I Would Like Armor And Spikes, Too

Babe wake up, new dinosaur just dropped

Researchers on the Isle of Wight have discovered remains of a new (to us) species of dinosaur, which they have dubbed "Vectipelta barretti."

This 'saur looks pretty badass, having armor and spikes and whatnot. Really just the kind of lad you'd want on your side. However, this particular oldboi was an herbivore.

It was named after Professor Paul Barrett, who noted that "any physical resemblance is purely accidental."

Today is Juneteenth

If you're in the US, today is Juneteenth, a federal holiday celebrating the emancipation of slaves in the country.

Juneteenth has been celebrated for quite some time now. It takes place on the day that slaves in Texas were finally informed of their freedom, despite it being more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Unfortunately, there were still enslaved human beings in Kentucky and Delaware for months to come.

The US formally recognized Juneteenth as a federal holiday in 2021, more than a century too late.

Texas takes away city and county abilities to make their own policies

Just kinda in general, but also specifically.

Texas governor Abbott has signed a bill into law which is essentially just five pages of "update existing laws to say that counties and municipalities cannot amend state laws regarding… stuff".

Among the things this would fuck up is local policy around worker conditions, especially something like having water breaks for employees working in the Texas heat. Rates of heat-related job-site deaths in Texas are on the rise, but Abbott seemingly prefers it that way, hence this law.

According to the chuds pushing this through, that's up to OSHA to handle! Y'know, the federal agency that makes nation-wide policy that is supposed to be a generic framework. Not local policies which are tailored to local conditions. Apparently we gotta turn to big government if we want water in the heat??????

Reddit bullshit, cont.

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman (aka "spez") has double, triple and quadrupled down on the deeply disliked changes he is pushing out on Reddit. If you want a recap on what he's doing, I made a whole video about it on my YouTube channel, and another one as bonus content right here on Stuff Keeps Happening.

The short version: Reddit is killing 3rd party apps and integrations (ways to use Reddit besides their main mobile app, which many long time users don't like) because they want to IPO. Their original claim was to prevent AIs from slurping up their data, but that facade has since dropped.

So now, Huffman has straight up said that he is following the example set by Elon Musk with how Twitter is changing. Stew in that for a moment: he wants to follow Musk's lead on running the website. He has also accused a 3rd party app developer of trying to extort them and was caught in his own lie about that.

And now, as decade-plus longtime users begin to leave the site and delete their content as they go, Reddit is seemingly trying to undo that and has been mass-un-deleting content previously deleted by users. This has accidentally included some very old "deleted" stuff, reminding you that just cuz a website says you deleted something, it doesn't mean it has actually been deleted.

On this day…

On this day in 1586, English colonists abandoned the first attempted colony by England in the "New World" at Roanoke Island.

The settlers faced food scarcity and hostility from native peoples and the landscape itself. Attempts to explore elsewhere and re-settle failed, and ultimately the colonists fled from their settlement while waiting for a delayed resupply.

The resupply ship eventually landed and found an abandoned colony.

Notably, English settlers took one of the natives back to England and kept him there for a year. Their "guest" saw it instead as imprisonment, and upon returning to America, strongly urged his people to push back against colonization at all costs.

Here's the weather

More Stuff

• Biden is now officially on the campaign trail and is trying to pretend he is a labor advocate, despite having forced the rail workers to go back to work during negotiations
• The Federal Reserve is finally slowing down with interest rate hikes
• That research dude who was living underwater for several months finally resurfaced after 100 days
• We got a look at the upcoming live action Avatar: The Last Airbender show from Netflix and I remain deeply concerned
• The Fox News producer who ran the inflammatory chyron that I mentioned in Friday's SKH has resigned
• A judge has ruled that drag shows are covered by the first amendment