Assorted Stupidity #59

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  • California has a new law that makes it illegal for any food employee to touch ready-to-eat food with bare hands. That means gloves, which sounds okay in general but there's no exemption for people like bartenders and sushi chefs, who I believe have worked bare-handed for roughly THOUSANDS OF YEARS without any mass human die-offs being attributed to this. Nor is a rule that will cause millions of single-use plastic gloves to be thrown away every year very good for the environment. Congratulations, however, to plastic-glove makers.
  • From the Johannesburg Times: "Zambian opposition leader charged with calling president a potato." Frank Bwalya actually called President Michael Sata a sweet potato, but close enough. The term he used, "chumbu mushololwa," refers to the fact that sweet potatoes break instead of bending, and is used to describe someone who doesn't heed advice. Bwalya was arrested for "defaming the president," showing that Sata is not only a yam, he is a tyrannical yam.
  • Also approved for publication, sadly: an application to trademark the word "candy" when used in a game title, filed by the company that sells "Candy Crush Saga." That company is also claiming "saga," apparently, based on its opposition to somebody else's application for "The Banner Saga." Here's a post discussing what is and isn't stupid about this (mostly "is"), created with the help of an IP lawyer.