The map sent me into a closed road and blamed me

🔥 Most Enraging

Utz recalls Zapp's and 'Dirty' brand chips in the FDA's highest-risk Class I salmonella recall

The government put two potato chip brands in its highest danger recall category over salmonella, and one of them is named Dirty, which is not helping its case. Chips were the one thing I trusted to just sit there and be bad for me the normal way. Now I have to read the bag.

😩 Most Exhausting

'Neil the Seal,' a 2,200-pound elephant seal, makes his annual visit to a Tasmania town, flattening fences and blocking roads

A two-thousand-pound elephant seal named Neil drags himself into the same Tasmania town once a year, wrecks a few fences and blocks the road, and the whole place throws him a party for it. I've lived in one spot for decades doing far less damage, and nobody has ever been glad to see me coming.

😤 Unreasonably Annoying

Disneyland's billionth-ever visitor is an 8-year-old, who got balloons and a ceremony

Disneyland counted up everyone who ever came through and the billionth was some eight-year-old, who got balloons and a fuss for the achievement of being born recently and standing in a line. A billion people have gone through that turnstile. I went exactly once. I sweated through my shirt and nobody counted me at all.

🤷 Somehow Also Happening

A large amount of mystery apples washed up on a North Carolina beach and nobody knows why

A pile of apples washed up on a beach in North Carolina and nobody can say where they came from. The ocean is now delivering fruit no one ordered. I can't get a package left at the right door, and the Atlantic is out here making produce drops in the sand.

▸ The real cause of a common stroke may have been missed for decades: tiny damaged vessels deep in the brain, not clogged arteries — Turns out a common kind of stroke may not come from clogged arteries at all. It may come from tiny damaged vessels deep in the brain, which means the usual advice was aimed at the wrong target for years. Comforting, at my age, to hear the experts go 'actually, hold on.'

▸ Scientists worked out how a single cell builds a brain of 170 billion neurons: related cells settle near their relatives, like a family tree — Scientists worked out how one cell grows into a brain of a hundred and seventy billion, and the trick is that related cells settle down next to their relatives, like a family tree that actually stays in touch. A hundred and seventy billion of them found their spots. My four relatives cannot agree on a restaurant.

▸ A study finds giraffes may be capable of rudimentary math — Researchers say giraffes can do a little math. They showed four of them carrots being added and taken away, and the giraffes picked the bigger pile more often than chance. So the giraffe knows when it's being shorted. I can't split a dinner check three ways with my own calculator in my hand.

Fine. A husky-mix named Bailey got lost and walked ten miles through the night back to the shelter that once took her in, then rang the doorbell with her nose at one-forty in the morning until someone let her in. She knew exactly where the help was and how to ask for it. I've had that address for years and still can't do either. No further questions.