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
Somebody put out a list of the worst data breaches of the year so far, and it's only July. My name and my numbers are on there somewhere, in a pile with a few hundred million other people's, because a bunch of companies I never chose to deal with all got robbed at once. I didn't do anything. I filled out a form once, years ago, and now I'm 'affected.' They mail you an apology and a free year of the same credit monitoring service that also got breached last spring. That's the deal. That's my compensation.
❖ The Damage Report ❖
Today's News, Ranked By How Much It Ruined My Mood
🔥 Most Enraging
An alligator named Irwin got loose from a cooler in Indiana and spent an entire month on the lam before anybody caught him. A month. There was a full-grown alligator living free in Indiana, and life apparently just went on. I can't leave a window open overnight without the whole house knowing, and this reptile ran a month-long vacation with a head start and a name.
😩 Most Exhausting
Astronomers found thirty-one of the oldest quasars ever, giant black holes that were already enormous when the universe was barely getting started, and nobody can explain how they got so big so fast. So the biggest things out there had a growth spurt right out of the gate and left the scientists guessing. Meanwhile I've been the same disappointing height since I was fourteen. Some of us peak early. Most of us don't peak.
😤 Unreasonably Annoying
A man in Chicago set a world record for the fastest anyone has ever walked ten meters with a balloon squeezed between his knees. Three and a half seconds. There is a person whose greatest documented achievement is shuffling across a room without dropping a balloon, and it's written down forever now. I have done harder things than that getting from the couch to the door, and no one keeps a record.
🤷 Somehow Also Happening
Scientists found a spider in the Himalayas with a little smiley face on its back, almost identical to one in Hawaii, except the two evolved that face completely separately, half a world apart. Two different spiders, same smile, no connection. Even the spiders are putting on a happy face they don't mean. I respect it. I've been doing the same thing at the pharmacy for years.
❖ And Some Other Stuff ❖
Briefly, And With Limited Enthusiasm
▸ A planet with a permanent day side and night side might still support life — Astronomers say a planet with one side stuck in permanent daylight and the other in permanent night might still support life, because the heat circulates underneath and evens things out. A world with no sunrise and no sunset, and it still might work. I get thrown off for a week when the clocks change by one hour. That planet's got it more together than I do.
▸ Physicists found quantum entanglement in a crystal big enough to hold in your hand — Physicists found clear quantum weirdness in a crystal you could actually hold in your hand, which they're not supposed to find in anything bigger than a speck. So the strangeness that runs the universe is apparently sitting there in a rock on a lab bench, in plain sight, being impossible. I don't understand a word of it. I just find it rude that even the pebbles have secrets now.
▸ A bacterium from a frog's gut wiped out tumors in mice with a single dose — Scientists found a bacterium living in the gut of a tree frog that wiped out cancer tumors in mice with a single dose, beating the usual treatments outright. A frog was carrying a possible cure this whole time and asking nothing for it. If this holds up in people, I'll forgive the frog for every three-in-the-morning noise its relatives have ever made outside my window.
Tomorrow will probably be worse. See you then.
— The Grump · (and Larry)
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