1 – Those Leno jokes were (not) harmless and unfunny.

Jay Leno has always sucked. Here's another very big reason: He's disingenuous AF.

“At the time I did those jokes, I genuinely thought them to be harmless,” Leno said, in response to complaints from activist group Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA). One of these “jokes” was about how Koreans like to eat dog meat.

I'm still mad he got the Tonight Show from Johnny Carson when David Letterman earned and deserved the top spot.

My grievance, of course, is nothing compared to the racist jokes Leno told. He has never been funny to me or millions of others.

2 – A damned robot “painted” a thing and it sold as an NFT for nearly $700,000.

Blow me. That's it. That's the story.

3 – All Hail the Baseball-sized Hail

The South is expected to experience a “violent” outbreak of tornadoes today. The term “violent” actually has meteorological meaning: Winds up to 166 miles per hour and could touch ground for 25 miles!

Crazy. My grandfather grew up in Tornado Alley. He left as a young man during the Dust Bowl. He never had any desire to return to Oklahoma, specifically because of the tornadoes. He was perfectly fine with the occasional earthquake in California.

I'm with him.

4 – General Motors expanded its Board of Directors (with a SURPRISE)

General Motors Co on Thursday said it is expanding its board of directors to 13 persons, with women holding seven of the seats.

Reuters

GM also has a female CEO: Mary Barra. She has quite the story. You should read it.

In a nutshell, Barra is one of three children born to Finnish parents. She went to the GM Institute (TIL this is a real college), was inducted into the engineering honor society Tau Beta Pi, then graduated with her MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. At 18, she went to work for GM.

I've never liked GM cars (except the Corvette). I'm a Ford guy. But I may have to reconsider: Ford has 3 women on its board of 12. This is just unacceptable today.

5 – Biden puts VP Harris in charge of border crisis

For the first two months of the Biden presidency, Vice President Kamala Harris hasn't been very visible, but she's about to get a lot more visibility: Harris has been put in charge of managing the border crisis.

And it is a crisis.

But if anybody can solve this problem, it's Harris.

Harris’ main focus, a senior administration official told reporters earlier Wednesday, will be two-pronged: working to slow the flow of “irregular migrants” by addressing “the root causes” that prompt them to leave their home countries as well as strengthening relationships with Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries where the bulk of the migrants arriving at the U.S. border come from.

Politico

VP Harris will not be owning the entire problem. She will be focused on dealing with the root causes and long-term management.

But still, Biden picked the right person for the job. IMHO of course. Time will tell. Nobody else has solved this puzzle.

6 – Remember that time Homer got stuck in the waterslide?

This is like that. Only different, with global economic consequences. Homer did get to meet Ringo Starr though.

SMAILIA, Egypt (AP) — A skyscraper-sized cargo ship wedged across Egypt’s Suez Canal further imperiled global shipping Thursday as at least 150 other vessels needing to pass through the crucial waterway idled waiting for the obstruction to clear, authorities said.

AP

The economic impact is startling: Lloyd's List, a shipping journal (who knew?), has estimated that for each day the Suez Canal is closed, it chokes $9 billion from the global economy.

To say the ship is–ahem–portly is an understatement. It's 400 meters long and 59 meters wide. It can carry 20,000 shipping containers.

That's a lot of homes for hobos.

More here.

Enjoy & make it a great day!

Bill

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