Good week, Bad week

Good week for:

The NFL referees union, after a replacement ref who’d been working high school games blew a call at the end of a nationally televised game, robbing the Green Bay Packers of a victory and causing a national furor. The NFL, with revenues of $10 billion, locked out its refs in a dispute over $3 million in pension costs.

Investing in a phone case, after a study by warranty service provider SquareTrade found that iPhone customers have spent $5.9 billion for repairs since the original iPhone was introduced, in 2007.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Truth in advertising, after a New Jersey homeowner put up a sign on the lawn reading, “House for sale by owner, because my neighbor’s an a--hole.”

Bad week for:

Climate change, after Britain’s National Pig Association warned that due to withering droughts and soaring grain prices, a “world shortage of pork and bacon next year is now unavoidable.”

Forgetting to check your privacy settings, after 3,000 people showed up to a birthday party in the Netherlands, when a 16-year-old girl forgot to check “private” on a Facebook invitation. The partygoers vandalized local shops, set a car on fire, and threw rocks and bottles at 600 police officers sent to control the crowd.

Not knowing how to drive a stick, after Anthony Reynolds, 18, of Newark, N.J., pleaded guilty to carjacking a Porsche 911 Turbo. After Reynolds ordered the car’s owner to get out, he herked and jerked while trying to operate the superfast car’s manual transmission, and stalled out. Police then grabbed him.