The weekend once again….time for relaxation and entertainment….time for my usual post on news that most of my readers missed….enjoy.

First a couple animal attack stories….

A dude is out hunting and is attacked by a bear….

A Wyoming hunter managed to scare off an attacking grizzly bear Friday night in an area south of Grand Teton National Park—but in the process, he shot himself in the leg. Lee Francis, 65, was hunting with his 40-year-old son in Rock Creek, along the Sawtooth mountains, when the bear attacked around 6pm, NBC News reports. The Sublette County Sheriff’s Office says Francis “was able to draw his handgun and fired several rounds, which caused the bear to disengage and flee; however, one of the rounds struck Francis in the lower leg.” His son called for help using a satellite phone, USA Today reports.

Francis’ son provided first aid and, after coordinating with rescuers, he got Francis, on horseback, to a rendezvous spot near Water Dog Lake. More than three hours after the attack, Francis was taken via helicopter from there to a hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah, and was discharged Monday. Authorities are searching for the bear involved in the incident. Days prior, a grizzly attacked two college wrestlers in Wyoming, and the state said there has been “an abundance of bear activity” in the national forest where they were attacked. “Game and Fish will continue to monitor bear activity in the area and work with the US Fish and Wildlife Service to make management decisions in the best interest of public safety,” a supervisor at the state agency said.

Next a woman is on her way to work and then….

It’s an occurrence so chilling and rare that it’s being reported around the globe: An Indonesian woman apparently lost her life to a python, with local reports confirming her body was found in the snake’s stomach. The Guardian reports a woman identified as Jahrah, 54, left for work at a rubber plantation on the island of Sumatra on Sunday morning but did not return home as expected. While looking for her that evening, her husband reportedly found a number of her items, including her sandals, headscarf, jacket, and work tools. The next morning, a search party came upon a 22-foot-long python with an enlarged midsection.

“After we caught him, we found the victim’s body in the snake’s stomach,” local media reported the police chief as saying, with the BBC noting he said the victim’s body was mostly intact. The New York Post (which has some photos of the scene) quotes a villager as speculating the woman was first bitten by the snake, which then would have wrapped itself around her to suffocate her prior to swallowing her, in a process that could have taken two hours. The Guardian notes known cases of humans being swallowed by pythons are rare, though Newser previously reported on cases in 2017 and 2018.

Finally another bad day…..

An Arkansas biker is expected to survive after he was tased earlier this month by police and burst into flames. Citing a release from Arkansas State Police, CNN reports that the incident took place in the early morning hours of Oct. 13 in Little Rock, when a cop tried to pull over a motorcycle that didn’t appear to have a license plate. Police say the rider, IDed as 38-year-old Christopher Gaylor, wasn’t keen on getting pulled over and instead sped off, with the police officer taking pursuit.

The release says Gaylor “ignored multiple traffic stop signs and traffic lights” and tried to flee at speeds of up to 100mph, making his way to Interstate 30. Police say a second officer then came across the biker, who soon turned off the freeway, then jumped off his bike in a residential neighborhood and started running. Police dashcam video sent to 40/29 by ASP shows what happened next, as one officer who was running after the suspect tased him, causing a fireball to erupt. Per 40/29, troopers started screaming, “He’s on fire!,” then put out the flames with a fire extinguisher. The release notes they provided medical assistance to Gaylor until an ambulance arrived.

As for why Gaylor turned into a walking fireball: “An investigation has since revealed Gaylor was carrying approximately 1 gallon of gasoline in a backpack,” the ASP release notes. Police say there was no signage or any other indication that Gaylor was carrying fuel in the backpack, and that he didn’t say anything to that effect when he jumped off the motorcycle. An ASP spokesperson say no personnel have been disciplined or investigated for the incident. Gaylor remains hospitalized but is said to be in good condition. However, he now faces charges of felony fleeing, failure to register a vehicle, reckless driving, driving with a suspended license, and having no liability insurance.

A couple great definitions of ‘having a bad day’……

I admit it I try to do my part for the environment by recycling…..and then I read the news that I might be ‘fartin’ into the wind’….

“Plastic recycling is a dead-end street.” So proclaims a new Greenpeace report that makes that very case using an underwhelming set of stats regarding the scant amount of plastic that’s recycled in the US. Per the report, at our peak in 2014, America recycled 9.5% of plastic waste, though that number was inflated by the way in which it was calculated—plastic exported to China to be “recycled” was included, though much ended up incinerated or in landfills. The figure in 2021: some 5% to 6%. In Greenpeace’s telling, the issue isn’t a lack of effort, so much as an impossibility: “Most plastic simply cannot be recycled.”

Per the report, two common plastic considered the easiest to recycle here—PET #1 and HDPE #2—are recycled and reused at rates of just 20.9% and 10.3%, meaning even if you dutifully directed all of your use of these plastics to recycling plants, the vast majority wouldn’t be recycled. Why? The report finds that the plastics “being accepted by a recycling processing plant does not necessarily result in them being recycled—effectively negating the recyclability claim.” NPR gets at some of the drivers of that: It’s cheap to make new plastic; it’s anything but cheap to recycle due to the sorting required. “There are now thousands of different types of plastic, and none of them can be melted down together,” NPR explains, and after plastic is reused a time or two, it starts to degrade.

So what’s a planet-conscious person to do? A Greenpeace rep offers a dig and some advice: “Corporations like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestlé and Unilever have worked with industry front groups to promote plastic recycling as the solution to plastic waste for decades. But the data is clear: practically speaking, most plastic is just not recyclable. The real solution is to switch to systems of reuse and refill.” As the Guardianobserves, paper, cardboard, metal, and glass are recycled much more successfully.

That news just sucks….so basically my recycling is just a feeble ‘feel good’ effort on my part.

That just sucks!

Have a great weekend….be well and be safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”