Who Had the Worst Week?

~ Jeremy Story
  • While we were all focused on how Artificial Intelligence may cause a human extinction event, Russia decided to remind us that old-school threats haven’t gone away. The country quarantined 200 workers at a Siberian lab when a worker died after reportedly being exposed to the plague. While Russia claims her death was unrelated to her work in a pneumonic plague lab, the World Health Organization is demanding more answers.
  • Cornell University, sadly, is positioning itself to be one of the year’s biggest PR disasters. Sensational and shocking details continue to dribble out – exactly the opposite of the goal for how to handle a crisis – and the latest development is that one of the students accused of rape was one of the fraternity’s official “trained event monitor” who are required to “stay sober and wear distinctive clothing so that police officers, paramedics or other partygoers could quickly identify them in an emergency.”
  • Meanwhile, sexual assaults on campus are an issue hitting closer to home as well. The University of Utah and the University of Colorado top the latest federal list of most reported campus rapes, followed by Ohio State, Penn State, UCLA, UC-Santa Cruz, UC-Santa Barbara, Indiana University, the University of Kansas and the University of Kentucky.
  • A screw-up by the Front Range Passenger Rail District means that 800,000 Colorado voters will have a question about a tax increase for passenger rail on their ballots that shouldn’t be there. Election officials are working on a process to exclude the votes that aren’t eligible. Even if it is ultimately handled correctly, the error is a gift to election-rigging conspiracy theorists.
  • There is a class war erupting in Britain, and the catalyst is access to tickets to an exclusive show. In the U.S., we fight over Taylor Swift tickets. In Britain, they fight over tickets to see a 230-foot-long embroidered tapestry from France. The commoners are not happy that wealthy patrons are being allowed to skip the line.
  • President Donald Trump doxxed U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, posting his cell phone number to social media and asking the public to contact Cotton to demand he stop holding up President Trump’s pet permanent Daylight Saving Time bill. With friends like that …
  • It was a tough week for college football teams in our state. Colorado State trended on social media when it appeared its head coach fired the team’s defensive coordinator in the middle of the first quarter of its game against Oregon State (the head coach later clarified he just relieved the coordinator of his duties in the first quarter and then fired him after the game). Meanwhile, a University of Colorado playbook was apparently left at a hotel bar and discovered by Texas Tech fans the night before their game. Neither Colorado team won.
  • Tom Cruise has been one of Hollywood‘s most reliable box office stars, but his latest movie, “Digger,” isn’t connecting with audiences. It is on pace to lose $250 million.
  • CBS Sports officially parted ways with NFL announcer Tony Romo, using his DUI arrest as an opportunity to negotiate a settlement lower than the $72 million they still owed him. It probably wasn’t a lot less, though – CBS has a long history of not significantly punishing sports announcers and analysts who have been arrested for DUI.
  • Denver International Airport is playing defense after CBS4 investigative reporter Brian Maass reported that executives “spent more than $21,000 on a retirement party attended by just 45 people – more than $466 for every person who actually showed up.” DIA officials explained ongoing construction has shuttered some spaces and forced the airport to move events to the nearby Westin.
  • A Chinese fitness influencer with more than half a million social media followers was disqualified from the Berlin Marathon after she hopped on the back of a bike to finish the final 3 miles of the race. Not surprisingly, data showed her fastest split was, in fact, the final 3 miles.
  • Almost no one was surprised that a former Army officer who was convicted of killing 13 people at Fort Hood in Texas was given the death penalty, and only some people were surprised when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered it to be conducted via a firing squad. But Secretary Hegseth’s order this week that the execution be livestreamed is quite a step.
  • It turns out that Colorado has no mechanism to issue tickets to driverless vehicles for traffic violations. What could go wrong? If I had a white minivan, I’d slap a Waymo sticker on the side and see what I could get away with.
  • New England Patriots QB Drake Maye outed himself as a moon-landing skeptic. NASA, wisely, jumped right on it.
  • Police arrested a fugitive who was on the run for 14 years after he participated in a job-related puff-piece profile in a local newspaper. The article included his photo and named the restaurant where he was working as a chef.
  • KWGN/Channel 2 anchor Chris Parente is leaving the station as he deals with early-stage bladder cancer. Side effects of his treatment and an expiring contract are forcing his departure.
  • Amazon keeps weirdly detailed information (and apparently judgments) about customers, and some users are not thrilled to learn what the company thinks. One found that Amazon has determined she “has no friends,” while another was labeled to have “flat buttocks.” The flat-buttocked user posted a screenshot and responded, “I mean it ain’t wrong but damn did you have to call me out like that?”

Who won the week?

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Published by Jeremy Story

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