There’s drunk, and then there’s “broke into a locked Virginia liquor store and passed out in the bathroom” drunk. And that’s exactly what one raccoon managed to pull off in Ashland, reminding all of us that nature has absolutely no respect for closing hours or inventory management. The store was…
Crime
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Your Cheap Home Camera Might Be Watching You… and Someone Else Might Be Watching Too
Every once in a while a story comes along that makes you stop and think, Wow… we’ve crossed a line we can’t uncross. This is one of those stories. South Korean police arrested four people for hacking more than 120,000 home and business cameras. That number itself is disturbing. What…
Culture
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The Skies Aren’t Turbulent — The Passengers Are. And Their Mouths Are Even Worse.
Something snapped in this country. I don’t know when it happened — maybe right after the airlines decided a “snack” was now six pretzels in a zip bag — but the behavior in airports has gone feral. And the language? Off the charts. We’re talking full-volume obscenities that used to…
Humor
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The Daredevil Who Rode a Unicycle While Carrying Seven Bowling Balls
There’s a certain personality you meet in the wide-open states — the ones with too much sky, too much quiet, and way too much room for ideas that should’ve died on the launchpad. You find them in Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, Washington, Oregon. Folks who grew up around space, real…
Culture
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The Great Chili Stampede-When a Viral Rumor Turned a Village Farm Into a Free-For-All
There’s a special kind of chaos that only social media can produce — the kind where a village wakes up expecting a normal workday and instead finds half the province rummaging through its chili fields like they’re at a clearance sale. That’s exactly what happened in Liujiangou, a rural village…
Culture
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China’s Robot Strip-Show-When a Tech Demo Turns Into a Live Dissection
Somewhere between a TED Talk and a magic show gone sideways, a Chinese robotics firm decided the only way to calm the internet was to cut open its humanoid robot — live, onstage, in front of an audience that expected a product launch and ended up watching synthetic surgery. I…
Culture
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A Life Sentence, Zero Vegemite and One Lawsuit Australia Didn’t See Coming
There’s no shortage of strange legal battles in this world, though every so often one comes along that forces you to stop scrolling, blink twice, and mutter, “Yeah… that tracks.”That was my reaction when I read about a man in Victoria serving a life sentence who decided he’s had enough…
AI
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Turns Out Your Brain Lives Like a Teenager Decades Longer Than You Think
Every so often a study rolls out that stops me mid-scroll and makes me wonder whether my internal wiring is a comedy writer with a grudge. This new one from BBC News by James Gallagher did exactly that. Scientists mapped nearly four thousand brain scans and came back with a…
Family
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The Thanksgiving Lions Game That Broke My Family in 1980
Listen To The Article Thanksgiving is already the busiest, most patience-testing travel week of the year. Airports are bursting, freeways are clogged, and somewhere out there a poor TSA agent is explaining — again — that gravy counts as a liquid. Chaos everywhere. But nothing, and I mean nothing, compares…
Holidays
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How I Learned Thanksgiving Eve Is America’s Big Drinking Night (the Hard Way)
Nobody ever warned me about the night before Thanksgiving. Not the way they warn you about New Year’s Eve or St. Patrick’s Day. There was no nickname, no folklore, no “pace yourself, kid.” Back then, I had no idea Thanksgiving Eve was America’s biggest drinking night — “Blackout Wednesday,” as…