I certainly understand feeling ravenous, but … all those weeks using a toothbrush to make an escape opening for pancakes?!
Virginia prisoners who used toothbrush to escape caught at pancake restaurant
Two inmates dug their way out of cell using toothbrush but were apprehended within hours at Ihop branch [The Guardian]
John Garza, 37, and Arley Nemo, 43, were quickly caught after being spotted by members of the public at a Newport News branch of Ihop. Photograph: Zoonar GmbH/Alamy
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“She’s 68 but she says she’s 54. I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s ma no more.” [The Inimitable Bob, “Maggie’s Farm”]
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Russia is shipping very old tanks west, signaling shortage in Ukraine
Open-source researchers have found evidence that Moscow is dusting off Stalin-era tanks — some first deployed more than 70 years ago — and shipping them west, possibly a sign that battlefield losses have led to a shortage of armor for Moscow’s forces on the front in Ukraine.
According to photographs obtained by the Tbilisi, Georgia-based Conflict Intelligence Team, T-54 and T-55 tanks from the 1940s were spotted aboard a train departing from Arsenyev in the Primorsky Krai region of Russia’s Far East, heading west. [Olga Lautman in Russian Digest]
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Ben Wittes is a very smart, serious - while also very fun - experienced lawyer (now a lawyer-writer-journalist & researcher) in D.C. who, among other things, writes Dog Shirt Daily which, as you might imagine, is one of his non-law activities, unlike being a cofounder of the Lawfare Blog as well as Co-Director of the Harvard Law School-Brookings Project on Law & Security. One might guess that he is a dry, up in the air guy you would not want to have a beer with, but he is not that guy. He and his (at least) equally brilliant wife Tamara Cofman Wittes (with whom I am fortunate to have a years-long electronic friend relationship) are incredibly nice and - in the best sense - normal. One of my fantasies is to be their next-door neighbor.
Here is part of Thursday’s edition of his oddball newsletter, which I feature today because it will hopefully brighten your day, as it did mine:
#DogShirtDaily Gets a Letter to the Editor
Plus beasts eating other beasts
Mar 23
Good Evening.
#DogShirtDaily received its first letter to the editor, from the estimable Jonathan Rauch, who is outraged that I refuse to consider vegetation as a possible #BeastOfTheDay:
Letter to the Editor of Dog Shirt Daily:
I hereby request—nay, demand—that you poll Dog Shirt Daily readers about changing your blatantly animalist Beast of the Day policy.
There are no rational grounds to discriminate against seaweed flotillas that act as a collective organism attacking the East Coast. We know plants and other non-animals are capable of sophisticated behavior. Slime molds, though not technically animals, are more intelligent than many, indeed most, animal species; they can solve mazes better than human children. Corals, though technically animals, are stationary and quite stupid. Plants can hunt, explore their environments, and, with the help of water, wind, and animals, move about. True, they cannot self-propel, but discrimination on grounds of disability violates fundamental principles of equity as well as federal and state law. Indeed, vegetation’s extra challenges justify accommodations, not second-class citizenship.
Moreover, the very concepts of “animal” and “non-animal” are colonialist, oppressive cultural impositions of arbitrary categories. They do not reflect any underlying reality in nature; they reflect systemic Animal Supremacism.
Don’t you think, in 2023, it’s time to move beyond stereotypes that marginalize vegetation, fungi, and possibly viruses, bacteria, and phages? Can you seriously claim to justify discriminating against seaweed simply because we do not assign it to the privileged category of “animal”—the category in which we self-servingly include ourselves?
Put it to a vote!
Jonathan Rauch [my italics, for clarity]
[Ben]: Okay, I’ll put it to a vote:
POLL
Should the #BeastOfTheDay be open to such non-beasts as vegetation, fungi, bacteria, slime molds, and other gross non-members of Kingdom animalia merely to satisfy a single reader?
Unless and until the vox populi demands change, the #BeastOfTheDay will remain restricted to, you know, beasts. Like this guy, for example—as he is eating, in honor of Janine B, another beast whole:
And here are the results:
POLL
Should the #BeastOfTheDay be open to such non-beasts as vegetation, fungi, bacteria, slime molds, and other gross non-members of Kingdom animalia merely to satisfy a single reader?
Yes - 58%
No - 42%
186 VOTES · POLL CLOSED
>>>>
[me] What will this mean for next week’s Beasts of the Days?!
[More on Tamara Cofman Wittes: she is a former diplomat & writer who has served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, then Senior Fellow at Brookings (previously its director), and is currently awaiting Senate confirmation to be Assistant Administrator (Middle East) of the Agency for International Development.]
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Who had “A reading of a letter of Joseph Stalin as a message … and a warning?” on their bingo card?
"I'll start smashing you like criminals." Medvedev threatened members of the commission on the military-industrial complex with Stalin's telegram
Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia Dmitry Medvedev read out the telegram of Joseph Stalin dated September 17, 1941, to the heads of defense enterprises. He voiced it at a meeting of the working group of the military-industrial commission.
“I ask you to honestly and on time fulfill orders for the supply of hulls for tanks ... If you turn out to be violators of your duty to the Motherland, I will begin to smash you as criminals who neglect the honor and interests of their Motherland. We cannot tolerate our troops suffering at the front from a lack of tanks, while you in the far rear cool off and do nothing,” he quoted the Soviet “leader”. [Moscow Times]
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These really are strange times, and I wish this was just a put-on; it’s not.
Spain's drought devastates olive oil output, drives world prices up
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/spains-drought-devastates-olive-oil-output-drives-world-prices-up-2023-03-24/
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Oh, a Republican again? [Yes]
(AP) — South Carolina’s embattled top accountant will step down next month after a $3.5 billion error in the year-end financial report he oversaw, according to a resignation letter written Thursday that was obtained by The Associated Press.
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In case you were wondering what the latest news from Slovenia is (irrelevant but I have been to Slovenia - twice - both times were en route to somewhere else, but I got off the train, went to a bakery, ordered a goody speaking Slovenian - actually pointing - & ate it right there, so I count it as a country where I have been!):
From: Olga Lautman from Russia's War on Democracy <olgalautman@substack.com>
Foreign intelligence agents of the Russian Federation detained in Slovenia
In Slovenia, two foreign citizens who were spying for Russia have been exposed in Ljubljana.
The suspects are facing up to eight years in prison for espionage and providing false information.
According to unofficial information, two Russian agents with citizenship of one of the South American countries (at least one of them has Argentine citizenship) were working under false names and were detained in a rented office in an office building in the Bežigrad district of Ljubljana.
The District State Prosecutor’s Office in Ljubljana has started pre-trial proceedings at the request of the Slovenian Intelligence and Security Service.
The two Russian agents are believed to have been in service with Russian military intelligence and worked under the “sleeper agent” program.
Read More:
https://mil.in.ua/en/news/foreign-intelligence-agents-of-the-russian-federation-detained-in-slovenia/