This Week's Opening Thought: August 24, 2026

This week’s opening thought: Target tried to sell kids’ glow-in-the-dark minstrel costumes. In 2026. Alrighty then.

This Week's Opening Thought: July 27, 2026

This week's opening thought: We live in a country currently embroiled in an unnecessay war that has cost us lives and resources. Domestically, people can barely afford to live and feed themselves and their families. Lettuce is giving people explosive diarrhea because the little food standards we do have in this country have been obliterated. People are dying at the hands of domestic terrorists posing as a government-funded law enforcement agency. Unemployment is high. Gas prices are high. Our rights are being taken away from us on the daily. Black, Brown, and trans communities are being terrorized and are in a constant state of danger. But you know what's most important to a whole lot of y'all?

That The Odyssey movie has Black and Brown folx in it.

You know, Homer's Odyssey. The one with the cyclops and giants and sea creatures and sh--.

Well, a whole bunch of y'all [*cough* people of pallor *cough*] are vocally mad that an obviously made-up story about Greeks and Romans made into a major motion picture with CGI special effects isn't "historically accurate."

Because that's definitely much more important than the *motions all around me at the raging dumpster fires surrounding us all*.

And this is why white supremacy is a joke. Albeit a dangerous, fragile joke but a joke nonetheless.

How can anyone take people of pallor seriously when these are the stupid personal odysseys through mediocrity and fragility that y'all constantly embark on in lieu of being legitimately up in arms and standing with your fellow citizens against all of the oppressive states we should be in solidarity to fight against?

Nope. Y'all gotta roll with that bigotry, hate, fragility, and racism until the wheels fall off on the most ridiculous sh--.

I can't imagine how goofy it must feel to be constantly at war with ghosts and believe you're "in danger" because you can't stop drinking the faux superiority Kool-Aid and see that the real enemies are within. And how extra-goofy it must be to tell yourself that this isn’t goofy and to paint it as some kind of “white pride” or thinly-constructed justification for why you think these kinds of things are important to upholding your identities.

What a dumb Trojan Horse to be constantly duped by.

This Week's Opening Thought: July 13, 2026

This week's opening thought: A whole lot of y'all seem to be, for some reason, distraught that people aren't handin' out thoughtful eulogies to a man who spent around 30 years of his life doing more harm than good to countless melanated and queer communities.

Note: When I say a whole lot of y'all, I'm talking about large numbers of people of pallor and the melanated and/or queer pallor apologists who long for pallor to embrace them and use them to fight their own people like Pokemon (i.e. the Cory Bookers of the world).

So, because some of y'all are really on one about how many of us have chosen to dogwalk a man who weaponized his internal self-hatred and chose to devote his life to legislative violence and harm, I thought I'd take a moment to offer you two thoughts so you can hopefully digest the tea better and basically shut up. And by "basically shut up," I mean that we will not be taking questions or engaging in "debates."

Alright? OK.

One: you can be a crappy human being AND someone who did one or two nice things here and there for a couple of people in your orbit. You can be both. But when you've spent a chunk of your adult life being more crappy than helpful on a large scale? Yeah, people are definitely gonna talk about the crappy things you did way more than anything nice you did. You've earned that kind of eulogy.

And if you aren't the crappy person in question but you decide to exercise a VERY selective memory to only focus on a couple of nice things the crappy person did while chastising others for focusing on the crappy things the deceased person spent their life engaging in?

You should be willing to take the L for defending a crappy person and be ten toes down with your eagerness to defend crappy people.

Two: I've lived a life that has allowed me to impact people's daily lives in a myriad of ways. I intimately know how the simplest of decisions/indecisions can dismantle a person's life. With this in mind, I have always done the work that I do from a place of humanity, acknowledging my privilege, power, and positionality while making sure I don't weaponize those things to harm others and/or benefit myself. Because of this, I know that when my time comes, the likelihood of thousands of people hopping on the internet or finding any platform they can to dogwalk me for being a hateful bag of crap that did harm to their lives is practically non-existent.

Every day, I get out of my bed and choose to live my life this way because I know the damage I can do...and I don't have anywhere near the power to alter lives that politicians have in this country.

Can you say the same about yourself and how you navigate the world? And if not, why would you expect people to "only remember the good times" when they look back on the crappy life you've led?

You can take all of that and swallow it as you see fit.

On Kansas, Transphobia, and Domestic Terrorism

TW: Transphobia.

A letter from the Kansas Division of Vehicles dated February 23, 2026, is being sent to the homes of transgender Kansans informing them that they must surrender their driver's licenses and that their current credentials will be considered invalid upon the House Substitute for Senate Bill 244’s publication in the Kansas Register on February 26.

House Substitute for Senate Bill 244 was passed on February 17, 2026, after the Kansas House overrode Governor Laura Kelly’s veto. Because of this, Kansas-issued driver's licenses and identification cards must now reflect the credential holder's “sex at birth.”

There is no grace period for updating credentials, and anyone operating a vehicle without a valid credential "may be subject to additional penalties." Those whose gender marker does not match their sex assigned at birth are directed to surrender their current credential to the Division of Vehicles for reissuance.

The consequences for noncompliance could escalate quickly. Under Kansas law, driving without a valid license is a class B misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. A conviction triggers an automatic 90-day license suspension. If a person drives during that suspension, they face a charge of driving on a suspended license, which carries a mandatory minimum of five days in jail. Kansas requires county jails to house inmates by sex assigned at birth.

This "bill" is also essentially a "Bathroom Bill", meaning that it mandates that multi-occupancy, private spaces in public buildings (such as restrooms, locker rooms, and changing rooms) are restricted to use based on biological sex. This "law" also allows individuals "aggrieved" by a violation of these privacy rules to bring a civil action, with potential for damages up to $1,000.00.

And again, there was no grace period given. This "law" is effective immediately. Schools, public buildings, businesses, even Government facilities are now all expected to scramble to help the State of Kansas employ transphobic discriminatory practices to the citizenry.

Let's keep it 100. This "law" is not about "protecting children and families" like these raggedy conservatives in Kansas want to keep stating. This law is meant to target, antagonize, profile, and terrorize anyone who is trans, non-binary, or expressing themselves in ways that do not fit the nonsensical gender binary that white supremacist culture insists we all bend the knee to.

This "bill" will protect no one. People are going to be followed into restrooms, harassed, profiled by law enforcement, and harassed by "good citizens." Kansas courts will be inundated with frivolous lawsuits from weak-willed, fragile, transphobic people insisting trans folx have done them harm by just existing in a space with them and expecting some kind of financial restitution.

This is domestic terrorism, pure and simple. And if you see it as anything other than that?

I'll let you connect the dots and label yourself.

This Week's Opening Thought: February 23, 2026

This week’s opening thought: I find it very interesting that after what appears to be three instances of a particular Black-centric racial slur being shouted out by Tourette’s Syndrome activist John Davidson at this past weekend’s BAFTA Awards (when Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo stepped onstage to present an award, while Oscar-winning production designer Hannah Beachler was on her way to dinner after the show, and a third was aimed at another Black woman minding her Black business) that suddenly so many people of pallor are experts on Tourette Syndrome.

I’m not an expert on Tourette’s, but I do understand it. I understood it before these incidents happened this past weekend. Unlike the many “concerned citizens” out there who suddenly have an opinion on Tourette’s because Black folx are collectively side-eyeing John Davidson, I didn’t need to become a Google Scholar to understand how it manifests and the struggles that folx who have Tourette’s endure. Still, I know enough about the condition as well as white supremacy to understand that a word like the one John shouted out multiple times to multiple Black people has to be a regular part of your vocabulary to use it so effortlessly three times in one night, so clearly and pointedly during a tic.

Let’s not belittle those with Tourette’s like that.

Let’s not bolster stereotypes of people with Tourette’s as a cover for a person of pallor’s likely ingrained racist beliefs.

Tourette’s targets the neurological filters that restrain language, the same filters that allow people to make concerted decisions about how they word and say things. But Tourette’s is still governed by a person’s vocabulary: words they use casually, thoughts and ideas they routinely chat about with others, beliefs they have about people, race, gender, culture, you name it. Tourette’s affects inhibition, not whether or not saying racist things is something you have no issue with saying.

I’ve known people who have Tourette’s. I’ve known people of pallor who have Tourette’s. Some of them likely had Coprolalia as well. And none of them ever said to me or around me what John said to Michael B., Delroy, Hannah, or the other Black woman he verbally assaulted this past weekend.

John may or may not be racist. That ain’t for me to judge, regardless of how it feels in my brain and body. But let’s not use his disability status as a pass for absolution. He should still be held accountable, and BAFTA should’ve done better. As for the sudden experts? Don’t be hoppin’ online, trying to check Black folx for calling out what we see or act like we don’t understand Tourette’s Syndrome or other nervous system disorders. The majority of us speak truth to power based on facts.

And don’t expect Black folx to stop side-eyeing you if you want to keep throwing another racist apologist log on the fire.