April 1: A Retrospective

April 1 is almost over, and it's been the same mixed bag for April Fool's jokes. (Including, elsewhere, mine.)  Lately it's become the sanctioned day for satire as well as pranks.  Megan Gaber at the Atlantic is down on the day, pointing out rightly that the Internet has fuzzed even more the distinction between truth and truthiness:

"And the Internet, for better and very often for worse, does not tend to distinguish between stories and facts, between the earnest and the satirical. The World Wide Web is an epistemological free-for-all—which makes it wonderfully democratic, definitely, but which also means that lies can spread on its platforms with, often, as much ease as truths."

Certainly, well, true, with many seriously troublesome effects.  The Internet is a platform for attention on the basis of bizarreness, so it's not clear whether the world is stranger than ever, or we just know more about it.  I'd say for sure both.  But that so much that is accurate is crazy (and that's just the Google News page) does flavor April 1 satire, which depends on the possibility of it being true.

Or maybe it just does what satire does--get the imagination freed for a new perspective.  I have to say that most of what I read today just wasn't that funny or interesting in this way, except for some sly "news" from an unlikely source, a very earnest and specific environmental group, the Center for Biological Diversity.  Their jibes came in the usual email advisory, which lately has often been about wolves endangered by aggressive hunting practices in several western states.  So it took a second for the satire to register in the headline "Idaho Governor Caught Stealing Wolves From Yellowstone."

In order to appease wolf hunters running out of prey, you see.  The gotcha moment made a point, but that was just the first of several stories.  For my money, here's the best one, both for quality, amusement and making several really telling points, plus there's something charming about it that goes beyond the joke-- Exploding 'Wind Trains' Wreak Mild Breezes on Unsuspecting Towns:

Yet another American community is reeling after a train carrying wind energy from the Great Plains derailed this week, unleashing mild breezes in its wake. Two hats and one freshly raked pile of leaves were lost in the disaster.

Wind-by-rail transport has been on a dramatic rise in the years since new technology allowed midwestern gusts to be captured, stored and transported to wind refineries in New York and California. In 2015 alone wind has been spilled eight times along rail routes, including in Nevada, where an outbreak of chapped lips was reported, and in Indiana, where a toupee was carried into a stream and drowned.

"So many of these 'wind trains' pass right next to our schools," said Pat Gumpter of the National Association of Peeved Parents. "Our children could be assaulted, at any moment, by an unexpected blast of air."