Number 5. NBC News. Mormon cricket sludge causes crashes in Nevada.
When I first saw the headline I thought it was new slam on a religious group. But no, it’s just a good old-fashioned horde of locusts, Exodus-like. Except these are crickets, not locusts.
Specifically, these are Anabrus simplex, common to the great western U.S. They live on herbs, grass, crops… any sort of plant. But like Moses’ locusts, they defoliate anything in their path.
Mormon crickets lay eggs, which apparently last for years in the ground, and then when there is a drought they hatch and come up.
See… you knew this would get back to climate change, didn’t you? It’s all your fault for driving that gas guzzler.
And now the Mormon cricket is taking revenge on drivers of gasoline cars by collecting on paved roads by the millions, forming a disgusting, living, crawling surface. When you try to stop your 6,000 lb car atop them, they squash easily, the carcasses turn to sludge, and then you slide into the other car you were hoping to avoid.
But wait, there’s more!
The Mormon cricket outbreak will last four to six years and is a menace to polite society. They attacked an elementary school in Sparks, Nevada, to the extent that classes had to be cancelled.
This is no way to start a News Roundup. I feel a little queasy already.
Cricket sludge?? Yechh!
Number 4. People Magazine. Snakes cause unprecedented power outages in Tennessee.
Staying with the creepy crawlies for a moment, this endearing story comes from People Magazine.
The Tennessee Valley Authority is under siege.
Rat snakes, those harmless, non-poisonous, lovable critters, slither their way into your heart because they are the natural enemy of mice, insects, rats, bats and lizards. Rat snakes are also expert climbers, finding their way into trees and attics where they nest at night and say “Surprise!” when you walk under a low roof beam the next morning while looking down at your smart phone.
These delightful little additions to God’s creation generally grow to 7 feet long, so there is a lot to love when you find one unexpectedly sneaking along the top shelf in the garage when you were looking for the garden trowel.
In Tennessee, the local TVA power plant has found friendly rat snakes inside their equipment room where all the electrical breakers are. This can truly shock workers (pun intended), who have tried lots of different barriers to keep the rat snakes outside.
The thing is, there is abundant warmth inside a power plant substation because of all those terminals with thousands of volts of electricity running through them.
Once upon a time at Southwestern Bell Telephone Company we had a 9-1-1 service outage in a town in west Texas. In that case, an iguana lizard had crawled up inside the telephone pedestal, that little two-foot-tall green steel box in the alley behind your office building. The 9-1-1 phone had just rung. The ringing tone is generated when 48 volts DC is applied to the circuit.
Just after the phone was answered and the ringing stopped, the two terminals inside the pedestal were still warm from the electricity. The iguana thought it was an ideal place to curl up across those two lugs. Nice and warm! And it was, until the phone rang again and fried him in place. His carcass shorted out the circuit and 9-1-1 was out of service.
That made for an interesting case to explain to the customer.
Which may suggest an ideal solution for a rat snake trap at the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Number 3. AP News. Red Lobster seeks bankruptcy protection.
One more about crawly things before we move on.
The Crimson Crustacean has closed dozens of its restaurants and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Chapter 11 is that version that allows a company to continue to operate while reorganizing and trying to work out satisfactory payment arrangements with creditors. It’s better than shutting down, firing everybody, and moving to Venezuela.
Red Lobster was started in Georgia in 1938 and did well for more than 50 years. As a casual dining experience, it was unique. The cheddar biscuits earned high praise from Tina Fey, who was quoted as saying, “Anyone who claims to not like the cheddar biscuits is liar and a Socialist.”
It is not clear whether that would be an accusation or a compliment today.
Now, assets for the restaurant chain are valued at somewhere under $10 billion dollars, and so are the liabilities. Probably half the 600 restaurants will close, taking with them an undisclosed percentage of their 100,000 employees, thanks to COVID three years ago and inflation ever since.
Last year, Red Lobster tried to rejuvenate interest with its “Ultimate Endless Shrimp,” an all-you-can-eat feast for a cheap $20 per customer. Unfortunately, the campaign was a huge success and they discovered that lots of people like huge amounts of deep fried shrimp. The promotion presented a financial loss of almost $20 million.
At $20 per plate, my back-of-the-envelope calculations says that means about a million customers ate well for a little while, and then ran them out of business.
Note to self: Always charge the customer a little bit MORE than your product costs, not a little bit LESS.
Number 2. Motor Biscuit dot com. Some drivers are chopping their OBD wires.
And now this, for the technologically enlightened. And for those who need a new set of wheels, free for the taking.
Grand theft auto was up 35 percent in Illinois from 2021 to 2022. The theft spike is directly related to that little plug-in port under your driver’s side dashboard.
The On-Board Diagnostics interface has been included in motor vehicles for over 25 years. Prior to 1987 it was called OBD; post-1987 the design of the pin-out was changed and it became known as OBD-II.
When your Service Engine Soon light comes on, you can get a code reader from Autozone for $29.99, plug into the port and see what’s what. It may not help much to learn that you have something like a P0440 fault, but it serves as a talking point with the mechanic and may make him think you know enough to not be scammed. (But it never really helped me.)
On the other hand, you can go to Autozone or O’Reilly’s and the nice young man will apply the store’s code reader and tell you what it says. Which still may not help.
But the real gold is using a device that accesses somebody else’s OBD-II port to steal their car.
Crooks are wise to the technology, and, once they get inside the cockpit, can do novel things like plug into your OBD-II and program a new key fob for themselves. Which they can then use to drive to the local chop shop, split up your Lexus into easily fencible parts and collect the cash for a vehicle that no longer exists.
In the old days, say about a year ago, the thief had to access your car’s electronic computer by means of plugging into your headlight connector. This involved opening the door to access the hood release, then raising the hood and fiddling with the headlight assembly.
Sitting in the driver’s seat working what looks like a smartphone connected to the OBD is much less obtrusive.
To counter the OBD thief, you can buy an OBD-II locking cover to secure the port.
Better yet, disconnect the original OBD port but leave it in place. Have your mechanic wire in a different OBD inside the glove box where it will be hidden. Use a locking cover to protect the original, disconnected OBD port. The bad guy will spend all his time trying to defeat the port cover, to no avail.
That could waste lots of the thief’s time, and might make him upset enough to hurt the owner that he left locked in the trunk.
My granddad had an old Chevy 3/4-ton pickup. Reports vary on what year it was; my brother thought it was a 1936; I thought it was a 5-window model from something like 1948. Whatever… In that vehicle, there was no need for an ignition key, as the key slot was a chrome molded affair that protruded a half inch from the dashboard.
You could grasp the protrusion between thumb and forefinger to turn the power on, then mash the spring-loaded starter solenoid on the floor next to the gas pedal to engage the starter. Optionally, you could use the key to lock the ignition mechanism if you wanted.
That meant you would have to remember where the key was.
Probably in the junk drawer in the kitchen.
But his Chevy did not have electric windows or eyeball lane protectors. Or seatbelts either, come to think of it.
Number 1. The Gateway Pundit. China prepares for war with robodogs armed with machine guns.
The ANR is obviously on the cutting edge of technology. I told you just two weeks ago on May 17 in this space about the robot dogs the U.S. Marine Corps is testing.
This article from The Gateway Pundit takes it another leap forward.
A recent “Golden Dragon” live-fire military exercise in Cambodia involved 2,000 Communist troops, 14 warships, 2 helicopters, 69 tanks and an unspecified number of four-footed robot dogs armed with fully automatic machine guns.
Each robodog was mastered by a soldier holding a leash.
The dogs did not fire the weapons, either because the mere presence of the critters was deemed adequate to display their military capability, or because they were not ready for prime time, or maybe because the brass did not know exactly what would happen when they opened up with the AKs.
None of the handlers was interviewed for this article. One wonders about the leash: It is obviously designed to keep the robodog from getting away from you, but what, exactly, keeps it from getting closer to you while spitting 7.62 mm bullets?
The scare factor alone might be something to give opposing troops pause. I wonder if the robos will be equipped with OBD ports? There may be an opportunity here.
*****
And thanks for joining The Alligator Blog for Friday, May 31, 2024. June is upon us! That means Election Day is right around the corner! Almost time for your Christmas shopping! Visit www.alligatorpublishing.com and order everyone on your list a signed copy of Alligator Wrestling in the Cancer Ward!
Have a good weekend!
The Alligator News Roundup