SQUIDFRY 07.22.21

LIVING SOCIAL… Just as for humans, social media is fraught with peril for marine life. Otters can be total mean girls (or boys) while posting choreographed dance jams they rip off from creators of color on TikTok. Sharks and their Twitter accounts – why do they post photos of every single meal? Everyone knows octopuses overshare, everything from their relationship woes to photos of them comforting themselves in between rocks, on Facebook.

Still, as taxing as it is watching Squid’s friends (and frenemies) behave badly on social media, Squid was unprepared for an account that recently slid into Squid’s feed. It’s an anonymous Instagram account and its goal seems to be harassing cops – specifically, Salinas Police Department cops. The account recently offered a bounty – in the form of a homemade bumper sticker – for anyone who followed an officer with a public social media account. For anyone who can “infiltrate” an officer’s private account, there’s a reward of three bumper stickers. And if you bring forward an account the anonymous harasser wasn’t aware of, they’ll give you five bumper stickers – and send one to the home of soon-to-retire Police Chief Adele Fresé.

There’s a list of officers’ accounts as a starting point, for whoever is looking to cash in on stickers.

Squid’s not going to identify the account, feeling no need to feed the crazy. But Squid now offers up a bounty of Squid’s own – identify the person behind it, and Squid will send you a bowl of steaming hot clam chowder in a tote bag.

TO CONCLUSIONS… Squid tries not to jump to conclusions very often, preferring instead to let information dictate how Squid responds and reacts to various situations. To that end, Squid offers a kind bit of advice to colleagues in the media: Stop jumping to conclusions.

It happened last week, with the tragic plane crash that took the lives of pilot Mary Ellen Carlin and her passenger, Alice Diane Emig, shortly after Carlin’s Golden Eagle Cessna took off about 10:30am on July 13 from Monterey Regional Airport. It might be many months before the National Transportation Safety Board determines what caused the plane to plunge into a home at the Monterra development, but even as the situation was unfolding, the Monterey Herald reported “the pilot was believed to be the only person on board the aircraft and his status has not yet been confirmed as a fatality.” His status. His.

Squid gets gender-neutral pronouns can be a difficult thing to navigate, but wants everyone to remember that women can (and do) fly too. And Carlin, by all accounts, was one hell of a flyer. May she and Emig, a friend who she was flying back to the Sacramento area so she could attend an important medical appointment for her son, rest easy.