For those of you celebrating Passover, friend Larry shared this modern matzoh ball with me. It’s the result of requesting AI to “create a matzoh ball.”
Looks like it needs a little salt, no?
There’s a very long story in the NYT today about the off-the-wall views of Jets QB Aaron Rodgers. It contains this sentence:
“Many fans say that their favorite teams are cursed, but the Jets faithful have a legitimate claim.”
No team in any major sport has gone as long as the Jets without making the playoffs. The last (and only) time they were in the Super Bowl was on Jan. 12, 1969 — LBJ was still president, which, BTW, stands for Let’s Beat the Jets.
Rodgers was on the list of possible VPs for RFK, Jr. He’s a vocal anti-vaxxer. There was a fear that he subscribed to the Sandy-Hook-didn’t-happen-theory, but he cleared that one up – he’s not that bad.
There was a weird back-and-forth with Jimmy Kimmel recently. With no evidence, Rodgers suggested that Kimmel had ties to sex monster Jeffery Epstein. WTF?? Kimmel then tweeted that AR is a “soft-brained wacko” and said in a monologue that Rodgers “thinks he knows what the government is up to because he’s a quarterback doing research on YouTube and listening to podcasts.”
OK, let’s defend him a bit. First, he does about a dozen crossword puzzles a week. (He’s one of us!) He believes it will help stave off the impact of head injuries. (May be too late for that? Just sayin’.)
Next, he has dated Danica Patrick, Olivia Munn, and Shailene Woodley. So how crazy can he be?
Let’s Go Jets!
Your car may be ratting you out, according to a big story in the Business section of the NYT today. When you bought it, you may have unwittingly signed up for some program like Onstar that is sending signals about your driving habits that your insurance company may be using to raise your rates! Yikes! I’m not sure if I was hit by this, but a few months ago I got a letter about how the actual mileage I was driving was higher than the amount I listed in my insurance application. I put down 12,000 a year — as an estimate, not knowing what I actually drive. It turns out I drive more than that and the letter told me that and was going to lead to a higher rate. Well, the letter said 17,000 a year, but I was able to get info from Marvin the mechanic that said it’s about 14,500 a year. So I corrected them. But how did they know to ask? Creepy. Apparently, we are being watched at all times. The nation has turned into one giant Jewish mother. She knows what you’re doing in the bathroom Portnoy!
The puzzle was a paean to lateral symmetry today. Despite completing it successfully, I had no idea what was going on until I turned to Rex’s blog. Well, I knew some of what was going on — the grid had lateral symmetry. That is, the two halves were symmetrical — the black squares lined up on both sides — you could fold it in half lengthwise and the black squares would match up. See what I mean, below? (That’s no big deal — XW puzzles are required to be symmetrical in some way.)
But the symmetry that eluded me was of the actual letters in the long, down, theme answers. Take 11D: HOITY TOITY. The individual letters TOHIY are all themselves symmetrical — you can fold each in half and each side is the same. Same for MAMMA MIA — M, I, and A are all symmetrical. (Examples of non-symmetrical letters are E, P, B, R, L, etc.)
Well, once this was revealed to me, I thought it was pretty clever. But Rex and most of the comments really hated it. Crazy.
I hadn’t heard “Mamma Mia” in, like, forever. It’s a catchy pop tune. Here’s ABBA, being very ABBA-licious.
One of the comments on YouTube says that “to this day” no one knows who the “invisible” drummer is.
Gotta go have dinner. See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 