PROVIDENCE, RI—In the hours following a violent rampage in Rhode Island in which a lone attacker killed at least two individuals and injured several others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Monday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said Idaho resident Kathy Miller, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this individual from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what they really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past eight years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”
No injuries were reported, according to Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman, who identified the man suspected of wielding the weapon as being 20 years old.
A year after the state blocked transgender Texans from updating their state IDs, it has collected information on more than 100 people who have tried. Officials won't say what they're using the list for.
The Nooksack River sources in North Cascades National Park on Mt. Shuksan. It flows north and then west, eventually dumping into Bellingham Bay off Puget Sound. Because of the topography in that region, when the Nooksack River floods badly, it spills north into the Sumas River. The Sumas sources in Whatcom County, Washington and flows around past the Nooksack and dumps into the Fraser River in British Columbia northeast of Abbotsford.
As is often the case, the reason this is a problem is because of what we chose to do many years ago. This whole area is a leftover flat plain from glacial retreat that acts as a floodplain for the rivers. It is called the Sumas Prairie, but it actually used to be a lake. In the 1920s, the lake was diked and drained. This opened up a bunch of fertile land for farming, as well as reduced flooding on the Fraser River in Canada. But it also is a former lakebed, and water was there for a reason. Thus, in floods like this, the lake is attempting to refill, except now people live where a lake once sat. Essentially, the Nooksack watershed gets higher than the Sumas watershed, and water essentially “spills” downhill into the Sumas, which flows from Washington into Canada.
Maps have borders. Nature does not.
After the bad flooding in 1990, a cross-border group was created to propose flood mitigation measures, specifically near Everson, WA where the Nooksack overflows into the Sumas Prairie. Some modeling efforts were undertaken, some solutions proposed but as time wore on and urgency disappeared, nothing happened, and the effort sort of ended in 2011. After 2021 flooding, the effort was revived. The rub is that a solution that could help alleviate flooding in British Columbia and in Everson would probably cause disastrous effects downriver from there. So, you could fix one problem only to create new ones.
After this event, there will be renewed momentum to try and address this, but the problem is complicated. Some possible ways of solving the problem will take years and are quite costly. Other problems are similar in nature to problems we’ll have to address with respect to dams, which is sediment buildup. In the case of the Nooksack, the river has been constrained for years, when in reality it used to expand and contract. This has allowed for sediment to remain constrained and build up over years, reducing the capacity of the river to hold water, which is challenging even when we don’t factor in that atmospheric river events in the Northwest are becoming stronger. More water from the sky, less capacity to hold water on the ground, a natural floodplain, more flooding. It’s an extremely complex problem underpinned by pretty simple math.
This is not a problem isolated to Washington and British Columbia. On the other side of the countries, flooding problems led to the International Joint Commission (created from the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty to investigate and come up with joint solutions for U.S.-Canada water challenges) to propose solutions to flooding on the Lake Champlain-Richelieu River basin shared between Quebec, Vermont and New York. The IJC has not yet been involved with the issues in Washington and British Columbia.
Borders exist on this map but as a secondary feature to the water basins themselves.
Locally in my world, there’s an issue right now between Harris County and Montgomery County in Texas. A proposed development in Montgomery County west of a particularly flood prone community in the Houston area (Kingwood in Harris County) forced a Harris County precinct commissioner to push out a high-level resolution requesting that Montgomery County ensure the development adopts Harris County’s minimum drainage standards. Montgomery County has generally weaker standards for developments than does Harris County. In this instance, their choices could directly impact the outcomes for people that do not live in their jurisdiction.
At what point does it become one community’s responsibility to ensure an adjacent one is not negatively impacted by decisions they make? Look at the Colorado River for one. This is less about flooding and more about water rights, but there are substantial tensions between the upper and lower basins (not to mention tribal nations) over this question. These are not easy problems to solve. But they do require coordination and cooperation. We have that to some degree with the Colorado River, which is governed by the 1922 Colorado River Compact. But when you have a patchwork of requirements and regulations rather than a single agency overseeing an entire region it can make for difficulties, such as in Southeast Texas, where decisions made in rapidly growing counties can impact many neighborhoods in the Houston area. The counties bordering Harris County have grown by nearly 1 million people in the last 15 years. Harris County itself has grown by nearly a million people in that same time. The growth is likely to continue. A formalized regional regulatory approach to flooding in this area is not currently in progress.
But these are the things we’re going to need to be thinking about as flooding likely continues to worsen. Climate change will get the oxygen for a lot of these issues. And it’s obviously a major factor. But it’s not just climate change. In the case of the Sumas/Nooksack flooding, it’s pretty much because we chose to drain a lake in the 1920s that existed for this specific reason, and we decided to constrain the flow of the river leading to sediment buildup and less room for water. In the Houston area we are eradicating prairie and former farmland in differing jurisdictions with differing requirements for building and quickening runoff. In the Colorado River, we are sharing a scarce resource and have dammed the river up. Rather than treating the Washington-British Columbia problems as an unfortunate circumstance from an extreme weather event, it should be a (yet another) wake-up call about some of the decisions we make as people in charting our growth.
In the months during which my boss was pressuring me to solicit gifts, I managed to procure exactly one in-kind gift from a local business I frequent, and I was so awkward doing it. There’s a local yarn shop that I frequent, so I intended to ask the owner for a donation for an upcoming fundraising auction. On the day I’d psyched myself up to make the request (as noted in my original letter, this kind of thing is NOT my bailiwick), I went into the shop, had a nice, long conversation about my current knitting project with the very nice woman who owns the place, then totally chickened out when a crafting group arrived and she got busy dealing with multiple other people. I ended up finding her email address on the shop website later and just emailed her the request. As stated, she is completely lovely so she overlooked my cringeworthy solicitation attempt and happily agreed to donate an item for the auction.
Despite my (admittedly minor) success, my boss still wasn’t happy. He didn’t like the gift she donated — a hand-knitted item, very beautifully done. I thought she was being very thoughtful by donating a finished product rather than just straight-up yarn or supplies, as it should have broader appeal beyond just knitters. My boss thought it was something no one would want or bid on. (Many of the other auction items were similarly small items, like a tote bag or gift card, so it wasn’t an issue where it needed to be something worth thousands.)
So after this, I just started lying. I told him I’d made the requests of my friends with small businesses and they declined. I think this was not just the “easier” way, but really the only way, because if I’d tried to stand on principle he would’ve argued with me.
Over the time I worked there, I got the feeling that he cared a lot more about potential contacts that employees might have vs. actual professional skills, and he was disappointed that my address didn’t mean I had a cache of wealthy friends to exploit. (I live in a tourist town that has a really high wealth disparity — very wealthy summer people, and then the year-round residents who work mostly blue-collar jobs. He was dismayed that my circle of contacts and I were in the latter camp. I actually do remember him making kind of a big deal about the town where I lived during my interview. Hindsight and all that.)
I did end up quitting, about two weeks after I sent in my original letter. The problem I outlined in my original letter was a very, very minor part of the reason. Actually, the reason I chose that problem to submit was because for most of the others, I pretty much knew your answer would just be “get out.” I should’ve listened to tiny Alison in my head sooner!
My boss was actually set to be going on vacation about two weeks after I made up my mind to resign, so I — very kindly, I thought — offered to extend my notice to a month, to provide coverage during the time he’d be gone. I thought I’d get an extra two weeks’ paycheck and not have to deal with him at all, because he’d be on vacation. (And to be clear: I actually really liked my job itself, as in my actual job duties. It was him that was the problem.) This turned out to be a mistake because after accepting my offer — in which I made it clear that I was extending my notice because he’d be away — he pushed back his departure date and rushed to hire someone to replace me, so my last two weeks were spent (1) still dealing with his bullshit and (2) trying to infodump my entire brain into the unqualified new hire, because that’s what my boss thought “training” was.
I was validated in my initial reluctance to solicit gifts from businesses and friends when I went back to the yarn shop recently and the owner asked how the organization was doing. (Just FYI, she received a prompt thank-you card for the donation! This was months later.) I had to awkwardly explain that I no longer worked there, and it was kind of uncomfortable because I was trying not to disparage the organization (and hence make her regret her donation), but people do wonder about it when you just quit with no backup plan. I babbled something about it not being the right fit for me. Hopefully it won’t come up again.
The pièce de résistance of this story is that the new hire I trained to replace me quit two weeks after I left. And a woman who started shortly before I put in my notice quit as well, after about four months total. I lasted eight months. I think both of them were smarter than me.
In-N-Out Burger quietly removed “67” from its order call-out system nationwide, apparently to deter youths from erupting into cheers when the number was announced. What do you think?
“I’m proud of the younger generation for forcing company higher-ups to have a conversation that stupid.”
Adam Thach, Lunch Orderer
“But that was my order.”
Zach Cabralda, Holiday Designator
“A shrewd marketer would take the opportunity to embrace the meme and ruin it forever.”
Object permanence: "Star Island"; "Mediactive"; Afraid of solar; Well-Armed Peasants; Dumpster fire exits; Wikipedia v Brittanica; Pentagon v Quakers; Stealing whole houses; "Situation Normal."
Break up bad companies; replace bad union bosses (permalink)
Unions are not perfect. Indeed, it is possible to belong to a union that is bad for workers: either because it is weak, or corrupt, or captured (or some combination of the three).
Take the "two-tier contract." As unions lost ground – thanks to changes in labor law enforcement under a succession of both Republican and Democratic administrations – labor bosses hit on a suicidal strategy for contract negotiations. Rather than bargaining for a single contract that covered all the union's dues-paying members, these bosses negotiated contracts that guaranteed benefits for existing members, but did not extend these benefits to new members:
A two-tier contract is one where all workers pay dues, but only the dwindling rump of older, more established workers get any protection or representation from their union. An ever-larger portion of the membership have to pay dues, but get nothing for them. You couldn't come up with a better way to destroy unions if you tried.
Thankfully, union workers figured out that the answer to this problem was firing their leaders and replacing them with militant, principled leaders who cared about workers, not just a subsection of their members. Radicals in big unions – like the UAW – teamed up with comrades from university grad students' unions to master the arcane rules that had been weaponized by corrupt bosses to prevent free and fair union elections. Together, they forced the first legitimate union elections in generations, and then the newly elected leaders ran historic strikes that won huge gains for workers (and killed off the two-tier contract):
Corrupt unions aren't the only life-destroying institutions that radicals have set their sights on this decade. Concentrated corporate power is the most dangerous force in the world today (indeed, it's large, powerful corporations that corrupted those unions). Antitrust activists, environmental activists, consumer rights activists, privacy activists and labor activists have stepped up the global war on big business all through this decade. From new antitrust laws to antitrust lawsuits to strikes to boycotts to mass protests and direct action, this decade has marked a turning point in the global consciousness about the danger of corporate power and the need to fight it.
But there's a big, important difference between bad corporations and bad unions: what we should do about them.
The answer to a powerful, corrupt corporation is to take action that strips it of its power: break the company up, whack it with fines, take away its corporate charter, strip its executives of their fortunes, even put them in prison. That's because corporations are foundationally undemocratic institutions, governed by "one share, one vote" (and the billionaires who benefit from corporate power are building a society that's "one dollar, one vote").
They fundamentally exist to consolidate power at the expense of workers, suppliers and customers, to extract wealth by imposing costs on the rest of us, from pollution to political corruption. When a corporation gets big enough to pose a risk to societal wellbeing, we need to smash that corporation, not reform it.
But the answer to a corrupt union is to fire the union bosses and replace them with better ones. The mission of a union is foundationally pro-democratic. A unionized workplace is a democratic workplace. As in any democracy, workplace democracies can be led by bad or incompetent people. But, as with any democracy, the way you fix this is by swapping out the bad leaders for good ones – not by abolishing democracy and replacing it with an atomized society in which it's every worker for themself, bargaining with a boss who will always win a one-on-one fight in the long run.
I raise this because a general strike is back on the table, likely for May Day 2028 (5/1/28):
Unions are an important check against fascism. That's why fascists always start by attacking organized labor: solidarity is the opposite of fascism.
To have unions that are fit for purpose in this existential battle for the future of the nation – and, quite possibly, the human race – we desperately need better leaders. Like the union bosses who gave us the two-tier contract, many of our union leaders see their mission as narrowly serving their existing members, and not other workers – not even workers who might some day become their members.
To get a sense of how bad it's gotten, consider these five facts:
I. Public support for unions is at its highest level since the Carter administration;
II. More workers want to join unions than at any time in living memory;
III. Unions have larger cash reserves than at any time in history;
IV. Under Biden, the National Labor Relations Board was more friendly to unions than at any time in generations; and
V. During the Biden years, the number of unionized workers in America went down, not up.
That's because union bosses – sitting on a mountain of cash, surrounded by workers begging to be organized – decided that their priority was their existing members, and declined to spend more than a pittance of their cash reserves on organizing efforts.
This is suicidal – as self-destructive as the two-tier contract was. To pull off a general strike, we will need mass civil disobedience, and a willingness to ignore the Taft-Hartley Act's ban on solidarity strikes. Trump's NLRB isn't just hostile to workers – he's illegally fired so many of its commissioners that they can't even perform most of their functions. But a militant labor movement could turn that to its advantage, because militants know that when Trump fires the refs, you don't have to stop the game – you can throw out the rule book:
This is the historic opportunity and challenge before us – to occupy our unions, save our workplace democracies, and then save our national democracy itself.
"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
"The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.
"The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.
A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla
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On October 11, I drove to Austin to attend the Teddy Sandoval and the Butch Gardens School of Art Symposium, which was hosted by The Contemporary Austin — Jones Center. I had no idea what to expect. At the symposium, I learned about Los Angeles-based artist Teddy Sandoval (1949-1995) through his friend Joey Terill, who recalled Sandoval’s exuberant nature during his lifetime. Sandoval died of AIDS-related complications in 1995, and the posthumous exhibition, Teddy Sandoval and the Butch Gardens School of Art, honors his legacy.
An installation view of “Teddy Sandoval and the Butch Gardens School of Art” at The Contemporary Austin – Jones Center, 2025. Image courtesy of The Contemporary Austin. Photo: Alex Boeschenstein
The retrospective is organized by Dr. C. Ondine Chavoya and David Evans Frantz, who performed tedious archival research to bring this exhibition to fruition. What makes Teddy Sandoval and the Butch Gardens School of Art unique among art museum retrospectives is that it considers Sandoval’s artwork in dialogue with other Latinx artists who feature LGBTQ+ characters; some of these artists, like Joey Terill, directly engaged with Sandoval during his life, while others, like Ever Astudillo, did not. Artists in the show negotiate Latinx LGBTQ+ identity, depicting people in diverse settings, where they are sometimes alone, and other times, directly confronting other characters, or each other. The exhibition’s showing at The Contemporary Austin is the first time that it is displayed outside of a college or university setting.
Sandoval charged forward amid a rather repressive time for Chicano artists, and especially for those who were queer. At a time when gay bars and discos excluded people of color, and when Chicano artists were largely missing from museums, Sandoval created a fictitious organization named the Butch Gardens School of Art. The organization takes its name from the Butch Gardens, which was a real bar in Los Angeles that provided a safe space for queer people of color from 1972 to 1975. Sandoval’s fictitious school mailed postcards and flyers to people who were considered to be newly enrolled members of the academy. The result of this was a network of queer connections among artists in the Los Angeles area and beyond.
Teddy Sandoval, “La Traición de Malinche,” 1993, watercolor on treated canvas, 101/2 x 13 1/2 inches. Image courtesy of Paul Polubinskas, Teddy Sandoval Estate. Photo: Elon Schoenholz
Sandoval’s painting La Traición de Malinche is a melodrama depicting Malintzin, or La Malinche, a controversial Nahua woman in Mexican history who served as interpreter for — and had a child with — the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés. In the artwork, Malinche and Cortés lean toward one another, their protruding tongues signifying an impending kiss. To their side, Aztec emperor Moctezuma II is shown with a spear piercing his heart as he gazes upon the scene in dismay. All three figures are rendered in profile, echoing the visual conventions of Mesoamerican art and the colonial codices produced by Indigenous artists. Sandoval also infuses the work with a queer sensibility, depicting Moctezuma II in a speedo. Sandoval painted on small pieces of treated canvas and paper to produce aging effects on pieces such as La Traición de Malinche.
Teddy Sandoval, “Rosa,” 1976, metallic-color intaglio print mounted on paper (image) 3 × 5 inches. Photo: Ian Byers-Gamber. Image courtesy of the Estate of Teddy Sandoval and Paul Polubinskas
Part of the Butch Gardens School of Art’s avant-garde practice was the embrace of mail art as an alternative art form. Rosa conveys one of Sandoval’s mail art alter egos, Rosa de la Montaña, a faceless femme fatale and drag persona who looks over her shoulder expressively. Though Rosa occupies a small area on the paper, she still asserts her presence through acts of self-expression. For Sandoval, Rosa de la Montaña functioned as both a projected self and a campy cipher — hosting exhibitions and parties, distributing mail art, and even exhibiting alongside Sandoval’s non–alter ego self. This performative play of identity aligns with the avant-garde tradition of self-mythologization initiated by Marcel Duchamp in 1920 through his artistic alter ego, Rrose Sélavy.
Teddy Sandoval, “Nude #2,” c. 1976, colored pencil and acrylic on paper (image) 5 3/4 ×3 3/4 inches. Collection of John Ruggles. Photo: Ian Byers-Gamber. Image courtesy of the Estate of Teddy Sandoval and Paul Polubinskas
Sandoval provides another view of Rosa in Nude #2. He extends her presence beyond the playful glance of Rosa into something more direct. Few of Rosa’s clothes remain, and the artist positions her in motion, as if she is about to drop them. Her near-nude figure invites attention, yet she maintains control of the gaze by how she performs for it. This balance between vulnerability and self-possession visualizes Rosa’s power as an active participant in her own representation. For Sandoval, this image carries weight: it places a queer, confident, and flirtatious Chicana body at the center of attention at a time when such visibility was rare. Through Rosa, Sandoval reimagines desire not as objectification but as a form of self-assertion that resists both erasure and containment. Together, Rosa and Nude #2 illustrate how Sandoval used his alter ego to navigate the politics of visibility and identity, transforming self-portraiture into an act of queer defiance and artistic liberation.
Ever Astudillo, “Sábado,” 1988, pencil on paper, 55 x 47 1/4 inches. Collection of the Artist’s Family. Photo: Juan Velasquez
The dynamics of the male gaze and arousal are further visualized in Ever Astudillo’s Sábado. The large-scale drawing depicts the silhouettes of two muscular men. Details of their faces are obscured in favor of the faceless, ambiguous character that Sandoval himself often employed. The man being gazed at wears a white sleeveless shirt that accentuates his build, a subtle nod to the social codes and visual cues that helped gay men recognize one another in public. The figure closest to the viewer rests his hand on his head, his body angled with clear interest toward the other man. Through posture, clothing, and the deliberate concealment of identity, Astudillo captures a moment of queer recognition and desire unfolding in plain sight.
Ana Segovia, “I Was Never Really Ready,” 2021, oil on linen, 28 3/8 x 21 5/8 inches. Anuar Maauad Collection. Image courtesy of the artist
Additionally, Ana Segovia’s I Was Never Really Ready presents yet another faceless, muscular figure, further extending this thread of coded visibility. Segovia draws from the hyper-masculine archetypes of the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema: think of icons like Pedro Infante, Jorge Negrete, Cantinflas, and Pedro Armendáriz. Their on-screen swagger shaped a national ideal of manhood. That same cultivated bravado is echoed here, yet Segovia complicates it. As in the earlier works I’ve discussed, the viewer is guided not by facial identity but by posture and style. The scars beneath the figure’s pectoral area subtly signal a transgender body, queering the very archetype the painting references. In doing so, Segovia not only reclaims this cinematic masculinity but also highlights how identity can be both performed and powerfully affirmed through the body itself.
Each of the artworks in this exhibition underscores how the body becomes a site of power, visibility, and self-affirmation. I left The Contemporary Austin struck by how unapologetically Latino, queer, and campy Teddy Sandoval was — and how boldly that energy radiates through the show. The exhibition not only honors that spirit but also acknowledges a generation of artists and individuals lost to AIDS complications, whose stories were never fully told. Sandoval’s legacy feels especially urgent today, reminding us that representation is not only personal, but profoundly necessary.
Teddy Sandoval and the Butch Gardens School of Art is on view through January 11, 2026, at The Contemporary Austin — Jones Center.
Some county GOP officials said the president’s pardon could complicate their plans to unseat the Laredo Democrat in South Texas’ battleground 28th Congressional District.
Records obtained by The Texas Tribune show how universities are using the technology to reshape curriculum under political pressure, raising concerns about academic freedom.
A progressive group pushed through a measure to bar Whitmire from receiving the party’s endorsement. It came nearly eight months after he attended a fundraiser for a Republican congressman.
SPRINGFIELD, MA—Facing intense backlash and scrutiny from critics who say the reference book publisher had failed to take all words into consideration, Merriam-Webster was accused of bias Monday after officially selecting ‘dictionary’ as its 2025 word of the year. “Merriam-Webster clearly has a pro-dictionary bias that’s preventing it from considering all words equally,” lexicographer Alison Nielsen wrote in a widely shared social media post that lambasted the Merriam-Webster editorial team, claiming its members had allowed a “personal affinity for looking up words” to cloud their judgment. “I was willing to overlook it last year when their word of the year was ‘definition,’ but I can’t allow myself to turn a blind eye to this. The Merriam-Webster editorial board is stuck in its own media bubble. They need to look around and read a thesaurus once in a while.” At press time, reports confirmed Merriam-Webster appeared to have doubled down by changing the 2025 word of the year to “dictionaries.”
LOS ANGELES—Emphasizing her ability to meet the film industry’s evolving needs, actress Gal Gadot reportedly assured a casting agent Monday that she was more than capable of playing AI roles. “I’ve been told for years I bring a certain lifelessness to my characters,” said Gadot, who emphasized that she had been honing her ability to deliver an uncanny performance complete with stilted speech, unnatural arm movements, and a total lack of chemistry with other co-stars for her entire career. “Honestly, when I heard that studios were starting to cast AI actors, I immediately thought, ‘Gal, it’s your time to shine.’ I genuinely believe no one in this town is better equipped to play a role designed for a non-sentient digital entity than I am, and if you want proof, check out Death On The Nile, Snow White, or Wonder Woman 1984. I was awful in not just one, but all of those movies.” Gadot added that she was also open to AI voice work, noting that her natural cadence already resembled that of text-to-speech software.
With the holiday season getting longer every year, Americans nationwide are searching for methods to ensure the focal point of their decor remains healthy and vibrant through Dec. 25 and beyond. Here are tips on how to keep your Christmas tree fresh.
Choose A Genetically Pure Tree Of Noble Heritage: Often the reason a Christmas tree sheds its needles when brought home is because it’s been tainted by foreign pollen from contemptible stock.
Replicate Its Natural Environment: Add a razor wire fence, 600 gallons of asphalt concrete, and a chain-smoking Russian man to your living room, and your Christmas tree will feel at home in no time.
Forgo Buying Your Children Presents: Fewer presents under the tree will allow it more growing room.
Play The Song Of The Forest On Your Pan Flute: The mystical melody of merriment and glee is sure to perk your Christmas tree right up as it sways to your folk instrument’s hypnotic tune.
Cut Down Adjacent Trees In Your House: Overcrowding can deprive smaller Christmas trees of sunlight, so thin out all existing growth in your home within 8 feet of your tree’s base.
Appoint A Shadow Christmas Tree: In its unofficial parliamentary role, it can scrutinize the work of the acting Christmas tree and keep it on its toes.
Let It Roam Around In The Woods For At Least 30 Minutes A Day: Allowing your tree to get outdoors will keep its mind sharp and its trunk strong.
Perform Sap Infusions From Younger Trees: Regular infusions of sap from a more youthful spruce can reverse your tree’s biological age to that of a seedling.
Don’t Cut It Down In The First Place: You took an ax to its trunk, and now you’re confused as to why it’s not perfectly healthy?
Make It Someone Else’s Responsibility: Let the housekeeper know that if a single pine needle turns brown, she can find employment at a different chalet.
Former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and pop star Katy Perry confirmed their status as a couple after a number of public sightings sparked rumors of a romance. The Onion presents a timeline of the pair’s relationship.
A.D. 1100
The couple’s common ancestor establishes two distinct bloodlines.
2008
A trembling 37-year-old Trudeau lies awake all night with strange and frightening feelings after hearing “I Kissed A Girl.”
2012
Katy Perry and Toronto Mayor Rob Ford file for divorce.
2019
Perry sees the photos of Trudeau in brownface and can’t help but notice his kind eyes.
May 2025
Matched on GlutenFreeSingles.com.
July 2025
Trudeau is spotted leaving Perry’s apartment in a cupcake bra.
August 2025
Perry and Trudeau discover they have a mutual love of having their picture taken.
September 2025
Trudeau tearfully confides in Perry that he used to be the prime minister of Canada.
Reiner became one of the preeminent filmmakers of his generation with movies such as “The Princess Bride,” “When Harry Met Sally …” and “This Is Spinal Tap.” He was 78.
I’m not sure who maintains the “where are they now” file these days. It used to be a jam packed (ram-packed) ledger but now, just a cloud of scuttlebutt and who knows.
The mainstream media just failed a basic civics test so badly that you’d think their brains have been pickled by the kinds of folks who spend all their time on X (oh, wait…). Headlines across major outlets are breathlessly reporting that Donald Trump “blocked states from passing AI laws” with an executive order. Except, that’s not how any of this works, and anyone who stayed awake during middle school social studies should know better.
Look at this:
That’s the New York Times, CNN, CNBC, NBC, and the Guardian all confidently telling their readers that Trump can magically override state sovereignty with a memo. These aren’t fringe blogs—these are supposedly serious news organizations with actual editors who apparently skipped the day they taught how the federal government works. They have failed the most simple journalistic test of “don’t print lies in the newspaper.”
Executive orders aren’t laws. They’re memos. Fancy, official memos that tell federal employees how to do their jobs, but memos nonetheless. You want to change what states can and can’t do? You need this little thing called “Congress” to pass this other little thing called “legislation.” Trump can’t just declare state laws invalid any more than he can declare himself emperor of Mars.
Even the text of the actual executive order admits all this:
My Administrationmust act with the Congressto ensure that there is a minimally burdensome national standard — not 50 discordant State ones. The resulting framework must forbid State laws that conflict with the policy set forth in this order. That framework should also ensure that children are protected, censorship is prevented, copyrights are respected, and communities are safeguarded. A carefully crafted national framework can ensure that the United States wins the AI race, as we must.
Right there in black and white: “must act with the Congress.” Apparently, someone in the White House briefly remembered how government works, even if the president and the entire mainstream media have forgotten.
And look, I actually do mostly agree that we’d be much better off with a single federal solution here, rather than a bunch of piecemeal (and perhaps conflicting) rules from every state. But, that’s why you actually have to work with Congress, and if there’s anything this Congress has shown over the past 11 months, it’s that it is inherently unable to do anything particularly competently.
Only a few news orgs managed to call out the problems with this executive order. Barron’s rightly noted that there would be “court battles” over the law:
NPR, however, came out and pointed out that this overall executive order probably isn’t legal:
NPR’s right. The order contradicts itself so blatantly it’s almost impressive. First paragraph: “we need Congress.” Rest of the document: “never mind, we’ll just do whatever we want.”
Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Attorney General shall establish an AI Litigation Task Force (Task Force) whose sole responsibility shall be to challenge State AI laws inconsistent with the policy set forth in section 2 of this order, including on grounds that such laws unconstitutionally regulate interstate commerce, are preempted by existing Federal regulations, or are otherwise unlawful in the Attorney General’s judgment, including, if appropriate, those laws identified pursuant to section 4 of this order.
You can’t just say that because a law goes against the intent of this executive order that the DOJ can challenge it. That’s not how that works. At all.
But here’s where this gets kinda funny (in a stupid way): that “interstate commerce” language could backfire spectacularly. Almost all state laws trying to regulate the internet—from child safety laws to age verification to the various attempts at content moderation laws—might run afoul of the dormant commerce clause by attempting to regulate interstate commerce if what the admin here claims is true (it’s not really true, but if the Supreme Court buys it…). Courts had been hesitant to use this nuclear option because it would essentially wipe out the entire patchwork of state internet regulation that’s been building for years, and a few decades of work in other areas that hasn’t really been challenged. Also, because they’ve mostly been able to invalidate those laws using the simple and straightforward First Amendment.
If Trump’s DOJ starts aggressively pursuing dormant commerce clause challenges to keep his Silicon Valley donors happy, they might accidentally create precedent that invalidates every state’s attempts to regulate social media, require age verification, or mandate content filtering. Every red state law targeting “Big Tech censorship,” every blue state law pretending to protect kids online—all of it could get swept away by Trump’s own legal strategy.
Wouldn’t that be something? In some ways, it would be hilarious, since I think almost all of these state laws are awful and a mess and waste everyone’s time… but it would certainly put a dent in a ton of efforts by Republicans and Democrats alike. All to keep the AI bros happy.
There’s also some extortion in here:
Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Commerce, through the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information, shall issue a Policy Notice specifying the conditions under which States may be eligible for remaining funding under the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program that was saved through my Administration’s “Benefit of the Bargain” reforms, consistent with 47 U.S.C. 1702(e)-(f). That Policy Notice must provide that States with onerous AI laws identified pursuant to section 4 of this order are ineligible for non-deployment funds, to the maximum extent allowed by Federal law. The Policy Notice must also describe how a fragmented State regulatory landscape for AI threatens to undermine BEAD-funded deployments, the growth of AI applications reliant on high-speed networks, and BEAD’s mission of delivering universal, high-speed connectivity.
We’ve talked about BEAD a lot here. That’s the Biden-era program that poured billions of dollars into broadband investment, which took way too long because Trump’s first FCC had fucked up the allocation process of earlier broadband grants. The Biden admin didn’t want a repeat of that, and thus tasked NTIA with figuring out a better allocation system, which took so long that Trump is back in office.
And rather than figure out the best way to allocate those funds, he’s holding them for ransom, and states that comply with his policy wishes might get it, and those that don’t won’t. It’s hellishly corrupt, but that’s what you get these days.
The other potentially interesting tidbit that is going to create a huge mess is Section 7:
Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission shall, in consultation with the Special Advisor for AI and Crypto, issue a policy statement on the application of the Federal Trade Commission Act’s prohibition on unfair and deceptive acts or practices under 15 U.S.C. 45 to AI models. That policy statement must explain the circumstances under which State laws that require alterations to the truthful outputs of AI models are preempted by the Federal Trade Commission Act’s prohibition on engaging in deceptive acts or practices affecting commerce.
This seems like an improper use of the FTC’s power to deal with unfair and deceptive practices, but the Trump administration abusing and twisting laws to get what it wants is kind of standard operating procedure these days.
The real story here isn’t that Trump signed some groundbreaking AI policy—it’s that the entire mainstream media apparatus completely failed to understand the most basic principles of American government. Executive orders aren’t magic spells that override federalism. They’re memos.
That said, the potential for this legal strategy to completely backfire is darkly amusing. If Trump’s DOJ successfully argues that state AI laws violate the dormant commerce clause, they’ll have handed every future administration—and every tech company—a nuclear weapon against state internet regulation. Every privacy law, every age verification requirement, every attempt by states to regulate online platforms could get vaporized by precedent that Trump’s own lawyers established.
It wouldn’t surprise me if one of the tech bro folks in and around the administration got that dropped into this executive order without much of the administration realizing it.
ALT
