Today’s Fluff: M&M’s and Royal Babies

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When Marian came home from Virginia, she did not bring me a Virginia ham or Virginia peanuts. She brought me an M&M’s chocolate bar. I’ve never seen such a thing before, so I cracked it open to see what was inside. Answer: it’s a chocolate bar with mini-M&M’s embedded in it. The mini-M&M’s, of course, are candy shells with chocolate inside, so the whole thing is basically a chocolate bar with bits of candy in it.

Now, I can see the case for M&M’s. They’re handy finger food, and they famously melt in your mouth, not in your hands. But that’s because they’re bits of chocolate surrounded by a candy shell. The chocolate bar is bits of candy surrounded by a chocolate shell. I don’t understand the point of this.

And before anyone gets peevish with me, yes, I know this is my third fluffy, nonpolitical post in a row. But this is important! What is the point of an M&M’s chocolate bar?

And as long as we’re on fluffy news, my sister writes to castigate me for blogging about “quantum whatevers” when there’s a new royal baby to talk about. It’s a boy! According to the Guardian, “The names of the baby will be announced in due course.” But you probably want to read the Daily Mail for this kind of news anyway.

Things are obviously getting out of control around here. At this point, how about if we just treat this as an open thread for whatever trivia happens to be occupying your mind at the moment?

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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