The Weekly Whatever: "Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Delta and Omicron!"
Note: Last week I noticed the newsletter platform had been inserting URL redirections to track clicks. This wasn’t something I had requested, and I’ve turned it off.
Questionable decisions
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UK bomb squad rushes to A&E after a man gets an unexploded mortar shell stuck in his rectum. The man insists he tripped and fell onto it.
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A man in Maryland tries to get rid of snakes from his $1.85m home by lighting a fire indoors to fill the place with smoke, then leaving. The mansion burns down in a blaze that takes 75 firefighters to control.
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Austrian surgeon found guilty of gross negligence for amputating the wrong leg. (He’d marked the patient’s body to prevent errors, but had marked the wrong leg.)
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Texas man who bought a Lamborghini with coronavirus relief money gets sentenced to over 9 years in prison.
Health and safety
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San Francisco cuts cannabis taxes to help dispensaries try to compete with unlicensed dealers.
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Missouri public health department examined statistics to see if mask mandates worked to slow the spread of COVID, found that they did, and so kept the information secret.
Science
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Merging black holes could create a true vacuum that could destroy the universe, but humans are probably doomed to go extinct a lot sooner than that.
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Man complains of trouble breathing, is told he has grown a tooth in his nose.
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At last you can drink your coffee out of a cup made from sperm.
Law and order
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Minneapolis police have a bad reputation even amongst other Minnesota police forces. Perhaps that’s why a whistleblower killed himself after Minneapolis TV station KARE-11 outed him to police.
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Singapore sentenced a homeless man to 7 weeks in jail for not staying at home during the pandemic.
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FBI document lists which messaging applications they can most easily spy on. TL;DR: Use Signal.
Protests
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Still not over it, a Greek Orthodox priest heckles the Pope for being a heretic.
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QAnon follower decides he’s tired of waiting for The Storm, writes a letter to Donald Trump, Putin and JFK Jr. to complain.
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Hackers are sending anti-work manifestos to printers left unprotected on the Internet. (Tip: If you have a network printer, turn off JetPrint / port 9100, it’s a huge security hole and you don’t need it to print from any modern OS.)
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After protests from PeTA, CVS bans greeting cards featuring chimpanzees wearing human clothing.
Technology
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This week’s multimillion dollar craptocurrency loss is thanks to another “smart” contract bug.
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Some musicians are unhappy that the CEO of Spotify is investing in AI battlefield analysis company Helsing.ai.
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Ex-Google employees sue the company for violating the “Don’t be evil” part of the company’s code of conduct.
Texas news
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Billionaire Mark Cuban buys an entire town south of Dallas. The town features a strip club, a trailer park, and a population of 23 plus one alligator.
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Bookmark this one: Greg Abbott guarantees the lights will stay on in Texas this winter.
Seasonal delights
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Finally, a smartphone stand that will blend in with the tableware at your family Christmas dinner.
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Microsoft sells Minesweeper-themed ugly Christmas sweater.
Content recommendations
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How the FBI discovered a real life Indiana Jones – in Indiana.
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Did you read in The Atlantic about free speech being threatened on college campuses? You probably did, because the Koch Foundation paid the magazine to run 20 articles on the topic over the course of 18 months.