New Zealand Bookworm

I've never been more devastated that I'm going to miss an event in my life. What a fucking icon.

She expected maybe 5-10 people to show up. There were about 100.

I gave out scotch eggs to commemorate the occasion.

She gave a beautiful speech, was blindfolded, then kicked REAL good. Crumpled. Gave us a thumbs up.

Applause. Then the flute. Then a moment's silence.

> got asked by someone what a species of bird was bc I "looked like someone who would know"

Every time you ask Copilot to write you a PowerShell script to stroke your boss' ego, a city experiences a brownout.

Every time you chat with your AI "girlfriend" a farmer doesn't get to water their animals.

IMO the problem is much broader than people using AI as consumers. These companies don't respect or care about the human costs at all, and getting upset specifically at the AI part is missing the bigger picture and potentially allowing the companies to obfuscate their issues by winding back or mitigating the shallower issues of AI but leaving the rest of the nightmare dystopia horseshit intact.

Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.

So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.

June 4, 2025 - Dockers at a major French port on Wednesday refused to load a container with machine gun spare parts bound for Israel, saying they “will not take part in the ongoing genocide (in Gaza) orchestrated by the Israeli government,” according to broadcaster Franceinfo.

Dockers at the port of Marseille-Fos have set aside a container containing "spare parts for machine guns," and they "will not load it onto the ship bound for Haifa" in Israel, the Gulf of Fos branch of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) announced in a statement.

The union confirmed that it was alerted by several networks that 19 pallets of Eurolink belts were to be shipped to Israel on Thursday. The Eurolink belts are spare parts for machine guns used by the Israeli army.

The Old Man of the Lake is a log that floats around the lake. It is somewhat strange in that it floats vertically. It's roughly 30 feet tall, with only about 5 or so feet sticking out above the surface of the water. It was first 'offically' recorded in the early 20th century, though there are oral reports of it as far back as 1896 (and likely earlier still given the cultural importance of Crater Lake to the Klamath tribe of that area.

The Old Man should have rotted away long ago or at the very least become waterlogged and sank into the water fully, but nope. Over a hundred years, and there is this log still in the water just floating.

So y'know how I said the fact that it floats vertically was 'somewhat strange'? Let's get into some actual strange territory regarding the Old Man. It moves. Against the wind. It has been recorded moving in paths that do not make sense, never getting stuck on the shore of Wizard Island, nor the area of shore around the lake. Now that's strange.

So now let's get freaky: The free-floating Old Man posed a hazard to boats since it moves, and only a small portion of it was above water. (though personal boats are no longer allowed on the lake) Anyway, in 1988 a team was using a small submersible to explore the lake. The scientist figured it'd be a good idea to moor the Old Man near the coast of Wizard Island out of their way, for safety. So they tied some rope to it, to move the Old Man. As soon as they did so, the clear blue skies of a warm August day turned dark. The wind kicked up, bad, and it started to rain, then hail, then snow in the span of a few minutes...again in August. Now snow in that area is common, but not in the summer months. It gets super warm in that area in summer (like 70 to 90 degrees on average) So the scientists decided to nope the fuck out of the water, because of this freak storm. They unmoored the Old Man, preparing to get the fuck out of dodge of this summer snowstorm. As soon as the rope loosened and was in the water, as quickly as the storm had come on them, the darkened skies cleared and it was once more a fine sunny summer day.

"The Old Man floats vertically through the lake on a calm day"

"THE OLD MAN FLOATS. VERTICALLY. THROUGH THE LAKE ON A CALM DAY"