Coulda been worse.
Coulda been worse. mikkelwilliam / getty images

Sure, the crash-landing rocket didn’t hit any populated areas, but it was still a bad time for some fish. A rocket launched in April came crashing back down to Earth this weekend, with nobody quite sure where it was going to wind up until it eventually splashed down in the ocean several hundred miles south of Mumbai. NASA is pissed that Chinese space agencies aren’t doing enough to prevent that from happening again.

Cruises may soon skip Florida, a disease hub. Florida’s new laws, banning businesses from requiring proof of vaccination, may force cruise lines to skip the state. The ban was pushed by Governor Ron DeSantis, a staunch advocate of enfeeblement and decrepitude. The elderly remain at highest risk of dying from COVID — I still can’t understand why Republicans have decided to take a stance that will kill their largest voter base.

Literally zero vaccines have been provided to entire countries in Africa. Chad, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Tanzania, and Eritrea are among those still waiting. Africa accounts for just one percent of global vaccinations. Haiti has also not begun vaccinations.

It was Mother's Day. Sorry, probably should have reminded you of that last week. Anyway, I hope yours was as nice as this one.

“Thus, I give up the spear!” Rescuers managed to save what looks to be a juvenile minke whale that got beached on the river Thames in London. Whales have made their way to London before — a Beluga made his home there for several months from 2018 to 2019. Past rescues haven’t always been successful, so this is a happy ending all around. Whew.

Breaking news: Cities are crowded and loud. If you enjoy tearing your hair out in frustration at interminably slow back-and-forth battles of urban planning, run-don’t-walk to follow the new “Tales from the Seattle Hearing Examiner” Twitter feed, which documents NIMBY complaints to the city. Most of what you’ll see are a real eye-roll, with neighbors who somehow think that a major city is obligated to provide them with the same level of privacy, nature, and quiet as the country; but there are also a few more nuanced grievances, like the city’s plan to kill a 100-year-old tree that’s rendered a sidewalk impassable.

COVID infections are leveling off. I guess that’s better than going up. King County’s getting on average 347 new infections per day, with 117 hospitalizations — higher than what those numbers need to be for stuff to re-open. It sucks, but we need to keep limiting our activities in unventilated spaces. (Australia is considering overhauls to building ventilation codes to prevent future pandemics.) I had a dream this weekend about being in a movie theater again, but they wouldn’t show the movie because it wasn’t safe and I nearly cried, because we were all there to see Cats (2019).

Freeways are for suburbs, not cities. Multiple drivers crashed into a pedestrian and each other along I-5 this weekend, killing William Gladue, 63, of Tacoma. Analysts say that drivers in Seattle are going 15% faster than they were in 2019. The sooner Seattle can get rid of I-5 altogether, the better.

A shooting in the ID could have been much worse. Police claim to have arrested a 29-year-old in connection to a shooting that injured one 58-year-old man in a brief shootout. No word on what precipitated the shooting, other than “an altercation with several subjects.” Other mass shootings this weekend: Seven killed in Colorado; four injured in New Jersey; two killed and three injured in Philadelphia; one killed and seven injured in Phoenix; ten injured and two killed in three separate California mass shootings; four injured in Detroit; four killed and one injured in Maryland; four injured in Milwaukee. Meanwhile Oregon just took steps toward allowing schools to ban firearms, which they should do immediately, unless they like mass shootings.

Now you can work more weirdly. Facebook added a new feature to the Quest 2 that allows you to put your real-life desk into VR, blending your real workspace and your virtual workspace. The feature is experimental, and if you want it to work with your keyboard you need to have a specific Logitech model. Still, there’s a lot of promise here for your workspace to eventually become a sort of tabletop holodeck.

Old man wants kids off lawn. The Seattle Times published an op-ed headlined “Thank God for police” by someone named John Wilcox, who is upset that people sometimes protest in the streets. His complaints about the May Day protests: They marched the wrong way up a one-way street; they got in the way of cars; they looked too much like ninjas. John Wilcox, in case you’re curious, is a retired business consultant, specializing in payment packages for corporate executives.

Elon Musk on SNL wasn’t even interesting enough to be a fiasco. There was nothing too great, nothing too terrible, nothing you need to actually waste your time watching. An average episode, in other words. Turns out being rich doesn’t make you interesting. The only point worth talking about is that he said during his monologue that he’s autistic. Reaction from people with autism, as you can imagine, was mixed.

Or are we just getting hornier? The New York Times has conducted an in-depth investigation into the question “are animated dads getting hotter?” I do not know the answer BUT I understand why Rose did what she did.

That new Resident Evil is a real good one. The months of horny anticipation for the giant lady are now at an end, and we can all get spooped. So far, I’ve found the most terrifying aspect to be that the game briefly expects you to look after a baby.