My ethics around picking up after my beagles during a walk have never truly been put through the paces. The true test is how a dog owner behaves when no one is looking. When you own a pair of howling beagle brothers, someone is always looking; often, half the neighborhood is. I'd like to think I'd do the right thing in any setting. But I'm not sure I'd want to frequent the L Trail on Mount Jumbo in Missoula where a now infamous vigilante, "armed with multi-colored rolls of plastic pet poop bags he buys by the box on Amazon," roams the trails looking to shame the locals who leave behind the output of their dog's behind. The fecal-matter obsessed vigilante has a bark worse than his bite, but the bark has gotten pretty loud. One could argue a man who spends much of his day picking up after dogs even though he's doesn't own one has lost his sh-t. Or maybe he's uncovered a key example that proves people can't get their sh-t together. "Even if you frequent this trail, you may not have seen the Bag Man—he’s shadowy like that, and crepuscular—but you will have seen his droppings. After every walk, he leaves a printed note at the Cherry Street trailhead surrounded by bags of dog sh-t in red, orange, blue or green. The color changes daily. 'These are feces left on this trail yesterday, bagged by your neighbor today,' reads a typical note, printed on white office paper and formatted to reveal an above-average command of Microsoft Word." In a story that is broadly about community, society, and the complex relationship humans have with rules, Jacob Baynham worked like a dog to stay on the hot and steamy trail of this story and drop a load of knowledge about a man who couldn't let sleeping dogs lie. Dog Duty. (As to why you should give a sh-t about this story: "There are as many as 89 million dogs in the U.S., collectively manufacturing about 24.4 billion pounds of poop each year—more than the weight of 33 Empire State Buildings.") 2Face RealityPeople generally think about facial recognition technology as something that provides an extra layer of security. But it's increasingly being deployed by governments around the world to provide an extra layer of authoritarian control over dissent. "While authorities generally pitch facial recognition as a tool to capture terrorists or wanted murderers, the technology has also emerged as a critical instrument in a very particular context: punishing protesters." Rest of World: The changing face of protest. "Mass protests used to offer a degree of safety in numbers. Facial recognition technology changes the equation." 3Bet the Overabundance"Since the beginning of March alone, betting-related controversies have swept through sports. A former Jacksonville Jaguars employee was sentenced to 6½ years in prison after pleading guilty to stealing $22 million from the team and wagering with it on FanDuel and DraftKings ... Then, the Los Angeles Dodgers fired Shohei Ohtani's interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, in the wake of media inquiries about $4.5 million in wire transfers sent from Ohtani's bank account to a Southern California bookmaking operation under federal investigation ... And Monday, ESPN reported that Toronto Raptors forward Jontay Porter is under investigation by the NBA following multiple instances of prop betting irregularities over the past several months." ESPN: Are sports betting scandals proving cynics right? That's one good question. Another much bigger question is how a generation of people already addicted to their phones will be impacted by access to sports betting so ubiquitous that they're actually carrying casinos on their pockets. 4Secondhand News"'This is an unprecedented situation and a big deal,' said study lead author Duncan Agnew, a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. 'It’s not a huge change in the Earth’s rotation that’s going to lead to some catastrophe or anything, but it is something notable. It’s yet another indication that we’re in a very unusual time.'" A faster spinning Earth may cause timekeepers to subtract a second from world clocks. (Ok, but which second?) 5Extra, ExtraTroubled Waters: "By now, the Maryland Transportation Authority Police were aware of the ship’s condition and quickly moved to stop oncoming traffic. They were calm and decisive, but seemed unaware of the impending peril. 'I need one of you guys on the south side, one of you guys on the north side,' an officer radioed at 1:27 a.m. 'Hold all traffic on the Key Bridge. There’s a ship approaching that just lost their steering. So until they get that under control we gotta stop all traffic.'" ‘The whole bridge just fell down.’ The final minutes before the Key Bridge collapsed. And from Vox: The Baltimore bridge collapse is only the latest — and least — of global shipping’s problems. "From drought in the Panama Canal to the Houthis in the Suez to pirates off Somalia, we’re all paying the price." 6Bottom of the News"This is why I liked reading about Stephen King’s coke addiction so much. At least he admitted what it took, and it wasn’t a color-coded email system." Kelly Stout in Esquire: Is It Even Possible to Become More Productive? This story reminded me of one I wrote several years ago called The Avalanche of Options. "Looking back on it now, the first time I truly felt the need for a note-taking app was when I started researching note-taking apps."
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