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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 film festival in Colorado had everyone lock their phones in pouches, filled a six hundred and fifty seat theater, and surprised them with a three hour documentary about Elizabeth Holmes. One of the two directors had reportedly been living in her guest house while he shot it. The film covers the thirty four days before she reported to federal prison, which is apparently a stretch of a person's life that a studio will pay for. A24 puts it in theaters next month. So there was a conviction, then eleven years, then an appeal that failed, then a clemency request nobody has answered, and now a runtime. I have never had thirty four interesting days in a row, and no one has ever asked to move into my garage to find out.
❖ The Damage Report ❖
Today's News, Ranked By How Much It Ruined My Mood
🔥 Most Enraging
Indonesia's peat fires do not race across the surface where you can watch them. They burn down into the ground and keep going under the smoke until the rains show up in October or November. One month into this season they have already produced about a tenth of what the catastrophic 2015 fires managed in total. Ninety percent of the country got almost no rain in early August. A fire you cannot see, that stops when the weather decides. I have handled several problems on exactly that schedule.
😩 Most Exhausting
Princeton researchers put an AI in charge of the plasma inside a fusion reactor, in the sense that it now watches the thing and adjusts it in about twenty milliseconds. A human operator takes several seconds. In one of five experiments on a tokamak in San Diego it saw an instability coming two tenths of a second before it arrived and moved to prevent it rather than clean up after it. Two tenths of a second of warning, acted on. I get considerably more warning than that and still choose to clean up after it.
😤 Unreasonably Annoying
A two year trial across eleven Latin American countries split one thousand and sixty five older adults into two groups. One group got periodic education about exercise and diet and four group meetings. The other got supervised exercise, nutrition coaching, cognitive training and thirty eight group meetings. The second group improved fifty five percent more on a composite measure of thinking. Thirty eight meetings. Being told turns out to be worth almost nothing and being made to show up turns out to be worth quite a lot. I have been told.
🤷 Somehow Also Happening
A six year old Parson Russell terrier named Cello followed something into a badger warren in Nottinghamshire and did not come out for two days. Badgers are protected in Britain, so before anyone was allowed to dig, the rescue had to obtain a government permit. They found him with a camera, sank a shaft two feet down, and lifted him out sore eyed. He then slept twenty four hours straight. Larry once wedged himself under the deck chasing the squirrel, and that operation took one neighbor, a slice of ham and no paperwork at all. Larry then slept the rest of the day. I gather that part is not optional.
❖ And Some Other Stuff ❖
Briefly, And With Limited Enthusiasm
▸ Scientists find breast cancer cells hiding behind protective shields — Researchers mapped breast tumors cell by cell and found clusters of cancer cells doing nothing at all, sitting inside a ring of immune and connective tissue cells that appear to be shielding them. Not dividing is what makes them hard to kill, because chemotherapy goes after the ones that are busy. They wait it out and start up again later. A cell that survives by declining to participate. I have used that strategy at family gatherings for years and never once had it described as a promising avenue for treatment.
▸ Firm buys Texas coal plant to leverage its grid connections for new massive solar project — An investment firm bought the Twin Oaks coal plant in Robertson, Texas, not for the plant but for the wiring. The transmission lines and the grid connection are already there and already approved, which is the part that normally takes years. On the same ground they are putting one point two gigawatts of solar and one point six gigawatts of batteries, one point seven billion dollars, first stage running in 2028. They bought a power station for its extension cord. I respect it.
▸ This new frog was hiding in plain sight for 100 years — A frog living across sixty seven thousand square kilometers of forest in western Ecuador and southern Colombia, calling from shrubs at night, common and easy to find, has been going by somebody else's name for more than a hundred years. A researcher went to a museum in London, looked at specimens collected in the eighteen hundreds, and worked out that it had been its own species the entire time. It is now Pristimantis milpe. A hundred years of being mistaken for someone else, in full view. My brother in law has called me Dave since 1998.
I regret most of this. See you tomorrow.
— The Grump · (and Larry)
Built in a kitchen. Edited under duress.