Newsletter: Once more for the people in the back

According to KnowYourMeme.com, contemporary use of the phrase “this is fine” to mean the exact opposite comes from a comic called Gunshow. The specific strip featuring the dog in the burning building denying that anything is wrong is subtitled “The Pills Are Working.”

See also “having a normal one,” or “having a very normal day,” meaning losing your goddamn mind.

So, anyway.
As white supremacist protestors were escorted off the National Mall this week, they exchanged fist-bumps with police.
As Ed Burmila warned us a year ago, Trump is determined to emulate Australia’s disastrous and inhumane immigration policies.
University of Alaska faces 41% budget cut.
ProPublica got access to a secret CBP/ICE employee Facebook group featuring roughly 9,500 members trading horrific racist jokes about dead migrants. Meanwhile, border agency staff are killing themselves in record numbers.
The poll tax returns to Florida.

And in creeping horror news
Climate change promises an increase in “supernests” of yellowjackets and other wasps, formed when mild winters permit more of a colony to survive throughout a year. These nests can grow to the size of compact cars and house tens of thousands of wasps at once.

BLDGBLOG notes that this would be the perfect setting for a post-apocalyptic horror movie: “unwary climate refugees of the near-future hiking through the forests of a superheated American South… approaching a super nest the size of train yard, its buzzing mistaken for the hopeful drone of distant machinery. ”

And also
This incredible drowned town.
This series of black NYC history tweets.
Toronto’s Garfield-themed restaurant.

Cultivating joy
This almost circular dog.
This high-jumping cat.