Assorted Stupidity #168
- It's possible that the weirdest thing about this story, involving a Bay Area transit-agency executive caught living in a secret apartment he built in a local train station using embezzled funds, is that he wasn't the first guy in that agency to get caught doing this.
- In other transit news, [o]ne of Britain's biggest fare dodgers," who was convicted after being caught at least 180 times riding trains and owes over 30,000 in unpaid court fines for doing so, appeared for sentencing on April 30. Do I need to tell you that he was caught riding the train to court that morning without a ticket? I do not.
- In yet more transit news, tens of thousands of much less significant fare-evasion cases were dismissed last year after concerns arose that UK rail companies were too enthusiastic about prosecuting them, using a special streamlined" procedure involving hearings to which defendants were not invited. The poster child seems to have been this case, in which Northern Rail said it would prosecute someone who had a ticket but mistakenly underpaid by 1.90 (once).
- A London employment tribunal has awarded a woman almost 29,000 for being subjected to a workplace detriment," namely the insult of being told a test showed her personality type was most similar to that of Darth Vader. (She didn't take the test-a colleague filled it out on her behalf.) Darth Vader is a legendary villain," the judge noted, a man who is half-machine and uses the dark side of the force" to persecute others. On the other hand, as the article points out, the test says those in the relevant category tend to be very focused individual[s]' who [can] bring teams together," and that's accurate. So it wasn't all bad.
- On May 13 the Kansas City Chiefs superfan known as ChiefsAholic" was sentenced by an Oklahoma court to 32 years in prison, to run concurrently with an existing federal sentence. He was not convicted, as some of you smartasses may suggest, just for remaining a Chiefs fan after February 2025. It was for how he went about raising the funds to support his obsession before that. See ChiefsAholic' Indicted for Robbing Banks to Fund ChiefAholism" (Aug. 18, 2023). According to his lawyer, ChiefsAholic expressed sincere remorse and took full responsibility for his actions," something that coincidentally the Chiefs have also done.
- Yes, I will be pushing for the compassionate release of ChiefsAholic at the earliest possible date on the grounds that, like the rest of us Chiefs fans, he has already suffered enough.
- This bill may be referred to as the Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying in Education or F.U.R.R.I.E.S[.] Act," says its first section, but it may also be referred to as stupid." The bill would amend Texas law to prohibit students from presenting themselves as anything other than a human being" or engaging in any non-human behaviors"-specifically including, among other things, using a litter box," having a tail surgically attached, or exhibiting any other physiological features that have not historically been assigned to the homo sapiens species through a means of natural biological development." I am not aware of any evidence that even one student has actually used a litter box or shown up with a surgically attached tail, but apparently someone in the Texas Legislature is willing to accept that this might be true.
- Unlike the theory of evolution, which the bill's author hilariously can only bring himself to describe as the historical assignment of physiological features to the homo sapiens species through a means of natural biological development." Oh dear, what a dilemma he must have faced when drafting this legislation. I guess you could say his proposed solution involves intelligent design, but you could also say it doesn't.
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