"It’s graduation time, baby,” you think to yourself. But you’re not just any regular baby. You're about to be a grown-up baby with a degree. Everyone usually decorates the top of their grad cap, and you decide to take part as well. What’s one more sign of conformity this far down the road? But time is money, and you don’t have either. So you coerced some student artist to do it for dirt cheap. You beat the system: scammed someone out of getting the money they deserved for their art and saved yourself time and frustration. Your newly designed cap comes in the mail. You’re shocked by what the artist has done. It's horrible. It’s nothing you asked for. It’s…
Darts and Laurels
Another day, another data breach. This time it is Capital One. A hacker accessed more than 100 million Capital One customers’ accounts and credit card applications on March 22 and 23 according to CNN. “What’s in your wallet?” Apparently not much, because someone has access to all of it. The hacker accessed a server holding 140,000 Social Security numbers, 80,000 bank account numbers and an unknown amount of user names, addresses, credit scores and other information from as far back as 2005. A dart goes out to Paige Thompson, the accused hacker, mostly because she posted the information on GitHub using her full first, middle and last names. And she bragged about it on social media. If you are going to hack a major credit card company, at least act like it was hard, or be less conspicuous. But there is some sick beauty about not hiding your own identity when boasting about having access to millions of financial identities.
At least 65 people died from an attack during a funeral procession in northeast Nigeria on Saturday. The culprits are suspected to be Boko Haram militants. The insurgents attacked mourners at the graveyard in the Nganzai district. Boko Haram has not formally claimed responsibility, but the attack matches the jihadist’s activity in the area, according to NPR. A dart goes to this attack, as it is one of the deadliest civilian attacks in the region this year.
On Sunday, Egan Bernal became the first Colombian to win the Tour de France and the youngest champion in 110 years. He’s 22. A laurel goes to him and his history-making win as the first Latin American champion. Climbing up the highest stretch of road in the Alps, the Col de l’Iseran, Bernal went after Julian Alaphilippe of France, who was ahead by a minute and a half. On Bernal’s descent of the Iseran, race officials decided to omit the final 23 miles of the 19th stage after a landslide blocked a part of the road. At 45 seconds ahead of Alaphilippe, Bernal had the win.
Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) introduced a bill Tuesday that would overhaul the oversight of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and give Congress the power to fire the people in charge of it. The bill comes after the USOPC and other national Olympic governing bodies “turned a blind eye” to sexual assault problems within the organization, acccording to USA Today. We are giving a laurel to this bipartisan bill as it attempts to protect athletes and rewrite the culture in the governing board that neglected so many athletes and their safety.
Former Dolphins and Patriots Hall of Fame linebacker Nick Buoniconti died on Wednesday, according to The New York Times. He was 78. In November 2017, Buoniconti pledged to donate his brain to research of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, also known as CTE. A laurel goes to him and his memory.
On Tuesday, Sen. Josh Hawley introduced a bill to ban Snapstreaks. A dart goes to this bill. Keep your government hands off our Snapchat streaks. The bill is part of Hawley’s Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology (SMART) Act. The proposed act’s purpose is to stop social media companies’ “addictive and deceptive techniques,” according to Reuters. Whatever happened to the separation of state and Snapchat? Keep your government claws off our favorite (yet fleeting) way to keep in touch with friends.
