Welcome to the TLO Dumpster Fire! It's my weekly roundup of news items that I wanted to write about, but for whatever reason – time, laziness, sloth – didn’t.
Overall, this week got off to a slow start for me, as my kid's school was closed a couple of days due to weather-influenced road conditions.
Fortunately for my sanity, it wasn’t closed for a week like some public school districts, something that apparently irritates my daughter’s softball bench coach, Chip Keating:
I don't agree with Chip on too many political issues, like public school privatization, but we're on the same "Man Yells at Cloud" page that public schools have grown too soft when it comes to shutting down for weather days.
Seriously, I didn't walk to school in the snow uphill both ways like my grandfather, but back in my day, I waited at a bus stop on plenty of cold mornings and, outside of minor frostbite, turned out fine. If a wuss like me could do it, today's kids can too. Free parents and open the schools!
Anyway, here’s the rest of this week’s Dumpster Fire…
Ryan Walters needs a copyright attorney who specializes in copyright law.
An Oklahoma appeals court recently ruled that a defamation case that former Bixby superintendent Rob Miller filed against Ryan Walters can go to court.
I’ll probably have more on this next week, but this is a big deal in that Ryan will now likely have to incur legal fees to defend himself. In addition to that, he’ll likely have to go through the “discovery” process. Just think of the material that will bring up.
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State Question 836 appears headed to the ballot
I’m not 100% sold that open primaries will have that big of an effect on things, but anything is better than the closed system that alienates independent voters like myself. Plus, every extremist Republican is hardcore against it, so it can’t be that bad. I can’t wait to vote for it in a year or two.
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Oklahoma Lawmaker Declares War on Imaginary AI Civil Rights Movement
Fearing a future where ChatGPT demands healthcare and voting rights, an Oklahoma legislator filed a bill to strip AI of personhood it doesn’t have:
You have to admit, this fits perfectly with a Legislature that loves debating the rights of theoretical beings while shrugging at the needs of actual, breathing humans.
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Capitol Vandal Was an Aspiring Pokémon Counterfeiter
While most of the media ran with the fact that Shelly Smith was a sex offender, I thought the real news angle was that he was a well-known local Pokémon counterfeiter.
Knowing the guy passes off counterfeit merch, don’t you think his graffiti would have been a little better? At the very least, he could learn something from…
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Lawton Vandal Improves Boring Mural…
I guess there’s a big Deadpool mural in Lawton that looked like this:
But according to the Lawton Constitution, it now looks like this:
You know, sometimes vandalism can help art more than hurt it. They should let it be.
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Bill filed to make it easier to raise and eat alligators. What can go wrong?
Maybe all the angry chicken farmers can raise alligators instead?
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State Senator Tries to Stop Oil Companies From Turning Oklahoma Into a Toxic Sponge
ProPublica and The Frontier documented the gallant, worthwhile, and what will ultimately be fruitless effort by Mary Boren to rein in oil companies that have spent years poisoning Oklahoma’s groundwater. It’s worth a read, even though our state’s Republicans won’t let any of her proposals see the light of day.
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Globe Shocked By Edmond Murder
I rarely cover violent crime, but this one hit close, as I knew the victim – Spring Weems.
It’s probably been 15 years since I’ve seen Spring, but we had a bunch of mutual friends in the mid- to late-aughts, and frequently crossed paths at poker games, house parties, and other social events, and remained social media friends to this day. She was always incredibly nice and friendly, and her death is a tragedy. My thoughts go out to everyone who knew and loved her. RIP.
