Fluff

Hundreds of Goobers; Nary a Brain Cell

It is time to celebrate Golden Retrievers. Also, Texas needs to calm the hell down, the cartoon people are trying to unionize, the US Fed launches instant money transfer, Russia is shelling Ukrainian food exports, and the day we set foot on the moon.

Endeavorance

Jul 21, 2023 — 4 min read

OKAY BUT DOGS THO

DOGS. Specifically, Golden Retrievers! It's the 155th anniversary of the Golden Retriever breed of dog, and so a gathering is taking place in Scotland with hundreds of Goldens running around and wagging and barking and just go watch the video I swear its so worth it.

Golden Retrievers were apparently bred to be a birding dog which was suited for the Scottish highlands climate. I don't know the specifics as to why the Scottish highlands called for the floofiest tails, but I'm so here for it.

Hey Texas, Fucking Stop

Texas has been at the forefront of the "stop abortion at all costs" efforts driven by fascists. These literal monsters would prefer to use the power of the law to put pregnant people's lives at risk because they can't comprehend medical nuance. Or, y'know, the concept of a woman being an autonomous human. Can't be having that, can we?

As the nightmarish stories pile up in Texas, women, physicians and healthcare advocates are asking for Texas to fucking chill for a second and clarify their rules, because right now they've got a situation where nobody is quite sure what counts as an exception, doctors are afraid to perform abortions because of massive legal blowback, and so people are being forced to carry nonviable pregnancies to term knowing full well that the baby will die immediately and possibly take the mother with it.

It is a ghoulish overreach and nobody wants this bullshit. The vast majority of the residents of the United States of America do not support total abortion bans. Once again it all boils down to sad, scared fascists who can no longer reach climax unless they're using their position of authority to abuse vulnerable populations.

Eat actual shit, Greg Abbott.

Even More Union Stuff; We Love Even More Union Stuff

Nearly 100 production staff members from Warner Bros and Cartoon Network have filed a petition for a union election as labor movements across the US are starting to gain steam. This is a very early step in the process and is far from "there's a union now," but is yet another inspiring tip of a domino as workers begin to band back together and demand more.

The folks who are petitioning to vote for a union are across all specialties, similar to the recent unionization effort at SEGA which resulted in the AEGIS Union, representing a wide range of multidisciplinary employees.

Said another way: literally everyone is unhappy with their job. It's not limited to one field. It's all of 'em. So, solidarity. The entertainment industry is grueling and the people who work tirelessly to bring laughs and stories to our lives deserve to have a thriving wage and a comfortable standard of living, just as the rest of us do.

The US Federal Reserve Finally Reaches 2010's

The US Federal Reserve has launched FedNow, a service for banking and financial institutions to instantly transfer money on behalf of clients at any time of day and any day of the year. In theory, this will end the era of "payments will settle in several business days" and hopefully the era of "pay a surchage for an instant transfer!"

I used to work at a financial technology company. The entire game there is to try and simplify moving money around and profit by taking a cut of the money being moved around. All of that exists largely because institutions are working on extremely outdated systems that they have virtually no intention to upgrade because it'd be costly and simply remove an income stream. So instead, the Fed is doing it, which on the one hand undermines all those intitutions, while on the other hand is directly beneficial to literally everyone except those institutions. Many other countries have had instant transfer systems like this in place for years, so this is really just playing catch-up.

Ukraine Ports Under Heavy Attack Due To Old Man Hubris

Putin—well understood to be a fuckin' dweeb—has been relentlessly attacking ports in southern Ukraine where grain shipments are sent out to neighboring countries, one of Ukraine's largest exports. There was a deal in place to ensure that shipments would not be attacked during the war in an effort to prevent a humanitarian crisis, but Putin does not give a shit about creating a humanitarian crisis because Putin is himself a humanitarian crisis.

For the past three nights, Russia has shelled port cities, making shipping routes impassable and killing civilians. Russia's reasoning is that this is retribution for the destruction of a strategic bridge between Russia and the annexed region of Crimea.

On This day…

On this day in 1969, humans walked on the moon for the first time as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out of their spacecraft as a part of the Apollo missions.

Armstrong is famously recorded saying, "That's one small step for (a) man; one giant leap for mankind"