Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/09/07/bug-eyed-monsters.html
…
4 Likes
The Philadelphia Insectarium and Butterfly Pavilion is missing 50,000 bugs
Did they get sold to Microsoft, Apple, assorted Internet of Shit manufacturers, et al?
10 Likes
This is reminiscent of the “great feather heist” from the British Natural History Museum in 2009, considered by many to be the most important theft of scientific specimens ever achieved, because the material stolen consisted of birds collected by Alfred Russell Wallace as he was pondering the principles of evolution. The story of that theft has been detailed in an entertaining broadcast by This American Life.
The theft of the feathers and bird specimens was triggered by their extreme value to enthusiasts of fly-tying of antique fishing lures. One wonders whether these insects have a similar value on the black market.
9 Likes
I hope for those involved that it was worth it
Narrator: It wasn’t
8 Likes
Eew! I wish I could have gotten that crackerjack team of roach thieves to burglarize my old apartment.
12 Likes
Burgle.
(Sorry - a real bugbear of mine. Unless you really DO have burglarizers where you are.) 
5 Likes
Perhaps someone really really wanted a Sicarius six-eyed sand spider for a pet.
http://archive.samj.org.za/1988%20VOL%20LXXIII%20Jan-Jun/Articles/02%20February/2.13%20REVIEW%20OF%20SOUTHERN%20AFRICAN%20SPIDERS%20OF%20MEDICAL%20IMPORTANCE,%20WITH%20NOTES%20ON%20THE%20SIGNS%20AND%20SYMPTO.pdf
1 Like
You’re right, I should have used burgle because I always find that word hilarious when my British friends use it, but alas I live in North America where “burglarize” is 100% proper and MUCH more commonly used.
You lot invented English, we just perfected it. 
7 Likes
Oh they used CCTV cameras to catch them. I thought it was from someone asking, “Are those ants in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?”
2 Likes
Boy, that really bugs the shit out’a me.
4 Likes
“Did they get sold to Microsoft, Apple, assorted Internet of Shit manufacturers, et al”
No need to purchase bugs from the outside when you have thousands of coders growing their own.
2 Likes
Touché
I prefer to say - you imperfecterized it. 
If it you had perfected it, you WOULD have burglarizers, but I note that you do still have burglars.
I might ask if your doctors are doctorizing or your callers callerizing, but of course burglar is (almost?) unique as a word describing a person’s trade or profession that ends in -ar, so there may be no general rule actually broken. Just more of the language’s wonderful lack of logic where it might have been expected. But too many other of what I call “Bushisms” (he seems to have been a particular offender at randomly adding -ize to perfectly innocent nouns to verbize them) give me the heebie-jeebies. I need help, but I fear it’s too late and I will just have to liverize with this afflicterization until the day I am deaderized.
1 Like
But apparently developers are scarce. So cheap bugs, in volume might be a bargain.
2 Likes
You sure do a lot of wordifying, don’t you?
3 Likes
Isn’t “burgle” itself a back-formation from burglar? I think “burglarize” is like the correction of someone saying, “there is no such word as ‘burgle’!”
1 Like
Oh, no worries. You get plenty of bugs for your buck!
2 Likes
I had to see your post twice before I saw what you did here!
Check the link that @JackFrost posted above.
(Nice link, Jack)
Seems US thinks one is a back formation from the other and UK thinks the other way round. I like how the comments there infer it is written by US author, given the repeated side comments about how ‘burglar’ is sniggeringly humorous.
I’ll stop now - we need to get back to the real bugs, not the language bugs.
2 Likes
Sounds like someone wants to make a couple of boxes of Cockroach Clusters…
Anything in the local news about frogs or larks?
1 Like
