By David Taylor / Managing Editor Harris County Flood Control District is making significant strides in the Aldine area, with a series of completed, ongoing, and upcoming projects aimed ...
Have you ever noticed that I've never done that whole influencer thing? Unless you count this Christmas light tirade, that is. Anyway, that's all thanks to people like you! Viewer support through Patreon keeps this channel independent and possible. If you'd like to join the amazing folks who fund my work, check out the link below. Thank you! https://www.patreon.com/technologyconnections
Object permanence: Denver bomb squad vs 8" toy robot; Iceland's atheist religion; Largest strike in human history; Ad-tech is a bubble; Battery rationality; Pasta carpet; "With a Little Help"; Crooked Timber on Pikett; Tiki-mug menorah; China vs Big Data-backstabbing.
In my book Enshittification, I develop the concept of "giant teddybears," a scam that has been transposed from carnival midway games to digital platforms. The EU has just fined Elon Musk $140m for running a giant teddybear scam on Twitter:
Growing up, August 15 always meant two things for my family: my mother's birthday and the first day of the CNE, a giant traveling fair that would park itself on Toronto's waterfront for the last three weeks of summer. We'd get there early, and by 10AM, there'd always be some poor bastard lugging around a galactic-scale giant teddybear that was offered as a prize at one of the midway games.
Now, nominally, the way you won a giant teddybear was by getting five balls in a peach basket. To a first approximation, this is a feat that no one has ever accomplished. Rather, a carny had beckoned this guy over and said, "Hey, fella, I like your face. Tell you what I'm gonna do: you get just one ball in the basket and I'll give you one of these beautiful, luxurious keychains. If you win two keychains, I'll let you trade them in for one of these gigantic teddybears."
Why would the carny do this? Because once this poor bastard took possession of the giant teddybear, he was obliged to conspicuously lug it around the CNE midway in the blazing, muggy August heat. All who saw him would think, "Hell if that dumbass can win a giant teddybear, I'm gonna go win one, too!" Charitably, you could call him a walking advertisement. More accurately, though, he was a Judas goat.
Digital platforms have the ability to give out giant teddybears at scale. Because digital platforms have the flexibility that comes with running things on computers, platforms can pick out individual platform participants and make them King For the Day, showering them in riches that they will boast of, luring in other suckers who will lose everything:
That's how Tiktok works: the company's "heating tool" lets them drive traffic to Tiktok performers by cramming their videos into millions of random people's feeds, overriding Tiktok's legendary recommendation algorithm. Those "heated" performers get millions of views on their videos and go on to spam all the spaces where similar performers hang out, boasting of the fame and riches that await other people in their niche if they start producing for Tiktok:
Uber does it, too: as Veena Dubal documents in her work on "algorithmic wage discrimination," Uber offers different drivers wildly different wages for performing the same work. The lucky few who get an Uber giant teddybear hang out in rideshare groupchats and forums, trumpeting their incredible gains from the platform, while everyone else blames themselves for "being bad at the app," as they drive and drive, only to go deeper and deeper into debt:
Everywhere you look online, you see giant teddybears. Think of Joe Rogan being handed hundreds of millions of dollars to relocate his podcast to Spotify, an also-ran podcast platform that is desperately trying to capture the medium of podcasting, turning an open protocol into a proprietary, enclosed, Spotify-exclusive content stream:
The point of the conspicuous, over-the-odds payment to Rogan isn't just to get Rogan onto Spotify – it's to convince every other podcaster that Spotify is a great place to make podcasts for. It isn't, though: when Spotify bought Gimlet Media, they locked Gimlet's podcasts inside Spotify's walled garden/maximum security prison. If you wanted to listen to a Gimlet podcast, you'd have to switch to using Spotify's app (and submitting to Spotify's invasive surveillance and restrictions on fast-forwarding through ads, etc).
Pretty much no one did this. After an internal revolt by Gimlet podcast hosts – whose podcasts were dwindling to utter irrelevance because no one was listening to them anymore – Spotify moved those Gimlet podcasts back onto the real internet, where they belong.
When Musk bought Twitter, he started handing out tons of giant teddybears – most notably, he created an opaque monetization scheme for popular Twitter posters, which allowed him to thumb the scales for a few trolls he liked, who obliged him by loudly proclaiming just how much money you could make by trolling professionally on Twitter. Needless to say, the vast majority of people who try this make either nothing, or a sum so small that it rounds to nothing.
But Musk's main revenue plan for Twitter – the thing he repeatedly promised would allow him to recoup the tens of billions he borrowed to buy the platform – was selling blue tick verification.
Twitter created blue ticks to solve a serious platform problem. Twitter users kept getting sucked in by impersonators who would trick them into participating in scams or believing false things. To protect those users, Twitter offered a verification scheme for "notable people" who were likely to face impersonation. The verification system was never very good – I successfully lobbied them to improve it a little when I was being impersonated on Twitter (I got them to stop insisting that users fax them a scan of their ID, or, more realistically, to send them ID via a random, insecure email-to-fax gateway). But it did the job reasonably well.
Predictably, though, the verification scheme also became something of a (weird and unimportant) status-symbol, allowing a certain kind of culture warrior to peddle grievances about how only "lamestream media libs" were getting blue ticks, while brave Pizzagaters and 4chan refugees were denied this important recognition.
Musk's plan to sell blue ticks leaned heavily into these grievances. He promised to "democratize" verification, for $8/month (or, for businesses, many thousands of dollars per month). Users who didn't buy blue ticks would have their content demoted and hidden from their own followers. Users who paid for blue ticks would have their content jammed into everyone's feeds, irrespective of whether Twitter's own content recommendation algorithms predicted those users would enjoy it. Best of all, Twitter wouldn't do much verifying – you could give Twitter $8, claim to be anyone at all, and chances are, you would be able to assume any identity you wanted, post any bullshit you wanted, and get priority placement in millions of users' feeds.
This was a massive gift to scammers, trolls and disinformation peddlers. For $8, you could pretend to be a celebrity in order to endorse a stock swindle, shitcoin hustle, or identity theft scheme. You could post market-moving disinformation from official-looking corporate accounts. You could pose as a campaigning politician or a reporter and post reputation-destroying nonsense.
This is where the EU comes in. In 2024, the EU enacted a pair of big, muscular Big Tech antitrust laws, the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA). These are complex pieces of legislation, and I don't like everything in them, but some parts of them are amazing: bold and imaginative breaks from the dismal history of ineffective or counterproductive tech regulation.
Under the DSA, the EU has fined Twitter about $140m for exposing users to scams via this blue tick giant teddybear wheeze (much of that sum is punitive, because Twitter flagrantly obstructed the Commission's investigations). The DSA (sensibly) doesn't require user verification, but it does expect companies that tell their users that some accounts are verified and can be trusted, to actually verify that they actually can be trusted.
I think there's a second DSA claim to be made here, beyond the failure to verify. Musk's plan to sell blue ticks was a disaster: while many, many scammers (and a few trolls) bought blue ticks, no one else did. The blue tick – which Musk thought of as a valuable status symbol that he could sell – was quickly devalued. "Account with a blue tick" was never all that prestigious, but under Musk, it came to mean "account that pushes scams, gore, disinformation, porn and/or hate."
So Musk did something very funny and sweaty. He restored blue ticks to millions of high-follower accounts (including my own). And despite the fact that Musk had created about a million different kinds of blue ticks that denoted different kinds of organizations and payment schemes, these free blue ticks were indistinguishable from the paid ones.
In other words, Musk set out to trick users into thinking that the most prominent people they followed believed that it was worth spending $8/month on a blue tick. It was an involuntary giant teddybear scam. Every time a prominent user with a free blue tick posts, they help Musk trick regular Twitter users into thinking that these worthless $8/month subscriptions are worth shelling out for.
I think the Commission could run another, equally successful enforcement action against Musk and Twitter over this scam, too.
Trump has been bellyaching nonstop about the DSA and DMA, threatening EU nations and businesses with tariffs and other TACO retribution if they go ahead with DSA/DMA enforcement. Let's hope the EU calls his bluff.
Of course, Musk could get out of paying these fines by moving all his businesses out of the EU, which, frankly, would be a major result for Europe.
#15yrsago Internet furnishes fascinating tale of a civil rights era ghosttown on demandhttps://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/eddwx/what_the_hell_happened_to_cairo_illinois/
"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
"The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.
"The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.
A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
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In brief: Following a brief warm-up this weekend, Houston’s temperatures are back on the cooler side this morning. We’re going to be cold for about 48 hours before the second half of this week is warmer and quite mild for December. By the weekend the forecast turns more uncertain.
The northern half of Texas is quite cold this morning, just before sunrise. (Weather Bell)
December, one week in
It has certainly felt festive during the first week of winter in Houston. On Sunday, just as temperatures started to warm up a bit, another front blew into the region dropping the mercury precipitously. Through the first seven days of the month, the city’s average temperature of 50.8 degrees is nearly 7 degrees below normal for early December. We will now experience a couple of more chilly days before temperatures moderate in the middle of the week. And so it goes with roller coaster weather, which is often the norm in Houston during December as we are whipsawed between fronts and then the returning flow from a still warm Gulf.
Will this much colder pattern hold? Probably not. In he big picture, it does seem like the first week of December will end up being colder, on average, than the middle of the month.
Speaking of cold weather, I just wanted to send a shout out to the hometown football team. The Texans ventured into the unfriendly confines of Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday night and gutted out a win in a brutally hard-hitting game. Temperatures during the second half hovered around 20 degrees, with wind chills in the low teens. Is it time to start talking about playoffs?!
Monday
Today will be the coldest of the week. Highs will struggle to climb out of the upper 50s, and there will be a chilly northerly breeze throughout the day. Mostly cloudy skies this morning will give way to clearing skies later today, such that we will end up with a fair amount of sunshine. Winds will die down this evening, and with clear skies we’ll see ideal conditions for cooling. Much of the area surrounding Houston, and away from the coast, will drop into the upper 30s, with a light freeze possible in parts of Montgomery and Waller counties.
Low temperature forecast for Tuesday morning. (Weather Bell)
Tuesday
This will be a sunny day, with highs in the low 60s. Winds will shift to come from the south on Tuesday, beginning an onshore flow. But I still expect lows to drop into the upper 40s on Tuesday night.
Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday
These all look to be pleasant days, with highs generally in the 70s and lows in the 50s. Skies will be sunny to mostly sunny, and winds generally light.
Saturday and Sunday
Our weather this weekend will be determined by whether a front makes it into the region, and frankly it’s not at all clear what will happen. I think it is more likely than not some sort of front does make it in by Sunday, but I would really like to see some consistency before making a forecast. For now I’ll predict highs around 70 degrees on Saturday, and in the 60s on Sunday, but I don’t feel great about it. We’ll probably see a mix of sunshine and clouds, but again that is dependent on what happens with the front. Rain chances are low, but perhaps not zero.
Next week
Unfortunately the forecast for next week is similarly muddled. There are scenarios in which the early part of next week is in the 70s, and there are outcomes in which we get some rain and a significantly cooler front drives into Houston in the Monday or Tuesday time frame. For now I’m going to just say let’s wait and see.
I’m on vacation. Here are some past letters that I’m making new again, rather than leaving them to wilt in the archives.
1. My boss watches me by video call while I work
I’m a 100% teleworker in the research field, which I love. The problem is my boss believes mentoring me means watching me via video call as I work.
I’ve asked my boss to stop (firmly but nicely) and reported it to my boss’s supervisor who was horrified. Even our supreme boss stepped in, but not much has changed. She has lessened up slightly but now complains she can’t mentor me right because of my “complaining.”
Any advice on how to reinforce some boundaries? Is this just a typical part of remote work? I’m a trailing spouse, so I’m job hunting but it takes quite a while for me to find anything even somewhat related to my field.
Noooo, this is not normal in remote work. This is really f’ing weird, it’s terrible management, and it’s a huge waste of her time.
The good news is that her boss was horrified when you told her about it. She probably thinks that it’s stopped now that she addressed it, so you need to let her know that it hasn’t (and that not only is it continuing, but that now your boss is making snide comments about you having complained). Also, when you let her know it’s still happening, you might just ask if it’s okay for you to disable your web camera — so that when your boss confronts you about having done that, you can say, “Oh, (grandboss) told me to do that.”
Also, for the record, the conversation your grandboss should be having with your boss isn’t just “stop doing this, it’s horrifying” but also “let’s do some urgent and remedial training about how to manage effectively because clearly we are not on the same page about what that means and about how you should be spending your time.”
2. Tubs of butter are taking up all the room in our tiny fridge
I had no idea this would be the hill I wanted to die on, but here we are. In our office, on our floor we have a kitchen area with a small dorm-sized fridge. There are 13 of us in our little area although with part-time and working from home, six to 10 is more normal most days.
The bottom of the fridge is taken up by the office milk leaving two rather small shelves. Often people pop out at lunch and get some shopping and fill the fridge after lunch but at that point everyone has taken out their lunch and its mostly ok, although sometimes very difficult to shut.
The problem is the six full sizes tubs of margarine/butter. Seriously. Of 13 people, there are six of these. Sometimes five, but usually six. I first brought this up jokingly that this was ridiculous and a couple people defensively said they were sharing. This is a tiny fridge. With their six tubs and if I am not first in, I cannot put my lunch in the fridge. I have started bringing a cold bag or something that doesn’t need refrigeration. I mentioned that each tub is bigger than 1/13th of their share of the fridge and I just get “but I have toast in the morning.”
Sigh. I just think it’s so selfish and I’ve been as up front about it as I can think and people just do not see that a full sized tub is too big for a teeny shared fridge. I’m annoyed but not insane, this isn’t a management thing, but I would like to understand why their big tubs of margarine trump my lunch. You may just advise I take up meditation or up the martial arts training to channel my aggression but maybe you or the readers have a brilliant suggestion here to transform coworkers into sensitive space sharers? I really really like a cold Diet Coke.
Convince your office to buy a full-sized fridge (a dorm fridge for 13 people is way too small). Failing that, you could propose a butter club, where all the butter eaters chip in for a single tub of butter to share. (Or perhaps a butter club and a margarine club.)
But perhaps the best solution of all — butter keepers! They don’t go in in the refrigerator at all.
3. I cried at work and worry I missed something important when it happened
I screwed up at work. Thanks to reading your blog for so long, I was able to handle the screw-up immediately and appropriately to make things right. Fortunately, I was not fired for the offense, although I was given a formal write-up. During the write-up, I sat up straight, looked my boss and grand-boss in the eyes, and held my head up — basically, I realized this was business and not personal, instead of cowering or running away as I would have previously in my career. They were both respectful and professional during the meeting, expressing what happened, what went wrong, addressing that it was corrected immediately, expectations going forward, and how they would both me helping me to move forward. I appreciate being given another chance, in addition to being soberingly humbled by my mistake.
However, I started crying in the meeting. I’ve never cried at this job before. My boss and grand-boss ignored the tears, continued to treat me with respect, and the meeting wrapped up (it was almost over). Unfortunately, I don’t remember what was said to me during the time I was crying. I was trying so hard to keep control over myself and maintain myself, I lost focus on the discussion. I know what I did wrong and how to move forward from it positively, and I’m not concerned it is going to haunt me or be held over my head unreasonably.
So, do I need to go back and tell them I missed part of it? I remember hearing my grand-boss expressing disappointment on a professional level. But I don’t know what else he said for another 3-7 minutes. I don’t know if the rest was professional feedback, I don’t know if it was instruction on how to make amends to the client, I don’t have any clue what it was. What do I do? And if I have to go back and say I didn’t hear him, HOW do I say that?
If you think there’s any chance that you missed instructions or something else important, then yes, go back and correct that! All you have to say is, “I really appreciated you talking to me about the X situation the other day. Because I was stressed by the situation, I want to be absolutely sure that I didn’t miss any action items for me, particularly from the end of the conversation when my stress was at its highest. Can I confirm with you my plan for moving forward and make sure this sounds comprehensive to you? I plan to do X, Y, and Z. Is there anything I missed?”
Or, you can be even more straightforward about it, replacing that second sentence with, “I’m sure you noticed I got a little emotional toward the end of the meeting. My apologies — it was a stressful situation, but I really appreciated how you handled it. I want to be realistic that getting emotional toward the end may have diluted my focus and I want to be sure I didn’t miss anything I should have taken away.”
And don’t be too mortified. People sometimes cry in serious meetings about mistakes. It happens! Your boss and grand-boss have probably seen it before. As long as you handle it professionally now, it should be fine.
4. I was rejected because the employer thought I wouldn’t do well in a small start-up
I am from a large multinational company but was just recently rejected from a small start-up company and received the email below. I seemed to impress them but was rejected, and the hiring manager wanted to “stay in touch.” I don’t get it. I’ve been feeling down about this, and I just keep sulking over it. Please help provide any insight and what this really means. What did I do wrong?
This is the email: “Hi Jane. We thoroughly enjoyed meeting you and appreciated your taking time to come by the office. We love your portfolio and experience. In particular your process and analysis skills are some of the best we have seen! As much as we’d love to add you to our team, we feel the move from such a big company like X to such a small operation as ours will be a tough transition and your skills would much better serve a business that has already reached some scale. I encourage you to connect with me on LinkedIn and I would like it if we could stay in touch. I wish you the very best in your job search!”
I would take it at face value: They think you’re great, and they also think you won’t thrive in a small operation like theirs. That could mean anything from “We’re still figuring things out and we need someone entrepreneurial who’s comfortable setting up systems from scratch and working with a tiny budget, and we don’t think that’s where you’d shine” to “Because we’re small, we’d need you wearing 100 different hats here, pitching in on things like reception duty and inventory, and we don’t think you’d love that — and even if you say you’d be fine with it, we’re not willing to take the risk that we’re right” to all sorts of other things. In other words, think of all the reasons someone might not thrive in a small start-up when they’re used to a huge company, and there are your possible answers.
People get rejected for jobs all the time because while they’re qualified in many ways, they’re not quite the right fit in other ways. That doesn’t mean you did anything wrong; it just means hiring is about lots of things beyond just your actual skills.
THE ARCTIC CIRCLE—With a vow to destroy the abomination she had created if it was the last thing she ever did, television host Oprah Winfrey has spent weeks on a ship pursuing Dr. Phil through the Arctic, sources reported Tuesday.
Sailors aboard the vessel confirmed that while Winfrey appeared ill and exhausted from continuous exposure to the harsh tundra, she nonetheless spent hour upon hour peering through a brass spyglass and scanning the desolate landscape for any sign of the grotesque TV personality and formerly licensed therapist. Despite the heavy winds and raging sea, the 71-year-old media entrepreneur reportedly urged the ship’s captain to press northward.
“There! There he is, that speck on the horizon!” said Winfrey, who had armed herself with a pistol, several daggers, and a heavy hardcover copy of Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections in preparation for a final face-to-face encounter with Dr. Phil. “I brought this horrid creature into the world, and now I must take him out!”
“The dæmon will pay for what he’s done to my legacy,” Winfrey continued.
The ship’s captain, 50-year-old Rodney Walton, told reporters that crew members had picked up Winfrey after spotting her stranded on a piece of fractured sea ice with a sled, a team of dogs, and a slightly mad look in her eye. Although she was evidently suffering from pneumonia and malnutrition, Winfrey was said to be hellbent on the immediate pursuit of Dr. Phil.
Had he not caught a glimpse of the monstrosity himself, Walton stated, he would not have believed in such a television host’s existence.
“He was tall and impossibly hideous, with a mustache that made my blood run cold,” said Walton, who shuddered visibly as he described Dr. Phil’s gruesome visage. “His voice, too. I’ll never forget it. He kept moaning about out-of-control teens stealing pills and cutting class. It wasn’t human.”
The malevolent abomination is being sought in punishing climes.
Winfrey expressed remorse over the fateful night years ago when she created the TV host at Harpo Studios, telling reporters it was a hubristic desire to play the Queen of All Media that compelled her to bring Dr. Phil to life.
Sketches in her possession revealed that she had reanimated Dr. Phil after exhuming the freshly buried remains of a deceased cutthroat and scoundrel, which she then combined with the rotting organs of a door-to-door Amway salesman, several telemarketers, and a disbarred attorney.
“What beast have I unleashed upon the world?” said Winfrey, who seemed hardly to notice the icicles forming on her eyelashes as she paced back and forth on the deck of the ship.
Winfrey stated that she had spent the past few months on the trail of Dr. Phil, traveling thousands of miles through the Alps, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the Russian wilderness, and, at one point, Los Angeles, where he was embedded with federal immigration officers. Winfrey alleged the pursuit was instigated after Dr. Phil strangled her beloved Stedman in retaliation for her refusal to create a female Dr. Phil to serve as his companion.
“Oh my dear Stedman, how I weep for thee,” said Winfrey, crying out in anguish as she recalled how she had looked up from the spot where she discovered her longtime partner’s limp body and seen a cackling Dr. Phil perched on the window sill. “I fired my pistol, but it was too late—the fiend leapt from the window and dove into the lake.”
“By the power of my 19 Daytime Emmy Awards, I shall vanquish you, wretch!” Winfrey added.
According to sources, Winfrey’s already poor health took a turn for the worse after the vessel became trapped in ice and completely grounded the hunt for the creature. When Winfrey’s condition forced her to take to her bed, she entered a state of delirium, alternately shivering in silence and cursing Dr. Phil’s name at the top of her lungs. She was overheard vowing to hack through every last iceberg herself should it prove necessary to wipe him forever from the face of the earth.
“Promise me that if I perish, you shall pursue the creature yourself,” said Winfrey, peering up at the ship captain from her bundle of furs in one of her last lucid moments. “This year, my favorite thing is vengeance.”
At press time, Walton had reportedly discovered Dr. Phil hunched over Winfrey’s lifeless body, weeping.
WASHINGTON—During a confrontation in which it was firmly reiterated that the front entrance was for approved personnel only, Vice President JD Vance was once again reminded by White House security to use the service door, sources confirmed Tuesday. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, stop right there. You know the rule. You’ll need to use the service entrance ’round back unless you have special permission,” said Marine Cpl. Nic Afton, a West Wing guard who stepped in the path of the vice president and Hillbilly Elegy author to sternly repeat the policy that forbids low-level staff from entering the premises through such a prominent, public-facing entryway. “You can’t just use any door you want, Mr. Vice President. You’ve been told several times this entrance isn’t for you. I’m gonna need you to go toward the back, take a left by the garbage cans, and use that door. You know the one.” Upon reaching the service entrance, Vice President Vance was reportedly stopped yet again and asked for identification by the head of White House maintenance.
This 3-by-4-inch plastic dish is a perfect place for you to sleep and live if you are a block of hand soap. If you are not a block of hand soap, this would likely not be a good place for you, unfortunately. Contact now!
SMITHS FALLS, ON ― In an attempt to assuage customers’ consciences and boost last-minute Christmas Eve sales, local handmade clothing store, The Silver Thread, has announced that they will not force overtime on those of their employees who actually have loved ones they could be gathering with this December. “We always want the best for […]
This wild animal was in terrible danger in its natural habitat until I sealed it in a box and put it in the trunk of my car for three days. You are welcome.
Al Jazeera, “UN says families, a generation being ‘wiped out’ by Israel’s war on Gaza” Elizabeth Barber, “The Case Against Children: Among the AntiNatalists,” in Harpers Kristen V. Brown, “The Coming Democratic Baby Bust,” in The Atlantic Meehan Crist, “Is It Okay to Have A Child?” in The London Review of Books Sarah El Deeb, “The war in Gaza has wiped out entire Palestinian families. AP documents 60 who lost dozens or more,” in AP Silvia Federici, “Wages for Housework” Nancy Folbre, “Children As Public Goods,” in The American Economic Review Timothy Morton, “The End of the World,” Chapter 6 in Hyperobjects MSF, “Gaza: MSF survey shows almost half of people killed are children” Christine Overall, Why Have Children? The Ethical Debate Laurie Ann Paul, “What You Can’t Expect When You’re Expecting” Plato, Euthyphro Gina Rushton, The Parenthood Dilemma Saul Smilansky, “Is There A Moral Obligation to Have Children?” in Journal of Applied Philosophy Lyman Stone, “Would You Have A Baby if You Won the Lottery?” in The Atlantic UNFPA, The Real Fertility Crisis Louise Weard, Castration Movie Anthology Part 1 Louise Weard, Castration Movie Anthology Part 2 Jessica Winter, “The Morality of Having Kids in a Burning, Drowning World,” in The New Yorker Seth Wynes and Kimberly Nicholas, “The Climate Mitigation Gap,” in Environmental Research Letters
FIFA’s newly announced peace prize for Donald Trump is a craven act of stroking his ego. The 2026 World Cup is shaping up to be among the worst cases yet of sports bending to politics.
Donald Trump has threatened to withdraw 2026 World Cup matches from cities with hostile Democratic mayors. Rather than push back, FIFA has just awarded him a specially created peace prize. (Hector Vivas / FIFA via Getty Images)
There’s a lot to dislike about the 2026 FIFA World Cup. A bloated forty-eight-team tournament spanning all of North America would be tough to pull off in the best of conditions. FIFA openly ripping off fans and charging thousands for tickets ensures that it’ll be, at base, an ugly cash grab. But there are also ills facing fans such as the United States’ immigration regime, roaming National Guard deployments throughout the country’s urban landscapes, and disconcertingly persistent threats to move match venues at President Donald Trump’s whim. The world’s biggest sporting event will have one of its most authoritarian backdrops yet.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino has responded to concerning developments in the cohost country the same way he responds to despots the world over — shameless groveling. Trump’s designated “king of soccer” has cozied up so closely to the US president that he might as well try to squeeze into Trump’s ill-fitting jacket with him. Infantino has capped off their budding bromance by awarding Trump the “FIFA Peace Prize” — a totally legitimate marker of statesmanship and definitely not an award made up to appease Trump for missing out on a Nobel Peace Prize.
What could be unserious about an award presented “on behalf of the billions of people who love this game and want peace” and honoring a “dynamic leader creating opportunities for dialogue, deescalation, and stability” that goes to Donald Trump? The president was so jazzed about “one of the great honors of his life” that he even stayed awake long enough to graciously accept it. The bizarre ceremony, crowbarred into the World Cup draw, provided a bit of levity to an otherwise depressing run-up to the tournament.
Despite widespread rumination on both Trump’s authoritarian lurches and FIFA’s sycophancy, there’s been little pushback to the rapidly approaching tournament. There’s certainly been nothing approaching the protests that accompanied the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Faced with all this, fans need to exert their power before a terrible World Cup renders the game fully unrecognizable.
Trump, the Latest Offender
When the United States was awarded the World Cup alongside neighboring Canada and Mexico back in 2018, Trump and Infantino predicted the “best World Cup ever.” A lot has changed since then. Trump’s second reign has fewer of the amusingly bumbling characteristics of his first term. The wholesale takeover of the Republican Party by some of the most reactionary forces in the country, combined with the weakness of institutional resistance, has ushered in bleakly authoritarian prospects that make the United States a fitting follow-up to the last two hosts, Russia and Qatar.
Those tournaments, textbook cases of sportswashing, faced significantly more criticism than the upcoming tournament has. As has Saudi Arabia’s multipronged takeover of nearly all aspects of sport, which will culminate in its hosting the 2034 World Cup. Instead of actual pushback, there’s simply an increasingly bemused “can you believe this sh-t” vibe surrounding the tournament. Trump’s proximity to Infantino makes it feel like he totally owns the World Cup. And despite global anti-Trump sentiment, it’s hard to imagine soccer bars in Germany refusing to show next year’s matches the way they did in 2022.
The United States is not Qatar, where thousands of guest workers died building the infrastructure needed for the petrostate’s gleaming sporting monument. Nor is the United States Russia, which annexed Crimea in the immediate wake of hosting the 2014 Sochi Olympics and was allowed to host the 2018 World Cup despite its expansionist foreign policy and rapidly eroding democratic and political rights at home. But the Trump administration’s record — extrajudicial killing abroad and something of a whiff of fascism in America itself — is hardly spotless. And if Trump were at all worried about being compared to Saudi’s sportswashing mastermind Mohammed bin Salman, he probably wouldn’t be giggling with the crown prince in the White House about murdering journalists.
Ironically, despite all the parallels to some of the most lecherous heads of state meddling in the sports world, Trump doesn’t actually seem to care about laundering his (or his country’s) reputation through sports. While most authoritarian regimes intentionally host sporting events to help whitewash their international reputations and make a point of being on their best behavior while under the global spotlight, Trump doesn’t seem particularly concerned with how he comes across leading into the tournament. And though it still seems unlikely that he’d do anything too disruptive once things kick off, deploying federal troops to occupy Democrat-run cities and threatening to move host venues away from cities “run by radical left lunatics who don’t know what they’re doing” doesn’t exactly instill confidence. Nor does US vice president J. D. Vance’s assertion that he wants foreign fans to visit, but after the tournament “they’ll have to go home, otherwise they’ll have to talk to [Homeland Security] Secretary Kristi Noem.”
Trump and Vance’s rigorous anti-immigrant regime and a near nonstop stream of masked ICE agents deporting people aren’t particularly welcoming, either. Many fans around the world won’t even have the luxury of weighing whether they want to visit an increasingly brutal and authoritarian United States. Iran and Haiti are in the tournament but are both on the list of nations whose citizens are banned from entering the country. And though Haiti has achieved its first World Cup qualification since 1974, the Trump administration has already made clear that its fans aren’t welcome on US soil: maybe not much of a surprise, as dehumanizing Haitians in the United States was a cornerstone of his election campaign. Even the president of Iran’s football federation was refused a visa to attend the Washington, DC–based World Cup draw, despite assurances that staff and players from all participating countries would have no visa issues.
If FIFA Won’t Push Back, Will Fans?
FIFA has done nothing to try to mitigate or even steer attention away from any of this. Infantino has decided that unbridled adoration is the best way to maintain stability and has gone above and beyond his usual gross fawning. “I’m really lucky. I have a great relationship with President Trump, where I consider him a really close friend,” driveled Infantino in a recent speech before lauding the president’s policy accomplishments. One can assume it was their deep friendship that inspired FIFA to book Trump favorites the Village People as World Cup draw “entertainment.”
Their friendship goes beyond a relationship that happens to make lining FIFA’s pockets as easy and effective as possible. Infantino is apparently a vital policy thinker in his own right, attending Gaza peace talks in Egypt with Trump. The FIFA president spent most of the year leading up to the Qatar World Cup trying to deflect from well-documented human rights abuses in the country and paint a positive picture for a skeptical global press. Now he’s dropped the front and is happy to fully endorse whatever horsesh-t Trump happens to come up with, including walking back any initial skepticism around Trump’s unprecedented proposal to shift host cities based on personal beefs incredibly close to the tournament’s kickoff.
Even if no one involved in this mess cares about using the power of the game to improve their reputations, it should still garner the same disdain as more straightforward sportswashing endeavors. If this doesn’t come from sporting and human rights institutions, then it’s going to have to come from fans. And even if those considering attending the World Cup are unbothered by Trump’s brutish politics and the United States’ ongoing democratic backsliding, they should at least be motivated by the fact that Trump and Infantino’s collaboration has completely morphed the tournament into a weeks-long scam aimed at screwing them at every opportunity.
Many fans won’t be able to attend due to Trump’s travel bans or the United States’ slow, restrictive visa policies. For those who do make it, they’ll have to keep their fingers crossed that Democratic mayors and governors don’t annoy Trump enough that he moves World Cup games to Southern college football stadiums (as it’s unclear where else he’ll find massive venues in Republican-led cities). Any seasoned fans used to crisscrossing World Cup host countries via high-speed rail will be in for a treat when they need to rent a car and pay more to park than match tickets cost at previous tournaments. Most sportswashing projects at least include a bit of public infrastructure development to project the guise of modernity and public benefit. The United States isn’t even bothering.
Though it’s likely too late, it’s time for fans — as well as players, who can truly grind this whole grim carnival to a halt — to begin a movement to boycott the games to at least mitigate some of the ugliest elements of Trump’s regime — like barring fans from participating countries from even attending the tournament. If FIFA were remotely serious, it’d be stripping the United States of matches rather than giving Trump a prize. If we’re seriously entertaining moving venues six months out, we might as well move all of them to Canada and Mexico, who deserve a lot more than having their cohosted World Cup entirely dominated by Trumpian belligerence. It’s either that, or we hope that Zohran Mamdani can step up his anti-FIFA offensive and build a wave of support for affordable tickets that make the people’s game actually accessible to working people.
Starting in 2026, Malaysia will ban social media accounts for anyone under 16, joining other countries such as Australia in imposing digital age limits. What do you think?
“Man, pedophiles just can’t catch a break.”
Madison Herczeg, Gorilla Groomer
“I guess I’ll have to start meeting underage kids the old fashioned way.”
Derek Wilgus, Retired Tourist
“Can Malaysia afford to fall behind in teenage depression?”
LOS ANGELES—In a shockingly personal attack on the actor’s arches, filmmaker Quentin Tarantino made comments Friday slamming Paul Dano as the worst actor on Wikifeet. “Paul Dano’s got the weakest soles on Wikifeet,” Tarantino said during a podcast appearance, calling Dano’s feet “nasty, gnarled stompers” compared to a peer like Austin Butler’s “gorgeous, five-star tootsies.” “And to put his feet next to Daniel Day-Lewis’s? Come on. I don’t know why he’s even on there. He’s dragging the entire website down.” At press time, celebrities from Ben Stiller to Alec Baldwin were defending Dano’s feet as “beautiful,” “incredible,” and “the finest of his generation.”
The final supermoon of 2025 graced night skies around the world from Thursday evening through to early Friday, creating some spectacular illuminated scenery.
We know many of you look forward to opening your mailbox each December to receive the Morton annual Christmas card and extensive family newsletter. It brings us no good tidings to let you know that we’ve made the difficult decision to paywall it.
As the years have gone by, the letter has grown in scope. When we sent the first Christmas newsletter, we were just a two-person operation in a small home in Middlebury. Now we have to cover nine busy family members across four states. And sometimes Jessica has a boyfriend. It’s a big operation, and Clare had to learn Microsoft XL or whatever it’s called.
Everybody on our list will receive the Morton Christmas Card featuring a candid photo of us down by the lake, wearing matching outfits. And while we love everyone who receives our card, those who subscribe and support our family’s essential end-of-year work will get even more of our love.
Join the Morton Friend Tier for $17.00 to receive:
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A recap of our disastrous trip to the world’s most boring hole (the Grand Canyon)
An update on the feud with the neighbor we hate, who parks his F-150 on our lawn
Asides like the day Clare thought she saw Beyoncé at Safeway
In-depth detail about Mark’s toe fungus
This newsletter isn’t just some free social media post. We start working as early as September. It takes days to write and weeks to edit down from its sixty-page first draft. Each Morton family member plays a valuable role in its production, from fact-checking to updating the printer firmware to making tough editorial decisions, like telling me that I “mention Pete Buttigieg should be president” a “weird amount.”
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An apology for how last year’s candlestick ornament looked like a big glittery penis
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Complimentary subscriptions will be given to families who always send us boxes of Harry & David pears and families who have good-looking sons around Jessica’s age.
From all of us Mortons, we wish you and your family a joyful, peaceful, and blessed holiday season. And don’t expect any freebies on Valentine’s Day either.
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