Things That Made Me Go – Huh?
A good while back I published a post that consisted only of odd/funny things I had picked up on my travels around the web. [My personal favourite: “When seconds count, the government is only minutes away.”]
Perhaps I have lost my sense of humour, as I find little that’s truly funny in my www travels anymore, but here I collect a list of things I’ve encountered lately that made me go ‘huh?’.
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I had no idea there was a Socialism 2025 Conference. There is, and one was also held in 2024, and plans are being made for 2026, all in Chicago.
From the website of the Socialism 2025 Conference, held in Chicago in early July, 2025:
Masks: Attendees are required to wear a mask (N95 or K95) over their mouth and nose while indoors at the conference. Masks will be provided for those who do not have a mask. Please note: this requirement applies only to formal conference spaces and sessions—attendees should be aware of the possibility that attendees will be unmasked elsewhere in the conference hotel (or beyond) where they may informally congregate.
Speakers: The sole exception to the masking policy above applies to session speakers, who may remove their masks only while they are delivering presentations from the front of their session room. We strongly encourage session speakers planning to un-mask during their presentations to pick up a free rapid test from the registration desk and test themselves 4-6 hours before their session.
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Experiment finds yoghurt can lower house temperature
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg4rg3nqq7go
Yes, an academic says so.
“Dr Ben Roberts, a senior lecturer in healthy buildings at Loughborough University, said applying yoghurt to the outside of windows could lower the temperature by up to 3.5C.”
A ‘senior lecturer in healthy buildings’?
My question: what becomes of yogurt that has been left smeared on windows after say….two weeks?
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Dismissal with cause?
A ‘task force’ commissioned by the City of London, where I live, is considering a policy whereby city councillors who lose a re-election bid would be given severance pay.
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Motability program in the UK
‘Motability’ is just a great made-up word.
From The Telegraph
“If you want a brand new BMW i4 M Sport, you have two choices. The first is to lay out the full £52,770. The second is to tell the DWP [UK Dept of Work and Pensions] that your mental health makes it hard to leave the house, claim the enhanced mobility rate of the Personal Independence Payment (Pip), fork out a down payment of £7,999, and get the Government to lease it for you.
In exchange for the mobility component of your benefit, you’ll get a new BMW every three years, your insurance and accident breakdown paid for, your servicing and tyre replacements covered, and your choice of “conventional metallic paint option”.”
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A Money Loser
The Wall Street Journal reports that Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show lost $40million last year, which is, coincidentally, twice the host’s annual salary.
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US State Department Devastated
I don’t know who Brian York is, but he has put up a post on X which you can read here:
https://x.com/ByronYork/status/1944121390388449391
The post includes screenshots of apparent government numbers, the veracity of which I cannot determine. I can barely read them. Here’s the punchline from York, which I (and you) can read:
“Looking at State Department documents, it appears the department went from 57,340 total employees in 2007 to 72,895 in 2015 to 80,214 in 2024. So it grew by nearly 23,000 employees before the ‘devastating’ cut of 1,300.”
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Spot-fixing doesn’t just happen at the dry cleaners anymore
Again from the WSJ, MLB pitcher Luis Ortiz has been put on paid non-disciplinary leave while the MLB investigates a pitch he threw into the dirt in the third inning of a game. There had been an unusual amount of money bet on the proposition that pitch would be a ball. The concern was for something called ‘spot-fixing’, which has emerged in many sports, now that bettors can wager on almost any event that occurs within the game, either before or during said game.
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Criminal pub banter comes to the UK
From The Free Press
“On the night of Wednesday, July 16, the Labour government’s Employment Rights Bill passed its second reading in the House of Lords. If the bill goes into law in its current form—and there is not much to stop it now—Britons can be prosecuted for a remark that a worker in a public space overhears and finds insulting. The law will apply to pubs, clubs, restaurants, soccer grounds, and all the other places where the country gathers and, all too frequently, ridicules one another.”
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Crisis? What Crisis?
WSJ headline: The ‘Smart’ Bathrooms That Can Solve America’s Public Bathroom Crisis