Category: TWTW

Supreme published its latest collection of branded goods including Ziploc bags, an Oreo cookie and even a Mac Tools rolling toolbox. The Oreos are already re-selling on eBay for $4000.

Do you miss the sweet smell of McDonald’s ketchup? What about the pickles or hamburgers? Not to worry, the golden arches will sell you a set of scented candles. Eater, points out the idea is to light all six candles to re-create the smell of a quarter-pounder. Ugh.

People in Mexico have figured out that they can get over Trump’s multi-billion dollar border wall with about $5 of re-bar.

An Indiana man with a Crime Pays tattoo on his forehead was arrested, again.

The emotional support animal bar was raised yet again (remember peacocks and alligators?) when Ronica Froese flew first-class with her mini service horse.

The coronavirus scare has driven up the price of essential goods in Hong Kong, including toilet paper. So much so, opportunistic gang members held up a supermarket and stole 600 rolls.

Climate change has hit the European ski resorts hard. So hard some resorts in the Alps and Pyrenees are bringing snow to their slopes with helicopters.

Tesla cars are smart. They come with cameras that can read speed limit signs and set their speed accordingly. Telsas are dumb. Hackers used some black tape to fool the car to rapidly accelerate from 35 to 85.

Glen Davis drove a school bus in Minnesota since his graduation from high school in 1949. He enjoyed driving the bus so much, he asked to be buried in a lovingly custom-built, school bus casket.

Aided by 200 MPH tailwinds, a British Airways flight set the record for the fastest commercial flight from New York to London. Flight 112 made the trip just under 5 hours, 80 minutes ahead of schedule.

In San Francisco, similarly strong winds blew the glass out of the 41st floor of the hapless and slightly-leaning Millennium Tower.

In a touching application of VR technology, a South Korean mother was able to play with her deceased young daughter.

A small museum in Pennsylvania sent out one of their older paintings for a routine cleaning and was informed that said painting was a 400-year old Rembrandt.

The Girl Scouts are out with cookies again so everyone’s got a story of the entrepreneurial ones setting up shop outside their local marijuana dispensary.

Prescription medication is so expensive in Utah one insurance company is sending its workers to Mexico or Canada to pick up medicine for its members.

Engineers in Hong Kong have figured out how to harness electricity from raindrops.

Modern Farmer reports that someone has invented an autonomous robot that can weed your garden.

Someone fell for one of those phishing emails. Unfortunately that someone was a worker for the government of Puerto Rico and they ended up transferring 2.6 million taxpayer dollars to a fraudulent account.

She thought something was funny about her date. He insisted she come pick her up in her car. He then asked her to stop by a bank for a quick moment. Her fears were confirmed when “he came running back, sweating with sunglasses, a hat, a gun and $1,000 cash in hand.”

Kansas City beat San Francisco in the Super Bowl. It’s been a long time coming for KC (50 years for those counting) so residents were excited to see their team win, disrupting weather radar with their fireworks and setting couches on fire.

Kansas’ defensive tackle Derrick Nnadi melted everyone’s heart when he lay down in the celebratory confetti (made up of fan’s hopeful tweets), made a snow angel, then went out and paid off the adoption fees for all dogs in the area.

A performance artist made headlines when he caused a virtual traffic jam on Google Maps towing a wagon full of burner phones running Google Maps across various bridges in Berlin.

The Philadelphia Flyers mascot, Gritty, was cleared of physical assault after a tussle with a fan. Tough town, Philly is.

Costa Rica announced that it gets its energy from nearly 100% renewable sources.

A draft executive order titled “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again,” proposes strict guidelines for acceptable design. Following the tradition of “Mussolini, Franco and a particular failed German art student (who) all pushed for a singular, classically inspired state architecture intended to project tradition, order and the superiority of the state.”

It was determined that the Apple Watch outsold the entire Swiss watch industry last year, by a large margin.

Keith Richards announced he hasn’t smoked a cigarette since October.

A parking space in San Francisco went on the market for $100,000. A bargain compared to the one, “closer to the lobby” that went for $140k.

A Oakland man rammed a police car and sped off hoping for a quick getaway but things didn’t quite work out that way when all four tires on his car fell off.

They thought they were so clever, hiding all their drugs in two bags with the words Bag Full of Drugs blazoned on the side. “They’ll never look in here,” they must have thought to themselves. They were wrong.

Oscar Mayer is looking for new drivers of their famous Wienermobiles after a probably now former driver was pulled over for speeding in Wisconsin. Yep, that’s them up above.

A Tennessee man, hauled into court to appear before a judge on marijuana possession charges, “casually reached into his pocket, pulled a joint and brazenly lit it while talking about how marijuana should be legalized in the state.”

Scientists have figured out how to keep their robots from overheating. They make them sweat.

The Trump Wall project isn’t going so well. Parts of it have fallen over in the wind. Because of seasonal flash floods, it now looks like they will literally have to open hundreds of flood gates in the wall for months at a time “to prevent flash floods from undermining or knocking it over.”

A Florida man, already facing drug charges, went a wee bit crazy with the technicolor Jackson Pollock effect on his house, mailbox, car, and trees and the neighbors are not pleased.

Luxury brand Louis Vuitton is opening up a restaurant in Osaka, Japan. Depending on how that goes, they may open up a hotel. Game console maker Atari is already working on their first hotel in Phoenix.

If you’re still looking for that special, romantic place for Valentine’s Day dinner, Waffle House is taking reservations.

Rent is so expensive in San Francisco that one developer is planning to rent out bunk beds in a basement for over $1000/month. They are marketed as “sleeping pods.”

Wondering how the senators keep going during hours and hours of presentations during the impeachment trial? I’m glad you asked.

For the first time in 54 years we have two teams that wear a red jersey to their home games. KC gets to wear red if you’re wondering. Enjoy the game but don’t drink too much and end up like the Mayor of Mahwah.

After driving around waiting for a calling from God, Nadejda Reilly decided to take it up a notch and drive into the path of an oncoming car. Local police charged her with aggravated assault for causing a wreck an injuring two people.

In India, a man suffered lacerations to his neck while taking his rooster to a cockfight when his prized bird turned on him instead.

Temps dropped to below 40 in Florida so it rained iguanas again.

Canadian Neil Young was finally granted US citizenship after his application was held up because of his long history of smoking weed.

In Italy medical marijuana is now apparently free of charge and apparently grown by the Italian Army.

If one Arizona lawmaker gets his way, it will become a felony to lick ice cream and put it back in the store cooler.

Nearly 100,000 gallons of cabernet sauvignon spilled into a river in Northern California at the Rodney Strong winery.

A man with ‘murder’ tattooed across his face sentenced for murder.

Several furries attending a nearby convention stopped a domestic assault, pulling the offender from his car and sitting on him until police arrived.

A Detroit man, trying to deposit a settlement check from a racial discrimination lawsuit against his employer, was refused by a bank that later called the four police officers on him and initiated a fraud investigation. So he sued the bank for racial discrimination.

Oh, and just in case you didn’t think the world is about to end – ‘Unprecedented’ Swarms of Locusts have descended on East Africa

Have a great weekend everyone!

New analysis determined that the past 10 years are the top 10 years on record for the world’s oceans or, to put it into terms we could understand, “the amount of heat being added to the oceans is equivalent to every person on the planet running 100 microwave ovens all day and all night.”

A medical marijuana farm in Arizona literally turned the sky above into a purple haze. (queue Jimi Hendrix)

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert put the kabash on an HIV-prevention campaign that involved handing out 100,000 free condoms after negative reaction to the packaging that “did not go through necessary approval”

The San Francisco Giants hired the first full time female coach in Major League Baseball history.

Louis Vuitton announced a partnership with the NBA.

Ben & Jerry’s have a partnership with Netflix – I’ll let you guess the name of the new flavor they launched.

A company called Mojo has been thinking about shrinking a video display and embedding on to your eye as a contact lens. They’ve reportedly have released their first prototype.

First it was pigeons in cowboy hats in Vegas. The mystery deepens this week as pigeons in sombreros have been spotted in Reno. Viral casino ad campaign or new ICE initiative?

Apparently there’s a killer squirrel on the loose trapping Houston residents indoors.

Danni Morritt asked her Amazon Echo to teach her about the cardiac cycle of the heart. To her horror, someone had edited the wikipedia page that the Echo uses for source material so the Echo told Danni not only that heartbeats are “bad for the planet” but that she should, “stab herself for the common good.

Police in Colorado Springs arrested a bank robber who robbed a downtown bank, then stepped out and tossed the cash in the air while saying “Merry Christmas”

The US Patent Office awarded Nike a patent for blockchain-verified sneaker line they are calling CryptoKicks.

Scientists have figured out how to edit tomato genes to make them grow into bouquets, like flowers.

A New York state assemblyman wrote an editorial to the local paper on Christmas Eve about the dangers of drunk driving. On New Year’s Eve he drove his GMC Acadia into a ditch and police determined he was drunk driving.

Headlines with the words Iran and attack triggered high frequency trading algorithms to rapidly sell off dollar/yen before traders grabbed the wheel and brought it back.

A Florida beachcomber brought home what she though was an old rusty plate but later discovered it was a landmine.

A Spanish television reporter won the lottery and quit her job, live on air. “Natalia doesn’t work tomorrow. Woo!” she declared while wagging her finger. Natalia later found out her payout was only $5,500 after discovering she was sharing her earnings with hundreds of others, “It’s unclear if [she] is still an employee at RTVE”

Photo: The most popular image was this bit of graffiti at Hong Kong Polytechnic which I learned from commenters is a Winston Churchill quote. Seems appropriate to leave this here as Hong Kongers are still protesting since mid-March 2019.

So here it is, the top links from this year’s The Week That Was – these are the stories that most interested you this past year in order of popularity. Thank you for your time and attention this year and see you in the next!

Special Operations Command Is Experimenting With Bullets That Shoot Through Water – Defense One

A night of drinking, a closed strip joint and a White Castle shooting bring suspensions for 3 judges – CNN

Meet the $50 Strawberries That NYC’s High-End Chefs Are Fawning Over – Eater

Fake guns banned in downtown Las Vegas district, but real guns OK – Las Vegas Review-Journal

Tiny Hand Will Be Your New Comic Sans – BuzzFeed

Miami-Dade Commissioner Joe Martinez Involved in Active Criminal Probe – Miami New Times

Memphis youth builds home nuclear fusion reactor – Memphis Commercial Appeal

I Just Took the World’s First 20-Hour Flight. Here’s What It Did to Me – Bloomberg

There’s a Dramatic Beef in the Quilting Community, Over a Pair of Scissors – Jezebel

Garfield phones beach mystery finally solved after 35 years – BBC

Photo credit: Electronic machine used to vote on articles of impeachment.

Jeep, the company behind four-wheeler brands such as Wrangler and Gladiator announced that its entire lineup will go hybrid or full-on electric by 2022

A sharp-eyed researcher discovered that Department of Agriculture listed Marvel’s mythical East African country, Wakanda, as a trading partner on a website built to track tariffs on nations signed on to the free trade agreement. The developer had forgotten to remove the test files from the prototype.

A woman in San Francisco, desperate to locate her dog, stolen while it was waiting for her outside a local grocery store, hired a plane for $7,000 to fly a banner with the website she set up to find her her dog. BTW, the website is www.bringjacksonhome.com/

Merck received FDA approval for the world’s first vaccine for the Ebola virus.

Now that it’s legal in increasingly more counties, marijuana has become a major export for the African country of Lesotho and a “critical piece of the government’s agricultural strategy.”

With the recent proliferation of metal credit cards, those looking for something more distinctive can opt for the $200,000, gemstone-encrusted Visa card from the Insignia Group.

San Francisco had to quietly revise the government’s well-intentioned blanket ban on facial recognition technology when they realized that the City Supervisors’ use of their government-issued iPhone Face ID was made illegal.

A shoplifter at a Walmart in Ohio was quickly apprehended when she made the poor choice to commit her crime during the annual Cops and Kids shopping event.

A bank employee allegedly stole $88,000 from his bank and was found out after posing with stacks of cash, on his social media account.

An all-electric powered seaplane took off from Vancouver, Canada, in what the operators describe as a “world first” for the aviation industry.

The man who placed the winning $243,200 bid for Olivia Newton-John’s leather jacket that she wore in the movie Grease, returned it to her as a gift.

The art world continues to debate the significance of the duct-taped banana.

A beach in Northern California was overrun by thousands of penis fish.

A self-driving truck delivered 40,000 pounds of butter from Tulare, California to Quakertown, Pennsylvania, finishing a 2,800-mile-trip in under three days.

Photo credit: Tokyo from above