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
Waymo and Zoox market their cars as needing no human behind the wheel, and the actual humans still behind the wheel during testing are getting hurt doing it. More than two dozen injuries across the two companies in the last two years, sprains, whiplash, shoulder and neck injuries, one Waymo worker missed a hundred seventy five days of work. Most of it comes from the car slamming on the brakes at highway speed for debris that may or may not have actually been there. Waymo says safety is paramount and points to the tens of millions of miles already driven. Zoox says the injuries are a small percentage of total miles and hard braking is sometimes unavoidable. A hundred seventy five days. Called a small percentage. I have hurt my own back reaching for a remote control, and at no point did anyone call it an acceptable rate.
❖ The Damage Report ❖
Today's News, Ranked By How Much It Ruined My Mood
🔥 Most Enraging
Buried in yesterday's eighteen billion dollar Meta settlement is a separate clause where twenty nine states agreed, permanently, never to sue Meta under child privacy law over one specific use of kids' data, letting the company keep using it to train and test the systems that guess whether a user is under thirteen. A lawyer not involved in the case called the guardrails around it pretty typical. Another noted the deal only holds if Meta actually stays inside the lines. Twenty nine states signed away a lawsuit before Meta has even had the chance to misuse the exception. I have never once been trusted in advance not to misuse something, including a gift card.
😩 Most Exhausting
A bear broke into a home in Crested Butte, Colorado, tore the kitchen apart, and somehow started a fire in the process, bringing firefighters out to a break-in with no human suspect. A bear. Breaking and entering. Then arson, essentially, by accident. I have also caused kitchen damage while looking for a snack, though never anything requiring a fire department.
😤 Unreasonably Annoying
Astronomers finally got a clear picture of the star that has apparently been orbiting Betelgeuse for the better part of a century, after decades of only suspecting it was there, and found it is two to three times heavier than the sun, considerably bigger than first guessed. One astronomer on the team reportedly said he jumped out of his chair. A hundred years to confirm a neighbor existed. I have lived next to the same people for a decade and still could not tell you both of their names.
🤷 Somehow Also Happening
A newly identified fossil insect from three hundred twenty four million years ago still had paddle-shaped limbs on its abdomen, evidence that early insects did not simply crawl out of the water and become land animals in one move, but spent a long stretch of time amphibious, half committed to dry land, in between. A long, uncommitted, half-in-half-out phase before finally becoming something else. I have been in that phase with several decisions of my own, some of them since March.
❖ And Some Other Stuff ❖
Briefly, And With Limited Enthusiasm
▸ Your dislike of eating bugs may be 9,000 years old — Researchers looked at ancient teeth and DNA and found that people across northern Eurasia have carried genes making insects harder to digest for about nine thousand years, going back to the start of farming, while Neanderthals ate bugs far more regularly. Nine thousand years of the same opinion about bugs. I have held a grudge against a single vegetable for a much shorter stretch, but relative to my own lifespan it is not far behind.
▸ A new startup launched a clone of old Twitter called Twitter.now — A new startup launched something called Twitter.now, built to look and feel like Twitter did before it became X, complete with the old bird and the old blue. People keep rebuilding the thing that already existed, one platform collapse at a time. I still call it Twitter out loud, to nobody, as a form of protest.
▸ A kitten rescued from an excavator became part of the construction crew — A kitten found inside an excavator on an Ohio job site has been formally adopted by the construction crew, and now has her own small vest and hard hat. A cat. With a hard hat. Fully OSHA compliant, presumably. I have worked from home for years and still do not own a single piece of appropriate safety gear.
Same time tomorrow. Bring your own coffee.
— The Grump · (and Larry)
No notes. No thoughts. Just news and grievances.