Tech

Mushy no Onion

My favorite anime about a giant mushroom, corrupt homeland security agents, corporate mysteries, and media empires.

Endeavorance

16 Dec 2024 — 4 min read

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BIG MUSHY

Picture this: you're out for a stroll with family. It's a gorgeous day with the wind in your hair and not a care in the world until... oop! Stomach's a-growlin'. Surely there's something good to eat around these parts?

Let's look up a nearby restaurant, or maybe there's a market. Oh, wait, never-you-mind, you've stumbled across a 5kg puffball mushroom. We'll just eat that!

For actually tho: a woman in England spotted a 5kb (11lb) puffball mushroom that was still in perfectly good condition to use for food. She harvested it, took it home, cut it up, and fed her family with it for a week. Granted, the family is now quoted in saying they're kinda sick of eating the mushroom. But like, it was a BIG BOY.

They legit used a huge slice of it as the base layer of a pizza. Mushzza.

Highland Security

Two US Department of Homeland Security agents have been caught re-selling confiscated bath salts for profit.

It went like this: the agents scooped up a dude who was previously imprisoned and used him as an informant and mole to do sanctioned investigations. They then were like, "hey, I'm a piece of shit; let's get rich by selling the drugs we punish people for selling back to the people we punish for selling the drugs." Foolproof.

So they did that, working with their informant to sell their salts to the tune of $300,000.

Fret not: they've been arrested and charged with… a single count of conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance. Cool.

OpenAI Whistleblower Found Dead

Suchir Balaji was a former employee at OpenAI who made waves after blowing the whistle about the company's complete lack of legal standing around the use of the data they stole to train their AI systems. He has now been found dead in his San Francisco apartment, which officials are claiming "has been determined to be suicide."

This is of course right on the heels of the Boeing whistleblower who was found dead after outing the company's egregious lack of safety concerns.

OpenAI has stated they're real big sad to hear about the passing of Suchir.

Suicide or foul play, we're watching a string of whistleblowers end up dead moments after calling out their giant, national-security-adjacent corporations for their actions. It doesn't exactly project a culture of openness and truth.

Judge Hates Onions

A judge has ruled to prevent The Onion from purchasing Alex Jones' Infowars website and media empire after Jones cried loud enough for Elon Musk to get involved.

The Onion, a satire news organization, attempted to purchase Infowars from auction after Alex Jones got fucking shitrocked by the courts from spending years claiming that the dead children from the Sandy Hook shooting were paid actors. He was held accountable for $1,500,000,000 to the families of the victims, who backed The Onion in trying to purchase the failed media empire.

Jones bitched and moaned a bunch and Musk filed an objection claiming that Twitter (or, X, as he still is trying to get people to call it) has sole ownership over all accounts on the website and therefore they refuse to hand access to the Infowars handle over, despite it being a part of the purchased media empire.

It's worth noting that if Twitter's official stance is indeed that they retain higher ownership over all accounts that they would then be on the hook legally for anything published under those accounts, as it would make them a publisher instead of a carrier. But y'know. Irony is dead.

The actual reason the judge cited for rejecting the purchase was that the auction wasn't auction-y enough. He says the final bids came in too soon and there should have been more competing offers.

It's not over yet, all that's happened really is the request for a do-over. The Onion is still trying to walk away victorious here.

If I May Have a Moment...

Now comes the part where I force myself to remember that doing things takes money, so here's a plug for stuff.

Do you like warm beverages? Do you prefer drinking your warm beverages out of a cup rather than holding the hot liquid directly in your hands and slurping? Me too!

Perhaps you would like a mug? It helps with the thing we seem share regarding hot beverage ingestion.

Anyway, check out the Don't Prey on Children mug as well as a bunch of other fun designs in the Drinkware section of my merch store!

Of course, if you need something to fill a mug, you can head to Many Worlds Tavern to pick up some coffee and tea for 10% off since you're a cool cool subscriber to Stuff Keeps Happening!