Professional snooker player Shaun Murphy, who has amassed over $4 million in winnings, was so angry to lose to an amateur player in this year's UK Championship that he told the BBC:

"I am going to sound like a grumpy old man but that young man shouldn't be in the tournament, "It is not fair, it is not right. I feel extremely hard done by that I have lost to someone who shouldn't even be in the building."

"This is our livelihood. This is our living. We are self-employed individuals. It is wrong, in my opinion, to walk into somebody who is not playing with the same pressures and concerns I am.

"He played like a man who does not have a care in the world, because he does not have a care in the world."

The player Murphy feels is unfit for the building is Si Jiahui, a Chinese man who was once a pro but stopped competing professionally some years back. And Murphy isn't the only one who thinks the match was unfair. Snooker's reigning champion Neil Robertson doesn't want any "Chinese boys" at the tournament. From The Metro:

"I totally get where Shaun's coming from. When you're playing one of the Chinese boys, some of them are amateurs, but some are as good as anybody in the top 50 in the world.

"Amateurs are under a completely different pressure where there's actually no pressure, because they're not competing for ranking points.

"They're basically on a free hit at a pro, so I completely agree with what Shaun's saying there, because it is very dangerous."

Insider says, "Robertson went on to lose 6-2 in the first round on Tuesday to amateur John Astley."

A North Korean man who brought a copy of the South Korean science fiction series Squid Game will be executed by firing squad, reports Radio Free Asia. Six high school students who bought copies of the series on USB sticks will face punishment ranging from five years hard labor to life in prison. A seventh student, whose wealthy parents bribed officials with a $3000 payment, will receive no punishment, according to Radio Free Asia.

The arrest of the seven students marks the first time that the government is applying the newly passed law on the "Elimination of Reactionary Thought and Culture," in a case involving minors, according to the source.

The law, promulgated last year, carries a maximum penalty of death for watching, keeping, or distributing media from capitalist countries, particularly from South Korea and the U.S.

Los Angeles Lakers player LeBron James paused the action in the middle of a game in Indiana yesterday to ask officials to eject two people jeering him. According to at least one person at the game, the woman wished death on James' son: "I hope Bronny dies in a car wreck," she allegedly said. As the two hecklers were escorted from their astronomically expensive floor seats the curtside Karen pouted and pretended to wipe away mock tears.

Mean girl Laura Ingraham rushed to the heckler's defense, naturally:

Frank Brunner is perhaps best known for being the artist on Howard the Duck, but he did a lot of excellent sword and sorcery work for Marvel and independent publishers. His splended cover for Dr. Strange #1 (1974) recently sold for $408,000 at Heritage Auctions.

From the release:

When Doctor Strange was published in 1974, he was not yet a major Marvel character, but he has evolved into a major figure in the Marvel Comics Universe in the nearly six decades since. The Master of the Mystic Arts has solidified his stature through his role in MCU movies, as a character in Strange Tales and ultimately in his own title, with this image fronting the premiere issue.

"For original art from the 1970s to top $400,000 is incredible," says Heritage Auctions Senior Vice President Ed Jaster. "Frank Brunner's Doctor Strange covers set an unmatched standard for the character's artwork."

New York Times bestselling author Don Winslow made a video asking 19 questions about the January 6th terrorist assault on the U.S. Capitol. I wonder if we'll ever get to the bottom of this? If the GOP takes the House in the mid-terms we'll definitely not get truthful answers.

1. Why wasn't Donald Trump evacuated to the terror attack bunker in the White House during the January 6 attack like he was for the May 29, 2020 protest?
2. How did the rioters know to target unsecured windows at the Capitol?
3. How did they find Jim Clyburn's secret office?
4. Why hasn't a single Republican member of Congress that was involved in January 6 been subpoenaed?
5. Who planted pipe bombs outside Republican and Democratic headquarters the night before the attack?
6. Why did Lauren Boebert tweet about Nancy Pelosi's movements during the attack?
7. What advance knowledge did the FBI have?
8. Why has Trump not been indicted for pressuring officials to overturn the election?
9. How did Steve Bannon know the day before the attack?
10. How many calls to Trump make between 1:10pm and 4:17pm on January 6?
11. Who ordered the National Guard delay?
12. Did Michael Flynn's brother stop help from arriving?
13. Why were there more than 35 Capitol police officers investigated for their role in January 6?
14. Which Republican officials gave insurrectionists tours of the US Capitol prior to January 6?
15. Why are Republicans so scared of their January 6 phone records?
16. Why did it take six months to form the January 6 committee?
17. Why did it take nine months before the January 6 committee issued its first subpoenas?
18. Why has there only been one public hearing in almost a year?
19. Why hasn't a single member of the Trump family been subpoenaed?

The main difference between Trump and Lukashenko is that Trump failed to overthrow the government while Lukashenko succeeded. Watch this alarming BBC interview with the Belarus dictator as he insults the interviewer and tells the same kind of self-aggrandizing lies Trump would tell if asked similar questions.

QAnon, also known as "mainstream Republicans," has elevated Kyle Rittenhouse to the level of a Holy Knight for the Cause. So when the chubby-cheeked killer told a television interviewer that he didn't believe in QAnoners and that Lin Wood was "insane," it must've thrown the QNuts for a loop.

They quickly recovered, though, and spun the moment into their tangled mythology. The Rittenhouse on TV, you see, isn't the the real Christian Defender of the Coming Kingdom of God on Earth. He, or rather "it," is a robot that resembles and talks like Rittenhouse. RoboRittenhouse is a false-flag operation being used by reptilian adrenochrome-drinkers to to make QAnon look silly. But all will be exposed soon. Trust the Plan.

When I was in high school I worked at a Kmart and often heard things like "You just lost yourself a customer," "I'm telling all my friends not to shop here," "I know the sale ended last week but can I still get a discount?" "Do you know how much money I spend here?" "Every time I come here my order gets messed up," and the classic "I'd like to speak to your manager." I only wish I would have had the nerve to use the snappy comebacks here.

There is nothing more terrible than the shrill whine of a fly, especially when it insists on invading the privacy of one's home. More often than not, the fly seems to be out to torment me, buzzing its way around my rooms with a sense of impunity, hoping to agitate me.

I have tried all traditional methods of ridding myself of this pestilence: shooing, swatting, waving a rolled-up newspaper about. All techniques have proven ineffective in most cases.

There is a solution though — a tool that fires a tiny pinch of salt. The shot either kills or stuns the fly, making it easy to place it in the great outdoors and let nature take its course. The pump-action Bug-A-Salt uses compressed air to blast the salt, no batteries required to impart a swift death to one of these nuisances.

I must confess whenever I settle upon a fly and prepare to take it out, my heart is filled with doubts. Was this tiny creature here to support, not torment me? Who am I to bring death upon such a loyal friend? But I waste little time pondering the answers to these philosophical questions, for I am a simple person who doesn't deal in shades of gray.

Verdict: The Bug-A-Salt makes you feel like you are actually getting something done. If you are looking to clear your house of flies, look no further than the Bug-A-Salt rifle.

I really miss seeing my old friend and neighbor Maureen Herman, former bass player of Babes in Toyland and frequent Boing Boing contributor, ever since she moved from LA a couple of years ago. Our families would get together at least once a week. So it was great to hear her voice again on this episode of the Voices Behind the Music podcast.

I loved hearing her talk about her high school days with Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine (they have remained lifelong friends), how Timothy Leary was such a fan of Babes that he introduced them on stage every night on a tour, how Courtney Love ripped off Kat Bjelland's style lock stock and barrel, and how Maureen geeked out the time she met Neil Young.

Show notes:

Do you love a good origin story about how a musician got their start? Did you hear about the one where her brother got his hand stuck in a pasta machine and that ended up being the start of her international touring career? Maureen Herman is her name and she tells Jeff all about how tragedy led to opportunity not once, but twice during her music career.  

Maureen is a writer and bass guitarist, who played with the iconic Babes in Toyland. They played venues all over the US and Europe and she is now in the midst of writing her memoir.  

Big takeaway: Having a community of creative people around you is the best support, inspiration, and built-in network you can find. 

This weird vandal is upset that one day in the near future, the government will forbid her from defacing private property. I hope she gets the help she needs.

Save a Fox is a domestic fox rescue. "What does this mean? We rescue foxes from furfarms and take in pet surrenders. All these foxes were born in captivity and could never be released so it is our job to give them a happy life!" In this video, the founder gives raw eggs to a bunch of cute foxes, who seem to love her as much of more than the eggs she doles out.

People sure loved cocaine in the 1970s. Look at this amazing collection of magazine ads from the era for products to help coke users sniff, store, dry, and stash their precious white happy powder.

Here are a couple to give you a taste:

In his latest video, "Don't Tell Me How to Live," Kid Rock soars through the air hugging the raised middle finger of a giant bird-flipping hand while clutching a pistol. Mr. Rock also boasts of "ripping lines" while pretending to snort a substance, likens himself to David Lee Roth, Bruce Springsteen, James Dean, and Brad Pitt ("a little less pretty but I slang more dick"), and attests to "being more outrageous than the Vegas strip."

The video is so ludicrous that Weird Al Yankovic felt it necessary to make a public statement.

To everybody that's congratulating me right now on my new Kid Rock parody video, let me clarify – that's not me. That's actually Kid Rock.

Mr. Rock has done an admirable job appealing to working class fans, given the fact that he was born into a wealthy family and grew up in a life of privilege:

Kid Rock was born Robert James Ritchie in Romeo, Michigan, on January 17, 1971, the son of Susan and William Ritchie, who owned multiple car dealerships. He was raised in his father's 5,628-square-foot (522.9 m²) home on a 6-acre (2.4-hectare) property where he regularly helped his family pick apples and care for their horses.

"Short Subject" (AKA "Mickey Mouse in Vietnam") is a black and white cartoon from 1969 starring Mickey Mouse. Running a little over a minute long the cartoon tells the story of Mickey enlisting to serve in the Vietnam War and getting shot in the head as soon as he arrives. The film was directed by Whitney Lee Savage (the father of Adam Savage, of MythBusters ).

According to Wikipedia, "The music prominently used in the soundtrack is The Gonk by Herbert Chappell, which was popularized by George A. Romero's horror film Dawn of the Dead."

It's safe to assume the filmmakers didn't receive Disney's approval to use Mickey Mouse in their cartoon, though I would guess it falls under the use of parody.

Terrible acting, off-key singing, casual bullying, puka-shell necklaces — what's not to love about this 1978 basement-budget musical featurette starring Paul Abdul.

From Wikipedia:

The story begins with Sherry (Paula Abdul) declaring plans to hold a party that night. Upon hearing about this party, Jerry's friend Paul (Kirk Burnett) encourages him to ask his crush Lori Scott (Karen Capelle) to accompany him to the event. On his way to doing this Jerry encounters several obstacles, including repeated run-ins with Keith (Mikal Robert Taylor), a school bully, and Vicki (Toni Mazarin), an ill-intentioned girl who hopes Jerry will ask her to the party so she can spite a previous boyfriend.

A review from IMDB:

I first saw Junior High School in 1978 as an entry in the Movies on a Shoestring Festival held in Rochester N.Y. (now called the Rochester International Film Festival). It was a cut above the usual MOS fare and was well received by the judges and festival attendees. The principals, writers and directors, were a group of USC cinema majors that made the movie as their senior project and to demonstrate their abilities to potential Hollywood employers. If you check their other credits, you will see that they collaborated on a prior short called Gravity. The principals attended the screening and each was given a trophy. Several years before this film was submitted, Movies on a Shoestring began purchasing copies of the most popular films screened during the festival for a lending library called "Best of the Fest". A copy of Junior High School was purchased and it went on to be one of the most popular in their catalog.

While many people today classify this as a really bad movie that you have to watch, at the time JHS was considered good work, especially for a group of film students with a relatively untrained non-union cast (save for Mitzi McCall & hubby Charlie Brill who appeared in disguise and were originally credited under aliases) and crew making little or no money. Yes, the story line is schmaltzy and the performances shallow but the production work was close to professional, all things considered.

Unlike the storyline and the acting, the music was quite good. I assume this is due in large part to the lineage of David Wechter whose father Julius was a well respected studio and touring musician (Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass and the Baja Marimba Band) as well as a composer/arranger/film scorer. I suspect that dad made a few uncredited contributions to the movie… Audio recording and post production capabilities for big budget movies were crude by today's standards; on a low budget production like this the music had to stand on its own.

The direction, camera work and editing occurred before music videos took film making on a downward spiral of fast cuts and often indiscernible imagery. By today's often unpalatable standards of film production, JHS may be dated but it was very well done for the pre-MTV era. Junior High School achieved its objectives: the principals graduated from USC with cinema degrees and three out of four quickly found jobs in Hollywood where they continue to work today. Jacobson appears to have skipped the Hollywood film business as there are no subsequent credits for him.

BTW, I would have enjoyed being a fly on the wall listening to a bunch of twenty something students trying to convince the the school principal to hand over his building to them for several days of shooting without a big fat compensation check. It would be interesting to get one or more of the principals to open up about the making of Junior High School.

This scratch-built 1:150 scale model of a Toyota Crown is incredible tiny and can be operated by remote control. The creator, who is Japanese said on YouTube:

I modified the TOMYTEC "THE Car Collection" 1/150 TOYOTA CROWN to work with a remote control. The car is controlled by a self-made infrared remote control. The remote control format is proprietary. The battery installed in the car is a lithium polymer battery(3.7V 40mAh). I used motors by removing weights of the vibration motors. In order to write the program of the microcontroller(ATtiny1616) used on the car, you need ATMEL STUDIO 7 or later and a device that can use UPDI. I use MPLAB PICkit 4. AVRISP mkII cannot be used.

People like Gwyneth Paltrow tout alkaline water as a health tonic. She even squeezes lemon into her alkaline water. I wasn't paying a lot of attention in middle school chemistry, but I do seem to remember that mixing a base and and and acid yields a salt. So is Paltrow actually a brackish water aficianado and not an alkaline water aficionado? Perhaps someone with actually knowledge can enlighten me in the comments. Anyway, I digress. What I wanted to say is that a company called Real Water has been accused by the FDA of making a toxic batch of alkaline drinking water that poisoned 25 people, including five children who suffered liver failure and one person who died. The FDA issued an alert that said, "Do not drink, cook with, sell, or serve 'Real Water' alkaline water"

From Ars Technica:

The saga began in November and December of 2020, when the five children—ranging in age from seven months to five years—became severely ill with acute liver failure after drinking the water. They were hospitalized and later transferred to a children's hospital for a potential liver transplant—though they all subsequently recovered without a transplant. Local health officials investigating the unusual cluster found that family members had also been sickened. The only common link between the cases was the alkalized water, which Real Water claimed was a healthier alternative to tap water.

In mid-March, the Food and Drug Administration contacted Real Water about the cases and urged the company to recall their water, which was sold in multiple states, including Nevada, California, Utah, and Arizona. Real Water agreed to issue the recall. However, by the end of the month, the FDA reported that retailers were still selling the potentially dangerous water, and the regulator tried to warn consumers directly. By then, Nevada health officials had linked the water to six additional cases, including three more children, bringing the total to 11.

Now, according to the new report, the tally has increased to 25: 18 probable cases and four suspected cases in Nevada, as well as three probable cases in California.

Republican standard-bearer Alex Jones profited handsomely when he claimed the federal government staged the Sandy Hook schoolchildren massacre and the slaughtered children's parents were hired actors. While Jones raked in the money on his Infowars network the grieving parents were harassed and threatened with death for years by Jones's fans. They sued for defamation and Jones and he lost all four cases. Now Jones has made a video begging for money.

From The Independent:

"Make a $10 donation, a $1,000 donation," he said. "Wealthy people out there – your free speech is being destroyed! InfoWars is just the first domino to fall and if wealthy folks don't start spending their money promoting liberty, promoting freedom, we're going to lose this country!"

He concluded by saying that he had never issued an "alert this serious" but he needed help right now.

My day begins with a tour of the kitchen in my cinder-block home high atop the peaks of the Hollywood Hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean, checking that all is in order. In my house, each family member has a drawer in the kitchen, and it is my job to make sure the contents of the drawers are in order. It's not complicated. I open and close the drawers and cupboards and make sure the utensils and cooking ware are in their proper positions.

I often pause to pick up the OXO Good Grips Ground Beef Chopper to admire its craftsmanship. The long handle is made of a brilliant whorled plastic that I have mistaken for amber on numerous occasions. Among its many features, the most outstanding are three narrow blades of a chemical composition unknown to me, which undoubtedly could pierce through armor and steel as if it were paper. But the blades are famous for their curious ability to cut through ground meat, inflicting a bizarre wound that engineers have named "The Rift."

I hold it carefully, awed by its ethereal glow. The technology from which it originates is more advanced than humans can comprehend, and I long to keep this tool for further study.

I will later return to the kitchen to prepare the OXO Good Grips Ground Beef Chopper for its journey to the table. I will place it carefully in the center of the table, where all five of us will observe it like pilgrims before the Holy Grail. My youngest son will attempt to grab it, but I will block him with my left arm. I will raise the chopper ceremoniously above my head, and my children will grasp their hands together in a sign of praise. I will then bring it to my lips and kiss it violently. We will then all chant in unison:

Bless this, our beef chopper.
Bless this, our ground beef chopper.
Bless this, our ground beef chopper,
forever and ever.
Amen.

I will then place the chopper on the table between my youngest son and me. The first squabble will commence.

My first son will reach for the chopper as ritual demands, but I will push him away. My second son will go for the chopper next, but I will push him away, too. I will then use the chopper to cut two large hunks of ground beef. We will all sit down together for a family luncheon of whole-wheat toast, eggs, and cut beef.

After lunch, my wife will force me to go to the supermarket to buy a new spoon for my youngest son, who has left his original spoon at a friend's house. I will use the car to drive to the parking lot of Ralphs, my favorite grocery store. I will open the door and let my youngest son run in first, which is his favorite part of the trip. (My wife and I disagree on whether such indulgences spoil our children, but we remain civil during such discussions.)

From this point forward, the trip to the market will be a familiar story. My son will run down the aisles, singing and laughing. He will steal a chocolate bar from the shelf, and I will lecture him sternly. He will promise to return it, but I know he will not. My wife will then say to me, "Do you want to deal with this now, or do you want to deal with it later?" I will tell her I want to deal with it later, but I never deal with it later.