Somehow I’d been unaware that the Earthshot Prize exists, honoring “solutions to climate change and environmental issues.” There are five different winners annually, each receiving £1-million ($1.2-million).

CRANKY OLD FART #239 leftovers & links   Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2022

Wikipedia says the prize is “funded by donations
from philanthropists and charitable organizations, including: Aga Khan
Development Network, Bloomberg Philanthropies, DP World in partnership
with Dubai Expo 2020, the Jack Ma Foundation, Marc and Lynne Benioff,
the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, the World Wide Fund for Nature, the
Green Belt Movement, Greenpeace, Conservation International, and the
Bezos Earth Fund.” 

This article says that 2022’s “presenters at the televised award ceremony include Rami Malek,
Catherine O’Hara, Shailene Woodley, Clara Amfo and Daniel Dae Kim.”Well
… that’s something, I guess.Ideas are welcome, desperately needed, and it’s an idea, I guess. I’ll try not to scoff. This is me, zippering my mouth and not mentioning that the Earthshot
Prize seems like celebrity piffle while the world burns.
The only real solution to climate
change is setting up a worldwide super-agency to overrule the
dumb and deadly daily decisions made by governments and corporations everywhere, and of course, that isn’t going to happen. Governments and corporations wouldn’t allow it.

On a cheerier note, my cat has two perches, a lower perch where she sometimes scrapes her claws against a horizontal patch of carpet, and an upper perch, where she’s within easy petting distance of me in my recliner.Just now, she spent some time scratching the scratch-post, then leapt to her upper perch. When I didn’t reach over quickly enough, she stretched out her paw to tap my arm, as if to say, “Hey, it’s time to pet me.”When her paw touched me, we both got the small electric shock a carpet sometimes provides. Me and the cat both saw the spark, too, because I’m watching a movie so the bedroom lights were dimmed, and — oh my!The cat rocketed straight up in to the air, crashed into some junk behind my chair, and I laughed and laughed, and she scurried into the closet for safety.

Out of my recliner for a shopping trip, a car came out from one of the myriad parking lots, and stopped two inches before running me over. I curtsied and said, “Thank you for stopping,” and the driver flipped me off.Just another day, just another asshole.

Here’s the news you need,
whether you know it or not• Florida woman sues Velveeta, claiming its macaroni takes longer than 3 1/2 minutes There are four steps listed in the directions on the back of the package: Remove the lid and cheese sauce pouch, add water to the fill line and stir, microwave for 3 1/2 minutes then stir in the cheese sauce, which the instructions note “will thicken upon standing.”Amanda Ramirez won’t win in America’s system of justice, but she’s right. The box lies. Just the ‘thickening’ step, after the microwaving and everything else, takes about five minutes, in my experience.• A woman was jailed for ‘endangering’ her fetus, but she wasn’t even pregnant • When Florida’s child welfare system takes over care for a kid, their chances of being a victim of sex trafficking actually increase • Some child welfare workers say the system is racist • Mercedes puts faster acceleration behind a subscription paywall • Potholes, warped rail lines and washed-away roads: flood-hit regions face infrastructure crisis And it never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, because climate change isn’t ‘coming’, it’s underway. It’ll kill billions, and we’re not doing squat about it. • Lack of medical care makes jail a death sentence for a growing number of Americans And it never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, because all cops are bastards, or they know who the bastard cops are and do nothing about it, which is the same thing. 
• They believed Republican-fueled nonsense and sailed off the edge of the Earth And it never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, because Republicans are the enemy of common sense, common decency, simple truth, and democracy. 

Links I liked• How hospice became a for-profit hustle It began as a visionary notion—that patients could die with dignity at home. Now it’s a twenty-two-billion-dollar industry plagued by exploitation.• What comes next after abolishing parking mandates • A question journalism won’t ask • Meet Reiner Knizia: The man who’s designed over 700 board games • An oral history of the time six doctors swallowed Lego heads to see how long they’d take to poo • Electrical disruptions caused by squirrels • Chicken eyeglasses 

Mystery links
Like life itself, there’s no
knowing where you’re going• click
• click
• click

♫♬  Mix tape of my mind  ♫• “Dammit, Janet” — Rocky Horror Picture Show
• “Goodbye, Blue Sky” — Luther Wright and the Wrongs • “MacArthur Park” — Richard Harris• “Ride My See-Saw” — The Moody Blues• “Venus” — Bananarama• “Zonked” — Red Prysoc

The End• Hebe de Bonafini • Danny Kalb • Jay Pasachoff