A frustrated mum says she has “no desire” to change her child’s birthday party menu after one mum’s awkward request. Planning a kids birthday party can involve a lot of organisation from the venue, decorations, activities, who to invite and more. And one of the most important items on the check-list is the food. Unfortunately this is never an easy process; some children can be fussy eaters, others could have a number of allergies between them, or some parents may say no to sugar. One woman has asked an online parenting group if she is “being unreasonable” after one parent sent her a challenging menu request which she wants to refuse. The mum, who sent out invites for her upcoming daughter’s birthday party, sent a note to the parents to check if there were any allergies or dietary requirements for the party. She was willing to accommodate so all the children had some food to enjoy. She was planning on serving typical party food to the children – aged between two and five – including veggie, one no pork, one nut allergy, one gluten free and dairy allergy. However, she was taken aback by one parent’s request for no allergens at the party. Taking to Mumsnet to share what happened, the parent said: “Birthday party coming up and have asked attendees for allergies/dietary requirements. Had the usual list back – some. I said – no problem, we will make sure that there are options for all but will be parents responsibility to ensure children are eating the correct thing. Had a reply separately from parent of gluten free / dairy allergy saying, ‘sorry to be difficult, but we need there to be no gluten or dairy served at all – it’s too dangerous for X as we can’t guarantee he won’t eat it. Sure you understand, thanks xx’.” The party planning mum added: “Am I being unreasonable to say that this just doesn’t work for us? I’m making the cake and have no idea how, or have any desire to learn, to make a nice gluten free / dairy free option. I was planning to buy little gluten free, vegan cupcakes so that there is something there for the others. “But, my daughter has requested a specific thing for her birthday which I’ve already started prepping.” The dilemma raked in thousands of responses on Mumsnet and a number of parents offered advice. One individual said: “The cake would be quite easy to keep separate I think so you could definitely keep your plan on that.” Another parent commented: “As the parent of a child who would end up in hospital if you get it wrong, I’d rather supply my own food. I did for all primary aged parties. So you are not being unreasonable. Tell them you don’t want the responsibility.” Another parent added: “Seems a strange request. When mine were little anyone who had a child with allergies used to bring a packed lunch along for their child. I did make sure the party bags were named and appropriate for each child and their allergies but I couldn’t cater the whole party to one kids requirements and the parents never expected us to.” One individual agreed and said: “I would not want to have the responsibility for ensuring the child is not eating the allergic food. I would be asking the mother to provide her own food for the child.” Another suggested: “I’d offer to buy separate food and keep it all in the packaging so parents can check it on the day, and say you will keep it separate from the rest of the party food. It’s unreasonable to ask you to cater the whole party to one child’s allergies.” Another said: “This is a crazy request. Are they family members? It’s still crazy but a bit less cheeky to offer that. Definitely say what you will supply and suggest they bring a packed lunch too if they don’t think that’s good enough. Make it clear you would love to see them but will understand if they can’t come under those conditions.” Do you think the mum is being unreasonable? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Archives for January 2024
Trump Fires Off, Smokes Judge He Says Has ‘Gone Crazy in His Hatred’
Former President Donald Trump may have put himself in line for another $10,000 fine for violating a gag order placed on him in his civil fraud trial in New York when called Judge Arthur F. Engoron “crazy” and “Radical Left.”
Trump made the statements Thursday morning on Truth Social, the social media platform he founded in 2021.
“The Judge in the New York State A.G. case refuses to accept the overturning of his decisions by the Appeals Court,” the former president wrote. “This is a first in the history of the State!
“HE HAS GONE CRAZY IN HIS HATRED OF ‘TRUMP,’” he added (emphasis original throughout).
“Also, their ‘STAR’ witness just admitted his statements were all a big lie. He broke down in court. The Radical Left Judge said he doesn’t care,” Trump continued in his post.
“He is trying to protect RACIST A.G. Letitia James, who has no case, lost the appeal, but has a tyrannical and unhinged Trump Hating Judge,” he argued. “She campaigned for A.G. on, ‘I Will Get Trump,’ long before she knew anything about me.
“This is Judicial Misconduct,” Trump concluded, “coupled with Prosecutorial Misconduct, and somebody from the State of New York must step in and stop this Complete & Total Miscarriage of Justice!”
Trump has already been fined twice for violating what the establishment media consistently refers to as a “narrow gag order,” as The New York Times did Thursday.
“This court is way beyond the ‘warning’ stage,” Engoron wrote when he issued the first $5,000 punishment, which he called “nominal,” according to the Times.
The following week, he fined Trump $10,000 despite the former president’s sworn testimony that his comments didn’t refer to Engoron’s clerk.
The judge said Trump’s statement in his own defense in the matter “rings hollow and untrue.”
Trump has not yet appealed Engoron’s gag order, although members of his legal team have suggested that such a challenge may be forthcoming.
“We have significant concerns about the constitutionality of limiting President Trump’s right to comment on what he observes in the courtroom,” Trump attorney Christopher Kise told the Times.
Trump’s first violation was apparently an oversight — the first $5,000 fine was imposed because of a social media post that had remained on his campaign website “for weeks,” according to the Times.
The second, however, appeared more intentional, as Trump told reporters that Ergoron was “very partisan” and had a “perhaps even much more partisan” person sitting next to him, an apparent reference to his clerk.
Nonetheless, even the liberal American Civil Liberties Union has weighed in on Trump’s side regarding a gag order placed on the former president in another of his trials, in which he’s accused of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election.
“Donald Trump has said many things. Much that he has said has been patently false and has caused great harm to countless individuals, as well as to the republic itself,” the ACLU wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief submitted in that case. “But Trump retains a First Amendment right to speak, and the rest of us retain a right to hear what he has to say.”
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The Batshit Crazy Story Of The Day Elon Musk Decided To Personally Rip Servers Out Of A Sacramento Data Center
Back on Christmas Eve of last year there were some reports that Elon Musk was in the process of shutting down Twitter’s Sacramento data center. In that article, a number of ex-Twitter employees were quoted about how much work it would be to do that cleanly, noting that there’s a ton of stuff hardcoded in Twitter code referring to that data center (hold that thought).
That same day, Elon tweeted out that he had “disconnected one of the more sensitive server racks.”

CNBC is running an excerpt from the new Walter Isaacson book about Elon that details what happened with the closing of the data center, and it is way, way, way crazier than even I expected. When Musk talked about how he “disconnected one of the more sensitive server racks,” he meant that entirely literally, in that he literally unplugged it, involving a series of improbable (and ridiculously dangerous and stupid) decisions that resulted with him under the floorboards in the data center pulling the plug, after multiple people warned him not to.
But, let’s take a step back. As the book details, Musk wanted to shut down the data center because he was in drastic “stop paying bills” mania at the time, and the Sacramento data center was costing the company $100 million/year. Also, apparently, the data center (which appears to be run by NTT) had told a Twitter employee that it did not think Twitter would be financially viable for very long.
The article starts out with a vignette that basically says everything you need to know about Musk. He had asked an infrastructure manager about moving the servers in Sacramento to one of the other two US data centers Twitter had, in Portland, Oregon. Then this happened:
Another manager at the meeting said that couldn’t be done right away. “We can’t get out safely before six to nine months,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Sacramento still needs to be around to serve traffic.”
Over the years, Musk had been faced many times with a choice between what he thought was necessary and what others told him was possible. The result was almost always the same. He paused in silence for a few moments, then announced, “You have 90 days to do it. If you can’t make that work, your resignation is accepted.”
The manager began to explain in detail some of the obstacles to relocating the servers to Portland. “It has different rack densities, different power densities,” she said. “So the rooms need to be upgraded.” She started to give a lot more details, but after a minute, Musk interrupted.
“This is making my brain hurt,” he said.
“I’m sorry, that was not my intention,” she replied in a measured monotone.
“Do you know the head-explosion emoji?” he asked her. “That’s what my head feels like right now. What a pile of f—ing bulls—. Jesus H f—ing Christ. Portland obviously has tons of room. It’s trivial to move servers one place to another.”
If it’s making your brain hurt to have someone explain to you some fairly basic issues about infrastructure, the problem may be with you, dude. And, yes, it may have been “trivial” to move servers around the last time Musk ran an internet company over two decades ago, but for a major service relied on by hundreds of millions of people, that also has a ton of sensitive data, it’s… not trivial at all.
But a cousin of Musk suggested to Musk that they just do it themselves, while they were flying from the Bay Area to Austin, and Musk literally had his plane diverted to go to Sacramento and try it out, leading to… whatever the fuck this is:
They were somewhere over Las Vegas when James made his suggestion that they could move them now. It was the type of impulsive, impractical, surge-into-the-breach idea that Musk loved. It was already late evening, but he told his pilot to divert, and they made a loop back up to Sacramento.
The only rental car they could find when they landed was a Toyota Corolla. They were not sure how they would even get inside the data center at night, but one very surprised X staffer, a guy named Alex from Uzbekistan, was still there. He merrily let them in and showed them around.
The facility, which housed rooms of servers for many other companies as well, was very secure, with a retinal scan required for entry into each of the vaults. Alex the Uzbek was able to get them into the X vault, which contained about 5,200 refrigerator-size racks of 30 computers each.
“These things do not look that hard to move,” Elon announced. It was a reality-distorting assertion, since each rack weighed about 2,500 pounds and was eight feet tall.
“You’ll have to hire a contractor to lift the floor panels,” Alex said. “They need to be lifted with suction cups.” Another set of contractors, he said, would then have to go underneath the floor panels and disconnect the electric cables and seismic rods.
Musk turned to his security guard and asked to borrow his pocket knife. Using it, he was able to lift one of the air vents in the floor, which allowed him to pry open the floor panels. He then crawled under the server floor himself, used the knife to jimmy open an electrical cabinet, pulled the server plugs, and waited to see what happened. Nothing exploded. The server was ready to be moved.
The story gets dumber. Musk had a Tesla employee buy Apple AirTags to “track” the servers, and then the process of “moving them” should make everyone cringe:
Other workers at the facility watched with a mix of amazement and horror. Musk and his renegade team were rolling servers out without putting them in crates or swaddling them in protective material, then using store-bought straps to secure them in the truck. “I’ve never loaded a semi before,” James admitted. Ross called it “terrifying.” It was like cleaning out a closet, “but the stuff in it is totally critical.”
At 3 p.m., after they had gotten four servers onto the truck, word of the caper reached the top executives at NTT, the company that owned and managed the data center. They issued orders that Musk’s team halt. Musk had the mix of glee and anger that often accompanied one of his manic surges. He called the CEO of the storage division, who told him it was impossible to move server racks without a bevy of experts. “Bulls—,” Musk explained. “We have already loaded four onto the semi.”
The CEO then told him that some of the floors could not handle more than 500 pounds of pressure, so rolling a 2,000-pound server would cause damage. Musk replied that the servers had four wheels, so the pressure at any one point was only 500 pounds. “The dude is not very good at math,” Musk told the musketeers.
Note the pattern: a willingness to ignore the details of what could go wrong, YOLO it and just test it out, and the assumption that if nothing goes wrong when you do that, it means that everything is fine and nothing else could possibly go wrong.
I might never even ride in a Tesla after this.
And then this:
The moving contractors that NTT wanted them to use charged $200 an hour. So James went on Yelp and found a company named Extra Care Movers that would do the work at one-tenth the cost. The motley company pushed the ideal of scrappiness to its outer limits. The owner had lived on the streets for a while, then had a kid, and he was trying to turn his life around. He didn’t have a bank account, so James ended up using PayPal to pay him.
The second day, the crew wanted cash, so James went to a bank and withdrew $13,000 from his personal account. Two of the crew members had no identification, which made it hard for them to sign into the facility. But they made up for it in hustle. “You get a dollar tip for every additional server we move,” James announced at one point. From then on, when they got a new one on a truck, the workers would ask how many they were up to.
Remember, these are servers full of information, some of it sensitive, and Musk is basically hiring literally undocumented workers off the street and tipping them a dollar for each rack they can move.
And, if you think anyone at Twitter cares about the privacy of your data, think again:
The servers had user data on them, and James did not initially realize that, for privacy reasons, they were supposed to be wiped clean before being moved. “By the time we learned this, the servers had already been unplugged and rolled out, so there was no way we would roll them back, plug them in, and then wipe them,” he says. Plus, the wiping software wasn’t working. “F—, what do we do?” he asked. Elon recommended that they lock the trucks and track them.
So James sent someone to Home Depot to buy big padlocks, and they sent the combination codes on a spreadsheet to Portland so the trucks could be opened there. “I can’t believe it worked,” James says. “They all made it to Portland safely.”
This is… bad. Really bad. Like this could have been a massive disaster for an awful lot of people. This is the kind of thing that the FTC should go after Musk for. He was playing fast and loose with data that could have created very serious problems. And we have no way of knowing that the data was actually safe, despite the “big padlocks” from Home Depot.
Again, because “it worked,” some people will argue that Elon was right to do it this way. But just because your crazily stupid move didn’t create immediate chaos doesn’t mean that it’s the right move.
And, of course, it didn’t really “work.” As we detailed, Twitter toppled over a few days later, and this excerpt admits it was because of the “server move.” The article does note that Musk himself eventually said he shouldn’t have done this and it did cause a fair bit of problems for the site, including the disastrous “Twitter Spaces” where Ron DeSantis tried to launch his Presidential campaign.
“In retrospect, the whole Sacramento shutdown was a mistake,” Musk would admit in March 2023. “I was told we had redundancy across our data centers. What I wasn’t told was that we had 70,000 hard-coded references to Sacramento. And there’s still shit that’s broken because of it.”
Yeah, I mean, maybe if you didn’t tell the person trying to explain stuff to you that it hurt your brain to hear the details, you would have heard them telling you things like this.
Even dumber is that the “lesson” that Walter Isaacson seems to take from this little episode is not that Musk’s impulsivity is a dangerous, out of control wrecking ball that is going to destroy some serious stuff, but that (ex)Twitter’s employees had to learn how to better “manage” the man-baby in charge:
His most valuable lieutenants at Tesla and SpaceX had learned ways to deflect his bad ideas and drip-feed him unwelcome information, but the legacy employees at X didn’t know how to handle him. That said, X survived. And the Sacramento caper showed X employees that he was serious when he spoke about the need for a maniacal sense of urgency.
There’s something to be said for pushing back on needless rules and bureaucracy, but it helps if you actually understand stuff before doing so, rather than doing something like this that had half a dozen ways it could have ended in serious disaster and possible tragedy. The fact that it “only” resulted in Twitter falling over every few weeks for months likely means that Musk and his supporters got the very wrong lesson out of this.
But the lesson I would take from it: have nothing to do with Elon Musk or any product he sells. It’s bound to be stupidly, unnecessarily risky.
Against all odds, The Super Mario RPG remake retains the original’s dirtiest joke
Mario has been teaching kids important life lessons for generations. Think about how Mario showed you that persistence is key, munching mushrooms is good for you, and stealing is a-ok. Well, that spirit will live on in the upcoming Super Mario RPG remake, it turns out, in the revival of one of the dirtiest jokes in the game’s history.
One of the most important lessons the original Super Mario RPG taught us was not to go through a lady’s belongings. As the game makes clear with one of the perceived dirtiest jokes known to Nintendo fans worldwide, you never know what you might find.
The game touches on the subject with a hidden item in Princess Peach’s room labeled “Toadstool’s ???” or “Peach’s XXX” depending on the translation. From the reactions elicited from spotting the thing – either a scold from Peach’s grandma, or Peach herself later down the line – it’s clear there’s something untoward going on in the minds of those game developers.
If you thought, like us, that there’s no way the Super Mario RPG remake is keeping the original’s most infamous joke, think again. Turns out the new game stays true to the original to such a degree that it even keeps the silly filthy joke in.
I mean if it ain’t broke, why fix it?
In their Super Mario RPG hands-on, our Dustin Bailey notes that “Against every expectation I had, the game even retains the infamous little Easter egg where you can make Mario rifle through Peach’s bedroom in order to find some sort of unmentionable item.”
There have been a few other theories around what the item could be, as one r/GameTheorists Reddit post from a while back goes over. User ProfessorMetallica considers that the item in question could actually be a bottle of booze, since “Alcohol is occasionally labeled as ‘XXX’, especially in cartoons”. Alternatively, it could be “a gift from her absent parents, and it’s labeled ‘???’ because Mario didn’t get enough time to look at it before it was snatched away.”
General consensus, however, is that it’s either a sex toy or some kind of pornographic imagery. As for the question of whether the true nature of the item will be revealed in the upcoming game… well, you’ll just have to play it to find out.
“Super Mario RPG is deeply weird even by the standards of Mario role-playing games, and the remake loses none of those bizarre vibes”, says Bailey in their overview. I’m excited to relive the strangeness come November 17 when the new Super Mario RPG will hit shelves.
Joe Rogan Talks Sam Sulek’s ‘Crazy Jacked’ Physique: ‘You Can Hear the Steroids in His Voice’ – Fitness Volt
With Sam Sulek’s popularity climbing, podcast host Joe Rogan recently took a look at the budding bodybuilding influencer. In a clip taken from his Joe Rogan Experience Podcast, Rogan discussed Sulek’s body transformation, fame, and steroid use. Despite his introverted nature, Sam Sulek ‘s witty personality shines any time he’s recording gym-related videos. Boasting record-shattering numbers on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, Sulek’s rise although surprising to some, has paved the way for other content creators aiming to make a name in the fitness and bodybuilding niches. At 21 years old, Sulek has built an incredible physique, though some have suggested that he’s setting a bad example for younger and more impressionable audiences due to his steroid use. The latest to give his take on Sulek’s newfound fame was one of the world’s best interviewers, Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan Discusses Bodybuilder Sam Sulek: ‘He Used to Be a Lot Smaller, & Then Got Saucy!’ Rogan clarified that Sulek used to be smaller and transformed his physique over a five-year period (2019-2023). “Sam Sulek. Oh Jesus. Jesus Christ. Oh, I have heard about him because he used to be a lot smaller and then got saucy!” says Joe Rogan. “He used to be a diver, you know into a pool type thing,” says Cameron Hanes. “So he was 183 pounds in [2019]. And now what does he weigh now? 237 in 2023, that’s crazy. That’s so crazy. That’s so much weight!” laughs Rogan. “He looks young. Oh, so he covers himself up like that when he works.” Watching a clip of Sulek’s training demonstration, Rogan said “you can hear the steroids in his voice.” “3.6 million followers.” “Just from being jacked. Isn’t it crazy that just being jacked could get you millions of subscribers now? So he’s doing all kinds of crazy lifts.” “Bro, you can hear the steroids in his voice. He’s gargling steroids. That guy is jacked. Look at the fucking legs on him. Holy shit. Look at his fucking thighs. Bro, that guy must chafe like a motherfucker.” As for Sulek’s end goal, Rogan expects it to revolve around adding size. “More massive [is probably his goal]. Tom Haviland, maybe that’s his goal.” Joe Rogan isn’t the only person discussing Sam Sulek’s meteoric rise. Weeks ago, reigning five-time Classic Physique Olympia Chris Bumstead talked about Sulek with Urs Kalecinski. Bumstead was impressed with Sulek’s efforts and said he had the potential to take over the world, but only after he retires. Meanwhile, Open standout Nick “The Mutant” Walker also addressed Sulek’s fame. Given Sulek’s physique, diet, and steroid use, Walker believes he’s ‘instilling’ the wrong message in kids who watch his content, adding that he’s ‘not okay’ with what he’s ‘putting out.’ Other bodybuilding voices like Lee Priest believe criticisms of Sam Sulek are unfounded. Priest backed Sulek up, citing his maturity levels. Moreover, Priest argued that Sulek’s fan backlash came as a result of jealousy. There’s no denying Sam Sulek has become one of the most talked-about names in fitness. While he’s yet to compete in bodybuilding or discuss his use of steroids, Sulek continues to dominate discussions online. As for Joe Rogan, he maintains that bodybuilding is ‘impossible without steroids.’ RELATED: Jeff Cavaliere On Sam Sulek’s Rise: “He’s A Brock Lesnar Of Bodybuilding” Watch the full video from the Sam Sulek Shorts YouTube channel below:
Watch the full video from the Sam Sulek Shorts YouTube channel below: