Leftovers & Links #41

There are probably exceptions and it’s not one of the Ten Commandments or anything, but when a politician says “quite frankly,” quite frankly you’re about to hear bullshit.

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Never lead a life of quiet desperation. Make it loud.

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G20 offers little new on climate,

leaving uphill task for COP26

That’s a boring headline, to match the boring news.

Quote: The leaders only recognised "the key relevance" of halting net emissions "by or around mid-century". This removed the 2050 date seen in previous versions of the final statement so as to make the target less specific.

Let me translate that: The leaders of our planet couldn’t reach consensus that 2050 is “mid-century.”

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The City of Caves looks like someplace fun to visit, and I’d like to have a sandwich at Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, the oldest inn in England — pouring beer since 1189.

As with all travelogue daydreams, of course, it’ll only be a daydream. I’ll never fly again, and every aspect of international travel looks like a pain in the arse, so you'll find my corpse in my recliner.

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Coca-Cola pays $5.6B to

fully acquire BodyArmor

Quote: Food and beverage giant Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) has made its biggest-ever brand acquisition. It's paid $5.6bn to buy the remaining stake it doesn't own in BodyArmor, the American sports drink brand, getting full ownership.

The news here, to me, is that BodyArmor is a “sports drink brand.” I’ve heard of it, but (not kidding) I’d assumed it was deodorant. That's the only reason I clicked the link, wondering why Coke was expanding into antiperspirants.

Also, I don’t know what a “sports drink” is unless it’s like the icky Gatorade I had a few sips of in the 1970s. Pepsi owns Gatorade so yeah, Coke buying BodyArmor means it must be the Brand X to that disgusting concoction.

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In San Francisco, cornhole and cornholing means anal sex. In the midwest, though, cornhole is a wholesome beanbag tossing game. I’ve lived in Wisconsin since 2004, but it’s still startling when my boss mentions that she played cornhole with her in-laws over the weekend.

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Signal messaging app responds to

subpoena with “pound sand,” again.

Quote: Once again, this request sought a wide variety of information we don’t have, including the users’s name, address, correspondence, contacts, groups, call records.
As usual, we couldn’t provide any of that. It’s impossible to turn over data that we never had access to in the first place. Signal doesn’t have access to your messages; your chat list; your groups; your contacts; your stickers; your profile name or avatar; or even the GIFs you search for. As a result, our response to the subpoena will look familiar. It’s the same set of “Account and Subscriber Information” that we can provide: Unix timestamps for when each account was created and the date that each account last connected to the Signal service.

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At the grocery at 4:00 in the morning, I saw a woman with “Don’t talk to me” emblazoned in large letters across her hoodie. I asked her where she’d gotten that delightful garment, and she told me.

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The scope of the problem

with bullshit on social media:

Quote: ...in just the 30 minutes allotted for her talk, Facebook would take down 615,417 pieces of content, YouTube would take down 271,440 videos, channels, and comments, and TikTok would take down 18,870 videos. And, also, the Oversight Board would receive 48 petitions to review a Facebook takedown decision.

Yeah, but nobody needs to be concerned when two or six or 600 fools on Facebook are chattering about the lizard people putting microchips in SpaghettiOs. It’s only a problem worth worrying about when 50,000 people, or millions, are following the lizard people. Focus the takedown efforts on the big fish filling the tank with poop.

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That's too many grasshoppers.

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You can tour the narrowest house in NYC, or buy it, for $5,000,000.

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I had a pimple coming in on my left thigh, making wearing pants quite uncomfortable, so it's lucky I’m working from home. Too much information? No, too much information is never enough.

What works best is jamming a moist towelette where skin rubs against skin, and leaving the moisty there for a few hours. Zit at noon, no zit at six.

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Mystery links — Like life itself, there’s no knowing where you’re going:

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Sincere tip 'o the hat:
BoingBoing
Captain Hampockets
Follow Me Here
Hyperallergic
Messy Nessy Chick
National Zero
Ran Prieur
Vintage Everyday
Voenix Rising
EXTRA SPECIAL THANKS:
Becky Jo
Name Withheld
Dave S.
Expensive works of art are trading cards for the rich.
11/3/2021
Leftovers & Links