chasing answers newsletter #25

Date night, The ultimate Twitter thread, Is this shit real?

“In the end, kids won’t remember that fancy toy or game you bought for them, they will remember the time you spent with them.” - Kevin Heath

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Happy Sunday!

Hopefully, everyone (at least those of you who got to set your clocks back last night) is well-rested and ready to start the week. We’re all Covid free in our house after a rough two weeks, so we’re ready to go!

Let’s get to it!

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Date Night

Last night (Saturday), my wife had a night out with the girls. 

That meant date night for my daughter and me. First, we hit Dairy Queen (my daughter’s choice) and then headed to the theater to watch “Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile.”

The movie was pretty good, but my daughter’s favorite part of the night was the recliners in the theater. They recently remodeled our local theater, and it’s off the charts. Way too nice for a small town like ours. I have no idea how they plan to make a return on their investment. 

I just realized how stupid that line was as I was typing it. The $20 popcorn will probably pay for the recliners in no time.

Anyhow, my daughter wore out the buttons on her seat. They literally recline all the way back, and she was up and down no less than a hundred times during the movie.

Luckily there was no one directly behind us.

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The Ultimate Twitter Thread

Between our dinner at Dairy Queen and the movie, we had some time to kill. So we made a quick stop on the way to the theater so I could get some necessities to begin my research for the ultimate Twitter thread. The image below is what that research looks like.

Thanks to a couple of writing friends (you know who you are,) I’m on a mission to deliver peanut butter to its rightful place as a respected and treasured treat and to prove it’s one of the few items where paying for the name brand is worth it.

I have some strong opinions on what the best peanut butter is, but to be fair, it’s been years since I have tried anything other than my favorite. So, I thought I better do some homework before making my claim in regards to what is the best. 

Of course, there was something wrong with the self-checkout lanes, so we had to go through one of the regular lines. If you’re wondering what type of look you get when you’re checking out with nothing but 20 jars of peanut butter and a bag of mandarin oranges (my daughter requested the oranges; they aren’t part of the research,) it’s something like this:

Oddly enough, this is VERY similar to the look your wife gives you when she comes home and sees $120 worth of peanut butter sitting on the kitchen counter.

Sorry honey, it’s all in the name of research.

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Is This Shit Real?

Ok, this is going to get dark for a bit.

A few months ago, something extremely unusual went down close to where I live. About six miles from my house, there was a raid by the Department of Homeland Security. This isn’t normal shit around here. It’s a small community of 10,000 people, so when something like this happens, it’s BIG news. 

This was the real deal too. Helicopters flying overhead, armored vehicles, and a whole team of officers in tactical gear. It took a few weeks before information started coming out, but evidently, they had been watching this guy for years. It turns out he was part of a global operation that was distributing child pornography and animal-crushing videos, and he thought moving to a small town in the middle of nowhere Ohio would get them off his trail.  

The child pornography alone would have been reason enough to off this guy on the spot, but animal-crushing videos? I didn’t even know what the fuck that meant. Turns out they are exactly what they sound like. Apparently, there are people out there who get off watching small animals, such as kittens, rabbits, gerbils, etc., be crushed by scantily clad women.  

You read that correctly. 

This guy represents the worst of everything this planet has to offer. 

Hearing shit like this makes me feel helpless. How can we do enough good to offset assholes like this?

The best thing I can do right now is highlight some charities focused on these issues. So here you go. If you feel the urge, please donate to one of them, or pass along their info to someone else who may want to.

Child Rescue Coalition - Child Rescue Coalition (CRC) is a nonprofit organization that rescues children from sexual abuse by building technology for law enforcement, free of charge, to track, arrest and prosecute child predators.

ecpat - ecpat’s campaign has evolved into the world’s largest influencing network fully dedicated to ending the sexual exploitation of children, with a membership of 122 civil society organisations in 104 countries.

Animal Legal Defense Fund - The Animal Legal Defense Fund’s mission is to protect the lives and advance the interests of animals through the legal system. The Animal Legal Defense Fund accomplishes this mission by filing high-impact lawsuits to protect animals from harm, providing free legal assistance and training to prosecutors to assure that animal abusers are held accountable for their crimes, supporting tough animal protection legislation and fighting legislation harmful to animals, and providing resources and opportunities to law students and professionals to advance the emerging field of animal law.

Animal Welfare Institute - Christine Stevens founded the Animal Welfare Institute to end the cruel treatment of animals in experimental laboratories. Inevitably, her work expanded to take on other animal welfare causes, including, preventing animal extinctions due to anthropogenic causes, reforming methods used to raise animals for food, banning steel-jaw leghold traps, ending commercial whaling, and much more.

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Twitter’s Best

I’m thinking about making this a weekly feature. I would love to hear your thoughts on this. A quick comment below or an email simply saying “great idea” or “that’s stupid” will do the trick. 😃

WWF @WWF

The actions we take today – no matter how small they may seem – affect our tomorrow. 2022 is wrapping up, but the climate & nature crises remain. Let's not wait ‘til next year to make a change. The moment is now. RT this video to speak up for people & nature. #COP27 #COP15

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That’s all for now.

I hope you all have a great week!

As always, I would love to hear from you.

• If you read something here that resonates with you, leave a comment.

• If you would like to discuss something further, shoot me an email.

• If there was something you absolutely hated, @ me on Twitter.

And if there is something you think I should be writing about, please let me know.

If you want to see more of my work, visit chasinganswers.co.

Thank you for reading, and if you liked what you read, please share.

randy