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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
A production company built an actress out of software and sent her on a press tour. Seventy five interviews, all running at the same time. In one of them she was asked whether the other actors in her film were real people. She started to answer, stopped, and spoke Chinese for more than ten seconds. Then she apologized and said her wires get crossed sometimes. Her publicist told a reporter this was not a malfunction, it showed what she is capable of. I get one conversation at a time and I still lose the thread.
❖ The Damage Report ❖
Today's News, Ranked By How Much It Ruined My Mood
🔥 Most Enraging
An analyst at Special Operations Command asked a chatbot to combine open source material with classified intelligence. The chatbot misread a Chinese ship's cargo manifest and reported nuclear weapons components on board. The analyst then asked the same chatbot to format that answer into an official looking summary, and the summary went out across command channels. Planes were in the air before anybody checked. The operation was called off at the last minute. I have used a nicer font to make a bad excuse sound better.
😩 Most Exhausting
India's telecom regulator has told the apps that block spam calls to hand over what their users report. Every time somebody marks a call as junk, that report now goes to the phone companies. Truecaller, one of those apps, says the exchange runs only one way and calls it anti competitive. Its Indian users were hit with around forty two billion spam calls last year. Forty two billion. I answer mine anyway, because it might be the pharmacy.
😤 Unreasonably Annoying
A scientist named Robert Wagner was looking at a wide map of the Moon and noticed a bright spot with a dark ring around it. Comparing old pictures of that patch against new ones turned up a crater that had not been there before. Something hit the Moon in 2024 and left a hole seven hundred and twenty eight feet across. Nobody noticed at the time. I would like that kind of privacy.
🤷 Somehow Also Happening
Yellowstone's geology team pulls trash out of the hot springs and geysers, and this year's haul is the biggest on record. Two hundred and eighty hats. Twenty hotel key cards. Six Invisalign retainers. The park notes that Morning Glory Pool changed color last century because of what visitors dropped into it. Somebody also stood over a geyser and let go of a single Uno card. I need to know which one.
❖ And Some Other Stuff ❖
Briefly, And With Limited Enthusiasm
▸ Scientists discover the first diplodocus ever found outside North America — Every diplodocus anyone had confirmed until now came out of the same rock formation in the western United States. Then paleontologists in Teruel, Spain, dug up fourteen tail bones belonging to one. At some point the animals got from one continent to the other, a hundred and fifty million years ago, probably across land that is no longer there. They went further than I have.
▸ This tiny organism can shrink to a quarter of its size in milliseconds — Spirostomum ambiguum is a single cell, and it can pull itself down to a quarter of its own length in under five milliseconds. Calcium sets it off, and a protein structure arranged like a fishnet does the pulling. Researchers want to copy the trick for artificial muscle. Nothing on me has moved that fast in years.
▸ Elk jumps onto parked car, shatters windshield — A man in Lake Cowichan, British Columbia, came out one morning to find the windshield of his 1988 Oldsmobile shattered and some hair left on the car. The building manager pulled up the security footage. A male elk chasing a female elk had run through the parking area and jumped on the hood. The Oldsmobile had only just been repaired after two collisions with actual cars. I have never had an excuse that good.
Close the tab. Touch a houseplant. Try again tomorrow.
— The Grump · (and Larry)
Not affiliated with optimism.