A WHOLE ARTICLE ABOUT BOB SEGER’S “NIGHT MOVES” WHICH IS A GREAT SONG:
I had taken some time off the road to write. I had some money from “Live Bullet” so I bought a nice house. Nothing spectacular, but it had a huge basement so the band could play. I wrote my brains out. The one that got me stuck was “Night Moves.” It took me six months to write. I had the ending [“I woke last night to the sound of thunder, how far off I sat and wondered”] but I didn’t know how to get there.
The history of lethal injection, and why it’s become such a disaster (I don’t support the death penalty at all, but it’s bananas that we can painlessly and swiftly euth 1200 pound horses with a single syringe and human executions just get sloppier and worse):
As a consequence, the death penalty has undergone in the past five years its biggest transformation since states began switching to lethal injection decades ago. As thiopental disappeared, states began executing prisoners with experimental one-, two-, or three-drug cocktails. States have essentially been improvising what is supposed to be one of their gravest and most deliberate duties, venturing deep into the shadows to carry out executions. They have turned to mail-order pharmaceutical suppliers and used untested drugs. They have sidestepped federal drug laws, minimized public disclosure, and, on multiple occasions, announced changes to execution protocols just hours before prisoners were set to die. The machinery of death in the United States has become a kluge.
If you “enjoyed” Blackfish, you should read Death at SeaWorld, which has consumed my free time this week. So many depressing details they couldn’t fit into the depressing movie!
Jolie Kerr answers the question “what to do if I have mushrooms growing in my bathtub?” WHAT. MOVE. BURN IT DOWN. CRY.
The not good that’s happening is that you’ve almost certainly got water and wood rot going on behind the bathroom walls. Which means a few things are probably occurring. The first is that, in addition to the fungus that’s leading to the mushroom growth, there’s likely a whole bunch of mold growing back there, and that’s a no-no, health-wise, since prolonged exposure to mold can cause all manner of allergic and respiratory issues. The other big thing you need to worry about is the wood rot, because, you know, eventually the walls could just fall down around you.
Why is there still a colossal backlog of untested rape kits? Why don’t we know how many there are?
Longtime sexual assault researcher Rebecca Campbell, who is a professor of ecological-community psychology at Michigan State University, told RH Reality Check that social science studies suggest there are at least 200,000 untested kits.
But to get actual numbers would require obtaining records from each city—and potentially, each precinct—in the nation, because rape kits, along with other DNA evidence, are usually gathered and tested at the local level, with no centralized state or federal record keeping. Indeed, there is no single rape kit “backlog,” but rather, thousands of individual backlogs scattered throughout jurisdictions with varying laws, funding, and priorities.
Cherished friend of The Toast Matt “Ofjaya” Lubchansky is recovering from a very expensive and aggravating bike wreck/subsequent surgery, so if you want to hire him for stuff or buy prints, I would do that! He is the fastest illustrator I have ever worked with, and you never have to remind him to include people of color (you would be surprised how often that comes up with artists!) and his work is always just gorgeous and vibrant and funny.
