Man and His 11 Cats Make Epic 300km Trip Across Thailand on Motorbike
AsiaOne | March 24, 2023

A Thai man travelled some 300km from Bangkok to Korat with his 11 cats in tow on a motorcycle, attracting praise and “likes” from cat lovers online.

Choowong Thepkoh, 65, who sells amulets and other knick knacks at flea markets in Bangkok, had travelled to Korat to sell his goods at a popular annual flea market.

Choowong also hails from Korat, and wanted to bring his “kids,” or his cats, to visit his birthplace.

“Conquest is easy. Control is not.” – Captain James T. Kirk

“I think I’m going to Korat: Man, do.” — Bob Seeger’s cat

Almost a Third of Queer TV Characters Will Disappear From Screens Next Year, Report Finds
Yahoo Entertainment | 2023-03-21 | Louis Chilton

Nearly a third of the LGBT+ characters to have featured on US TV over the past year will not be returning in future, a new report has revealed.

Over the period between 1 June 2022 and 31 May 2023, a total of 596 LGBT+ characters were featured on scripted TV.

Of these, 175 will not be returning in the following season, as a result of series being cancelled or coming to a pre-agreed end. The majority of these characters (140) are the result of series being cancelled.

The statistics are taken from the annual report published by the US media monitoring organisation GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation).

The report takes into account LGBT+ characters across scripted primetime broadcast networks, scripted primetime cable networks, and scripted series on the eight major US streaming platforms: Prime Video, Hulu, Netflix, Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max, Peacock, and Paramount+.

Did they tally up the number of non-queer characters that will disappear with those cancelled series?

Um . . . Why not?

No “sindication” joke comes to mind. If they did, they would probably suck.

With No Hint of an Agenda

FBI Data on Good Guys With Guns Called ‘Garbage’ as Critic Finds Many More Cases
Washington Times | March 20, 2023 | Stephen Dinan

Mercedes Perez crashed her car into another car on a San Antonio street in 2021 and then jumped out with a gun and blazed away at neighbors who came out of their homes to see what happened.

She killed one man, the car’s owner, and wounded his wife and son before another neighbor heard the shooting. He grabbed his gun and ran to the scene, where he killed Perez with a shot to the neck.

John Lott, founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center, said it’s a case of a good guy with a gun stopping a bad guy with a gun.

Yet the incident was left out of the FBI’s database of active shooting incidents.

Mr. Lott said it’s one of dozens of such incidents missing from the bureau’s statistics, which he said has fueled a false narrative that rarely do good guys with guns stop shootings.

The FBI says the rate of active shooting incidents ended by good guys with guns is 4.4% over the years. Mr. Lott says it’s 34.4%.

The FBI’s conclusions are widely cited, particularly as new shootings revive old debates about gun control and whether more access to weapons is safer or more dangerous.

When an armed citizen does intervene and it draws national headlines — as happened at an Indiana mall food court last year — news accounts are quick to point to the FBI’s findings as evidence that it’s a rarity. The FBI’s numbers also have been used in court cases, and they pepper legislative debates on Capitol Hill and in state assemblies.

Mr. Lott said the numbers are so distorted by shoddy work and judgment calls that they are not just worthless but also misleading.

Copyright-free!

Sadly, the Chinese have come up with a cheap knock-off version — dubbed the ITCZ, or International Tepid C-something Zone:

(They employ “Oceans” as metaphors for the … fellas…)

But it’s pretty accurate:

“Haddy L’amour?”

“That’s Hadley!”

“Five degrees North? Kinky!”

Jazz for the bears!

You don’t want to see what happened in neg. 34922.