Bewarethewumpus

Mushrooms are the coolest. Not quite flora, not quite fauna, they are a secret third thing—isn't that neat? Many types of fungi have also been observed to form symbiotic relationships with the root systems of plants. Sometimes mutualistic, sometimes parasitic, this root-meets-fungus network is called 'Mycorrhiza'—and a similar web of mycelium may one day come to a rig near you.

No, this isn't my pitch for a funguspunk trilogy, this is actual science. Researchers at the Ohio State University recently found that mushrooms you can eat can also be trained to act as bioelectronic data processors (via phys.org). Specifically, the team grew shiitake and button mushrooms, dehydrated these cultures for long-term use, and trained the fungi to function like organic memristors through methodical electrocution.

I know that sounds wild, but that's not even the raddest part. The researchers observed the dehydrated fungus demonstrated an ability to remember past electrical states, with the mushrooms able to reproduce memory effects in a way not dissimilar to traditional semiconductor chips.

The research project was partly inspired by how human brains produce neural activity through electrical impulses. The paper's lead author, John LaRocco, explains: "Being able to develop microchips that mimic actual neural activity means you don't need a lot of power for standby or when the machine isn't being used. That's something that can be a huge potential computational and economic advantage."

After all, if our own lumps of meaty grey matter can be encouraged to produce a thought or two through electrical stimulation, then why not mushrooms? Joking aside, the research project was also motivated by more environmental concerns; the paper reflects on how "current semiconductor-based neuromorphic chips require rare-earth materials and costly fabrication processes," pitching "fungal computers" as a sustainable, even biodegradable alternative.

Obviously, you won't be able to play The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered on what amounts to a portobello mushroom suffused with electrodes any time soon, but this early research is no less compelling—especially with how screwed memory prices are thanks to AI. For one thing, when the researchers attempted to use their dehydrated mushroom cultures like RAM, they found the samples performed with a 90% accuracy rate. Performance waned when the fungus was exposed to more frequent electrical shocks but this was remedied by, you guessed it, adding more mushrooms to the circuit.

For another, the researchers are also keen to note that "shiitake has exhibited radiation resistance, suggesting its viability for aerospace applications." Rockets navigated by mushrooms—now that's a vision of the future I don't think I'd mind living in.

Now, before you get as excited as I am, it's probably worth taking note of the speed of these "fungal memristors". With a top speed of 5.85 kHz our Nick has noted that, "the RAM chips my first ZX Spectrum were 1000 times faster at switching... Admittedly, you couldn't eat them, though."

Biological computing is nothing new, and you may remember Cortical Labs' 'body in a box' wetware from earlier this year. But, costing $35,000, the CL1 presents a far greater cost to research institutes compared to, say, culturing some mushrooms, meaning those aforementioned fungal aircraft may not be such a far flung fancy after all.

For years, Linux users who wanted to play PC games were out of luck. The operating system just didn't support most games. But that's rapidly changing. According to Slashdot, nearly 90% of games designed for Windows PCs now work on Linux machines too. — Read the rest

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BRAND NEW KICKSTARTER! Pre-order Volume 1 and Volume 2 of The Complete Tom the Dancing Bug Library right here. Limited time. Plus a bonus comic book: Trump You!

Please join the team that makes it possible for your friendly neighborhood comic strip Tom the Dancing Bug to exist in this world: JOIN THE INNER HIVE! — Read the rest

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Fans of LEGO and Nintendo rejoiced earlier this year when the LEGO Game Boy was released. The model is near perfect, with all the buttons of the original gaming handheld. It also includes two Game Paks and swappable lenticular displays to match the games. — Read the rest

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Old School RuneScape (OSRS) is no stranger to madcap individuals doing harebrained tasks: 10,000 hour grinds, taking eight entire months to grind out a single baby mole, you name it. But trout guy, who has been attempting to make a dent in a stack of over 500,000 trout, might just be a secret genius.

As posted to the OSRS Reddit, "trout guy", or Lousifer in-game, has been trying to eat 500,000 trout for almost a week straight. "He keeps getting trout donations and the crowd keeps growing," writes user IronWurmple. "Last night it was about 40 people deep."

Just to make sure my leg wasn't being pulled, I made an OSRS account and booked it to Edgeville and, sure enough, at the time of writing, Lousifer is still eating trout with crowds of adoring fans.

"I lived through this," one player says. "Troutman, have my wife", says another. Whenever trout guy stops eating, everyone barks at him to eat more trout. Whenever he moves tiles, a manhunt starts until he is discovered again amongst the swarm. He cannot escape.

Edgeville is so flooded with pilgrims bearing fish for Lousifer that, at one point, the man himself even posted a screenshot to the subreddit, flaunting not only an inventory flooded with trout, but a Jagex mod coming along to pay him well-wishes. "Godspeed, trout man," says Mod Nin, before returning back to work: "Trout skill releasing Winter 2027."

However, this seems to be the tip of the iceberg. See, there are rumblings—some commenters in the aforementioned threads believe that trout guy might be manipulating the fish markets for their own personal gain.

"I spent 539k on 5000 trout at 107 gp each," writes one player. "That may be the highest trout prices have ever been in OSRS." Another adds: "What if trout man is merching everyone?"

It's definitely possible. If I hop onto osrs.exchange and search for trout, there's a massive spike in trout prices, which almost doubled on October 20 from 70 to 120 gold. If we take that five-day timeframe as gospel, that means trout guy, savvy fish scoffer that he potentially is, spent two days scarfing fish to gain notoriety, waited for the fish market to deplete, then offloaded his donated fish to an alt and sold it at a higher price.

I've reached out to Lousifer, and I'll update this article if I receive a response from the guy. Until then, keep on scoffing, trout man. Even if you are playing us all for fools, what's the harm? That we might believe in something? That even a small fish can make it big on the grand exchange? We must believe in the smaller lies to believe the bigger ones. We must believe in trout guy.

As if DirecTV doesn't have enough trouble keeping customers, the satellite TV provider's streaming devices will show AI-generated screensaver ads next year, according to an announcement today from partnering ads company Glance.

People who use either of DirecTV’s two Gemini streaming devices will start seeing the ads “in early 2026,” per the announcement. DirecTV’s Gemini Air is an Android TV-powered USB device that people can plug into a TV for access to live TV channels, as well as streaming apps. Gemini Air doesn’t require a DirecTV satellite connection, and DirecTV gives all of its Internet customers the device. DirecTV first started selling Gemini devices in 2023, when it launched a separate Gemini set-top box that connects through DirecTV satellite setups.

DirecTV made an agreement with Glance to show AI-generated content and ads on Gemini devices' screensavers. Currently, Gemini devices show Google wallpapers as screensavers, which are on by default. When the new screensavers launch, Glance's AI content will show if the TV is idle for 10 minutes, The Verge reported.

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This is why he doesn't come back for humans any more.

It's certainly not an absence of demand that keeps "dead" games like Black & White or the original Civilization off the market. It's usually red tape and nebulous barriers involving copyright law and intellectual property ownership-flavored headaches that get in the way. And even though GOG has a team working on its preservation program full time, senior bizdev manager Marcin Paczynski said they found the process of digital necromancy "harder than we thought it would be," on a recent episode of The Game Business Show.

He added that the strange stories involved were enough to fill a book, and served up some examples that make me really want to read that book. One tidbit involved someone in the UK who had unwittingly inherited rights to several games, but was "nowhere to be found."

Paczynski told The Game Business: "He kind of fell off the grid, so we hired a guy in the UK that was supposed to find him. That was the type of person who was really, really living without any cell phone, without any online presence, just chilling. He didn't even know that he owned the rights because this was just a package with his inheritance … we have a lot of stories like that."

In the same interview, he mentioned a Vietnam veteran turned game developer turned business mogul behind a multimillion-dollar oil company, as well as more precarious stories like developers whose physical documentation of IP ownership was torched in a fire—the further back in time you go, the more game development relied on physical record-keeping. And notably, this is all before you get to the technical aspect of getting a game to function on modern machines and keeping it that way.

It's a wild set of stories and a good reminder of how hard it can be to do this sort of thing on the up and up. The length of GOG's Dreamlist, which catalogs users' top picks for additions to the preservation program, as well as the Video Game History Foundation's claim that around 87 percent of games are largely unplayable, can make the whole task of game preservation seem impossible. That said, players have made it clear the alternative—letting old games fade into memory—isn't something they'll accept.

Firmware security company Eclypsium has claimed that 200,000 Framework laptops and desktops that are running Linux have shipped with "what can only be described as signed backdoors." This is because they've shipped with UEFIs that allow memory read/write access that can apparently be used to compromise Secure Boot. And apparently "this situation is not unique to Framework."

That's according to the security company, which notes that UEFI shells that enable these vulnerabilities aren't backdoors placed by bad actors for malicious purposes (via Bleeping Computer). "Instead, they’re legitimate diagnostic tools signed with trusted certificates that contain functionality to effectively bypass security controls we’ve built into the boot process" the company says. "The implications? Systems that have a secure boot process, in reality, do not."

A UEFI shell is a command-line environment that loads before the operating system boots up. It allows you to perform diagnostics, update your firmware, and so on. Part of what goes on at this pre-OS stage of booting is your system checks whether UEFI applications are signed by Microsoft. If it's signed, your firmware will trust it and allow it to run things in the UEFI shell.

The problem, however, occurs with one UEFI shell command. Eclypsium explains: "At the heart of this issue is a seemingly innocent command: mm (memory modify). This command, present in many UEFI shells, provides direct read and write access to system memory. While this capability is essential for legitimate diagnostics, it’s also the perfect tool for bypassing every security control in the system."

Essentially, it seems like a malicious actor can use this command to directly write to memory, rather than interfacing with the UEFI code/variables themselves, to bypass security verification. The process is as follows:

1. Identify the target variable (gSecurity2)
2. Locate the Memory Address for that variable
3. Patch the security handler, using the mm command to overwrite it with NULL, or redirect it in such a way that makes it bypass verification.
4. Load and execute any UEFI module code now that the security handler is disabled
5. Establish persistence so the bypass happens automatically on each boot

This can allow the malicious actor to completely bypass Secure Boot. This is the part of the booting process I mentioned earlier, where your system verifies that nothing is compromised by checking digital signatures. The "mm" command seems to be able to bypass these checks entirely, which would mean you could then load and execute even non-verified, ie, potentially malicious, code.

This vulnerability has been discovered and tested in Framework Linux systems, and Eclypsium says "this information was disclosed to Framework, and they have been working on remediating the vulnerabilities affecting roughly 200k Framework laptops and desktops."

Given this isn't just a Framework problem, but presumably a problem with any UEFI shell that allows execution of the "mm" command, the security company thinks it might call for a complete change in approach to security:

"The concept of implicit trust based solely on digital signatures is fundamentally flawed when those signatures can be applied to components with dangerous functionality… those [organisations] that continue to operate under the assumption that 'signed equals safe' may find themselves on the wrong side of a fundamental shift in the threat landscape."

Of course, there's also the fact that older systems don't run Secure Boot at all, and users can bypass Windows 11 Secure Boot requirements by modifying the install in Rufus, for instance. Although this will become increasingly difficult to get away with for gaming, given more and more games are requiring it and Steam now even lets you check if you have it enabled.

Given that we seem to be decidedly wading into the Secure Boot requirement era, it would be great if we could get it, y'know, actually doing its job and verifying system integrity. Without possible UEFI shell exploits like this, I mean. Perhaps stopping to assume that "signed equals safe" is the way after all. Until then, keep an eye out for BIOS updates from Framework and any other companies that recognise the vulnerability and patch it.

A team of researchers from UC San Diego and the University of Maryland have published a study [PDF warning] detailing their attempts to pick up unsecured information from the airwaves using a basic receiver system. Over the course of three years, the team pointed their off-the-shelf residential dish at various geostationary satellites and interpreted the data, and were shocked by what they found.

"There are some really critical pieces of our infrastructure relying on this satellite ecosystem, and our suspicion was that it would all be encrypted," said UCSD professor Aaron Schulman, speaking to Wired. "And just time and time again, every time we found something new, it wasn't."

Using a $180 satellite dish and roof mount, a $195 motor system, and a $230 tuner card, the team say they were able to pick up samples of the contents of US calls and text messages on the T-Mobile cellular network, along with data from in-flight Wi-Fi and utility infrastructure comms from oil rigs and electricity providers. Perhaps more troubling, however, was that military and law enforcement communications were also said to be easily accessible, revealing the locations of personnel, equipment, and facilities.

"They assumed that no one was ever going to check and scan all these satellites and see what was out there. That was their method of security," Schulman continues. "They just really didn't think anyone would look up."

What's also troubling is the relatively small scale of the researchers' efforts. Using their easily obtainable equipment from a San Diego location, they were only able to pick up signals from roughly 15% of satellites currently in operation, yet discovered numerous unencrypted communications—suggesting the problem may be more widespread than initially thought.

At one point, during a nine-hour recording session of T-Mobile's backhaul satellite communications, the researchers say they were able to view phone numbers, calls, and text messages from over 2,700 users. There is a small glimmer of hope, however, in that the team was only able to pick up data from one side, meaning that the data the users were receiving was open to access, not data being sent from their devices. Essentially, a one-sided conversation—but a leaked one, nonetheless.

The team seem keen to point out that they didn't actively intercept any of these communications, instead passively listening to what the receiver picked up.

"When we saw all this, my first question was, did we just commit a felony? Did we just wiretap?" says co-leader of the study Professor Dave Levin.

However, it appears that all that was needed to receive the unencrypted data was a small set of equipment, and the knowledge of how to use it. "These signals are just being broadcast to over 40 percent of the Earth at any point in time," said Levin.

The team say they were also able to receive unencrypted internet communications from US military sea vessels, and were able to discern the vessel's names as a result. However, data from Mexican military and law enforcement authorities seems far more detailed. The team say they were able to pick up the unprotected transmission of intelligence information on narcotics tracking, as well as military asset tracking and maintenance records for helicopters, sea vessels, and armoured vehicles, along with locations and mission details.

The team has since notified the companies and agencies affected by the unencrypted information, with varying results. According to the researchers, T-Mobile, Walmart, and KPU have been re-scanned since being informed of the data breach and are now using some form of encryption, although other unnamed parties still appear to be broadcasting without a fix.

It's truly astonishing how much data the team was able to intercept with a relatively budget set of equipment, and it does make you wonder how easy it would be for less scrupulous entities to do the same. The researchers acknowledge that their work may enable others to begin tracking satellite communications, and that intelligence agencies with far superior equipment are likely to have been analysing the same unencrypted data.

However, they argue that the study may force more satellite communications providers to tighten up their security protocols. Schulman says: "As long as we're on the side of finding things that are insecure and securing them, we feel very good about it."

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Coming soon! Volumes 1 and 2 of The Complete Tom the Dancing Bug! Sign up now to be informed when the Kickstarter launches VERY SOON! — Read the rest

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Hovertext:
Must be nice to be part of a religion that'd never go to war.

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Hovertext:
Is this the one that gets the hatemail? I keep waiting.

(No bonus panel today because of a missing file, it will be posted later.)

cosmicportal:

I think everyone knows that when you open Netflix, what you are shown is curated to your interests and viewing history.  So the home page affords you quick access to recent viewings, new releases, similar movies, and so on.  There is a search function for specific titles, but no apparent way to search for all the rom-coms or all the soccer movies.

The codes reveal Netflix's complete organizational system. Instead of broad categories like "Action" or "Comedy," you get hyper-specific genres like "Martial Arts Movies" (code 8985) or "Classic Action & Adventure Films" (code 46576). Some categories contain hundreds of titles, while others might have just a handful of carefully curated selections.

What surprised me most was discovering content that never appeared in my regular browsing. Shows and movies that existed in Netflix's library but were essentially invisible due to the algorithm's assumptions about my preferences. It's like finding a hidden room in your own house.

Here are examples of how the categories are subdivided (links in the image are not clickable):

paper-mario-wiki:

a texan professor just lost their job because a student was filmed saying “you cant be teaching this, the president said theres only 2 genders, and it also goes against my religious beliefs”, to which the professor responded with “you are free to leave the classroom if you are uncomfortable with what is being taught”, which was apparently out of line

can you fucking imagine

being a college professor

and getting fired after not humoring some fucking stupid kid

for saying

“excuse me what youre teaching is wrong, the president said so”

The post Head <i>Magic: The Gathering</i> Designer Apologizes For Misogynistic Card From 27 Years Ago appeared first on Kotaku.

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Great, now in addition to putting Sellotape over my webcam, tissue paper in my keyholes, and tin foil over my head, I'm going to have to whisper quietly around my gaming mouse. That's because, according to some researchers (via Igor's Lab) our optical gaming mice might be able to spy on what we're saying.

And is it a surprise that this fiendish development is aided by AI? Not to me, it's not. Judging from the video demonstration above, the real magic occurs in the last stage of the pipeline, where the neural model cleans up the speech even better than the Wiener filter does (no sniggering, that's a serious scientific term).

Apparently this method of snooping can be performed on "consumer-grade mice with high-fidelity sensors", which sounds a lot like "gaming mouse" to me. That does seem to be exactly the case, as in the full paper (pdf warning) we can see the researchers used a Razer Viper at 8 kHz polling to train the models used for this attack.

I suppose one of the key requirements is a high polling rate, as a higher polling rate means more data, which means more accurate data clean-up to isolate acoustics, ie, speech: "Attackers can exploit these sensors’ ever-increasing polling rate and sensitivity to emulate a makeshift microphone and covertly eavesdrop on unsuspecting users."

The researchers also point out that "creative software, video games, and other high performance, low latency software are ideal targets for injecting our exploit." Video games in particular are "ideal targets" because many of them "contain networking code that can be reused by our exploit without raising suspicion. Thus, using a video game as the delivery vehicle of our exploit allows us to meet the performance demands of our collection scheme."

However, it looks like the mouse might need to be on a hard, flat surface, and also remain still, for the data to be cleaned well enough to get any speech out of it. So I doubt you'd have to worry while running around in Battlefield 6. Sitting still on bomb site B, defending the entrance to Tunnels on Dust 2, might be another story, though.

Perhaps more than anything this is just another reason to keep our polling rates to 2 kHz or lower. All it does is drain your battery anyway, as you won't be able to notice the difference by bumping the polling much higher than this.

The latest Insider Preview build of Windows 11 includes a rather ominous update. Ominous, that is, for anyone who prefers to install Windows without being hooked up to the internet and signing up for a Microsoft account.

According the to accompanying Microsoft blog post (via The Verge), Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.6772 dispenses with local-only commands. To quote Microsoft directly, "we are removing known mechanisms for creating a local account in the Windows Setup experience (OOBE).

"While these mechanisms were often used to bypass Microsoft account setup, they also inadvertently skip critical setup screens, potentially causing users to exit OOBE with a device that is not fully configured for use. Users will need to complete OOBE with internet and a Microsoft account, to ensure device is setup correctly."

Yuck. This change is just the latest in a series that make it ever harder to set up Windows 11 without an internet connection and a Microsoft account. Back in March, ye olde "bypassnro" workaround was nixed.

The Verge says that this new measure means that the “start ms-cxh:localonly” command that replaced bypassnro as the weapon of choice for the internet and Microsoft-account avoidant will also no longer work. Now it will simply reset the OOBE process and fail to bypass the Microsoft account requirement.

So, does this mean you'll absolutely must have a functional internet connection and a Microsoft account to install Windows 11 once this Insider Build rolls out to the masses? Possibly not.

According to this Reddit post, there may be another work around. "In OOBE, go through MS account creation. Tell it you were born today. It'll let you set a password for the MS account before rejecting you due to COPA requirements. At this point, you can make an offline account without having even created an MS account, let alone having to use one.

"This will not go away - it's a legal thing. MS doesn't want to deal with COPA stuff for very young kids, so this flow exists. Enjoy."

We haven't had the opportunity to try that workaround yet. But we're generally hopeful that methods to install Windows 11 without an internet connection and a Microsoft account will remain. Given the broader Swiss-cheese like qualities of Windows, it seems unlikely that Microsoft has nailed down every single possible workaround.

It's also likely that enterprise editions of Windows will continue to support initial local accounts before joining corporate domains. And there's the Rufus method, which Andy describes here, and may still work even after this update.

Speaking of which, Andy called it when he said, "I can't help but feel, however, that this may just be the beginning of a crackdown on these sorts of workarounds." That does indeed seem to be the case and the days of internet-free installs without a Microsoft account look distinctly numbered.

A history teacher at Rutgers University has been chased not only out of town, but out of the United States by a blood-thirsty MAGA mob after he dared to talk about anti-fascism to the press.

Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook (2017), began teaching as an assistant professor at the university in 2019, but abruptly fled to Spain with his family this week after he was pummeled with death threats and accused of leading "antifa" by indoctrinated Trump fans. — Read the rest

The post Rutgers professor flees to Spain after death threats over anti-fascism comments [UPDATE: His ticket mysteriously cancelled] appeared first on Boing Boing.

Social media is awash with images from Portland, Oregon, where an addled Donald "Grandpa Pudding Brains" Trump has been misled into believing "the city is on fire." There is no fire, only peaceful citizens, abusive ICE Gestapo, and dancing.

Folks in inflatable suits are seen as threatening by the Brownshirts, for some reason. — Read the rest

The post Images from the Portland "war zone" appeared first on Boing Boing.

Bob Ross, famous for his hair, his brushwork and his happy little trees, is rarely to be found at auction houses despite the vast number of canvases he generated producing The Joy of Painting for PBS. The warehouse owner plans to let some go, though, to help public television after the Trump administration cut off $1.1bn in funding to it. — Read the rest

The post Bob Ross paintings to be auctioned to support public television appeared first on Boing Boing.

The limits of Minecraft's procedural-generation math become apparent the further away you get from your starting position. First you cross into the jitters, a region where movement gets all, well, jittery. Keep going and eventually you'll reach the Far Lands, an alien landscape where patterns of blocks stop resolving into pleasant hills and streams, instead forming gigantic sky-dominating structures that reach to the topmost limit of block-generation where they're sheared flat, with dark crevices running between them.

Kurt J. Mac began his long walk to the Far Lands in March of 2011, and on October 4, 2025, he finally arrived. He's been streaming his journey as Far Lands or Bust on Twitch, taking donations for charity as he goes and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for Child's Play, Direct Relief, the Progressive Animal Welfare Society, the Equal Justice Initiative, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East over the years.

Finally arriving at the Far Lands, kurtjmac climbed to the top of them to take some screenshots, briefly experiencing existential horror when he saw his completely dark character model in the third-person view. "Aah! I don't exist!"

Climbing back down to the ground, he assembled a sign to memorialize the spot. "Here Farlanders First Set Foot upon Far Lands! October 4, 2025" it says. Accompanied by his dog Wolfie, kurtjmac has since continued exploring, meeting a Far Lands cow and trying not to get eaten by spiders. "Now we've gotta play Minecraft," as he put it.

As reported by The Verge, Discord has announced that one of its third-party customer service partners was recently compromised by an "unauthorized party," who Discord states was attempting to "extort a financial ransom."

While the hackers did not gain access to Discord directly, some users' data was impacted by the breach⁠—specifically data shared with Discord's Customer Support and Trust & Safety teams, including government IDs shared for age verification.

Discord stated in a press release that anyone impacted by the breach will be contacted soon over email. The types of data potentially at risk include names, Discord usernames, email addresses, contact information, payment types, the last four digits of credit card numbers (but not CCVs or full credit card numbers), purchase history, IP addresses, messages shared with customer support, and "limited corporate data."

The most concerning data caught in the breach is a limited number of government ID images shared with Discord for age verification purposes, such as passports or driver's licenses. Discord added that, "If your ID may have been accessed, that will be specified in the email you receive." Notably, no passwords, authentication data, or messages "beyond what users may have discussed with customer support" was compromised in the breach. Discord also stated that it has revoked the impacted customer support partner's access to its systems.

If you haven't shared info with Discord's Customer Support team recently, you most likely won't be impacted by this breach. However, if you think your data may have been leaked, keep an eye out for an email from Discord. If your ID was involved in this breach, you may want to take a look at the IRS or NCSC's identity theft and data breach guides.

This breach comes only six months after Discord started requiring age verification in some regions. The UK's Online Safety Act made such age verification law in Britain, though users quickly found ways around it, including using the photo mode in Death Stranding. Some U.S. states have also passed similar age verification laws.

This data breach at Discord makes it clear why people around the world are concerned and frustrated by these policies—even beyond issues of censorship, there are clear risks involved in giving scans and photos of sensitive data like government IDs to companies that might not have the security to protect that data.

inkpressedpetals:

copperbadge:

copperbadge:

copperbadge:

copperbadge:

Men, boys, and eggs of my acquaintance, I cannot stress this enough:

Nobody worth being with will ever judge you based on your deli sandwich choices.

Sincerely, a dude who had to watch like two dozen men pretend to find vegetarian sandwiches unthinkable in order to maintain a sense of masculinity today.

The sando gender spectrum I osmoted this weekend according to a specific type of dude:

1. Roast beef is the most masculine of sandwiches. The only sandwich it is permissible to ask for by name (we did not have roast beef as an option).

2. Ham is an acceptable substitute for roast beef. There appears to be some controversy, however, over the bread options; we only had two, croissant or ancient grains roll (gluten free). Croissant is considered slightly more manly than ancient grains UNLESS you are under 20 in which case “ancient grain” sounds badass.

3. Turkey is okay, obviously not ham but if you don’t like ham it’s an option as long as you don’t show enthusiasm for it. Definitely has to have mayo however. Mustard is a bit much. (Initial field research indicates mayo is the manliest of condiments but we have not introduced barbecue sauce into the study yet.)

4. Chicken salad is woman food. Absolutely not acceptable unless you announce loudly that it’s for your wife or that she’s making you for your health.

5. Vegetarian wraps require a recoil reaction or a sheepish “oh, no, no, what meats do you have?” protest. We had the veggie wraps off to one side so vegetarians could get to them more easily, and guys would come up to the wrap boxes because there was no crowd/line, then I’d say “that’s veggie wraps” and they’d stagger back.

To be clear, most of the people of all genders at the event were totally fine, this was a small and specific set of guys – mostly older dudes and (unsurprisingly) their young sons or grandsons. Maybe 20-30 people out of the 400+ attendees. But it really was both sad and a little funny to watch them unnecessarily assert their manhood using deli meat to me, a guy in a floral shirt with neon blue hair handing out box lunches at a charity event. My indifference to your masculinity is so vast it has its own international calling code, fellas.

Friends, I have volunteered in the lunch tent once more and I have new scientific findings to share regarding the Sandwich Gender Spectrum.

We still do not serve roast beef, the most toxically manly of all sandwiches, but it turns out that there is a sandwich option almost as masculine, the mention of which will preclude a certain type of dude from even asking for roast beef:

The Italian.

For those unfamiliar, an Italian sandwich in most American sandwich shops is composed of ham, capicola, salami, and sometimes pepperoni, with provolone, the usual sandwich veggies, and a drizzle of Italian dressing.

The hierarchy from ham-downwards remains undisturbed by this revelation currently rocking sandwich discourse, but new data has indicated that the Italian sandwich occupies a special place above ham and technically below roast beef but so acceptable a substitute for roast beef that I only had one guy ask me for it this time around. I would say, “We have ham, Italian, turkey, or veggie,” and the Certain Kind Of Man would look skeptically at the ham and then ask for an Italian.

I am now working on my doctoral thesis in Sandwich Gender, where I will be examining whether there is a direct correlation between how masculine a sandwich is and how weirdly homoerotic the name is. I’m going to call it “I’d Like An Italian: Gender And Sexuality Between The Buns.”

Ahead of the Sandwich Gender Spectrum Studies Department’s annual report on the September 2025 new data release, I wanted to share some recent findings by a research colleague at a prestigious academic institution on the east coast:

ALT

My sample size is growing all the time and my research is replicable.

Field work in sandwich gender studies, sandothropology if you will, can be challenging at times. While my thesis has been supported by both independent researchers such as above and grant-holding professionals (aka “people who work in food service”), the window of time in which I perform my yearly field survey is brief.

This year a new variable was introduced. The selection of sandwiches we were given to hand out was reduced to three: ham, turkey, or vegetarian. For the first time, the vegetarian option was a sandwich and not a wrap, as well.

There seems to be something about the idea of a wrap that makes it particularly unpalatable to a Certain Kind Of Person; we didn’t have anyone getting hissy about being offered vegetables this year, and also got far fewer remarks about getting a turkey sandwich “for the wife” or “because she’s making me”. Perhaps when your options are realistically ham or turkey, rather than an array of choices that you have to navigate correctly, the social pressure eases off. Plus, ham and turkey both fall in the middle of the spectrum, so they’re a little more ambiguous than say, roast beef and chicken salad. Why bother performing gender for two almost equivalent options? (There’s a bisexuality joke in here somewhere.)

I did have one guy furiously lecture me for about two minutes because we didn’t have any sandwiches on wholegrain bread, but if we’d had more sandwich options he’d have been mad we were spending the organization’s money unwisely on sandwich fripperies (I know him of old) so that barely registered.