This is my shocked face

 Doctor, can you check and see if I'm dead inside?  I don't seem able to experience surprise.

"The largest investigation in journalism history" (as its authors call it) was unveiled yesterday.  The Pandora Papers document some of the trillions of dollars being sheltered from public scrutiny and taxation and my reaction was "South Dakota?  You're kidding."

I can usually rely on Stephanie Grisham, the Beltway's Hedda Hopper, to get my juices flowing.  Today we learned that Melania Trump wanted to send full-length mirrors to children in Malawi "so they could see how beautiful and strong they looked."  You know it's true because the ex-model's office called Grisham "a deceitful and troubled individual."  No juices in evidence.

The Israel Antiquities Authority released photos of a 2,700-year-old limestone toilet discovered by archeologists in Jerusalem.  These were extremely rare and available only to the upper classes.  Where would Jesus poop?  Behind the house like everyone else.

"War is not healthy for children and other living things" said a famous poster in the 1960s.  And apparently neither is Facebook according to Frances Haugen's testimony before a Senate committee.  Imagine, a company that put profits ahead of everything else and mostly ignored incitements to violence and conspiracy theories that cost countless lives during a pandemic.  Facebook apparatchik Andy Stone questioned Haugen's expertise but had to do it on Twitter, as Facebook is still recovering from yesterday's blackout.  All right, that's amusing.

On the second day of what promises to be a colorful term a man was extracted from his car, apparently wired for explosives, in front of the Supreme Court.   Now that they have had a taste of what it was like to be in the Capitol on January 6, I'm sure Their Honors will do just as they were programmed to do by Moscow Mitch and the Federalist Society.

The Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church reports that French clerics abused more than 200,000 minors over the past seventy years.  Maximilien Robespierre and his associates were unavailable for comment.

When life gives you annual raging wildfires, make brandy.  That's the solution to smoke-damaged grapes being tried by Hoopes Vineyard in California's Napa Valley.  We'll know in two years (it has to age).  Meanwhile, why not try hickory-smoked raisins?  

The FBI just raided the offices of the NYPD Sergeants Benevolent Association and the home of its president Ed Mullins.  Mullins is a Fox News and OANN regular who publicized personal information about Chiara de Blasio (the mayor's daughter) after she was arrested at a George Floyd protest.  He also claimed Tessa Majors, a Barnard student who was murdered in Morningside Park, went there to buy drugs.  Which was a lie.  But the feds don't usually concern themselves with loudmouth cop union officials or they'd never get home.  More to come?  

Somewhere I read that a woman should remove one piece of jewelry before leaving the house.  This woman should have removed the elegant silver noose that is getting Givenchy's spring line so much attention, most of it horrified.  In Britain the outcry is concerned with the issue of young girls and suicide.  In America it's being called "Jim Crow-inspired."  Only the capital punishment community seems happy.

Sixteen large electric utilities pulled in $1.25 billion in covid relief cash but still cut off the power of a million customers who couldn't pay their bills.  Shocked?  Moi?