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I have embarked on a misguided crusade.

Nothing noble enough to require a horse. I’m vegan; I’d never require a horse. Just me, a Facebook feed, and an increasingly inconvenient question:

“Where’s the link to buy the physical product?”

Followed, when appropriate, by:

“How much is shipping?”

These are ordinary shopping questions. Somehow, they become deeply disruptive when directed at an advertisement full of objects that apparently do not exist.

Lately, my feed has been serving me books. Beautiful books. Thick books. Books with spines, shadows, and the apparent structural integrity to remain upright on a desk. Beside them: little cases of physical media, printed reference guides, and coordinated accessories arranged into an educational boutique.

Some of these images look AI-generated. Others might be mockups or actual printed demonstration copies. I cannot establish the provenance of every suspicious paperback in my feed.

But I can click the offer.

Seven-dollar download.

Twenty-seven-dollar download.

An entire desk full of merchandise has been reduced to an email attachment.

Ma’am, you are a ZIP file.

I Would Like the One With Atoms

I like physical things.

A reference book can sit beside my computer while I work. A printed guide can live under my keyboard. An SD card can go into a device. These are useful qualities, and an advertisement depicting them has successfully attracted my interest in precisely those qualities.

There is also a difference between being able to read something and having to drag along a charged device to read it. Devices are fine. Charged devices are another matter entirely. I work in a phone store, and somehow my own phone is always dead. If the book is physical, I can pick it up whenever I want. If it is digital, I have to locate the device, find a charger, and hope the battery has not chosen this exact moment to become a historical artifact.

Congratulations. Your marketing worked.

Now where do I buy what you showed me?

This is where the atmosphere occasionally becomes delicate.

Apparently, I was supposed to admire the lovingly staged physical product without developing any expectation of receiving it. The paper was conceptual. The binding was aspirational. The shipping department is a metaphor.

My apologies. I saw a person holding a book and assumed the book had entered commerce.

The Download Has Rack Screws

My least favorite offenders are DAW audio plug-ins. They seem to do this more than anyone else.

An advertisement presents a gorgeous new hardware device: brushed metal, substantial knobs, glowing meters, dramatic lighting. It looks expensive. It looks heavy. It looks like something I should check the dimensions of before rearranging my desk.

How is it powered?

What external physical interfaces does it use?

What inputs and outputs does it have?

Does it come with the cable?

Oh. It’s a plug-in.

The rack screws are decorative. The metal is emotional support. Installation requires a password, and the only thing taking up physical space is my disappointment.

I understand why software interfaces resemble familiar equipment. Knobs and meters are useful. But somewhere between designing the interface and presenting the advertisement, somebody could prominently mention that the chassis is made of pixels.

“DAW AUDIO PLUG-IN. NO HARDWARE INCLUDED.”

There. We’ve cleared customs.

A Picture Can Explain What You Sell

I saw another music-production advertisement that simply said, “Study Music Production Online,” over a picture of a mixing console.

Perfectly clear. I understood the offer immediately. Nobody needed to explain that tuition did not include freight delivery of a recording studio.

The wording and the image worked together.

That is entirely possible. We have the technology. Apparently, it even predates artificial intelligence.

What bothers me is the presentation of a specific, branded, physical bundle when the available purchase is a download. Some examples are ambiguous. Some, to my eye, are flagrantly misleading.

And “everybody does it” is a fascinating defense from an industry that charges people to learn how to stand out.

Shipping Costs?

So I have begun asking.

Politely. Enthusiastically. With the unbearable optimism of a woman who believes a photographed object might be available for purchase.

“Books, SD cards, and a mousepad guide seem amazing. Where’s the link to get a physical copy?”

“Shipping costs?”

“It’d look cute sitting on my desk.”

I recognize that this is a ridiculous use of my finite time on Earth. Somewhere, laundry remains unfolded while I interrogate the supply chain of an imaginary textbook.

Nevertheless, the question deserves an answer.

If there is a printed edition, wonderful. Send the link. If there isn’t, say so clearly in the advertisement. A digital product can be useful, beautiful, and worth buying on its own terms.

Give me a reason to want the download.

Because if you show me a book with a spine, pages, and a place on somebody’s desk, I may develop the outrageous ambition of owning that book.

And then we will have to discuss shipping.

For something with no physical inventory, this is becoming remarkably difficult to deliver.

Hurricanes usually cool it down. That’s the arrangement I’ve come to expect: summer spends months boiling Hampton Roads in its own juices, something tropical comes through, and eventually you can walk to your car without needing to be wrung out.

This year? Zip. Zilch. Nada.

Instead, we get a nor’easter.

Jiminy Christmas, I’m freezing my t*ts off.

I had requested a reduction in humidity. Apparently that request was forwarded to a maritime witch with disciplinary authority.

There should have been a transition. A pleasant evening. A light cardigan. Some brief opportunity to say, “Oh, this is nice,” before the wind started trying to remove my f**king skeleton.

But no. We went from air you could chew to rain that approaches you sideways with a personal accusation.

And “nor’easter” is such a quaint name. Sounds like a little seaside inn. Somewhere you’d find fresh coffee, tasteful curtains, and an elderly woman named Margaret who knows where the good towels are.

Then you step outside and Margaret hits you with a patio chair.

I live in Hampton Roads. Water is already abundantly represented. We have rivers, bays, tunnels under water, bridges over water, and roads that periodically reconsider their career and become water. I don’t understand why the atmosphere feels compelled to contribute.

Now getting from a building to the car requires planning normally reserved for an amphibious landing. You stand at the door, assess the conditions, secure your belongings, and briefly consider whether employment was a mistake.

The car is right there. You can see it. Somehow, between here and there, lies the entire North Atlantic.

I’m not asking for much. A little sunshine. A breeze with manners. Temperatures that allow my breasts to remain attached without submitting a hardship request.

I worked hard for these. They are not seasonal decorations.

And before anyone says, “Well, you wanted cooler weather”—yes. Cooler. There was room for interpretation, but you chose violence.

Somewhere between “sweating through my clothes” and “being identified by my dental records after a gust outside Walgreens,” there is a perfectly serviceable autumn.

I would like to experience it.

Preferably before Margaret finds another chair.

I remember Skip-Its.

Not just owning one. Treating it like a leased vehicle.

Because Play It Again Sports bought them back.

That transformed a children’s ankle toy into a depreciating asset.

Other kids were trying to beat the counter.

I was thinking about resale value.

Every rotation mattered. The little odometer turned exercise into mileage, and mileage into money.

Every hop was a squat. Every rotation was a lunge. Every ankle strike was brutal.

And I had bought it “new.”

Not new-new. Play It Again Sports new.

The kind of new where the previous owner was an older lady, mostly indoor use.

That was the explanation.

“Previous owner was an older lady. Did a little calisthenics, nothing strenuous.”

Which was technically true, if you ignored the 74,000 miles, the rock chips, the squeaking axle, and the fact that one side had apparently melted on a playground surface.

I had purchased it from her estate.

The family had emptied the garage and found folding chairs, a stationary bike, expired protein powder, and one Skip-It hanging from a pegboard like a ceremonial weapon.

They saw an old toy.

I saw a one-owner fitness machine with documented calisthenics history and compelling estate provenance.

There might also have been a time I sold a bubble mower filled with dish soap, because I could not obtain the OEM fluid.

I presented it as a functioning lawn appliance.

The bubbles were technically happening.

The mower was technically full.

And the dish soap was technically cheaper than whatever proprietary bubble solution the manufacturer expected me to locate in the pre-internet wilderness.

So before taking the Skip-It back, I feverishly rolled the odometer backward.

Just sitting there performing amateur Skip-It fraud.

“No, no. Hardly used.”

Cranking that s**t.

Meanwhile, the thing had been slammed into a curb approximately 600 times.

The plastic wheel looked like it had completed three tours of duty. The bearing sounded like a shopping cart. There were stress fractures consistent with commercial use.

But according to the odometer?

Seventeen.

“I just got it yesterday.”

Ma’am, the Skip-It has bald tires.

I was standing at Play It Again Sports like a deeply unethical used-car salesman:

“Previous owner was an older lady. Mostly indoor use. Did a little calisthenics. Estate sale.”

Never mind the abrasions. Never mind that one more orbit around my ankle could trigger catastrophic structural failure.

The number said 12. It wouldn’t roll back to zero. That wouldn’t be believable anyway.

Therefore: mint condition.

I was a little girl standing in that store with the confidence of a woman who had forged an entire vehicle history.

I wasn’t returning a toy.

I was committing odometer fraud on sporting goods before I was old enough to understand odometer fraud.

And Play It Again Sports encouraged this economy.

The whole store was childhood CarMax.

Bring in your filthy rollerblades, a baseball glove that smelled like a hostage situation, a bubble mower full of dish soap, and a Skip-It with the structural integrity of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. They’d inspect it for nine seconds and offer you $4.75.

When I was a kid, the Arby’s sign confused the hell out of me.

Because apparently it’s supposed to be a cowboy hat.

I did not see a cowboy hat.

I saw a giant, upright lobster claw.

Just sitting there by the highway.

ARBY’S.

And underneath this enormous red crustacean appendage, they’re advertising roast beef.

So my childhood understanding of Arby’s was basically: “I have absolutely no idea what animal we’re dealing with here.”

Is this seafood?

Is this beef?

Did the lobster kill the cow?

Is the lobster the chef?

Nobody explained anything. My parents just pulled into the parking lot like the giant lobster claw was perfectly normal corporate branding.

And now I’m vegan, which has somehow made the sign even more confusing.

Because I drive past Arby’s and my brain still goes:

“Lobster.”

Then:

“No, cowboy hat.”

Then:

“Right. Roast beef.”

Then:

“I don’t eat any of these things.”

It’s like the entire animal kingdom has assembled into one roadside ethical pop quiz.

Cowboy hat. Cow. Lobster.

Three completely unrelated nouns brought together by the human desire to sell a sandwich.

And the worst part is that I’ve known for years that it’s a cowboy hat, but knowing something intellectually does not mean your childhood brain has agreed to update the firmware.

I still see the claw first.

Every time.

Which means Arby’s has somehow accomplished the impossible: they’ve made me, a vegan, briefly wonder why the lobster restaurant is selling beef.

Then I remember there is no lobster.

There was never a lobster.

The lobster exists only in my mind. Which, frankly, is probably the safest place for it.

The Pentagon is reportedly searching confidential medical and personnel records to identify transgender service members—an effort advocates have accurately described as a military-wide “witch hunt.” Hundreds of active-duty and reserve troops may have been involuntarily outed, not because of misconduct, failed performance, or an inability to serve, but because somebody in Washington went rummaging through their healthcare history with institutional paranoia and a government login.

The Advocate reports that the search has reached service members, reservists, academy students, and ROTC cadets.

This is especially impressive because the Department of Defense recently consolidated more than 200 religious-affiliation designations into approximately 30-something officially useful categories. Wiccans and several other minority faiths disappeared from the administrative menu entirely. Evidently, the Pentagon needed fewer religions so it could focus its resources on the nation’s most urgent spiritual undertaking: looking for transgender people.

And after all that consolidation—after compressing centuries of human theology into roughly 33 or 34 government-approved dropdown options—they still haven’t found a single witch.

Not one.

No broomsticks on the flight line. No cauldrons in the galley. No suspicious coven operating from the chief’s mess. Nobody levitated during quarters. The Pentagon has reviewed medical records, flagged diagnoses, notified commands, disrupted careers, and placed decorated service members into separation proceedings—but the official witch count remains a humiliating zero.

They have, however, found transgender troops.

This was considerably easier because transgender troops were already serving honorably, doing their jobs, maintaining qualifications, deploying, leading sailors and soldiers, and existing in plain sight. The government did not uncover a secret threat. It located competent people inside its own workforce and reclassified their existence as one.

That is the defining feature of a witch hunt: the witch is optional.

The machinery does not require evidence of harm. It requires a disliked category, an accusation dressed as readiness policy, and enough administrative access to turn private information into a weapon. Once the target has been selected, the search itself becomes proof that something dangerous must have been hiding.

The Pentagon says a history of gender dysphoria is incompatible with readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity. That is an extraordinary amount of moral vocabulary from an institution currently digging through troops’ medical records to expose them.

Apparently “honesty” means disclosing whatever the government would prefer to use against you.

“Integrity” means honoring your oath until the administration changes its opinion of your body.

“Uniformity” has simply stopped pretending to be about uniforms.

The military did not discover that these service members suddenly became incapable. It changed the definition of acceptable and then searched backward through their medical histories for evidence that they had always deserved removal. The performance came first. The disqualification was applied later.

That is not readiness. It is retroactive suspicion.

So congratulations to the Department of Defense. It has reduced religious complexity, expanded medical surveillance, endangered qualified careers, and successfully dragged the United States military into the proud technological future of seventeenth-century moral panic.

Still no witches, though.

Perhaps they were filed under “Other.”