Diary of a Fat Slob: A jumbo jet without wings

Leftovers & Links #48

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No jail time for rich white serial rapist.

Quote: "It seems to me that a sentence that involves incarceration or partial incarceration isn't appropriate, so I am going to sentence you to probation."

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They’re going to permanently park a Boeing 747, sans wings, between luxury high-rises in Seattle. The jet itself won’t be open to the public; it’ll house a bank’s offices.

Done right, having a dead airliner in your neighborhood could be kind of cool. This ain’t don’t right, of course. First off, a dead airliner loses most of its cool once the wings have been removed. This all sounds like something more for rich bastards to gawk at.

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Captain Lou vs. an abandoned Amazon delivery truck.

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Hacker tricked Robinhood tech support into revealing 5-million users’ data.

Every time you fill out a form with info you wouldn’t want bad guys to know, you’re gambling that some company will keep your data secure.

I’m not much of a gambler, but I wouldn't gamble on something called Robinhood.

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Usually there’s nothing more than lint inside a sweatshirt as I’m putting it on, but after lightly cleaning the living room here in my slovenly hovel, I pulled a long-lost sweatshirt over my head and discovered about three dozen dead flies. They’re presumably remnants of last summer’s fly infestation. Turned the sweatshirt inside-out to shake away all the flies, and now I'm wearing it for warmth in this wintery room.

You’d think a pile of dead flies might be disgusting, but it was fascinating. Unexpected science! Gotta ask why there were no flies outside the clothes, only inside. My theory was that in a fly apocalypse, with Raid being sprayed all over the room, the flies sought sanctuary in the soft/warm/dark inside of clothes discarded on the floor. However, several pair of pants were also discovered during the clean-up, and they're all fly-free.

My revised theory, then, is about color — the pants were all black, but the sweatshirt was white (long ago; now it’s beige with tan blotches). In an epidemic of insecticide, are flies attracted only to the inside of only white-ish clothes? I’ll let you know this summer.

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Vizeo, which I’d thought of as an electronics company, makes more than twice the profit via advertising and selling viewer data as it makes from selling TVs.

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One of my favorite old-time pop songs — Jump, by Van Halen — gets rejiggered into minor keys. It’s vandalism and it ought to be illegal, but it’s strangely amusing and not awful. Basically sucks all the joy out of the song, so it never would’ve been a hit or a anyone's favorite.

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The North Face continues to be a comically evil corporation, sending a cease-and-desist trademark infringement letter to journalists covering the company. The article includes a brief mention of the South Butt debacle from years ago, which cemented North Face as monstrous in my mind.

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How to impress the ladies.

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A San Francisco Muni driver critiques the bus scene in some new Marvel movie. Without seeing the movie because the movie looks stupid, these quips from Twitter are much more interesting than the work I’m supposed to be doing right now.

Yes, the text and images were originally from Twitter, but I couldn’t read it there because Twitter was not made for reading anything longer than a one-liner. Here the text has been tidied up, by Thread Reader, an app that "helps you read and share Twitter threads easily!" Which is a brilliant concept, hope they make a billion bucks, but it seems kooky that you need an app to make social media readable.

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Tilt your head a little sideways, and learn about the leaning tower of San Francisco, a/k/a Millennium Tower, the city's new skyscraper which insists on bending over.

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Saturday afternoon Ikea trip simulator

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We’ve all been there: you subscribed online with a few clicks, but there’s no click to cancel. That’s illegal, says the FTC.

Which reminds me, there’s a Federal Trade Commission. I haven’t heard any news about the FTC doing anything in years, but this is the sort of thing the FTC is supposed to do.

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This lady’s been driving this car for longer than I’ve been alive.

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

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Sing along with Doug:
Beginnings, by Chicago