Everybody please just stop it

 Farmers in Britain are losing thousands of pounds and tons of grain because idiots are creating crop circles in wheat fields.  It couldn't happen at a worse time, as prices climb due to widespread drought and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  These circles are very elaborate and obviously labor-intensive; they would be beautiful if Tibetan monks were making them out of colored sand.  As it is, they're just vandalism for vandalism's sake.  Why?

Anything on social media billed as a "challenge" should be viewed with deep suspicion at this point since so many of them end in death or serious injury.  The FDA had to issue a warning about the latest stunt, Nyquil chicken, which is exactly what it sounds like, cooking a damn chicken in an OTC cold medicine.  It originated on 4chan, a message board for the most feckless and unhinged demographic, young males.  Since young males don't do a lot of cooking, I have to wonder who is behind this.  

It looks like Italian voters have decided to mark the centenary of Mussolini's March on Rome by trying fascism again, in the person of Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy party.  I'm not too worried -- it's Italy, they'll have a new government by January.

Some observers are wondering if Putin's call-up of reservists will be the blunder that finally brings him down.   But what he needs to worry about is the other gangsters -- his fellow oligarchs who are tired of his inability to win a two-week war, now in its seventh month.  This war is bad for business.  Their assets in the west have been frozen, their yachts seized.  One had to sell Chelsea Football Club.  Putin should not venture higher than the fourth floor of any building without a parachute; Russian gravity is treacherous.

Take Anatoly Gerashchenko of the Moscow Aviation Institute.  On Wednesday he fell down "several flights of stairs," presumably because the first flight didn't quite do the job.  Two weeks earlier another aviation executive, Ivan Pechorin, fell off a speedboat near Vladivostok.  Hey, let's be careful out there, tovarich.

Tudor Dixon wants to be the fascist governor of Michigan but she has an unusual view of crime.  She thinks kidnapping is funny when the presumed target is a Democrat.  The plot to abduct and "try" Gretchen Whitmer, for which several men have been imprisoned, is exactly the same in her mind as ordering businesses to close during a pandemic.  Needless to say, she carries the Trump Seal of Approval.  

The media were so transfixed by the QAnon one-finger salute and marching song at this Trump rally in Ohio, they neglected to point out the disappointing attendance, or attributed it to being scheduled during a minor league football game of local interest.  Very circumspect.  Or very dishonest.  At tonight's hatefest in Wilmington, North Carolina, some of the faithful did the Q but were apparently told by King MAGA's goons to tone it down.  Where they go one, they go one or two at a time.

Tomorrow Cuba will hold a referendum on a new Family Code which could legalize same-sex marriage.  That's right, Yanquis, when it comes to personal liberty we're losing ground to Cuba.  

Amusing coda to Kevin McCarthy's blink-and-you-missed-it "Commitment To America":  the wannabe speaker adorned it with a quote he attributed to Lincoln, who the party continues to pretend to admire.  Except it's actually from a 1986 Lehman Brothers ad in the Wall Street Journal.  Close enough, Qevin!  Remember when Goldman Sachs warned us about a house divided against itself?