The Weekly Whatever: Sadly The Omicron Variant isn't a new Robert Ludlum novel
Pandemic news
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Austrian brothel offers free entry to anyone who’ll get vaccinated on site.
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A man goes to a COVID party to get infected so he can build immunity without having to get vaccinated. You’ll totally guess what happens next.
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Antivax doctors attend an in-person COVID conference in Florida. You’ll totally guess what happens next.
Very normal people
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Passenger on a Delta flight to Atlanta refuses to stop breastfeeding her cat.
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Tory MP says that Doctor Who being a woman has left young men with no genocide-committing TARDIS-stealing role models.
Law and order
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US National Police Association would like you to stop recording police officers.
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Armored truck spills cash across a California highway and drivers go wild. Police would like the money back, apparently asset forfeiture is only OK when they do it.
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School removes student project about fascism after armed campus police complain.
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Arizona firefighters rescue a dying baby, so the local for-profit ambulance company files a formal complaint.
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Rittenhouse says he fired his first lawyer, Lin Wood, over Wood’s insane election fraud and QAnon beliefs. Said lawyer now wants the $2m bail money he raised to be returned to him, but Rittenhouse’s current lawyers argue that the money was raised for Rittenhouse, so he should get to keep it.
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After being found guilty in four defamation cases, Alex Jones is begging for money to save himself from bankruptcy.
Climate news
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Thanks to climate change, the Smithsonian museums are flooding.
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Swedish authorities finally come out and say the obvious: We need to ban Bitcoin mining if we’re going to have any hope of hitting our climate change goals.
Consumer news
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Walmart pulls a children’s toy that swears, and sings in Polish about doing cocaine.
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Horse meat potato chips? Or how about fugu?
Actual good news
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Apple starts notifying activists who are being targeted by state-sponsored attackers, including users in Thailand and Poland.
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Lush quits Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, saying the social networks are “beginning to feel like places no one should be encouraged to go”.
Recommended reading
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The “Pictures for Sad Children” webcomic story — what happened to Simone Veil?
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Antivaxx Holocaust — why antivaxxers comparing themselves to Jewish victims of the Holocaust is not just breathtakingly offensive, but historically inappropriate as well.