Monday, October 3: Fishy Behavior in Ohio
Can't trust a 7-pound Walleye when it's stuffed with weights & Fillet O' Fish
Our top story today comes from the charming northern coast of Ohio, along the Great Lake Erie where a sporting scandal has rocked the local community and tarnished reputations forever. Local fishing tournaments are often organized, with cash prizes worth tens of thousands of dollars, but what happens when one man is willing to break all the rules to take home the prestige and glory of being crowned champion? Furthermore, what happens when he’s caught red-handed by his fellow fishing enthusiasts?
On Friday, such a tournament was organized, drawing competitors from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The fisherfolk faced off to see who could achieve the highest total weight for a bucket of five walleyes caught in Lake Erie, and at its conclusion, there seemed to be a clear winner. But as the dramatically-filmed video above proves, controversy was lying in wait all along.
The would-be champions, poised to take home a $28,000 cash prize, on the cusp of glory and local fame, were instead disqualified and publicly chastised after it was discovered they had stuffed their fish with lead weights and fish fillets. The evidence is right on tape for all to see, and the other competitors really let the cheaters hear it. At one point things almost get physical, before the tournament organizer reminds the crowd that the public humiliation should be punishment enough. In fairness, if I’d woken up in Ohio and sat in the cold for hours catching fish only to be outdone by a bait-feeding backwater bandit bastard, I’d probably be pretty upset as well.
Side Items
Brazilian Election Update: Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s far-right president, outperformed the political polls, which I’ll remind you are complete garbage, winning 43% of the vote and setting up a runoff election with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who received 48%. Lula would’ve needed more than 50% to win the election outright, but hopefully a runoff election in the coming months confirms the country’s desire for a new leader, cuz this guy stinks.
Scumbag Scammer: Remember those migrants who were flown out of Texas and Florida to try and make a scene in places like Martha’s Vineyard? Well now it appears they were recruited for these flights by a woman who was a former Army counterintelligence agent. I swear I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried. The story continues to unfold, but it features a mysterious woman codenamed Perla, so it’s probably worth your time.
I watched it so you won’t have to: Netflix recently dropped a film called “Wedding Season”, a rom-com that focuses on a South Asian couple as they go through the process of falling in love. It’s cheesy, predictable, and definitely may have been written by adult children. Stick around past the hour mark for the big twist (spoiler alert: it’s “Facebook money”). If you’re looking for content you can ignore completely and still enjoy in the periphery of your consciousness, keep looking, cuz this ain’t it.
Shoutout Svante Paabo! The Swedish geneticist took home the big prize, of the Nobel variety in Physiology/Medicine for sequencing Neanderthal genomes.