More on "the end of woke"

Further to "What does 'the end of woke' look like?", WWW 11/2/25, we have more good news to report. [Notice he didn't say "share". Ed.] The Executive Orders are coming so fast that it's hard to keep up.

First of all, President Trump has announced that it's OK for people to use plastic drinking straws again. "We’re going back to plastic straws," he told the meeja at the White House as he signed the order. "Paper straws don't work. They break," he said, adding, "I don’t think plastic is going to affect a shark very much, as they're munching their way through the ocean." More common sense, not to mention trees saved.

Even more important are indications that Google has given up trying to toe the politically correct line. Their online and mobile calendars no longer include references to the first day of Black History Month or Pride Month, among other events. The company previously had those days marked at the start of February and June, but they reportedly don’t appear for 2025. 

In "Google Calendar removed events like Pride and BHM because its holiday list wasn’t ‘sustainable’", a site called TheVerge first reported the removals on February 7th. In an e-mail to the outlet, a Google spokesthingy wrote, "Some years ago, the Calendar team started manually adding a broader set of cultural moments in a wide number of countries around the world.

"We got feedback that some other events and countries were missing, and maintaining hundreds of moments manually and consistently globally wasn’t scalable or sustainable. So in mid-2024 we returned to showing only public holidays and national observances from timeanddate.com globally, while allowing users to manually add other important moments."

The company, which has also removed the first day of Women’s History Month in March and Indigenous Peoples Month in June, has stepped back from its diversity, equity and inclusion goals after President Trump signed an executive order to dismantle federal DEI programs. The EO was titled "Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing."

Has the President got the wokesters' attention yet? Looks like it, but there's lots more to come. Stay tuned...and give thanks!

The good old days - a short rant

We turn our attention, today, from impeachment trials, Harry and Floozie, and other matters of great import, to small everyday concerns, like carrying your groceries home from the store.

Back in the good old days, before the world was covered in plastic, the grocery store (later, supermarket) packed your groceries in sundries in paper bags, like those worn here by Mr and Mrs Walt. Yes, they packed the bags for you. And they were free, even when the heavy stuff needed to be double-bagged. The store would carry them to your car too! And the bags were useful for other things, like putting your garbage in, or hiding your face if you were a fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs. All for free.

Then came plastic bags. Merchants liked them because they were cheaper, lighter, and easier to handle. Shoppers liked them because they had handles, and were less likely to tear under the weight of groceries or wet garbage. They were more reusable (as kitchen catchers, for instance) than the paper bags. And they were free too, in the good, not-so-old days.

A couple of years ago, however, the stores, under pressure from the eco-weenies and climate alarmists, started to charge for the plastic carrier bags. Instead, they wanted us to use bigger, heavier, reusable shopping bags aka tote bags, available for purchase for a mere 99 cents. This was ostensibly to protect the environment by reducing the incredible amount of plastic littering the countryside and going into landfills or (worse) the sea. Fair enough. We (Mrs Walt and YVT) use the nickel bags [referring only to the carrier bags! Ed.], most of the time, and don't object to paying 5 cents when we forget to take the tote bags to the store.

But the climate activists remain unsatisfied. They have now succeeded in pressuring at least one major supermarket chain to discontinue selling plastic bags. Instead, if you fail to bring your own bag, you will have to pay ten (10) cents (plus tax!) for a paper bag! And not the good ones, with handles, but the plain, old-fashioned paper bags shown in the picture.

Why have the supermarkets been so quick to co-operate in the scheme to shut down Big Oil? (You knew, eh, that the plastic bags are made from oil.) For the answer, follow the money! I've done some pricing, and find that the cost to the supermarkets for one paper bag is about 2 or 3 cents, depending on whether they want them to carry advertising or not. So that's a profit to the merchants of, say, 7 cents per paper bag, compared with a lousy 3 or 4 cents on a plastic bag. Geddit?

And never mind that paper bags are made from, errr, paper, which comes from trees. Paper manufacturers are doubtless happy to see the prospect of increased sales, after a steady decline in consumption of low-end paper products, such as newsprint and, yes, paper bags. Good news for all concerned, except of course for us consumers, who are being nickel and dimed to death, one bag at a time.

Why you should care about World Oceans Day

Walt is aware that WWW is hardly a clarion voice for environmentalism. But that doesn't mean we're unaware of the mess we humans [Speaking for yourself? Ed.] are making of the world in which we live. I speak not of "global warming" and CO2 emissions and so-called "climate change", about which I remain skeptical. What I am not skeptical about, because I see it everywhere, every day, is the pollution of our habitat by discarded garbage. Especially plastic.

In a recent episode of Family Guy, Brian and Stewie discover "Garbage Island", a huge floating mass of debris so solid that castaways have been able to live there, quite comfortably, amidst the filth and debris. It looked something like this.

That there actually are islands of garbage, approaching the size of small continents, floating in our oceans is old news. But is anyone doing anything about it? The answer is yes! At least, some folks are trying. Amy Taylor sent us an e-mail reminder that June 8th was World Oceans Day. Hoping that I'd post something on that date -- sorry! -- she sent along info on SLOactive, a "social enterprise" [??? Ed.] dedicated to cleaning up our oceans.

SLOactive recently published a guide, titled Plastic Pollution: Single Use Plastic Impact on our Oceans, which I recommend to all WWW readers concerned about putting a stop to the excessive use of plastics. It details the facts and figures of plastic pollution, the impact on our oceans and marine life, and much more. Click here to get the PDF and find out more.

To answer the question posed by the headline... you should care because some of that plastic garbage may be yours!

Do I have your attention yet? Browsing the SLOactive website, I notice they also have a line of "sustainable swimwear and wetsuits". Need I say more? Tell `em Walt sent you!

Further reading: "Environmentalist writer shocked to find his book wrapped in plastic", WWW 3/12/18.

Environmentalist writer shocked to find his book wrapped in plastic

We live in a world covered in plastic. Plastic packaging, shrink-wrap, containers, even our garbage dumps -- all smothered in plastic. Walt has considerable sympathy with the environmentalists and eco-wienies who say this has got to stop. One such is British writer Martin Dorey, author of No. More. Plastic.: What You Can Do to Make a Difference – the #2minutesolution (Penguin, 2018).

In 2009, Mr Dorey launched the "2 Minute Beach Clean campaign" to encourage people to pick up marine litter. He also maintains the No More Plastic website, encouraging people to find ways to use less plastic. On the landing page we read, "We call on our favorite brands to find innovative alternatives." Who could argue with that?

Well... the US distributors of No. More. Plastic. seem to have a problem with that statement. According to a recent report in The Telegraph, Mr Dorey was not just dismayed but furious to find that his book is being sold in the Excited States of America nicely wrapped in shrink-wrap!

In an Instagram post, Mr Dorey called the distributor's decision an "absolute shambles", adding, "It undoes all our hard work and proves once again that we are using plastic with our eyes closed. We toiled hard on this. We worked with the printer to make it one of the most environmentally friendly books this year. And then this!"

Mr Dorey told The Telegraph, "I know my publishers are working hard to stop this in future but it still happens further down the line. It makes me very sad indeed that we are so clever, but so stupid." The publishing house, Penguin, said "We hope this image makes people stop and think as we head into a busy Christmas period." They promised to contact the US distributors to get them to stop using the plastic covering.

The final word goes to Mr Dorey. "The point is that this book is about no more plastic and some idiot shrink-wrapped it in plastic without thinking. We're sleep-walking into oblivion with plastic and we need to change everything from the bottom up. We need to understand that this is not good enough."

Further reading (added 9/6/19): "Oops! Missed World Oceans Day", WWW 9/6/19.