I can think of worse crimes

Kinston, NC, doesn't get a lot of snow. But in February, they got 15", breaking a record that has stood since 1927. 

One thing about living in a place that's not a stranger to snowfall, people pretty much know how to get through it. There are snowplows. Mounds of sand and rocksalt. Although I am always surprised when there's a first-storm-of-the-season rush on hardware stores for shovels, most folks do have a shovel around. And if they're smart, a 40 pound balt of ice melt. Or at least an 8 pound shaker. 

Yes, people get into a pre-storm panic and quickly strip the grocery store shelves of bread, the coolers of milk. But those of us in Snow Country have useful skills, like knowing how to drive in the white stuff. And mostly, we know enough that, when "they" suggest that we stay home, we stay the f home. Curfews are only for insane blizzard conditions. Not your average 15" dump o' snow.

Snowy weather skills are honed over generations, and even when we haven't been having bad winters for a stretch, when they do happen race memory kicks in and we know how to cope. (We've had pretty lousy winter in these parts. Most snow in the last five years, and the coldest winter since 1977. Heating bills are sky high, but at least bitter cold helps tamp down rat reproduction. So there's that.)

But Kinston, NC - while it gets bad hurricane season rotten weather - doesn't get a lot of bad snowy weather. So the mayor of this small city (population roughly 20,000) set a curfew. Unless you were working, you were supposed to stay in. Which means that you couldn't be out and about.

Apparently, the problem for Jonathan Hackett was that he didn't have a place to stay, so he couldn't help but be out and about.

But he found his way to the Little Caesars where he used to work. They hadn't changed the key code from his time there so, push a few buttons and - voila - Hackett was in. (He claimed that the manager gave him permission to spend the night. Not clear whether that was in fact the case.)

With time on his hands, and the storm raging, Hackett did what any old pizza shop worker might do: He started making pizzas. (Give a man the ability to make a pizza, and he'll have work for life...) What do you do with a pizza? Why you can always give it away for free. Or so the message started spreading via Facebook. 

So, figuring that Little Caesars was making a goodwill gesture to the snowbound community, a few folks decided curfew-smurfew and showed up for their free pizza. 

But the enterprising Hackett decided he could make a buck. He started selling pizzas for $5 a pie, which even though Little Caesars in Kinston, NC is pretty inexpensive, was at least a slight bargain. (Some buyers said they were charged $10, which is closer to the standard price for a pizza.)

All in all, Hackett claims to have sold 10 pizzas, so he pocketed maybe $50 bucks.

He took off at some point, but when he arrived back at the shop, he encountered the manager and her family there. They had been at work, prepping the business for the next day, and decided to camp out there on a snowy night.

Everyone was asleep, when someone heard a noise. It was Hackett in the room. The [manager's] husband was awakened by a figure in the room: Hackett. That’s when the fight ensused. The husband told police that he was “about to do my thing” when Hackett swung at him and ran, so he chased Hackett down, confessing to police that he was “whooping his ass.” His son came outside, saw his dad holding Hackett, and “did what he had to do.”

The manager called the police, and told them that they’d detained a trespasser. When two officers showed up around 9:30, Hackett was being held down outside, bleeding from his face. For his part, Hackett told the police that he didn’t know why he’d been chased and beaten up. Again, even though he was a former employee, he said that the manager had given him permission to come into the Little Caesars to sleep. He did admit to selling pizzas, though. (Source: Jeremy Markovich, NC Rabbithole)

Hackett is facing a few felony charges - including B&E, larceny - and a couple of misdemeanor counts, including violating the Kinston curfew. In addition to getting his "ass whooped," Hackett could end up serving a prison sentence for his troubles. 

If this is all they have on him, I hope that Jonathan Hackett doesn't end up in the hoosegow for a couple of years. I can think of a lot worse crimes than breaking and entering a pizza shop and selling a few crappy pizzas to folks just looking for some comfort food on a snowy night. 

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Image Source: Little Caesars Peoria Facebook

One potato chip factory...

I am an absolute sucker for local products that make it big, especially food products. Some of my favorites - but of course! - are from Worcester: Near East Rice Pilaf. Polar Soda. Table Talk Pies.

I always have a couple of boxes of Near East rice/pilaf/couscous in my kichen cabinets. In my fridge, there'll always be some Polar Soda. (I especially like the diet orange and the diet cranberry. Mixed together, it's a wonderful combo.) I don't have any Table Talk Pies around, but when I go to a Woo Sox (Red Sox AAA team in Worcester) game - which I do a couple of times a season - I always get me a pie-let, even though they rarely if ever have my favorite, which is cherry.

A local food favorite that broke out of local availability into nationwide presence doesn't have to be from Worcester. I like Brigham's ice cream. And since I first had one, decades ago, Cape Code Potato Chips, has been my chip o' choice. 

As I write this post, there are no bags of Cape Codders in my kitchen, but there is an empty bag in my kitchen wastebasket. 

So I was sad to read the news that those chips, as of April, will not longer be made in Massachusetts. The OG plant in Hyannis is closing down, and 49 employees will be losing their jobs.

In a statement, the company said the Hyannis plant produces just 4 percent of the Cape Cod and Kettle brand chips, while newer plants in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Pennsylvania produce the majority. The move will end production of Cape Cod chips in Massachusetts. (Source: Boston Globe)

The company, by the way, is not Cape Cod Potato Chips. It's Campbell's, as in soups in red and white cans. They acquired Cape Cod back in 2018. I can't say I remember this acquisition, but I'm sure I was aware of it at the time. As I'm sure I would have feared that, post acquisition, chip quality would go down, and those yummy Cape Codders would no longer be so Mm! Mm! Good!

Purists may notice a difference, but I can't say that I have. Cape Cod Potato Chips remain my brand. (I favor the sea-salt originals, but also like the russets.)

Still, sorry to see the chip production leave Hyannis, even though it's unlikely that the chips in the bag I just consumed were actually made locally. I fished the bag out of the trash, but there was no indication of where the chips were produced. All I learned was that the chips were distributed by Cape Cod in Hyannis.

Probably not for long.

The Hyannis site “no longer makes economic sense for the business,” the company said. “Production will be transferred to more modern and efficient plants, enabling a more agile and flexible manufacturing network” while maintaining quality. 

Blah, blah, blah-di-blah blah.  And, for the employees who are about to be pink-slipped, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, life goes on.

Campbell’s said it will provide “impacted employees with separation benefits, job placement support and guidance on how to access state assistance programs.”

The company said it plans to connect with Cape Cod organizations that “offer culinary entrepreneur programs, workforce development, and career pathways” in the hospitality industry. It will also allow nonprofits to apply for grants from the Campbell Foundation, which targets communities where the company has operations.

Good luck to the laid-off employees. I can't quite figure out how working on a manufacturing line can translate into culinary entrepreneurship, but, then again, I am singularly lacking in careerish imagination. Good luck to them all!

And I do have to say that there was something a bit romantic about Cape Cod Potato Chips actually being made on Cape Cod as opposed to, say, Wisconsin. The sea salt from Wisconsin won't exactly be local. And while I know that Wisconsin has a titanic lake next door. And dunes. It's not the same. No one ever wrote a song about Wisconsin that holds a candle to Old Cape Cod. 

If you spend an evening, then you'll want to stay.
Watching the moonlight on Cape Cod Bay.
You're sure to fall in love with old Cape Cod.

Sentimental me. (Oh, boo-hoo.) 

Makes me want to go out and get a Party Size bag of Cape Cod Originals. (And while I'm in a pro local mood, a quart of Brigham's Mocha Almond ice cream. I'll hold off on the Table Talk Pie until I get to Worcester for a Woo Sox game.)

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Image Source: Cape Cod Chips. 

Guilty until proven innocent

Hard to believe it's been over a month now since Nancy Guthrie went missing. Hard to believe they haven't found something: Nancy (dead or alive), the kidnappers. 

I cannot begin to imagine what this poor woman is going through/went through. Nancy Guthrie is/was eight years older than I am, and she sure looks like she could be someone I know. Part of the alumni commitee I'm a member of. A fellow volunteer. A neighbor. Someone cruising the same shelves at the library looking for a bunch of good reads. A nice, pleasant "older lady" who looks like she doesn't have a mean bone in her body.

I cannot begin to imagine what her poor family is going through. There's the act of the kidnapping. But even worse is the not knowing. It's god-awful to sit through a death watch. It's god-awful to lose someone you love. But not knowing what your loved one is enduring/has endured? Not knowing if they're alive or dead? Not knowing if you'll ever know? Unimaginable.

It's also unimaginable to be an innocent bystander, someone who had less than zero to do with this heinous crime, yet find yourself a prime suspect, plastered all over social media and having civilian vigilante crime-stoppers stalking you (and your family) online and up close and personal.

As has happened to Dominic Evans, a Tucson grade-school teacher who had the ill luck to have been the drummer for Early Black, a band for which Nancy Guthrie's son in law Tommaso Cioni is the bassist. Early on, Cioni was named (by someone, somewhere) as the prime suspect in Guthrie's disappearance. ("The authorities" - and they've been none too authoritative here - have since announce that all the family members, including Cioni, have been cleared.)

Evans, who is 48, also became a prime target because of his criminal past. I.e., Internet sleuthers, in their zest to solve a crime, unearthed the fact that 27 years ago, when Evans was 21, he was arrested "for drunkenly swiping a calculator and watch while out at a bar." Crime of the century, that. 

Anyway, as things do, speculation about Evans' culpability went viral.

The accusations were levied online, but they have become a real-life nightmare for Mr. Evans and his wife. They hid in their bedroom with the lights off that night, too frightened to pick up their son from his grandmother’s house, for fear of being followed. Days later, another swarm of journalists, livestreamers and gawkers photographed the family’s home and knocked on their neighbors’ doors. (Source: NY Times)

When the speculation hit the fan, the Evans' asked their parents to keep their two youngest overnight. They told their teenage son not to come home. Evans had spoken with investigators (legit ones) and, while he hasn't yet been cleared, they haven't reached out to him in the weeks following the first interview. Looks to me like no one suspects Evans of anything. 

Yet when the doorbell camera pictures of the ski-masked man on Nancy Guthrie's doorstep were released, online "crime solvers" decided that yep, the guy was Evans. 

The lives of Evans, his wife, his children have been turned upside down. No, it's not the same degree as what the Guthrie family's experiencing, but it ain't nothing, either. 

“I feel like someone’s taken my name,” Mr. Evans said. But for what reasons? “I don’t know — monetary, clickbait, to be relevant, entertainment — but there are innocent people that get hurt.”

Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos (who, regretably, has come across as something of a Barney Fife throughout the investigation) recently said that, while no one other than Guthrie's family (inclding Tommaso Cioni) has been ruled out as a suspect, he feels bad for Dominic Evans. 

“He’s going through hell, and it is horrible,” Sheriff Nanos said. “And I don’t know what to tell him except he probably should be speaking with some attorneys and sue some of these people for libel...I wish I could jump out and defend every single one of them that’s been falsely accused,” he added.

Good luck to Evans if he does decide to sue. I'm sure the defense will be some combination of First Amendment, we were just thinking out loud, we meant no harm, we were just trying to help. Not to mention that most of the social media Sherlocks probably don't have two nickels to rub together. 

The "accusatory onslaught against" Evans has been dying down, and life is getting back to the new normal.

But the lasting effects are clear. The other day, Mr. Evans worried that a man was following him at a department store. Ms. Evans can’t help pulling out her phone and searching her husband’s name — she wants to know in advance if people might mob their neighborhood.

“None of this is real, but there’s so much of it,” Ms. Evans said of the speculation. “How can anyone decipher or catch all of it?”

Problem is, you can't.

I feel plenty bad for Nancy Guthrie, and for her family. They're going through hell. But I'm also feeling plenty bad for Dominic Evans and his family, collateral damage in the hunt for Nancy Guthrie and her abductor(s). And in the eyes and limited little minds of the nothing-better-to-do-brigade of amateur crime solvers, guilty until proven innocent.

Look, I understand just how entertaining it is to poke around the web googling "stuff." Way back in 2013, when the Boston Marathon Bombing occurred, I spent hours haunting the web. And when they released the names of the bombing brothers, I found info on Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev - where he was a student, what he was studying - before it hit any of the news sites. 

But finding "stuff" out is one thing, keyboard and phone vid rampaging around accusing innocent people of crimes they didn't commit is quite another. Get a life, folks. And if you can't get a life, why not STFU rather than keep hurting the lives of others.

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Image Source: Screen Daily

AI AI AI AI!

I'm a pretty big Ken Burns fan. I love, love, loved The Civil War, Baseball, The Vietnam War, Country Music. If I had to pick a favorite, tie goes to Baseball and The Vietnam War. I remember a lot about Baseball. Understandably, as it paid a lot of attention to the Olde Towne Team. The Vietnam War I recall in far less detail, other than that I was heartsick (and often crying) while watching it.  

Yes, there's a sameness to Burns' work, a familiar trope that unites them all. The old documents and pictures, the talking heads, the "you are there" shouts and shots, the period music. (Even if it's faux period. Seriously, who cares if The Civil War's "Ashokan Farewell" was written in 1982, not 1862?) But I love the way he so skillfully weaves everything together. And I always come away from a Ken Burns' series having learned a few things.

That said, I was a bit underwhelmed by The American Revolution, his latest. Yes, it was interesting. Yes, I loved the local history. (While out and about, I pass the site of the Boston Massacre a couple of times a week.) And yes, I learned stuff. Like just how bloody (literally) awful it all was. Still, it's not one of my favorite Ken Burns' outing. 

Yet I would watch it on endless loop before I'd sit through the entirety of Darren Aronofsy's new “On This Day… 1776,” a series of (blessedly) short videos that chronicle one event that took place during that so-critical year of the founding of the United States. 

Aronosky is a well-known director - that is, well-known other than to me (although I believe I've seen bits of Black Swan - who has chosen to do without the expense of using human actors, actual horses, period costumes, and real locations and "create" everything using AI.

I watched a couple of them. “The Flag” focuses on King George blithering and "our" George (Washington) raising the first, pre-Betsy Ross version of the American flag. “Common Sense"  features Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin who is depicted as something of a droll little Muppet. they were pretty creepy. The "characters" - if you can call them that - are affectless, hollow-eyed, affectless. The "acting" - if you can call it that - is wooden, probably because the mouths don't sync up with the dubbed voices.

You didn't need the little early-on disclaimer that states "altered or synthetic content" is being used. That's pretty obvious from the jump.

It looks like a video game. And if it's supposed to be stirring, engaging, emotionally satisfying, well, let's jus say it's not like hearing Sullivan Ballou's letter to his wife being read while "Ashokan Farewell" plays softly in the background.

Here's what Gizmodo (a tech news site) had to say:

The series uses human voice actors who belong to the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), which is clearly an attempt to tamp down on the inevitable backlash from both inside and outside Hollywood. Folks inside the movie and TV industry have fiercely pushed back against the use of AI to replace the skilled artists and actors who create the media we watch. That concern obviously comes from a place of self-interest because nobody wants to be pushed out of a job. But they also care about the quality of the work being produced. And there’s also been a revolt among the average consumer, people who’ve been inundated with the lowest-grade AI garbage imaginable. It’s really everywhere now. (Source: Gizmodo)

 Writer Matt Novak further characterized it as AI slop that "looks like dogshit."

Over time, we can expect a couple of things. The quality of AI-generated movies will no doubt improve. There'll be real actors behind some of the AIs, who may be just as happy to accept half pay to lend their name and voice without having to show up on location and do multiple takes. There'll be AIs who don't represent an actual human being at all. But they'll have backstories, social media presence, and adoring followers. 

And moviegoers will grow to accept the soulless enterprise that is AI when it enters the creative realm.

AI has its place, its uses. Trouble is, it's going to be creepily creeping in to places where we'd be better off without it.

Guess we'll have to take the advice of the Ay-Ay-Ay-Ay song and canta no llores. (Sing, don't cry.)

Meanwhile:

Gizmodo reached out to Ken Burns for comment, but didn’t immediately receive a reply 

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(Image Source: CineD)

Mar-a-Lago Face

I suppose it's one of the more benign aspects of the entirely regrettable Reign of Trump. It's not the lying, the boneheaded tariffs, the embrace of Russia and the rejection of Europe, the racism, the anti-science, the destruction of respected institutions, the violence, the white nationalism, the venality, the weaponization of the Department of Justice ("Justice"?), the villification of any and all opposition. It's not the astounding corruption. It's not the Epstein files. It's not the prevalence of the hallmarks of authoritarianism: the Cabinet meetings with their interminable asskissing - straight out of the Idi Amin playboo - the rote glorification of Trump by each Cabinet member; the insane egotistical need to have things named for him, monuments erected to him; the Putin-Saddam Hussein-Ceausescu gilding of the White House; the ludicrous pursuit of the Nobel Peace Prize; the even more ludicrous acceptance of the FIFA "Peace Prize." It's not even the day to day pettiness, insults, and stupidity that just wears you down. 

The Mar-a-Lago look for women may be relatively benign in comparison to all of the above, but it sure is a peculiar aspect of the Trump era. 

The two most prominent Mar-a-Lago faces are probably those of Kristi Noem and the now-exiled Kimberly Guilfoyle. 

(We'll ignore Melania here. While she appears to have had beaucoup d' work done - whether it's enhanced her natural beauty or made her look weirdly robotic I'll leave to others to decide - Mel hasn't embraced the full Mar-a-Lago face aesthetic, which has plumped up lips as a principal feature.)

Kristi Noem is naturally very pretty. If you look at pictures of her as governor of South Dakota - before we knew her as the puppy-killer cosplay Barbie who heads up the Department of Homeland Security - she was pleasantly attractive. Now Noem's had the puffy lip treatment, the bronzing, the cascade o'curls hairdo, etc. And she looks artificial. In a role that presumably calls for seriousness of purpose, for gravitas, she's cavorting around like one of Charlie's Angels. (If only they'd drafted Donald Trump to play Charlie, rather than promote him as some sort of business genius on The Apprentice, we could have been spared an awful lot of grief.) Weird, no? But apparently the preferred aesthetic. 

Then there's the once pretty and now hideously overdone Kimberly Guilfoyle. I suppose I should ignore her, as she's been swept aside by Don Trump, Jr. for a younger, wealthier, and more attractive socialite. But when she was on the A Team, or at least its fringes, Guilfoyle went full Mar-a-Lago face + Mar-a-Lago body: lips, hair, bronzer, boobs - and revealing, tight-fitting clothing that she cavorted around in during Trump rallies. Wonder how Kim (and her "work") are holding up in Athens, we're she's the US ambassador to Greece? Probably doing fine over there, out-divaing Maria Callas.

Guilfoyle reminded me of the Palm Beach Trump supporters who are regular presences at Mar a Lago. Lots of makeup. Long curls. Push up and push out bras. Skin tight clothing. And unwavering support for DJT. 

(It also reminds me of what the once-pretty first wife Ivana Trump looked like/dressed like in the years before her death. Colossally made up and crazy looking Interesting, while Ivanka and Tiffany Trump have both had plenty of work done, especially Ivanka, neither has opted for the full Mar-a-Lago look.)

Seriously, does anyone find this aesthetic attractive (other than Trump cultists)? Who wants to look like a Bratz doll brought to life? Some women, apparently. 

Anyway, with Trump in office, the look took off. 

But it seems that:

...as quickly as it rose, the trend may already be losing steam.

...According to recent reporting from USA TODAY, cosmetic professionals and social media watchers are beginning to see signs of fatigue. Searches and inquiries tied directly to the “Mar-a-Lago face” label have slowed, and online conversation has shifted toward newer aesthetics. Despite its ubiquitous appearance at the Trump’s New Year’s Eve party, what once felt like a dominant cultural signal now registers more as a punchline or perhaps a relic of a particularly loud political moment. (Source: Salon)

Good riddance is all I can say. 

Can't wait for the day when we no longer see Kristi Noem, sporting those pouty lips and full-of-baloney curls, wearing her "sexily" positioned baseball cap or cowboy hat, lying about innocent civilian protestors, calling them domestic terrorists. Lying about using neo-Nazi imagery, wording, and music to recruit ICE agents.

Can't wait for the day when we're no longer subjected to weekly videos of Trump dining at his club, with the other tables occupied by paying customers all kitted out in the over-the-top bling that passes for fashion at Mar-a-Lago. (What's going to be the after market for those natty Trump sequined pocketbooks?)

...What remains, though, is the lesson the trend offered while it lasted. The Mar-a-Lago face revealed how ideology can become aesthetic performance, how political identity can be signaled visually rather than verbally, and how consumer culture eagerly monetizes belonging. Cosmetic procedures, once framed primarily as personal choice, became a form of affiliation, something to display, post and brand. 

Grey hair. Thin lips. Wrinkles (and lucky me: thanks to genetics and avoiding the sun, I have precious few of them). Comfy, never in style, never out of style clothing.

Glad that my brand -  aging liberal - doesn't cost a penny.

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Image Source: MaL Women FB Anonymous Works

Image Source: Bratz Doll MGA Entertainment

"Catch me if you can"? Will do!

When I was a kid, I avidly read the book The Great Impostor, which chronicled the exploits of one Ferdinand Waldo Demara, a Massachusetts-born conman who, among other things, forged (fake) careers as a Trappist monk, Benedictine monk, engineer, teacher,  psychologist, prison warden, lawyer, and surgeon. He also founded a college that, miraculously, is still in existence. That many of his exploits involved Catholic institutions made the story all the more interesting to me. (The book formed the loose basis for a movie of the same name, with Demara played by Tony Curtis. I'm sure I saw it at some point, and may look it up one of these days.)

Fast forward to Catch Me If You Can,

a very enjoyable 2002 movie starring Leo DiCaprio as Frank Abagnale, conman extraordinaire. Like DeMara, Abagnale (supposedly) impersonated a doctor, lawyer, and airline pilot along his merry way. As an airline pilot - which is a little scarier a thought than being a lawyer, and a lot scarier a thought than being a doctor, but is REALLY SCARY, I don't think Abagnale ever actually flew a plane. He just deadheaded (cadged free flights), forged checks, and recruited (and physically examined) potential stewardesses - guess that's where being a fake doctor helped.

(Having found it difficult enough to fake my way through professions I was actually skilled at and/or educated for - like waitress and product marketer - the idea of making a career up out of whole cloth is fascinating to me.)

Frank Abagnale isn't the only one who pretended to be a pilot to fly for free. 

Federal prosecutors accused a Canadian man on [January 20, 2026] of doing just that, charging him with wire fraud for a scheme in which they say he pretended to be a pilot and a flight attendant to get hundreds of trips for free.

The man, Dallas Pokornik, used a false identification badge to defraud three airlines of travel benefits, according to an indictment filed in federal court in Hawaii. Mr. Pokornik, 33, had previously worked for a Toronto-based airline as a flight attendant between 2017 and 2019, court documents said, but not as a pilot. (Source: NY Times)

Impersonating a flight attendant for a free flight - which many airlines provide to colleagues at other airlines - is bad enough. Fraud, sure. Theft, absolutely. But pretty much no harm, no foul. And bad enough he scammed his way into free seats in the cabin. On some of his free flights - and there were many of them over the course of four years, on several different airlines - Pokornik, pretending to be a flyboy, asked for and was given a jump seat in the cockpit. Where, presumably, he could have been called on to assist if something happened to the pilot or copilot. Given that his in-flight experience was as a flight attendant, what was he going to do? Offer the other pilot a Biscoff cookie or a barf bag? 

The airlines Pokornik defrauded weren't named in the article, but "one [was] based in Honolulu, one in Chicago and one in Fort Worth." I'm a pretty good guesser, and I'm guessing Hawaiian Airlines, United, and American. I've never flown Hawaiian, but, yeah, I've been on United and American plenty of times. Wonder if Pokornik was ever in the seat next, or maybe even in the cockpit?

Pokornik is in line for a hefty fine and prison sentence. Wonder if it'll end up being worth the free flights he conned his way into?

Pokornik flew down the "catch me if you can" gauntlet, and apparently the airlines took him up on it. 

Anyway, he's grounded now.

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Image Source: Netflix

The Office Park from Hell

In 2024, Shunda Park "materialized and metastasized" almost overnight in the middle of nowhere on the Myanmar border. Unlike office parks that support companies in a wide range of businesses, Shunda - which was run by a Chinese criminal network - from the jump was built and operated for one business purpose only: running lucrative scams. 

There, over 3,500 workers representing nearly 30 countries toiled away under attaboy/attagirl signs reading “Dream chaser,” “Keep going,” “Making money matters the most.” 

Some of those workers had been scammed themselves, thinking that they were getting plum tech and marketing jobs, only to find themselves working at the office park from hell. 

Others thought they were checking out merchandise for online sales businesses. Instead, they were hustled at gunpoint across the river that demarcates the border with Myanmar...(Source: NY Times)

However the new employees managed to arrive, they were quickly onboarded to their new employment reality. 

...all had become skilled in the art of the online grift. When the scammers bilked $5,000 out of someone, they struck a Chinese gong. A $50,000 shakedown earned a celebratory pounding of a giant drum, then an offering to a Chinese deity resplendent in his golden altar. 

This was not just a Nigerian prince email scam center, but a highly sophisticated enterprise that used a complex approach to suckering in victims from around the world:

Using generative intelligence and deepfake videos, as well as fraudulent businesses, websites and financial apps, the scammers at Shunda embraced the long con and reeled in people from almost every demographic.

Then last November, the park was overtaken by the Karen National Liberation Army, one of a number of different rebel groups battling the military junta that took over Myanmar a few years back and plunged the country into a brutal civil war. 

Karen forces closed Shunda down, and most of the scammers had dispersed, but the Times jounalists were able to speak with some of the remaining scammers "both those who were trying to return home and others who wanted to find another job in the fraud business." (Hoping for another job in the fraud biz? Huh? Do what you know, I guess.)

The now unemployed scammers recounted receiving beatings, being shackled, not - no surprise there - getting paid. There were punishment chambers, torture cells:

Ivan, a Malaysian who once worked as a member of the ground staff at the Singapore airport, said he was chained in a crucifixion position and denied food for days.

“You think you know hell,” he said, “and it’s actually even worse.”

Who among us hasn't joked about work being a torture chamber, a gulag? And is there anyone who hasn't seen one of those galley slave cartoons? The beatings will continue until the morale improves. But, yikes, when it comes to torture chambers, this was the real deal. The unreal deal. 

At Shunda, there were some actual paid employees, Chinese nationals who ran the show and lived pretty well in the Shunda compound. There were restaurants. A night club. A basketball court. Nice cars. The bosses lived in "luxury" villas. But some of the Chinese workers were also conned, paid far less than they were promised.  

Despite the fact that Shunda - now destroyed in large part - is in the middle of an active war zone, with Karen forces going at it with the Myanmar military, many of the Chinese workers are reluctant to be repatriated. Their fears are reasonable enough.

 The Chinese government has periodically cracked down on the scamming industry, arresting Chinese workers who are repatriated. So tense was the situation that days before our visit, some Chinese workers had tried unsuccessfully to wrestle weapons away from the Karen soldiers, according to members of the militia and other scammers who witnessed the melee.

One might think that the destruction and occupation of Shunda would give pause to the Chinese outfits that ran them.  Maybe they should be looking to set up shop someplace that's not a civil war zone under active bombardment and featuring armed skirmishes. But no. Not far from Shunda, "scam centers [are] being built, Chinese red lanterns hanging from the eaves. 

As one of those inspirational signs from Shunda said, “Making money matters the most.” 

Guess so.

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Image Source: AP via NPR

Death of a pizza parlor phone order taker

On Christmas Eve, the Upper Crust on Charles Street - my go-to pizza place for the past 20+ years - closed. At first, I thought they were doing a reno, but after the first of the year a sign went up saying that they had closed. Their next closest outlet on Newbury Street was already gone, and after that...Well, I like being able to order my pizza and go pick it up. This worked well, as the Charles Street location was about a 2-minute walk. I suppose I could switch to delivery, but that always seems to add a whole lot of wait time into the process.

So no more Upper Crust. (Oh, boo hoo.)

I liked their pizza, and they had a pretty straightforward website to order from. Or you could call in and have a human take the order down. Neither method was foolproof. Once in a while they screwed up. But it worked pretty well.

Pizza order screw ups do tend to happen on occasion.

For a while, there was a good deep dish pizza - Bel Canto - on Charles Street, with a yummy whole wheat crust, a very tasty red sauce, and lots of interesting toppings. My favorite combo was broccoli and walnuts; my husband's was pepperoni, anchovies, and jalapeno. We used to do half and halfs. One time when we went to pick up, they gave us a spinach-only, which we were not interested in. I wish I could have seen the look on the person's face when they opened the box and saw our order.

One time, in anticipation of a blizzard, Jim and I ordered an extra-large super-deluxe from the late and surely lamented European Restaurant in Boston's North End. Extra-large was the size of a coffee table, so we figured one would hold us for a couple of snowbound days. The super-deluxe had everything on it, but I don't do anchovies, so we asked for no anchovies on half. Well, they made us two extra-larges - one with anchovies, one without - but when they realized their mistake, they only charged us for one. Those pizzas lasted to infinity and beyond and even I, an ardent lover of cold pizza, finally got sick of looking at it while the blizzard raged around us.

Both the Bel Canto and European mixups were pre-Internet. So were both phone orders, which is actually my preferred way even post-Internet. I like having the person take the order repeat it back to me, even though there were inevitably occasional human errors.

But now it seems that some pizza shops are starting to deploy AI. 

Crush Pizza [small local chain] is one of many small restaurants across New England and the country taking orders and fielding other calls using AI, a move helping cut costs and staff amid slim post-pandemic profit margins, inflated food and labor costs, and ongoing labor shortages. These technologies have been met with resistance from some customers who said they can’t get the service they are used to. 

Tony Naser, who rolled out AI answering systems at both of his Massachusetts-based Crush Pizza locations and another chain, Mickey’s N.Y. Pizza in New Hampshire, said many customers were “surprised,” and some “standoffish,” after the change. (Source: Boston Globe)

Most clients, Naser says, have come around, but I'm guessing that plenty are still not happy. They're probably just gritting their teeth and unhappily accepting one more human touch has given way to technology.

The technology Naser is deploying is from Loman.AI, an Austin TX startup with a website that boasts "Meet your new best employee, an AI phone agent for restaurants." Well, that doesn't exactly give me much by way of the feels. Who needs human employees, anyway?

And what's with the name Loman.AI. Loman is not the name of either of the co-founders, so where did it come from? How many people are there out there who don't hear the name "Loman" and think Willy Loman, the sad and suicidal lead character in Death of a Salesman. Or is Death of a Salesman no longer read? Anyway, a peculiar (and peculiarly depressing IYKYK) name for a company, me thinks.

Loman - AI, not Willy - says that their AI ordering system has an accuracy rate of 98.6 percent, which they compared to a 94 percent accuracy score found among data-taking receptionists in an entirely different industry. (Trust me when I say that marketers have a tendency to glom on to such favorable comparisons, whether they make sense or not.)

Outlets that have adopted AI ordering say that most people order online, anyway. So taking humans off the phone is no big deal.  And for them, AI ordering handles the phone orders better. No phone ringing off the hook; no geting put on endless hold; no disconnects. Unfortunately, the folks who still order via phone rather than online tend to want to use the phone to connect with another human. 

Tony Naser has become a big proponent of AI phone ordering. After all, larger chains/franchises like Chipotle and Domino's have been using such services for years. Why can't the mom-and-pop chains like his enjoy the same benefits? 

Naser said he feels local stores are being held to a different standard even as more large chains phase out human receptionists.

“You can’t call a lot of these big fast food chains. So why do customers get upset when a smaller mom-and-pop shop wants to try to get a little technological advancement or be a little bit more efficient?” Naser said.

Naser's got a point. 

But so do the folks who just want to have some human interaction. And so do the folks who want other folks to have jobs, even it's a crummy pizza parlor job for a high school kid answering phones and screwing up an occasional order. And there's no doubt that those jobs are going away. Loman says that two-thirds of their clients are able to cut staff by roughly one "human" shift per day. So, death of a pizza parlor phone order taker.

Where it all ends up, I don't know. 

My immediate worry is where I'm going to get pizza the next time I'm hankering for a sausage, ricotta, and roasted red pepper from Upper Crust? Sure hope another pizza joint goes into the space they just vacated.

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Image Source: Loman.ai

Remarkably, Bill Belichick makes Bob Kraft look good

Locals have now had a week to recover from the Patriots' Super Bowl loss.

My recovery is blessedly complete. In fact, I was fully over the loss as soon as I finished watching Bad Bunny's excellent halftime show. By that point, the handwriting was on the scoreboard and I figured the Pats were toast. So I turned off the SB and turned on All Creature Great and Small on PBS. 

I was pretty mixed on whether I wanted the Pats to win to begin with. I'm a frontrunner, fair weather fan, but I did watch a few games this year once the team got good. I liked the coach and what little I knew of the team. So go Pats!

But I can't stand the Trumpist team owner Bob Kraft, especially given that, shortly before the Super Bowl, he made a pointed and highly publicized appearance at the premier of Melania, the apparently pointless puff-umentary about FLOTUS. 

So, I was there watching the Big Game rooting for the team to win, but for Krafty to lose. Guess I couldn't lose.

I was also cheered by Kraft's not getting elected to the Football Hall of Fame. In truth, given some of the crappy team owners who are "enshrined" in Canton, Ohio, Kraft probably should be there. But Kraft has been shamelessly lobbying for election, almost but not quite exceeding the aggression and zest with which his BFF has begged for a Nobel Peace Prize. 

A week before Kraft was dissed, former Pats' coach Bill Belichick also failed to make the Hall of Fame cut. The rejection of Belichick's candidacy is perhaps even more ridiculous than Kraft's coming up short on the ballot. Love him or hate him, Belichick wears an awful lot of Super Bowl rings, and that all can't be 100% attributed to wonder-GOAT Tom Brady. But Belichick is a gruff, snide jerk, so he didn't get voted in his first time on the ballot. In large part because he's a jerk. (As an aside, if being an a-hole were a dealbreaker for election to the Football Hall of Fame, there probably wouldn't be ten people in there.)

An interesting aspect of these dual HofF snubs is that Belichick and Kraft have been at odds for the past few years. One of their main beefs was Kraft having engineered a documentary, The Dynasty, which pretty much ignored Belichick's role in all those Super Bowls wins. 

In the aftermath of the documentary, there's been some back and forth sniping between Bill and Bob. But when Belichick failed to make the Hall of Fame, Kraft was supremely gracious. The Pats' owner:

...issued a glowing statement on his former coach, acknowledging their differences, then saying, “He is the greatest coach of all time and he unequivocally deserves to be a first-ballot Hall of Famer.” (Source: Boston Globe)

How to Belichick return the favor?

Well, on the eve of the Patriots' ignominious Super Bowl appearance, Belichick appeared with his girlfriend at a UNC basketball game while she was wearing an Orchids of Asia tee-shirt. Orchids of Asia was the Florida massage parlor where, back in 2019, one Robert Kraft was arrested for engaging in prostitution. The charges were dropped in 2020, but the reputational damage had been done. And the million jokes and memes regarding Kraft's not-so-happy ending have still not exhausted themselves. 

Anyway, as The Boston Globe's Dan Shaughnessy wrote:

This was nothing less than a declaration of war on the Krafts. It almost guarantees that the Belichick-Kraft feud will never end, and creates a world in which it’s impossible to imagine Belichick ever being inducted into the Patriots Hall of Fame. [Note: not to be confused with the the overall Football HofF.] 

Did Belichick really need to remind the world that, whatever success he achieved in the NFL, he's now a mediocre college coach at the University of North Carolina. And did he really need to remind the world that for the past few years he's been embarrassing himself by having his 24-year old girlfriend Jordon Hudson hanging on his arm - and humiliating himself by having Hudson (50 years Belichick's junior) call the PR shots for him. This isn't the first time she's made him look like a fool. And it likely won't be the last. 

But what was Bill Belichick thinking? That this stunt was funny? That it made him look cool?

Agreed that it is kind of funny, but it made him look like petty and nasty. Which may well be Belichick's true self. But it sure doesn't make him look like a mature, accomplished, pretty darned great football coach who should absolutely be in the Football Hall of Fame. Belichick may think his GF is polishing his brand, but all she's doing is tarnishing it.

What's remarkable to me is that Bill Belichick is actually managing to make Bob Kraft look good.

Shaughnessy speculates that the Football Hall of Fame voters will come to their senses, and that both Bill Belichick and Bob Kraft could well end up getting elected next year now that the voters have vented their initial spleen and shaking their animus out of their systems. This would put them together on the dais at Canton in 2027 when next year's winners are inducted. 

Won't that be a wonder to behold. Not a big football fan, but I could well tune in for that show.

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Image Source:  Savage Sports on X

Skeletons in the closet?

Certainly, everyone's entitled to a hobby. 

Personally, I've never had one - if you don't count reading, watching the Red Sox, or fretting over the news - but if someone wants to go all-in on stamp collecting, painting still lifes, gardening, or cupcake decorating, well, have at it. And if you can monetize your hobby, well, have at that, too.

But what do we make of one 34-year old hobbyist/entrepreneur Jonathan Gerlach?

A Pennsylvania man has been charged with stealing and desecrating dozens of skulls, bones and other remains from a historic cemetery, the authorities said. The local prosecutor described the case as “a horror movie come to life.” (Source: NY Times)

The charges against Gerlach - and there are hundreds of them - include abuse of a corpse; theft; burglary; criminal trespass; intentional desecration of public monuments, venerated objects, and historical lots and burial places. As of early January, he was being held on $1M bail.

Gerlach had collected over "100 sets of human and skeletal reamins from his home and storage unit." Under surveillance, skulls and bones were seen "in plain view" in his car. Yikes! Whatever happened to bobble head doggos and "my kid's an honor student" decals? And:

When Mr. Gerlach was taken into custody on Jan. 6, the authorities found the mummified remains of two children, three skulls and other bones, in a burlap bag, the affidavit said.

Oh.

The cemetery where Gerlach was doing his desecrating is Mount Moriah, one of those beautiful, bucolic, garden-style resting places established in the mid-1800's. Over 160 acres, it has over 150,000 gravesites. And a lot of mausoleums.

Gerlach was apparently not interested in the mess, fuss, effort, and more obvious possibility of detection associated with digging up a grave. He raided mausoleums and the crypts inside.

One of the crypts inside, which had held the remains of a girl who was born in 1854 and died in 1869, had been opened and was now empty, the affidavit said.

Another mausoleum held a Monster energy drink can that had been left behind, it said. This provided an opportunity to take fingerprints and a swab for DNA testing.

Mr. Gerlach is also accused of stealing jewelry, some of which was believed to have been taken with the human remains.

Some of the remains were pushing 200 years old. Others were of more recent vintage. One body still had a pacemaker attached. 

So far, no motive has been unearthed. (Sorry. Couldn't help it!) But monetization may have been a factor:

In addition to investigating Gerlach, authorities are also investigating a Facebook group he was connected to, called "Human Bones and Skull Selling Group." He was tagged and pictured holding a skull on the group page, ABC 6 reported. (Source: People)

Bones and skull selling group? 

Just how many macabre ghouls are there trading in human skulls and bones? To each his/her own, I guess. But I'd rather have folks trading/selling stamps. Or their bad-art still lifes. Or cupcake decorating trips.

This is just so very, very weird.

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Image Source: Hidden City Philadelphia

Talk about school trip gone bad

When I was in kid, school trips weren't much of a thing.

Fifty kids in a class? Where were we going to go, and who was going to foot the bill?

The one quasi grammar school trip occurred in eighth grade, when a subset of our class - the good students, the goodie two shoes, the ones least likely to act up - were allowed to take the bus "down city" to see Heaven Over the Marshes (1949), an Italian movie about Maria Goretti, a 12-year old virgin martyr who in 1902 was stabbed to death for resisting the sexual advances of a 20 year old man. Maria Goretti was canonized in 1950. Her murderer, having been relased from prison and become a religious brother, died in 1970. (I remember when he died.)

On the day of our school trip, the girls were warned to sit separately from the boys both on the bus and in the theater. We may have been goodie two-shoes, but hah to that.

The film was an old timey black and white with subtitles, and was pretty boring. Plus we were all embarrassed by the topic: resisting rape as the pathway to heaven. Bad jokes were made by the boys on the bus on the way back home.

In high school, I went on a couple of school trips. Into Boston to the Science Museum, where all I remember is the lub-dub heart. And into Boston to see La Traviata, where we were the only high school group and the ruffian, raucus Boston public schoolers ran around the opera house hollering and blowing through their Good & Plenty boxes to make that wonderful Good & Plenty. Better than a vuvuzela!

Anyway, when she wasn't dying of consumption on stage in Alfredo's arms, Violetta was laughing at the antics of the audience. As was Alfredo.

On a Saturday in June my freshman year, the Literary Society went to Concord to visit the Old Manse, where Ralph Waldo Emerson lived, as did Nathaniel Hawthorne. But this was on a Saturday and, while a couple of nuns came with us, it wasn't exactly an official school trip.

When I read about a school trip gone bad in British Columbia, I couldn't help but think of the paltry school trips of my youth. They weren't much, but at least they weren't perilous.

What happened to the students from the Acwsalcta School is horrific and unfathomable to a city girl. What happened was that students and teachers were injured in a grizzly attack.

The attack happened Thursday [November 20] in the Bella Coola Valley of the Nuxalk Nation in British Columbia. The CBC reported that two people were critically injured, two were seriously hurt and others were treated at the scene.

...A male teacher "got the whole brunt of it" and some children got sprayed with bear spray as the adults tried to scare the bear away, parent Veronica Schooner told the Canadian Press, Canada's state news agency. (Source: UPI)

The area where the attack occurred was, not surprisingly, remote: over 400 miles from Vancouver. The school is run by an indigenous nation (Nuxalk), and the kids are used to nature, to wildernerness. 

Heroic teachers have been credited with thwarting the attack, making sure it wasn't worse than it was.

But what a horrible experience for these kids, and their teachers.

A lot easier to watch the lub-dub heart go lub-dub, and see Violetta laugh herself to death.

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Image Source: BBC

A lobster tale

I like lobster as much as the next New Englander, but it's not something I eat all that often.

Mostly when I have lobster it's in the summer, and in the form of a lobster roll. 

I like the idea of a boiled lobster, but it's a big, messy pain in the butt. Once you retrieve the easy meat, which you get at by twisting the tail off and prodding the meat through, things get harder. You need to crack the claws, which don't always open up perfectly. As for the legs, whether you're poking the stringy meat out with a lobster pick, or sucking it out, as god intended, it's mostly not worth the effort.

Dipping lobster meat in drawn butter is sort of fun, but a mess. Your fingers get all greasy and you end up with butter running down your chin. 

If you're preparing boiled lobster at home, you have to kill the critters. I don't know how sentient lobsters are - I'm guessing not very - but one minute you have these guys crawling around in your tub, and the next minute you're sending them to their death. Not for the faint of heart.

Plus in my no doubt minority opinion, lobster doesn't actually taste like much of anything. Other than the butter you're dipping it in, or the butter the lobster on the lobster roll comes doused in. 

Anyway, if I'm looking for a seafood thing-y that says summer, more often than not, I'm going with fried clams or fried oysters. And the thought of eating lobster, fried clams, or fried oysters anytime other than summer is anathema to me.

Which is not to deny that plenty of folks love lobster. Year round, lobsters are on the pricey menu. And who among us hasn't been to a height of luxury wedding with surf 'n' turf on the menu? (Sorry, if the surf isn't lobster, it ain't surf 'n' turf.)

The lobster industry is primarily New England based, mostly in Maine, which produces the great majority of American lobsters. (The American lobster is what most homies think of as lobster. As opposed to langostinos, which aren't technically lobsters, or European lobsters, which are lobsters, but pre-cooked are blue vs. American lobsters, which are dark brown. Both cook up bright red, by the way.)

While I might think of lobster as summer fare, lobsters were in the news earlier this winter when a truckload of lobster meat valued at $400K pulled a disappearing act between leaving the warehouse in Taunton, Mass. and (not) arriving at some midwest Costcos. 

Seafood theft is apparently a pretty big "business," and the criming is pretty well organized. 

According to Dylan Rexing, CEO of the broker/logistics company that was ripped off, this was the second recent theft from Lineage Logistics, the Taunton cold storage facility where the lobsters were swiped from. Earlier, it had been crab. A few weeks prior, a different facility in Maine had 14 cages worth of oysters, worth $20K, stolen. 

“This theft wasn’t random,” Rexing’s email said. “It followed a pattern we’re seeing more and more, where criminals impersonate legitimate carriers using spoofed emails and burner phones to hijack high-value freight while it’s in transit.”

Rexing said his company hired a driver “that was fraudulently impersonating another carrier” in a case of “highly sophisticated” identity theft. (Source: Boston Globe)

Speculation is that the lobsters ended up in seafood markets in Boston and/or NYC, where it was sold at a discount.  

The FBI is actively investigating the incident which looks to be part of a growing pattern of organized cargo thefts targeting high-value freight in the United States, Rexing said.

Good to know that the FBI is on the case. Maybe they've been freed up from escorting Kash Patel's girlfriend around. Homeland Security Investigations is also in on the act. Better looking out for stolen lobsters than thugging around maltreating the people of Minnesota, but if Homeland Security Investigations is going to be doing any investigating, I'd just as soon they start with ICE. A girl can hope, can't she?

The Department of Transportation is also looking at cargo thefts, which end up in losses to brokerages like Rexing's, tax revenue losses to the feds and state governments, and additional costs to the "average American family," who are getting hit with over $500 worth of extra spending each year. 

I imagine that perishable cargos are especially difficult to recover. By the time the FBI, DHS, and DOT have started sleuthing, that lobster meat has already been scarfed down in a lobster roll. An out-of-season lobster roll, I might add. So don't blame me!

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Image Source: Vital Choice

Why am I not surprised? (Even if it's just GoFundMe.)

My Irish forebears didn't leave Ireland as the (direct) result of the famine. They came over in the 1870's for the usual reasons: poverty, and too many offspring chasing survival on a poor, rocky farm that was not infinitely divisible. My great-grandfather John Rogers hailed from County Roscommon; my great-grandmother Margaret Joyce Rogers was from Mayo. Roscommon and Mayo were two of the counties hit hardest by An Gorta Mór (The Great Famine), losing nearly one-third of their population to death or emigration during the famine years (1845-1852).

My other set of Irish ancestors, Bridget and Matthew Trainor, were from County Louth, just north of Dublin, which was relatively unscathed by the famine.

But whether directly scathed or unscathed by the famine, victim or survivor, the entire population of Ireland for generations since has been impacted by genetic or race memory of this unparalleled catastrophe. The same is true in places where there are a lot of folks descended from famine (and non-famine) Irish.

One such place is Boston, where in the late 1990's "they" erected what has to be one of THE most hideous momunents ever to memorialize any tragic event, anywhere. It's a two-parter, one statue depicting a starving family in rags who'd just sailed into Amerikay on a coffin ship, the other showing a well-dressed, prosperous Irish-American family who'd achieved the American dream. (Weren't those the days?)

The momument has been controversy since the jump, and in 2013 wae dubbed "the most mocked and reviled public sculpture in Boston" by the Boston Globe's art critic. I can't speak for all Bostonians, but I have personally mocked and reviled it plenty of times.

But I digress.

What prompted this post was an article I came across a few months ago stating "Ireland named most generous country in the world."

This made sense to me. 

Time and again over the years, whenever there's some disaster or another - famine in Africa, the destruction of Gaza - there's news of Irish relief organizations stepping in to help out, punching well above their weight. (Ireland's population is roughly 5 million, 7 million if you count Norther Ireland, which would give it the same population as Massachusetts.)

Anyway, I was enjoying the glowup, basking in the halo effect  - ah, the wonderful Irish - when I clicked through on the click bait and read that the metric was per capita donors to fundraisers listed on GoFundMe. And that for the seventh year running, Ireland comes out on top. Or the 20 countries GFM operates in. The US ranks second.

Not that there's anything wrong with donating to GoFundMe fundraisers. I do it all that time, most recently to the one set up for T.J. Sabula, the Ford worker who in January yelled "pedophile protector" at Trump during an appearance at a Ford plant. Trump's response was to shoot T.J. the finger and mouth the words "fuck you." It wasn't clear whether Trump was acting in his capacity as president of the US, president of Venezuela, or receipient of the FIFA peace prize.

I find GoFundMe endlessly fascinating. Pretty much everything about it: how within nanoseconds of some sort of tragedy/emergency, someone's set up a fundraiser to cash in; what people want the money for (does anyone really need a $50K funeral?); how one fundraiser will grab attention - and donations - while another near identical one will not; what a disgrace that people need to raise money to take care of medical expenses that should be covered, etc.

Five years ago, I helped run a pretty successful GoFundMe for a friend who'd been diagnosed with ALS and needed home renovations and 24/7 care. My friend was a very well known Boston personage, famous for his kindness and generosity, and hitting our goal was relatively easy. (It helped that someone gave $50K. I thought at first it was a mistake. Who gives $50K via GFM? But as one of the managers, I had access to the names of the anonymous donors, and I recognized the $50K donor as someone who had made hefty donations in the past to the charity my friend had founded.)

And while I won't say I'm a regular-regular GoFundMe donor, every month or so, something will catch my eye, and I'm good for 25 or 50 bucks. I donated $50 to T.J.'s cause, helping in my very small way to let the United State achieve second place among GoFundMe nations.

For Ireland:

The new figures show that one in ten people in Ireland made a donation through GoFundMe this year, with over 560,000 donors supporting causes both at home and abroad. One Irish city, known for its charm and charitable nature, topped the list overall. (Source: The Irish Star)

BTW, that charming and charitable Irish city is Galway, which is pretty much my favorite place on earth.  

GoFundMe’s Global CEO Tim Cadogan said: “Ireland’s exceptional generosity continues to set a powerful example globally.”

“Every donation, big or small, fuels hope and makes a real difference. What we see this year reflects a deep-rooted compassion that unites people across the country.”

Even though it's not a matter of "Eire Number One" for overall charitable giving, I'm not surprised that the Irish would support causes through GoFundMe. It's a small country, and people know people who know people, so why not take part in a whip-round for the kiddo in Cork who lost both her legs in a farm accident? Or the fundraiser for the little Kerry cutiepie who needs to go to the States for treatement for neuroblastoma?

Bottom line: when it comes to helping folks out, Éire Abú. I'm happy to know yez. 

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Image Source: Atlas Obscura

Wanker

Sir Benjamin Slade doesn't appear to have done much with his life, other than enjoy the life and trappings of a minor British aristocrat. He's a baronet who lives in the big old pile he inherited (along with the title) when his dear papa passed on when Sir Benjamin was still a teenager. He allegedly got rich as a "shipping magnate," but more recently earned his coin of the realm hiring out his pile as a function space.

Baronet, btw, is not that big a deal. Baronets aren't members of the peerage, eligible to join the House of Lords. They can be called Sir, but not Lord. Unlike actual Barons. (Inquiring minds want to know where the Duke of Earl fits in. Slade does have blood ties to some king or another in the way, way way back. Maybe Charles I from 400 years in the way back. Or is it Charles II?)

Anyway, one thing Sir Benjamin hasn't managed to accomplish during his 79 years of life is produce an heir. A male heir, as baronetcies - unlike many estates/titles - remain a guy thing.

So for the past decade or so, Sir Benjamin has been trying to find someone to produce an heir and a spare while also helping him run his estate. The pay isn't all that great - only £50,000-a-year (or about $67K). But she also gets a car, food, housing, expenses, a bonus, and holidays. I'm guessing there's some sort of allowance for mumsie to raise the new baronet to manhood. Maybe there's a dowager cottage for her down the line. And I do think she gets to be a wife, too. It all adds up.

Sir Benajamin has managed to father a girl child, but she doesn't count, baronetcy-wise.

He does have a rather detailed list of requirements.

The ideal candidate must be "a good breeder," but I guess that just goes with the territory. She's got to be at least 5'6", but can't be a Guardian reader. The height requirement I get. He doesn't want a mini baronet running around, I guess. And the Guardian? I'm guessing he's trying to weed out free thinkers and lefties. As a Guardian subscriber, I can't imagine that a lot of my fellow readers would be lining up to produce an heir for this guy. But whatever.

The gal of his dreams must be a shooter and have her own shotgun. While a driver's license is required - she'll need to be able to charge around his 1,300 acres in what is no doubt a Range Rover - a helicopter license would be a nice to have. 

Sir Benajamin is a social-type guy, so his mate has got to love "ballroom dancing, [and] playing bridge and backgammon."

...She must be able to run two castles and having estate, legal and accountancy training 'would be useful'. 

Make that two castles and a grouse moor.

Oh, yes, and the future mother of his heirs should have "amorial bearings." Now anyone and everyone can get some sort of "amorial bearing." Here's the coat of arms of the illustrious Rogers family of Ireland.

But in this case, he's looking for someone who's part of the British class apparatus. I will say he should be careful about what he's wishing for. Lady Di and Fergie were both aristocrats, and look what happened there. Princess Kate is nothing but a commoner, and that seems to be turning out okie dokes. 

It probably goes without saying that the old git harbors a few aristrocratic prejudices. 

No Scorpios for some reason. And:

...she can't come from countries beginning with 'I' that have green in their flag, which rules out residents of Ireland, India, Italy, Ivory Coast and Iran.

Oddly enough this doesn't rule out Israelis, but I can't really see him wanting someone from Israel. That said, an Israeli woman would likely know how to use a gun and maybe even, courtesy of the IDF, have a heliocopter license. 

On clarification, looks like no Israelis need apply, either, as he's not looking for anyone "from countries where they don't wear overcoats in the winter."

He further said: 'I don't mind Canadians, Americans, Germans and Northern Europeans - what I like to call similar people. I don't think marrying an Eskimo is for me.

Even though Eskimos do wear overcoats.  

'What I just need is a nice, ordinary country girl who knows and understands things.

Well, I know things and understand a wanker when I see one. Good luck finding the breeder of your dreams, Sir Benjamin.  

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Content Source: Where else but The Daily Mail. 

Image Source for the old wanker: The Times of London