[Sounding smart is now suspicious.]

Over at Techdirt, Mike Masnick writes about how the existence of A.I. detection tools is turning students into worse writers. The particular concern here is not students using A.I. to avoid writing things themselves. Instead, the problem is talented writers being forced to dumb down their writing as a defensive act. Masnick opens with this awful example:

About a year and a half ago, I wrote about my kid’s experience with an AI checker tool that was pre-installed on a school-issued Chromebook. The assignment had been to write an essay about Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron—a story about a dystopian society that enforces “equality” by handicapping anyone who excels—and the AI detection tool flagged the essay as “18% AI written.” The culprit? Using the word “devoid.” When the word was swapped out for “without,” the score magically dropped to 0%.

Revising writing to avoid false positives from A.I. detectors is just an outrageously poor use of time.

Link: https://www.techdirt.com/2026/03/06/were-training-students-to-write-worse-to-prove-theyre-not-robots-and-its-pushing-them-to-use-more-ai/

[Available for a not nearly limited enough time]

It’s apparently National Ranch Day, a celebration of one of America’s lesser culinary contributions. Should you find yourself at a Great Wolf Lodge today, you can plunk down just $3.10 to partake of this:

[Photo credit: Great Wolf Lodge]

What you’re looking at is a “milkshake” containing some combination of vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, and ranch dressing. As far as I can determine, news of this abomination was first revealed near the end of a mid-February press release, which described it thusly:

Ranch Milkshake: A sweet-and-tangy vanilla ranch shake topped with fried chicken, carrots and celery, and finished with a sweet-and-salty lime rim and whipped cream.

They just tossed that in a list of four limited-time food and drink offerings alongside a burger and a brownie, as if a ranch milkshake is the most normal thing in the world.

It’s available through April 26 (for a regular price of $7.99). I’ve found that there’s a Great Wolf Lodge about an hour west of Boston, but I do not intend to visit. If you do, please let me know how it is.

Previously in Ridiculous Foods Made Primarily to Go Viral: Everything Is Dumb, So Let’s Get Drunk on Roast Beef Vodka

[I’m so tired of winning.]

Last year, I covered the 2025 edition of the Ig Nobel prizes. Since 1991, a ceremony has been held annually in the Boston area, and I was lucky enough to attend in 2011. Sadly, it’s unlikely I’ll be able to repeat that in 2026, as the Ig Nobel ceremony is moving out of America.

The shift from the US to Europe is due to concerns about the political situation and attendees getting visas, organisers said on Monday.

“During the past year, it has become unsafe for our guests to visit the country [US],” Marc Abrahams, master of ceremonies and editor of the magazine, told the Associated Press in an email interview.

“We cannot, in good conscience, ask the new laureates, or the international journalists covering the event, to travel to the United States this year,” said Abrahams.

Who can blame them?

Link: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/research-frontiers/ig-nobels-to-move-awards-to-switzerland-due-to-concern-over-us-travel-visas/91073250

[Winner gets to keep the nickname “Big Ben”.]

On Tuesday night, Bam Adebayo dropped 83 points on the hapless Washington Generals Wizards. That’s the second-highest single-game total of all time, behind only Wilt Chamberlain’s legendary 100 point game, and topping Kobe Bryant’s 81 points from 2006.

Bam also topped Kobe in another way. After Wilt put up his 100, he posed with a ridiculously low-rent “sign”:

[Wikipedia]

As far as I can find, Kobe Bryant did not recreate this image after his monster game. Bam Adebayo, on the other hand, did:

[Photo via @miamiheat]

I think they used a Sharpie instead of a grease pencil, but it’ll do.

As I read about Tuesday’s game, I saw that Bam scored 36 of his points from the free throw line, on 43 attempts. That’s 83.7%, and I wanted to know how that ranks in the NBA. Against all judgement, but also because the button is right there on my phone, I asked Siri “What’s a good free throw shooting percentage in the NBA?”. Please have a look at the absolutely wretched answer it provided:

That is not the answer to the question asked.¹ It also contains strange grammar, with the phrase “in the NBA history”. And most amusingly, it features a picture of the wrong Ben Wallace.

This is yet another pathetic showing by Siri, but it did have one upside. It’s led me to a new dream. I don’t know how we make it happen, but I’d love to see these two Bens Wallace go head-to-head in a free throw shooting contest.

Footnotes:

1. The correct answer is that roughly 80% or higher is good, and 85-90% is elite. Bam’s 83.7% was thus quite respectable, particularly for a center. ↩︎

[Is nothing sacred?]

Ski jumpers aren’t the only ones making illicit use of hyaluronic acid. Grotesque body modifications have now come to camels.

The article on this scandal states “Camel beauty contests in the Gulf aren’t a silly novelty event”, and I suppose that fact that there’s real money involved makes that true. Nevertheless, they’re definitely still ridiculous, and now they’re more ridiculous than ever.

Link: https://www.vice.com/en/article/20-camels-disqualified-from-beauty-contest-in-hump-inflation-scandal/

[Red-checkered tablecloths are obviously a must as well.]

Growing up, my family used to drive many hours to visit relatives. As a child affected with car sickness, I couldn’t pass the time by reading. As a result, those trips felt painfully long. One upside, however, was that we would often stop at Pizza Hut for lunch. The chain offered a lunch deal where your personal pan pizza had to arrive within five minutes, or your next one would be free.¹

They even created a custom timer for it, which you can purchase on eBay if you’ve got 300 dollars and no sense:

I seem to recall some shenanigans with when exactly the timer arrived at the table, but regardless, they aimed to deliver your food fast and hot. Better still, watching those seconds tick down gave my brother and me something to be entertained by as we waited to eat.²

I don’t know if we ever scored a free pizza. As kids, we certainly weren’t paying anyway. Nevertheless, the hope of beating Pizza Hut sprang eternal all the same.

As an adult, however, the restaurant has not been a part of my life. They’ve shifted to a focus on take-out and delivery, and I’ve shifted to eating higher-end pizza. I don’t think I’ve been to a Pizza Hut in at least a decade, and probably much longer.

Apparently, the chain is seeking to lure folks like me back in, with an astounding “Pizza Hut Classic” concept. These restaurants are throwbacks to the Pizza Hut of my childhood.

The interior design and menu had been painstakingly engineered to replicate the Pizza Huts of the 1980s and ’90s, when families and friends settled into red-vinyl booths on a Friday night to eat deep-dish pan pizza and drink Pepsi from red plastic cups.

If I ever find myself near a Pizza Hut Classic, you can bet I’m going to book it right on in to chow down on some acceptable pizza while drinking soda from a red plastic cup.

Footnotes:

1. The oh-so-’80s ad is archived here. ↩︎

2. I would be remiss if I failed to note that when my dad joined us on these road trips, we couldn’t participate in this deal. While my mother, brother, and I would always order a personal pan pizza, my dad had a love for Pizza Hut’s spaghetti bolognese. Ordering that meant our whole table was ineligible for the 5 minute pizza deal. I’m still working on forgiving him. ↩︎

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/dining/pizza-hut.html?unlocked_article_code=1.TVA.DhJ7.073NCxeQ7vrV&smid=url-share

[In 50 years, I plan to be celebrating the tercentennial too.]

250 years ago today, more then 11,000 British troops fled Boston on what has come to be known as Evacuation Day. Today, you’d better believe my towniest pal Mat and I will be celebrating this important early Revolutionary War victory.

Link: https://onefoottsunami.com/2022/03/17/happy-evacuation-day/

[Obviously, words like “restaurant” or “grill” do not qualify as unusual.]

A list of chain restaurants whose names contain unusual structures, presented in decreasing order of how appealing it would be to eat in such a structure:

• Castle (as in White Castle): A meal fit for a king! Apparently, “Fit for a king” was actually the slogan of Royal Castle, a White Castle knock-off that has been almost defunct for decades.

• Villa (as in Taco Villa): A villa isn’t quite a castle, but it’s still a very fancy place to eat.

• House (as in Waffle House and International House of Pancakes): Two different breakfast chains using “house” in their name is strange, but eating in a house is certainly normal enough.

• Roadhouse (as in Texas Roadhouse): A roadhouse has always been a place where you could eat a meal, so this is fine too. I’m quite tickled at the idea of asking for a room for the night at Texas Roadhouse though.

• Cabana (as in Taco Cabana): If I’m in a cabana, I think I’d prefer a tropical beverage over a meal, but it’ll do.

• Hut (as in Pizza Hut): A hut is basically just a cabana that’s not near the beach. It’s not a particular appealing place to eat a meal, even if it’s a Classic.

• Shack (as in Shake Shack and Harold’s Chicken Shack): To me, a shack seems worse than a hut. It just sounds dirtier.

• Factory (as in Cheesecake Factory and The Old Spaghetti Factory): Unless it’s cranking out computer chips, a factory is liable to be grimy and unclean. Must it really be old, too?

• Warehouse (as in Spaghetti Warehouse): Two different spaghetti-focused chains with weird buildings in their names! This was initially my pick for least appetizing place to eat, but I found worse.

• Corral (as in Golden Corral): Don’t eat the cow pies.

• Pit (as in Pita Pit and Buca di Beppo, which translates to “Beppo’s Pit”): A pit is pretty much just a hole in the ground, with some bracing that qualifies it as a structure. Surely this is the worst place to sit down for a meal.

[Leopards, faces, etcetera]

While compiling yesterday’s very important list, I learned of the brief and stupid existence of “Trump Burger”, a Donald Trump-themed burger restaurant. Strangely, it appears the namesake menu item at this wretched concept was not a well-done burger with half a bun.

Anyhow, the chain is no more, for the most incredible of reasons:

In August 2025, the chain’s founder Beainy, a Lebanese national, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and has been charged with overstaying in the U.S. under the terms of his visa. In October 2025, it was reported that all Trump Burger locations had closed.

The lack of awareness is simply astounding.

[He’s a sport for doing what he did.]

Four years ago, Ohio’s Adams County Sheriff’s Office kicked rapper Afroman’s door, on seemingly-bogus suspicion of drug trafficking and kidnapping. They damaged his property, frightened his family, and possibly stole $400 from him, all while finding no evidence of crime. After all that, when Afroman decided to make lemonade (or at least Lemon Pound Cake) out of those lemons, they sued him for defamation.

On Wednesday, after a brief trial that blew up on the internet, Afroman emerged victorious. Meanwhile, the plaintiffs most definitely lost to the Streisand effect.

Link: https://www.npr.org/2026/03/19/nx-s1-5753563/afroman-lemon-pound-cake-trial

[It would be nice if American car companies actually had to compete with BYD on their home turf.]

An electric car with a 600+ mile range is very impressive, and even more so if it can recharge to add 250 miles in under 5 minutes. When it comes to the automobiles of the future, America is falling painfully behind.

Link: https://www.fastcompany.com/91503415/byd-ev-battery-competes-with-gas-engines

[Unfortunately, it seems he really can do almost anything.]

After reading a headline of “Quadruple amputee athlete accused of shooting man, dumping body in Maryland”, it’s natural to have questions. The answer to what is surely at least one of those questions is “cornhole”.

Link: https://wjla.com/news/local/deadly-shooting-maryland-arrest-virginia-dayton-james-webber-charles-county-la-plata

[And after that, a personal injury attorney.]

Today is opening day for the 2026 MLB season, so let’s talk baseball. Actually, let’s talk food and drink at the ballgame, and the 9-9-9 challenge. This feat requires you to consume 9 hot dogs and slug back 9 beers within the 9 innings of a baseball game. It sounds both awful and incredibly expensive, so naturally, it’s quite popular.

The earliest reference to the challenge that I’ve found is a site called 999AllStar.com, which is sadly no longer online. Fortunately for us all, the invaluable Internet Archive has captures of the site back to 2004. They provide a delightful look into the past, and the site’s Rules page is particularly noteworthy. It contained a thematically appropriate nine rules, including:

• Rule #2: You must have a designated driver to attempt the…Challenge.

• Rule #4: One beer must equal a minimum of 12oz.

More on those in a moment.

While 999AllStar.com may be dead, the 9-9-9 challenge is more popular than ever. In fact, in the past year, it’s gone corporate. During the 2025 postseason, food service vendor Aramark sold an official 9-9-9 challenge box for Philadelphia Phillies games at Citizens Bank Park.

[Photo credit: Aramark]

In 2026, the company is expanding the package to five additional ballparks.¹ The offering is even being promoted by MLB itself.

Naturally, this called for a celebrity pitchman. Who better than hot dog eating champion Joey Chestnut to sidle into Oracle Park, slap on a poorly made Aramark jersey, and scarf some encased meat while chugging beers?

Before
[Photo credit: Aramark]

During
[Photo credit: Aramark]

After…a very different event, demonstrating “The Agony of Victory”

The above promotional photos show full-sized 12 ounce beer cans, but you can see that the actual serving glasses are rather small. Aramark states that their pre-packaged version of the challenge features nine “mini hot dogs”, as well as nine “flight‑sized” beers. I have been unable to determine exactly what that means, except that they’ve watered down the whole thing and broken rule #4. Both I, and the Amarillo Sod Poodles know shenanigans when we see ’em.

The reasons for this bastardization are obvious enough, but the promotion still leaves me with a lot of questions.

QUESTIONS I HAVE ABOUT ARAMARK’S 9-9-9 CHALLENGE

• Do they serve you all the dogs and beers at once?

  It sure seems like it, so I hope you’re ready to enjoy some cold dogs and warm beers after about inning number four.

• What’s the total calorie count on this package?

  Even if “mini” means half-sized, that might be 1000-1500 calories for the hot dogs. Add in another 500-1000 calories for the beers.

• Do they stop selling it after the first inning?

  Probably not. So just how close to the end of the game do you think you can buy nine beers at once?

• Do you get to select your beer?

  Also probably not, though surprisingly, Coors Field does sell many non-Coors beers. That even includes arch-rival Budweiser.

• Can you at least select a non-alcoholic beer?

  Hey, teetotalers deserve the chance to overdose on sodium and nitrates too.

• Do you get to keep the glasses?

  I imagine you do. I cannot imagine what the hell a person does with nine miniature beer glasses branded with the logo of a single baseball team, adorable though they may be.

• Just how much does this all cost?

  Whatever it is, it’s too much.

Given the newly commercial nature of the 9-9-9 challenge, the folks behind the defunct 999AllStar.com really ought to consider making it refunct.² I doubt they sold much merchandise back in the day, but in 2026, they could clean up. Who wouldn’t want to wear this lovely t-shirt?

Or, ya know, one with a better design.

You can take a gander at their old Merch page, but because it was 2004 and bandwidth hadn’t been invented yet, the images on it are hilariously small. If you squint, you may be able to make out the other items they had for sale, which included a baseball hat, a BBQ apron, and a baby bib. More than two decades on, I can still recognize the stink of CafePress. I’m shocked they weren’t selling thongs, too.

Anyhow, as a grassroots stunt invented by fans, the 9-9-9 challenge was good-if-inadvisable fun. I’m quite surprised to see a business getting in on it, however, even a business that makes its money selling food and drinks. They may have shrunk the portions, but it’s still some very excessive consumption.

Given MLB’s successful efforts to speed up the game, it seems particularly unwise to encourage fans to down nine beers, “flight-sized” though they may be. Unlike 999AllStar.com, Aramark has no rule requiring a designated driver. I punched some fuzzy numbers into several different BAC calculators, and they all showed that most people who complete this challenge would still be over America’s .08% legal limit to drive at the end of an average length game. But hey, maybe those tiny hot dog buns will soak up some of that alcohol.³

I’m calling it now. In a year or three, I’ll be here reporting on a wrongful death lawsuit against Aramark. When that time comes, the only surprise will be whether it relates to drunk driving, choking, or a heart attack.

Update (March 26, 2026): Then again, maybe it’ll be a class action lawsuit for deceptive advertising.

Footnotes:

1. In addition to Citizens Bank Park (Phillies):

   
   [Photo credit: Aramark]

   you’ll find Aramark’s 9-9-9 challenge package at Citi Field (Mets):

   
   [Photo credit: Aramark]

   Coors Field (Rockies):

   
   [Photo credit: Aramark]

   Daikin Park (Astros):

   
   [Photo credit: Aramark]

   Kauffman Stadium (Royals):

   
   [Photo credit: Aramark]

   and Oracle Park (Giants):

   
   [Photo credit: Aramark]

   These promotional images were edited down from massive 30+ meg files which Aramark provided via Dropbox. I am delighted to think about someone staging this little tableau for a team, replete with a napkin of the proper color, then resetting the entire arrangement five more times. The least I could do was to include all six delightful images here.

   I’m afraid I must issue two demerits, however, because the Mets and the Astros images contain 10 beers, rather than 9. MLB’s social media post for this even notably excludes those two clubs. ↩︎

2. A hat tip to my friends Todd R. and Rich W., who played bass and drums respectively in the late-aughts Cambridge band “Refunct” that inspired this dumb joke. Click here to stream a track. ↩︎

3. Because my high school driver’s ed class needed to fulfill the “health” portion of the state-mandated curriculum, it contained a fair amount of information about alcohol. The intent was to discourage drunk driving, which is laudable. Still, our teacher Mr. Wilkinson was fully aware that many students were going to imbibe, so he shared the sage recommendation to avoid doing so on an empty stomach. His counsel was along the lines of “Eat some bread to slow things down”. It’s not the worst advice. ↩︎

[In the words of friend-of-the-site Jason S., “This ain’t it”. It really ain’t!]

While contemplating the corporate edition of the 9-9-9 challenge yesterday, I was surprised that a massive corporation would encourage fans to drink copiously. I should have known better. It turns out the package comes with one (1) single 24 ounce beer. I am entirely unsurprised to find a massive corporation pretending to sell one thing, while providing something much less.

With this promotion, Aramark and MLB have bastardizing to an unforgivable extent the sacred concept of drinking nine beers and eating nine hot dogs over nine innings of baseball. Even if we accept the mini weiners, in no world does 2.67 ounces qualify as “a beer”.

Friend-of-the-site Colin T. pointed me a helpful post from SFGate, which answers most of the questions I had yesterday. It includes an image showing exactly what you get when you buy into this farce:

Aramark, you should be ashamed.

I now know that when you purchase, you do indeed get everything at once. Given that you receive just one beer, it’s surely fewer calories than I estimated, and sales probably continue late into the game. As for selecting your beer, at Oracle Park, fans can have any beer they want as long as it’s Coors Light. Still, my bet that youcouldn’t select your beer wasn’t entirely correct. At least last year, fans in Philly really were given a choice from a range of beers.

In guessing how this all worked, I did get one thing completely right. The phony package you see above costs a whopping $54.99 before tax. That is indeed too much to pay for a completely sham edition of the 9-9-9 challenge.

Link: https://www.sfgate.com/giants/article/sf-giants-999-challenge-22094230.php

[Or at the very least, a silver lining to bad decisions.]

While writing about the 9-9-9 challenge, I learned of the existence of license plates specifically assigned to DUI offenders. These plates are a tool to assist law enforcement in monitoring high-risk drivers and to deter repeat violations. However, they’ve gained the nicknames “party plates” in Ohio and “whiskey plates” in Minnesota. Those names convey an insouciance, rather than intended shame.

There’s also a problem with the visuals. Though the yellow is a bit garish, Ohio’s DUI plate looks markedly better than their mess of a standard plate:

[Photos via Wikipedia]

That’s a bad incentive.

[Note also that the period in question was during the summer.]

Speaking of license plates, friend-of-the-site Gus M. pointed me to a school district using plate recognition in an attempt to verify residency.

According to the school district, her daughter’s new student enrollment form was denied due to “license plate recognition software showing only Chicago addresses overnight” in July and August. In an email sent to Sánchez in August, the school district told her, “Although you are the owner on record of a house in our district boundaries, your license plate recognition shows that is not the place where you reside.”

It’s understandable for school districts to not want to be burdened with non-residents. This method to avoid it, however, seems well beyond the pale.

Link: https://www.nbcchicago.com/consumer/suburban-school-district-uses-license-plate-readers-to-verify-student-residency/3906703/

[Just how evil can you be?]

The Giving Pledge is a campaign started by Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffet, intended to establish a norm of charitable giving by the ultra wealthy. Though the pledge has no enforcement, it still seems a wise way for billionaires to attempt avoiding being at the wrong end of pitchforks.

Supervillain Peter Thiel is trying a different route, and is apparently attempting to convince signers to renege on their commitments.

Link: https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/15/the-billionaires-made-a-promise-now-some-want-out/

[Three liters is really quite a lot of vodka.]

Reader Micah C. pointed me to a story from Down Under, where a woman was recently convicted for the addition of googly eyes to sculpture.

While I do think the addition enhances the work, the use of Gorilla Glue is too much. Tsk! Also, recording your own crime and posting it online? Tsk again!

Link: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-24/mount-gambier-blue-blob-sculpture-googly-eyes-graffiti-convicted/106405276?_bhlid=cec9fa6d4b3778e6759258e469ddad860eee0d4e

[That’s different from detecting frustration with trying to use regex.]

This week, Anthropic accidentally leaked a whole bunch of information about Claude Code. In addition to revealing many of their future plans, the leak showed that the tool uses some rudimentary pattern-matching to detect user frustration.

Claude Code is actively watching our chat messages for words and phrases—including f-bombs and other curses—that serve as signs of user frustration.

The exact regex pattern is a delight to read:

/\b(wtf|wth|ffs|omfg|shit(ty|tiest)?|dumbass|horrible|awful| piss(ed|ing)? off|piece of (shit|crap|junk)|what the (fuck|hell)| fucking? (broken|useless|terrible|awful|horrible)|fuck you| screw (this|you)|so frustrating|this sucks|damn it)\b/

It’s very simple and surely very effective.

Link: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3104748/claude-code-is-scanning-your-messages-for-curse-words.html