Your Tax Dollars at Work: FEMA Cancels Canvassing, Buys Bigger Shrug
In a bold move widely described as “deranged yet somehow inevitable,” Earth has officially declared a Full Environmental Reset, triggered by a cascade of events so bewilderingly absurd, they read like a post-apocalyptic Mad Lib.
Let’s begin with the sky. This week, a Soviet-era spacecraft—having ghosted us for 53 years—finally crash-landed back to Earth, presumably to file a noise complaint about all the Bitcoin miners now buying up power plants. At the same time, the UK joyfully received a package of moon dust from China, now declared “rarer than gold,” leading hedge fund managers to invest heavily in lunar sediment futures. Experts anticipate that by 2026, billionaires will be snorting crushed meteorites as a status symbol.
Down on the ground—well, it’s a mess. Street cleanliness across the UK has reached record lows, a “litter nightmare” even raccoons are organizing strikes over. In Antelope Valley and Malibu, rampant illegal dumping and a proposed sewer project have left residents asking whether they live in a city or an experimental landfill. Meanwhile, an $18M EPA food waste reduction grant was cut, which would have addressed the problem but alas, fiber-rich diets—shown to help expel forever chemicals—are the new hero of the resistance.
In coastal America, BP’s oil spill legacy continues to haunt Louisiana’s marine ecosystems 15 years later, while Trump overturns Biden-era appliance efficiency rules, reinstates commercial fishing in fragile marine monuments, and declares pollution “has no cost to society.” A new lawsuit insists there’s “no energy emergency,” despite record-breaking heat and a surge of Americans turning to government-funded “appliance coaches” to understand how not to explode while installing a heat pump.
And what would an ecological collapse be without a biblical plague? Enter the Cicadas, who have decided this is the moment—after 17 years underground—to rise and scream. Their synchronized emergence across the U.S. is described by NOAA scientists as “auditory revenge.” Cicada-themed cocktails are now trending on TikTok.
Of course, this isn’t just a terrestrial affair. Google’s AI is now trying to decode dolphin language, which one preliminary translation suggests might be “Why are your oceans on fire?” This comes as reef-building corals buckle under the weight of multiple stressors, and the U.S. flirts with seabed mining that could permanently fracture any remaining oceanic consensus.
Back in the headlines, Trump’s Middle East tour aims to revive oil trade and nuclear ambition, while his crypto dreams stumble over his own profit-chasing shoelaces. Domestic tensions rise as FEMA fires its leader (again), ends door-to-door disaster support, and reportedly considered a reality show called Disaster or Hoax? before someone remembered hurricanes are real.
Meanwhile, rural electric co-ops in Colorado are quietly going green, possibly out of boredom. Churches are now armed with a new handbook on how to confront fossil fuel actors, giving “Sunday sermon” a much sharper edge. A new fossil of a tropical tree was found just in time for scientists to say: “Cool. That’ll be extinct again soon.”
Oh, and let’s not forget: a wolf from Game of Thrones has been cloned, a baby mammoth was unearthed, and a rare New Zealand snail laid an egg from its neck, proving once and for all that nature has absolutely had it with us and is now just freestyling.
In a final spiritual twist, thought leaders now say the ultimate pilgrimage is not to Mecca or Burning Man, but a waste management site, where one can gaze upon the sacred relics of Amazon Prime.
As the World’s Richest 10 Percent continue to cause two-thirds of global warming, a new wave of data centers, earthquakes, and megalawsuits creep across the landscape like spilled pancake syrup—sticky, slow-moving, and impossible to clean up.
The good news? Water is now safe to drink in fire-affected parts of L.A., and you can stock your emergency go bag cheaply and easily—as long as you have a coach, a whistle, and a flamethrower.
In conclusion: buckle up, breathe deeply (assuming you still can), and remember that when the origins of language were first laid down, this probably wasn’t what we had in mind.
Coming up next: Can fiber fix climate change? Is your Tesla haunted by dolphin ghosts? And why is a pig farm trending on OnlyFans? Stay tuned.
Chatty Geppetto’s log for May 14, 2025:
- 60 news headlines pulled from 15 different news sources via RSS on May 11, 2025. Sources include the BBC, CBS News, CNBC, Fox News, Grist, the Guardian, the Hill, Inside Climate News, Los Angeles Times, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the New York Times, NPR, Politico, Science Daily, and Yale Environment 360.
- 9 ChatGPT queries; estimated 14.85 g CO2e produced
- 4 hours to create the mixed media drawing; estimated 7,332 g CO2e produced. This drawing was created on vellum-surfaced Bristol paper with a painted gouache base and layered with hand-drawn pen and ink hatching.
- 3 hours to scan the original drawing and assemble and publish the digital post; estimated 93.75 g CO2e produced
