Weekly Review
More than 70,000 denizens of the temporary city erected for the Burning Man festival were trapped in the Nevada desert after heavy rains caused thick mud.1 Organizers advised attendees, who paid up to $2,750 per ticket and whose ranks included the DJ Diplo, the comedian Chris Rock, and the tax-reduction activist Grover Norquist, to conserve food, water, and fuel, and police investigated a possible death by drowning.2 3 4 5 President Joe Biden was briefed on the situation, and the White House said that it was in contact with state and local authorities.6 “We’re very pleased and surprised that there has been such a fuss over us,” said one festival organizer.7 In New York, electronic dance music fans stormed the gates of a festival after they were denied entry, and, in Kyrgyzstan, spectators rioted after a kok-boru match, in which teams on horseback compete to throw a headless goat carcass into a ring.8 9 In Johannesburg, South Africa, which the World Bank ranks as the most unequal nation in the world, a fire tore through a crumbling five-story building that was home to 141 families, killing at least 74 people, including a dozen children. The overcrowded structure, which had no formal electrical hookup and was subdivided by cardboard, corrugated metal, and bedsheets, is one of approximately 700 such illegally occupied buildings, of which Johannesburg, which has had six mayors in the past 22 months, has inspected 14. During the blaze, residents were seen jumping out of windows, and many found their path to escape blocked by locked security gates.10 Libya’s foreign minister fled the country out of fear for her safety after it was reported that she had met with her Israeli counterpart.11
A man with eight followers on the app formerly known as Twitter was sentenced to death for disloyal social media posts in Saudi Arabia.12 It was reported that around half the members of Bangladesh’s main opposition party are entangled in politically motivated legal cases, including a party leader who faces between 317 and 394.13 Donald Trump was accused by New York’s attorney general of inflating his net worth by as much as $2.2 billion, and, in unsealed testimony, the former president claimed he had averted a nuclear holocaust.14 15 Former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows testified that he had gotten involved in the fake electors scheme because he didn’t want to get yelled at, and it was reported that the leaders of the Conservative Political Action Conference had held an exorcism at their headquarters.16 17 Satan-2, the world’s most powerful nuclear rocket, was placed on combat duty by Russia, and, after $986 million worth of weapons had not been delivered on time, Ukraine replaced its defense minister.18 19 In Germany, a 10-year-old Ukrainian boy was thrown off a bridge for not speaking Russian, and a former adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin was reported to have claimed that the Ukrainian army had been “zombified and unified through gay sex.”20 21 Nigeria arrested more than 60 people who had attended a gay wedding, and Canada warned LGBTQ citizens about visiting certain areas of the United States because of recently enacted homophobic and transphobic state laws.22 23 The governor of Nebraska signed an executive order titled “Establishing a Women’s Bill of Rights” that states “a person’s biological sex is defined at birth” and claims that males are “on average, bigger, stronger, and faster.”24
Data breaches affected London’s Metropolitan Police Service, Forever 21, and a company that makes chastity cages, and, in Ann Arbor, a teen was arrested for biting a nightclub employee’s testicles.25 26 27 28 Pirates were spotted in San Francisco Bay, and a San Francisco official was forced to resign after he offered a tour during which participants could “get close and personal to the doom and squalor” of the city.29 30 In Chicago, a news crew reporting on an armed robbery spree was held up at gunpoint, and it was reported that a woman who had fired a weapon during a White Sox game had snuck the gun into the stadium in the folds of her belly.31 32 A study found that 40% of dog owners believe that getting their pets vaccinated could lead the animals to develop autism, and a Massachusetts man was sentenced to two years’ incarceration for using pandemic relief money to buy an alpaca farm.33 34 It was reported that 12% of Americans eat half of the nation’s beef, and cows were involved in deadly incidents in Nigeria, India, and Cascade County, Montana.35 36 37 38 Nebraska police issued a warning to a man driving on the highway with a 2,200-pound steer named Howdy Doody in the passenger seat. “Grandkids said it was a bad idea,” the man told a reporter. “I said Grandpa’s going to do it anyway.”39—Jon Edelman
