, changes employee names to Boople Floof, Noodle Holder, Glock Meister and Jimmy Cracked Corn.

Wait, what?

  • Halloween store introduces sexy tariff costume.

  • FDA rules that some diabetes drugs must warn users of the risk of flesh-eating genital infection.

Dystopia technologica

  • Digital Recognition Network is a private surveillance network of 9 billion license plate scans, available to law enforcement.

Threat Level Orange

  • Man praised by Trump for his heroism during the El Paso shooting made up his story according to police.

  • Trump pushing the US towards exiting the international postal mail system.

That’s some mighty fine police work there, Lou

  • Phoenix police have a union contract allowing all record of misconduct to be quietly erased from official files.

  • County Sheriff discovers that one of his deputies has a recording of him making racist comments, so he allegedly encourages another man to kill the officer.

Well, fancy that!

  • Johnson & Johnson knew fentanyl was being abused 18 years ago.

  • Scientists have decoded babies’ babbling. They’re bossing you around.

  • Pennsylvania Republican state senator who opposed legislation meant to help victims of child sexual abuse is arrested and charged with possession of child pornography.

  • Chinese exporters have ignored Trump’s tariffs, and the burden has fallen entirely on US consumers and businesses.

We’re fucked

  • North America’s bird population has dropped by 29% since 1970.

  • Algal bloom on the beaches of Brittany can kill you in seconds.

  • Data visualization shows you average temperature for your location from 1895 onwards, as a series of colored stripes.

Get out your tiny violin

  • The super-rich are being scammed onboard their private jets.

  • Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer says his client’s life has been ruined.

Sick, sad world

  • UK school asks students to write a suicide note for their homework.

  • E-cigarette company Juul gave presentations to 9th grade schoolkids about how vaping was “totally safe”.

  • Michigan State Health Director, told that Flint water could kill people, responds with “They’ll have to die of something“.

  • Firefighters forced to dodge after massive semen explosion.

  • Woman makes her dream come true; unfortunately it’s the dream about eating her engagement ring.

Not The Onion

  • Pennsylvania judge rules that raccoons are not subject to the law.

This should end well

  • Explosion at Russian lab that stores ebola and smallpox.

Schadenfreude Friday

  • Neo-Nazi web site The Daily Stormer is down unless they can find $11,000, as their ISP is no longer willing to host them for free.
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