The Five Hundred

And so, the Indianapolis Five Hundred, the single remaining high point of an overall rotten summer, is going to be run without spectators. I am disgusted.

For the first time in my life, I actually feel sorry for Roger Penske. He can afford to take the loss, but it's been a terrible first year of owning the Speedway for him. This year should have been the highlight of his life.

Scoundrels!

Bill DeBlasio is named "The Least-Liked Mayor in the History of the Universe"

*****

Dramatic explosion in Beirut. Strangely enough, it seems to have been accidental. Apparently a fireworks & gasoline warehouse caught fire. The heat from that cooked off a warehouse full of some simple nitrate that exploded with that bright orange cloud. Almost immediately, there's an absolutely HUGE explosion that produces a big opaque white shockwave that actually produces a brief cloud cover, and apparently breaks every window in town. That was initially reported as an earthquake on Cyprus, some hundred miles distant. That was almost certainly military ordnance. The good news is that a number of Hezbollah guys seem to have been blown to bits. Blew up a literal boatload of UN guys too.

*****

Local teens "plot a school massacre", which assertion, TBH, I doubt. This is, I think, goth kids with big mouths who wanted to scare everyone.

My inner pedant can't help but note that “I wish I could kill as many people as I could”, is a self-fulfilling wish.

*****

Local prison riot. It's like there's something in the air anymore.

*****

I wanted to go watch this trial, and you can't even do that anymore. You've probably not heard of it, but this was a huge story here. This woman took informal custody of the little boy, then basically just spent five months torturing and mutilating him. She's charged with "neglect", which doesn't even remotely begin to cover it. He's permanently injured. He'll be that way his whole life, assuming no advances in medicine. Twenty years seems a light punishment.