“IMAO” = “I’m An O_________”

France relaxes strict cheese-making rules after prolonged drought
bbc.com | 08/27/2026 | Hugh Schofield

The Fake Ancient Theater in Italy That Fooled Ticket Buyers for a Decade
Weird Italy | July 25, 2026

Marketed as a Neolithic and Roman find, the site was in fact assembled with concrete and grouted stone blocks. 

A man in northern Italy has been sent to prison after Italy’s highest court gave final confirmation to his conviction for illegally constructing a fake ancient theater and presenting it to the public as a genuine archaeological site, charging visitors an entrance fee of up to 40 euros. 

The structure still stands in Arcugnano, in the province of Vicenza. It consists of tiered stone seating built from stacked stones that were worked to look ancient. The columns are fake too, made of concrete, along with plaster statues and an artificial small lake dug beneath the tiers in the arena area. 

If you could take a peek into Hell, what might you see?

… by altering the lyrics of a popular song.  

I know that’s a pretty broad category, but who doesn’t like categories with pretty broads?

Crossing a ‘Red’ Line? Chinese Comedy Star Investigated Over Altered Song Lyrics
Channel News Asia | 19 Aug 2026

Prominent Chinese comedian Guo Degang has come under investigation after improvising new lyrics to a well-known revolutionary song, with a complaint accusing him of violating “social order and good customs”. The incident spotlights the fine line performers in China must navigate between creative license and political sensitivities, amid Beijing’s continued emphasis on ideological discipline.

He should have formed a group: Kool and Degang.

Guo changed the lyrics of Playing My Beloved Pipa during a Peking opera adaptation of Ji Gong, a legendary Chinese Buddhist monk and folk hero, held in Wuhan on Jul 24, reported Shanghai-based news outlet The Paper. Guo starred as Ji Gong in the production. Playing My Beloved Pipa was featured in the 1956 film Railway Guerrilla – a well-known revolutionary classic depicting a group of railway workers and farmers who form a guerrilla force to fight invading imperial Japanese forces.

So, unless you are too busy playing your beloved pipa, have at it.

Chinese Peoples’ Army Censoring Squad:

🎵  We Didn’t Start To Fire . . .  🎵

Students given AI slop with misspelled state names, faulty table of elements, angering parents
NYPost | 8/21/26 | Marc Vartabedian

Kentucky middle school parents are furious over instructional packets teachers assigned their kids that were filled with AI slop like misspelled state names and a faulty table of elements, according to a report.

The packet, handed out on the first day of class at Farnsley Middle School in Louisville, featured a US geography map with jaw-dropping flubs like Kentucky being mislabeled “Venecky” and Louisiana as “Lookoong,” according to local news station WDRB.

“Mom, did you know that we live in Venecky?” Stacey Morris said her son joked to her on the drive home after his first day.

She didn’t know what her son was talking about until she opened the material and was appalled by the lesson, according to WDRB.

“Arizona is Arizone. Illinois starts with a V. I mean, it’s crazy,” Morris said, adding that Texas was spelled “Taxas” and New Mexico was “New Mizone,” while Oklahoma was morphed into “Olkchoma.”

Look; even I know that our first president was not George Malcolm Peter Brian Telescope Adrian Umbrella Stand Jasper Wednesday (pops mouth twice) Stoatgobbler John Raw Vegetable (barks) Arthur Norman Michael (blows squeaker) Featherstone Smith (whistle) Northcott Edwards Harris (fires pistol, then ‘whoop’) Mason (chuff-chuff-chuff-chuff) Frampton Jones Fruitbat Gilbert ‘We’ll keep a welcome in the’ (three shots) Williams If I Could Walk That Way Jenkin (squeaker) Tiger-drawers Pratt Thompson ‘Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head‘ Darcy Carter (horn) Pussycat ‘Don’t Sleep In The Subway‘ Barton Mainwashington Smith.

What’s Wrong in Canada?
Free Beacon | 8/18/26 | Jonathan Leaf

Nickname: “Maple”

Last year, roughly 150,000 Americans chose to leave the United States. … 120,640 Canadians left Canada. The numbers aren’t so different. But the United States has eight-and-a-half times as many people. So, if the United States had the same rate of emigration, we would be losing close to 1.3 million people each year. That’s more than live in Boston and Miami combined.

Here’s an even more shocking statistic. In 2016, Canada legalized assisted suicide. Now eight times as many Canadians die from euthanasia as in car accidents. Increasingly, Canadians are anxious to leave either for another country or the undiscovered country.

No offense meant to our Canadian commenter.  It’s a beautiful country; that’s why we’d want to move there.

Double-check with your doctor that you heard the prescription correctly.

The Absence of Young Male Novelists Signifies the Death of American Culture
Chronicles | August 14, 2026 | George P. Cross

Here’s an interesting question: how many white American men born after 1984 have had a literary piece published in The New Yorker? The answer is zero. How did we get here, and who let this happen?

Every literary generation used to produce its Roth, Updike, Bellow, Wolfe, McCarthy, or Franzen. Today’s literary establishment shows no interest in producing young men of comparable prominence—especially if they’re straight and white.

This is not a new or underdiagnosed problem; in fact, it appears to be a point of pride for the new generation of literary critics and publishers alike. Penguin Random House has no problem publishing it’s demographics yearly and celebrating the slow but consistent decline in white editorial staff.

Acclaimed novelist Joyce Carol Oates had no issue tweeting that “a friend who is a literary agent told me that he cannot even get editors to read first novels by young white male writers, no matter how good; they are just not interested.”

(Three out of four paragraphs use the word “interest.”)