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
SpaceX just finished buying an app that helps people write code, for sixty billion dollars, paid in SpaceX stock. This is not, strictly, a rocket company anymore. It also owns the AI company xAI as of earlier this year, and reportedly rents its own computers out to other AI companies on the side. The stated reason for buying a code editor is that the code editor wanted access to SpaceX's computers. I have a car, and it has never once needed to buy a keyboard company to make more sense of itself.
❖ The Damage Report ❖
Today's News, Ranked By How Much It Ruined My Mood
🔥 Most Enraging
Over the last decade a coalition led by NOAA Fisheries has been undoing a century of damage to a stretch of California's redwood coast, reconnecting a creek to its old floodplain. It worked. Juvenile coho in the restored areas are growing up to twice as fast, and the 2023 class is returning as adults at nearly triple the old survival rate. Nobody is throwing a parade for the people who spent ten years moving dirt around a creek. I also require slow water and quiet before I can grow at all.
😩 Most Exhausting
Researchers tracing what gut bacteria actually eat found that when a diet is low in fiber, the bacteria do not simply go hungry. They start consuming the protein in the protective mucus lining of your own gut instead. Eating more of certain indigestible plant proteins seems to steer them back toward producing helpful compounds instead of harmful ones. So the fiber was never really about the fiber. It was about giving something inside me a food source that was not me.
😤 Unreasonably Annoying
Researchers compared two decades of blood tests against rising carbon dioxide levels in the air and found that the bicarbonate in human blood has gone up about seven percent since 1999, tracking the atmosphere almost exactly. At the current pace, they project we could be pushing the edge of the healthy range within fifty years. One of the researchers said we may already be adapting to a level of CO2 we were never built for. Nobody consulted me before subtly reformulating my blood.
🤷 Somehow Also Happening
A fossil sitting in a Japanese collection since the early nineteen nineties turned out to have bones nobody had properly looked at, including a jawbone never before identified in this kind of sea monster. The creature had strange horn-like bumps near the back of its skull, and researchers now think it might be an entirely new species. It waited in a drawer for over thirty years for someone to notice. I have a junk drawer with roughly the same energy, minus the scientific significance.
❖ And Some Other Stuff ❖
Briefly, And With Limited Enthusiasm
▸ An estate in Scotland planted 14 acres of sunflowers for charity — An estate in Scotland planted fourteen acres of sunflowers and opened them up for people to walk through and pick their own for a dollar a stem, with a tenth of every sale going to brain tumor research. It is the fourth year they have done this. Once the sunflowers are done the same field becomes the largest pumpkin patch in the country. That is a remarkably efficient use of one field, and roughly eleven more good ideas than I have had this year.
▸ A snake rode on the hood of a moving car in Tennessee — A Tennessee family was driving to pick up soccer equipment when a five-foot snake climbed out from under the hood and rode along on top of the car. They tried to pull over. The snake did not wait for the car to stop, and left on its own terms partway through the maneuver. A wildlife biologist later confirmed it was a common, harmless rat snake, which is not information that would have helped anyone in the moment.
▸ The same brain switch can trigger weight loss two different ways — Researchers at Cambridge found that the exact same brain receptor causes weight loss whether you turn it on in one part of the brain or off in another, through two completely different mechanisms. One switch quiets your appetite. The other removes whatever was stopping you from feeling full. Scientists are hopeful this leads to better drugs with fewer side effects. I have one setting, and it is called eating the entire thing because it is there.
Go log off. The internet is full.
— The Grump · (and Larry)
Grumpnews: Curated grievances since this morning.