Matt Of All Trades

This dude robbed a bank in Delaware, then tried to deposit his loot in the ATM outside the  bank. Surprise! It didn't work.  Say you decide to rob a bank, and you manage to make it out the door with the cash without being shot, arrested or beat up. Then what do you do?   Well, you have to put the money somewhere, right? Personally, I'd hide it somewhere - bury it perhaps? - until the heat was off a little bit, but what do I know? I wouldn't do what this genius did when he robbed a Wilmington, Delaware, as Delaware State Police inform us:  He got the money from a teller, and police pick up the story from there: "The suspect fled the bank on foot, and once outside he made a deposit in the ATM on the exterior of the building. The suspect then continued to flee the scene behind the Prices Corners Shopping Center where he was located by responding troopers and taken into custody without incident." The dude police arrested, McRobert Williams, was charged with felony s...

A Christmas fright from Karens!  Just for laughs and giggles, I've decided now, after the gardening season ended, that I have time to devote to this blog thingy, so I'm reviving it. At least for awhile.  This blog has mostly been on hiatus since spring, since I didn't have time to deal with it. But let's go for broke.  Since it's the Christmas season, let's start with the holiday spirit, if you will. With Karens, since they've been all the rage - literally - this year. Jimmy Kimmel recently had a fantastic holiday Karen segment that you have to watch.  It starts pretty frighteningly, with a woman doing an anti-vax version of Mariah Carey's Christmas classic "All I Want For Christmas Is You."   Sweet Mariah can sing this lovely song. Anti-vax Karen.......cannot. Anti-Vax Karen, "performing" at a San Diego county board meeting, reworked the lyrics into extreme nonsense. Worse, her singing voice is about as good as the tragic sound of ...

A scheme by health insurers to deny coverage and medication to patients via bureaucracy has hit Vermont with a vengeance. My health insurer just caught me up in a type of trap I never knew existed until now.  It's called prior authorization, and it is a Byzantine, maddening  way for health insurers to deny coverage of important, sometimes life-saving  medical procedures and prescriptions.   Prior authorization is evil. It's dangerous. It is being done more and more by "health" insurers nationwide. And ot's hit Vermont with a vengeance this month. Essentially, it's the insurance industry trying to make medical decision for  patients they've never met. That is, instead of letting physicians who have actually physically examined and worked with these patients do that crucial work.    This rising tide of  prior authorization denials of medical services has been known to cause poorer outcomes, permanent injury to patients, even extra deaths. ...

Boston Dynamics has dancing robots. Endearing or creepy? Robots are getting more and more lifelike by the day.   Which led me to this weird but serious question: When do we cross the line before we are affectionate toward them? Are we already there?   This thought came to me within the past few weeks after Boston Dynamics put out a video of dancing robots. Said robots were well, almost endearing.  Though the idea of having an emotional attachment to robots isn't new, I think it's going to become more and more part of our lives.  What if you start loving a robot like you'd love your dog or cat, or even your spouse? Where does that put human beings? Or other living, loving creatures like real dogs?  A couple years ago, one of my young nephews got a robot dog for Christmas. The robot dog was programmed to figure out how to follow my nephew's leads and preferences, and it did so beautifully.  The robot dog was cute, had a few mannerisms that real dog...

 UPDATE Turns out kids in Alabama will be able to participate in  yoga sessions, with restrictions to appease fearful, ignorant "Christians." Yoga could be welcome in Alabama schools after all.   Sponsors of the bill legalizing it made some entirely unnecessary changes to their legislation, just to appease religious "conservatives" in the state, who fear anything other than their brand of Christianity.  According to Al.com: "The (Alabama State) Senate amended the bill to say that 'school personnel may not  use any techniques that involve hypnosis, the induction of a dissociative mental state, guided imagery, meditation or any aspect of Eastern philosophy and religious training." Never mind that yoga does not involve hypnosis, and earlier versions of the bill these "Christians" objected to already banned schools from using yoga for anything other than exercise.  But you gotta appease the crazies to get anything accomplished, right?   I know yo...

Alpacas are cute, and the Vermont farms they live on are lovely, except in instances where the farms are acquired through pandemic loan fraud, as prosecutors allege in  one Vermont case. The Federal Paycheck Protection Program was meant to keep businesses afloat during the pandemic as a way to preserve employment through the crisis.   It program was a big help, and it saved a lot of butts. However, as with everything else, there are a few cheaters involved, and now prosecutors are starting to poke around nabbing people who benefitted illegally. Among the people caught in this net is somebody who allegedly cheated to get this money in what I consider an only-in-Vermont way. He used the money to buy alpacas. Anyway, that's what prosecutors are saying about Dana McIntyre, 57, of Grafton, Vermont. He's charged with wire fraud and money laundering because he's alleged to have used some of the PPP money to buy alpacas for a farm in Vermont.  He was supposed to use the mon...