Extra, Extra
Food Chain Gang: ” A hidden path to America’s dinner tables begins here, at an unlikely source – a former Southern slave plantation that is now the country’s largest maximum-security prison.” AP: Prisoners in the US are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands.
+ The Art of the Spiel: Since last we met, a “jury in New York put a price on Donald Trump’s inability to keep his mouth shut, awarding the writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million in damages in a defamation lawsuit.” Trump has now spent more money on his social media addiction than anyone on earth—other than Elon Musk. And the financial cost of the Trump way could get a lot more expensive. AP: “Within days, Donald Trump could potentially have his sprawling real estate business empire ordered ‘dissolved’ for repeated misrepresentations on financial statements to lenders, adding him to a short list of scam marketers, con artists and others who have been hit with the ultimate punishment for violating New York’s powerful anti-fraud law.” (It’s nothing a few fundraising emails can’t cover…)
+ H&R Cellblock: “The former Internal Revenue Service contractor who leaked the tax records of former President Donald Trump to The New York Times as well as the tax records of billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk to ProPublica was sentenced Monday to five years in prison.”
+ Rink Skip: “The Russian skater Kamila Valieva, who was only 15 when she found herself at the heart of a doping scandal at the 2022 Winter Olympics, has been banned for four years. The verdict means that Russia is certain to be stripped of its team gold from the Games, with the International Skating Union expected to formally announce on Tuesday that the medal will go to the United States.” (At 15, she certainly wasn’t making doping decisions herself.)
+ Mona Fides: Here’s a quick Yiddish lesson. Someone who spills the soup is a schlemiel. Someone who the soup is spilled onto is a schlimazel. Someone who throws soup at the Mona Lisa is an assh-le. Mona Lisa: Protesters throw soup at da Vinci painting.
+ Cold Chilean: “Five friends from different countries traveled to South Lake Tahoe to ski and enjoy Heavenly Ski Resort. They all went up the hill in the morning and only four came back down on the evening of January 26, leaving one unaccounted and the rest of them scrambling for answers.” Luckily, she wasn’t hurt or missing. But insanely, she was in a gondola that the resort shut down for the evening. Chilean woman spends night in Tahoe’s Heavenly Gondola.
