R.NF

Summary

Walmart fired Dani Davis, a 6'4" cisgender woman, after a man who mistook her for transgender verbally threatened her in a women’s restroom at a Florida store.

Davis, visibly shaken, reported the March 14 incident to her immediate supervisor but was fired for not informing salaried management, allegedly creating a “security risk.”

Davis called the firing discriminatory. After viral backlash, Walmart offered to reinstate her with back pay.

Davis, a longtime employee, is uncertain about returning, citing fears of a hostile work environment.

first, I think it makes sense. Sometimes it's good to hit and be hit, without a bunch of other secondary bullshit to worry about. Second, my game is mostly that I think he's a coward. And I want him to stop pretending to be tough. That's about it.

So I called up the number and it went to voicemail. Lame. So I called the senate main number and spoke to a really awesome guy who seemed supportive of the idea.

So let's make it happen. I want to fight JD Vance. We can call it "boxing" since feet shouldn't be involved, but I'm not wearing big red gloves. So let's do this. Crowdfund or whatever me punching JD Vance! We're about the same age..both from 1984. I wouldn't do this to Trump because it would be unfair. But JD Vance? Makes sense. let's do it.

The majority of this money has come from small donations from regular people. Small glimmer of hope in a dark moment. Maybe we can push back against “legal” corporate genocide and win. [

The healthiest people live in Madrid

In Gaza, human shields are used by Israeli soldiers at least six times a day.

I served in Gaza for nine months, and first came across these procedures, called "mosquito protocol" in December 2023. It was only two months into the ground offensive, long before there was a shortage of dogs from the IDF's canine unit, Oketz, who were used for this purpose. This became the insane, unofficial excuse for this insane, unofficial procedure. I didn't realize then how ubiquitous using human shields, whom we referred to as a "shawish," would become.

Today, almost every platoon keeps a "shawish," and no infantry force enters a house before a "shawish" clears it. This means there are four "shawishes" in a company, twelve in a battalion, and at least 36 in a brigade. We operate a sub-army of slaves.

I recently saw that the IDF's Military Police Criminal Investigation Division opened six investigations into the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields, and my jaw dropped. I've seen cover-ups before, but this is a new low.

If the MPCID wanted to do its job seriously, it would have to open far more than even a thousand investigations. But all the MPCID wants is for us to be able to tell ourselves and the world that we're investigating ourselves, so they've found six scapegoats and are pinning it all on them.

BE

Democrats are furious. And they want their leaders to get mad, too.

“I wish you’d be angry,” a constituent told representative Gil Cisneros, a Democrat of California, at a recent town hall. At an event in Minnesota featuring a panel of Democratic attorneys general, an activist voiced a similar sentiment: “Get angry, man,” punctuating the message with a profanity.

The anger roiling the party, slow to build, is now a forceful current coursing through the electorate and pulling in Americans terrified that the country is descending into authoritarianism. Democrats – with no leader to guide them and little power to wield in Washington – are scrambling to harness the sudden fury.

At rallies, town halls and protests, voters are venting their fury with Donald Trump and his empowerment of Elon Musk’s full-frontal assault on federal agencies, stoking what progressive activists believe are the embers of a populist backlash against the president – and the Democratic leaders they believe are not meeting the moment.

This is the kind of bar of soap I am talking about. It's kind of a contoured oval.

I know there are copyrights on soap shapes. I've read several soap shape patents like Theodore G Brown's hollow bar of soap designed to contain slivers of old soap and Douglas Lee's helical soap.

I've tried to go through Conopco Inc's list of patents (the trademark holder for Dove) but I can't seem to find much. They also own a plethora of other companies though so it's been challenging to swift through.

On that note I also looked for subsidiaries of Unilever (they own Dove) to see if any of them make similarly shaped bars of soap but it doesn't seem like it. Brands of soap outside of Unilever such as Irish Spring (owned by Colgate-Palmolive) do sell contoured/"dog bone" soap but I don't recall seeing any that match Dove's design.

I did find a book called Chemical Product Design: Towards a Perspective through Case Studies from 2007 and chapter 9 is titled "Design of the Dove Beauty Bar" which sounded promising but it seems to be mostly about the chemical composition and reducing soap scum in bathtubs. This is also apparently one of the theories as to why they are branded as beauty bars instead of soap. The other theory being it was an advertising tactic by David Ogilvy to appeal to women.

Someone on Reddit claims their grandfather invented the shape of Dove soap and posted the original wooden models. They backed up their claims by getting into contact with Unilever. I couldn't find any useful information in the comments.

I could probably go to a grocery store and see if any other brands have similarly shaped soap and cross reference that with the release of that style of soap by Dove to see if the copyright has lapsed but that would probably mean looking for old advertisements.

For context I was in the shower thinking about different shapes of soap and it made me wonder if that specific design (contoured oval) was originally chosen primarily to either:

A) Minimize the amount of contact on surfaces after being used to limit residue build up and prevent it from becoming stuck to tubs, shower, sinks, and so on.

B) Work better with the human body by maximizing the area that comes into contact with skin and wearing more evenly.

I imagine these days Dove would say both but that feels a bit like saying the stay-on-tabs you find on canned drinks were designed with a hole to hold your straw in place or keep bees out of your drinks during the summer.

All of this made me wondering if there was a patent somewhere and I've now spent about two hours looking for it. I don't really know why I became so invested in this. I suspect there's going to be a simple answer.

SNW s2e7 "Those Old Scientists"