Welcome to the State of the Earth — A source for cosmonauts, subterranean mole people, and everyone in between. Each *indeterminate amount of time* the State of the Earth Address will present perspectives on the issues of the day, news from around the globe, and tips on how to be less of a goose (just in case anyone needs those).

MR. KOYA's Update

Protesters continue to hit the streets of the world, drawing attention to their rigorously researched views that COVID is a lie, masks are dumb, and Warren Buffett cooks babies into party pies and hands them out at scout jamborees.

If nothing else it heralds a new age of protesting, whereby disaffected maniacs from all ends of the political spectrum can come together to share their best Pepe memes, their favourite flat earth YouTubers and preferred fruits to throw at Dr Fauci. 

Everyone else of course, looks on with weariness and heads back to bed until the pubs reopen.We like to ponder tranquil thoughts, like the threat of supervolcano eruption and the subsequent devastation of mankind.

The Yellowstone supervolcano in particular has a tendency to erupt every 700,000 years. The most recent eruption was around 664,000 years ago, and sources say this has been adding to the pressure on Universal Pictures executives to release its delayed James Bond movie.

The United States Geological Survey notes that the odds of Yellowstone erupting in any given year are 0.00014 percent — lower than the odds of getting hit by a civilization-destroying asteroid, yet still higher than the odds of Novak Djokovic having a level-headed opinion on something.

  

Assassination: not a topic normally featured in lighthearted email bulletins, but last month marked the first time in history that the killing of a country’s leader has been considered less newsworthy than statements by public health bureaucrats on whether the consumption of a piccolo outside is cool or not.

The assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse is still causing shockwaves and unrest (not helped by last week's tragic earthquake).

Assassination for military or foreign policy purposes has been around forever, espoused by Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, and by Scrooge McDuck when he attempted to take a hit out on South African mining magnate Flintheart Glomgold in 1956.

Achievement of power and money are almost always entwined with the practice of assassination, both in real life and fiction. The exception of course is Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed series, which these days is more concerned with gods and sea shanties and owning a pet bird.

Let’s hope for a utopian future where the worst type of assassination is character assassination, reserved for people who have different opinions to us on important topics like whether a melt is different to a grilled cheese sandwich.

SPACE! NOPE, NOT SPACE.

Astrophysicist and world-famous salsa dancer, Neal the Grasse Tyson is pretty mad about two cowboy billionaires. Neil pretty much owns space. And the billionaires claimed they went into space, which Neil owns, when they really didn’t. Neil's also mad that this time around, unlike his warning about the meteor that never hit us or the once-in-a-lifetime blood moon, the media totally ignored him, choosing to run extensive coverage of the two launches as if something important was happening.

According to experts, both Bezos and Branson were more than an order of magnitude below the energy needed for orbital speed.

In other words, Bezos is going to have to build a much larger and faster flying phallus if he’s going to successfully penetrate Neil's Blue Origin.