Good news for Texans who like butts! And fart jokes!

After a case spurred by complaints on books containing the words “butt” and “fart” as well as touching on the topics of racism and LGBTQ+ identity, an appellate court has ruled that Texas cannot ban books from libraries simply because officials “dislike the idea contained in those books”.

The fifth US circuit court of appeals issued its decision on Thursday in a 76-page majority opinion, which was written by Judge Jacques Wiener Jr and opened with a quote from American poet Walt Whitman: “The dirtiest book in all the world is the expurgated book.”

In its decision, the appellate court declared that “government actors may not remove books from a public library with the intent to deprive patrons of access to ideas with which they disagree”.

Maybe Texas will catch up to Minnesota. We have a new law, passed at the end of the legislative session, that prohibits all that book banning that Republicans love.

There were some major bills that did not pass in the chaotic last days of the Minnesota legislative session. One bill that did pass prohibits public and school libraries from banning a book “based solely on its viewpoint or the messages, ideas or opinions it conveys.” It also protects library employees from discipline against them for complying with the new rules.

It’s not all good news. Among the important bill blocked by the chaos of obstructionist Republicans were the bonds to improve university facilities.

On May 20, 2024, the Minnesota Legislature adjourned sine die without garnering the 60% of votes required to pass a capital investment bill funded by general obligation bonds. Despite both parties citing bonding as a top priority in the beginning of the session, politics between the two parties, fueled in part by the upcoming House elections, prevented them from striking a deal. The Minnesota Legislature ran out of time to pass a smaller, cash-only bonding bill before the constitutionally mandated time of adjournment.

I guess we’ll struggle along, as always. At least we can assign textbooks that feature butts!

This guy wants to be our president again, so he was demonstrating his perspicacity with a riveting speech at a rally.

My story begins in nineteen-dickety-two. We had to say dickety because the Kaiser had stolen our word twenty. I chased that rascal to get it back, but gave up after dickety-six miles. Then after World War Two, it got kinda quiet, ’til Superman challenged FDR to a race around the world. FDR beat him by a furlong, or so the comic books would have you believe. The truth lies somewhere in between. Three wars back we called Sauerkraut “liberty cabbage” and we called liberty cabbage “super slaw” and back then a suitcase was known as a “Swedish lunchbox.” We can’t bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell ’em stories that don’t go anywhere – like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on ’em. Give me five bees for a quarter, you’d say. Ah, there’s an interesting story behind that nickel. In 1957, I remember it was, I got up in the morning and made myself a piece of toast. I set the toaster to three: medium brown.Now where were we? Oh yeah: the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn’t have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones…

Whoops, wait, sorry. That’s Grandpa Simpson’s speech from the TV show. It’s pretty much the same thing, but in the interests of accuracy, here’s what the brain-damaged fascist actually said.

It must be because of MIT, my relationship with MIT, very smart, I say, what would happen if the boat sank from its weight, & you’re in the boat, & you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery’s now under water, & there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there—by the way, a lot of shark attacks lately, do you notice that?—I watched some guys justifying it today, ‘Well they weren’t really that angry, they bit off the young lady’s leg because of the fact that they weren’t hungry but they misunderstood who she was.’

Note: he had an uncle who taught at MIT. That’s the extent of the “relationship,” he did not graduate from MIT, he did not attend MIT, he did not have lunch from a food truck in the Kendall/MIT Open Space. He just launched into this rambling nonsense because he doesn’t like vehicles that don’t burn guzzoline.

This was at a rally in Nevada, which is land-locked, and where they don’t have many shark attacks. None, actually.

…These people are quick. He said, ‘there’s no problem with sharks, they just didn’t really understand a young woman swimming,” no really got decimated and other people too, a lot of shark attacks. So I said, ‘there’s a shark 10 yards away from the boat, 10 yards, or here. Do I get electrocuted if the boat is sinking, water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking? Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted?

His mind wanders. This was a part of the speech that was supposed to be about electric vehicles, he’s somehow leapt the track and is babbling about sharks, and now he has invented a new moral dilemma about sharks and electrocution.

…Because I will tell you, he didn’t know the answer. He said, ‘You know, nobody’s ever asked me that question.’ I said, ‘I think it’s a good question. I think there’s a lot of electric current coming through that water.’ But you know what I’d do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted? I’ll take electrocution every single time. I’m not getting near the shark. So we’re going to end that, we’re going to end it for boats, we’re going to end it for trucks.

Please do take electrocution. Any time.

If you want an actual scientific opinion on the subject, Andrew Thaler has one.

I would just point out that in the cinema classic Jaws 2, the danger was resolved by having the big bad shark bite an underwater power cable, ending the shark menace until Jaws 3-D.