Amid the trollings, Elon Musk encourages his followers to vote Republican

An ode to the days when everything happened so much.

The puppeteer who gave a racist performance involving a Black puppet named “Sista Girl” during Touché’s 45th anniversary party said he is retiring the character. Puppeteer Jerry Halliday has faced backlash for last week’s performance, in which he spoke for the puppet using a stereotypical “Blaccent,” or voice that non-Black performers use to imitate Black vernacular, and told jokes about loving watermelon, being on welfare and having five kids. On Sunday, Halliday told Block Club he removed Sista Girl from his act. “I have permanently retired the Black puppet, just like the Rolling Stones recently retired their song ‘Brown Sugar’ when they received similar criticism,” Halliday said. “I continue with my other puppets full speed ahead.”

That amounts to less than 1% of the nearly 6m people employed by America’s technology companies. But it is nevertheless a rude shock for firms far more familiar with hiring than firing.

As world leaders gather for Cop27, these pictures prove that global heating isn’t a distant possibility – it’s already here

John R. Tyson, a fourth-generation of the Tyson family, was hired by the Tyson company in 2019. He serves as executive vice president and chief financial officer, according to the company's bio. He is responsible for the company's worldwide finance and accounting functions and also leads its sustainability and enterprise strategy teams.

A growing fast food chain is crying fowl after its plans to open a restaurant in Hobart were fried.

A new video released by a Chinese anti-corruption agency revealed a corrupt Chinese official’s unusual method of hiding his ill-gotten gains. Last April, authorities in the eastern province of Zhejiang launched an official probe into Jiang Xunbo, a retired top official at the prefecture-level city of Quzhou, who was accused of receiving millions in bribes from different corporate executives. Jiang confessed a day after the investigation began. The video, posted on Sunday by the Zhejiang provincial supervisory committee on the social media platform WeChat, showed footage of officers raiding his mansion. They found bags after bags of frozen meat in his freezer, including chickens, ducks, and fish stuffed with plastic-wrapped gold bars and jewelery. They also uncovered stacks of debit and gift cards Jiang had buried under bamboo trees in his garden.

“It’s not so much the size of the brain that matters, but what the animal can do with what it’s got,” says arachnologist Fiona Cross of the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Twitter Inc., after laying off roughly half the company on Friday following Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition, is now reaching out to dozens of employees who lost their jobs and asking them to return. Some of those who are being asked to return were laid off by mistake, according to two people familiar with the moves. Others were let go before management realized that their work and experience may be necessary to build the new features Musk envisions, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private information.

Tao Huabi rose from humble origins in south-western China to create a beloved condiment that can now be found in fridges around the world

This is fine.

In the wake of Hurricane Ian, Florida’s teetering property insurance market has emerged as a late campaign issue in the state’s closely watched gubernatorial race, as Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis tests the waters for a 2024 presidential bid. Property insurance costs have nearly doubled under DeSantis, a major recipient of industry cash — and a little-noticed change to the state law governing “bad faith” insurance lawsuits pushed through by the governor and the GOP-controlled legislature this spring could make it harder than ever for homeowners now facing record levels of property damage to get a fair shake from their insurers. Consumer advocates and attorneys say the recent property insurance overhaul, billed by DeSantis as a fix for skyrocketing premiums and unreliable coverage, instead amounted to an industry bailout — and that not only did the legislation fail to help homeowners, it will also effectively hamper their ability to sue insurers that wrongfully deny, delay, or underpay claims.

Lake Powell wasn't always half empty. In 1983, the reservoir filled nearly to overflowing, saved by resourceful engineers and a lot of concrete.

Running out of time and options to save water along the drying Colorado River, federal officials said they’re considering whether to release less water from the country’s two largest reservoirs downstream to Arizona, California and Nevada. Without enough snow this winter, the water level at Lake Powell — the country’s second-largest reservoir — will drop below a critical level by next November, according to a new report from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Below that point, the Glen Canyon Dam will no longer be able to generate electricity and experts worry whether conditions will worsen to the point that the structure will no longer be able to send water downstream at all. Conditions on the Colorado River are worsening quicker than expected. The seven states in the river basin made little progress saving water over the summer and Colorado is heading into its third La Niña winter in a row, likely indicating below-average snowpack. A worst-case scenario, once considered only as a hypothetical, now presents a very real threat. “It’s going to be ugly,” Mark Squillace, a water law professor at the University of Colorado, said. “The bottom line is there just isn’t going to be enough water available.”

Like all hopelessly addicted Twitter users, I, of course, hate Twitter. It IS the social network for people who are both too mean and too unattractive to make it on TikTok or Instagram. But because I am a hopelessly addicted Twitter user, there are many things I like about Twitter. Things it has given me, over and over. Things that I will be sad to lose, as Elon Musk sets Turd Mountain aflame and claims to be surprised that people are running away.

SAN FRANCISCO — When the ax came down at Twitter on Friday, it did not fall smoothly. The first sign that some of the company’s 7,500 employees had been laid off came when their email accounts were shut off late Thursday. Yet they received no official word about termination and some of their Slack accounts still worked. In Twitter’s offices in Ireland and Britain, employees stayed up late waiting for the San Francisco headquarters to inform them of their job status. Some learned they were unemployed in the middle of their night. The cuts were so haphazard that at one late-night meeting about the Twitter Blue subscription product, at least one worker was locked out of the company’s systems during the call, according to three people with knowledge of the meeting and internal messages viewed by The New York Times.

They named their company Pegatron.........

France’s Assemblée Nationale is investigating a racist outburst after a far-right MP yelled “go back to Africa” as a black member of the lower house was speaking about migrants. Grégoire de Fournas, a member of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN), or National Rally, is now threatened with temporary suspension from the house and a possible loss of pay. He said he was not referring to the MP but to migrants. The house erupted with outrage after his interjection on Thursday evening. The speaker, Yaël Braun-Pivet, immediately halted proceedings and demanded to know who had made the comment, which came as Carlos Martens Bilongo, of the far-left La France Insoumise (LFI), was questioning the government. Bilongo, a teacher, was addressing a request by the SOS Mediterranée, a humanitarian organisation, for help in finding a port willing to accept 234 migrants rescued at sea in recent days. The parliamentary speaker said the investigation would focus on whether De Fournas said “he” or “they”, to establish whether the comment was directed at Bilongo or the migrants, before deciding on what punishment was appropriate.

Rochester, N.Y. — Bright pink envelopes will soon be mailed to people spotted buying drugs on North Clinton Avenue. "This is not a criminal arrest, so we don’t have to witness an exchange of drugs and money," said Linda Kingsley, corporation counsel for the city. "We just need to see some interactions between a drug dealer and someone driving in the area." Inside the envelope is a letter with details of their encounter with the drug dealer, along with a list of criminal and safety risks.