Australia's planet-roaster government proposes to spend lots of money building dams that may not serve any other purpose. Nominally they will collect water for irrigation, but they have not been chosen to provide useful irrigation. They were chosen to reward a right-wing governing party's voters.

One thing they will surely do is release lots of CO2 as the concrete sets.

*US justice department appeals mask mandate ruling after CDC request.*

DeSantis has found a way to bully Disney into silence on the question of queer rights, by proposing a law that would take away Disney's special privileges — in 2023. This means that that the law would pressure Disney to keep quiet for the 2022 election.

This contest pitches one kind of corruption against another. Companies such as Disney should not have much political influence on elections; that influence is how plutocracy works. That power undermines democracy.

However, Republicans also undermine democracy.

Woe is my country, caught between these dangers.

A study of gun violence records from California shows that starting to live in a house where there is a gun correlates with increased danger of being killed by domestic violence, and is no protection against killing by strangers.

Workers in a major Apple store seek to unionize. As long as Apple stores exist, it would be good for their workers to have a union — but due to the injustice of Apple's hardware and software, what we should really wish for is the elimination of Apple's products (along with products running Android and Windows).