I had no idea

 You kick back with a beverage and visit the sites less traveled, you learn all sorts of things.

As a non-player of video games I had no idea that both PlayStations and XBoxes are almost unobtainable, at least in their latest versions.  Blame is being placed on the world-wide chip shortage that is also bedeviling the auto industry, home appliance makers, phones and pretty much every other inorganic thing you might want.  "Chipageddon" even affects CSSI, a company that makes dog-grooming machines.  Really?  They can't do that by hand?  I had no idea.

Cheer up, it could be worse.  Northern Ireland is short of clowns.  All right, don't cheer up.  NI is just now coming out of a long pandemic lockdown during which many professional clowns left to find work elsewhere in Europe, presumably thirty to a car.  What would a circus be without clowns?  A lot less upsetting to small children and a lot less tedious for everyone else.

Merck Pharmaceutical says its new drug is halving the rates of hospitalization and death in patients with moderate to severe covid.  Now all they need is a better name than molnupiravir and an endorsement from Q.  ("It's made from carpet fibers!  It won't magnetize you and Bill Gates can't trace it!")  Because the richest country on earth is coming up on 700,000 dead.

Ryan Faircloth is facing federal charges for leaving a Molotov cocktail inside the offices of the Democratic Party in Austin.  Under Texas state law that's perfectly fine.

"By the pricking of my thumbs..."  Trump must have every slip-and-fall lawyer in Palm Beach County on J. Wellington Wimpy retainer (he'll gladly pay them Tuesday if they prevail in court today).  The latest in his tsunami of dumb lawsuits demands that Twitter give back his account.  I have no idea who reads his bullshit now on YourRantHere.com or whatever, apart from Right Wing Watch, but apparently he's not reaching the masses.  He absolutely has a Constitutional right to the free services of a private corporation, right?  Even after he violated their terms of service?    

I'm sure superlawyer Lin Wood agrees, but just now he's busy promoting the candidacy of someone called Kandiss Taylor for governor of Georgia by sharing his belief that the 9/11 atrocity didn't really happen.  We fought a hopeless twenty-year war for nothing?  I had no idea. 

Victoria Beckham, whose professional name is Anorexic Spice, wants us to know that her favorite meal is salted toast.  The Independent thinks this is important enough to run all week.  I have no idea why.

What is it called when you can't take "yes" for an answer?  Trump won Idaho last year with 64 percent of the vote, but that's not good enough for Mike Lindell because, according to the voices in HisPillow, he actually won 120 percent of the vote.  Therefore a hand count-nose sniff-hold each ballot up to the ultraviolet light recount must be performed.  I'm starting to think the point of all this is not to detect fraud but to undermine the whole enterprise of voting.  I'm also thinking Mike has come to love the attention, even the derisory kind, and is in no hurry to go back to his pillow factory.  Democracy dies in derpness.

Remember the protesters in Minneapolis after the murder of George Floyd?  Remember how BLM shot up a police station?  Here he is:

He pleaded guilty.  His name is Ivan Hunter Harrison, he's from Texas, and he's a Boogaloo Boi [sic].  Now that's a false flag.