Tbh I Think The Funniest Phenomena That's Been Happening In The Last Couple Years Is "youtuber, Having

The Texan Federation's first military act was to push the hogs out of their territory. Beginning in a line from the coast, the army drove every pig northward. They devastated the landscape, using grenades and mortars whenever they caught a herd on open ground. A few soldiers, unsuspecting and inattentive, were knocked down by a big male and trampled by hundreds of hooves. A few more were lost to equipment failure, or their own mistakes, or the mistakes of fellow soldiers. Eventually, at the cost of a few dozen people and a few thousand hogs, the herds were driven north of the Red River and west out of the Arkansas area, into Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Cherokee territories. The Texans placed landmines across long stretches to mark a northern border and block the hogs' return. For several decades the Texan military would maintain this defensive line, blocking both pigs and refugees from the north.

The US government, hollowed out, has all but collapsed. The east coast states down to Georgia have mostly held together and still recognize the authority of Washington DC. California, Oregon, and Washington have formed an independent coalition on the west coast. Texas' influence captures the whole coast of the Gulf of Mexico, now called the Gulf of Texas by several hundred million people. The Great Lakes states have merged with Canada. And the Great Plains in the middle of the continent are overrun by feral hogs, and war.

lovely story from a friend today.

Wojtek was a Syrian brown bear adopted by the Polish II Corps during World War II. He was officially enlisted as a soldier to ensure he could travel with the unit and was given the rank of private. He became famous for helping carry artillery shells during the Battle of Monte Cassino. Wojtek was also known for drinking beer, eating cigarettes, and wrestling with soldiers.

After the war, he was taken to Scotland, where he lived at the Edinburgh Zoo until his passing in 1963.

and how many petulant letters embedded in well-designed structures?

This is the exact sort of passive-aggressive Rich Old Man Grumpiness I can get behind

#childrensrights

I think one of the most damaging ideologies towards children is the conviction that having children isn’t a calling but a moral obligation.

The perfect drink to wash down my ape biscuits

There's an open pit in the middle of our office plan that drops down into a bunch of very sharp spikes that kill you instantly. This is bad. People keep falling in there and dying. Someone put a sign up, the other day, all bright yellow so you can't miss it, that says "Beware!!! Spikes!!!"

The office immediately split into two factions over it. One says that if anyone falls in the spike pit it's their own fault for being so stupid and not watching where they're walking, so we should remove the sign. The other says that the sign is an insult, there shouldn't be a spike pit in our office at all, and having the sign up like that is just normalising the existence of the spike pit, so we should remove the sign.

We ended up removing the sign. Probably for the better. Still... for a while there it looked like it might have worked...

Arguably, wikipedia is the most peer reviewed source

For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, then, there was an Irish or a German girl scrubbing floors in that middle-class home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making “ladies”’ dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.

The Way We Never Were, Stephanie Coontz. 2016 edition.