I try to stay away from the big stories of the week as this newsletter’s tagline is quirky stories you might have missed from the week prior. But it would be insensitive to at least acknowledge the overturning of Roe v. Wade. It was a dark week where the GOP’s long-game reared its ugly head and “ushered in an era of grave doubt about the status of liberty in the United States.“

In other news,

Toyota issued a global recall for 2,700 of its first edition electric cars because of a tendency for the wheels to fall off.

It got so hot in Oklahoma that the interstate highways are buckling under the heat.

Brittney Griner, the WNBA star held in a Russian prison, was unable to talk on the phone with her partner, Cherelle, on their fourth wedding anniversary. Brittney called the US embassy in Moscow 11 times but there was no one to pick up the phone to put the call through. Nobody could be bothered to come in on a Saturday.

San Francisco, where browsing real estate listings is everyone’s hobby, is perplexed by the latest home to come on the market. It’s about a foot and a half tall.

A 100-year old Brazilian man set a Guinness World Record for working the longest at the same company. Walter Orthmann started working at a textile factory back in 1938. His secret? “You need to get busy with the present, not the past or the future. Here and now is what counts.”

The Pirates game against the Cubs was briefly interrupted at the bottom of the 2nd when a squirrel ran onto the field. Another squirrel (no relation) shorted out a power circuit and and caused a massive power outage in downtown Asheville.

Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov auctioned off his 2021 Nobel Peace Prize and raised a record $103.5 million for Ukrainian child refugees. Dmitry was editor-in-chief of an independent Russian newspaper that was shut down by the Kremlin in March.

A software engineer at Google raised concerns that one of their artificial intelligence algorithms had reached sentience. He was put on administrative leave by the company. The ensuing debate over whether the transcript of the AI proved sentience or not became a Turing test of our own understanding of technology.

A 180,000 square meter autonomous cargo ship completed the 33-day voyage from the Gulf of Mexico, through the Panama Canal and into a port in South Korea using AI to determine the optimal route for fuel efficiency and distance.

The Nonhuman Rights Project lost its plea to free Happy, an elephant in the Bronx Zoo, who they argued was being unlawfully imprisoned. Extending habeas corpus to animals “would call into question the very premises underlying pet ownership” stated the majority decision. We also learned that Grumpy, who arrived with Happy in 1977, died after a confrontation with other elephants in 2002.

Microsoft retired their Internet Explorer web browser after nearly 27 years of continuous updates. The entire world has moved on to more modern browsers including Microsoft’s own Edge browser. All except for the Japan Pension Service that still requires Internet Explorer to function.

Joe Maddon, manager of the Los Angeles Angels, shaved his hair into a mohawk to motivate his team during a 14-game losing streak. The team never got to see it though because the GM fired him in-person at home before he could report to work.

The Golden State Warriors won. . . again.

An Alabama man, heartbroken at the sudden death of his fiancee in a car crash, was arrested for placing flowers at her graveside. The fiancee’s father, who did not approve of the marriage, reported him for littering.

Japanese engineers have figured out how to make the internet go faster, achieving the world’s first transmission speed of 1.02 petabits per second. How fast is that? Fast enough to support 10 million channels of 8K livestreaming.

An 83-year old Japanese man completed a solo crossing of the Pacific sailing from San Francisco to Japan on his 19-foot sailboat. In 1962, he was the first person in the world to complete a solo, nonstop sail across the Pacific the other way from Japan to San Francisco. “I imagine my next voyage would be even more fun,” he said.

News came out that a 15-year old drone hobbyist was a key reason Ukrainian forces were able to stop the advance of a column of Russian forces outside of Kyiv in February.

North Korea, accused of testing an ICBM a few weeks ago, was put in charge of a top nuclear disarmament forum at the United Nations.

Huy Fong Foods, makers of the most popular Sriracha sauce, announced that due to an unexpected crop failure from the spring chili harvest there will be a severe shortage of the green-capped hot sauce for the next few months.

Due to the ongoing drought in California, farmers have been burning dead crops, further contributing to poor air quality and the drought.

Two workers were rescued after falling into a tank full of chocolate at a Mars M&M factory.

A congressional hearing pre-empted prime time television to lay out the case that the January 6th invasion of the Capitol was ultimately orchestrated with the full knowledge of Donald Trump. The New York Post editorial board finally threw in the towel, calling Trump the King Lear of Mar-a-Lago and a prisoner of his own ego. “Trump can’t look past 2020. Let him remain there.”

Like a grim, mass shooting hat trick, gun violence continued this past week. A Tulsa man killed his surgeon and three others at a hospital because of continuing pain after a recent back operation. Then two people were shot at a cemetery south of Milwaukee to which the city’s exasperated mayor said, “The violence has got to stop!” Later in Iowa, two church members were gunned down in the parking lot of their church. The County Sheriff Captain said, “I wouldn’t say I’m shocked.”

To round out the week of “only in America” headlines, a man in Wellston, Missouri used his pistol to hold up another man and steal his assault rifle as the victim was walking out of a grocery store (Missouri has “open carry” laws). The victim went to his car, got another gun, a pistol, and shot at the gun theif (now with two guns) as he walked away. A shootout ensued and, before the police arrived, a third man joined the melee with his own gun. Along with the original gun thief two innocent bystanders were shot. The Wellston Food Market was the scene of a deadly shooting that left one police officer dead in 2019.

In other, non-shooting, news

A French man smashed through the world record for most bungee jumps in a 24- hour period completing 765 jumps from a bridge in Scotland.

A man disguised as an elderly woman lept up from his wheelchair and smeared cake on the bulletproof glass protecting the Mona Lisa. He then threw rose petals around the room while saying there are people trying to destroy the planet and we all need to think about it.

A woman in San Antonio, Texas had an ear “printed” for her by a company in New York City using cartilage from her own, misshapen right ear and a 3D scan of her normal left ear. The new ear was printed in 10 minutes and shipped overnight and attached by her surgeon back in Texas.

In order to protect a certain species of bumble bee under the law, a California court expanded the definition of fish to include the endangered bees.

Following a campaign led by eighth graders, Elizabeth Johnson Jr., who was condemned but not executed for witchcraft over 300 years ago, became the last victim of the Salem witch hunt to be officially pardoned.

Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas (famous for catching COVID after refusing to wear a mask) was recorded in an interview complaining, “If you’re a Republican, you can’t even lie to Congress or lie to an FBI agent or they’re coming after you”

Facebook, which last week rewrote its famously lengthy privacy policy to meet a secondary-school reading level but, in the process, tripled its length to 12,000 words.

Self-driving company Cruise received a permit from the California Public Utilities Commission to charge for fully driverless rides in San Francisco between the hours of 10pm and 6am on “select streets” at speeds no faster than 30 miles per hour.

In a medical first, a paramedic used a jetpack to reach a climber suffering from a cardiac arrest in the UK’s Lake District. The 3-minute trip would have taken a non-jetpack paramedic 1 hour and 20 minutes on foot. Some may recall last year a drone was used to deliver a defibrillator to help a Swedish man in a remote area.