For example:

School students across the country today plan to walk out of class in demand for stronger gun control laws.

The group Students Demand Action called for students across the country to walk out of class at 12 p.m.

The group is reacting to the recent mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas that killed 19 school children and two educators.

My new favorite Facebook entity, Bots Of New York, a computer generated parody of Humans Of New York.

Bot[s?] write little stories. Here's the latest:

“My name is Rikki Flicker. I’m a cosplay and image consultant cosplayer. I’ve worked as an image consultant for more than a decade. And I’ve been cosplaying even longer than that. The characters I’ve done are diverse and realistic. Sometimes they’re stupid. Sometimes they’re tough. But then there’s Darth Popo. Someone who’s gross on the inside, and not overly concerned with the outside world. He secretly wants to be the greatest pop star ever, but he’s got a drinking problem and doesn’t take well to social situations. Last weekend he won the Goldman Sachs Mind Games Superstardom Trophy. And in true Darth Popo fashion, he gave a riveting acceptance speech: ‘I want to play a song that brings an entire generation of people together,’ he said. Then he lifted his glass of champagne, and spoke into a microphone: ‘I want to invite 100% of humanity to come live with me in a wine cellar. Let’s do lunch.’ Then he proceeded to sit down at the piano and perform his hit pop anthem, ‘Making Urine Looks Fun’. I always cry when he sings the refrain: ‘Remember that YOU ARE A NINJA / and never ever let yourself forget that part.’”

Never ever forget.

This one from earlier today was also nice:

“I’ve got geese in my ear. I’ve got a gecko on my face. I’ve got at least four different varieties of the American geese on my teeth. Geests Tickle the ivy. Vicky Tickles the face. Even my lowers do not belong to me. The goose goshes around my waist. The twins prank my frogs. The distant car alarms call my name. I close my eyes and listen for the buzzing. I’ve been closed for 4 hours. Every day I slow down. I sleep with the goose in my hand. It’s a nightmare. My family is fleeing the country. They won’t answer their phones. They’re culture war sweethearts who went the way of the zebra. It’s been four years now. I keep calling. I keep praying. I keep writing the name of the butterfly but I can’t get it out. It’s just too deep. There’s just too much venom.”

The Washington Post has spent years tracking how many children have been exposed to gun violence during school hours since the Columbine High massacre in 1999.

Beyond the dead and wounded, children who witness the violence or cower behind locked doors to hide from it can be profoundly traumatized.

The federal government does not track school shootings, so The Post pieced together its numbers from news articles, open-source databases, law enforcement reports and calls to schools and police departments.

While school shootings remain rare, there were more in 2021 — 42 — than in any year since at least 1999. So far this year, there have been at least 24 acts of gun violence on K-12 campuses during the school day.

The count now stands at more than 311,000 children at 331 schools.

311,000 kids are going to grow up with strong opinions about guns. Hopefully they'll end this madness.

Was that painful.

The doctor warned me that the nerve blocking injections he gave were only going to block about 40% of the pain. And he was probably right about that. After the fluid injection, which I thankfully did not feel, I think he stretched-out my shoulder four times. And I have never felt pain like that. Just blinding all-consuming pain. I did heard the scar tissue breaking up on the third one! I couldn't hear during the first two. Whole thing took about 20 minutes. But wow. Ten of them were insane.

And after that I was an absolute wreck. I could barely walk. I think I shook in my chair for a good ten minutes, trying to calm down, trying to get my breathing under control, completely unable to move my right arm (because of the nerve blockers), just trying to think straight.

So... I would recommend sedation. Or at least a Valium or something.

My shoulder responded to two months of physical therapy by becoming more sore and more immobile.

PT people said "This ain't workin. Maybe you should talk to an orthopedist?" So I did.

Ortho doc said "Sounds like a tear. Get an MRI." So Monday I did.

Tuesday I got my MRI results from the hospital network's cool online info sharing network thing, and... holy crap!

"Distal supraspinatus tendinosis with partial-thickness interstitial tear/articular sided tear along the anterior margin of the distal supraspinatus at the insertional footprint traversing approximately 50% of the thickness of the cuff" And "posterior inferior labral tear" and "possible low-grade SLAP tear".

!!!

To my ears, and Google's pictures, that sure sounds like the kind of thing that leads to surgery. So that meant two days of "Oh great. Shoulder surgery. What will the next six months of recovery be like? Who will mow the lawn? Shit."

Today, Thursday, I talked with Ortho doc and he said surgery wasn't needed. Take an MRI of the shoulder of anyone who is active and over 50 and you'll find tears. If the tendon had completely torn in half, he'd operate (and I'd be screaming, not wondering about mowing the lawn). But he said I needed to get the adhesive capsulitis fixed. OK. How?

"High-volume fluid injection with steroids, followed by manipulation". They're going to inject a lot of mystery fluid into my shoulder joint and then grab my arm and crank on it until the joint loosens up. They're going to frack my shoulder joint. And I won't be sedated for this. Yipes.

I guess it beats surgery?

In case you needed any further proof that the modern anti-abortion movement is an outgrowth of many centuries of virulent misogyny and violence against women, Justice Samuel Alito’s leaked opinion draft striking down Roe v. Wade relies heavily on a 17th century English jurist who had two women executed for “witchcraft,” wrote in defense of marital rape, and believed capital punishment should extend to kids as young as 14.

“Two treatises by Sir Matthew Hale,” Alito wrote in his argument to end legal abortion across America, “described abortion of a quick child who died in the womb as a ‘great crime’ and a ‘great misprision.’ See M. Hale, Pleas of the Crown.”

How interesting that Alito would cite Pleas of the Crown! That’s the text, published in 1736, 60 years after Hale’s death, that defended and laid the foundation for the marital rape exemption across the world. Let’s go straight to the text:

“For the husband cannot be guilty of a rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife for by their mutual matrimonial consent and contract the wife hath given up herself in this kind unto her husband which she cannot retract,” Hale wrote.