Book and Rant

It's a gorgeous morning here in Valhalla but temps are supposed to enter the 90s later. I suspect I'll be hiding out in the AC with Ten, Cake and a good book.

I just started a fascinating novella by Larry Niven. Death By Ecstasy was written 50+ years ago but feels awfully current.

The world’s billions wanted to live, and the organ banks were life itself. A man could live forever as long as the doctors could shove spare parts into him faster than his own parts wore out. But they could do that only as long as the world’s organ banks were stocked.

A hundred scattered movements to abolish the death penalty died silent, unpublicized deaths. Everybody gets sick sometime. 

And still there were shortages in the organ banks. Still patients died for the lack of parts to save them. The world’s legislators had responded to steady pressure from the world’s people. Death penalties were established for first, second, and third degree murder. For assault with a deadly weapon. Then for a multitude of crimes: rape, fraud, embezzlement, having children without a license, four or more counts of false advertising. For nearly a century the trend had been growing, as the world’s voting citizens acted to protect their right to live forever. 

Eventually tax evasion and multiple traffic tickets rate the death penalty.

The story is set in the 22nd century but, damn, it sounds like something the Republi/Facists would be down with right now. Can you tell me, with any amount of confidence, that Cancun Cruz, Moscow Mitch or Marjorie Three-Toes would NOT be all in favor of something like this? These traitorous, oil spill-sucking, greedheaded, grift-assed motherfuckers would personally rip out and sell newborn baby hearts if it meant they’d see even a dime’s worth of profit.
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How long will it be before a young person from Florida is unable to get a job outside of their own state? How long before Floridians are too ignorant to perform even the most simple of job functions? Not long at all if DuhSantis stays in the governor’s mansion.

All book donations and purchases have been halted in the district for the rest of the year because the new law (HB 1467) requires books to be approved for suitability by state-certified media specialists, a job that doesn’t currently exist in the district. (source)

This includes DICTIONARIES donated by the Rotary Club. FREE dictionaries but NOOOO. I guess even these are too “woke” for the anti-education Dicktator DeathSantis.

Can the tourism industry survive when the customer service folk are unable to make change or understand words of more than one syllable?
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Yesterday I mentioned that no one at my favorite bakery was wearing a mask. I’m amazed that people continue to be so cavalier about their health and that of their loved ones. Did you catch the tale about the woman who’d just given birth? The new grandparents went to visit them in the hospital and gave them both COVID.

IF there is a god, he/she/it must’ve been distracted and dog tired when creating humans came up on the calendar.

NPR looked at deaths per 100,000 people in roughly 3,000 counties across the U.S. from May 2021, the point at which vaccinations widely became available. People living in counties that went 60% or higher for Trump in November 2020 had 2.73 times the death rates of those that went for Biden. Counties with an even higher share of the vote for Trump saw higher COVID-19 mortality rates. (source)

Surprised? Of course not!