Cowboy Who?

Standing on your own two feet isn’t easy. While many animals can momentarily balance on their hind legs, we’re the only critters, besides birds, for whom bipedalism is completely normal. Find out why, even though other animals are faster, we’re champions at getting around. Could it be that our upright stance made us human? Plus, why arches help stiffen feet, the argument for bare-footin’, and 12,000-year old footprints that tell a story about an Ice Age mother, her child, and a sloth. 

Guests:

• Daniel Lieberman – Professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University.
• Jeremy DeSilva – Professor in the departments of anthropology and biological sciences, Dartmouth College, and author of “First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human.”
• Madhusudhan Venkadesan – Professor of mechanical engineering and materials science, Yale University School of Engineering.
• David Bustos – Chief of Resources at White Sands, National Park, New Mexico.
• Sally Reynolds – Paleontologist at Bournemouth University, U.K.

Originally aired May 24, 2021

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. My friend’s job offer was pulled after he was a jerk

My friend Howell recently signed the contract for a new job, but was dismissed before he started for aggressive behavior to coworkers. The backstory is this: he needed to pass a medical before starting and after he passed the medical his employer was slow to confirm that they had received the certificate and give him a start date. He emailed the employer about this, and when he didn’t get a response he phoned the company receptionist, shouted at her when she couldn’t put him through to HR, and, as I interpret the story, bullied her into giving a number for HR. He then called HR and spoke to various women who said he wasn’t in their region and they didn’t have access to his file. The way he tells the story sounds as if he told them robustly that he believed they were lying. He then got an email saying that the job offer had been withdrawn due to his behavior to colleagues. He says they are all passive-aggressive misandrists and he wouldn’t want to work for them anyway.

The backstory to this is that Howell has been unemployed for about three years and I had encouraged him to apply for this job for which he has the skills and qualifications. It’s with a big company in the industry I work in, although fortunately there is no way the people I work with will connect me to him. Is there anything Howell can do to repair this and apply for other roles with the company and any advice I could give him? It now appears to me that the reason he has been made redundant a few times and had a slow job search may be more due to personality than the job market.

There’s nothing Howell can do to get considered for a role at that company again. He should send an email apologizing for his behavior simply because that’s the right thing to do, but it’s extremely unlikely they’ll ever consider him again after he bullied and shouted at a receptionist and accused multiple employees of lying. It can take far less to put someone on a “do not hire” list. (And really, would you feel comfortable if you discovered your own company was considering hiring a candidate who behaved like this? These consequences are logical ones and warranted by what happened.)

As for advice to Howell … he needs to do some significant work on his temper and the way he treats people. Personally, I advise reconsidering whether you want to maintain a friendship with someone who believes women who don’t do what he wants are “misandrists.”

2. Is my girlfriend’s CEO overstepping?

My girlfriend works as an executive assistant to the CEO in a mid-size company she joined three months ago. She tells me her male CEO often compliments her on her outfit, how amazing she is, that he doesn’t know what he’d do without her, etc. Also that she’s made him change his dress code to be more stylish.

Over the last few weeks, she’s planned a larger company event at an out-of-state resort. It all went well and during the event her CEO gives her a gift card to a back massage at an exclusive spa close to her home. I find the gift too personal and that the CEO is overstepping. My girlfriend laughs it off and tells me nothing is going on between them. What do you think?

Do you trust your girlfriend? Nothing here is inherently inappropriate.

I originally had written an additional paragraph that said: “Does your spidey sense normally go off when your girlfriend has warm interactions with other men in her life? If not but something is setting off alarms this time, there might be a conversation to have here. But you need to navigate it carefully so you don’t put your girlfriend in a position where she feels pressured to quit a job where nothing inappropriate is happening. (You also don’t get to take repeated bites at that apple; you’d pretty much have to hear her out and decide how you feel about her response, not keep raising it.)” But re-reading your letter, the details you included just don’t warrant that. She has a warm relationship with the CEO she supports — something the CEO/assistant relationship often lends itself to — he appreciates her work. She’s the best person best equipped to judge if the vibe feels off, and she says it doesn’t. Unless there’s more to it, this is just not alarming.

3. Why don’t people say thank you?

I work on an in-house “service” team (think communications deliverables) in a larger group that sits within an even larger organization. I am in a senior director role, but fundamentally I still work for others, so my day-to-day consists of creating things (or overseeing the creation of things) and sending them out to people in our larger organization for “review and feedback.” It’s exhausting, but it’s what I signed up for.

I am consistently surprised by the way people respond to having something they asked for (and that serves a key role in the business) sent to them. When did people stop saying thank you? When did people stop acknowledging the creation of work? When did people stop being … nice?

It doesn’t matter to me if you decide to change every part of the work, the “thank you” part is important. Am I expecting too much? If people are doing what they’re being paid to do, does that mean they are not entitled to be thanked? I’m noticing this behavior more and more. Is this a workplace trend, or is everyone in my organization just a jerk?

How do these same people treat you generally? Are they respectful and decent, or demanding and rude? If they’re generally respectful, then yeah, I think you’re putting too much emphasis on the thank-you; for whatever reason, that’s not the culture in your organization. It might be because people are busy, or they figure their appreciation goes unsaid (not necessarily a great stance, but a common one), or they simply see creating these materials as part of your job and not something that requires specific thanks from them.

To be clear, if they were writing in, I’d recommend they take two seconds to thank people who fulfill requests for them — but on your end of that transaction, I think you’ll be happier if you focus on how you’re treated generally at this job and by these teams, and not so much on specific individual thank-you’s.

Related:
Coworkers who don’t say “please” or “thank you”

4. Was this recruiter using me for insider info?

My job is fine — not great but fine. I’ve decide to look into what other jobs are out there, just to see, so I’ve been replying to recruiters messaging me on LinkedIn.

I had a call today with a recruiter in my space and got asked some odd questions mixed in with expected ones: “How is your team structured at the moment?” The recruiter then mentioned knowing some people in my company, including my current boss by name.
Later on, I was asked, “Do you have any projects coming up over there?”

At the time I thought this was checking on whether I would be available to change jobs. But thinking back on it, we brought in an extra team member on a short-term contract for a large project last year. Was this a sneaky way to see are there any jobs coming up on my team? Or am I overthinking?

Yeah, this was almost certainly a recruiter trying to get intel they could use to try to get business from your current company. Some recruiters do that almost as a matter of course — it’s as if it’s built into their business model — and would still do a perfectly fine job representing you, but it’s also reasonable to be annoyed by it. (I would be! You hadn’t agreed to provide info for that purpose.)

5. How much should I tell my brother’s manager about his hospitalization?

I am my brother’s medical power of attorney, and he is in the hospital with both a heart issue and alcoholism. The heart issue was discovered when he was brought to the hospital with a very high blood alcohol content and threatening suicide.

He had notified his manager that he was in the hospital but has now lost phone privileges. I’m in a different city and trying to navigate until I can get to him.

I do have his manager’s contact info. Should I notify her that he is in the hospital and leave it at that? Should I mention the heart issue? I don’t want to mention the alcoholism due to the ongoing stigma that still, unfortunately, accompanies mental health and addiction issues. (If it makes a difference, we are in the U.S.)

Definitely don’t mention the alcoholism; that’s not a decision you should take away from your brother. You don’t really need to be specific about the heart issue either. You can simply say he’s hospitalized with a medical issue and not able to talk by phone and that you will keep his manager posted once you have better information regarding his return to work (or until he’s able to do that himself). Stick to the stuff that’s relevant to them — he’s out, he’s in the hospital, you’ll know more by X date, but not specific medical information.

Masters of the Nefarious is a cult classic comic by the pseudonymous French artist Pierre La Police. It’s being published for the first time in English by New York Review Comics in a translation from the French by Luke Burns.

In this excerpt from the book, Chris, Montgomery, and Fongor, the paranormal investigators known as the Masters of the Nefarious, arrive on an island they believe may hold the key to solving their latest case. Can our heroes follow the clues without getting sidetracked?

Students and teachers can discuss sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom, provided it's not part of instruction, under a settlement between Florida officials and civil rights lawyers.

(Image credit: Douglas R. Clifford)

Women working full-time, year-round jobs earn 84 cents for every dollar men make, and part-timers make even less. Women have to work well into March before they earn what men made the year before.

(Image credit: John Pratt/Keystone/Hulton Archive)

Making videos about cities around the world is fascinating for a number of reasons, but one of the most interesting things I’ve learned over the better part of a decade doing YouTube is that no matter where you go, everyone thinks their transit is very bad (except perhaps for Switzerland and Japan, which truly have really good — although not perfect) transit services.

For example, any time I make a video about, say, Germany, I’m guaranteed to get lots of comments complaining about Deutsche Bahn. Now to be clear, DB does have its problems, but even compared to riding trains in other places in Europe (the UK for example) I see lots to like. The fares are more reasonable, the stations are often better, and the very quality of the rails trains ride on seems far superior. Despite the German rail system having its problems, there is a lot to like!

The natural question this raises is why do people spend so much time complaining about something that is objectively good (and this can be said for anything from suburban rail in Australia to the Metro in Barcelona and the buses in Toronto).

Personally, I think it comes down to a large number of effects and cognitive biases. 

I think the first big thing is a sort of local bias. People are often (if not always) trained by negative media coverage to have great disdain for, if not downright hate, the place they live in. Local news coverage of a transit system always seems to be biased towards problems from crime, to cleanliness, to infrastructure and funding issues. Most of these issues are issues everywhere to some extent, but people tend to only consume local media for their own locality and so they only hear about their transit in the context of these problems. People who participate in more globalized discourse around transit be it in academia or even just Twitter tend to have a better balanced perspective on the common problems transit faces.

There is also a sort of grass is greener bias where people seem to see the best in other places. I have come to really understand this one personally because it’s almost universally easy to feel good about that which you don’t have. It seems that the way our brains and desires work is that we tend to take those aforementioned negative associations that we have towards the places that we call home, and ignore them in other places — sometimes this is because we don’t know the unique way problems present themselves, and sometimes I think it’s because we don’t know where to look. I’m also certain that people are more willing to forgive problems in a transit system they are visiting as a sort of superfluous act of god, whereas we tend to place blame more directly on systems which we are intimately familiar with. There’s also an extent to which we allow novelty (consciously or subconsciously) to overshadow issues we see in front of us.

One particularly nice case I see a lot of is complaining about something that is not universal. For example, I hear Australians complaining about how bad their suburban rail is, even sometimes to North Americans who have no system on continent that competes with any of those in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth or Adelaide. Something similar happens with people from France or Germany complaining about poor intercity or rural rail service — when such services are essentially nonexistent in North America or Australia!

Such localisms can even happen from city to city, for example I hear Sydney-siders lament that Sydney Metro has “almost no” seats, even when it does actually have many seats (maybe not facing your preferred direction), and Sydney is just unusual in having an electric rail system that is all double-decker and all with dense transverse seating, which is quite uncommon globally!

In any of these cases, people are complaining that something they have isn’t satisfying them, even when many people don’t have access to that thing at all (this can obviously be thought of much more broadly than transit).

There are also elements of problem frequency and perceived severity at play. It’s the case that 1) people tend to put disproportionate weight on bad experiences, and 2) bad experiences are usually not that common. For example, most transit systems are on time most of the time (70% on time performance is seen as horrible, but that’s a solid majority of the time!), but the one time you are delayed you might have a very bad experience. This situation where bad experiences are not that common but really stick with people is naturally going to make it so that people who use a system a lot have far more negative associations. This is especially true because as mentioned earlier, someone using a system irregularly is more likely to write off a problem as a freak incident.

I also think the familiarity with local conditions that people tend to have has a huge impact on their perception of problems. For example, you’re going to notice a lack of cleanliness and it’s going to sting more when you’ve seen news coverage of a shrunken janitorial budget, or are even just aware of it. You’re also absolutely going to notice if you live in a place with good transit that is going downhill, even if the effect is slight; outsiders see good transit and you see declining transit.

It’s also just the case that problems are more real when you experience them. People can talk about how great transit in Stockholm is, but if you just got home from a commute on a particular dirty, crowded metro train, no amount of nice language and compliments are going to make you feel that the system is fundamentally good.

The natural question to ask then is: “what’s the antidote to this?”.

I think the best one, and the one I try to cultivate is… perspective. I personally believe everyone can benefit from seeing and understanding the world, and that doesn’t necessarily mean travelling! You can learn so much about other places in 2024, not only through the traditional methods of reading, watching old films, and talking to people from those places, but now by watching on the ground videos, enjoying all manner of local independent media (that’s often people like me), and of course enjoying 3D maps and street view imagery.

I think that a holistic approach to learning about places will teach you a lot about what makes them good, but also their unique challenges and struggles — People always underestimate how different other places might be and often overestimate how much they know of them. If people can gain a wide knowledge and perspective about cities, we should hope that most people would feel content because on any normal distribution most data points will fall around or above the middle! You should learn about the places that do things like transit well, and those that do it poorly, but also the wisdom and respect to understand that good ideas and good places often exist in the most unexpected settings. I talked about it in a recent video, but for example I think the 24-hour nature of New York city is amazing, and a city like Copenhagen that learned from & benefitted from it (Copenhagen has one of the world’s only 24/7/365 metro systems).

I think that once we understand the context in which we exist, we can go about trying to understand and improve the conditions. Something like bad transit sucks today, but when you understand the world, and some of the history you’ll know that it need not stay that way, and you can personally be involved in making things better.

Summary: In today’s post I discuss the bluebonnet season, and look ahead to warmer weather and a likely wet weekend. If you have outdoor plans, you’ll definitely want to keep tabs on the potential for precipitation.

Texas bluebonnets

I wanted to say a quick word about wildflowers in general, and bluebonnets in particular. If you’ve driven between Houston and Austin of late you know they’re spectacular. The combination of a very hot summer last year, which thinned out wildflower competition, and a relatively wet winter created near ideal conditions for this bluebonnet season. “On a scale from one to 10, this year looks like it could be an eight, for bluebonnets in particular, if not even better,” said Andrea DeLong-Amaya, of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, in a forecast a few weeks ago.

A reader of Space City Weather, Niloeby Montenoeci, was kind enough to share a few photos taken of late. We are right about at peak season right now, so be sure and check these lovely flowers out.

Tuesday

It took awhile for skies to clear on Monday, but when they did conditions were lovely across the Houston metro area. Today will be a little more humid, a little warmer, and a little more cloudy. We can expect highs in the upper 70s this afternoon, with partly to mostly cloudy skies, and light southerly winds. This is the beginning of moisture return that should eventually set the stage for some healthy rain chances later this week.

Rodeo forecast

There should be nothing but fine weather for this evening’s show, with temperatures in the low 70s this evening and partly to mostly cloudy skies. Winds will be about 10 mph, so nothing crazy there. Afterwards conditions will be mild, with temperatures in the upper 60s. Lows tonight won’t fall much further, perhaps dropping only into the mid-60s overnight in Houston. Some fog may develop late tonight into Wednesday morning.

Wednesday

This will be a warmer day, with partly to mostly cloudy skies, and highs in the low 80s. Lows will only drop to around 70 degrees.

Thursday

A warm day, with highs in the mid-80s and fairly humid air. Some light rain showers are possible, but the overall chances are fairly low due to a capping inversion. If the cap breaks, we may see some thunderstorms later Thursday or into Friday ahead of a cool front.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday

This initial front is likely to move into Houston and more or less stall near the coast. This means we’ll have a fair amount of moisture in the atmosphere and unstable conditions—a good starting point for rain showers. Daily chances are about 50 percent on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, with total accumulations likely of 1 to 2 inches for most of the area. I don’t think this will be a total washout, but if you have plans for the weekend you’ll definitely want to keep tabs on the radar.

In terms of temperatures, we’ll see highs in the 80s on Friday, followed by 70s this weekend for the most part. A secondary push should shove the front offshore some time on Sunday or Sunday night, setting the stage for a cooler start to next week. Lows on Sunday night could drop into the 50s.

Next week

We should begin week in the 60s, with nighttime lows in the 40s or 50s, and some sunny weather. We’ll warm back up some by mid-week, when rain chances resume.

COLUMBUS, OH—In an effort to come clean about the storied history of the brand, White Castle released a statement Tuesday confirming its sliders were the result of centuries of inbreeding. “Years of burgers procreating within the same bloodline have resulted in the square shape and diminished size of White Castle’s…

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ELMHURST, IL—Mesmerized by the distinct aura of the suburban bar patron, sources reported Tuesday that local woman Katrina Wollack, 53, was a different kind of drunk. “It’s a sadder kind of drunk, but also sloppier—she’s much louder too,” said one of the sources, who confirmed they were unable to take their eyes off…

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WASHINGTON—Noting that the late astronaut was actually quite disoriented after spending four days confined to the cramped Apollo 11 command module, a new report from NASA confirmed Tuesday that Neil Armstrong mistakenly believed he had discovered India after landing on the moon. “While Neil Armstrong did in fact land…

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NEW YORK—While weighing the pros and cons of the flight as he planned his trip to visit family on the West Coast, local man Brett Danielewski, 32, reportedly expressed conflicting feelings Tuesday about a layover that would save him $39 but also require spending 7 months living in an Iowa City, IA suburb. “On the one…

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Pokeymen t-shirt will be on sale just as soon as pokemon enters the public domain.

BALTIMORE—Excitedly pulling out their Orioles jerseys and beat-up baseball mitts from the black of the closet, a local father and his son reportedly engaged Monday in their annual tradition of saying they should attend spring training one day. “One of these days, we’ll take a trip down south for spring training—just…

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LOS ANGELES—Growing increasingly frustrated by the agonizing customer service experience, Emma Stone was reportedly on the phone with a Louis Vuitton representative for four hours Monday trying to get a refund on her gown that ripped at the Oscars ceremony last night. “Hi, Emily, we are so sorry to hear that you had a…

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PALM BEACH, FL—Telling reporters about his revamped beauty routine as he lavished praise upon the social media platform he once tried to ban as president, a Vaseline-covered Donald Trump publicly reversed his stance on TikTok Monday after getting really into skincare. “You can’t get rid of TikTok…

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"Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing," the princess of Wales said, acknowledging suspicions about a family photo.

(Image credit: Stephen Pond)

A 2023 Column Contest grand-prize winner, Laurence Pevsner’s Sorry Not Sorry investigates why we’re sick of everyone apologizing all the time—and how the collapse of the public apology leaves little room for forgiveness and grace in our politics and culture.

When Shane Gillis performed his monologue on Saturday Night Live last month, he opened with a joke about why he was previously fired from the show. “Don’t look that up, please,” he says with a smile. “It’s fine, don’t even worry about it.”

If you do look it up, you’ll come across Seth Simons’s reporting for the Los Angeles Times, which details Shane’s long history of using slurs against Jewish, Chinese, and Black people. In one podcast episode, Shane shares his enthusiastic support for Gavin McInnes, the founder of the Proud Boys, a neo-fascist militant organization that promotes political violence. In another, Shane says, “If the blood rushes to my head, all my blood’s racist. I do have racist blood.”

After Shane’s racism was thrust into the spotlight, he defended himself by saying, “I’m happy to apologize to anyone who’s actually offended by anything I’ve said.” Groups like the Media Action Network for Asian Americans called his bluff and asked for a genuine apology. He didn’t give one.

Instead, Shane followed the conservative tradition of refusing to apologize, lest it be seen as a sign of weakness. He implemented a strategy he outlined in a podcast episode in 2017. “I tone it down so much onstage, compared to this,” he told his most fervent fans behind a paywall. “All you have to do is listen to any one of our podcasts and be like, ‘Oh yeah, he’s pretty ra—.’” He cut himself off. A wink to a knowing audience.

This strategy worked. When Shane got fired, his career didn’t end—it escalated. He released a hit special on YouTube, which led to another on Netflix. Last month, he inked a deal with the streamer to release yet another special and a sitcom. “Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast” is currently the most popular show on Patreon.

Shane had just guest starred on SNL when I went to see a screening of Sorry/Not Sorry, a documentary I was contractually obligated to watch given this column’s title. The film explores the leadup and aftermath of the sexual misconduct of Louis C.K.—whom Shane opened for during Louis’ 2022 tour.

Louis C.K. was perhaps the biggest comedian in the country when he was accused in the New York Times by five women of sexual misconduct, most notably for masturbating in front of some of them. The accusations had come at the height of the #MeToo movement in 2017, following public allegations against Harvey Weinstein, Larry Nassar, and Bill Cosby.

Sorry/Not Sorry, co-directed by Caroline Suh and Cara Mones, is surprisingly free from moralizing. After the screening, the directors emphasized their efforts to keep the film fact-based and to include the full context of everyone’s statements so that audiences might make up their own minds. They also reached out to “everyone in the comedy community” to comment, even if only “a few brave souls” were willing to speak. Louis was not one of those brave souls.

Louis C.K. had previously made a career out of courageous self-deprecation. His comedy criticized the way men could terrorize women, himself included. “How do women still go out with guys when you consider the fact that there is no greater threat to women than men?” he said in one of the most popular bits from his HBO special Oh My God. “We’re the number one threat! To women! We’re the worst thing that ever happens to them!”

Perhaps that’s why, after the accusations, something unusual happened: Louis C.K. did not deny them. “These stories are true,” he said in his statement. He went on to admit that he had power over these women who all worked in comedy, and that he “wielded that power irresponsibly.” He even explained that the consent he sought wasn’t real consent. “When you have power over another person, asking them to look at your dick isn’t a question. It’s a predicament for them.”

This was remarkable. As the New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor said in the film, it was “the rare case where there was no dispute about the facts.” It felt like an opportunity had emerged for someone to do this right, to apologize well and address their wrongs in a way that helped people heal and move on.

But then Louis went from sorry to not. Instead of reaching out to his victims privately or doing any public work to ensure he had accounted for his actions, he stayed silent—until he reappeared nine months later at the Comedy Cellar without any acknowledgment of his bad behavior. He did finally address it in his stand-up special Sincerely Louis C.K., lamenting that now the whole world knew about his kink. He talked about enthusiastic consent, comparing his confusion on the subject to thinking enslaved people were happy when they sang spirituals.

Sorry/Not Sorry also shows what happened to the women in the aftermath of the allegations. They were ridiculed by Dave Chappelle, hounded by Louis fans, and boxed out of the comedy careers they were trying to pursue. Two of the comedians from the New York Times piece are absent from the documentary—the filmmakers explained the duo had received so much harassment that they just wished to move on with their lives. The remaining women also say they wish they had nothing to do with any of this. “It will be the first line in my obituary,” exclaims Abby Schachner, obviously frustrated.

In Louis’s second special after the allegations, he bounds out onto the stage like Elvis in front of giant lit-up red letters that spell SORRY. The joke is a middle finger to all the commentators upset that the word “sorry” didn’t appear in his apology statement. The implication is one we’ve previously discussed, which I believe holds a kernel of truth: in liberal circles, apologies get scrutinized so much that it’s almost impossible to be forgiven.

But is it impossible? A few months after Louis C.K.’s statement, the comedic world heard another attempt at an apology for sexual harassment from another comedian, Dan Harmon, the cocreator of Rick and Morty and the showrunner of NBC comedy Community.

The apology started from the same place as Louis, by admitting the truth of what he had done. But then Dan went further, clinically describing in detail the way he abused his power to punish an employee who had rebuffed his advances. He made his apology without excusing his own actions, stressing how he had said horrible things and treated her cruelly, which he “would never, ever, ever have done if she had been male.” He even confesses that he would have gotten away with all of this had his accuser, Megan Ganz, not asked him for a fuller apology on Twitter.

Then something beautiful happened: Megan forgave him. She had tuned in expecting to be mad at a disappointing non-apology, but instead, she heard an honest reckoning. “It was cathartic in a way that I could never have imagined,” Megan told This American Life later. “It was like receiving the antidote to a poison I’d been self-inflicting. It’s the only way I can describe it.”

This healing power is the reason public apology is worth all the fuss. It may be easier to never apologize and embrace a conservative or indifferent fanbase. It may be difficult to deal with the “sorry scrutinizers” among the progressive set, nit-picking your attempts at contrition. But Dan Harmon and Megan Ganz persisted all the same, and it gave them both their lives back. So, while Shane and Louis can certainly get away with their failed apologies, and maybe even gain some fans in the process, you just have to think: it’s a shame they didn’t try harder.

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(sorry)

The annual switch from standard time to daylight saving time yesterday renewed debate about the potential harms of switching the clock twice per year, such as increases in car crashes, hospital visits, and heart attacks in the week after the change. What do you think?

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INDIANAPOLIS—Pushing around a limp salad in a bowl, local woman Danielle Guerra reportedly sighed and said, “I wish I had your metabolism,” Monday upon seeing Garfield swallow a whole lasagna in one gulp. “You’re so lucky that you can eat that stuff all the time and not gain any weight,” Guerra said as her eyes moved…

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NORFOLK, VA—Reaching the decision after an extensive discussion amongst the military branch’s leadership, the U.S. Navy announced Friday its plan to phase out all wet activities over the coming year. “Although wetness has long defined the Navy’s operations, we’ve concluded that getting wet is really more trouble…

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THE HEAVENS—Emphasizing His Eternal Kingdom’s infinite supply of prime real estate “just waiting to be developed,” the Lord God Almighty announced plans Monday to bulldoze heaven and build luxury condominiums. “Soon we will begin demolition on the starry firmament and break ground on exclusive, state-of-the art…

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TACOMA, WA—Saying “Sure, man, let’s do it” in response to the suggestion he select a model that cost $750 more, local insecure prick Brent Linsky was immediately talked into an upgrade Monday, according to sources at an area Best Buy. “I’m definitely planning on having a lot of friends over, so if you think the…

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LOS ANGELES—Groaning with pleasure as Hollywood’s biggest stars entered the Dolby Theater, celebrity sources confirmed Sunday that the moaning red carpet had a distinct Quentin Tarantino-shaped lump underneath. “Yes, yes, harder, step harder,” said the quivering mound in the outline of the famed director, which was…

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