Yeah, but free shipping...

Just by captioning this, I'm personally 
responsible for several metric tons of CO2.
Probably. I don't even know anymore.

In case you needed another reason to stop giving money to Amazon, it's come out now that the company has been-huh? Yeah, for real, they're the worst, trust me, I've done the research. And by research I mean I googled "Amazon criticism." Also, Google's probably pretty bad too, and I'm saying this on a Google platform right now. Basically what I'm saying is that you can't exist in the world without supporting gigantic, gross corporations that are slowly killing us, but right now, let's talk about this Amazon supporting anti-vaxxers thing. 

Which is weird, because people not
getting vaccinated is why we're still in this.

The company has a program called Amazonsmile, which lets you designate a charitable cause and then Amazon donates 0.5% of your purchase to them. Cool, right? There are lots of worthy organizations on the list including Planned Parenthood, St. Jude's, and the American Cancer society. Last year however, they also donated thousands of dollars to something called the National Vaccine Information Center which, despite the name, tells people not to get vaccinated. 

This word cloud from the NVIC's site
took some intern, what, fifteen minutes? 

And sure, "thousands of dollars" for a company like Amazon is like what they find in Jeff Bezos's couch cushions, so who cares? But an organization spouting paranoid bullshit online doesn't need a lot of money to do a lot of damage. You don't need thousands of dollars to do lazy internet searches and then cherry-pick the information that reinforces your worldview. Trust me, I should know. With that kind of money I could spend so much more time ranting about Republicans and opining about Star Trek, but I have to go to work. Like an under-funded chump.

Turns out a craw or "crop" is a part of
a bird's digestive tract. Huh. Now you know.

Speaking of lazy internet research, I checked Amazon's list of charities and I don't see the NVIC. Maybe they dumped them to avoid the public backlash, or maybe I missed it, but am not paid enough to look into it more closely. Or both. What really sticks in my craw is how it doesn't matter because Amazon's program isn't about helping anyone, it's about justifying their stranglehold over American retail. Sure, they've crushed brick and mortar business, but they donate 0.5% of your purchase to (fill-in-the-blank), so even-Steven?

Except no, neither even nor Steven because some of those fill-in-the-blanks are things like the National Vaccine Information Center whose preposterous nonsense prolongs the pandemic and kills people. And we can't even hold Amazon accountable because they can't possibly be expected to keep track of every dangerous lunatic fringe organization they funnel donations to. I mean, they've got more important things to worry about. Like making streaming content, and launching billionaires into space.

Pictured: Jeff Bezos (center, in the stupid hat), seen here cackling about
how we, the little people, made all of this possible by buying shit off Amazon and by
extension digging the grave of American retail and, it turns out, real graves as well.