Rip Archives - Page 4 of 18 - Alex's Asteroid Astrology

August 14th, 2023 at 08:40am by Alex Miller

Asteroid Sleuth: The Case of the Falling Formaggio

On the evening of Sunday, 6 August 2023, 74-year-old Giacomo Chiapparini entered the storage room of his family-run dairy farm’s cheese factory near Bergamo, Italy, to check the robot used to clean the wheels of Grana Padano as they aged, stacked on floor-to-ceiling shelves. No one knows what went wrong, but one of the metal shelves buckled, spilling its store of hundreds of 40 kg (approximately 88-pound) cheeses and creating a domino effect, whereby the entire stock came crashing down, crushing the septuagenarian.

August 10th, 2023 at 09:55am by Alex Miller

Aster-Obit: Singers Sign Off

In late July 2023 a trio of notable performers exited earth with swan songs of their own. American icon Tony Bennett passed on July 21, Irish singer Sinead O’Connor and Eagles founding member and vocalist Randy Meisner both died on the 26^th. They were accompanied by a host of lesser-known (to US audiences, anyway) singers cross the globe, with no less than 10 others passing during that five-day period, from lands as disparate as India, Kenya, Brazil, Chile, Greece, Jamaica and the UK.

July 21st, 2023 at 09:30am by Alex Miller

Vermont Flooding

After a very dry spring in much of the eastern US evoked widespread drought conditions, the climate change worm turned dramatically in late June and early July 2023, deluging these same areas with more rain than they could handle. Vermont quickly became the poster child for Northeast flooding, with new records set for rainfall in the Green Mountain State. Wastewater treatment facilities were among the hardest-hit, with 33 impacted statewide, and the plant in Johnson inundated by eight feet of water, leaving “total destruction” in its wake, with “just the shell of a building” remaining.

July 7th, 2023 at 11:14am by Alex Miller

Fireworks, American Style

The celebration of Independence Day in the US is, tragically, often bound up with a deadly expression of Americans’ Second Amendment rights, coinciding with an uptick in the already ubiquitous incidents of mass shootings. Although Founding Father John Adams, after the signing of the Declaration, wrote to his long-suffering wife Abigail that “I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival…It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shows, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more,” I doubt that murdering fellow citizens was the type of celebratory gunplay he anticipated, nor the parade of lost and shattered lives.

June 26th, 2023 at 09:07am by Alex Miller

Masturbating Teen & Family Murdered

A bizarre story emerged on Father’s Day 2023 in Kellogg, Idaho, where a 31-year-old father of two shot dead his 18-year-old neighbor, for masturbating fully nude in front of his bedroom window. Majorjon Kaylor told police he “snapped” after seeing Devin Smith swinging and stroking his penis in full view of Kaylor’s wife and young daughters. Police were called and interviewed the recent high school graduate after the masturbation incident on June 13, telling Kaylor afterward that charges would be filed.

June 23rd, 2023 at 08:57am by Alex Miller

Lost at Sea: The OceanGate Disaster

On Sunday, 18 June 2023, the Titan submersible, some 13,000 feet under the waters of the North Atlantic, lost contact with its support vessel on the surface. The craft was carrying a crew of five, including OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush and four others who had paid $250,000 apiece for a chance to view the wreckage of the Titanic, part of OceanGate’s underwater tourism service. Last contact came at 9:45 AM local time (11:45 AM UT), and a multi-nation search was instituted after the sub failed to return to the surface at about 3 PM as expected. With an estimated 96 hours of reserve oxygen, by Thursday the 22^nd, the operation became one of recovery rather than rescue, as little hope was offered for survivors.