Florida Roundup

News Items in the News.

Today we have a roundup of news from Florida, including an exciting encounter in the Everglades involving a Gen Z influencer and a deceased reptile. Also I met Joe Namath. But before we get to those stories, we have this:

ARTEMIS II MOON-MISSION UPDATE

It’s going great! As I write these words, the four Artemis astronauts are on their way back to Earth in their Orion spacecraft, having traveled around the far side of the Moon, where they were treated to a breathtaking view of spectacular lunar rock formations never before seen by humans.

So the mission has been a success, although there have been a couple of minor glitches. One involved Microsoft Outlook, the blight upon humanity popular software program that was installed on Orion so that the astronauts would still be able, even in space, to receive emails from fake PayPal accounts.

Early in the mission the crew discovered that Outlook wasn’t working, and nobody could remember the password or the 67-character Product Activation Code. So the crew called Tech Support, and after several hours on hold they spoke to a person in Asia identifying himself as “Patrick,” who tried a few things that didn’t work, and finally suggested that they unplug the entire spacecraft, let it sit for ten minutes, then plug it back in. So they ended up just using their iPhones. Problem solved!

The other glitch involved the Orion toilet, which as it happens was featured prominently in last week’s Substack. During the mission the toilet malfunctioned twice, necessitating the implementation of NASA’s Inflight Commode Repair Action Plan (ICRAP), which saved the day, although because of the high gas prices these days it was not cheap.

Here’s the thing: The Orion toilet, which is officially named the Universal Waste Management System, was built by Lockheed Martin for a price — I am not making this up — of twenty-three million dollars. So why does it keep malfunctioning? Let’s take a close look at it:

Notice anything? As a number of people, including several alert commenters to this Substack, have pointed out, this toilet bears a striking physical resemblance to a device that can be found in many American households, including mine:

Am I saying that Lockheed Martin bought a Shop Vac at Home Depot for $75, gussied it up a little and sold it to the American taxpayer as a space toilet for $23 million? Yes. No. That would be libelous. What I am saying is that if NASA is looking for a new toilet supplier, I’m willing to do the job for just $20 million. In fact I have already made the necessary engineering modifications.

Give me a call, NASA! I accept Venmo!

But never mind these minor glitches. The important thing is that the Artemis II mission has been a big success. We congratulate the courageous crew members, and we welcome them back to Earth, although the way things are going down here, they may wish they had stayed up there.

Which brings us to our:

FLORIDA NEWS ROUNDUP

Our top Florida story concerns a 20-year-old social-media influencer named Braden Peters, known online as “Clavicular,” who is, by his own admission, extremely attractive.

Clavicular is a star — he has more than a million followers — in the world of “looksmaxxing,” a Gen Z trend in which young men obsess about their looks, do extreme things to improve their looks, go around comparing their looks to the looks of other young men, and just generally engage in narcissistic douchebaggery youthful hijinks.

Back in March, Clavicular and his posse were on an airboat in the Everglades when, according to published reports, they encountered one of the most fearsome sights, if not THE most fearsome sight, in all of nature: a dead alligator. Now some people, upon finding themselves in that situation, might have panicked. But Clavicular and his posse are not “some people.” They are looksmaxxing streamer-influencers, and they knew exactly what they had to do: Shoot the dead alligator.

Fortunately, this being Florida, they had handguns. Also bullets. They had a LOT of bullets, as you will see if you click on the link to this video of the action, which Clavicular posted. You really should click on it, but here’s a still photo:

It’s hard to tell exactly how many rounds they fired, but it appears to be somewhere around 30. Which may seem like a lot, but as any experienced outdoorsperson will tell you, in a situation like that you can’t afford to take any chances. Not with a dead alligator.

Unfortunately, the Florida State Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, instead of hailing these young men as heroes, went on Formerly Twitter and posted the following snippy statement:

So apparently the state does not approve of the actions of Clavicular and his crew. But consider this: Since they took action in the Everglades, not one single Florida resident has been attacked by a dead alligator. Coincidence? Don’t make me laugh.

I also have some exciting personal Everglades-related news. A fine environmental conservation group called Friends of the Everglades held its annual fundraiser luncheon in Coral Gables on March 20, and I was the keynote speaker. But that’s not the exciting part. The exciting part is that the big award — the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Defender of the Everglades Award — went to Jessica Namath, daughter of Joe Namath, so Joe was at the luncheon. He was my athletic idol in 1969 when he quarterbacked the New York Jets to a wildly improbable upset victory in Super Bowl III. So I had to ask if I could get a picture with him, and he graciously agreed. Eat your hearts out, Gen Z looksmaxxers:

Friends of the Everglades is deeply involved in the effort to shut down Alligator Alcatraz, the immigration detention facility that was hastily slapped together out in the Everglades last July and is costing taxpayers more than a million dollars a day. As I pointed out in my speech, aside from being bad for the environment, Alligator Alcatraz is stupid. I mean, if we need an unpleasant place in Florida to send detainees, we don’t have to build it. We already HAVE one:

Photo by Joseph Prezioso/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Trust me: After spending a few hours in the line for Space Mountain, those immigration detainees will be begging to go back to their countries of origin.

OK, that’s my roundup of the news from Florida and outer space, not that there’s a huge difference. Now let’s open the floor to you highly intelligent, yet at the same time impossibly good-looking, paying subscribers. Today we have two polls: