Showdown at the Tenacious Unicorn Ranch

In an effort to get away from the trans haters and their constant persecution, a group of trans people went out to a remote part of Colorado to start the Tenacious Unicorn Ranch, to grow alpacas and other animals and to provide a safe haven for other trans and non-binary folk. They hope that theirs will be the first of many across the country. But when word got out to the local townspeople about who had moved there, some of them tried to force them away.

Samantha Bee’s show had a report on what went down.

To my mind, alpacas look like a creation of the Star Wars special effects team.

Who hasn’t encountered people like this?

Who hasn’t encountered people in the workplace who are never satisfied with what others do but feel that they have to make suggestions for improvement even if they have no idea what they want or are completely unable to articulate it?

No one? I thought so.

Incidentally, the sound engineer who does not speak at all says the most with his expressions.

The importance of background knowledge in humor

Cartoonists have a very difficult task because they do not have space to fill in all the necessary information and have to use images to convey a lot of background information so that people get the joke. But in doing so, they are heavily dependent on the reader getting the allusions.

As an example of how much background knowledge is needed for humor, take this cartoon.

(Speed Bump)

To get the joke, you have to recognize the person as William Shakespeare. You have to know that he was a playwright and thus his works were performed by actors, that many of his plays were done at the Globe theater, and be familiar with the aphorism written on his shirt.

This makes humor hard to cross cultural boundaries.

The unconscionable tragedy that the US created in Afghanistan

On his show Last Week Tonight, John Oliver castigates all four presidents (Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden) and the members of their administrations as well as the US military and intelligence agencies for the disaster that they created that has led to massive tragedy for the long-suffering Afghan people.

This appalling situation reveals once again that when your basic policy goals are flawed, you start on a road which eventually leads nowhere, however many resources one assigns to it.