Did Lionel Messi donate $1.5M to Israel? Don't fall for claim
Mar. 13th, 2026 08:06 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
snopes_feedThe rumor came from a satirical post on X.
snopes_feed
snopes_feedIt is unclear precisely where the remnants were found, though the images emerged amid mounting evidence the U.S. was responsible for the strike.
snopes_feedThe unnamed Secret Service agent allegedly said Trump calls him by his "actual name" and knows details about his family.
Rig Museum in Morgan City, Louisiana
Mar. 13th, 2026 02:00 pmatlas_obscura_places_feed
Tours are on the first movable offshore drilling rig "Mr. Charlie." "Mr. Charlie" is the only authentic offshore drilling rig in the world available for the general public to tour. "Mr. Charlie" is the only National Historic Landmark representing the offshore oil and gas industry.
The guided tours are very informative and can last from 45 minutes to 3 hours (usually around 1 1/2 hours) depending on all the questions that are asked and answered. The tour guides are knowledgable, informative, personable, and helpful. They enjoy discussing the rig, the offshore oil and gas industry history and present, the surrounding area, and life itself.
It will be the best guided tour you have ever taken. Half of the tour is outside and half inside. There are several sets of stairs to ascend and descend, the first deck of the rig is approximately 40 feet above the river surface. Exhibits with the Diving and ROV Museum are included in the tour. Also, pets are welcome on the tour.
The Iran War
Mar. 13th, 2026 01:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_camera
Who's winning the Iran War?
Russia!
Trump just suspended economic sanctions 'cause the U.S. needs that Russian oil!
If anything can convince you that war in particular and nationalism in general are nothing more than a lethal playground squabble, that particular bit of info should be it. No need for sophisticated analyses. The playground bully—that would be the Trump administration—is always arbitrary when it comes to enemy lists.
Between scarcity & price gouging, gas will be $5 a gallon by the end of March, and increases in the price of fuel will be baked into every good that relies upon transportation. In the consumer price index, what goes up does not go down, so we are looking at permanent price increases.
The economy was already struggling before Trump miscalculated Iran. Revised estimates for GDP growth during the last quarter of 2025 are just .7% while January inflation was 3.1%. We are running very fast just to stand in one place.
###
Is any war a "good" war?
I would say military actions undertaken to quell forms of ethnic cleansing are probably justified. Genocide should be prevented. Thus, WWII was a "good" war; ditto the 1995 NATO airstrikes that ended the Bosnian War.
But what are we looking at exactly in Iran?
I am beginning to think the Universe would be much better off without human beings.
snopes_feedNo reputable journalists have obtained and published Katie Johnson's real address or name, making this claim impossible to substantiate.
Friday open thread: spotted on public transport
Mar. 13th, 2026 03:33 pmdolorosa_12I had so much fun with the 'overheard on public transport' prompt last week, and trepkos's answer got me thinking of a follow-up question, which I hope people will enjoy just as much. This week's question is not about things you've heard, but rather about things you've seen:
What is the strangest thing you've seen someone wearing and/or carrying on public transport?
I don't actually have a particularly good response here. The most memorable thing I can think of is one of the times Matthias and I went down to visit our friends L and C in Devon during a public holiday weekend, and the return train journey was incredibly crowded, including, in our carriage, with an older couple who were carrying two newly-purchased antique chairs, and were accompanied by a giant dog, which lay down in the aisle. Between the dog and the chairs, the carriage became impassable. On another trip to that part of the world (with my mum, in order to spend a week hiking along the Southwest Coastal Pathway), we got off at the end of the train line and had to catch a bus to Tintagel — the last bus of the day — which left very late due to a guy with a massive surfboard begging and pleading with the driver to be allowed onto the bus with the surfboard, which was inevitably forbidden. But I don't think either of these things (the chairs+dog, or the surfboard) were particularly weird in the scheme of things — no doubt some of you will have witnessed much more bizarre stuff on journeys of your own.
trepkos's answer got me thinking of a follow-up question, which I hope people will enjoy just as much. This week's question is not about things you've heard, but rather about things you've seen:What is the strangest thing you've seen someone wearing and/or carrying on public transport?
I don't actually have a particularly good response here. The most memorable thing I can think of is one of the times Matthias and I went down to visit our friends L and C in Devon during a public holiday weekend, and the return train journey was incredibly crowded, including, in our carriage, with an older couple who were carrying two newly-purchased antique chairs, and were accompanied by a giant dog, which lay down in the aisle. Between the dog and the chairs, the carriage became impassable. On another trip to that part of the world (with my mum, in order to spend a week hiking along the Southwest Coastal Pathway), we got off at the end of the train line and had to catch a bus to Tintagel — the last bus of the day — which left very late due to a guy with a massive surfboard begging and pleading with the driver to be allowed onto the bus with the surfboard, which was inevitably forbidden. But I don't think either of these things (the chairs+dog, or the surfboard) were particularly weird in the scheme of things — no doubt some of you will have witnessed much more bizarre stuff on journeys of your own.
open thread – March 13, 2026
Mar. 13th, 2026 03:00 pmaskamanager_feedIt’s the Friday open thread!
The comment section on this post is open for discussion with other readers on any work-related questions that you want to talk about (that includes school). If you want an answer from me, emailing me is still your best bet*, but this is a chance to take your questions to other readers.
* If you submitted a question to me recently, please do not repost it here, as it may be in my queue to answer.
The post open thread – March 13, 2026 appeared first on Ask a Manager.
snopes_feedAs of this writing, the voting issues legislation does not include provisions on trans health care and athletes, despite Trump implying that it does.
more Taiwan notes
Mar. 13th, 2026 10:26 ammindstalkJapan drives on the left, so in streams of people, they tend to walk on the left. Unless they're walking on the right to face oncoming traffic, or are standing on the escalator in Osaka (which for some reason went to the right), or randomly ended up on the right. But mostly they're on the left.
Taiwan drives on the right, so people walk on the right, and after 3 months of doing things the Japanese way, it takes effort to adhere to local custom, and I still find myself going on the left "to be polite."
You might wonder why I just don't fall back to US habits. But the US rarely has pedestrians dense enough to need stream efficiency, outside of some escalators and airport slidewalks. Even where sidewalks are congestion, like in Manhattan, my impression is mostly of interleaved chaos.
( Read more... )
Enkiri Enoki in Itabashi City, Japan
Mar. 13th, 2026 10:00 amatlas_obscura_places_feed
Japan is the a country filled with shrines dedicated to various things and entities. Some are big, and others as small as a single sign. But very few are run by vending machines.
The Enkiri Enoki shrine is dedicated to an ancient tree from the Eddo period which is said to help with the breaking of bad relationships and the beginning of new ones. This makes it a popular spot with people who want help with their relationship, and also alcoholics who want to stop drinking. However, the place is too small for round the clock shrine keepers, and thus an alternative was found; vending machines.
There are two of them on it's small premise. A large machine that sells 'Ema' planks which are used to write down your wish, and a smaller 'gachapong' machine which dispenses blessed charms for those who wish to cary them. This unique system makes the temple easy to use with minimal upkeep from priests.
Hold On To Your Hats, Sports Fans...
Mar. 13th, 2026 01:00 pmcakewrecks_feedWreckporter Barry B. gives us the skinny:
My wife went into a cake maker to get a small cake for my birthday. They asked what she’d like on it and she said, "How about the Chicago 'C', like The Chicago Bears’ 'C' logo? Is that possible?"
They said, "The Chicago C? No problem."
...it was the funniest present I’ve ever received.
Let's hope that Justina felt the same way about her University of Michigan cake, which was supposed to look like this:
But ended up looking like this:
Oh! A swing and a miss!
Karen M.'s son asked for the Alabama "A" on his birthday cake. To help the bakery out, his aunt brought in a photocopy of his Alabama hat to use as a reference.
(Can you sense where this is going? If not, then you really haven't been reading this blog long enough. Heh.)
Ready?
Here's the cake:
Thank goodness they didn't bring the actual hat in; that icing would take forever to clean off.
*****
And from my other blog, Epbot:
One More Reason the Aliens Might Be Avoiding Us
Mar. 13th, 2026 10:06 amjames_davis_nicoll
Is the current location of our Solar System the reason no one's coming to visit?
One More Reason the Aliens Might Be Avoiding Us
Email from Epstein files allegedly proves he's still alive. Here's the truth
Mar. 13th, 2026 01:00 pmsnopes_feedOnline users claimed the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in 2019, was referred to in the present tense in a 2023 email.
The Language of Liars by S L Huang
Mar. 13th, 2026 09:08 amjames_davis_nicoll
A linguist goes undercover to unravel a xenological puzzle whose answer is in plain view.
The Language of Liars by S L Huang
podcast friday
Mar. 13th, 2026 07:26 amsabotabby Let's take a little break from reality and talk about romantasy! Escapist tales of fucking fairies and immortal elves and nothing to do with politics whatsoever, right?
Okay you know whose blog you're reading here. Two new-to-me podcasts with great names, Ordinary Unhappiness and In Bed With the Right, did a crossover episode, "Romantasy, Fantasy, and Trauma." For someone who has never read a romantasy (but read a lot of the precursors) I'm kind of obsessed with it as a genre and even more obsessed with the discourse around it.
Disregarding the people whose opinions I don't care about, there are kind of two opposing takes on its appeal.
This is a fundamentally conservative genre that encourages women to become tradwives and relish in our own oppression.
This is actually a liberatory genre that allows women to explore their fantasies and traumas.
I don't think either side is fully right or wrong here, and that tension is worth exploring. This episode starts from two positions that many critics and admirers of the genre neglect: That women have agency, and that not everything women like is inherently feminist. From there it looks at where the romantasy boom came from, what its appeal is, and what it says about the psychology of its readers. I came away without a spicy take beyond that it turns out that a lot of the stories I wrote and never showed anyone when I was in my teens and twenties actually fit pretty neatly into the genre, which means that either BookTok girlies and I read a lot of the same books growing up, or there's something very deep in our culture that it speaks to, such that we reproduce the tropes unthinkingly.
I also find it interesting (not really discussed on this episode) that for all that the romance formula is reified into tropes and beats and commercial genre fiction is expected to at least somewhat engage with word counts and structure, romantasy really does appear to be an exception, and you can still write and sell stupidly long books in which nothing much happens, and no one complains about it. Dear Publishing Industry: Another world is possible.
Okay you know whose blog you're reading here. Two new-to-me podcasts with great names, Ordinary Unhappiness and In Bed With the Right, did a crossover episode, "Romantasy, Fantasy, and Trauma." For someone who has never read a romantasy (but read a lot of the precursors) I'm kind of obsessed with it as a genre and even more obsessed with the discourse around it.
Disregarding the people whose opinions I don't care about, there are kind of two opposing takes on its appeal.
This is a fundamentally conservative genre that encourages women to become tradwives and relish in our own oppression.
This is actually a liberatory genre that allows women to explore their fantasies and traumas.
I don't think either side is fully right or wrong here, and that tension is worth exploring. This episode starts from two positions that many critics and admirers of the genre neglect: That women have agency, and that not everything women like is inherently feminist. From there it looks at where the romantasy boom came from, what its appeal is, and what it says about the psychology of its readers. I came away without a spicy take beyond that it turns out that a lot of the stories I wrote and never showed anyone when I was in my teens and twenties actually fit pretty neatly into the genre, which means that either BookTok girlies and I read a lot of the same books growing up, or there's something very deep in our culture that it speaks to, such that we reproduce the tropes unthinkingly.
I also find it interesting (not really discussed on this episode) that for all that the romance formula is reified into tropes and beats and commercial genre fiction is expected to at least somewhat engage with word counts and structure, romantasy really does appear to be an exception, and you can still write and sell stupidly long books in which nothing much happens, and no one complains about it. Dear Publishing Industry: Another world is possible.
snopes_feedThough Israel does censor press and punish some social media expression, there is no evidence of this specific law.