Contributors this month include dronon, earthfurst (Happy Canada Day!), GreenReaper, InkyCrow, and Mike Retriever.

As conventions have been closed, the charitability of the fandom marches on as Pibble, Chise, Nas, and Wolf (aka Kind7ed) lead a fundraising effort collecting nearly $9,000 for Project Okra and the Navajo Nation. They did this during the stream on Picarto where they played Jackbox games while hanging out and telling stories.

Project Okra is an organization that pays black trans* chefs who provide meals for black trans* individuals who are facing food insecurities, along with other community services. The Navajo have been fundraising to help deal with the impact of the Coronavirus on their people. Each received $4,365 dollars as a result from the stream.

Some truly awesome people - Wolf @woIffangs , Vatika @PIBBLEBITCH, Chise @sailorrooscout , and Nas @nasfk_ !! The $9k you guys raised for two vital charities is incredible and shouldn't be overlooked. I'm glad I got to watch for a bit You're amazing and deserve to be proud! pic.twitter.com/HvdT1bmnlb

— ◽ GHOSTFLANNEL ◽ (@ghostflannel) June 28, 2020

Capital City Fur Con has closed any future gatherings after its premiere in January 2020 due to financial mismanagement. Staffers came forward to discuss the issues caused by the chair’s fiscal malfeasance, and guests have reported that honored guests who were promised compensation were left out in the cold.

The greatest grievance, though, is that it is alleged that the charity they were raising money for, the ALS Association, also were not given their money. ALS has gained infamy in the fandom due to the disease that took the late Tony “DogBomb” Barret, and many conventions over the year have been raising money toward research for a cure since.

More information can be seen on Global Furry Television’s coverage on the below video which is transcribed below.

For many furries, the Fourth of July weekend would be a time that many would make their way to the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in order to partake in the convention of Anthrocon. Due to the current pandemic, most conventions have been canceled for the year of 2020. For those furries looking to reconnect with their community, though, a full length documentary by Ash Coyote is set to release that weekend.

The furry producer did a series of shorter furry non-fiction for her channel which we reviewed here.

Hello and welcome to May’s episode of digging up positivity. This month we have a couple of literal diggers! Online events, animation and our featurette is the guy behind that big event you saw where I was floating in mid-air, playing connect-four with the little ones in the Sophia Childresn Hospital in Rotterdam.

Reporting from Verve indicates that Neopets will be releasing an animated series in 2021. Neopets is known for its Flash based entertainment that held its own with other such animal care based franchises of the 1990s such as Pokemon, Digimon, or Tamagochi.

The owning company JumpStart, who bought it from Viacom in 2014, hopes to use this as a way to refresh interest in the pet based franchise at a time where they are shifting their Flash based interface before most browsers discontinue support for Flash applications by the end of this year.

Released in November 2019, Cassel Games’ Ratropolis sets players in the role of the leader of a post-apocalyptic rat society, attempting to rebuild their once-great civilization after scientific experiments caused its collapse. But in order to grow, the new settlement must defend itself - first from mutated rats that caused the apocalypse, then as the settlement grows, from predators. The goal is to survive 30 waves of enemies using cards that provide an array of tactics, and with the leader’s special ability.
 

Furries of past connected mostly via the internet behind avatars and characters of varying species. In chat rooms they would engage in discussion and role play. However, many folks of color found opportunity through being through a world where interaction was through text and art alone. That if they did not discuss or indicate their race then they could see the world in a whole new way. They could finally escape their skin and put on a new one here.

However, no one can live on the internet alone. A systemically racial bias in justice systems throughout America came to a head, once again, in the death of George Floyd, a black citizen of Minneapolis. The cruelty of this death was of grueling note as video was released of Officer Chauvin knelled down on his neck for many minutes until Mr. Floyd stopped breathing.

To help distract quarantined Doctor Who fans, there are Doctor Who: Lockdown! simulcast watch-alongs of popular episodes of the "New" series of the show, featuring creatives behind the scenes Tweeting along, as well as short videos to go along with the watch-along.

With the May 30 watch-a-long of the loose "trilogy" of episodes "The End of the World", "New Earth" and "Gridlock" a sort of illustrated audio ""The Secret of Novice Hame", written by Russell T. Davies, was attached. The titular character and narrator of the story is Novice Hame (played by Anna Hope), who appeared in the "New Earth" and "Gridlock" episodes and is an anthropomorphic cat. She tells the story of her life among the various anthropomorphic animals of the far future planet of New Earth, and is visited by David Tennant's "Tenth" incarnation of the Doctor.

An interesting implication of the short piece is that it opens up the possibility that the Doctor themself might someday become an anthropomorphic animal; Novice Hame notes that there are stories of the Doctor in various forms, including animals.

See Also: Flayrah's 2006 coverage of the the episode "New Earth"

Contributors this month include 2cross2affliction, dronon, GreenReaper, Rakuen Growlithe, and Sonious.

The Ursa Majors have announced their winners for 2019, celebrating excellence in the furry arts! Due to Covid-19, there was no formal ceremony at a furry convention this year; instead the results were announced on May 23, 2020 in a YouTube video.

Determined by popular vote, two categories were excluded this year due to not getting enough nominations (Fursuits and Non-Fiction).

The winners and runners-up are...

It has been two decades since the triangle shirt wearing wallaby had aired on Nickelodeon. Things have changed a lot since then. The world had a recession, Starbucks is a thing, smartphones are now an integrated part of life, there was the 3D film craze, and social media is now a primary source of communication. All of these elements are introduced quickly in the show’s opening.

If you are a fan of the show it’ll be well worth the watch, but you can enjoy it without having watched the 90s run. I myself was not a religious watcher of the show, which may be deemed as blasphemous due to my Kangaroo fursona, but my parents did not have cable television during the Nickelodeon hay-day. That changed with the invention of satellite television, though. So change can be good.

Static Cling’s theme is very heavy handed, dealing with life and the changes that take place there-in. As someone who wasn’t a devoted watcher of the show, it is a decent attempt to cover the more modern life of the modern life we live in at this point. The main review will have spoilers and synopsis so if you want to enjoy it blind, watch before proceeding to the next sections.

Contributors this month include 2cross2affliction, dronon, earthfurst, GreenReaper, and mwalimu.

If you were to Google the definition of a comedian you would see it defined by Dictionary.com as an entertainer whose act is designed to make an audience laugh. Likewise the New York Times has a comedy critic, Jason Zinoman, who defines comedy in a moment of reflecting on his own career of analyzing them.

This often dictates the form of my column, since while the goal of comedy is to make you laugh, what’s fascinating about the art form — especially these days, when it’s so fragmented and aesthetically diverse — is that there are many ways artists accomplish that goal.

However, if you were to ask one furry who considers himself one, 2 Gryphon, you’d find an entirely different etymology of the word, and what the job of a comic is.

It's the JOB of the comic to bring forth uncomfortable things and question them in a way that makes people think about them.Since that has become "wrong", expect that the Western world will not be laughing as much. https://t.co/EIExUX5W2h— 2, The Ranting Gryphon (@2_gryphon) June 9, 2019

It is this quote that we are going to be over-analysing today. I have broken this down into three main points as to why this definition of the job of a comedian is not only a fundamental misunderstanding of the role, but also a resignation of the foundational principles of comedy.