Weekly Review
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the founder of the prominent anti-vaccine nonprofit Children’s Health Defense, held a holiday party where guests were asked to be vaccinated or take a test beforehand; Kennedy later blamed the attendance requirements on his wife, the actor Cheryl Hines.1 2 “I guess I’m not always the boss at my own house,” said the second son of the assassinated presidential candidate Robert Kennedy. The number of COVID-19 cases in New York reached 21,027, a new single-day record for the state which, over the next two days, was broken twice more, leading to test shortages, school closures, and the cancellation, after audience members had already been seated, of a Moulin Rouge! The Musical performance on Broadway.3 4 5 6 7 8 New York City’s mayor-elect, Eric Adams, who has said that he will move to close Rikers Island by 2027, announced that he would resume solitary confinement for detainees there, a punishment that current mayor Bill de Blasio planned to end on the final day of his term.9 10 “They better enjoy that one-day reprieve, because January 1, they are going back into segregation if they committed a violent act,” said Adams.11 San Francisco’s mayor, London Breed, who last year redirected $120 million in funding from the city’s police to its black community, announced that she would ramp up police presence in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood in order to address “all the bullshit that has destroyed our city.”12 13 14 15 It was reported that an Amazon delivery driver in Illinois was repeatedly instructed to continue delivering packages during the tornadoes that killed nearly 100 people across the Midwest last week, six of whom died at the warehouse she worked for.16 17 18 “The safest practice is to stay exactly where you are,” her dispatcher texted while she was on the road. “The sirens are just a warning.” “As a friend of mine says, he should spend more time at Blue Origin and less time in the hot tub,” said the thrice-divorced father of six Elon Musk of Jeff Bezos.19 20
A 35-year-old leftist and Tool fan was elected president of Chile, defeating a lawyer whose German-born father was a member of the Nazi Party.21 22 The mayor of Anchorage, Alaska, who earlier this year said that wearing yellow Stars of David to protest a mask mandate was “actually a credit” to Jewish people, admitted that he had halted the fluoridation of the city’s water supply for around five hours in October, and the former Alaska governor Sarah Palin said that she would get vaccinated against COVID-19 “over my dead body.”23 24 25 A school librarian in Washington, D.C., was placed on administrative leave after instructing third graders to act out scenes from the Holocaust and directing a Jewish student who was playing Hitler to pretend to commit suicide.26 The U.S. Senate passed a bill banning all imported products from Xinjiang that businesses cannot prove were made without forced labor, which would negatively affect the supply chains of Apple, Nike, and Coca-Cola; Amazon was found to have complied with requests from China’s government, such as removing ratings and reviews from a product listing for a book written by President Xi Jinping, in order to open up the Chinese eBook market; and after disappearing from public view for nearly a month, the tennis star Peng Shuai posted a video on Weibo in which she denied that she had previously claimed to have been sexually assaulted by a former Chinese vice premier.27 28 29 30 “We are actually constructing our memories while we retrieve memories,” testified Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, who also served as an expert witness in the trial of Robert Durst, in defense of Ghislaine Maxwell.31 32
The Dutch nuclear safety authority discovered that several brands of necklaces, bracelets, and sleep masks that claim to protect against 5G networks give off hazardous radiation.33 Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia announced that, after weeks of negotiation, he would not support President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better infrastructure bill.34 Eric Clapton won a $4,000 lawsuit against a 55-year-old German widow who listed a bootlegged CD of Clapton’s live performances on eBay for $11.35 It was revealed that the creators of the scam Squid Game (SQUID) cryptocurrency token invested $125 million in Shiba Inu (SHIB).36 Scientists found that the horseshoe crab, whose blood is frequently used to test drugs and vaccines, may be on the brink of extinction.37 Nicola Sturgeon’s administration voiced support for a bill that would apologize to and clear the names of nearly 4,000 people who were burned at the stake for witchcraft in Scotland in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries.38 “It’s stupid. The whole thing is theater,” said a man who was banned from United Airlines flights for wearing a red thong instead of a mask.39—Sara Krolewski
