Everything is happening So Much, all the time, and it’s hard to keep up. Did you realize we had the Olympics this year?? AND The golden state killer was finally arrested in April. I would’ve guessed both these huge events were at least two years ago.

There was also: the former Russian agent and his daughter poisoned, the Parkland high school shooting, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle got hitched (and fam’d up), France won the World Cup in Russia, the trade war started, Jamal Khashoggi was murdered, Bolsonaro was elected in Brazil, the synagogue shooting and MAGA mail bomber, and that’s just a quick scroll through Wikipedia! I am barely scraping the surface of Yikes that is constantly happening.

2018 has completely ruined our sense of time, so much that even weekly its hard to keep all the ridiculous news straight. I wanted to take space that isn’t the constant revolving door of twitter to highlight stories before they get swallowed up by the churning media tide.

Wether its weird right-wing twitter troll types or huge corporation news, foreign affairs or voter suppression in rural America, each of these stories effects the world in an important way. When I spend time on twitter, maybe I throw a choice line out about it. Maybe two. Here I can expand more on issues I think are important. Or I can point and laugh a little longer. The world needs balance.

Laura Loomer is not a name everyone will know, and that’s definitely for the best. She’s a far-right troll famous mostly for getting banned from rideshade services because she complained about Muslim drivers. Loomer loves big dramatic stunts centering her opinions (she also once tried to stir drama saying her tires were slashed, when they were really just old and cracked) and managed to get everyone talking about her this week. She chained herself to a door at Twitter HQ to protest her ban from the site. This was, naturally, because of Anti-Muslim comments she made. Loomer may be thrilled with the exposure, but she a) did not get back on twitter, b) got dunked on A TON, so I think it all works out.  Oh, did I mention that Laura was also wearing a huge Star of David, Holocaust-style?

Labory Secretary Acosta and his role in Jeffrey Epstein. Acosta is a former Miami prosecutor that worked out a deal with this billionaire sex trafficking predator because he is powerful. Epstein has friends that include the Clintons and Trumps so naturally, he only served 18 months in prison. Yet he’s ruined at least 30, and possibly even hundreds, of lives. The whole account is intensely disgusting for the varied ways we failed these women. Secretary Acosta has claimed he didn’t think Epstein’s joke of a sentence would actually be a joke, and most likely nothing will happen to him either. Aside from him now being out of the running for a job that Trump doesn’t seem super eager to re-fill right away.

Facebook has been having a pretty shit year. There’s been a security breach where millions of users data was exposed. They misreported metrics regarding video and have essentially cratered an industry.

And now they are delving right into the anti-Semitic paranoid fray with the admission that they hired a company to do opposition research on George Soros. Soros’s name has become a ^[1]signal for the far right, a stand-in for The Jews™ at large. Cue the jokes about Leaning In to anti-Semitism!  It’s hard to parse the idea that they find these conspiracy theories disgusting (as Sheryl Sandberg has said publicly) after admitting to hire a company whose only job for them was looking into Soros’s finances. Facebook has nourished it’s own Conspiracy Theory Grow Kit and who knows what will come out of that.

George HW Bush had the foresight to die on the eve of World AIDS Day, which is fitting in a shitty ironic sort of way. This will not be for everyone, but as someone who makes a lot of jokes about death, I was excited. Death Twitter is a special gift from the Internet Gods. A community Christmas, scrolling through the timeline where everyone is talking about one thing, retweeting the funniest takes, just basking in the warmth of a shared experience.

We all find different ways to sum up a person’s life, especially within however many characters are the current Twitter limit. When your legacy includes something literally called the highway of death, things aren’t going to be all nice. The Nation has an obit that outlines much of HW’s worst offenses: his stance on AIDS, the Willie Horton ad, subjecting us to a lifetime of Clarence Thomas, the War on Drugs.

Let’s also not forget how many women have come to accuse him of sexual harassment in recent years. There’s a lot to be said about the way eulogies and obits will gloss over the worst parts of powerful people to present them as down to earth and Just Like Us! and it’s honestly gross but all I can do to fight back is share the truth, and what I find amusing now that HW is gone.

Goodbye, Old White Man. Here’s the best tweets about you:

In lieu of flowers the family of George H.W. Bush requests that you honor his memory by making a donation to finance a really racist political attack ad.

— Frank Conniff (@FrankConniff) December 1, 2018

RIP David Cop-a-Feel 💔

— Bill Corbett (@BillCorbett) December 1, 2018

This is your brain on an Ivy League creative writing programhttps://t.co/D7nQemq3GY

— irreducibly nice guy (@kenklippenstein) December 1, 2018

ok I’ll stop.

*siren emoji*THE CARAVAN*siren emoji* is troubling really because many LGBTQIA folx within are having difficulty getting sponsored in the US. Please take a moment to read what they are going through, and if you are of means consider donating to the Santa Fe Dreamers Project, who are taking on the cases of the trans women who are seeking asylum.

This weasel received a medal from the outgoing Mexican President. His face will forever haunt me. AMLO got sworn in today, maybe he can ask for it back.