Lawnmower Boy

Once, a long time ago, I would be happy that sanity had won out. But since we've had Soylent and Juiceroo and Thanatos and raw water and ridesharing and that subletting company. We're really dumb. Or too many people have too much money. Or both.

Boo? Yay? Lost Boys was great but I liked it when he won all those car races.

"That could have been anyone."

This is good to hear, and if there is one consolation to take from the events of the last few weeks, it is the expected upsurge in funding for museums,archives and field archaeology that will follow from this belated realisation of the importance of history.

Well aren't you a Negative Nellie. Turn that frown upside down and whistle a happy tune until your liquified lung snorts out your nostrils!

Ooh... Now, on the one hand, if there's any guy in OOTS who needs some of Durkon's counselling, it's got to be Redcloak. Unfortunately, on the other hand, Redcloak knows Implosion.

Oh, people understand. We're going with the "Stopping coronavirus is hard, and so we gave up" strategy.

With respect, we have a double selection bias here. For a person to die in police custody, they have to be, first, called to the attention of the police. And, second, to have experienced more serious consequences from that encounter. The first suggests that most of these individuals will be apprehended while committing crimes or crime-adjacent activity. They will be "felons resisting arrest." The second is an issue because these cases have to come before us. Plenty of people experience police brutality and extricate themselves without much harm. Their cases do not come before the public because it is very hard to interest the public in a case in which a coed complains that the officer who cuffed them in order to charge them with shoplifting (but then changed their mind when it became clear that there was no shoplifting), put on the cuffs too roughly. A dead body is usually our starting point, and for there to be a dead body suggests some fragility in the victim, most often due either to either mental health or substance abuse issues. In short, your police brutality cases will normally involve someone who can be cast as having "deserved it." And that's leaving aside cases where juvenile records are dragged into the case. We take our injustices as we find them. Social out groups exist in every society, and their experience is a continuum. They're not just arrested, or killed while resisting arrest, in disproportionate numbers. People just simply treat them worse, and this is something everyone has to deal with, from school principals to HR to grocery store managers. Unless that's done, they will fail school for no reason, be turned away for jobs, and be arrested for shoplifting in circumstances that quickly go south. As a supervisor, I take it for granted that some of my cashiers, most of whom have issues of their own, will fight with out group customers on a regular basis. I take it for granted that some who aren't normally bullies will slip into bad habits and have to be reined back, or have bad days and need to be removed from the situation. I take it for granted that these things will happen to me. People can, and will, deny the very existence of out groups, and rationalise their treatment. Korean-Japanese, Canadian First Nations, Roma, Irish --every society has out groups and we can almost infallibly predict disproportionate rates of death in police encounters, adverse economic and educational outcomes, elevated rates of substance abuse. It's human nature, and it's on socially dominant groups to keep these trends in check. Giving into them is disastrous for a police force, an economy, a grocery store.

Why, yes, I think it is time for R'lyeh to re-emerge, thank you very much, 2020.

Annie: "Sex!" Jeff: "At some point you hit a point of diminishing returns."

Fortunately, I'm told that the olds are eager to throw themselves from the train to get the economy going again. I usually define "old" as about ten years older than me, but maybe we need to narrow it down a bit? In other words, come your next birthday, you'll see the light, prof. Speaking of things that will happen in the future, I see that Texas, at 59,107 historic cases per worldometer compared with Pennsylvania's 73,662 and Michigan's 55,608, has 2038 cases per million of population compared with roughly 5700 per million in the bracketing states, and that with 416 million deaths per million for Pennsylvania and 534 million for Michigan, compared with Texas at 55 deaths per million, there is ample room For Texas to converge with its neighbours (in the Worldometer chart) at a much higher human toll. The Texas Tribune says that the current status quo is 34 new virus deaths a day, at which rate Worldometer's projection of Texas hitting 2,985 Covid deaths by August 4 2020 seems optimistic. To their credit, the official statements from the state government seem much more sensible and measured than what one hears refracted through opinion journalism. That said, minimising the tragedy that Texas is continuing to experience, does not seem helpful.

I miss Comics Alliance, but I do go to CBR for my nerdly fix.

Pogo graduates college in the next installment!

The black people did the bad thing once, so they deserve it.

The Moon hasn't eaten lately, and it's feeling faint.

Something's wrong with this train of thought, but I can't quite see it. Oh, well, guess I'll just make fun of Aquaman and get to work.

Yeah. Some of us work hard every day to be idiots!

That's not a mentally ill Canadian. He's not having a breakdown at the customer service desk.

Welp, now that the long weekend is over and the labs are reporting again. . . As a fun distraction from the ongoing global apocalypse with America as the on-fire-but-ignoring-it cheerleader, I've decided to look at the state active cases and deaths totals as a race. Hey, there's not much else in the way of sports, and, while they represent dead and dying people, they're not me and I don't know them. Unless they're my American cousins. Please God, don't let them be my American cousins. Ahem. The point here is that you can forget about all the death and suffering and poverty and just root for Texas, Georgia, Iowa and Nebraska to keep on climbing those league tables. I'm watching Texas chase Michigan since forever, and I can tell you, my heart's in my mouth. Georgia has further to go, but a few days ago I thought it would never beat Connecticut, but while I don't like the way that the state isn't opening up a solid lead, I have some faith that we're going to hear an "Oh, my bad" upwards correction in a few days that will put Michigan in Georgia's sights. I just know that Virginia can overtake Louisiana, while there's a whole bunch of states that stand to get by Washington in the next week. Including Iowa. There's literally no limits to Iowa's surge up the standings so far. It's showing more leg than Nebraska, and that's saying something. Meanwhile, a big old scolding to Kentucky, Utah, Oregon and Hawaii, all of which have great potential that they're completely squandering. So disappointing.

Makes sense.

Just spitballing here, but have you guys considered nationalizing your healthcare industry?

Youth is wasted on the young and that's why I'm ripping if from their veins and discarding their drained carcasses.

It sounds to me like you guys tried to turn off the main drag into the posh Shaughnessy neighbourhood. The street grid has been designed to keep you lot out, thank you very much. For some reason two major north-south bike routes and one east west are threaded through the same area, and that's fine. I don't get it, but I do enjoy the quiet commute through the nice houses.

British Columbia, you darn hillbilly! And you should work on your French. It's the language of love.

Well, I can think of at least one other very nice oceanside province you could have chosen. But don't worry, I'm not offended. You do you. ..... Okay, maybe a bit offended.