Huh. I've been avoiding specific Newtown news stories since it happened, but now as I've been getting the facts, I'm astounded by the misinformation and reckless speculation on that day. I thought I'd gleaned the facts eventually, but I still thought that the killer's mother worked at the school. I had no idea that he actually had no connection to the school at all and just randomly decided to go on this horrific shooting spree. Somehow that makes it even more horrifying than it was.

If anyone wants a pick-me-up today I highly recommend reading this darling children's story, written & illustrated by my friend Sal. So adorable, and the art is fab.

Oh, that is lovely.

Pix, I heard a piece on NPR yesterday about how the story was prone to initial reporting errors and, in general, how incorrect reporting happens. What I thought was interesting was that the reporter (David Folkenflick, but I have no idea how to spell that for real) went back and listened to the initial reports on the Reagan assassination and there were also lots of initial incorrect reports.

9/11 was totally like that. Initial reports were that a "small plane" hit one of the towers. I wonder if that initial report had been that it was a big airliner, would it have affected people in the other tower differently? Maybe they would have been less likely to see the crash as an accident, resulting in more people from the second tower leaving before the second plane hit.

Grandmothers, with their signature dishes.

The caterpillar actually looks kind of appetizing.

Initial reports were that a "small plane" hit one of the towers.

I remember that--I was listening to the radio as I got ready for work, and immediately pictured the sightseeing plane that had crashed into the Empire State Building (??) a year or three before that.

OK, all I can say is, "Ha ha ha ha ha!"

Olive Garden, Red Lobster See Sharp Drop In Profits After Anti-Obamacare Campaign Backfires

Ever since Darden Restaurants — the owner of the Olive Garden and Red Lobster chains — first announced its anti-Obamacare campaign, the company has had a tough couple of months. Darden admitted as much when it revised its predictions for latest quarterly earnings down in December, attributing the drop to “recent negative media coverage on Darden [...] and how we might accommodate healthcare reform.”

The negative press led the company to reverse course on its threat to shift employees to part-time status to avoid covering them under Obamacare. The latest report on Darden’s earnings prove that was a good move, since the restaurants did take a turn for the worse as a result of their bad publicity. Its net income fell 37 percent:

I've had to rewatch almost all of the live reporting from 9/11 because of my job (last year being the tenth anniversary meant everyone with access to Final Cut Pro was making a documentary about it) and the eyewitness reports were all over the place, and most of them completely wrong.

The Atlantic has a bunch of photos of people preparing for the end of the world: [link]

Some of them are pretty awesome. I like the round pods you can float on a river.

I like the round pods you can float on a river.

Those are awesome. They'd work for many end-of-the-world scenarios, but not the "Invasion by giant aliens armed with giant pool cues" one.

(The link is x-posty with Tom Scola, btw.)