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In the 1970s Will Shortz submitted a crossword to the New York Times with a word so scandalous that the editor rejected it. The word: bellybutton. Fast forward over four decades and Shortz himself is the Times crossword editor who is now the gatekeeper, selecting puzzles from the nearly 200 submissions he gets a week. (Bellybutton has appeared once during his tenure. Clue: navel.)

I wouldnt [publish a word in the crossword] that is pornographicBut it depends on the term, Shortz told me. Sex toy has been an answer twice. Thats something I have no problem with. But certainly [former editors] Margaret Farrar and Will Weng wouldnt have done it.

There is a limit to sex in the puzzle. References to pegging, will never show up in The Times, according to Benjamin Tausig editor of the indie American Values Club crossword (which formerly ran in The Onion), and author of The Curious History of the Crossword. While an article on pegging might run in the actual newspaper, Tausig said, in the crossword, things are kept more PG. The AV Club crossword, however, has published pegging.

Sex is just one of the many contentious issues surrounding crossword puzzles. At a time when debates about language anchor political discourse and incorrect pronouns spark vicious attacks, the fact that culture wars are being played out in crossword puzzles makes sense.

During the pandemic, [the crossword community has had] the same type of reckoning that weve had in the rest of American societywhere were looking at representation, were looking at inclusion, said Rebecca Neipris co-host of the Crossnerds podcast. Hundreds of thousands of people are consuming this thing on a daily basis and paying for it. So you also have this responsibility to at least be aware of what it is that youre feeding those people.

Puzzle debates represent a microcosm of larger cultural conflicts surrounding race, class, and gender. Questions arise: should dictators appear in crosswords? Serial killers? What about Donald Trump? Or Hitler? Are terms like hag okay?

The types of clues and answers in crosswords have shifted dramatically. On March 21, 1943, the New York Times crossword clue was author of a bestseller. The answer: six letters long HITLER. Hitler still appears in the Times crosswords, but his last name hasnt been an answer since 1984 (clued as historys blackest.)

Whether you want it or not, theres a kind of inherent politics [to a crossword], said Michael Sharp, a SUNY-Binghamton English professor who, under the pseudonym Rex Parker, pens a blog critiquing The Times crossword and has constructed puzzles for them .Youre making an assertion about what counts as common knowledge.

For decades the people making decisions about what should be in a puzzle have been straight white men according to Tausig, who said crosswords were a very much elite, hyper educated, white, New York City thing, where if you didnt know chess and your classics you were screwed.

When Shortz became editor of The Times crossword in 1993, things began to change. Shortz brought pop culture into crosswords, Tausig said. Yet Shortz doesnt always get it right. A few years ago, Shortz included the word beaner in a puzzle. Its baseball slang for a ball that hits the batters head. But its also, as I did not know at the time, an offensive term for Hispanics, he said. There was a lot of anger over that.

Even Sharp, who is one of Shortzs biggest critics, said that Shortz changed the New York Times, radically in terms of how fun it wasturning away from being a test about arcane knowledge and toward a kind of playful, wordplay-oriented kind of puzzle.

Although crossword constructors and solvers are overwhelmingly left-wingShortz surveyed attendees of his American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in March 2017 and found that close to 90 percent voted for Clintonthere is no consensus among editors, podcasters, and solvers on what should be included in a puzzle.

So how do constructors decide whats in and whats out? Patrick Berry, a constructor whose puzzles have appeared in The New York Times and The New Yorker, said that he strives to keep his puzzles apolitical, which is difficult. It becomes an endless series of judgment calls. Is this slang term offensive? Is that world leader merely unpleasant, or too toxic to even mention? Berry said.

While there are some answers that constructors and solvers all agreed were objectionable, such as racial slurs, the community is divided on other types of clues. Berry thinks that mainstream crosswords shouldnt have Curse words, certain bodily functionsnotorious figures like Harvey Weinstein [because] puzzles are meant to be entertaining, and that stuff generally isnt. Yet omitting these terms is a political choice as well. Some people (me) find curse words and bodily functions very entertaining, and who counts as a notorious figure is up for debate. While Berry wont put references to Nazis in his puzzles, not everyone feels that way.

Shortz will include Nazi if it is clued in a non-offensive way. Ive had Nazi in the puzzle a number of times. But usually I clued it Raiders of the Lost Ark villainor Soup Nazi from Seinfeld, he said. A reference to notorious Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, however, caused him to reject a puzzle. I just found that so offensive, that I just didnt want that in the New York Times crossword, Shortz said.

In response to the beaner incident, the Times created a diversity panel that reads over every crossword to find terms that could cause offense. The standard we use nowis, taken out of context, is the answer, something that is likely to offend people, Shortz said.

Recently the panel flagged pig, because its clue was gluttonous. One of the peopleobjected to that because in their mind, it suggested fat shaming, he said. And I went to the dictionarygluttonous is basically one who overeats. Its not a matter of fat shaming, he claimed. Its just what the word means. But he took the word out so as not to offend readers.

Yet Sharp believes Shortz and The Times havent gone far enough. Last year he posted a link to an open letter to the then Times puzzle executive director asking that women and/or non-binary puzzle lovers comprise at least half of Wills test solving team and more diversity to all of its editorial staff. (The letter noted that The Times has frequently had more than half of its creators be non-male, but urged that there should be a formal policy).

For most of the history of crosswords, All the constructors were men pretty much men, said Tausig. He ensures that half of the constructors he publishes are women or non-binary. More diversity means that Puzzles deal with different material now, he said, including fewer sexist terms like hag and clues about director Ava Duvernay.

This year Tausig published a non-binary themed puzzle by a non-binary creator. He received a few angry emails and lost some subscribers, but most people loved it. Recently The Times has pushed for more diversity as well. On January 10, 2022, the paper announced a crossword constructor diversity fellowship to provide mentorship and support for constructors from underrepresented groups, including women, people of color and the L.G.B.T.Q. community. Shortz is serving as one of the members of this fellowship.

More contentious than non-binary creators or Nazism is Donald Trump, who is verboten in many crosswords, and has only appeared twice in The Times (and only once since he was elected president) in comparison to Obamas 73 showings (to be fair Obama was a 2-term president, but still). This isnt about like censorship, its about whats fun. I dont know if theres any way to make to put Trump in a puzzle and have it be fun, said Tausig, who shies away from using any clues that would jolt readers out of the bubble of the game. Yet dictators like Chairman Mao and Idi Amin routinely show up in crosswords with little outcry.

Why is it okay to have other dictators [than Hitler] who also murdered millions of people?...How directly involved did you have to be in mass murders? asks Neipris.

IDI has been an answer 120 times since Shortz began editing the puzzle, most recently on July 5 of this year. Former Times editor Farrar did not allow Idi Amin in a puzzle because he was such a despicable person, Shortz said. Nowadays, no one loves to have Idi Amin in a puzzle, but sometimes he makes the interlock work, so its all right. Sharp also notes that few words are three letters beginning and ending with I, but he thinks theres another reason for Amins popularity. Its a European biasIts people who dont have the experienceof dictators in Africa. They could just look at their names and think of them as just words.

Hitler is harder to think of as just a word, even though, as Sharp said because HITLER is six letters and ends in ER the word, he Probablywould have helped out some constructor but nobody wants to think about Hitler when theyre doing their puzzle. (Adolf has shown up more recently as an answer: unpopular baby name March 12, 2017.)

Similarly, Mao is a useful word for constructors. 75% of all entries are five letters or fewer. So giving up MAO makes construction harder, whereas giving up DONALD TRUMP has no effect, said Berry. Another reason is that Maos reign is further back in history, so theres a layer of removefeelings about Trump remain immediate and visceral.

Not everyone has trouble with seeing Trumps name in a puzzle. Hayley Gold, whose book on the crossword culture wars, Letters to Margaret will be published this year, said, If someones a prominent figure in the world, I personally believe that theyre fair game to be in the puzzle. And it doesnt mean that you support their views necessarily.

Can a puzzle truly be apolitical in such a politically-charged country?

Berry thinks so. Clues are supposed to be based on facts, not opinions. Most clues really will end up being neutral and I think thats a good thing overall, he said. As much as Berry tries to be apolitical, his views sneak in. A blandly factual clue like [Transgender four-star admiral Rachel] for LEVINE makes a quiet but powerful statement for inclusivity Since I find it difficult to write a neutral clue for, say, NRA or MAGA, I instead avoid using those entries altogether.

Other constructors dont avoid NRA, which has appeared 569 times in The Times, although not always in reference to the gun group. Most recently on December 8, 2021, NRA was clued as food industry lobby, in brief. MAGA, however, has never shown up.

Gold cautions that criticism of crosswords can sometimes go too far. In my experience, Will Shortz has been the nicest guy in the world. I hate all the articles that tried to slander him and make it like, Oh, hes this old white dude. And hes trying to keep puzzles, sexist and racist.Change is slow and change is happening.

Correction 2/1/2022 10:52 a.m.: This article has been updated to accurately reflect correct surnames.

Continued here:
The Surprisingly Messy Culture Wars Within The New York Times Crossword Puzzle - Kotaku

This week, podcaster Joe Rogan tweeted and then deleted a misleading story about ivermectin. The tremendously popular podcaster employed by streaming service Spotify has been in the news recently for touting misinformation regarding COVID-19 treatments; previously, he said he had taken ivermectin, which is an anti-parasitic drug, when he was diagnosed with COVID-19.

The gloating tweet appeared mere weeks after hundreds of medical experts urged Spotify to crack down on COVID-19 misinformation, specifically calling out the dangers of Rogan's podcast. Rogan'snow-deleted tweetsaid "Well, lookie here," and linked to a report on a press release suggesting that ivermectin an off-label anti-parasite drug used for the treatment of some parasitic worms in people and animals was "effective" against the omicron variant in a phase 3 clinical trial. Reuters originally reported on the press release on Monday, but quickly made a correction.

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"CORRECTION: Japan's Kowa said anti-parasite drug ivermectin showed an 'antiviral effect' against Omicron and other variants of coronavirus in joint non-clinical research," Reuters tweeted. "The @WHO has warned against its use.We will delete a tweet with a misleading headline."

Before the correction was made, many people like Rogan Laura Ingraham, and Charlie Kirk, the head of the right-wing campus organization Turning Point USA shared the misleading article. Curiously, the conspiracy theory that ivermectin is an efficacious COVID-19 treatment, despite little evidence, has become a point of contention within culture wars with right-wing talking heads promoting the drug.

But science, ostensibly free from the culture wars, should operate without regard for the cultural storm that ivermectin has become enmeshed in. And despite Reuters' "misleading" headline regarding the Japenese study, little attention was paid to the actual study itself, and what it said and whether it actually did showanything new about ivermectin in treating COVID-19.

The Reuters article was based on a press release from Kowa Co. Ltd., a Japanese pharmaceutical company; at the moment, there is no peer-reviewed study attached to it. The news simply said that in a test-tube study, ivermectin showed "antiviral" capabilities against omicron. However, the company does plan on conducting Phase III human trials; should those show Ivermectin is effective in a way it was not against previous variants, that would merit new news regarding the anti-parasitic drug.

As Salon has previously reported in interviews with scientists, in vitro or test tube studies are limited in what they can reveal. Many different substances kill viruses in test tubes, including chlorine bleach and gasoline; this does not mean that they would do the same in the human body, nor that such substances could or should be injected or ingested to the point that they might eliminate viruses from one's body.

Related:Is there any evidence ivermectin can treat COVID-19? We analyzed the prominent scientific studies

Such in vitro studies "raise eyebrows" to a virologist,Dr. Benhur Lee, a Professor of Microbiology at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, previously told Salon. "I can increase the concentration of sodium chloride (table salt) by 50% to my tissue culture cells and show inhibition of most viruses," Lee said. "But I don't go asking people to eat as much salty food as possible to combat virus infections, much less SARS-CoV-2."

As Salon has reported, ivermectin is Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved and it can be prescribed by any U.S.-based physician, usually to those with intestinal strongyloidiasis and onchocerciasis two conditions caused by parasitic worms. However, the drug has been co-opted by those with an anti-vaccine agenda trying to keep people from getting vaccinated. Unlike ivermectin, there is sound scientific evidence that the existing COVID-19 vaccines prevent people from getting hospitalized or dying from COVID-19.

Without a prescription, the only way for a layperson to obtain ivermectin would be at a feed store or farm supply store, which sell the drug as a horse dewormer. As Salon previously reportedlast summer, some tractor supply stores around the country posted signs reminding their customers that the ivermectin they sell is only for animal consumption. Crucially, the FDA has not recommended ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19. In fact, the public health agency warns against it. While there have been some studies that have had mild positive results around ivermectin and treating COVID-19, scientists have repeatedly told Salon that these studies, due to their small size or lack of being tested in humans, should be taken with a grain of salt.

Edward Mills of McMaster is a principal investigator of the Together Trial, which consists of more than 5,000 participants, and is the largest Phase 3 randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled trial. That trial found that ivermectin showed no effect in treating COVID-19. Mills explained to Salon via email that the press release Rogan cited refers to "a test-tube study and has the same strengths and limitations as any test tube study."

"It doesn't provide any evidence on the role of IVM [ivermectin] on clinical use," Mills said. "It really should have not received a press release and no legitimate news source should have reported on it."

A second ivermectin-related study that was recently published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases could be misleading, too. The study states that a five-day course of ivermectin could reduce the duration of COVID-19 symptoms.

"The second study in Bangladesh was actually one of the earliest studies of IVM when people were still very open to repurposed medicines," Mills explained, referring to the latter study. "It is just that it is being published 18 months after it was conducted."

Mills added: "It is by a very well respected group from Bangladesh, but was small and they were doing this without resources."

Mills concluded that there was a time when many scientists were open to evaluating ivermectin from smaller, early studies. But as the science continued with larger, randomized trials, those findings weren't compelling enough to continue.

"But as more and more higher quality forms of evidence, usually large randomized trials, have been completed, they did not find compelling enough findings," Mills said. "It's important to note that NIH and Oxford continue to do large randomized trials, as there remains some uncertainty."

Read more on the omicron variant:

See the rest here:
Joe Rogan can't stop pushing ivermectin as a COVID treatment. Experts are tired of debunking him - Salon

If youve been pondering the idea of the world coming to an end lately, it might be because youve been spending too much time with the Libs of TikTok.

The no-longer-underground social media sensation which amassed more than a half-million followers and tens of millions of views on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube in less than a year prides itself on exposing far left hypocrisy and liberal wokeness on steroids. The accounts mysterious creator specializes in outing unchecked teachers, abuses in schools and the alleged indoctrination of children by reposting videos of the so-called offenders in their own words.

With biting zingers and snappy captions, the feed posts alarming videos pulled directly from the unhinged sources: TikTok accounts of, say, a college professor accused of soft-pedaling pedophilia or a middle school teacher gleefully threatening to throw a child at you. Maybe even an English teacher steering students to pledge their allegiance to a gay pride banner after secretly stowing the American flag.

Those are just a few of the greatest viral hits, mixed in with a hefty dose of button-pushing hot takes on non-binary gender fluidity and its impact on US youths.

The feeds founder who chooses to remain anonymous spoke with The Post about the meteoric rise of the feed she formally launched in April 2020 which has high-profile fans in controversial podcaster Joe Rogan, 54, and former The View co-host Meghan McCain, 37, who often retweets her. While her location reads Depths of Hell online, the founder said shes in a slightly cooler California location, where she quit her former nonpolitical 9-to-5 job to run the feed full time.

Ive been called a Nazi, white supremacist, grifter, liar. Im not offended I think these people are so broken I cant see any of the people Ive posted about coming to my home. I dont think theyre violent.

Its a grassroots one-person operation yes, it once lived on TikTok but that account is now deactivated that involves scouring every corner of the web for up to eight hours a day and sifting through tips and submissions.

I dont do this for money or fame. Im not some politician or blue-check journalist. And people feel like they have someone they can talk to when they have no one else to ask to help them spread it, she said, noting that she relies heavily on the dozens of direct messages in her inbox each day from parents and ordinary citizens who want their story to have a platform.

With me, they have a place to reach out to to get the message out, she told The Post. I feel like there are so many small stories that are so important that arent getting out and thats what Im here for. It sometimes feels like a mini Project Veritas.

Although plenty of proud conservatives hang on her every tweet, she told The Post there are also secret liberals, albeit ones too scared to be publicly associated withher, who follow the feed. I think a lot of people in the middle follow me, and probably a lot of liberals and democrats, she said.

Meanwhile, Libs of TikTok viewers likely dont know whether to laugh or cry at the often disturbing content, but the cherry on top is her withering, pithy commentary: The captions are the hardest part of the whole thing I try to encapsulate the whole video together with the message . . . in two lines, max.

And shes not losing sleep over retribution from a teed-off subject. I cant see any of the people Ive posted about coming to my home, she said. I dont think theyre violent.

Still, unsurprisingly, shes on the receiving end of some pretty ugly epithets. Ive been called a Nazi, white supremacist, grifter, liar, she said of the parade of messages and DMs that she ignores wholesale. Im not offended I think these people are so broken. The people on the left who all day call people Nazis and white supremacists are so broken. All the left-wing media are brainwashing people.

She said theres an inevitable moment anyone on the wrong side of the hard left will face: If you are a conservative, chances are you will be called a racist or Nazi in your life, noting how cheapened she believes these words have become in the culture wars. Its overused.

Teacher at West Hollow Middle School in NY went on unhinged rant today on his IG about masks and says if you mask shame him at school he will throw a child at you pic.twitter.com/YuwNfnYp4c

Waking people up about whats going on in schools and exposing lefty lunacy has been overwhelming. People have said, Your videos opened my eyes to whats going on or Your videos have convinced me to run for school board, she said, adding that she may have even converted some former lefties. I think Ive gotten a few [messages] that said, I used to be on the left. Her focus on the grooming and indoctrination in schools has been her main thrust on the feed. The left has taken over all the schools and universities and turned out all these people now who are so confused about their identity, and theyre teachers now. We need to stop this cycle, she said.

But whats most gratifying is the action taken after exposing what she considers to be educators gone too far. The attention to issues featured on Libs of TikTok has brought down multiple teachers who posted dubious videos but she doesnt take lightly seeing someones life go up in smoke. Its not easy. I really do feel bad, she told The Post, noting that their poor judgment and self-incriminating content brought about their downfall in the first place. Sometimes it breaks my heart, but it has to be done. These kids are so innocent and they dont deserve to go to school to get groomed and indoctrinated.

Its surprisingly easy to find countless teachers, lacking basic self-awareness, publicly and cavalierly posting inappropriate content on TikTok. Theyre usually smug about it, bragging about it and think there wont be repercussions, she claimed, adding, They were doing this as a government employee. Technically, its taxpayer money.

Reps for TikTok did not immediately respond to The Posts request for comment regarding her opinions about inflammatory content.

While she said shes always conscious of not running afoul of the ubiquitous Twitter police, the founder added that the constant censorship and suspensions only hurt the platforms credibility. I obviously dont agree with the policing and silencing, but I do think Twitter is an amazing platform. However, she tries to stay away from vaccine discourse for that reason. I know the work Im doing is really important, and I dont want to risk getting suspended for vaccine-related videos.

With future plans to monetize her work, the founder said she has no plans to hang up her laptop: I would never stop this because its too important.

Read more here:
Meet the mystery woman who quit her job to run the 'Libs of TikTok' account - New York Post

The Book Of Boba Fett continues to be amazing as a stealth Mandalorian series.

Last weeks episode of The Mandalorianer, The Book Of Boba Fett was outstanding.

Mostly, thats because it was all about Mando (Pedro Pascal) rather than Boba Fett (Temuera Morrison) despite this being a show ostensibly about the older bounty hunter. Boba Fett used to be the coolest bounty hunter in Star Wars, now Im not even sure he makes the top five.

In this weeks episode we get two of the most badass bounty hunters: Mando, again, as he searches for Baby Yoda; and the infamous bounty hunter, Cad Banea ruthless, cold-blooded killer from the Clone Wars and The Bad Batch voiced here once again by Corey Burton.

This episode was even better than last weeks for all sorts of reasons, but on a very personal level it was the return of Luke Skywalker, once again, and his interactions with Grogu. Written and directed by Clone Wars creator Dave Filoni (who co-created The Mandalorian with Jon Favreau) Chapter 6 takes this show to a whole new level.

Once again, we get Mandobut we get lots of other characters from the wider Star Wars universe as well.

Mando heads to an unnamed forest planet where he meets some old pals. R2-D2:

R2-D2

And Ashoka Tano (Rosario Dawson):

Mando and Ashoka

Hes here to see Grogu and bring him his Beskar steel gift, but Ashoka tells him that he has to make a choice. If he sees Grogu, hell disrupt the little guys training. Grogus ability to remain detached from loved ones will be tested and potentially his training will be stopped in its tracks, and there will be nothing Luke can do to salvage it.

She offers, instead, to deliver the gift for him.

But Ive come all this way! Mando says, his voice brittle with sadness. I just want to see him.

Poor Mando. In the end, he chooses not to see his baby, flying off in his fancy Naboo N-1 Starfighter while Grogu looks on from afar, making this expression:

Baby Yoda

Okay just stop it with the cuteness, Grogu. Sheesh.

Luke and Grogu

Speaking of cute, the entire segment with Luke and Grogu was adorable but also more than that. For me, it was a little bit like being a kid again, more so even than the end of The Mandalorians second season, when Luke shows up to save the day.

Here we have the inverse of Lukes training with Yoda on Dagobah. A whole lifetime later. The Empire Strikes Back came out the year before I was born (1980, I was born June of 1981). This is where we first meet Yoda in his swamp and he teaches Luke to Do or do not, there is no try.

I was two years old when Return Of The Jedi came out and spent my childhood watching and rewatching those movies. When I was very young I never really wanted new movies in the Star Wars universe, but as I got older and read some comics and books, I started to wonder why there werent more movies about these characters. What did Luke and Leia and Han Solo do after winning the war against the Empire? What came next?

Well, George Lucas had other plans. He wanted prequels. He wanted to drench them in CGI and boring discussions about trade embargos and dry politics. He had some good ideas woven throughout the prequel films, but mostly as a teenager and young man, I was crushed by the prequels.

I found a new hope when A Force Awakens came out. It was far from perfect, but it felt like the Star Wars I remembered as a kid. Practical effects, a sense of humor, the right aesthetic throughout. If only it had been followed by two more movies that enriched all the characters that film introduced and gave fans what theyd been hoping for all these years.

Instead, the sequel trilogy was disjointed, rushed and never felt like it had any real purpose. I enjoyed the transformation and redemption of Kylo Ren, but every other character got the short end of the stickand if I want a really good redemption story, I can just rewatch Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Even The Force Awakens feels week in hindsight. The repetitive Death Star plot. The fact that they had to rip everything good from Han Solo and Leiatheir marriage, their son, their happiness. Han dying like that. Luke going out in The Last Jedi (which I liked for some reasons and hated for others).

The point is, todays episode of The Book of Boba Fett reminded me why I fell in love with Star Wars to begin with. It gave us Luke Skywalker in his primea Jedi Master, before his transfomration to defeated hermit in the sequels, but after his heros journey in the original trilogy. Here he was training Grogu, just as Yoda trained him. A circle was completed. I felt a profound joy watching these scenes.

I wont lieI became quite emotional. It surprised me. This felt like coming home to something I didnt know Id left, or that had left me. Watching Luke run with Grogu on his back, leaping and flipping. Watching Baby Yoda train with the floating ball. This hit me a lot harder than I expected.

I think it just brought me back to that time as a kid when Star Wars was just so important and exciting and beautiful, before it became this battleground its become today. Now, Star Wars has been subsumed by the culture wars. Now if youre a fan who has anything bad to say about The Last Jedi, youre a troll and probably a GamerGater; and if you liked that movie youre probably some woke SJW.

We cant just love Star Wars anymore. Like so much else, its become a cultural totem we use to score points and argue about Trump. Its absurd and Im sick of it, and for this very brief moment I was transported back to a time when none of that existed (for me, at least).

I was a kid again, hanging out with Luke Skywalker.

Luke Skywalker

And my god how the wizards and Industrial Light & Magic have done this with Luke is beyond me. Its staggering. Ive been a pretty harsh critic of the Uncanny Valley effect weve seen in past iterations of Star Wars characters. Moff Tarkin in Rogue One looked almost right, but just off enough to not be.

Even in The Mandalorian, Luke felt too stiff. And that wasnt long ago at all!

But here? Here he feels real. He looks and moves and sounds real. Its close enough to perfect that I now really want Lucasfilm to make a Thrawn movie trilogy (or Disney Plus show) with Luke as the main protagonist just like in the books (though change them enough to bring in Askhoka and Bo Katan and other newer characters). Its an exciting prospectif mostly wishful thinking.

Cad Bane

Elsewhere, the war over Tatooines future heats up. The Pyke Syndicate isnt messing around. They dont really care about gaining control over Mos Espa so much as they do control over their spice routesand anything, or anyone, who stands in their way.

The episode opens with yet another familiar face from The Mandalorian: Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens:

Cobb Vanth

Just kidding! Its Cobb Vanth, the Marhsal of Mos Pelgonow called Freetown under Vanths stewardship.

Vanth doesnt take kindly to a group of Pykes loading up a container of spice in his territory and tells them to make like a tree and get the hell out of there. When they draw blasters instead, he makes short work of three of the four. The fourth he allows to live, but only after unloading the spice.

This is worth more than your town, the Pyke sneers. Maybe Ill retire, then, Vanth shoots back.

Later, when Boba Fett and his minions are discussing the Pyke Syndicates burgeoning threat, Mando arrives and says he knows where to get some muscle. He goes to Freetown and tries to enlist Vanth and his people, who have their own reasons to want the Pykes gone.

When Mando leaves, the titular stranger from the episodes title shows up.

The blue-faced alien is none other than Cad Bane, one of the most fearsome, terrifying and evil bounty hunters in the Star Wars galaxyexactly the kind of badass everyone was expecting Boba Fett to be, but worse.

Cod Bane

In fact, Dave Filoni had an entire Clone Wars arc worked out for Bane and Fett, where Bane would teach a young Boba Fett the ways of the bounty hunter as his apprentice following his father, Jangos death at the hands of Mace Windu. This was never put to screen, though Fennec Shand and Cad Bane had a showdown in The Bad Batch.

Now, it appears well get the Boba Fett / Cad Bane face-off we never knew we wanted. Unfortunately, it comes after a pretty tragic gunfight in Freetown.

Bane shows up making threats. His new employerthe Pyke Synidicateis flexing its muscle. Bane makes it clear hes not there to talk. He pushes his coat aside, hand hovering over his blaster. You can almost hear the whistling from The Good, The Bad and the Ugly play over the drifting sand.

Vanths deputy draws first, forcing Vanth to draw as well. Bane is faster than either of them. Both men fall to the dirt, though its not entirely clear if theyre dead or not. We dont get a lot of character deaths in Star Wars but I think its possible Timothy Olyphant will not be reprising this role.

"Tatooine belongs to the syndicate," Bane growls. "As long as the spice keeps flowing, everyone will be left alone."

Back in Mos Espa, a pair of Pykes go into the Sanctuary. The cantinas owner, Garsa Fwip (Jennifer Beals) eyes them worriedlyand with good reason. They leave and a moment later the place blows up. Were getting into Narcos territory here, with the Syndicate taking on the role of Pablo Escobars cartel.

Next week is the series finale of The Book Of Boba Fett, and well see where the chips fall. Its been a weird show, transitioning from one thing into a pre-season Mandalorian in the space of two episodesnot that Im complaining. Its just odd and Im not sure what the point of doing it this way was, when you could really have saved Mando and Grogu and Luke for The Mandalorians third season instead.

Luke gives Grogu a choice

While things are heating up on Tatooine, Luke and Grogu are still training on the forest planet where Lukes droids are building a new Jedi school.

Luke shows Grogu the gift Mando brought for him: Mithril mail!er, sorry, a Beskar Steel shirt of chainmail that Grogu will grow out of in about a hundred more years.

But Luke doesnt give him the armor. Instead, he gives him a choice. He whips out Yodas adorable little lightsaber and tells him that he has to choose between it and Mandos gift.

If he chooses the laser sword, hell become Lukes first student at his new Jedi academy. If he chooses the Beskar, however, hell return as Mandos foundling and never be trained in the ways of the Force.

Grogu's new sword.

This is, once again, all about the Jedi and their insistence on not forming attachments, which is kind of rich given how close Luke is to Leia and Han Solo and Chewbaccas and C-3PO and R2-D2. Luke has lots of friends and loved ones who hed happily kill or die for, but Grogu isnt allowed to receive a gift from Mando?

Granted, this is during training, so I suppose different rules apply. And Luke makes a very good point: Grogu will live hundreds of years. A short time for him is a lifetime for Luke or Mando. He may very well never see Mando again if he trains with Luke. On the other hand, if he goes with Mando hell outlive him by centuries and forego his Jedi training.

The episode ends before we get a chance to see which choice he makes. Maybe we wont find out until The Mandalorian airs. Maybe well find out next week. As much as it pains me, sticking with the Jedi is clearly the right choice and the safest option for the little guy. But its sad.

What did you think of this episode? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.

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'The Book Of Boba Fett' Episode 6 Recap And Review: Dave Filoni To The Rescue - Forbes

It happened every time a school board member spoke up about changes to the Central York School Districts COVID-19 plan. Meow! a group of four people would taunt from the back of the room. Cat!

Amelia McMillan, a parent in the Pennsylvania district, recognized the four people. Theyd supported Central Yorks recent (and now overturned) ban on certain school books, many of them about race. After the mid-January meeting ended, McMillan said she saw the group corner a local father in a hallway.

They were yelling at him about his kid being a furry, McMillan told The Daily Beast. The group cited an email someone sent to the board about furries. I heard him say, Leave my kid out of this. Two administrators from the school broke up this interaction and shuffled the four aggressors out of the building, and then asked the father if he was alright. He told everyone standing there (myself included) that they were calling his child a furry and he asked them to stop.

Furries are a subculture of people who craft alter-egos as anthropomorphized animals. A furry might draw himself as a cartoon tiger, or dress up as a dragon at a convention for fellow enthusiasts. Its a decades-old genre and, relative to other available subcultures, fairly wholesome.

So why are school boards attendees in a panic about supposed furries in the classroom?

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In Pennsylvania, Maine, Michigan, and Iowa in recent months, school board meetings have been disrupted by allegations that educators are giving special treatment to furry students. While false, the widespread hoaxes play into a broader right-wing effort to discredit and demand further control over public education.

Its culture war, its control, and its not about protecting kids, Patch OFurr, proprietor of the furry news site Dogpatch Press, told The Daily Beast. If you actually look at whos doing this, at some of the political groups getting involved, theyre all far right.

The rumors simmered for months in districts like Central York last year, where a concerned parents Facebook group promoted fears that furries could be in your childs classroom hissing at your child and licking themselves.

Theyre demonizing minorities by proxy, with a target behind the target.

But it was in Michigans Midland school district, not Central York, that the claims finally caught fire.

Yesterday I heard that at least one of our schools in our town, has in one of the unisex bathrooms a litter box for the kids that identify as cats, a speaker at a school board meeting said, in a video that went viral in January. And I am really disturbed by that.

Michigan GOP co-chair Meshawn Maddock soon amplified the cat scat claims. Kids who identify as furries get a litter box in the school bathroom, Maddock wrote on Facebook. Parent heroes will TAKE BACK our schools.

Midland Public Schools do not provide litter boxesunisex or otherwise. The districts superintendent debunked the rumor in a scathing email. (It is unconscionable that this afternoon I am sending this communication, his email to parents began.)

Nevertheless, the allegations soon spread to Texas, where a GOP candidate (and activist with the right-wing parents group Moms For Liberty) added her own baseless claims about special privileges for furry students. Cafeteria tables are being lowered in certain @RoundRockISD middle and high schools to allow furries to more easily eat without utensils or their hands (ie, like a dog eats from a bowl), she tweeted.

That allegation wasnt true, either. In fact, chatter about litter boxes and doggie bowls display a misunderstanding about the furry community, which eats and poops like everyone else, says Sharon Roberts, an associate professor at the University of Waterloo and member of the academic research team Furscience.

Its limited fantasy, Roberts told The Daily Beast of furrydom. Its not escapism, its not a departure from reality. People who are furries are not like, I am my anthropomorphized character. Thats not what happens.

Furries do not literally believe they are non-human animals, Roberts said. Instead, a furry might play-act the role of a cartoon animal, but when nature calls, shell step out of character and remove her costume to use a normal toilet. (Furscience set the bathroom record straight in 2016, when they made a tongue-in-cheek video about the impossibility of using a toilet in a fursuit.)

OFurr, who has traced the origins of the litter box urban legend, dates the hoax to at least 2008. Thats when a local news story about a Pittsburgh furry convention led to unfounded speculation that hotel staff would have to clean up convention-goers poop.

Those rumors appear to have resurfaced with the start of the 2021-2022 school year. In August, for instance, an anonymous grandparent told Kentuckys WLKY that her grandchildren were being bullied in class by students who made hissing noises. The districts superintendent told the station that a small number of students had violated the dress code by wearing cat ears or tails, and that the situation was under control.

But the rumor metastasized in other states, especially when picked up by conservative voices. Blogs in Iowa and Idaho promoted the stories this fall, claiming that furry students were either being granted special litter boxes, or were being exempted from homework (cant grip pencil with paws). The blogs noted that schools had denied the allegations, but the authors went on to say theyd heard more rumors from locals and people at the Clay County GOP booth at the county fair.

Such rumors, if true, threatened to weaken the U.S. military, an Iowa commentator wrote. As China threatens to invade neighbors, were cringing when someone tells us hes an antelope and we better acknowledge hes got hooves whether or not visible, he opined. How could we possibly win a war with an army filled with dogs and cats?

Not all of these queries have been warmly received in the furry community. In early November, an aspiring educator took to Reddits r/teachers board to relay rumors about students in her hometown demanding litter boxes in school. I went to r/furry to ask for advice and their opinion on how to handle this situation but got permanently banned, wrote the Redditor, who is in school to become a teacher.

By October, furry fears were making their way into school board meetings. In Skowhegan, Maine, where Redditors were already sharing litter box rumors, a speaker at a school board meeting spoke requesting information regarding the districts stance on allowing students who identify as animals (furry), to be an exception to dress code (hats, etc), according to the meetings publicly available minutes.

A parent raised a similar concern at an Iowa school board meeting that month, and the query took on a more political tone at a board meeting in Minnesota. Another topic many parents would like addressed are furries, a speaker said. Why are kids being allowed to dress up like animals in our schools? Theyre being allowed to growl and bark at their teachers. Theyre allowed to wear leashes and collars and tails and they just bark but God forbid a kid wears a Trump hat to school; theyre told to take that off immediately. (Most schools dont allow hats.)

The politicization of furry school rumors comes amid a sweeping conservative assault on public schools and how they approach issues like race and gender. School board meetings, sometimes attended by members of far-right paramilitary groups, have become theaters for culture wars, with GOP figures like Maddock calling on parents to TAKE BACK our schools from the specter of liberal educators.

Sometimes, as in the case of Central York, the same people who supported book bans are the same people now promoting furry rumors.

Furries make a convenient target for people looking to lash out at marginalized identities, particularly the LGBT community, which has a higher-than-average representation among furries, OFurr noted. Multiple litter box hoaxes make explicit reference to gender-neutral litter boxes (a parallel to battles over gender-affirming bathroom choices in schools) or claim that students identify as furries (a phrasing uncommon in furry media, but with parallels to how conservative media often describes transgender youth).

Theyre demonizing minorities by proxy, with a target behind the target, OFurr wrote in a recent blog post. Its a cousin to transphobic memes like I sexually identify as an attack helicopter using weirdos to make it easier to swallow.

The director of the Public Schools Branch in Prince Edward Island, Canada, took a similar stance when furry hoaxes flooded his districts social media in October.

It seemed to me like it was a backlash against some of the progressive things that our schools are doing, director Norbert Carpenter told the CBC, and we would have many that would say this is rooted in hate and transphobia and homophobia and that message needs to be clear, its not acceptable.

Thats not to say furries arent in schools. A recent Rolling Stone article showcased a thriving, TikTok-based furry youth scene. Its a space for creativity and play, young furries and their parents explainedand like any youth subculture (see: goths and MySpace queens of decades past) some of the allure is in furrydoms inscrutability to adults.

But efforts to cast anthropomorphized animals as a niche issue are misguided, anyway. Last week, a Tennessee school board banned the Holocaust graphic novel Maus, ostensibly on the grounds that its illustrations of unclothed mice were inappropriate. Meanwhile, conservative commentators accused the left of attempting to destroy the fabrics of our democracy for drawing Minnie Mouse in a pantsuit instead of her usual short dress. These dueling debates over mouse attire dont illustrate some deep American angst over rodent dress codes; anthropomorphized animals, imbued with our own anxieties, have long acted as our proxies in culture wars, regardless of whether we own fursuits.

Roberts, the furry expert, said the furry community can act as a safe home for young people who might be jeopardized by efforts to ban school books about autism and LGBT issues (like Central York schools did earlier this year).

The furry movement is disproportionately LGBT and neurodiverse, yet we see that furries are thriving in this community, Roberts said. Its because they have a strong bond and connection thats rooted in creativity.

But with a fixation on nonexistent litter boxes and lunch tables, the furry panic turns a thriving subculture into a cudgel against public schools and their students. Ironically, OFurr said, its the rightnot furrieswho wont stop talking about cat shit.

It shows a complete failure to understand how kids think, what they care about, what they want, he said. Theyre targeting the places kids have a little bit of privacy in schools, like their lunch or their bathroom breaks. Its about control.

Read more:
Furry Panic Is the Latest Dumb GOP Attack on Public Schools - The Daily Beast