Cowboy Who?

German man who worked for a far-right lawmaker in the European Parliament has been convicted of spying for China.

What was that?
Well, that was Indians Cowboy Slim.
No that wasn't! That just the guy that hangs the lights and he's wearing some dumb costume! #CowboyWho

A reader writes:

My job has a weekly meeting where a different employee each week presents to our group about what they’ve been working on for the past few months (academic lab meeting). The group is about 30 people and includes our boss/PI and everyone else in the lab group.

There’s a tradition where the first five to ten minutes of these hour-long presentations are devoted to photos highlighting cool things from our personal lives. Almost everyone uses this time to show photos from things such as vacations, hobbies, hiking trails, their children’s school events, etc. I think it’s a cool way to connect with my coworkers and I think everyone else feels the same way.

My issue is that I spend most of my time outside work on a hobby that toes the safe-for-work line and I’m curious if it would be appropriate to talk about. I spend a lot of time playing a game called Warhammer 40k. It involves building and painting miniatures (like building a model train or a lego model) and then putting them on a table and rolling dice to have them act out different scenarios (like Dungeons and Dragons). I often travel to large tournaments with my team to compete in this game against other people like in a traditional sport.

The issue is this game is based on fictional sci-fi violence. The game is very explicitly about fighting, and the aesthetics of the game include heavy use of sci-fi guns and sci-fi swords. It would be impossible to talk about this hobby without at least somewhat referencing gun violence being used in a fictional war setting. What are your thoughts on including this hobby in a semi-casual work presentation? I know some of my coworkers would find all this pretty neat but I’m not sure about everyone else, including my boss.

Yeah, you’ve got to nix all mention of guns and instruments of unique, brutal death (which my husband tells me is one of the things the game is known for).

But there’s got to be a way to talk about it in broad terms without zeroing in on guns and deaths, surely! You can reference “battles” and “warring factions” and the building of miniatures and traveling to tournaments and what Wikipedia tells me are supernatural monsters without talking about actual violence. The miniatures angle, in particular, might be interesting to people. (Do you paint them? How do you build them? Etc.)

Plus, even if it didn’t have violence, you should still keep it pretty surface-level, because no one really wants a detailed account of someone else’s gameplay unless they’re an avid fan of the same game, and maybe not even then.

I’d also mix it up — you don’t want this to be your topic every time (and people may really zone out if it’s more than once — but that’s probably true of other people’s topics, too). I don’t think you need to avoid it entirely, though, as long as you don’t focus on the specifically violent elements.

(Caveat: I’m writing this as someone who had never heard of the game until I received your letter. If it’s known among people who know games as one where the violence is the entire point — to the point that people who know the game would question your judgment for raising it there at all — then you should ignore all of the above and not use it in this context.)

The post do I have to avoid talking about Warhammer 40k at work? appeared first on Ask a Manager.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
Btw, the real life Dr. Whiteson, who podcasts with my wife, has a new book out called Do Aliens Speak Physics? which you should go check.

Today's News:

Free speech experts say that when teachers speak in their personal capacity, even on school grounds but outside their official duties, they retain their right to comment on matters of public concern.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth also blocked Lake from removing Michael Abramowitz as VOA's director.

Americans are divided on which party to blame if funding lapses after midnight tonight, according to a new PBS News/NPR/Marist poll. Yet a plurality – 38% – say Republicans, who control the White House and both houses of Congress, would be most at fault. In the new poll, 27% would blame Democrats, while 31% believe both parties would be equally to blame. WATCH: Government shutdown appears unavoidable after White House meeting fails to produce deal...

Critics like RFK Jr. and health-conscious social media influencers often claim seed oils like canola, soybean, and safflower oil contain toxic byproducts caused by the extraction process. The Onion dispels the common myths surrounding seed oils.

MYTH: Seed oils cause inflammation.

FACT: The science on this will reverse itself six times over the next 100 years.

MYTH: Avoiding seed oils is just another diet fad.

FACT: Avoiding seed oils makes you an independent thinker, just like all the other subscribers to TheDukeOfNaturalEating’s YouTube channel.

MYTH: Seed oils can cause brain fog.

FACT: Your brain was already like that.

MYTH: You should switch to beef tallow.

FACT: Your body naturally makes all the beef tallow you need.

MYTH: Olive oil is healthier for you than seed oils.

FACT: Olive oil costs $20 a bottle.

MYTH: The ancients used seed oils.

FACT: True, but mostly as orgy lube.

The post Seed Oils: Myth Vs. Fact appeared first on The Onion.

The post Signature Moves appeared first on The Onion.

A former NASA astronaut turned US senator has joined with other lawmakers to insist that his two rides to space remain on display in the Smithsonian.

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) has joined fellow Democratic senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, both of Virginia, and Dick Durbin of Illinois in an effort to halt the move of space shuttle Discovery to Houston, as enacted into law earlier this year. Kelly flew two of his four missions aboard Discovery.

"Why should hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars be spent just to jeopardize a piece of American history that's already protected and on display?" wrote Kelly in a social media post on Friday. "Space Shuttle Discovery belongs at the Smithsonian, where millions of people, including students and veterans, go to see it for free."

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One of the few, small things the US press could do is stop pretending this administration is normal. It isn’t. It’s motivated solely by cruelty and revenge, in service of imposing its will and white Christian nationalist imperatives on the nation, which is nothing less than fascism. So, when President Trump says he’s sending the National Guard to Portland, Oregon to quell an alleged rebellion, the very least the press could do is not bury the lede.

Here’s what Matthew (sorry, that’s all the information I have) pointed out on Bluesky in regards to press coverage of Trump’s latest revenge invasion of a US city:

# of paragraphs for news orgs to mention there’s no discernable need to deploy troops to Portland, Oregon

The Guardian: 1st paragraph
BBC: 4th paragraph
AP: 5th paragraph
Time: 6th paragraph
Politico: 8th paragraph
NPR: 9th paragraph
CNN: 10th paragraph
NBC: 12th paragraph
Fox News: never mentions

That’s why we’re going with the Guardian for more details on Trump’s latest slide down the slippery slope that’s been greased to hell and back by the last bastion of the system of checks and balances: the shadow docket-est Supreme Court to ever hold lifetime positions.

Donald Trump said on Saturday he is deploying troops to Portland, Oregon, “authorizing Full Force, if necessary”, ignoring pleas from local officials and the state’s congressional delegation, who suggested that the president was misinformed or lying about the nature and scale of a single, small protest outside one federal immigration enforcement office.

Trump made the announcement on social media, where he claimed that the deployment was necessary “to protect War ravaged Portland,” and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facilities he said were “under siege by antifascists “and other domestic terrorists”.

Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, rejected the president’s characterization. “In my conversations directly with president Trump and secretary Noem, I have been abundantly clear that Portland and the State of Oregon believe in the rule of law and can manage our own local public safety needs,” Kotek said at a news conference in Portland on Saturday. “There is no insurrection. There is no threat to national security and there is no need for military troops in our major city.”

Here’s Trump’s nonsensical raving on Truth Social, which seems to pin the responsibility for this latest attempt at martial law on avowed pet killer, Kristi Noem.

At the request of Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, I am directing Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists. I am also authorizing Full Force, if necessary. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

The Secretary of War [SoW] (a.k.a. the day-drinking boss of the US Defense Department) is going to send war troops into “War ravaged Portland” to defend against a “siege” by “Antifa.” Meanwhile, in Portland, this is how things actually look:

A visit by the Guardian to downtown Portland on Saturday morning confirmed that the city is placid, the farmers’ market was packed and the protest against immigration enforcement in an outlying residential neighborhood remained small. There were just four protesters on the sidewalk near the Ice field office Trump claimed was “under siege”. One, wearing a chicken costume and draped in an American flag, held up a sign that read: “Portland Will Outlive Him.” Passing motorists honked in appreciation.

The Trump-loving NY Post claimed “protestors clashed with ICE agents” as Trump’s military/federal officer posse rolled into Portland. And yet, it couldn’t even drum up any photos of the “clash” it declared in its headline, having to settle for pics of the most clash-less protest I’ve ever seen:

The only description of said “clash” involved ICE attacking protesters, rather than the other way around:

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer was seen Friday shoving a protester to the ground, according to video footage captured by KATU-TV.

Given all of this, it’s extremely irresponsible for US press outlets to write sentences like this when covering truly alarming government actions, like sending the military into US cities for the sole purpose of stifling dissent. This is CNN doing Trump’s work for him by pretending these martial law-esque efforts are meant to address societal problems, rather than being the politically motivated attacks they actually are:

It’s the latest example of Trump’s willingness to use the military in extraordinary ways as part of his push to reduce crime in American cities.

The New York Times’ coverage is even worse, with this being the second paragraph in the article:

The order was the latest instance of Mr. Trump’s use of the American military on the nation’s streets, after federal troops were sent to Washington last month in an effort to crack down on crime. Federal agents will start arriving in Memphis as early as next week, after the president authorized the use of the National Guard there as part of a similar crackdown.

This has nothing to do with crime and everything to do with Trump expanding his power and taking control of cities simply because they’re run by members of the Democratic party. No similar moves have been made in Republican-run cities, no matter how high their crime rates are.

While I understand some journalists think it’s not their duty to speculate about politicians’ motivations, it doesn’t take much to add sentences into the mix that make it clear there is no factual basis to support this mobilization of the military, while also pointing out that Trump has exclusively targeted Democratic party-run cities with these deployments.

And, for the love of all that is fucking holy, the press could help itself out quite a bit by pointing out that these vengeful acts by the Trump administration target protected First Amendment expression — the ongoing protests of ICE and its actions by residents of cities now swarming with federal officers and National Guard troops. Trump’s going to hate you anyway. The least you can do is fully earn it.

In brief: This is largely a persistence forecast. Houston will face temperatures in the low- to mid-90s this week before rising humidity levels bring highs down slightly this weekend. Bigger changes are possible next week, but we’re making no promises.

Tuesday

We are seeing mostly cloudy skies this morning due to a passing disturbance. If there were more moisture in the atmosphere this might spark some showers, but there’s just not much to work with. So we have overcast skies, and these should give way to sunshine later this morning or by early afternoon at the latest. Following this we are going to see temperatures rise into the lower 90s in Houston, with mid-90s possible for areas west and north of the city. Afternoon dewpoints will drop to about 60 degrees so this won’t be super sultry weather like summertime in Houston, but it will be hot for the end of September nevertheless.

Winds will be light, from the north at about 5 mph today, shifting to come from the east tonight. Lows will drop into the lower 70s. With the slightly lower humidity, nights and mornings will continue to feel pleasant for a couple of more days before dewpoints rise a bit by Friday or so.

Wednesday and Thursday

These will be hot and sunny days, with highs in the lower 90s in Houston, and possibly mid-90s for inland areas. Dewpoints will remain marginally lower to keep a bit of a lid on humidity. Rain chances remain near zero. Nights drop into the lower 70s for most except the coast.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday

By the weekend the flow turns more southerly, so dewpoints will ramp up slightly. This increased atmospheric moisture should limit highs to around 90 degrees, and push overnight lows to the mid-70s. Each day should bring a slight chance of rain, perhaps 20 or 30 percent for areas near the coast, with lesser chances inland. Any accumulations should be very slight.

Next week

Most of next week will likely see a continuation of the pattern above, with highs in the vicinity of 90 degrees. Rain chances may start to look a little better by Monday or Tuesday, but we still probably are looking at overall low likelihoods and nothing serious in the way of accumulations. That may finally start to change toward the end of next week when a cool front could approach the area. But from this far out I would be a fool to make any promises. So I’m not.

A reader writes:

My workplace has drinking heavily interwoven into the culture. You doubtless know the kind of place — never had a work social event without copious amounts of booze, boss bringing around beers on Friday afternoons, work parties with an open bar being relocated to another bar where the limitless company tab covers five shots for everyone at the table in five minutes, that kind of vibe.

I didn’t know that was the culture when I was applying, and I’ve had a lot of issues with alcohol and drugs in the past. Over the past year and a half, I’ve had some life stuff going on that meant I got to the point where I felt it would be good for me to cut out drinking, and oh my god I did not foresee “the receptionist is having a Pepsi with no rum in it” to be the apparently catastrophic event it seems to be.

Apparently I’m fun when I’m drinking (yeah, I am, until I’m stumbling home throwing up and sobbing at 3 am) and I have a unique ability to keep the party going (not a good thing in my case!) so whenever I’m at any work social event, the pressure is constant, especially from a few of my bosses. No thanks? Oh, come on! I’ve been trying to cut back? It’s just one, on a special occasion! I have to work tomorrow? Oh, it’ll be fine, we’ll be okay if you’re a few hours late tomorrow if you go too hard!

And so on and so forth, to the point where once my boss at a party, after being told I wasn’t drinking this time, handed me a glass of what I thought was ginger ale but turned out to be a dark and stormy, because “I know you like them!” Another has told me after a few drinks, probably joking but still, that they hired me for my personality, so I have to go to the bar after with everyone and if I don’t, it’ll come up at my performance review. Even if I drove, they don’t reliably accept when other people say they can’t drink because they’re driving — or, on one occasion I can remember, pregnant.

We don’t have HR — after they abruptly fired the HR guy, they decided to split up his duties between four of my bosses, most of whom are on the drink-pushing side of the equation. I would really like to have my “no thanks” respected, but I’m hesitant to go into my issues with my bosses because from what I’ve seen so far, it probably won’t help. Any suggestions, besides doubling down on the old job hunt?

In an ideal world, you’d talk to your bosses and point out that the drinking-heavy culture is really problematic for a whole range of people — people in recovery, people who are pregnant or on medications where they can’t drink, people who don’t drink for religious reasons, and people who just plain don’t drink or don’t feeling like drinking at the moment. And in that ideal world, your bosses would then address it on two fronts: (1) having a zero-tolerance policy for pressuring anyone to drink and (2) reconsidering how heavily alcohol features in their work events in the first place.

But it doesn’t sound like you’re in that ideal world. Any chance, though, that it’s worth a conversation anyway? Is there a manager who you’d be comfortable pointing out the above to, possibly (although not necessarily) paired with an explanation that you’ve stopped drinking and the pressure has become a problem? (You don’t need to disclose that about yourself, but if you’re comfortable doing it, it might help them take the conversation more seriously.) You could also point out the legal liability for the company when “I’m driving” isn’t immediately understood as a reason not to drink.

If not, or if that doesn’t work, then — short of finding a new job — all you can really do is limit your exposure to these events (hard to do when they’re in the office during work hours) and tell people to stop when they’re trying to get you to drink. Feel free to say, “No, and it’s weird to push people to drink; you don’t know what their reasons for not drinking might be.”

If you find that easy to do, then great; that might be all you need. But if you find that hard to do, and as a result you’re making decisions you don’t want to make (like drinking when you’re trying not to), that’s a sign that this is really not a culture you should stay in. It’s easier said than done to find a new job, especially if you’re otherwise happy with this one, but at that point that would be the right move.

The post my office loves to drink, and I’m trying to stop drinking appeared first on Ask a Manager.

What would MacGyver do?

Pop star Sabrina Carpenter is one of several artists set to headline this year’s Lollapalooza. The Onion sat down with the “Espresso” singer to discuss love, life, and her forthcoming album, Man’s Best Friend.

The Onion: Which one are you again?

Carpenter: Of the two very short pop stars under 35, I’m the one who acts like a horny 56-year-old stepmother rather than a transracial infant.

You got your start in Hollywood as a child actor for Disney, is that right?

Yes, I starred in the 1999 Disney Channel movie Zenon: Girl Of The 21st-Century when I was just three minutes old.

What is your first music-related memory?

My grandma used to sing me an old Scottish lullaby about girls getting on top.

Favorite ungulate?

Brazilian tapir. Wait—no! Siberian musk deer!

Are you a natural blond?

We’re all born bald, and we’ll all die bald.

What part of performing do you get most excited for?

The free bottled water. At the Grammys, I stuffed, like, nine Dasanis down my bodysuit. They almost fell out during “Espresso.”

What is your biggest turn-on?

Ants freaking out after you erase their pheromone trail.

Who is “Manchild” about?

Charlton Heston.

What are your biggest regrets?

If I could do it all over, I would have chosen different cover art for Man’s Best Friend. I now understand that it’s wrong because I was comparing myself to a dog, and dogs play poker, which is a vice.

Did one of your ancestors really work as a carpenter?

All of my ancestors also sang about fucking, but in period-accurate clothing.

Do you have any hidden talents?

I can crush a beer can inside my vagina with a single Kegel.

Would you like to harmonize?

Sure—you be the tuba, and I’ll be the gong.

The post The Onion’s Exclusive Interview With Sabrina Carpenter appeared first on The Onion.

INDIANAPOLIS—With an official proclamation that declared the state “open to self-proclaimed messianic prophets,” Indiana began offering tax breaks Wednesday to attract religious doomsday cults. “Whether your fundamentalist commune believes it will usher in an apocalyptic race war or board a spaceship to a higher plane of existence, we hope your cult will choose to make Indiana its new home,” Gov. Mike Braun said during a signing ceremony for the new law, which will provide a 30% tax credit for all qualified expenditures, including stockpiled firearms, ceremonial cloaks, surveillance equipment, proselytizing pamphlets, and bulk purchases of matching Nikes. “This legislation will make us the next hotspot for fanatical cults of personality, bringing new opportunities to the neglected rural parts of our state, especially those that are isolated and free from any outside influences or scrutiny. You can move here and do whatever your beliefs command you to do: Drown your followers in Lake Michigan as part of a spiritual cleansing ritual, bury the bodies in the Indiana Dunes National Park—that part’s up to you,” Braun added. “It doesn’t matter if your cult is the kind where no one is allowed to have sex or the kind where everyone is allowed to have sex, but only with the group’s leader. Either way, you’ve got friends here in the Hoosier State.” Braun went on to observe that an end-times collective could get “a whole lot more bunker” for its money in Indiana than it could in California or Texas.

The post Indiana Offers Tax Breaks To Attract Religious Doomsday Cults appeared first on The Onion.

QUANTICO, VA—Racking his brain for answers as he gazed out at the high-ranking officers gathered before him, a visibly hungover Pete Hegseth reportedly struggled Tuesday to remember exactly how he ended up in a meeting room filled with U.S. generals and admirals. “Jesus fucking Christ, why are they all staring at me—am I supposed to say something?” the defense secretary muttered to himself as he looked from face to expectant face of the assembled military top brass, pinching the bridge of his nose and quietly cursing his nightcap of Beefeater from the previous evening. “Anyone out there have a Pedialyte? Advil? No? Nothing? All right, well, let’s start by dimming those lights. My head is killing me. That’s good. Much better.” At press time, Hegseth asked a nearby five-star general for a 20-minute recess, lowered his head into his arms, and vomited.

The post Hungover Hegseth Struggling To Remember How He Ended Up In Room Full Of Generals appeared first on The Onion.

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Welcome, neighbors, come on in. There’s plenty of room for everyone, aside from God. He has no place inside this well-ventilated, open-concept embodiment of runaway capitalism.

What you see before you is my 14,000-square-foot testament to taste, triumph, and unrepentant hubris. A five-bed, six-bath new-construction McMansion with a gaping spiritual wound that can never truly heal.

Let’s start in the foyer, which doubles as a waterpark and triples as a shrine to me. The marble floors are hand-cut from an Italian quarry that geologists begged us not to touch. The chandelier? They found it inside a meteor already shaped like that.

I spared no expense. Especially not on humility.

Over here is the living room. I’ve actually never been in here before. Vaulted ceilings that touch the second heaven, twelve Corinthian columns (structurally unnecessary, spiritually confrontational), and a roaring fireplace powered by a small but persistent coal fire deep within the earth. Is it environmentally sound? No. But is it efficient? Not really.

Now, please direct your gaze to the kitchen. Not for cooking, lord no! We have Postmates. But we do have a thirteen-burner Viking range, two walk-in fridges (both empty), and a spiral ham encased in resin. The island is so large that it has its own HOA. The countertops? Carved from pure astatine. Highly radioactive stuff. Could have fed an entire village for a year with how much I paid for that, FYI.

Follow me upstairs via the golden escalator. It’s just like the one Trump had, except five workers died making it. It’s haunted.

Also, the escalator only goes up, so you’ll have to slide down a bunch of silk scarves I had the help tie together. Very chic, very unsafe. OSHA has been here nine times.

Here is the primary bedroom, or as I like to call it, “The Throne of Flesh.” King bed? Please. That’s for plebeians. This is an emperor bed, thirteen feet wide, custom made from the bones of extinct forest creatures most have never even heard of. Mattress Firm will sell you this bad boy only if you have an Amex black card and a personal endorsement from the Illuminati. Above the bed is a mural of me riding a lion into battle against modesty. It glows at night. Not with electricity, but with spiritual discomfort. Unfortunately, it’s too bright for anyone to sleep in here. Still worth it.

Now, let’s step outside to the yard. The landscaping was designed to resemble Babylon, pre-fall, naturally, but with more water features and several nude models I hired as living statues. Please don’t feed them.

We installed a full-size Roman aqueduct even though we’re on city water. Just hoarding for the sake of hoarding! And yes, that’s a twenty-four-hour flamethrower fountain spelling out my name in cursive.

Over there’s the infinity pool, which literally mocks God by being both infinite and chlorinated.

And finally, the roof features a concrete and soapstone statue of me, standing an extremely petty six inches taller than that inferior Jesus the Redeemer statue in Brazil. It’s been struck by lightning twelve times!

Is it all a bit much? Well, perhaps. Am I technically violating forty-seven zoning laws? Who isn’t? Whatever, I can afford the fines. But if God wanted me to build modestly, He wouldn’t have given me generational wealth and a complete lack of internal regulation.

All I know for sure is that while this may not be the most structurally sound house around, it’s certainly the most lavish. And no act of God would ever befall it.

Anyway, thanks for the housewarming gift. You can just throw out the edible arrangement. I waste so much food.

Please feel free to worship the golden calf on the way out!

After years of hyperventilation about TikTok’s impact on privacy, propaganda, and national security, TikTok is likely being sold to a bunch of Trump’s billionaire technofascist buddies who don’t believe in privacy and want to use TikTok to spread right wing propaganda. Bang up job all around, especially to all the befuddled Democrats whose hysteria about the app helped Trump seal the deal.

TikTok’s new owners will include Rupert Murdoch (responsible for creating Fox News, the most effective mass media right wing propaganda platform ever) and Trump bestie Larry Ellison, who is in the process of turning CBS News into basically the same thing via his nepo baby son and Bari Weiss.

Normally you’d want to be a little subtle about the plan to turn TikTok into a pro-Trump and pro-Netanyahu propaganda machine to avoid scaring off customers, but that’s not Trump’s style. So last week he basically just blurted out the whole plan, then insisted he was just “joking”:

“Trump signed an executive order to “save” TikTok, while supposedly joking that he’d like to censor influencers by tweaking the algorithm so that content is “100 percent MAGA.”

“Everyone is going to be treated fairly,” the president added—seemingly covering his tracks as critics warn that TikTok under US ownership could soon carry a right-wing bias, perhaps going the way of Twitter after Elon Musk took over and rebranded it as X.”

Yes, “perhaps.”

From Twitter and the Washington Post to CBS News, the right wing billionaire tendency to buy up major media properties and convert them into right wing propaganda and bullshit machines has not been subtle. Yet, as the framing of this Ars piece makes clear, the press still seems somewhat confused as to whether TikTok will be any sort of reliable source of information (spoiler: it won’t) under far right wing billionaire ownership.

TikTok under Bytedance ownership certainly raised privacy, propaganda, and national security concerns. But under Bytedance the platform at least tried to behave so it could continue operating in the U.S. With Trump having dismantled all our privacy, NatSec, and fraud regulators, the new U.S. ownership of TikTok will see arguably fewer regulatory constraints on their worst impulses than ever.

Murdoch clearly wants a modern media extension of his existing Fox News empire given his core audience is dying off. Ellison, a staunch supporter of Netanyahu and his industrialized mass murder of children, clearly wants to leverage TikTok as a new media extension for whatever fresh hell he and Bari Weiss are building over at CBS. I’d expect ample authoritarian apologia.

To be clear the deal hasn’t been fully finalized yet. It’s still not clear if the deal will meet the legal requirements of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, especially given there seems to be some ongoing debate over who’ll exactly own the underlying algorithm. There will likely be some opportunities for activists and lawyers to throw sand in the gears.

But make no mistake: if this deal goes through TikTok will absolutely be headed the way of Twitter under Elon Musk. They’ll likely try to leave things much the same for a 6-12 months to pretend that’s not going to be the case, but I suspect that, ultimately, its use for right wing propaganda will be obvious.

Creating an internet full of wall-to-wall racist and corporatist right wing agitprop was always the end game of MAGA’s bogus “Conservative censorship” and “we support antitrust reform now” claims, it was never remotely subtle, and you can’t say you weren’t warned, repeatedly.

You’d like to think that the conversion of TikTok into a far right wing safe space will cause a mass exodus of ethical people off of the platform, but as we’ve seen with Twitter (especially when it comes to journalists’ continued use of a website owned by an overt white supremacist) that’s clearly not really something you can truly rely on.

You’d also like to think that the hijacking of TikTok will create the opportunity for innovators to create a better, more ethical short-form video platform not owned by assholes actively cheering on the destruction of foundational democracy. Here too, time will tell.

Their goal is obvious but as some are quick to point out: their success is far from guaranteed. Remember what happened with Rupert Murdoch and MySpace? AT&T’s attempted domination of video? These sorts of domination plays, especially in mass modern media, never quite go the way rich brunchlords planned, and it’s not like Oracle executives have any sort of serious experience with consumer-facing product success, much less any understanding of modern media.

That said, you’d need to define “success.” The billionaire right wing architects of this new modern era right wing propaganda bullhorn (that may soon be comprised of Fox, CNN, Sinclair, TikTok, Twitter, and countless other media properties) have no limit of money to burn on profit-losing propaganda ventures in a country that just took a hatchet to any remaining financial or consumer protection regulators.

They may never have the competency to actually execute, but given the already extremely shaky status of journalism, the media, and informed consensus, I think emphatic alarmism remains the right response to the grand, unsubtle mass media plans of our shittiest billionaires.

This one will never get old.

RIYADH, KSA – As Saudi Arabia’s new comedy festival welcomes talent from around the world, local executioner Imad Usman is excited for the opportunity to perform in front of larger audiences.  “I’m going to open with some classic crowd-horrifiers, like beheading an apostate and beheading a burglar,” Usman told reporters. “Then, of course, I’ll finish […]

The post Riyadh Comedy Festival opens with up-and-coming executioner appeared first on The Beaverton.

Falling-sand simulator with hundreds of elements.

Added by @r74n in Games › In-Browser Games.

Large companies like IBM, Microsoft, or Novell typically had a well defined process for releasing software on floppies. More often than not, files were not directly copied onto a physical floppy; instead, a tool was used to create an image of a floppy disk from distribution files, and the image was then sent off for mass duplication.

Quite often, timestamps of files were set to a predefined value when creating the image. That practice is probably as old as timestamps in the FAT file system. PC DOS 1.0 kept track of the date when a file was modified, but not the time of day. PC DOS 1.0 has all non-system files set to a 08/04/1981 date, although it is theoretically possible that this was a result of normal file manipulation.

With PC DOS 1.1, there is no ambiguity. The timestamps of all files are set to 12:00:00 on 05/07/1982. Floppy disks are not nearly fast enough to write all those files within two seconds (the FAT timestamp resolution), even in the extremely unlikely case that someone sat there waiting until exactly noon to start the operation. It is a given that IBM artificially set the timestamps of all files to match, and that was before the PC was even a year old.

It is notable that Novell followed a different strategy and strictly kept the original timestamps of shipping files. It was common that different releases had some files with matching timestamps and some files different. One could be reasonably confident that two files with the same name and timestamp were in fact identical. That was not always the case with IBM or Microsoft, where two files with different timestamps were often identical. And in rare cases, two different versions of a file were distributed with the same timestamp, arguably completely defeating the purpose of timestamps.

Especially when software was released with artificially created timestamps, this helps identify modifications to the release disks. If one has, say, an IBM DOS 4.0 install disk where files are dated 06/17/1988, but the timestamp of AUTOEXEC.BAT or CONFIG.SYS is different, it’s more or less certain that someone modified those files. Such modifications may otherwise be impossible to clearly identify if one only has a floppy image to work with, because editing an existing text file may not result in any changes to the FAT and a disk sector will simply be rewritten in place.

IBM TCP/IP 2.0 for OS/2

The other day I was looking at a disk set (that is, a set of floppy images) of IBM TCP/IP 2.0 for OS/2 Base Kit. I was almost sure that I had imaged original disks about twenty years ago, but there were several red flags that usually signal non-original disks.

Here’s a listing of the B1 floppy (the installation disk):

Directory'\*':
   731921 ---a 01/06/1994 10:17:12 BASE1.ZIP
        0  DIR 01/06/1994 15:23:22 LANLK
    43151 ---a 01/03/1994 15:45:22 BASECSD.DOC
    56528 ---a 12/07/1993 13:20:12 BASEXT.EXE
     1999 ---a 01/06/1994 11:27:06 DEFAULT.RSP
      422 ---a 03/19/1993 16:49:00 LAPSRSP.RSP
     5436 ---a 08/12/1993 20:29:14 README
   111242 ---a 12/04/1993 11:29:08 TCPINST.EXE
    12663 ---a 06/17/1993 18:44:32 TCPINST.HLP
   114303 ---a 01/05/1994 08:42:56 TCPINST2.EXE
    92080 ---a 11/03/1993 09:08:46 UNZIP.DLL
        0  DIR 10/28/1993 14:10:24 TK
        0  DIR 10/28/1993 14:10:28 HDCONTL
Directory '\LANLK\*':
    15580 ---a 07/26/1993 16:18:46 IBMLANLK.EXE
     4420 ---a 07/26/1993 16:18:46 IBMLANLK.SYS
     4548 ---a 07/26/1993 16:18:50 LSI.MSG
     5579 ---a 07/26/1993 16:18:50 LSIH.MSG
Directory '\TK\*':
        0  DIR 10/28/1993 14:10:24 SAMPLES
     2847 ---a 07/21/1993 12:11:38 CONTROL.SCR
Directory '\TK\SAMPLES\*':
        0  DIR 10/28/1993 14:10:24 VIDINST
        0  DIR 10/28/1993 14:10:24 CODEC
        0  DIR 10/28/1993 14:10:26 VCADDT
Directory '\TK\SAMPLES\VIDINST\*':
     3017 ---a 08/03/1993 10:05:26 MAKEFILE
     2202 ---a 07/21/1993 12:11:36 README
Directory '\TK\SAMPLES\CODEC\*':
     2743 ---a 09/22/1993 09:54:20 README
     2691 ---a 08/03/1993 10:05:22 MAKEFILE
      553 ---a 09/22/1993 09:54:20 CONTROL.SCR
Directory '\TK\SAMPLES\VCADDT\*':
     2310 ---a 08/10/1993 10:17:56 README
Directory '\HDCONTL\*':
    10456 ---a 10/28/1993 13:06:58 MASTERH3.RTP
     4634 ---a 10/28/1993 13:06:56 CONTROLH.SCR

While the LANLK directory is presumably part of the installer, the TK and HDCONTL directories are definitely not. They are in fact fragments of the OS/2 2.1 Multimedia Toolkit. Completely unrelated to TCP/IP. So… that’s suspicious.

The README file is several months older than the rest, which is unusual; usually the README includes late-breaking information and ends up being one of the most recent files on an installation disk.

And there’s more. The OEM identifier in the boot sector of disk B1 from the kit is “IBM 20.0”, which is normal for OS/2 2.x disks. The OEM identifier on disk B2 is “DOS4.0” which is much less common for OS/2 software. Disk B3 has OEM identifier “IBM 3.3”. Disks B4 and B5 have “IBM 20.0” and disk B6 has “IBM 3.3” again. To top it off, the OEM identifier on the IBM Library Reader disk (also part of the Base Kit) is “IBM 10.2”, indicating OS/2 1.2.

In other words, the disks are a complete mess. They were clearly not created through any kind of a controlled process. It looks like someone just took whatever random disks they had lying around, deleted the existing files, and copied over the new ones.

That is also clearly visible in the root directories of the disks, which contain some (or many) deleted files.

There’s also the small matter that IBM released TCP/IP 2.0 for OS/2 in mid-1993, and these disks clearly contain updated files from early 1994, even though the packaging does not indicate an updated version.

All this made me quite unsure that I was looking at images of original disks. So I had to find the old box of floppies and then ran them through my Kryoflux. Lo and behold… the images were really made from true blue IBM disks. The Kryoflux tools can identify rewritten disk sectors but no, the disks were all clean mass-duplicated specimens.

Whoever mastered these disks was either in a real hurry or didn’t have the right tools, and really just took a box of random floppies, deleted existing files, and copied the (updated) TCP/IP 2.0 Base Kit files onto the disks. And so we ended up with distribution disks that look really fishy, but are in fact completely intact originals.

Thanks to the Kryoflux, I can also exclude the possibility that someone modified the original disks after the fact—which was always unlikely, but not completely impossible. No, there was no modification, the disk images really reflect exactly how IBM shipped the disks from the factory… primed to confuse digital archivists decades later.

Watch out for the editing!

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