Thursday open thread: Consider the dong
As I was plugging away at my various tasks yesterday, two stories caught my eye.
Penises are shrinking and genitals becoming malformed because of pollution, an environmental scientist has warned in a new book detailing the challenges facing human reproduction.
Dr Shanna Swan writes that humanity is facing an "existential crisis" in fertility rates as a result of phthalates, a chemical used when manufacturing plastics that impacts the hormone-producing endocrine system.
As a result of this pollution, a growing number of babies are being born with small penises, Dr Swan writes.
Americans have no right to carry guns in public, a divided en banc Ninth Circuit panel ruled Wednesday, reversing a prior Ninth Circuit decision that struck down a Hawaii firearm restriction as unconstitutional.
“There is no right to carry arms openly in public; nor is any such right within the scope of the Second Amendment,” U.S. Circuit Judge Jay Bybee, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote for the majority of an 11-judge panel in a 127-page opinion.
Looking back on 700 years of legal history dating back to 14th century England, seven judges in the majority found “overwhelming evidence” that the law has never given people “an unfettered right to carry weapons in public spaces.”
The fact that pollution is decreasing human penis size may just be the existential threat required to get troglodytic climate change-deniers to act before it's too late. The penis must be saved!
But the 9th Circuit's en banc ruling—that means that all eleven judges ruled on the case—is even more hilarious. As we all know, men who open carry have already been affected by the pernicious penis-size-decreasing effects of pollution, and thus treat their dysfunctions by displaying cock-substitutes in some funhouse version of a Sir David Attenborough documentary. "We spy the small-membered homo sapiens male engaging in displays of virility by using a substitute for his sexual organ, attempting to secure a mate."
Human attacks on the environment are making our johnsons shrink from one generation to the next; but now the court has ruled that you can't assuage your deficiencies through ersatz dicks which just happen to be able to mow down dozens of other human beings in a few seconds. One must chortle.
This year started out rough, what with an attempted coup and all. But all indicators have been doing nothing but going up since then. Ahem.
This is your open thread.