samhexum

Jimmy Kimmel interviews himself from 20 years ago:

Actually, it's Janet... Ms. Jackson if you're nasty!

Japan completed naming its 30-man roster on Thursday for the World Baseball Classic, which includes outfielders Lars Nootbaar of the St. Louis Cardinals and Masataka Yoshida of the Boston Red Sox. Nootbaar has a Japanese mother but grew up in California and does not speak Japanese. He is the first to play for Japan in the WBC who qualifies because of his ancestry. Japan announced its first 12 members earlier this month, including the Los Angeles Angels' Shohei Ohtani, San Diego Padres pitcher Yu Darvish and Chicago Cubs outfielder Seiya Suzuki. Nootbaar said a few weeks ago at a Cardinals event in St. Louis that he does not speak Japanese but is working on it with his mother, Kumi Enokida. "I am going to try [to speak] a little bit," he said. "Obviously it's going to be tough to learn a language in a month. I'm going to try my best. My mom is singing the Japanese national anthem in the house. I'm repeating it. We're just doing little stuff like that."

Ogden Nash The Eel I don’t mind eels Except as meals. And the way they feels.

Interesting characters.

$2.09 Stop & Shop Fat Free Milk 1/2 gallon | $0.03 / oz $2.19 Stop & Shop Fat Free Skim Milk 1 quart | $0.07 / oz Uhh... interesting pricing policy. There's no sale, btw.

For nearly a year and a half, a Massachusetts high school has been lit up around the clock because the district can’t turn off the roughly 7,000 lights in the sprawling building. The lighting system was installed at Minnechaug Regional High School when it was built over a decade ago and was intended to save money and energy. But ever since the software that runs it failed on Aug. 24, 2021, the lights in the Springfield suburbs school have been on continuously, costing taxpayers a small fortune. “We are very much aware this is costing taxpayers a significant amount of money,” Aaron Osborne, the assistant superintendent of finance at the Hampden-Wilbraham Regional School District, told NBC News. “And we have been doing everything we can to get this problem solved.” Osborne said it’s difficult to say how much money it's costing because during the pandemic and in its aftermath, energy costs have fluctuated wildly. “I would say the net impact is in the thousands of dollars per month on average, but not in the tens of thousands,” Osborne said. That, in part, is because the high school uses highly efficient fluorescent and LED bulbs, he said. And, when possible, teachers have manually removed bulbs from fixtures in classrooms while staffers have shut off breakers not connected to the main system to douse some of the exterior lights. Still, having the lights on at Minnechaug all the time is a conspicuous waste of taxpayer money, Wilbraham’s town selectmen said in an Aug. 8, 2022, letter to the members of the Hampden-Wilbraham Regional School District. “The image it projects is one of profligacy in a time when many families in the communities the District serves are struggling with their own energy costs,” they wrote. But there’s hope on the horizon that the lights at Minnechaug will soon be dimmed. Paul Mustone, president of the Reflex Lighting Group, said the parts they need to replace the system at the school have finally arrived from the factory in China and they expect to do the installation over the February break. “And yes, there will be a remote override switch so this won’t happen again,” said Mustone, whose company has been in business for more than 40 years. Minnechaug is the only high school in its district and serves 1,200 students from the towns of Wilbraham and Hampden. The original high school building, which dates back to 1959, was replaced with the current 248,000-square foot structure in 2012. One of the cost-saving measures the school board insisted on was a “green lighting system” run on software installed by a company called 5th Light to control the lights in the building. The system was designed to save energy — and thus save money — by automatically adjusting the lights as needed. But in August 2021, staffers at the school noticed that the lights were not dimming in the daytime and burning brightly through the night. “The lighting system went into default,” said Osborne. “And the default position for the lighting system is for the lights to be on.” Osborne said they immediately reached out to the original installer of the system only to discover that the company had changed hands several times since the high school was built. When they finally tracked down the current owner of the company, Reflex Lighting, several more weeks went by before the company was able to find somebody familiar with the high school’s lighting system, he said. In the meantime, Lilli DiGrande, who is now a 16-year-old junior and a co-editor of The Smoke Signal, the online high school newspaper, published an article on Nov. 3, 2021, with the headline “What’s Wrong With The Lights?” “The teachers were complaining because they couldn’t dim the lights to show videos and movies on the whiteboard,” DiGrande told NBC News. “The teachers now try to get around it by unscrewing light bulbs. But the lights seem to be on everywhere in the school.” Soon, Wilbraham’s town selectmen began hearing complaints from residents. “The Board of Selectmen members have received, and continue to receive, complaints regarding the lights being left on at night at Minnechaug Regional High School,” they wrote in their Aug. 8, 2022, letter. “The lights that are being referred to are the classroom lights, not the outdoor lights. There is a significant amount of concern expressed by citizens that this is a waste of energy and, in turn, taxpayer dollars.” The town leaders added that “this issue may be one of lesser cost or importance in the overall operation of the District, but it is, unfortunately, a visible one.” Osborne, along with Schools Superintendent John Provost, assured the town leaders they had been working on the problem. “After many weeks of effort, we were provided a rough estimate in excess of $1.2 Million to comparably replace the entire system,” Osborne and Provost wrote in an Aug. 26, 2022, response. That estimate was from Reflex Lighting, Osborne told NBC News. But with the pandemic raging, the contractor would not have been able to start doing the job until the following summer, Osborne said. So Osborne and Provost, in their letter to town leaders, wrote that they hired a software consultant to see if it would be possible to “patch the system” to override the default system. And when that proved unworkable, they explored the possibility of having simple timers installed or even an on/off switch. “This was eventually deemed not possible and the district moved on to looking at physical solutions that would retain some of the energy-saving intent of the original lighting management system,” Osborne and Provost wrote in their response. Osborne said they had no choice but to go back to Reflex Lighting and, with the help of the company’s electrical engineers, they came up with what he described as a “piecemeal” approach to solving the problem by replacing the server, the lighting control boards and other hardware. In November 2021, the parts were ordered and the repair job was supposed to start in February 2022. But the replacement main server wasn’t delivered to Wilbraham until March 2022, which Osborne and Provost described in their letter to town leaders as “relatively on schedule.” “It was very frustrating, but we were dealing with the pandemic and supply chain issues,” Osborne said. Osborne and Provost also reported that “the remaining equipment has been back ordered multiple times” and the district was given a new delivery date of Oct. 14, 2022. “While we are hopeful this will be met, we are of course skeptical,” they wrote. “So, for now, the lights are stuck on.” It turned out they were right to be skeptical. The Christmas 2022 season came and went and the replacement parts were not delivered and the lights remained on at Minnechaug. “The final lighting system transition did not happen over break as expected because our vendor contacted us on the last day school was in session to reschedule the transition work,” Osborne said in a subsequent Jan. 3 letter to the Hampden-Wilbraham Regional School Committee. “This was surprising and disappointing to us: we had this date locked with Reflex since October.” Now, Osborne said, “we’re not expecting them to come until February, but we are pushing to do it sooner.” But he's confident that waiting it out was the right decision. “We could have accepted the $1.2 million bid to rip the system out and start over right away, but I suspect we would find ourselves in the same position,” he said. “As I see it, there wasn’t an alternative.” Mustone said the pandemic essentially shut down the factories in China that produce the components they need to do this kind of work. He said it’s a lot cheaper to build things over there, but lots of American companies like his are now paying the price. “I have been doing this for 42 years and I have never seen this kind of supply chain disruption,” he said. “We made a deal with the devil by moving the factories to China.” https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/lights-massachusetts-school-year-no-one-can-turn-rcna65611 I can hear Vicki Lawrence singing... That's the years that the lights stayed on at Minnechaug...

Julian Sands, a British actor known for films like A Room with a View and Leaving Las Vegas, is missing after he was last seen hiking California's Mt. Baldy on Friday. A spokesperson for the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department confirms to Yahoo Entertainment that "search and Rescue crews responded and began a search." The news comes as Southern California's mountains have been pummeled by storms in recent weeks. "Due to trail conditions and the risk of avalanche, the ground crews were pulled off the mountain on Saturday evening," a spokesperson shared on Wednesday. "However, we continue to search by helicopter and drones when weather permits. We will schedule another ground search when the weather improves, and it is safe for our ground crews." This is another example of why exercise & physical exertion are bad for you.

A Los Angeles judge declared that Ron Jeremy is mentally incompetent to stand trial on dozens of rape and sexual assault counts. Superior Court Judge Ronald S. Harris said in a hearing that after reviewing reports from both prosecutors and Jeremy’s defense that he is in “incurable neurocognitive decline” from which he is unlikely to recover. Prosecutors asked that he be periodically reevaluated. A hearing on placing the 69-year-old Jeremy, whose legal name is Ronald Hyatt, in a state hospital will be held next month. Jeremy, who has remained in jail since his arrest in 2020, did not attend the hearing.

You deserve a break today... One man’s trip to McDonald’s made no cents. TikTok user Josiah Vargas, who goes by the username @dookiedoeboy, has claimed that when he swung by his local McDonald’s drive-thru to grab a quick bite to eat, he was handed a bag full of cash in addition to his requested sausage McMuffin. The video, which has climbed to more than 891,000 views and topped 205,000 likes, showed Vargas opening his to-go bag and apparently finding wads of money inside. “What’s in this bag? Their f–king deposits,” Vargas said in the TikTok video as he revealed Ziploc bags full of bills. “Just a couple thousand dollars here,” he noted. “Like, what is this? Why would they do this? “Now I have to return this because I’m a good person, I guess,” added Vargas, who didn’t state the location of the restaurant. Vargas then turned around to return the moolah to the restaurant. “Why would you guys do this to me? Do you know how bad I want this money?” Vargas seemingly asked himself as he got out of his car. When he gave it back to the employees inside, he jokingly asked them if they were laundering money. The crew working that day seemed to be quite relieved that they got their cash back, as a chorus of “Oh, my Gods” erupted between them. One staff member can even be heard saying that she wanted to give Vargas a hug and take a picture of him. “They were just all hugging me and thanking me and crying, and I get free McDonald’s for a month, I guess,” Vargas said to his camera when he was back in the car after doing the good deed. He also claimed they gave him a $200 reward. However, even though Vargas did the right thing by returning the cash, some commenters on TikTok admitted they wouldn’t have done the same if they found themselves in that position. “Nah I’m McKeeping that,” one user joked in the comments section. Another agreed, writing, “I would literally be like, ‘The universe has blessed me.’ and drive away. Lol.” One person chimed in: “Yeah I’m not giving the money back, McDonalds will be ok,” while one commenter even claimed that Vargas most likely saved the employees’ paychecks. “Someone kept their job because you did the right thing good on you man,” they wrote. In a follow-up video, Vargas admitted that he later went back to McDonald’s — but this time, they had no idea who he was. “They put my name down and my number, and I had to pay for my two McChickens and a Sprite, which is fine. I’m not too worried about it,” he claimed. “That’s a McRipoff!” one person commented in response.

A Canadian woman who caused $10 million in damages after driving drunk, crashing into a house and causing an explosion is now suing the concert venue that provided her alcoholic beverages — as she claims the owners are to blame. The “car bomb” fiasco occurred in August 2019 while Daniella Leis, 26, was driving home from a Marilyn Manson concert at the Budweiser Gardens arena in London, Ontario, the CBC reported. After drinking at the show and getting behind the wheel, Leis crashed her Ford Fusion — registered to her father — into a brick home at 450 Woodman Ave., rupturing a gas line and triggering a massive explosion that destroyed four houses and injured seven people. Falling embers led to blazes in several homes nearby — and the entire neighborhood had to be evacuated, with gas and water service shut off in the area. All told, the blast reportedly caused damages in the neighborhood of $9.8 million to $14.7 million. “The financial impact of Ms. Leis’ actions have been enormous, with a total damage estimate approaching $15 million,” Judge George Orsini told the court. Meanwhile, victims included two police officers and two firefighters who suffered numerous injuries, with one firefighter forced to spend more than a week in a hospital before being discharged. Leis subsequently pled guilty to four counts of impaired driving, and was was slapped with a three-year prison sentence in 2021. However, the Canuck wasn’t about to throw away her shot at easing the financial strain. This month, she and father Shawn Leis filed a lawsuit against Ovations Ontario Food Services, the company that distributed the hooch. They claim that the libations purveyor shares liability for the blast on the grounds that staffers “ejected Leis from the venue while failing to take steps to ensure she would not drive home,” according to the legal documents. In addition, Leis also alleged that Ovations had served her alcohol while aware that the bargoer was intoxicated, accusing them of putting “profit above safety,” and that the resulting damage was “caused or contributed to by the negligence, breach of duty, breach of contract” by the bar. As reparations, they believe that the booze distributor is responsible for “any awards or judgment amounts” resulting from multiple court claims levied against them by Woodman Avenue victims. That is, if the father-daughter duo is required to pay any amount, then they are “entitled to contribution and indemnity from [Ovations].” God forbid there should be some personal responsibility accepted!

Affordable Housing Lottery Opens for 12 Units in Jackson Heights, Studios Start at $2,171 Per Month

Meryl Streep has signed on for season 3.

We've had a few threads referencing puppy play, but they all seem to be too old to revive. Who let the dogs out? IKEA shoppers were forced to put together something other than furniture when two men dressed as dogs appeared to be “walked” by a third man in the store, according to a Twitter video posted Sunday. The video, shot by a man named Alan Watson, showed the trio at the food court near the showroom with the two “dogs” wagging their tails. “A guy just taking his 2 dogs a walk in IKEA Edinburgh,” he captioned the video, which has been viewed over 36,000 times as of Tuesday morning. The group gained many stares from shoppers, including one father with his kid, as the group made their way through the cafeteria. In BDSM, this behavior is commonly called “puppy play,” in which one party dresses up as a dog and exhibits similar characteristics as part of role-play, sometimes conducted in both public and private. Many people on Twitter also expressed their shock at the appearance of the “pups.” I wonder what the local leash laws are. After all, the man could get fined for walking his dogs off their leash. https://nypost.com/2023/01/17/ikea-shoppers-shocked-as-man-walks-human-dogs-in-store/

Eating just one portion of freshwater fish — such as trout or carp — could expose people to potentially toxic chemical compounds, according to a new study. The findings, which were published by Environmental Research, revealed that eating even a single serving of freshwater fish per year could be equal to one month of drinking water laced with high levels of perfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS, that can be harmful to one’s health. Very low doses of PFAS in drinking water have been linked to suppression of the immune system, including reduced vaccine efficacy, and an increased risk of certain cancers. They are also linked with increased cholesterol and reproductive problems, among others. “People who consume freshwater fish, especially those who catch and eat fish regularly, are at risk of alarming levels of PFAS in their bodies,” said Dr. David Andrews, who led the study, according to South West News Services. These PFAS are made up of a group of more than 9,000 different chemicals — some of which are already banned or highly restricted — that can be found in non-stick cookware and food packaging. The chemicals don’t break down in the environment, therefore they build up in our bodies. “PFAS do not disappear when products are thrown or flushed away,” said Dr. Tasha Stoiber, the study’s co-author. “Our research shows that the most common disposal methods may end up leading to further environmental pollution.” To perform the study, scientists analyzed data from over 500 samples of fish filets collected in the United States over a two-year period, from 2013 to 2015. They also found that PFA levels were higher in fish in the Great Lakes as well as those fish caught in urban areas. Researchers discovered high levels of so-called “forever chemicals” in fish caught in lakes and rivers. The forever chemical found at greatest concentrations in freshwater fish was PFOS, or sulfonic acid, averaging roughly three in four of total PFAS detections. The research found that median amounts of PFAS in freshwater fish in the US were an astonishing 280 times greater than forever chemicals detected in some commercially caught and sold fish. They estimate that there may be more than 40,000 industrial polluters of PFAS in the United States, including manufacturing facilities, municipal landfills, wastewater treatment plants and airports. The contamination of water has spread PFAS to soil, crops and wildlife, including fish. “The extent that PFAS has contaminated fish is staggering,” said Nadia Barbo, the project’s lead researcher. “There should be a single health protective fish consumption advisory for freshwater fish across the country.” https://nypost.com/2023/01/17/eating-freshwater-fish-may-expose-people-to-toxic-chemicals-study/ Every other week we're told something different about what's healthy to eat. Now we have to know the fish's backstory to know if it's healthy to eat? What's a buff, health-conscious simpleton like me supposed to do?

How could anyone think of her without hearing Fred Flintstone serenading her cartoon doppleganger? In a desperate effort to convince Fred that she needs a maid to help her in household duties, Wilma carries wood logs while moaning and groaning, feigns lassitude, complains of brittle hair, and uses mascara to produce dark circles under her eyes as a symptom of Hemopoopalitis, of which the treatment is restful recuperation. Fred touches Wilma's eye circles, finds thick mascara on his finger, and knows that Wilma is faking her misery. So, Wilma changes tactic by crying loudly enough for Fred to relent and agree to hire a maid, though finding the necessary money to pay her salary will be difficult without an increase in earnings from Slate at the rock quarry. The maid is a lively Italian named Lollobrickida, who cooks a delectable menu. Unbeknown to Fred, Lollobrickida cannot abide bad singing, and after Fred's bombastic morning aria ("Oh, Lollobrickida, your food I diggeda!") in the bathroom shower, she broaches the topic of dish-shattering and ear-hurting song to Fred, but he forestalls her complaint with a promise to serenade her day and night in appreciation for her cooking, then swiftly departs home to go to his job. Lollobrickida could not work for Fred under such torturous conditions and, while Wilma is visiting Betty, quits her Flintstone maid position. And a famous daughter in law.

Netflix has uncoupled itself from this show.

Who cares(?), as long as he made it safely! A kind Irishman who stopped traffic to help a koala across a busy Australian highway has been praised for the sweet gesture. Will Thornton went viral this week after he was filmed carrying out the heroic traffic operation. Mr. Thornton is seen, barefoot, stopping traffic on a dual carriageway in Burleigh Heads as the small fury traveler crawled across the infamous busy Gold Coast Highway yesterday. “Our Irish son-in-law escorting koala across Gold Coast Hwy in Burleigh Heads this morning,” Katrina Boyle, who posted the video to Facebook, wrote. The 39-year-old told the Courier Mail he spotted the critter while having coffee on his balcony. “Myself and my wife were having a coffee on the balcony, and we noticed a koala coming out of the tree below us, and I thought it was pretty cool,” Mr. Thornton said. “He started moving towards Gold Coast Highway, I thought that would be bad, so I bolted down to help him. “He was hellbent about getting across the road. “He just sort of kept going so I had to try and stopped the traffic. I didn’t really know what the hell I was doing. “I was trying to get the cars to look.” Mr. Thornton said road users were “pretty understanding” of his demands when they saw the animal he was trying to help. “You can see in the video there’s a cyclist he had a good chuckle at me, people gave me the odd thumbs up,” the good Samaritan said. His act has now been viewed millions of times online with the public overwhelmingly praising the man for his good work. Thornton was greeted with praise online after the selfless act of helping the innocent koala was posted. Conservationists said the video should serve as a reminder that suitable koala habitats are shrinking. “Southeast Queensland is an area that has been massively impacted by clearing, largely for development and transport,” Dave Copeman from the Queensland Conservation Council told The Guardian. “We’re at the point where we just can’t have any more clearing going on – we are destroying koala habitats,” he said. “The really distressing reality is koalas face extinction in the wild if we don’t turn around the current trajectory. The science is clear.” Koala breeding season generally runs from September to February, meaning the sleepy marsupial can become more active and mobile in spring and summer months. https://nypost.com/2023/01/13/irishman-in-australia-helps-koala-cross-highway-in-viral-video/

Geez, Texas allows pugilism at a very young age! As your brother can probably confirm, bears are known to be very anti- (forest) fires.

A home-alone Labrador retriever was scarfing down holiday cookies when she accidentally turned on a gas stove, sparking a fire that nearly destroyed a suburban Frisco, Texas home, video of the canine shenanigans shows. Twitch, a silver lab, made her way into the kitchen through an open dog gate while her owner was at a relative’s house Christmas morning, Dallas’ Fox station reported. The 3-year-old was feasting on the counter near the gas range — lapping up holiday sweets — when flames started spreading in the kitchen, video obtained by the station shows. “She just pushed so perfectly and turned the stove on,” owner Megan Black said. Black was alerted that fire alarms were going off and was able to see the blaze from her home surveillance system on her phone. She then quickly called her neighbor. “Just broke down because my home was on fire,” the homeowner recounted through tears. “It was terrifying. The whole day was kind of a blur.” Her neighbor rushed to help, taking Twitch and a second pooch outside to safety. She then threw water on the flames, extinguishing the blaze before the fire department arrived. The downstairs level of the suburban Dallas property was gutted in the fire, and the entire home had smoke damage. The family will be staying in a rental for around four-to-six months. “I was never mad at her, never,” the forgiving dog mom said of Twitch. A 10-year-old boxer named Asher was also in the house, and was unharmed in the ordeal. https://nypost.com/2023/01/12/dog-starts-texas-house-fire-while-eating-cookies-off-kitchen-counter/ I hope her homeowner's insurance covers acts of Dog.

This macaroni move is giving Italian-American comfort food fans some serious agita. Pastina, the tiny, star-shaped pasta boiled for soup or prepared with butter and heaps of Parmesan cheese, could be in danger of becoming extinct after US-based brand Ronzoni announced Tuesday it would cease production of the product. The shocking communiqué had carb lovers begging the brand to reconsider — and prompted online petitions, hoarding and price-gouging, with bids for a box starting at $20 on eBay. “After extensive efforts, we regretfully announce that Ronzoni Pastina is being discontinued,” the brand posted on Instagram, citing supply-chain issues. “Unfortunately, our long-term supplier informed us that they would no longer be making Ronzoni Pastina as of January 2023,” the brand continued. “We searched extensively for an alternative solution, but were unable to identify a viable option to make Pastina in the same beloved small shape, size and standards you have come to expect.” While other brands make pastina, Ronzoni is a household name for many fans, who expressed their devastation on social media. When I was a young'n this was a staple in our home, but I think I bought it once as an adult.

I remember that after that great romance fizzled, he changed his name to McHale and joined the navy.

You're plagiarizing somebody's rentman ad, admit it.