Good Things Friday (377) and Link Love
May 22, 2026
1. For Mother’s Day we enjoyed a trip to the shelter and to the local reuse center. It was deeply satisfying to find expensive office supplies for cheap (saving at least $45 on address labels), and then at checkout I paid for a lady’s stuff for her kid when she didn’t have cash on hand and wasn’t buying enough to use her CC. I’ve been caught out cashless before so I told the guy to just add it to our order. She was shocked but it was only $2! And it’s fun to randomly help a person out.
2. We took the kids to the zoo and decided, at $9/ticket, only three of us would ride the train. This was really SmolAc’s burning desire. We’d have sent the two kids without us but SmolAc is still short enough that they are required to ride with an adult. We’re being a little bit penny-pinching where it seems appropriate. In the end the tickets were discounted to $7 because we’re zoo members this year ($21).
Then the conductor waved PiC on free so all four of us rode! Completely unasked for, and unexpected, but very nice and totally appreciated to have that bit of fun together.
This is fucking disgusting: Texas Children’s Hospital must create country’s first “detransition clinic” under legal settlement with state
This is fantastic, go unions!: Penn State Faculty Vote in Favor of Unionizing
Kat Tenbarge of Spitfire News reporting A postmortem on the Blake Lively case
From BOLTS on “The Court Interred the Voting Rights Act Without the Dignity of a Funeral”
Two redistricting experts answer your questions on the latest Supreme Court ruling that guts the VRA—did it kill Section 2, what can states do, and how may Congress respond?
From BOLTS: In Chicago, Prosecutors Fight to Keep Exonerated People from Clearing Their Names. Under State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke, Cook County prosecutors have tried to block nearly every exonerated person who has sought a certificate of innocence. It’s another stark sign of how Burke has changed the official approach to innocence claims in the nation’s wrongful conviction capital.
This case was dismissed with prejudice, thank goodness: Lawyer for Guy Who Sued Women Who Called Him ‘Psycho’ Caught Using AI