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 power line went down near Washington the other week. Normally the grid shrugs that off in seconds. This time the lights flickered from Virginia to Chicago, because the moment it failed a wall of data centers yanked themselves off the grid at once to protect their own machines. Three gigawatts, gone in half a minute, and the whole system staggered. So the thing making my lamp blink is a server farm running a chatbot somewhere. I did not agree to share a fuse box with the robots.
❖ The Damage Report ❖
Today's News, Ranked By How Much It Ruined My Mood
🔥 Most Enraging
People are so worn down by having AI shoved into every phone and app that librarians have started running classes on how to turn all of it off, and the classes are packed. Seventy people showed up to one, to learn how to make their own devices stop doing tricks nobody asked for. A library, teaching a roomful of grown adults how to un-install the future. I have been running that class in my own head for years, and mine has no waitlist.
😩 Most Exhausting
Scientists looked at a group of people in their eighties and nineties who still remember everything, sharp as someone thirty years younger, and went hunting for the lucky gene behind it. There isn't one. They checked, and the memory champions carry the same odds in their DNA as the rest of us who cannot find our own glasses. So it is not the genes. It is something else nobody can name yet, which at this point is probably just spite.
😤 Unreasonably Annoying
A marine biologist in Maine earned a world record for having a hundred and six tattoos of sharks, which somebody at Guinness apparently sat down and counted one at a time. She has loved sharks since a movie scared her at eight, and now she wears a hundred and six of them. I admire the commitment. I cannot commit to a wallpaper. I have had the same undecided beige in the hall since the second Bush.
🤷 Somehow Also Happening
Scientists ran the first close-up models of Venus and think the planet is cracking itself open along giant rift valleys that are still spreading, a few centimeters a year, which for a planet is a tantrum. Everyone had it filed under dead and dormant. Turns out it has been coming apart at the seams this whole time, in private, where nobody was looking. I have never felt closer to a planet in my life.
❖ And Some Other Stuff ❖
Briefly, And With Limited Enthusiasm
▸ A daily fiber supplement reduced knee arthritis pain — Researchers gave a hundred people with bad knees a daily spoon of a fiber that comes from chicory root, and after six weeks their knees hurt less and their grip got stronger. Fiber. For the knees. Apparently the gut and the joints have been talking behind my back this whole time. I have tried everything else on these knees, so I suppose now I go buy the chicory too.
▸ The universe can outrun light without breaking Einstein's rules — It turns out the far-off galaxies are moving away from us faster than light, and it breaks none of Einstein's rules, because it is not them racing off, it is the empty space between us all stretching out at once. The universe is running away from itself and getting away with it. I find that relatable. I would put more room between me and everything too, if the rules let me.
▸ A man found a full-grown python living in his car's engine — A man in Ontario popped his hood and found a full-grown python living in the engine of his car, and when the animal officer reached in, the snake climbed up onto their arm like it had been waiting for a lift. No panic, no fight. Just a snake that had decided the engine was home now. I have never once been that relaxed about being found somewhere I did not belong.
Forward this to someone who also hates everything.
— The Grump · (and Larry)
Grumpnews: Where the news goes to be resented.