By Amos Staff

Dateline: Greenwood, Indiana. It’s raining. All headlines and links are true. We sprinkle in some opinion just for decoration, as a treat.

World

Europe: Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Netherlands are experiencing catastrophic flooding. (here, and here)

The Caribbean: “Why is Cuba exploding in protests?” (NBC). There are rumors (unsubstantiated, so calm down) that Venezuelan troops are present in Cuba for the protests. So that’s a thing, too, possibly. Cuba has an acute shortage of food, medicine, and vaccines; the current economic and governmental policies leave little room for trade or growth.

South America: Brazil’s president hospitalized after 10 straight days of hiccups. We’re not making this up.

Here’s his Twitter. Please don’t sleep on the part of Bolsanaro’s hospital tweet where he says “Brazil is ours!” (Uhh…we have questions):

Africa: Former South African president Jacob Zuma has been arrested. There is generalized unrest and riots throughout the country. Here’s some fact-checking on the situation.

U.S./Nation

Fucking Wildfires in Western States. (It’s not great, y’all.)

The Delta variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (coronavirus) is spreading in the U.S.

Employers are still having a heckuva time finding employees. Will they raise their wages? (Who knows? Capitalism!) (Curious? Google “worker shortage.” It’s a real thing. Better yet, drive around your town and check out all the signs! Many restaurants are only open for drive through because they don’t have enough people to open the dining room. And you can find examples too. Collect them all!) Unemployment rate for the U.S. went down yesterday and extended unemployment insurance benefits go away entirely in September. Some economists are blaming the labor shortage on lack of affordable childcare and predict improvement in early fall when kids go back to school. (Someone here might suggest: subsidies for excellent childcare and living wage). Anyways, all we know is that the Peppermill in Las Vegas is no longer open 24 hours due to lack of employees, so we’re just gonna say: childcare and living wage but let’s seriously fix this. (Sometimes we all need pancakes and scrambled eggs in neon lighting at, like 2 or 3 in the morning, and who can put a price on that shizzle?)

Insert here Congress-y and presidential and governmental, like, legislative news, and we know shit’s going on with the infrastructure bill, but honestly, between bad policing and climate change, we can’t deal. And according to Congress-type-entities, they’re going on recess soon anyway, so…(insert emoji of choice here.)

Sports

We didn’t catch Rachel Nichols on the Tee Vee today so we can’t update you on either her hair or outfit.

Overheard overnight? People were bitching and moaning because they couldn’t sports bet/bet online about anything tonight. So that’s a thing that happened (I mean, didn’t happen).

The Olympics are coming up. They’re gonna sleep on recycled cardboard beds, have no spectators, and some of these athletes (of the asshole persuasion) are not vaccinated. But, hell, let ‘em compete. What’s a pandemic among friends? (Not vaccinated? Not allowed. But no one asked me.)

There’s probably baseball to talk about but, frankly, we don’t care. We do, however, like the snacks and the green, green grass (which grows around and around and around and around). Also, we got a soft spot for this Disney thing about baseball:

Money & Business

Stocks and bonds and such: reports are easy to find so we’re not gonna spoon-feed it to you. Google that shit.

We’re kinda curious about that 6am (Indiana time) show that used to air called “Ag Report” or something. Like, is that shit still on (we would watch it) and does it still precede old-fashioned cartoons like Andy Panda, Woody Woodpecker, and Rocky and Bullwinkle? Inquiring economic minds (1) want to know and (2) would set our alarms for that nonsense.

Pop Culture! Movies, Books, TV, Music, Social Media, et cetera, etc.

So, we’re thinking of starting an advice column on Amos. What do you think? Got a question? Email us at amosmagdotcom@gmail.com or just comment in the, uh, Comments.

Also, home and garden topic: we have a cute l’il mouse in our garage at Amos Global HQ. How do we convince it to live outside?

TV Stuff: What we’re feeling at the moment– Outlander (Netflix. The sex scenes are way, way too much but the acting, production values, and story are incredible. Also: the books are disappointing. This is one case where TV is better.) Bosch (Amazon Prime): Just so good. As a bonus, excellent music. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (Disney Plus). Just so good.

Other miscellaneous streaming video nonsense: If you have a library card, use it on Kanopy (an app): gives you access to tons of documentaries, films, and series, plus a huge amount of The Great Courses. (Free with your library card. Absolutely top notch.)

Food and Drink: (1) Barefoot Wines have the worst labels of all wines. We will fight you on this. Bad name; bad label. Drinkable swill. (2) If you mix Barefoot Wine Pinot Grigio and cranberry-lime seltzer water, it kinda sorta tastes like one of those Fla-Vor-Ice popsicle sticks (uh, any flavor). We heard it from a friend on the down low, yo.

Social Media: We’re still highly recommending following @SkinnerPm and Vital Vegas on Twitter.

Don’t forget that every Sunday at 6PM, you can watch the live stream of the Waste of Kokomo show. (Facebook)

Music: July 17 (i.e. Saturday, tomorrow) Here Come the Mummies will be playing live at Fort Wayne’s Three Rivers Festival.

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