The Week in Meep: DEMONS! SUMO! LIGHTNING DEATHS!
...SOME of this is happy stuff....
Howdy all, I haven’t done one of these in a while, so I thought I’d pop in to give you a few things.
SUMO! July tournament ends with a 3-way playoff
The sumo tournament is a little later in July than I like, but that’s okay.
The blue whirlwind Aonishiki (and “blue whirlwind” is one interpretation of his ring name) won the July tournament, and got the giant pink macaron (granted by France)… one of the many prizes one can get as the Grand Champion.
On my other substack, Sumo Stats, I covered Aonishiki’s win:
And you can see the size disparities of the three guys in the playoff:
Yes, an over 50-kg difference in weight between Aonishiki and Atamifuji. Weight doesn’t determine everything in sumo (it does help, to be sure).
The way the three-way playoff works in sumo is that the bouts keep going until one person wins two bouts in a row (the first two combatants are chosen by lot).
Three-way playoffs are really exciting, especially as many times two of the people in the playoff were up against each other earlier in the day, as Atamifuji and Aonishiki were. If Aonishiki had won that earlier bout, there would have been no playoff at all — he would have been the winner outright with no playoff.
In addition to winning the tournament, Aonishiki won a special Technique Prize, and he also earned back the Ozeki rank, which is second only to the top Yokozuna rank.
It’s very difficult to achieve the Ozeki rank, and difficult to maintain because Ozeki have the most difficult competitors (other than the Yokozuna… but Yokozuna cannot lose their rank).
Anyway, here ends the happy stuff. Look at happy Aonishiki:
Dostoevsky and Demons
I recently finished reading Demons (or The Devils or The Possessed) by Dostoevsky, which I saw many others were reading. I have already read Crime & Punishment (many times), Brothers Karamazov (many times), The Idiot, The Gambler, and some lesser works, so I figured to dive into this one.
I almost regret it. This one is brutal. Yes, more brutal than Crime & Punishment.
From the Amazon description:
Inspired by the true story of a political murder that horrified Russia in 1869, Fyodor Dostoevsky conceived of Demons as a “novel-pamphlet” in which he would say everything about the plague of materialist ideology that he saw infecting his native land. What he emerged with in 1872 was at once his darkest novel until The Brothers Karamazov and his most ferociously funny. For alongside its relentlessly escalating plot of conspiracy and assassination, Demons (which earlier translators erroneously titled The Possessed) is a blistering comedy of ideas run amok. And, like all of Dostoevsky’s novels, it is also a riot of literary voices, whose profusion, energy, and variety are rendered wonderfully in this English version.
Crime & Punishment had a certain thread of manic humor to it. (And, spoiler, there is redemption at the end.)
This one… no redemption.
There are multiple suicides, homicides, terrorism, and (I had the uncensored version, so it may not be in the version you get) sexual violence — all in the name of supposed Marxist liberation, etc. Or not.
A character claims to find meaning in life… right before he kills himself. Great.
People claim that Dostoevsky prophesied the Russian Revolution of 1917 in this book, but it’s more that he was writing about the various radical groups in Russia at that time. After all, Dostoevsky himself had been involved with them, until he became disaffected, especially about the nihilism and atheism of the groups, more than anything else. (His almost-execution and stint in Siberia also put him off.)
One of the main characters in the book seems to be based on Sergei Nechaev, and one of the main events in the book based on a murder Nechaev instigated, after which he high-tailed it to Switzerland… which this character exits the novel doing. Yep, he gets away with his murders (spoiler).
Or maybe he’s going to America. That was a bit jarring, hearing about these characters hanging out in the U.S. for a few years, because they were too radical to be in Europe.
Anyway, I recommend reading Crime and Punishment and Brothers Karamazov first. They’re much better books. This one requires you to read up on Russian history a lot more, to get the required context. You need to know the political situation of Russia of the time, not just with respect to the emancipation of the serfs.
Lightning Deaths are racking up in 2026… watch the skies
The death count for lightning strikes in the U.S. is now up to 9.
According to John Jensenius of the National Lightning Safety Council, the U.S. has averaged about 13 deaths by the end of July over the past decade.
The initial incident was on a beach in North Carolina, when two people were struck, and one later succumbed to their injuries:
28 July 2026, Charlotte Observer: Lightning knocks beachgoer unconscious in NC and injures companion, rescuers say
A lightning strike knocked a beachgoer unconscious at Wrightsville Beach, and the impact was powerful enough to injure someone standing nearby, according to officials in eastern North Carolina. Witnesses reported seeing it happened around 11:45 a.m. Saturday, as the two adults were walking near the Shell Island Resort, officials said.
The resort is at the northern tip of Wrightsville Beach, which is a 130-mile drive southeast from downtown Raleigh.
The beachgoer hit by the flash was unconscious when taken to a nearby hospital, officials said. The other victim was conscious, officials said.
The one who was knocked unconscious was the one who died.
Note that the Wrightsville Beach death occurred before others; this was just the 9th reported. There may have been some lightning strike deaths in July we simply haven’t heard about yet.
Jensenius reminded us that being out on the beach is rather exposed, and the only activity with more lightning strike deaths is fishing: The Deadly Dozen
It looks like the 2026 data will strengthen “Beach”’s place on this ranking table.
As the small inset in the upper left-hand corner says, no place outside is safe in a thunderstorm — take shelter! When thunder roars, go indoors!
But part of the reason fishing, being out on the beach, boating, etc. are so dangerous during storm season is that it’s so difficult to find shelter.
And no, trees aren’t shelter.
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