"Anomaly Detected" reports Google Analytics. It seems Google expected 9 visitors to Wriphe.com on Friday, and I got 38. Can I account for that difference? No. Maybe a whole bunch of people tuned in to read my take on What's New Pussycat? Come to think of it, maybe some 21st-century surveillance AI flagged me for putting the terms "student bodies," "having wonderful crime," and "murderers among us" in the same blog post. If so, whoops, I did it again.

I don't look at the site analytics often, and I would have thought that 38 was a huge aberration. (According to my phone, I literally only ever communicate with about a dozen people, and that includes my dogs' vet and "friend" Keith who said he was going to buy us tickets for today's Dolphins vs Falcons game in Atlanta then didn't and threw a party without inviting me instead. Not that I'm bitter. At least now I don't have to spend time and money on the Dolphins. So thanks, Keith! What a pal!) But looking at the year-to-date snapshots, 38 appears not quite so deviant. It looks very much like I commonly have over 20 visitors a day in 2025. I'm sure I have no idea who most of you are or why you would be interested in any of my pretentious whining about football or my so-called "friends," but you're welcome here

In fact, I had 345 visitors on August 17. I would assume that was the leading edge of a Denial of Service attack, although the day before I did post about my family's Scrabble history, so maybe that showed up in some Google News feeds, and I caught some stray boardgame fan lookie loos by accident. To those people I offer my sincerest apology (13 points).

Huh. Now that I really walk though the dashboard, I find I am getting a surprising amount of traffic (14% of all site hits) from China. To the best of my knowledge, I don't know anyone in China, so that does seem a bit weird. I don't think that I post a bunch about anything Chinese, but a quick search does reveal 32 posts matching the word "China." There are not quite 3000 posts in the history of this site, so that's a healthy 1%. Disproportionate to the number of hits, sure, but also more than I would have expected. In any case, ni hao to my China people!

The real question is whether any of these analytics serve any purpose. I think the answer is no, at least in regards to Wriphe.com. As you probably know if you're reading this, I don't tailor my blog posts to anyone's interests but my own, which is probably why Google thought I should have only 9 visitors. Seems to me that's still 9 more visitors than I deserve. More often than not, I wonder why I bother posting anything at all, and it's rewarding to know that at least 9 of you are paying attention. Or at least clicking through to see if I'm a murderer. Even if you're all just web crawling spiders, thanks for dropping by.

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Cherry Coke finally reached China last month, and Coca-Cola promoted its launch with cans featuring a caricature of billionaire investor Warren Buffett.

Stop and think about that. If you put Warren Buffett's face on something in America, no one would even know who the hell he was. ("Steve Martin sure got old!") Name one person from China whose face might influence you to buy a product. Take your time. I'll wait.

The reason I mention this is not to denigrate Americans — they don't need me for that; they're doing so well themselves — is because of how Bloomberg News reported it.

At his company's annual meeting last year, [Buffett] said his happiness from drinking soda outweighs health benefits from eating more vegetables.

That must have been painful to publish. Bloomberg's founder and owner, Michael Bloomberg, is behind the nationwide push to tax sodas. According to Warren Buffett, that's the same as taxing happiness. (I bet nobody's taxing broccoli.) Whose word are you going to take for that? I know who the Chinese trust.

Science backs up Bloomberg. Sugar overconsumption is a nationwide problem. However, I doubt anyone with a net worth of $75 billion worries much about healthcare. But then, neither do the Chinese, 95% of whom have basic health insurance coverage. That just one more thing they're doing better than us.

So drink up, China. You can afford it, and America sure could use the help.

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