Two weeks ago, the day after Easter, Pope Francis died. Last Saturday, Donald Trump fell asleep at the Pope’s funeral in Rome. In the middle of the week, a reporter threw out a question to Trump at a scrum on the White House lawn about who the next Pope should be, and Trump said he should, and then suggested (without actually naming him) Timothy Dolan. Lindsay Graham then enthusiastically supported Trump’s candidacy for the Papacy on social media. Friday night, Trump posted this to his social media, which the official White House social media then amplified:
There is an argument to be made that Trump was trolling Catholics with this. That it shouldn’t be amplified because it’s obviously a joke. But it’s so hard to tell; Trump’s line between sincerity and parody is so porous as to be useless. This is a thing. It happened. He may well believe he would be a great Pope, the best Pope, the Pope like no one has ever seen before. So what if he’s not a cardinal or a bishop? So what if he’s not a Catholic?
There have been many corrupt and venal men who have sat upon the Throne on St. Peter across the last two thousand years, men who were more interested in power and women and riches than in matters spiritual. Donald Trump would not be an historical outlier in that regard.
Were he to be elected Pope, which he will not be, perhaps a successor will have the fat, bloated corpse of Trump disinterred, placed on trial for heresy, convicted, and tossed in the river like the common trash. It’s the least he deserves.
Facebook’s algorithms occasionally intrigue me. Take, for instance, these two recent ads that landed in my feed.
Okay, the Peanuts baseball jersey from Hot Topic on the left caught my attention. This, at least, is official Peanuts merchandise, which is rare for the Facebook ads I see. Unfortunately, Hot Topic is sold out of the jersey in the warehouse and there’s not a store within 100 miles that has it in stock. Would I have spent the money on it? I’m not sure. Probably not. But at least I looked.
On the left we have a shirt that melds a Japanese-style Darth Vader with Hokusai’s famous ukiyo-e print, “The Great Wave off Kanagawa.” The art looks pretty cool. As a poster, maybe I’d make room for it in my collection. As a shirt, it doesn’t work for me. It looks tacky. No sale from me.
Here’s an interesting shirt that came up in my Facebook feed.
Baltimore Orioles… established 1901…
So, it’s a New York Yankees shirt.
The Orioles were one of the founding franchises of the American League. They went bankrupt, were bought by a New York ownership group, and moved to Manhattan for the 1903 season. I don’t believe the Yankees claim the two years in Baltimore anymore as part of their official history, though they do claim to be one of the original eight American League teams, and they can only do that if the Baltimore years count.
The Washington Nationals do the same thing, selling shirts that say “Established 1905,” when the team that played in Washington in 1905 now plays in Minnesota and is even in a different league from today’s Nationals.
I’m not even sure where the 1905 date comes from — there were teams known as the Nationals in Washington back into the 1880s — and there were Orioles teams in Baltimore in the 1890s, notably the teams that dominated the National League of John McGraw, Wee Willie Keeler, and Joe Kelley. (I don’t believe I ever shared my pictures from my trip to Baltimore’s New Cathedral Cemetery to visit the graves of McGraw and Kelley.)
Baseball history — or rather, the financial exploitation of it — is weird and malleable.
Finally, some AI slop movie posters.
I shared some AI slop movie posters back in January, including one for a movie that actually exists — The Dark Knight Rises — but lately I’m getting posters for Star Trek and Star Wars movies.
These posters aren’t real. There are no trailers. I don’t believe the Rey-focused Star Wars movie has even entered production yet. (I think the script is still being worked on.) I’m not sure the fourth Star Trek film with Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto will ever get out of Production Hell.
I’m not sure why people like and share this obvious slop.
I’m not sure why I even screenshot these when I do, except maybe to remind myself that this existed.
This hit social media after I made this post, but it fits, so I’ll add it.
The White House decided to mark May the 4th, the “Star Wars holiday.” (May the Fourth, May the Force be with you, get it? It’s clever, but I was over it about a decade ago.) Anyway…
He’s not well in the head.