Butts Arrested in Boob Murder Case

There has been a development in a year-old murder case in Potter Township, Pa. The victim: Samuel S. Boob, 29. The alleged getaway driver has been arrested, Kermit Butts, 26.

I first found this on the ThisIsTrue weekly email, and here’s a link to the specific article: https://thisistrue.com/family-feud/. Details about the case were difficult to find in any well-known news site, but maybe try this: https://thecinemaholic.com/samuel-boob-murder-where-are-mirinda-boob-and-ronald-heichel-now/ (730 words).

Good news from Fix the News:

One-shot gene therapy is helping the deaf hear. The OTOF gene makes otoferlin, a protein the inner ear needs to send sound to the brain. Those born without this gene are deaf… but maybe only temporarily. Researchers at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute injected ten OTOF-deaf people with a working copy of the otoferlin-making gene, delivered straight into the cochlea via synthetic virus.

The hearing of all ten improved drastically: on average, the quietest sound they could hear dropped from 106 decibels to 52, roughly the difference between a chainsaw and normal conversation. Children responded fastest; one seven-year-old was chatting with her mother four months after therapy. The treatment has shown no adverse side effects, so the Karolinska team is now looking to try the same setup on different deafness genes. ScienceDaily

And an image from my collection:

Donald Trump’s top 25 lies of 2025

From CNN:

Here is our highly subjective list of Trump’s top 25 lies of 2025. We chose some because the president repeated them particularly often, some because they were about notably consequential topics, and some because they were especially egregious in their distance from reality….

Here are the headlines. Each one has a short explanatory paragraph:

Inflation, tariffs and the economy

Lie: Trump secured $17 trillion or $18 trillion in investment in 2025
Lie: ‘Every price is down’
Lie: Trump was reducing prescription drug prices by ‘2,000%, 3,000%’
Lie: Foreign countries pay the US government’s tariffs

Public safety

Lie: Portland was ‘burning down’
Lie: Washington, DC had no murders for six months
((Full explanation:)) The president continued his long-established pattern of choosing dramatic untruths over facts that would have been useful to him if he had just stated them accurately. Instead of correctly noting that crime in Washington, DC, declined after his federal takeover of law enforcement there in August, he falsely claimed three times in a November speech that the capital hadn’t had a single murder “in six months.” Washington actually had more than 50 homicides over the six months prior to the speech, police statistics and Washington Post tracking show.
Lie: ‘I invaded Los Angeles and we opened up the water’
Lie: The Democratic governor of Maryland called Trump ‘the greatest president of my lifetime’

Foreign affairs

Lie: Ukraine ‘started’ Russia’s war on Ukraine
Lie: Trump was speaking ‘in jest’ when he promised to immediately end the Ukraine war
Lie: The US government had planned to spend $50 million on ‘condoms for Hamas’
Lie: Every drug boat in the Caribbean ‘kills 25,000 Americans’
Lie: Trump ‘didn’t say’ he had no problem releasing full footage of a September boat
strike
Lie: Numerous foreign leaders emptied prisons and mental institutions to send their most undesirable people into the US
Lie: Trump ended seven or eight wars
Lie: ‘The people of Canada like’ the idea of becoming the 51st US state

Justice and elections

Lie: Capitol rioters ‘didn’t assault’
Lie: Critical media coverage of Trump is ‘illegal’
Lie: Trump didn’t pressure the Justice Department to go after his opponents
Lie: Obama, Biden and Comey made up the Epstein files
Lie: The 2020 election was ‘rigged and stolen’
Lie: The US is ‘the only country in the world’ with mail-in voting

Health care, legislation and Democrats

Lie: Babies get 80-plus vaccines at once
Lie: Trump’s big domestic policy bill didn’t change Medicaid
Lie: The domestic policy bill was ‘the single most popular bill ever signed’

2,900 words: https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/27/politics/analysis-donald-trumps-top-25-lies-of-2025

Good news from Fix the News:

Mozambique has wiped its IMF debt to zero. The country cleared its $701 million IMF debt by late March, making Mozambique one of a growing number of African countries with no IMF debt at all (Nigeria and Namibia cleared theirs last year). The move doesn’t end the country’s wider debt problems, but it does remove an important external liability. Business Insider Africa

And an image from my collection:

Superstition

xkcd.com posts a new item three times a week. I always read them. (Remember to hold your mouse over the item for an extra comment.) Some people try to say “Rabbit rabbit” or “Rabbit rabbit day” as the very first thing they say on the first of each month (https://xkcd.com/3191/):

(And the mouseover comment is: “It’s important to teach yourself to feel responsible for random events, because with great responsibility comes great power. That’s what my wise Uncle Ben told me right before he died; he might still be alive today if only I’d said rabbit rabbit that year!”)

Good news from Fix the News: Big progress in 25 years!

The UN Special Programme on Human Reproduction’s 2025 annual report reveals women today are 40% less likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth than in 2000. That’s astonishing progress, and there are powerful reasons to believe it will continue: in 2025 the WHO issued new guidance on standardising postpartum haemorrhage treatment, the single leading cause of maternal mortality globally, responsible for around a quarter of all deaths.

☝️ possibly the most beautifully designed UN report you will ever see.

And an image from my collection:

“No Kings 3” signs

On March 28, 2026, over eight million people attended more than 3,300 “No Kings” protests across the country, making it the largest single-day demonstration in US history, according to organizers. Buzzfeed seems to really like these: here are three links to pics of signs:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/mychalthompson/no-kings-best-protest-signs-march-2026
https://www.buzzfeed.com/alanavalko/best-no-kings-signs-2026
https://www.buzzfeed.com/mychalthompson/no-kings-protest-signs-buzzfeed-community

Good news from Fix the News: Our President has (totally by accident) greatly advanced interest in switching from foreign oil as an energy source to locally-produced green energy:

Iran shock speeds the shift from fossil fuels to electrification. The data is starting to come in: the Iran war is acting as an accelerant for clean energy. As oil and gas volatility pushes up costs, households from Britain to India and Pakistan are turning to EVs, solar, heat pumps and induction stoves as a hedge. These shifts will not stay local: when major economies accelerate the transition, others follow, creating spillover effects that outlast the crisis. Bloomberg / PV Magazine / CleanTechnica

And an image from my collection:

(xkcd.com/3199. The mouse-hover text is “Ugh, I’m never going to be like spiders. My descendants will all just be normal arthropods who mind their own business and don’t do anything weird.” –The ancestor of a bunch of eusocial insects.)