Today in why you don't feed squirrels:

Well, what am I supposed to do now? Shop there or not shop there? 

"Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of low-quality flatpack
furniture and sweatshop t-shirts, or to take a slightly longer drive and put up with Walmart."

-Hamlet, on exactly this subject

What? I'm not wrong.

In case you somehow missed this, Target stores and employees have recently been the target (sorry) of right-wing goons who have nothing better to do than to pile into their over-sized Ford F-150's, drive down to the big box stores, and film themselves pestering staff and customers, and even destroying displays and merchandise. Specifically the gay stuff. The retailer's solution however, was not to denounce their actions or ban the goons from the stores, but rather to remove or relocate Pride-themed products. 

The real victim here is good taste.

Which is, you know, disappointing. Look, I don't care about rainbow water bottles and t-shirts with slogans on them, per se. This is just an example of a giant corporation capitalizing on Pride month. What I do care about is that they carry the stuff. Sure, it's mostly cheap gaudy junk, but everything Target carries is cheap gaudy junk, and what's important is the visibility. It's corporate America saying "we recognize your existence enough to view you as an exploitable market." And that's...good. 

Harlan Crow's been voting
with his wallet it for ages.

So my first instinct is, you know, to boycott. To vote with my wallet, if you will. I realize that the company is concerned for the safety of its staff who are facing the phone-wielding asshats in person and that's fair. It just feels like the response should have been to address the people making the threats and not to acquiesce to their incoherent accusations of grooming and satanism. It fits a frustrating pattern of schools, town boards, and public officials punishing the victims rather than the bullies. 

"Do you people even bother reading this?"

-Jesus

The problem here is that the goons are already boycotting Target, but they're doing it because the store carries the rainbow gear in the first place. According to The New York Post--so, grain of salt--the retailer has lost something like ten billion dollars--that's a billion with a "B"-- in stock value from the Conservative boycott. Although I imagine a portion of that might be people like me who are staying away for the opposite reason, but most of it is from the Fox News and Twitter crowd sticking it to them queers and standing up for their extremely dubious interpretation of Christianity. 

I'm not being a dick, they absolutely do
carry Truck Nutz. Ok, and I'm being a dick.
But, I mean, they did start it.

Weirdly, Ted Cruz--and I can't believe I'm citing Ted Cruz--suggests that this boycott won't get the results the bananas-right (of which he's also a member?) want. Target, he points out, is more Disney that Bud Light, that is, there isn't much in the way of an alternative. The ye-haws can drink a Coors, but where else are they going to shop? Walmart? Because they're also drawing fire from these people over their Pride merch. I mean, where are they supposed to buy their Truck Nutz and Styrofoam coolers? Yeah, I'm leaning into the stereotypes. 

Look, I don't want to tell Target how to run their store, but there are two sides here: the one that celebrates differences and accepts everybody and one that knocks over mannequins or whatever because they're butt-hurt that transpeople exist, and if they give in to them over this, they're only going to start throwing tantrums over something else. It's like feeding squirrels. Do it once and they'll never leave you alone.

Except in this case the squirrels are mediocre white dudes who feel
threatened by queer people and take it out on hourly retail employees. 

Aerosmith on standby...

Isreal is on the metric system, right? I'm not judging or anything. We Americans, along with Myanmar, and Liberia, use a preposterous system based on a medieval King's foot. But what I want to know is what's up with The Jerusalem Post's ludicrous units of measurement?

Who says journalism is dead?

Incidentally, why is it our national bird? It's an
opportunistic scavenger who-oh. Oh...I get it.

Like I said, I'm a United Statesian have and never been to Israel and don't read the Jerusalem Post often enough to know if this is normal. And I'm not an astronomer, so for all I know describing the size of asteroids using marine mammals for scale is de rigueur, but then like three days later they referred to another asteroid as being the size of twenty bald eagles and so I have questions. Is it like naming a hurricane? Like, each new asteroid gets a different animal? And what's the exchange rate? How many bald eagles to a walrus? And why the bald eagle? Isn't it kind of our national bird? 

I just have no context for either of these units of measurement. That is to say, to my knowledge, a ball of eighteen walruses has never collided with the earth at great speed, so I don't know what kind of damage to expect. 

Like, do we need to assemble a rag-tag team? Does Aerosmith
need to get cracking on a new glam rock ballad?

End-to-end? Stacked up? What?

The article clarifies that in this case eighteen walruses refers to the diameter of asteroid 2023 JK, and not the weight, which to my non-astronomer mind would have been the greater concern, but what do I know? In anycase, you'll be relived to hear that 2023 JK blew past us as did 2023 JL2 and 2023 HG11 which the Post describes as being around fifteen Honda Civics and three bottlenose dolphins respectively. Although had there been a danger of an impact, we'd be completely unprepared if we only had the Jerusalem Post to tell us about it.

Interestingly it turns out that in the more recent article they were giving us shit for not using the metric system, which is fair, if a bit rude. They were describing astroid 2023 JK3 using bald eagles at us. But the earlier use of a walrus-based system of measurement was just them being cute. And, I don't know, if an asteroid were headed our way, accurate information seems more appropriate than funny, funny jokes about our inability and unwillingness to get on team metric system. 

On the other hand, the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was something
like fifteen kilometers in dimeter, and that's only nine miles. Which is less.
So in many ways, the metric system has its shortcomings too.

They just can't wait to throw the book at'em...*

Another reason not to live in Oklahoma.
You know, along with the crushing emptiness.

Yeah, this again. Did you read about this? I'm only reading about this now and goddamn. What am I on about? This. You can click, but there might be a paywall, so I'll sum up. Half a dozen state legislatures (so far), specifically those controlled by Republicans, have passed laws in the past couple of months that hold librarians and teachers personally accountable for distributing obscene texts. Accountable as in massive, (like tens of thousands of dollars) fines and--get this--prison. Educators can go to jail for handing kids books that someone objects to. In Oklahoma, if can be for up to ten years. 

Alright so obviously, librarians and teachers shouldn't be distributing porn and the good news is, they don't. So what the actual is up with these laws and their draconian punishments? Right-wing politicians pandering to white-victimhood/MAGA hat crowd, that's what.

So we're still not doing anything about guns? Nothing at all. Just books? Ok...

The Republican Party: working tirelessly
to fill America's many dangerously
under-populated prisons.

I mean, has this or has this ever been a thing? Is there now, in American schools, an epidemic, nay, a porndemic? I mean, I'm sure someone, somewhere has done it, and I sincerely hope they lost their job, but this isn't about porn, or protecting children, this is more fascist horseshit from the people who bring you bathroom bills and abortion bans. The bills say things like obscene, or offensive material, and "community standards" but don't really tell you what that means because the people who write this nonsense in to law want it to mean whatever they want it to mean. 

"Educators should stick to the basics. Topics
like the Bible and how great Ronald Reagan was."

-Republicans

If they, whoever they are, personally object to sexual education in schools, then anything that refers to the idea that babies result from sex is out. If they don't like queer people, then books with queer themes are obscene. If they're uncomfortable with the fact that America has a horrifying history of enslavement whose repercussions reverberate down to this day, then books about slavery are obscene. And I say "if" before these things, but really it's exactly this. It's their way of trying to silence discussions about sex, queer issues, and racism.

Three things the political right--in order--can't handle, don't want to handle, and think were solved because we had a Black president that one time. And you know, I feel like I'm just running out of ways to articulate how infuriating I find the naked, flailing fascism of one half of our two-party system right now.  

Look! That librarian is inspiring a love of reading in children, get her!

*I think I owe you an apology for the title. Owe, but don't offer.

Florida: The Orwellian Transphobe State

Truth be told, I'm not 100% comfortable rooting for corporations. I think they are, and I say this not being an economist or anything, a big part of everything wrong with anything. That said, I am rooting for Penguin Random House.

"Hey there Milton Friedman fans, who loves capitalism!"

-Some corporate guy

A group of penguins in the water is known
as a raft, while on land they're called a waddle.
It's not relevant, I just felt you should know.

The gigantic publishing conglomerate is comprised of The Penguin Group and Random House which merged in 2013. Then, realizing that they didn't control the entire industry, they then tried to buy Simon & Schuster in 2020, but The Department of Justice sued on anti-trust grounds because occasionally the government remembers that that's a thing they should do to avoid the world spiraling into even more of megacorporation-run hellscape than it already has. Anyway, the DOJ won and the deal fell apart, and the aforementioned spiral was slowed. Slightly. I mean, we're still doomed.

But why in the world would anyone cheer on this stifling, monopolistic nightmare of end stage capitalism?  Because they're suing Florida, that's why. Well, one county specifically, and it's not just Penguin Random, but we'll get to that. Escambia county has banned a ludicrous number of books recently in response to a few ignorant, yet vocal people who find their worldview threatened by things they don't understand. Which is a lot.

Pictured: Ron DeSantis grinning like an idiot over all the anti-queer
and anti-trans legislationhe's just signed. Legislation which apparently 
fulfills article IIa of the Geneva Convention's definition of genocide. 

Sunshine, ok, but now they're more
known for book bans and racism so
maybe it's time to rethink the motto? 

The plaintiffs include the publisher, a free speech advocacy group, the authors of some of the banned books, as well as some parents of children in the district. Basically everyone with a stake in this. They argue that the county's bans "disproportionately target books by or about people of color and/or LGBTQ people, and have described an orthodoxy of opinion that violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments." But that's only because they disproportionately target books by or about people of color and/or LGBTQ people, and describe an orthodoxy of opinion that violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

"Look, if we can't erase queer people,
what are we supposed to campaign on?
Our ideas? We're Republicans..."

-Some Republican

Which they do. And of course they're targeting marginalized groups. Of course they are. It's what they have left and they're leaning into it. The GOP is running entirely on a platform of stoking baseless, hate-filled fears about trans people, pretending that slavery wasn't all that bad, and guns. Lots of guns. The political Right love--and I suspect are sexually excited by--the Second Amendment and its dubious--and imaginary--right to any and all weapons, no matter how lethal, in unlimited quantity no matter how untrained, insane, or on a watchlist someone is. 

Yet they're weirdly disinterested in the Fourteenth's protection of equal rights and they only care about the First's free speech protections when someone calls them out for saying something shitty. Because consequences are for other people. Anyway, that's why it's ok, in this once instance, to get behind a corporation. Well, ok, two corporations, Disney's also doing its best to screw over DeSantis. And we're here for it. 

Above: the things Republicans are more worried about
than tens of thousands of gun deaths per year.

Explain to me how we're the snowflakes here?

Once again, we awake to read about a tragedy unfolding in an American school. Students in Jenna Barbee's fifth grade class in Hernando County, Florida were brutally and callously shown a movie that acknowledged the existence of gay people. 

Pictured: a child sobs after being shown a movie with a gay character.--I'm kidding.
 These kids go through routine active shooter drills, it's the parents who are the wusses.

Above: noted man-baby Ron DeSantis,
seen here yelling at kids to take their
masks off during the pandemic.

The film, Strange World, is some woke liberal Disney claptrap about how destroying the environment can have, you know, cataclysmic consequences, and features a male teen character who's attracted to--gasp!--another male teen. I've never seen Strange World, and I'm not sure about the educational value of watching a cartoon in class. Particularly in a State like Florida where a thin-skinned man-baby is doing his damndest to make sure the kids don't learn anything other than how great America is and how slavery really wasn't all that bad. 

But whatever, the film's pro-environment message and inclusive cast make it more educationally valuable than anything the State of Florida currently allows. Of course, in doing so it also violates Florida's Don't Say Gay bill which--yes, I know technically it's called HB 241 Parents's Bill of Rights, but we're not idiots and it's entirely about erasing queer people, so it's the Don't Say Gay bill, shut up Ron, yes it is.

Pictured: the aforementioned man-baby grinning after signing his
shitty bill, surrounded by a bunch of kids he's using as political props. 

Not all heroes wear capes. Some of them
shriek into a phone until they get their way.

Jenna Barbee's egregious crime probably would have gone unpunished had it not been for the heroic actions of one parent who bravely picked up the phone and complained. Complained that their parental rights had been violated. Specifically their right to foist their ignorant, hate-filled worldview on the rest of us. Which, I mean, for an ideology so vocally all about freedom and self-reliance, kind of feels, I don't know, like naked hypocrisy? And how did the Left ever get saddled with the epithet "snowflake" by these people.

Anyway, the Florida State Department of Education isn't saying whether Barbee is under investigation, but she totally is. And I can't help but wish America's Right would direct just a fraction of the outrage and willingness to take action towards something other than queer-bashing. Something productive. Something like, I don't know, doing something about actual problems like, say, all the kids murdered with guns every year?

A vigil is being organized for Barbee's victims, and if you'd like to make a donation 
to the families of the children who were irrevocably groomed by the revelation 
that sometimes people have same sex attractions, you may do so here.

Today in the show must go on-ing:

You know who are a bunch of goddamn heroes? These kids. Which kids? Yeah, fine, don't bother clicking on the link, I'll just explain. These kids are students from Carroll High School in Fort Wayne, Indiana, who when their play was cancelled, raised a ton of money to go ahead and do it anyway. Amazing, right? 

Pictured: basically, the students from Carroll High.

Robin Hood's been many things, Errol Flynn,
an investment app, even a sexy fox, so it's not
like queer woman is much of a stretch.

Huh? No? Oh, maybe some context is in order then. The play, Marion or the True Tale of Robin Hood, is a take on the Robin Hood story, which presupposes that Robin and Marion were one and the same, and--you can see where this is going right? Mid-western high school? Queer themes? Pearls on standby to be clutched. Anyway, according to the students, absurdly named principal Cleve Million--so, five hundred grand?--signed off on the production until a group of parents, presumably drunk on Fox News and transphobia, demanded that the play be cancelled. 

Above: Cleve Million seen here, shortly
after caving in to the parent's demands.

Evidently Million received some phone calls and was concerned for the students safety and so he made the decision to call off Marion. Which, I mean, let's be absolutely clear on this point: people were calling the principal and saying something that led him to believe that it would be best to call off the show for the students' safety. So my question is, what were these people saying? Were they threatening students? Are parents threatening kids? Because if that's the case, shouldn't Million have, I don't know, called the police? 

And while were at it, could he maybe
explain the name? I mean, Cleve? Million?

Look, I'm a childless shut-in who really doesn't care for kids. Or pets. Or plants. But threatening kids is probably a crime. And the response to threatening students shouldn't be to cancel their show and give the threateners exactly what they want. This is how terrorism works. We know this because we fought two entire wars premised on the idea that we don't give in to terrorists. I mean, in those cases we didn't actually go after the people who attacked us, but that's neither here nor there. The point is the answer here isn't to punish the victims. For Cleve Million the answer should be to either investigate these threatening calls and to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law, or, if there were no threats, and Million just decided to wuss out, to explain why he's such a gigantic coward.  

As for the students, the answer is to put on the play without the support of the school. To that end, they've started a fundraiser to raise the necessary fifty thousand dollars. Framing this--and rightly so--not only as a stand against the bullies who torpedoed the play, but also against the general and unrelenting attacks on the LGBTQIA+ community in general, they've raised eighty-two thousand dollars. Of money. For a high school play. In Indiana. So, like I was saying, these kids are goddamn heroes.

It doesn't even matter how the show goes, what matters is that a bunch of cowards
who shrieked threats into a phone aren't going to get what they want.  

Florida can't sink fast enough...

You know, on second thought, I
think I owe COBRA an apology.

I think at this point we can all agree that the Republican Party, like as a thing, is basically the bad guys. Supervillains. They're like COBRA. Their entire platform is based on vitriol and violence and victimhood. When college kids register to vote, Republicans want to raise the voting age. When there's a mass shooting--which is daily at this point--these people put on AR-15 pins. And they have never met an anti-trans bill they didn't gleefully sign in a staged photo op, usually surrounded by bored-looking prop children. See? Bad guys. 

Above: Florida

So it comes as no surprise then that Florida, the Republican Terror Drome to keep the analogy going--again, sorry COBRA--is about to pass a bill requiring the Florida Transportation Department to look into using something called phosphogypsum in road pavement. Ok, who cares, right? People with cellular structures should care, because phosphogypsum causes cancer. Well, ok, if you want to get technical about it, and I know you do, phosphogypsum contains uranium which produces radium-226 which in turn radon, which, you know, cancer. 

Your answer must be in the form of a cynical
observation about corruption in politics.

According to The Center for Biological Diversity, a non-profit environmental advocacy organization, phosphogypsum will put the public--particularly road construction workers, who would be around the stuff like, all the time--at serious risk of developing cancer. So why in the world would Republicans want to use it? It's not like it will only harm trans people, MAGA goons in those ridiculous, oversized pickup trucks will also be breathing this stuff in too. So why? Go on, guess. Guess why the GOP is interested in paving the roads with radioactive asphalt. 

Moving out of Florida is probably
sound advice in any event.

If you said money, you win. Unless you live in Florida, in which case move out of Florida before they start paving the highways with cancer. Phosphogypsum is a radioactive waste product left over the manufacture of fertilizer which Florida produces in abundance. And if there's one thing Republicans love to do it's mortgage the future for short term financial gain, specifically financial gain for private business.  Which, I mean, if you can think of a more perfect example of end-stage capitalism, I'd love to hear it.   

Now, it's possible that in the end, Governor Ron DeSantis might recognize the recklessness of using radioactive waste in asphalt just to give a handout to the fertilizer and veto the--huh? Why are you laughing? Oh, right. DeSantis. 

Pictured: a stock photo of Governor Ron DeSantis
pointing and laughing. Probably at road workers with cancer.

Better off Krang

I don't know that I would want to live forever, but I wouldn't mind a couple hundred years provided that I could live them in some semblance of good health. Like, I wouldn't want to be a brain in a jar or something.

A brain in a sweet android body however...

When have the Germans ever had
a bad...uh...idea...oh...

I mention this because according to a new article in Popular Mechanics, a German startup called Tomorrow Biostasis has ten frozen bodies in tubes with the plan of one day reviving them. And you van be body number eleven! I suppose I should clarify that these were presumably willing participants. That is, people who specified a desire to be cryonically frozen upon death, and, for some reason, paid a startup to handle that for them. How much? Well, that depends, but it's not cheap. 

I mean, what's not to love about
where the world is heading?

It's about sixty or two hundred thousand Euros all told depending on how much of yourself you'd like frozen. Just the head or the full corpsesicle. Ultimately your life insurance will pay for this if you have it, but you give Tomorrow Biostasis twenty euros a month to keep a team on standby should you find yourself circling the drain. A small price to pay to experience the devastation of climate change followed by the inevitable take over of what's left of humanity by super intelligent AI's. So what's the catch? 

From the business model that brought us a
$400 machine that squeezes juice into a cup.

Well, for one, I'm not sure I'd trust my immortality to a startup. I won't even commit to Magic Spoon. I don't know anything about business, but something like 90% of startups fold before they hit the ten year mark. Hopefully one would die of something they find a cure for before 2033, but that feels like cutting it a little close. Changes are your cryotube will go the way of your other subscription services--that is, you cancel it a few years in when you realize you forgot that you subscribed in the first place. Remember Gamefly? Yeah, better check, you might still be paying for it.

Also, what if you die in a blimp explosion or are killed by one of America's well regulated militias? This whole scheme is predicated on the idea that you die of something that kills you slowly enough that Tomorrow Biostasis' freezer squad can get to you. Like, there has to be something left of you to freeze.

The chance of being murdered at any moment is just the
price we pay for the freedom something something...

So this, but the victim will be your
cognitive function and not say, vanilla bean.

But even if that's the case, you still have to have died of something that doctors find a cure for. And this has to happen while the company is still around, which is in no way guaranteed. Then they have to figure out how to revive you. Then you just have to hope they can reverse the inevitable cell damage being frozen causes. Ever leave ice cream in the freezer too long? Exactly. And then you have to contend with the emotional trauma that comes along with waking up in a changed world where everyone you knew or cared for could very well be dead themselves.

Unless you're into that. Anyway, I can understand why someone might want to disinherit their ungrateful children in favor of the thin possibility that their corpse might be reanimated sometime in the indeterminate future. But it kind of sounds like there's quite a lot of if's involved here. So many, in fact, that I'm left with the sense that this might just be some kind of elaborate German insurance tontine that only works if an incredibly specific set of circumstances line up.

Pictured: the Tomorrow Biostasis rapid response team.
Just try not to die while they're on lunch or something...

One of the few jobs not being replaced by AI...

"The peasants? Are revolting?
Oh Charles, you are too wicked!"

-Princess Anne (actual quote)

Yet...Anway, in a move that is surprising to exactly no one, Princess Anne is against layoffs for members of the royal family: 

"Well, I think the 'slimmed down' was said in a day when there were a few more people around. It doesn't sound like a good idea from where I'm standing, I would say. I'm not sure quite what else we can do."

-Princess Anne, noted, uh, 

person who was born

Say what you will about monarchy,
that woman knew how to wave.

Princess Anne was referring to speculation that her brother, the soon-to-be-crowned King Charles III, might reduce the number of "working royals" from eleven down to seven. And when they say working royals, they mean people who represent the royal family at events. So going to parties, waving from a moving vehicle, that sort of thing. They're busy sure, but by no stretch would any of all call it "working." But who cares what I think? I'm not British, although I am a quarter Canadian. So maybe care a quarter? Doesn't matter, I'm don't really have strong opinion of the monarchy, as a thing to begin with.

What I'm saying is that I've won the
popular vote as many times as he has.

There was a time where I'd make fun of the idea of vesting power, however ceremonial, with someone who wasn't elected by a majority of the people, but then twice in my life time the person who got fewer votes was made the President. With disastrous consequences both times, so I don't know, hereditary monarchy might not be the craziest idea. They have been at it for over a thousand years and only beheaded one king. Although they do go through Prime Ministers like Doctors Who. Which isn't a bad thing necessarily.

Sorry, I'm out of the loop, we're still
making fun of Kardashians, right?

I don't know, back to Princess Anne. I'm a little unclear if she's saying that she's not sure what else they can do in terms of reducing the monarchy while still having enough royals to open malls or whatever, or if she's saying that she's not sure what else they'd do for a job. I mean, she's got a point. It's not like someone who's spent their entire life just being royal can pick up a trade. But on the other hand, she might not be aware that not actually doing anything is no longer a bar to being wealthy. Lots of famous people are famous for being famous. 

To be clear: not this.

I don't know, maybe I'm bring too harsh. We make the comparison between British monarchy and American celebrity and sure, there's probably a lot of overlap, but the monarchy has an actual constitutional function. And in a sense kind of is the constitution? Kinda? They form the government in the King's name and the King can technically dissolve Parliament. As in make everyone go home and elect a new government, not like, vaporize them or something. But still, it's kind of a thing. 

Damn, she knew her hats too.

He won't do this because it would almost certainly be unpopular and public approval of even having a King is lower than it's ever been. In fact, the whole tightening the belt of the monarchy idea is entirely about making it more palatable to the public that they're basically paying for these people to eat brie and wear giant hats to horse races. The King can't be everywhere at once, so they probably need people to pick up the slack, but how many is enough? 

I dunno. it's a small-ish country, and eleven sounds reasonable. But then I'm not a British taxpayer either. Anyway, Charles says that he has no plans to make anyone go get real jobs, so I suppose Anne's got nothing to worry about for the time being. But still, it seems inevitable that sooner or later people are going to catch on that maybe letting an entire family just wave and dressage their way through life isn't the most democratic thing in the world.

"But if we don't attend the galas, who will?"

-Princess Anne, making a point

just maybe not the one she thinks...