Gheorghasbord

It's pouring buckets here on the lake, and I'm going just a tiny bit stir crazy, so you're the winner, gentle reader.

Just two days before host country Russia takes on heavily favored Croatia in the quarterfinals of the World Cup, an interesting bit of business news from the Balkans. Troubled Croatian retail food conglomerate Agrokor agreed to sell a 47% stake to a group of Kremlin-backed banks as part of a restructuring designed to get the company back on solid financial footing. Agrokor's revenues
represent 15% of Croatia's GDP, and the firm's 60,000 employees make it the largest privately-held employer in the region.

The timing here is...interesting. 15% of Croatia's economy is in Russian hands on the eve of a huge international sporting competition between the two countries. Maybe we'll see a curious series of just-off touches by Luka Modric, or a suspiciously awkward foul by Dejan Lovren in a crucial situation (that'll probably happen regardless). Putin's a damn mastermind.

Scott Pruitt, arguably the most corrupt member of the Trump administration (and what a hell of a titanic accomplishment that is), resigned. I don't have a joke to make here. I'm just amazed that someone so transparently engaged in grift and mendacity lasted as long as he did. Unfortunately, his successor, Andrew Wheeler, is a coal lobbyist and protege of Oklahoma Senator and noted insane person and climate change denier Jim Inhofe. So, less corruption, more competently executed planet rape.

Here's a poetic justice headline, non-Pruitt category: "Lions killed poachers, leaving behind shoes, rifles and 'not much' else, officials say". Three dudes who were up to no good started making trouble in the Sibuya Game Reserve in South Africa, armed and heavily-provisioned, and apparently looking to slaughter the Reserve's population of rhinos. A pride of lions, described by Reserve head Nick Fox as "our watchers and guardians", went all Scooby Doo on the meddlesome villains, only slightly more violently. Said Fox, "They picked the wrong pride and became a meal".

This bodes well for England, for what it's worth. Three Lions, and all that.

A headline of a far different sort: "Spiders Can Fly Hundreds of Miles Using Electricity". We live in an age of electrified arachnids? Fuck it, man. Let Andrew Wheeler have his way and burn the whole planet down. Earth 2 has to be a nicer place.