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Est. 2026 · Vol. I · The Daily Grievance
Grump News
"The worst thing that happened to me today that you NEED to know about. And some other news stuff."
❖ The Gripe ❖
A Personal Affront, Reported Faithfully
Apple has been fighting for years to keep charging a cut of purchases made outside its own app store, and lost enough of that fight that a court finally made it show its math. The new number is fifteen percent, down from the twenty-seven percent it tried first. Apple says this recoups its investment in the tools that let a developer build an app it does not otherwise touch. It also pointed out that Google charges more, as if getting undercut by Google is a defense anyone wanted. I do not build apps. I buy things through them, and apparently a cut of every purchase has been funding Apple's feelings about being asked to explain itself.
❖ The Damage Report ❖
Today's News, Ranked By How Much It Ruined My Mood
🔥 Most Enraging
Someone has been breaking into water utilities across the country since late July, and the FBI now says it happened in at least seven states, including a Minnesota town of seventeen hundred people. The attacks caused a loss of water pressure in some systems, which the FBI says could let untreated groundwater into the pipes. Nobody in government will say the word Iran out loud, but multiple reports say that is who intelligence agencies think did it. I complain about my water pressure for entirely pettier reasons.
😩 Most Exhausting
Since 2011 nearly two hundred rescued Sumatran orangutans have been released into a forest reserve in Indonesia, and at least ten babies have now been born there to parents who were themselves raised in captivity. Nobody taught them how to do this. The conservation group running the program says it amounts to an entirely new wild population of a critically endangered species, built one rescued animal at a time. I was raised by two people who read a book about it and still needed a decade to recover.
😤 Unreasonably Annoying
An eight-foot pet python escaped its enclosure at a Virginia middle school overnight, knocked over its own heat lamp, and started a fire that damaged eight classrooms. Firefighters arrived to find the snake sitting in a classroom, waiting, and secured it until the owner came to collect it. Nobody was hurt, and the school year still starts on time, just with eight fewer working rooms while repairs happen. The python is, as far as anyone has reported, facing no consequences whatsoever.
🤷 Somehow Also Happening
Two companies just got permission to test self-driving eighteen-wheelers on California highways, after years of doing it in Texas instead. The trucks are required to have a human sitting behind the wheel the entire time, doing nothing, in case the truck needs a human to suddenly remember how to drive. California only lifted its ban on driverless vehicles this heavy in April. I have been driving for decades and I would also like a person paid to sit next to me and watch.
❖ And Some Other Stuff ❖
Briefly, And With Limited Enthusiasm
▸ A woman ran 100 miles on a treadmill to break a world record — A forty-four-year-old fitness trainer ran one hundred miles on a treadmill in just under thirteen hours to break the world record, beating the old one by an hour and a half. She said the hardest part was not the distance, which she has done before on roads, but running in place with no turns, hills, or variety to spread the fatigue around. I get restless on a treadmill at the eleven-minute mark.
▸ A Florida man won the lottery while visiting Michigan and is moving there — A seventy-five-year-old Florida man was visiting family in Michigan when he bought a Fantasy 5 ticket out of habit and won three hundred fifty-eight thousand dollars. He and his wife are now using the money to move to Michigan permanently, which means a lottery ticket has made a bigger life decision than most people manage on purpose. He said they both cried and stayed up all night too excited to sleep. I would also stay up all night. I would just be doing math about the taxes.
▸ Taking the stairs could protect your heart — Researchers pooled data on more than four hundred eighty thousand people over a median of fourteen years and found that the ones who regularly took the stairs had a thirty-nine percent lower risk of dying from heart disease. The overall death risk dropped by nearly a quarter. One of the researchers called it a practical, overlooked way to get exercise into daily life. My building has an elevator, and I have made my choice.
If today was bad, just wait.
— The Grump · (and Larry)
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