The Pryor Week #11: Accidental legislation, Morgan Freeman's earrings, and $2.9 million down the toilet

Hey peeps, been a while since I did these weekly roundups, but I figured I’d restart it as the response was always nice. I’ll skip the mini-essay today and just ask a question with this fandangled sparkly new Substack function, a poll! (at the end)

The Pic:

Taiwan invests a lot of money in parks around its cities. While the downtowns are often synonymous with dystopian concrete jungles (a common feature in Asia), I love that they take the time and effort to craft and maintain beautiful pockets of nature.

The one above I hadn’t even known about for two years, it was only when walking my friend’s dog I chanced upon this city-river in the rain. It would’ve been nicer without the fence in the way, but I thought that was a nice picture to share this week.

Beautifully calm in the middle of a bustling city, with only the sound of a nearby mini-waterfall and the pitter patters of light rain to listen to.

---

Some Cool Things This Week:

I’m gonna try to ignore all the hate, anger, and outrage that’s rightfully flooding the internet lately. So, here’s some quirky things you might find interesting.

#1. Why Morgan Freeman wears earrings

“Yeah these earrings are worth just enough to buy me a coffin if I die in a strange place. That was the reason why sailors used to wear them.”—The Talks

According to Live Science, he’s right (amongst other reasons)!

“But earrings made of silver or gold were worth enough to pay for a sailor's funeral if his body washed ashore. Some seamen even engraved the name of their home port on the inside of the earring so that their bodies could be sent to their families for a proper burial. If a man died on a ship, the earrings helped to cover the cost of transporting his body home so that he wouldn't be buried at sea or on foreign soil.”

#2. Jeff Bezos and a bridge too far

If you remember that egregious display of all that’s wrong with the world in the form of Jeff Bezos's $500 million brand-new mega yacht requiring a historic bridge to be dismantled, well, get your tissues ready, because they decided not to do it after a public backlash. — Tech Story

#3. Minnesota accidentally legalized edibles

I had a good laugh at this, as I’m sure many others did too, after they hit the store on Friday. The legislature in Minnesota is against recreational dope, but being politicians, they’re lazy and didn’t read a bill that went through. Bam, legalized dope and lols for a plenty.—NPR interview

#4. A fool is easily parted from his money

In the unfortunate case you know what NFTs are, this one is also worth a chuckle. A dude bought an NFT of the first Tweet on Twitter (yes, it’s useless) for $2.9 million just over a year ago.

He recently put it up for auction.

The highest bid? $280. No millions. But many lols.—Forbes

#5. Don’t like a potential mate? Just fake your death.

“Scientists have discovered a species of dragonfly whose females will fake their own deaths.”—Indiana Public Media

---

And now for the long-awaited poll:

This message has been brought to you by a non-lizard-king named J.J. Pryor.

🤞Click the heart thingy to titillate the algorithm’s cold dead cockles?🤞