Good morning! Here's your forecast for Thursday: Early tendrils of ennui should burn off before the second lunch beer, leading to an afternoon humid with unrealistic optimism, disappointment around sunset and our usual seasonal overnight updrafts of existential dread.
A Tarpon Springs palm reader was arrested for allegedly exploiting a veteran with PTSD and grieving widow and scamming them out of more than $150,000. Weird how she never even saw the cops coming. KA-ZING.
Governor and possible slowly dissipating robber baron's ghost Rick Scott vetoed the "Whiskey and Wheaties" law that would've done away with the state's "liquor wall" and allowed hard booze to be sold alongside groceries and other consumer goods. He said he did so in the name of preserving small businesses — you know, boostrappy little independent concerns like Publix and ABC Fine Wine & Spirits, which both lobbied heavily against the bill because one already holds a bunch of leases on properties with the liquor stores attached to the side and the other would rather not see its supermegashitload profits be reduced to mere megashitloads.
Check out this great story by the Times' Craig Pittman about how wildlife authorities set up a complex and long-running sting operation to disrupt the illegal gator-farming trade. It's like Serpico, but with swampdragons.
And finally, while we're speaking of Florida reptile encounters, an Orlando man opened his pantry to throw away some garbage earlier this week, and found a 4-food python chilling in there. That's probably, like, the third most unsettling way to discover you might have mice.
This article appears in May 25 – Jun 1, 2017.