{"id":5699,"date":"2026-09-15T10:34:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T17:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5699"},"modified":"2026-09-15T12:31:40","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T19:31:40","slug":"odd-lots-374","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5699","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Ok, it\u2019s weird: <a href=\"https:\/\/liferafttreats.com\/\">Ice cream in the shape of a fried chicken leg<\/a>. But it\u2019s really ice cream. The meat is ice cream, the bones are chocolate, and the breading is made of broken but not powdered corn flakes. When I first saw it I thought: Fried chicken flavored ice cream? Whew. No.<\/li>\n<li>And if you thought fried chicken shaped ice cream was weird, consider <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Republic_of_Slowjamastan\">the Republic of Slowjamistan<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Peanut allergies and the resulting deaths were almost unknown before 1980. So what happened? <a href=\"https:\/\/stephenskolnick.substack.com\/p\/on-the-origins-of-peanut-allergy\">Here\u2019s a piece with as good a theory as I\u2019ve ever seen.<\/a> Carol and I eat non-emulsified peanut butter sold in glass jars, and whole peanuts. Never had any trouble, granting that we ate peanuts as fairly young kids.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/09\/14\/us-news\/atlantic-breaks-60-year-record-for-the-longest-hurricane-dry-spell\/\">No Atlantic hurricanes this year so far, breaking a 60-year record<\/a>. (More <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/science\/2026\/09\/this-is-by-far-the-most-peaceful-atlantic-hurricane-season-weve-ever-seen\/\">here<\/a> with better graphics.) If no little spinwhizzies show up by September 22, it\u2019ll break an 85-year record. If we don\u2019t see any by the close of hurricane season on November 30, it\u2019ll only be the third time on record this has ever happened. (The first two were 1907 and 1914.) Asterisk: In 1914 we didn\u2019t have satellite cameras and so there may have been a few mid-ocean that we never knew were there.<\/li>\n<li>How will AI destroy the human species? It\u2019ll tell everybody that they\u2019re already dead\u2014and everybody (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5359\">but me<\/a>) will believe the damn things.<\/li>\n<li>It had to happen eventually, and it just happened a few minutes ago: I was reading a substantial 700-page hardcover book that was very absorbing and addressed some issues that interest me intensely (more about this after I finish the&#160; book) when, without thinking, I touched my index finger to the page I had just finished and swiped left. Whoops. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ok, it\u2019s weird: Ice cream in the shape of a fried chicken leg. But it\u2019s really ice cream. The meat is ice cream, the bones are chocolate, and the breading is made of broken but not powdered corn flakes. When I first saw it I thought: Fried chicken flavored ice cream? Whew. No. And if [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[118,33,227,37],"class_list":["post-5699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-ai","tag-books","tag-climate","tag-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5699"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5700,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5699\/revisions\/5700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}