Dec 26

You know when you see something that’s so absurd you just have to take advantage? Well, I was looking for free New Year’s images and this popped up. And that’s when I thought about writing this.

There. Now, you know everything. :)

But really … remember New Year’s Day 2020? Before you-know-what came along. Before you-know-who took over Twitter. Right around the time BookTokking became a profession. Or did that happen back in the Twenty-Teens? I don’t know. I don’t much care, either.

So, on that happy note, here’s what I got for you (and I’ve only got four gift links, so I can only give away four Washington Post articles, so on behalf of myself, the Washington Post, and that guy who owns the paper, along with a hefty chunk of cloud computing power, sorry about that):

Repeat after me: the internet is not addictive. Right.

For Cassidy Hutchinson, ‘I don’t remember’ wasn’t good enough. (The only non-gift link. The rest should be gift links.)

Another great reason to put down your fucking phone and stop staring at screens.

For better or worse, billionaires now guide climate policy.

It’s a gift link, but shall I quote from this one, too? Sure, why not?

They are not elected to any office. But in the fight against global warming, the world’s billionaires have more influence than many heads of state.

Interesting. Let us read more.

They are men with household names like Jeff Bezos (net worth: $113 billion, according to Forbes) [and who also happens to own this very newspaper/digital publication], Mike Bloomberg ($77 billion) and Bill Gates ($106 billion), along with other billionaires who have lower profiles but equally large climate ambition. Their role as shadow policymakers has grown amid the evolution of the Biden administration climate agenda and the recent U.N. Climate Change Conference in Egypt, known as COP27, where their projects were on prominent display.

What an interesting term the writer used. “Shadow policymakers”. Hmm.

“This kind of hobbyist approach has become a big factor in the way we are addressing climate change,” said David Victor, co-director of the Deep Decarbonization Initiative at the University of California at San Diego. “Is this the ideal way to do it? No. The ideal way would be large publicly oriented programs. But that is not happening anywhere in the world.”
“In some cases the billionaires are making real progress,” Victor said.

Well, I’m just so glad that billionaires’ hobbies are so high-minded. At least, the ones we hear about or read about in papers owned by … never mind.

And, of course, this post wouldn’t be complete without acknowledging Dave Barry’s 2022 Year in Review, which made me laugh a lot harder than any of the funnies this morning. And never mentioned Amazon even once. Ahem! :)

But it’s the article with the two Abraham Lincoln jokes that gets the last laugh here.

“If I had two faces, would I be wearing this one?”

One day at the Willard Hotel, a waiter served him a cup of something warm and brown. “If this is coffee, please bring me tea,” Lincoln said. “And if it’s tea, please bring me coffee.”

And finally, for your viewing pleasure, one of the Censored Eleven cartoons.

I only now (at the moment of writing this) found out about the Censored Eleven, while trying to find a public domain Bugs Bunny cartoon that didn’t offend someone or other.

I found this cartoon on the Internet Archive (and YouTube, of course), a website that refuses to whitewash history and provides warnings when potentially offensive content appears there.

Here are the potential offenses:

Adult Content
Nudity
Foul Language
Racism
Anti-Semitism
Nazi Visuals
Religious Intolerance
Bigotry
Sexism
Terrible Animation

I watched this one and only noted possible Nazi Visuals, nose-poking, off-screen removal of clothing, violence, use of weapons, a bomb exploding, assault on a law officer, mocking a character with a speech defect, an execution by firing squad, singing Dixie while in blackface, and a general disrespect for authority.

Oh, and a poster or calendar with a woman on it.

PS: I just realized it’s Boxing Day! Or it will be, at any rate. :)