The last straw

My ears perked up when the early morning news team said the university for which I work had made a big announcement:

The retail places on campus are transitioning from plastic straws to paper straws.

I shouldn't have been surprised at this social justice posturing, since a key tenet of the university is (social) justice for all. I suppose they needed a quick win, given the spanking they recently received in court. But straws?

Plastic straws have become a "thing" lately, with irate tweets, overwrought Facebook memes and badly sourced "research" into how billions!!@#@$!! of straws are discarded every day, ending up skewered through our favorite Nemo and Dory look-alikes.

Plastic straws are evil, and replacing them with gee-they-disintegrate-in-liquids paper straws allows Millennials to feel virtuous and smug when they throw away what is left of their paper straws...still stuck in the gigantic, domed, all-plastic cup that held their mostly air "coffee" drink.

Stupid.

For all my ire over this, there is almost no impact on me personally. I don't like or use straws, other than the one or two times a year I pick up a milkshake. Honestly, the shakes are so thick I can happily "drink" them with a spoon.

A plastic one, of course.