In brief: In today’s forecast we talk about our warm weather across the next week, and when it should start to rain again. We also venture into the perilous mists of long-term forecasting, and issue a preliminary prognostication for Thanksgiving Day in Houston.

Thanksgiving forecast note

Yes, at the end of today’s post we are going to take a stab at forecasting the weather for Thanksgiving this year, which is a full two weeks from today. It’s a little mad to try and do this because, as a general rule, forecasts are usually pretty accurate out to five days, and have some value from five to 10 days out. And after 10 days, well, sometimes forecasters can be a little more accurate than throwing a dart at a wall. Sometimes. We’re going to take our best shot anyway.

The reality is that, because we own and operate Space City Weather independently, Matt and I have complete editorial control. We don’t work for anyone but our readers—that’s you. So we can do zany things, and take chances, and have some fun. That’s why our annual fundraiser is so important. If you can support us, please do. If you can’t that’s totally fine as well. We understand this economy isn’t helping everyone.

Thursday

Lows across most of the region this morning are in the vicinity of 60 degrees, nearly 10 degrees above normal for mid-November. And still, this will be the region’s coolest morning for the next week. That’s because high pressure has moved in, and will remain more or less in place, allowing for a persistent, warm-ish pattern. Highs today will reach about 80 degrees across the area, or slightly above. Winds will come from the southeast, mostly light, but gusting up to 20 mph during the afternoon. Lows tonight will drop into the mid-60s in Houston, with the potential for some patchy fog to develop.

Friday

This will be a mostly sunny day with a high generally in the low 80s. Friday night will be mild, in the mid-60s, with the potential for fog. With dewpoints around 60 degrees it will be somewhat humid, but not excessively so (just you wait, it’s coming). Rain chances remain near zero.

Saturday and Sunday

Sunshine will continue, with highs in the mid-80s (possibly nudging into the upper 80s on Sunday). A front will approach the area, but wash out before moving into the region. Nights should remain in the mid-60s for most. Rain chances will be low, perhaps 10 percent, for each day. Plan your outdoor activities with confidence.

Next week

The first half of next week looks rather warm and humid. We’ll see another boost in atmospheric moisture, and this will nudge the humidity levels up. Monday or Tuesday could see a dewpoint near 70 degrees, which is extremely humid for this time of year. High temperatures will likely be in the vicinity of the mid-80s, with partly cloudy skies. Nights will be warm and mild. This increasing moisture will lead to some low-end rain chances, perhaps 20 to 30 percent on Monday through Wednesday.

Then, about a week from now, there is general agreement in the models that some sort of front is going to push into the area, bringing better rain chances and cooler air. Since this is about a week out our confidence is lower in the details. But I’m hopeful it will bring an end to the anomalously warm pattern for November, and also some needed rainfall.

Thanksgiving week

So what does the weather look like a full week after that? We are now entering the danger zone for forecasting. With that said, there is a rough signal in most of our best model guidance for a somewhat stronger front to move into the area about 10 days from now, in the vicinity of Sunday, Nov. 23. This would set the stage for a pleasant week, with highs perhaps around 70 degrees and nights in the 50s. My official forecast for Houston on Thanksgiving Day therefore calls for a high of 68 degrees, with partly cloudy skies, and a 30 percent chance of rain. It will be fun to see how wrong this is two weeks from today.

It’s the Thursday “ask the readers” question. A reader writes:

This is half-question, half-plea. I’d love to hear from readers who didn’t get into a fulfilling / interesting / creative / what-you-actually-want-to-do career until after age 40.

I’m having a bit of a slow, long-term personal breakdown of shame over my “career.” I started out a high achiever, interested in so many things and studying so many creative and academic pursuits. I went to a good college, got great grades, and have so many interests.

But graduating into the Great Recession without a much family money behind me (and not having worked during school) left me working retail / customer service / secretarial jobs for what eventually added up to over 10 years. I was pursuing some small writing and performance activities during that time, but nothing that gave me a foothold into a creative job. I saw place after place I wanted to write for someday get sucked dry by venture capital. Covid and helping family members through crises didn’t help things.

I’m out of the entry-level stuff now, but just barely — working admin for a good organization but deeply ashamed to be almost 40 and doing a job I don’t want and should have progressed past in my 20s.

I think you can tell the pain this is causing me. My friend group is divided between high earners with unfun, morally grey jobs and those whose jobs are clearly “the thing you tried to be” (teacher, nurse). Meanwhile I’m so embarrassed to even tell people what my job is at my age.

I’d really like to hear anyone who had a similar “wandering in the desert” period and then got back on track after age 40. I know Alan Rickman didn’t start acting until after 40 but I need some other people to tell me it might be okay too.

Well, first, there’s nothing embarrassing about doing admin work in your 40s! Many people make an entire decades-long career out of it and are extremely valuable to their employers. But it’s not what you want to be doing, and that’s what matters.

Readers, please share your own stories in the comments.

The post let’s hear from people who didn’t find their career paths until after 40 appeared first on Ask a Manager.

The glass is all spotty, but I guess I’ll drink it anyway.

The 208-year-old publication Farmers’ Almanac, not to be confused with the more famous Old Farmers’ Almanac, will cease publication with its 2026 edition, citing rising production and distribution costs in the shifting media landscape.

“I get most of my trout migration news on TikTok anyway.”

Alvaro Bahena, Coffee Critic

---

“That’s what they get for their woke coverage of tidal patterns.”

Dane Hackney, Sundial Calibrator

---

“And what of my rye?”

Lacie Krauss, Pinwheel Spinner

The post Farmers’ Almanac Ceases Publication appeared first on The Onion.

BOULDER, CO—Stressing that it represented an ideal opportunity to see one of nature’s greatest wonders, scientists at the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center confirmed Thursday that the aurora borealis would be visible on Google Images tonight. “For this entire evening, the northern lights will be observable to the naked eye simply by walking to your computer, opening up a browser, and searching the phrase ‘aurora borealis’ in Google,” said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration spokesperson Dr. Colin Byrne, adding that the magnificent pinks, crimsons, and deep greens of the geomagnetic storm could be easily seen by looking at an iPad, a laptop, or any other device upon which Google Search is available. “While some photos may show cloud cover or appear dull and gray, the addition of search terms to read ‘northern lights amazing’ or ‘aurora borealis Iceland 4K’ will reveal the astonishing display in its full glory. If you’re still having trouble seeing things, try using your phone to take a photo of the web results. Then you can just zoom in to get a better view of this natural phenomenon.” Byrne added that this was also the perfect time of year to search for a YouTube video of the Perseids.

The post Scientists Confirm Aurora Borealis Will Be Visible On Google Images Tonight appeared first on The Onion.

WASHINGTON—In the wake of the House Oversight Committee releasing more than 20,000 pages of documents from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein, some of which raised questions about the extent of the president’s relationship with the convicted sex offender, Donald Trump on Thursday downplayed his name appearing in Epstein’s correspondence by saying it only proved he was one of the most emailed-about men in history. “MSN, Gmail, Yahoo—my name is popping up everywhere,” said Trump, assuring journalists that a 2019 email in which Epstein claimed he “knew about the girls” did nothing but demonstrate that he had been written about in thousands upon thousands more emails than former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. “Hardly an email goes by these days without a mention of Trump in it, and it’s been that way for a very long time. Barron [Trump] is fantastic at cyber, and he tells me that even the late, great Dale Earnhardt wasn’t emailed about as much as me. They’re doing CC, they’re doing BCC, and it’s all about Trump. You look around your inbox, folks, you check your spam folder, and you’ll see that I’m there, and that’s something we’re very proud of.” Trump criticized renewed calls to release the Epstein files in full, arguing they would only prove he had appeared in more photographs, videos, client lists, nondisclosure agreements, and victim testimonies than anyone else in the world.

The post Trump Says Epstein Emails Only Prove He One Of The Most Emailed-About Men In History appeared first on The Onion.

WASHINGTON—Responding to recent revelations suggesting the prominent economist was a close associate of the late child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, a devastated nation reportedly joined together to wail “No! Not Larry Summers!” on Thursday. “Oh please God, not Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary Larry Summers!” said visibly distraught Iowa resident Carrie Pritchard, who echoed the sentiment of all 340 million Americans upon seeing multiple emails that showed the former Harvard University president had regularly corresponded with Epstein. “I feel so lost! Who am I supposed to turn to for insight on the role of regulation in the derivatives market now? It must be some kind of mistake. Are we sure the emails weren’t from someone with a similar name? I just can’t believe a man who was once a leader at the World Bank would do something so terrible.” According to reports, the nation was soon dealt another unimaginable blow when additional emails revealed billionaire Peter Thiel had also corresponded with Epstein.

The post ‘No! Not Larry Summers!’ Wails Devastated Nation  appeared first on The Onion.

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Today's links

• For-profit healthcare is the problem, not (just) private equity: Competition can't solve the hospice problem.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Inner-tube laces; NZ MPs ejected for talking about sexual assault; Snowden's opsec advice; Xi on interop.
• Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

For-profit healthcare is the problem, not (just) private equity (permalink)

When you are at the library, you are a patron, not a customer. When you are at school, you're a student, not a customer. When you get health care, you are a patient, not a customer.

Property rights are America's state religion, and so market-oriented language is the holy catechism. But the things we value most highly aren't property, they cannot be bought or sold in markets, and describing them as property grossly devalues them. Think of human beings: murder isn't "theft of life" and kidnapping isn't "theft of children":

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/feb/21/intellectual.property

When we use markets and property relations to organize these non-market matters, horrors abound. Just look at the private equity takeover of American healthcare. PE bosses have spent more than a trillion dollars cornering regional markets on various parts of the health system:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/28/5000-bats/#charnel-house

The PE playbook is plunder. After PE buys a business, it borrows heavily against it (with the loan going straight into the PE investors' pockets), and then, to service that debt, the new owners cut, and cut, and cut. PE-owned hospitals are literally filled with bats because the owners stiff the exterminators:

https://prospect.org/health/2024-02-27-scenes-from-bat-cave-steward-health-florida/

Needless to say, a hospital that is full of bats has other problems. All of the high-tech medical devices are broken and no one will fix them because the PE bosses have stiffed all the repair companies and contractors. There are blood shortages, saline shortages, PPE shortages. Doctors and nurses go weeks or months without pay. The elevators don't work. Black mold climbs the walls.

When PE rolls up all the dialysis clinics in your neighborhood, the new owners fire all the skilled staff and hire untrained replacements. They dispense with expensive fripperies like sterilizing their needles:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-dirty-business-of-clean-blood

When PE rolls up your regional nursing homes, they turn into slaughterhouses. To date, PE-owned nursing homes have stolen at least 160,000 lost life years:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/23/acceptable-losses/#disposable-olds

Then there's hospices, the last medical care you will ever receive. Once your doctor declares that you have less than six months or less to live, Medicare will pay a hospice $243-$1,462/day to take care of you as you die. At the top end of that rate, hospices have to satisfy a lot of conditions, but if the hospice is willing to take $243/day, they effectively have no duties to you – they don't even have to continue providing you with your regular medication or painkillers for your final days:

https://prospect.org/health/2023-04-26-born-to-die-hospice-care/

Setting up a hospice is cheap as hell. Pay a $3,000 filing fee, fill in some paperwork (which no one ever checks) and hang out a shingle. Nominally, a doctor has to oversee the operation, but PE-backed hospices save money here by having a single doctor "oversee" dozens of hospices:

https://auditor.ca.gov/reports/2021-123/index.html#pg34A

Once you rope a patient into this system, you can keep billing the government for them up to a total of $32,000, then you have to kick them out. Why would a patient with only six months to live survive to be kicked out? Because PE companies pay bounties to doctors to refer patients who aren't dying to hospices. 51% of patients in the PE-cornered hospices of Van Nuys are "live discharged":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

However, once you're admitted to a hospice, Medicare expects you to die – so "live discharged" patients face a thick bureaucratic process to get back into the system so they can start seeing a doctor again.

So all of this is obviously very bad, a stark example of what happens when you mix the most rapacious form of capitalist plunder with the most vulnerable kind of patient. But, as Elle Rothermich writes for LPE Journal, the PE model of hospice is merely a more extreme and visible version of the ghastly outcomes that arise out of all for-profit hospice care:

https://lpeproject.org/blog/hospice-commodification-and-the-limits-of-antitrust/

The problems of PE-owned hospices are not merely a problem of the lack of competition, and applying antitrust to PE rollups of hospices won't stop the carnage, though it would certainly improve things somewhat. While once American hospices were run by nonprofits and charities, that changed in 1983 with the introduction of Medicare's hospice benefit. Today, three quarters of US hospices are private.

It's not just PE-backed hospices; the entire for-profit hospice sector is worse than the nonprofit alternative. For-profit hospices deliver worse care and worse outcomes at higher prices. They are the worst-performing hospices in the country.

This is because (as Rothermich writes) "The actual provision of care—the act of healing or attempting to heal—is broadly understood to be something more than a purely economic transaction." In other words, patients are not customers. In the hierarchy of institutional obligations, "patients" rank higher than customers. To be transformed from a "patient" into a "customer" is to be severely demoted.

Hospice care is a complex, multidisciplinary, highly individualized practice, and pain treatment spans many dimensions: "psychological, social, emotional, and spiritual as well as physical." A cash-for-service model inevitably flattens this into "a standardized list of discrete services that can each be given a monetary value: pain medication, durable medical equipment, skilled nursing visits, access to a chaplain."

As Rothermich writes, while there are benefits to blocking PE rollups and monopolization of hospices, to do so at all tacitly concedes that health care should be treated as a business, that "corporate involvement in care delivery is an inevitable, irreversible development."

Rothermich's point is that health care isn't a commodity, and to treat it as such always worsens care. It dooms patients to choosing between different kinds of horrors, and subjects health care workers to the moral injury of failing their duty to their patients in order to serve them as customers.

Hey look at this (permalink)

• Enshittification short-listed for Goodreads Readers' Favorite Nonfiction https://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards/readers-favorite-nonfiction-books-2025

• Enshittification https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcceOOPdKZY

• James Watson, dead at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers https://www.statnews.com/2025/11/07/james-watson-remembrance-from-dna-pioneer-to-pariah/

• Exclusive: Here's How Much OpenAI Spends On Inference and Its Revenue Share With Microsoft https://www.wheresyoured.at/oai_docs/

• Not So Wonderful Things https://stage-write.ghost.io/not-so-wonderful-things/

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago New Sony lockware prevents selling or loaning of games https://memex.craphound.com/2005/11/12/new-sony-lockware-prevents-selling-or-loaning-of-games/

#20yrsago Dr Seuss meets Star Trek https://web.archive.org/web/20051126025052/http://www.seuss.org/seuss/seuss.sttng.html

#20yrsago Sony’s other malicious audio CD trojan https://memex.craphound.com/2005/11/12/sonys-other-malicious-audio-cd-trojan/

#15yrsago Will TSA genital grope/full frontal nudity “security” make you fly less? https://web.archive.org/web/20101115011017/https://blogs.reuters.com/ask/2010/11/12/are-new-security-screenings-affecting-your-decision-to-fly/

#15yrsago Make inner-tube laces, turn your shoes into slip-ons https://www.instructables.com/Make-normal-shoes-into-slip-ons-with-inner-tubes/

#15yrsago Tractor sale gone bad ends with man eating own beard https://web.archive.org/web/20101113200759/http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40136299

#10yrsago San Francisco Airport security screeners charged with complicity in drug-smuggling https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/three-san-francisco-international-airport-security-screeners-charged-fraud-and

#10yrsago Female New Zealand MPs ejected from Parliament for talking about their sexual assault https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/11/new-zealand-female-mps-mass-walkout-pm-rapists-comment

#10yrsago Councillor who voted to close all public toilets gets a ticket for public urination https://uk.news.yahoo.com/councillor-cut-public-toilets-fined-094432429.html#1snIQOG

#10yrsago Edward Snowden’s operational security advice for normal humans https://theintercept.com/2015/11/12/edward-snowden-explains-how-to-reclaim-your-privacy/

#10yrsago Not (just) the War on Drugs: the difficult, complicated truth about American prisons https://jacobin.com/2015/03/mass-incarceration-war-on-drugs/

#10yrsago Britons’ Internet access bills will soar to pay for Snoopers Charter https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/11/broadband-bills-increase-snoopers-charter-investigatory-powers-bill-mps-warned

#10yrsago How big offshoring companies pwned the H-1B process, screwing workers and businesses https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/11/us/large-companies-game-h-1b-visa-program-leaving-smaller-ones-in-the-cold.html?_r=0

#5yrsago Anti-bear robo-wolves https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/12/thats-what-xi-said/#robo-lobo

#5yrsago Xi on interop and lock-in https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/12/thats-what-xi-said/#with-chinese-characteristics

#5yrsago Constantly Wrong https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/12/thats-what-xi-said/#conspiratorialism

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Cardiff: Hay Festival After Hours, Nov 13
  https://www.hayfestival.com/c-203-hay-festival-after-hours.aspx

• Oxford: Enshittification and Extraction: The Internet Sucks Now with Tim Wu (Oxford Internet Institute), Nov 14
  https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/news-events/events/enshittification-and-extraction-the-internet-sucks-now/

• London: Enshittification with Sarah Wynn-Williams and Chris Morris, Nov 15
  https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2025/event/cory-doctorow-with-sarah-wynn-williams

• London: Downstream IRL with Zack Polanski, Ash Sarkar, and Aaron Bastani (Novara Media), Nov 17
  https://dice.fm/partner/tickets/event/oen5rr-downstream-irl-aaron-bastani-in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow-17th-nov-earth-london-tickets

• London: Enshittification with Carole Cadwalladr (Frontline Club), Nov 18
  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/in-conversation-enshittification-tickets-1785553983029

• Virtual: Enshittification at the Internet Archive, Nov 21
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/book-talk-enshittification-tickets-1839608451399

• Virtual: Enshittification with Vass Bednar (Vancouver Public Library), Nov 21
  https://www.crowdcast.io/@bclibraries-present

• Toronto: Jailbreaking Canada (OCAD U), Nov 27
  https://www.ocadu.ca/events-and-exhibitions/jailbreaking-canada

• San Diego: Enshittification at the Mission Hills Branch Library, Dec 1
  https://libraryfoundationsd.org/events/doctorow

• Seattle: Neuroscience, AI and Society (University of Washington), Dec 4
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/neuroscience-ai-and-society-cory-doctorow-tickets-1735371255139

• Madison, CT: Enshittification at RJ Julia, Dec 8
  https://rjjulia.com/event/2025-12-08/cory-doctorow-enshittification

Recent appearances (permalink)

• How to dis-Enshittify the world (Blood In the Machine)
  https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/how-to-dis-enshittify-the-world-with

• Reimagining Digital Public Infrastructure (Attention: Govern Or Be Governed)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8JuXDfDtBY

• Enshittification and How To Fight It (ILSR)
  https://www.whoshallrule.com/p/enshittification-and-how-to-fight

• Big Tech’s “Enshittification” & Bill McKibben on Solar Hope for the Planet
  https://www.writersvoice.net/2025/11/cory-doctorow-on-big-techs-enshittification-bill-mckibben-on-solar-hope-for-the-planet/

• Enshittification and the Rot Economy with Ed Zitron (Clarion West)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tz71pIWbFyc

Latest books (permalink)

• "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025

• "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).

• "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "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

Upcoming books (permalink)

• "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026

• "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

• "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE AND SUBMITTED.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

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ISSN: 3066-764X

Earlier this week, the Landgericht München issued its ruling in the first EU lawsuit concerning the training of generative AI models. Having now read the GEMA v. OpenAI judgment from start to finish, what matters most to the discussions about the relationship between AI training and the EU copyright framework is that the court sets out two clear points: when the TDM exceptions apply to model development, and why memorisation of training data falls outside them.

This hasn’t stopped some commentators from confidently insisting that the ruling shows the TDM exceptions don’t enable AI training. But the judgment actually reaffirms that they do—provided the training doesn’t lead to memorization.

GEMA’s argument is straightforward: they claim (and demonstrate) that GPT‑4 and 4o were trained on song texts from writers they represent, and that these same texts can be reproduced by users of ChatGPT through fairly simple prompts. In their view, this constitutes unauthorized reproduction and unauthorized making available to the public. For good measure, they added a few rather implausible assertions about how some less‑than‑perfect chatbot outputs might infringe the personality rights of the authors. The court spends roughly twenty pages summarizing all of this, including this gem of a sentence^{[1]This is so much more beautiful in the original German. For anyone who does not read German here is a machine translation into English: The outputs are not double creations because they are not based on a magical process, but rather causally on training with the corresponding works and their memorization, i.e., storage in the model.}:

Die Outputs seien keine Doppelschöpfungen, weil diese nicht durch einen magischen Vorgang begründet würden, sondern kausal durch das Training mit den entsprechenden Werken und deren Memorisierung, also durch Speicherung im Modell.

OpenAI’s defence strategy can be charitably described as “comprehensive”: they argued almost everything except that their models are powered by sorcery. Beyond asserting that GEMA lacked standing, they claimed that they could rely on the research exception in Article 3 of the CDSM Directive, that any problematic outputs were merely hallucinations, and that the models were simply quoting, producing pastiches, or generating private copies. The court dismissed these arguments in short order, dryly noting—among other things—that AI models do not have rights because they are not human. In the end, essentially none of OpenAI’s arguments survived the court’s scrutiny.

The court’s position: training is allowed, memorization is not

This brings us to the core of the judgment. The court’s reasoning is remarkably straightforward: if model developers want to rely on the TDM exceptions, they must ensure that training does not result in the model storing protected works—in whole or in part—within its parameters. In other words, the court affirms that training on lawfully accessible and not-opted-out works falls squarely under the TDM exception when the training process does not lead to memorization. However, if the model does memorize works from the training data, then the exception no longer applies. As the court puts it (translation from German original):

If memorization of training data cannot be prevented using state-of-the-art technology, training models with copyright-protected training data are not covered by the text and data mining exception.

To me, the court’s reasoning is coherent. It aligns with the way I have understood the relationship between AI training and the TDM exceptions since I first wrote about this, and it confirms the basic principle that training is permissible so long as it does not result in memorization of protected works.

What the court is really parsing here is the boundary between learning and leakage—the difference between a system that abstracts information and one that quietly preserves the debris of what it was fed.

Although this is only a ruling from a lower-level court, anyone still insisting that the TDM exceptions do not apply to AI training now has to reckon with the fact that the court treats that position as legally untenable. And given that the judgment is widely being read as a reaffirmation of copyright protection in the context of AI, it even offers critics a face-saving way to drop their increasingly strained objections.

At the same time, the judgment puts the responsibility squarely on AI model developers and companies. They need to demonstrate that the models they are building are nothing more than abstract mathematical representations of digitized human knowledge and that they can function without sneakily storing a bit of extra juicy training data.

While I hope this is achievable, I remain sceptical that developers will be able to demonstrate it in a way that satisfies the evidentiary standards of the legal profession.

In more practical terms, I assume that this will require the development of some kind of shared minimum threshold for what counts as memorization. And that threshold will need to take seriously the idea of de minimis use. As noted by Technollama, some of the evidence brought forward by GEMA looks like scraping the bottom of the honeypot: the fact that a model can reproduce a fragment of fifteen words that many of us could memorize as teenagers is not, on its own, a good reason to bring the full force of copyright to bear on the problem.

The unresolved opt-out question

Even if a sensible de minimis threshold emerges, this still leaves the unresolved issue of how rightholders can effectively communicate that their works should not be used for commercial AI training.

What is notable here is that, although the court affirms the applicability of the Article 4 TDM exception to AI training (when implemented correctly), it says almost nothing about the hotly debated issue of machine-readable opt-outs. OpenAI argued that it was entitled to use the song texts because they had been included in datasets compiled in accordance with robots.txt exclusions, but the court did not need to address this point. Once it found that the model itself contained reproductions of protected works, the opt-out question became irrelevant.

Even so, several passages imply that, that if the court had been required to rule on the matter, it would have have adopted a more expansive interpretation of “machine-readable” than mere adherence to formal technical standards like robots.txt. This aligns the trend evident in the LAION judgment and in a recent case from Denmark: European courts are increasingly willing to interpret machine-readability in a flexible and practical way.  The responsibility for this gap lies with the AI companies themselves, whose inability or unwillingness to agree on a standard is now leaving them increasingly exposed on this front as well.

The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth has announced that it will host Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers, a major survey of the artist’s work traveling from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. The exhibition will open in Fort Worth on Sunday, March 8, and run through Sunday, September 27, 2026.

In a press release, the Modern cites Mr. Johnson as “one of the most acclaimed artists of his generation,” known for his diverse practice spanning painting, sculpture, film, and installation.

Detail view of Rashid Johnson, “Antoine’s Organ,” 2016, black steel, grow lights, plants, wood, shea butter, books, monitors, rugs, piano. Image courtesy the artist © Rashid Johnson, 2025. Photo: Stefan Altenburger

Halona Norton-Westbrook, Director of the Modern, explained that the show highlights a personal side of Mr. Johnson, as well as three decades of work. “This presentation, a rich collaboration between the artist and the exhibition curators, visually brings to life Johnson’s path to self-discovery from a young age and his deep personal and cultural reflections over the last thirty years,” she said.

In a video interview with Naomi Beckwith, Deputy Director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, Mr. Johnson said of the exhibition overall, “This is not just the story of my art career. This is the story of my life.”

A Poem for Deep Thinkers was curated by Ms. Beckwith and Andrea Karnes, the Modern’s Chief Curator, with additional support from Faith Hunter, a Curatorial Assistant at the Guggenheim.

Ms. Beckwith said in an exhibition introduction on the Guggenheim website that throughout his career, Mr. Johnson has contended with a dual responsibility to community and to his artwork as a personal vocation. She said the artist’s legacy will be “expanding the forms of art history, allowing space for honesty and openness in his work, and also allowing space for collective practice.”

Ms. Karnes said, “Rashid Johnson is a singular creative force whose work bridges art history with Black contemporary culture and culture at large, creating powerful spaces for reflection and dialogue.”

The artist’s multidisciplinary approach draws upon art history, philosophy, literature, and music as conceptual frameworks. The exhibition title is derived from a poem by Amiri Baraka, an American poet, writer, teacher, and political activist whose work is a frequent source of inspiration for Mr. Johnson.

Film still from Rashid Johnson, “Sanguine,” 2024, 35mm film transferred to video, 5 min., 52 sec. © Rashid Johnson, 2025

Mr. Johnson’s film Sanguine, to be included in an installation of the same title, is a glimpse inside the artist’s life, featuring himself, his father, and his son as characters sharing time in various everyday situations. Mr. Johnson describes himself as in the middle position, caring for his son while being aware that he will soon become caretaker to his father.

Speaking of the work, Mr. Johnson explained that the film and the multisensory installation around it — a large metal framework holding shea butter chunks, an array of live potted plants, paintings and other film and video works — “hopefully speak to to care, and this idea of how care functions, how care evolves, and how we relate to those positions of care from the middle.”

Public programming for the exhibition will include a conversation with Mr. Johnson and Ms. Karnes on Friday, March 6, 2026. Additional performances, events, and educational programs will be announced at a later date on the Modern’s website.

Visit the Guggenheim’s exhibition web page to learn more about Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers.

The post Fort Worth Modern to Host Rashid Johnson Survey in 2026 appeared first on Glasstire.

Glasstire counts down the top five art events in Texas.

For last week’s picks, please go here.

Detail view of Gyula Kosice, “La ciudad hidroespacial (The Hydrospatial City),” 1946–72, acrylic, paint, metal and light. Image courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

1. Gyula Kosice: Intergalactic
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
October 26 – January 25, 2026

From the MFAH:

“Gyula Kosice: Intergalactic is a large-scale tribute to the works of the Argentine experimental sculptor, painter, poet, and theorist. The exhibition marks the first time such a complete survey of the work of Gyula Kosice has been presented outside Argentina, comprised of more than 70 two-dimensional works and kinetic sculptures made of acrylic materials, air pumps, water, light components and neon gas tubes. Kosice was a prominent figure in the international avant-garde of the mid-20th century, and co-founder of both Arturo (1944) and Madí (1946), two constructive-art groups based in Buenos Aires. His practice introduced original artistic ideas, including interactive sculptures, which questioned the relationship between object and spectator, as well as cutout frames which transformed the painting into a ludic object. He also experimented with a wide range of materials, such as neon tubes and various types of plastics, many of which had rarely been used in art at the time, and was the first artist to ever incorporate water as an artistic medium. Like his contemporaries Julio Le Parc and Carlos Cruz-Diez, Kosice also incorporated light and motion into his work.”

McKay Otto, “Know”

2. McKay Otto: In the Ethereal/Present
Five Points Museum of Contemporary Art  (Victoria)
September 27 – December 14, 2025

From Five Points Museum of Contemporary Art:

“McKay Otto has been making art for over 30 years; raised in Fort Bend County near Houston, his work is rooted in Texas while gaining international recognition. In the Ethereal/Present will feature a selection of portraits of notable citizens of South Texas who have made significant contributions to the cultural landscape of Victoria. These works feature his layered photo-luminescent abstraction, so that they change with the light. In this, they both enhance understanding of the subject and ask the viewer to consider the ethereal nature of existence. Also on display will be Otto’s sculptures, in which he repurposes materials as varied as recycled clothing to jigsaw puzzle pieces and imbues them with thoughtful commentary and often humor.”

Matt Steinke, “Drum, Warble, Hum, Buzz, Trill,” 2023

3. Matt Steinke: Reverse Ears
Northern-Southern (Austin)
October 17 – November 16, 2025

From Northern-Southern:

“Matt Steinke has shown work with Northern-Southern since our third show. Reverse Ears is an installation of new interactive sculptures: a rabbit, a bat, and a wasp nest made of wood, acrylic, PLA, resin, glass, cloth, epoxy clay, metal, electronics, light, and sound.”

Danville Chadbourne, “The Coincidental Bearer of Continuity,” 2009

4. Danville Chadbourne: Mysterious Conjunction
Trinity University (San Antonio)
November 6 – December 20, 2025

From Trinity University:

“San Antonio-based Danville Chadbourne works primarily in clay and wood in both two- and three-dimensional formats. Over the years, he has created a complex body of work unified by a primal iconography that emerges from a personal and consistent formal aesthetic. The richness of Chadbourne’s iconography, nuanced sense of color, expansive sculptural conception, and insistence on craftsmanship are rooted in his keen observations and deep contemplation of the driving forces of both nature and human nature. This exhibition examines Chadbourne’s art from the past five decades and is a cornerstone of the Trinity University Festival of the Arts, TUFA.”

A work by Gail Blank on view in “3 Women”

5. 3 Women
Nature of Things / Ephemeral Space (Dallas)
September 27 – November 23, 2025

From Nature of Things:

“3 Women explores identity — as a vessel, a mask, and a morph — primarily through the female body and symbolic dream allusions. The work in this exhibition, ceramics by Gail Blank, paintings by Gretta Johnson, and ink drawings by Helen Burkhart Mayfield, act harmoniously, and at times almost interchangeable in their styles and continuity of narrative.”

The post Top Five: November 13, 2025 appeared first on Glasstire.

Sarah Carney, 64, died peacefully last weekend. In lieu of flowers, the family asks if you would mind picking up one of her legs and lifting her body together on the count of three.

The post Sarah Carney appeared first on The Onion.

So many musicians were hired for this pair’s lavish wedding band that a new instrument had to be invented called the harmoniaphone.

The post Betty Greenberg and Stephen Harold appeared first on The Onion.

For those who know what “crenellated” means, like we do, this house has it (or them). Crenels here, crenels there. Just a ton of that good stuff.

Reference #49308

The post Crenellated Aesthetic appeared first on The Onion.

WASHINGTON—Dismissing the swashbuckling sci-fi romp as “a total hoax” amid growing scrutiny over his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, President Donald Trump made remarks Tuesday denying that he had written a 36-volume comic titled Don And Jeff: Time Pedophiles.

Obtained last month by the House committee investigating the late financier and child sex trafficker, the Time Pedophiles saga depicts Trump and Epstein journeying through various historical eras aboard Epstein’s Chronolita Express time machine, taking on Edo-period samurai, ancient Roman legionaries, and Wild West gunslingers in their never-ending quest for underage sexual partners. 

Though Trump was prominently credited as writer and illustrator on every cover, in addition to appearing as a doodled version of himself in several “Molester’s Soap Box” columns, where he would frequently rant about the unfair treatment of sexual predators, the president has vigorously disputed the series’ authenticity.

“Epstein was no friend of mine, and I never drew us becoming knights and competing at a joust for the virginity of a 13-year-old Eleanor of Aquitaine,” Trump said when asked about Time Pedophiles by a reporter, suggesting that someone else could have written, inked, and lettered the series before falsely signing his name. “Anyone who knows me knows I wouldn’t draw myself in a covered wagon picking up minors on the Oregon Trail, nor would I write a story arc about going back into prehistory, long before humans invented the age of consent, to hit on Cro-Magnon girls. Sorry to disappoint, but the fact is, I don’t draw cavemen.”

“I’ve never written a caveman in my life,” he added, though several one-shot comics the president drew for charity in the early 2000s depict cavemen in a style nearly identical to those in Time Pedophiles.

The storylines in the series are largely driven by the reliance of Epstein’s time machine on Enigmium, a mysterious substance that “never ages” and can only be obtained via sexual encounters with girls between the ages of 12 and 17. Each arc typically begins with the erudite Don rattling off facts about their next destination, only for Jeff to interrupt him with his catchphrase, “But what does [the Qing dynasty/Prohibition-era Atlantic City/Belle Époque France] have to do with getting pussy?”

The duo’s time-faring underage sexcapades also feature numerous cameos from Don and Jeff’s team of “Temporoconspirators,” including Doc Dershowitz, the madcap inventor constantly developing new gizmos—like the Groomatizer Ray and allegation-proof underwear—for the Time Pedophiles to test out, as well as Chief Engineer Ghislaine, the Chronolita Express’s mechanic and Jeff’s on-and-off paramour, whose direct exposure to the timestream in a tragic massage accident left her forever trapped in the body of an adult woman.

Despite the president’s repeated denials of having ever depicted himself and Epstein commissioning Leonardo da Vinci to build them a mechanical clockwork nymphet who goes haywire and chases them through the canals of Venice after Jeff carelessly fondles a dial controlling her aggression levels, Americans expressed unease that Epstein and Trump opted to self-publish Time Pedophiles through a company they founded called GROPE comics. 

In a nationwide poll conducted by Pew Research Center, 84% of respondents called the comic unpresidential and said they were disturbed by the Time Pedophiles traveling back to ancient Egypt in the “Groom Like An Egyptian” storyline and getting two breastlike pyramids constructed in their honor for molesting 14-year-old Cleopatra. In addition, 77% were appalled by the Time Pedophiles rescuing Joan of Arc from being burnt at the stake only to heave her back into the blaze upon learning she was 19. 

Similarly, 89% of those polled said they disapproved of the chapter where Don deliberately lands the Chronolita Express in the Miss Teen Mesopotamia changing room, and 68% said that Trump should immediately resign if he did indeed pen the issue in which an incident at a 19th-century girl’s boarding school leads to Don unwittingly becoming Jeff’s great-grandfather.

“Assuming the comics in this omnibus collection are authentic, the entire series paints a damning picture of Trump and Epstein’s relationship,” said political analyst Sarah Helbecker, pointing specifically to the series’ retrospective final chapter, in which Don and Jeff wind up in the year 5000 and are put on trial by an all-female robo-society for their crimes against women, girls, and the young velociraptor from the “Jurassic Pedos” arc. “The whole courtroom sequence reads like a confession, but before anyone faces any consequences, a portal appears and the duo receive a deus ex machina pardon from the Pedophile King of the Chro-noverse, who is strongly hinted to be a future version of Don himself.”

Helbecker added, “The American people should ask themselves just what the president meant when he concluded every issue of Time Pedophiles with the motto ‘Three cheers for molestation, and may every historical era be another wonderful secret!’” 

The post Trump Denies Writing 36-Volume Comic Titled ‘Don And Jeff: Time Pedophiles appeared first on The Onion.

#Kento #RoninWarriors

Luckly, my curious and inquiring mind provides me with spurious and inspiring answers. #CowboyWho

Would you like to Supersize it?

LAS VEGAS – A massive fire destroyed the RealGirlz Headquarters in Las Vegas, Nevada on Friday morning which CEO and founder Jeff Morrow called a “deliberate act of arson.” Morrow, who first made international headlines in 2012 after promising that his line of RealGirlz sex dolls would one day replace real women as the ideal […]

The post Long awaited sex bots arrive, immediately self destruct rather than deal with men appeared first on The Beaverton.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – With many of Jeffrey Epstein’s documents and emails now available to the public, subtle messages from the disgraced financier like “Donald Trump is a sex criminal I have done sex crimes with” and “Would anyone like to hear about how big of a pervert Donald Trump, the pedophile, is?” have raised some […]

The post “Trump is a pedophile” email raises questions about whether Trump is a pedophile appeared first on The Beaverton.

“We’re willing to negotiate down to 8.2.” Luke and the Panel (Ian MacIntyre and Nile Seguin) delight in the chaos consuming the Conservative Party, wonder why the Democrats are incapable of not shitting the bed, and try to understand the government’s plan to put 300,000 civil servants in the armed forces. Then the Approximately 10 […]

The post The Beaverton will tell Doug Ford a tunnel under the 401 is the dumbest idea of all time for just 8.5 million appeared first on The Beaverton.

Japan deployed troops into its northern rural regions to combat a surge in bear attacks that has already killed a record 12 people since April, as experts link the crisis to climate change and rural depopulation. What do you think?

“Be careful. Once they get a taste for combat, troops will keep coming back for more.”

Collin Gurworth, Protein Advocate

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“Hopefully this show of strength will convince the bears to come to the negotiating table.”

Athena Kalogeras, Clarinet Repairman

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“Hopefully humans and bears can set aside their differences and find a common enemy in squids.”

Jon Fosmark, Bell Ringer

The post Japan Deploys Troops To Combat Deadly Bear Attacks appeared first on The Onion.