listen, we know supermarkets are crazy these days because of all your last-minute christmas shopping, but seriously - there should be a minimum age required to use self-checkout lanes. we love the idea of not having to interact with another human being to purchase items, especially when those items happen to be six pints of ice cream and a single spoon, we just can’t stand waiting for the otherwise nice 60-year-old grandma in front of us figure out how to use a barcode scanner. 

1. a school shooting just a few miles away from where we live took place earlier this week, ending with four dead children and a teenage suspect being charged with murder and terrorism as an adult. it’s surreal driving around town with christmas parades cancelled and flags lowered, but also, unfortunately, a normal occurrence here in ‘murica. if it seems a bit more traumatic than usual, it’s because it’s the deadliest school shooting since 2018, and the deadliest ever in michigan.
2. while some of the injured are still in the hospital, families are already beginning to question who’s at fault here, other than the terrorist himself. the school itself had safety concerns about the boy, and repeatedly assured parents that oxford high was safe for their children to attend. the suspect’s parents were arrested and are being charged with involuntary manslaughter for purchasing the gun used in the massacre for their son, and apparently resisting the school’s attempts to get psychiatric help for him. the suspect’s parents fled oxford for detroit, where they were arrested while hiding in a warehouse. oh, the irony of reverse white flight...
3. in any case, the true responsible parties here are politicians who stand in the way of common sense gun control, most of whom these days are republican. the last time any new gun control laws were passed nationally were in the 1990’s, when the brady bill mandated background checks and waiting periods for gun purchases. now, we wouldn’t be doing our jobs if we didn’t point out that while an even-then-somehow-ancient Joe Biden shepherded the bill through his committee, a young whippersnapper named Bernie Sanders voted against that common sense gun control measure...

• (AFP) some old guy just casually saunters past a sinking ship off the coast of istanbul. ahh, what it would be like to be this jaded by life...

1. the november jobs report was released this week, and man are we (and economists) a little weirded out. on the one hand, half the number of new jobs were created compared to what was expected - 210,000 versus the projected 550,000. on the other hand, the unemployment rate still dropped to 4.2%, and the percentage of americans...