Random Bits Of Weirdness for the week ending June 28

Dairy, egg and other product shelves are largely empty at IGA Foodland on Saturday, June 28, 2025. (Mark Sabbatini / Juneau Independent)

Shelves for yogurt, eggs and some other cold-section products were strangely empty at some stores this week. It was not, apparently, due to the on-again/off-again Trump tariffs that are triggering predictions of supply shortages and higher prices. Rather, it appears to be the latest of numerous ransomware attacks hitting grocery suppliers in the U.S. and elsewhere. The attacks are affecting local stores differently since they have different suppliers: the yogurt shelves at Safeway were full Saturday, while an IGA Foodland employee said the supplies for its mostly empty shelves should arrive by Monday…

An abundance is the problem at Juneau Animal Rescue, which in posts on its Facebook page and others states it is trying to cope with "a sudden intake of nearly 40 cats." The reason for the sudden arrivals was not specified. A shelter worker noted in one such post "We are a small shelter that is trying our hardest to build ourselves a new facility off of donations from the kind individuals of the public. Until then, we have absolutely NO space for these cats and we're struggling to get creative with where we put them!" There are, as might be expected, also reminders about spaying and neutering pets. The shelter’s website is juneauanimalrescue.org and its phone number is (907) 789-0260…

Speaking of social media, some of the randomly strange inquiries and comments on local sites this week: "Anyone seen dead salmon washing up yet? My dog likes to roll in them…trying to decide where to walk."; "How would one go about reporting a tour feeding bald eagles?"; "The downtown (power) outage this morning was caused by a bird being where it shouldn't have been."; "Are there any practicing mediums in town?"; "i have 7 hours left in juneau and i’ve never been more excited to get out of a city."

Finally, while a mantra of real journalists is "we’re not the story" (as compared to too many "influencer" types who relish calling attention to themselves), the editor of the Independent (who’s writing what you’re reading now) ended up getting something of a spotlight as part of the June 20 launch of this publication. In addition to the expected "legacy" media coverage by the likes of KTOO, KTUU and the Sitka Daily Sentinel, the Alaska Landmine declared in "The Sunday Minefield" last week "This week’s Loose Unit is Mark Sabbatini." The Landmine broke the story of the Independent’s existence with a social media post on June 16, after which the departure was confirmed with a post on the Empire’s Facebook page. The Landmine, among other details, noted what followed: "According to this Sitka Sentinel story, Sabbatini was fired after his bosses saw his post after the Landmine tweet! Classic Loose Unit behavior."

As a postscript, speaking of the Empire, for those who noted its website wasn’t updated for several days after that departure, it was purely a matter of unfortunate timing since a system malfunction affected papers’ websites throughout the Sound Publishing chain.