WASHINGTON—Condemning what he described as the disturbing and unjust treatment of the group, President Donald Trump granted refugee status this week to former SS guards. “The discrimination these people are facing is absolutely sick—they’re literally hunting them down,” said Trump, who greeted the small group of centenarians on the tarmac at Dulles International Airport and invited them back to the White House for an official welcome ceremony. “It’s targeted violence. The Schutzstaffel have been treated very unfairly for just doing their jobs. Their land was seized and turned into concentration camp museums. That’s why it’s so important that we get them all into the United States, where they can rest assured they won’t be discriminated against.” At press time, Trump was reportedly thanking senior advisor Elon Musk for bringing the plight of the Nazi people to the world’s attention.

The post Trump Grants Refugee Status To Former SS Guards appeared first on The Onion.

Cannes Film Festival issued an updated red carpet dress code that effectively bans full nudity and “voluminous” ensembles, citing “decency reasons.” What do you think?

The post Cannes Bans Nudity On Red Carpet appeared first on The Onion.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
The go wild for the Mountain Dew flavor corn.

Today's News:

WASHINGTON—In a move that significantly restricts the eligibility of thousands of American troops to fight for their country on the front lines, senior U.S. military officials announced Wednesday that all men with girl names would now be forbidden from serving in combat roles.

The ban, which goes into effect immediately, prohibits male personnel with clearly feminine names like Jamie, Sandy, and Alexis from serving in all artillery, infantry, and armored units. According to a Defense Department memo, the military is less effective as a fighting force when it deploys men named Francis, Sloan, Carol, or Loren in active conflict zones.

“For too long, we’ve sacrificed combat readiness in the name of inclusivity, ignoring the fact that there are innate differences between a Hank and a male Tracy,” said Gen. Doug H. Sandoval, who is a longtime opponent of men with girl names in the military and who worked with top appointed officials at the Pentagon to devise the new ban. “All these Shelleys and Dakotas are a liability. Imagine you’re in a heavy firefight, and your commander tells you to lay down cover fire for Casey. Your brain takes an extra moment to realize Casey is a man even though that’s a lady’s name, and in that plit second of hesitation, your entire squad is overrun by the enemy.”

“Or suppose your special forces team is parachuting into hostile territory,” he continued. “Can you really order someone named Ashley to jump out of a plane? It defies common sense.”

The Pentagon confirmed that servicemen with girl names would be reassigned to noncombat roles and that their pay would be lower as a result, an outcome officials justified by arguing that men named Allison should not be the primary breadwinners in their household anyway. Some hardliners have suggested these men should not be in the armed forces at all, and should instead stay home to father the Johns and Harolds needed to fight America’s wars.

Some exceptions will reportedly be made on the basis of spelling, with men named Nicky, for example, being eligible for combat deployment so long as their name ends with a y instead of an i. A military spokesperson told reporters tabs will be kept on once-masculine names that are starting to become girly, the way Charlie and Riley seem to have lately.

“America must project strength to keep our adversaries in check, and we can’t do that with men named Taylor on the battlefield,” said Navy Vice Adm. Scott Rigby, observing that the soft consonants of unisex names like Sasha and Avery never sat right with him. “China will never take us seriously so long as we’re sending Leslies to enforce our interests abroad. And if Russia ever learned we let men named Dana pilot our fighter jets? Forget it. When it comes to soldiers, we need big, strong Chets, Mikes, and Jakes out there, full stop.”

President Trump signaled his personal approval of the ban in a post on Truth Social, writing: “Bye bye, Bailey. He’s got to leave the fighting to GUS!!!”

The ban has been met with fierce condemnation from many effeminately named male veterans, including Aubrey Hart of the advocacy group Man Enough to Fight, which plans to mount a legal challenge on behalf of 24-year-old Army sniper Mandy Wright.

“Just because a man is named Stacy or Carey doesn’t mean he can’t fight like a Brock or an Axel,” Hart said. “Back when I served, there may have been a few snickers the first time I introduced myself, but once I set my fellow soldiers straight about Aubrey being a perfectly normal thing for a boy to be called, my name was never a distraction. To suggest otherwise is an insult to me and all the male Aubreys who have bled and died for their nation.”

While congressional Republicans appear to have fallen in line behind the Trump administration’s support for the ban, one GOP lawmaker was willing to speak on the record against it.

“This is the most egregiously unfair, bigoted, and discriminatory policy I have ever encountered,” said the senator and Air Force veteran Lindsey Graham. “I won’t stand for it.”

The post U.S. Military Bans Men With Girl Names From Combat appeared first on The Onion.

SEATTLE—Deftly jumping into the arena’s octagon as audience members cheered and laughed, an Ultimate Fighting Championship clown attempted Saturday to lure an irate fighter’s attention away from his fallen competitor. The lighthearted performer known as Boxo, who was dressed in brightly colored clothing with his face painted into a frown, reportedly sprang into action and began cartwheeling, hopping from foot to foot, and snapping his big red suspenders after bantamweight headliner Henry Cejudo delivered a knockout punch to contender Song Yadong. While witnesses confirmed the jaunty entertainer was able to successfully distract Cejudo for several minutes, the fighter eventually clipped him in the torso, sending him several feet into the air as a honking sound reverberated through the stunned arena. According to reports, the crowd let out a loud cheer when Boxo jumped back up, blew a kiss to the audience, and successfully chased the rowdy UFC fighter back into his holding pen.

The post UFC Clown Jumps Into Octagon To Distract Irate Fighter appeared first on The Onion.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA—With the rest of the family looking on tensely as the conversation grew heated, local parents James and Denise Sweeney were reportedly bickering Tuesday over whether they had seen The Bear. “We watched one episode and decided it wasn’t for us, remember?” said James Sweeney, who vehemently refuted his wife Denise’s statement that she “would like to see” the FX comedy-drama series, causing his adult children to deeply regret ever mentioning the show. “I am certain we have seen The Bear. I thought it was okay. You thought it was just all right. No, we definitely tried it. Remember? It’s the one with all the meat. No, not Beef.” At press time, reports confirmed the Sweeneys’ children had succeeded in salvaging the evening by steering the conversation to Yellowstone.

The post Mom, Dad Bickering Over Whether They’ve Seen ‘The Bear’ appeared first on The Onion.

Studies have shown that creating a neat and organized living space can reduce stress and improve mental well-being. The Onion provides helpful guidance for decluttering your home.

Lure Marie Kondo into your home using an evenly spaced trail of sensible storage solutions.

Assess if you really need 8,000 terracotta soldiers in your tomb.

Call some friends and family over to shake their heads disapprovingly at what you’ve become.

Take everything out of the closet or drawer, place it on the ground behind you, and resign yourself to never facing that direction again.

Mass graves are a simple, affordable way to get rid of a corpse problem.

Anything that fits down the toilet goes down the toilet.

Immediately buy a more expensive version of whatever you just threw out.

Let a herd of goats graze inside your home twice weekly.

Running out of room in your junk drawer? It may be time to upgrade to a junk house.

Hang a hornet’s nest in high-clutter areas of your apartment to discourage yourself from leaving things there.

Die and make your decades’ worth of junk your kid’s problem. 

Throw out all your bundled issues of Swank except for 1941 to ’45, ’47 to ’49, ’50 to ’53, ’59 to ’67, and ’70 to ’89.

No! Not my McDonald’s straw wrapper! I need that!

The post Strategies For Decluttering appeared first on The Onion.

#Kento #RoninWarriors

Brett Detamore, 40, was ordered by a U.S. district judge to pay $2.3 million in restitution to more than 10 victims of the scheme. He was sentenced to 51 months followed by two years of supervised release.

Today's links

• Are the means of computation even seizable?: Magic Saran Wrap is a mind-game.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020
• Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

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Are the means of computation even seizable? (permalink)

Something's very different in tech. Once upon a time, every bad choice by tech companies – taking away features, locking out mods or plugins, nerfing the API – was countered, nearly instantaneously, by someone writing a program that overrode that choice.

Bad clients would be muscled aside by third-party clients. Locked bootloaders would be hacked and replaced. Code that confirmed you were using OEM parts, consumables or adapters would be found and nuked from orbit. Weak APIs would be replaced with muscular, unofficial APIs built out of unstoppable scrapers running on headless machines in some data-center. Every time some tech company erected a 10-foot enshittifying fence, someone would show up with an 11-foot disenshittifying ladder.

Those 11-foot ladders represented the power of interoperability, the inescapable bounty of the Turing-complete, universal von Neumann machine, which, by definition, is capable of running every valid program. Specifically, they represented the power of adversarial interoperability – when someone modifies a technology against its manufacturer's wishes. Adversarial interoperability is the origin story of today's tech giants, from Microsoft to Apple to Google:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

But adversarial interop has been in steady decline for the past quarter-century. These big companies moved fast and broke things, but no one is returning the favor. If you ask the companies what changed, they'll just smirk and say that they're better at security than the incumbents they disrupted. The reason no one's hacked up a third-party iOS App Store is that Apple's security team is just so fucking 1337 that no one can break their shit.

I think this is nonsense. I think that what's really going on is that we've made it possible for companies to design their technologies in such a way that any attempt at adversarial interop is illegal.

"Anticircumvention" laws like Section 1201 of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act make bypassing any kind of digital lock (AKA "Digital Rights Management" or "DRM") very illegal. Under DMCA, just talking about how to remove a digital lock can land you in prison for 5 years. I tell the story of this law's passage in "Understood: Who Broke the Internet," my new podcast series for the CBC:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/08/who-broke-the-internet/#bruce-lehman

For a quarter century, tech companies have aggressively lobbied and litigated to expand the scope of anticircumvention laws. At the same time, companies have come up with a million ways to wrap their products in digital locks that are a crime to break.

Digital locks let Chamberlain, a garage-door opener monopolist block all third-party garage-door apps. Then, Chamberlain stuck ads in its app, so you have to watch an ad to open your garage-door:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

Digital locks let John Deere block third-party repair of its tractors:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

And they let Apple block third-party repair of iPhones:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/22/apples-cement-overshoes/

These companies built 11-foot ladders to get over their competitors' 10-foot walls, and then they kicked the ladder away. Once they were secure atop their walls, they committed enshittifying sins their fallen adversaries could only dream of.

I've been campaigning to abolish anticircumvention laws for the past quarter-century, and I've noticed a curious pattern. Whenever these companies stand to lose their legal protections, they freak out and spend vast fortunes to keep those protections intact. That's weird, because it strongly implies that their locks don't work. A lock that works works, whether or not it's illegal to break that lock. The reason Signal encryption works is that it's working encryption. The legal status of breaking Signal's encryption has nothing to do with whether it works. If Signal's encryption was full of technical flaws but it was illegal to point those flaws out, you'd be crazy to trust Signal.

Signal does get involved in legal fights, of course, but the fights it gets into are ones that require Signal to introduce defects in its encryption – not fights over whether it is legal to disclose flaws in Signal or exploit them:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/05/theyre-still-trying-to-ban-cryptography/

But tech companies that rely on digital locks manifestly act like their locks don't work and they know it. When the tech and content giants bullied the W3C into building DRM into 2 billion users' browsers, they categorically rejected any proposal to limit their ability to destroy the lives of people who broke that DRM, even if it was only to add accessibility or privacy to video:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership

The thing is, if the lock works, you don't need the legal right to destroy the lives of people who find its flaws, because it works.

Do digital locks work? Can they work? I think the answer to both questions is a resounding no. The design theory of a digital lock is that I can provide you with an encrypted file that your computer has the keys to. Your computer will access those keys to decrypt or sign a file, but only under the circumstances that I have specified. Like, you can install an app when it comes from my app store, but not when it comes from a third party. Or you can play back a video in one kind of browser window, but not in another one. For this to work, your computer has to hide a cryptographic key from you, inside a device you own and control. As I pointed out more than a decade ago, this is a fool's errand:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

After all, you or I might not have the knowledge and resources to uncover the keys' hiding place, but someone does. Maybe that someone is a person looking to go into business selling your customers the disenshittifying plugin that unfucks the thing you deliberately broke. Maybe it's a hacker-tinkerer, pursuing an intellectual challenge. Maybe it's a bored grad student with a free weekend, an electron-tunneling microscope, and a seminar full of undergrads looking for a project.

The point is that hiding secrets in devices that belong to your adversaries is very bad security practice. No matter how good a bank safe is, the bank keeps it in its vault – not in the bank-robber's basement workshop.

For a hiding-secrets-in-your-adversaries'-device plan to work, the manufacturer has to make zero mistakes. The adversary – a competitor, a tinkerer, a grad student – only has to find one mistake and exploit it. This is a bedrock of security theory: attackers have an inescapable advantage.

So I think that DRM doesn't work. I think DRM is a legal construct, not a technical one. I think DRM is a kind of magic Saran Wrap that manufacturers can wrap around their products, and, in so doing, make it a literal jailable offense to use those products in otherwise legal ways that their shareholders don't like. As Jay Freeman put it, using DRM creates a new law called "Felony Contempt of Business Model." It's a law that has never been passed by any legislature, but is nevertheless enforceable.

In the 25 years I've been fighting anticircumvention laws, I've spoken to many government officials from all over the world about the opportunity that repealing their anticircumvention laws represents. After all, Apple makes $100b/year by gouging app makers for 30 cents on every dollar. Allow your domestic tech sector to sell the tools to jailbreak iPhones and install third party app stores, and you can convert Apple's $100b/year to a $100m/year business for one of your own companies, and the other $999,900,000,000 will be returned to the world's iPhone owners as a consumer surplus.

But every time I pitched this, I got the same answer: "The US Trade Representative forced us to pass this law, and threatened us with tariffs if we didn't pass it." Happy Liberation Day, people – every country in the world is now liberated from the only reason to keep this stupid-ass law on their books:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/15/beauty-eh/#its-the-only-war-the-yankees-lost-except-for-vietnam-and-also-the-alamo-and-the-bay-of-ham

In light of the Trump tariffs, I've been making the global rounds again, making the case for an anticircumvention repeal:

https://www.ft.com/content/b882f3a7-f8c9-4247-9662-3494eb37c30b

One of the questions I've been getting repeatedly from policy wonks, activists and officials is, "Is it even possible to jailbreak modern devices?" They want to know if companies like Apple, Tesla, Google, Microsoft, and John Deere have created unbreakable digital locks. Obviously, this is an important question, because if these locks are impregnable, then getting rid of the law won't deliver the promised benefits.

It's true that there aren't as many jailbreaks as we used to see. When a big project like Nextcloud – which is staffed up with extremely accomplished and skilled engineers – gets screwed over by Google's app store, they issue a press-release, not a patch:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/05/nextcloud-accuses-google-of-big-tech-gatekeeping-over-android-app-permissions/

Perhaps that's because the tech staff at Nextcloud are no match for Google, not even with the attacker's advantage on their side.

But I don't think so. Here's why: we do still get jailbreaks and mods, but these almost exclusively come from anonymous tinkerers and hobbyists:

https://consumerrights.wiki/Mazda_DMCA_takedown_of_Open_Source_Home_Assistant_App

Or from pissed off teenagers:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/29/23378541/the-og-app-instagram-clone-pulled-from-app-store

These hacks are incredibly ambitious! How ambitious? How about a class break for every version of iOS as well as an unpatchable hardware attack on 8 years' worth of Apple bootloaders?

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/25/mafia-logic/#sosumi

Now, maybe it's the case at all the world's best hackers are posting free code under pseudonyms. Maybe all the code wizards working for venture backed tech companies that stand to make millions through clever reverse engineering are just not as mad skilled as teenagers who want an ad-free Insta and that's why they've never replicated the feat.

Or maybe it's because teenagers and anonymous hackers are just about the only people willing to risk a $500,000 fine and 5-year prison sentence. In other words, maybe the thing that protects DRM is law, not code. After all, when Polish security researchers revealed the existence of secret digital locks that the train manufacturer Newag used to rip off train operators for millions of euros, Newag dragged them into court:

https://fsfe.org/news/2025/news-20250407-01.en.html

Tech companies are the most self-mythologizing industry on the planet, beating out even the pharma sector in boasting about their prowess and good corporate citizenship. They swear that they've made a functional digital lock…but they sure act like the only thing those locks do is let them sue people who reveal their workings.

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Hey look at this (permalink)

• Nintendo reserves the right to brick your console following "unauthorised use" https://www.eurogamer.net/nintendo-reserves-the-right-to-brick-your-console-following-unauthorised-use-in-bid-to-prevent-piracy (h/t Don Hayler)

• The Soviet Experiment with Empire https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2025/05/13/the-soviet-experiment-with-empire/

• The future of (post-)capitalism and democracy: worker-owned businesses? https://www.metafilter.com/208766/The-future-of-post-capitalism-and-democracy-worker-owned-businesses

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Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Why writers should stop worrying about “ebook piracy” https://memex.craphound.com/2005/05/14/why-writers-should-stop-worrying-about-ebook-piracy/

#15yrsago Will 3D plans for bongs become illegal, too? https://www.fabbaloo.com/2010/05/up-against-the-wall-and-spread-your-legs-html

#15yrsago The People’s Manifesto: Mark Thomas and friends’ suggestions for UK political reform https://memex.craphound.com/2010/05/14/the-peoples-manifesto-mark-thomas-and-friends-suggestions-for-uk-political-reform/

#5yrsago Pandemics shatter AI's intrinsic conservativism https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/14/everybody-poops/#homeostatic-mechanism

#5yrsago Modern monetary theory's moment has arrived https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/14/everybody-poops/#deficit-myth

#5yrsago Facebook's "backfire effect" junk science https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/14/everybody-poops/#backfire-effect

#5yrsago Restaurants won't let gig drivers pee https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/14/everybody-poops/#gotta-go

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Pittsburgh: Picks and Shovels at White Whale Books, May 15
  https://whitewhalebookstore.com/events/20250515

• Pittsburgh: PyCon, May 16
  https://us.pycon.org/2025/schedule/

• Virtual: Writing to Resist (California Writers Club Berkeley), May 18:
  https://cwc-berkeley.org/writing-to-resist-5-18-25/

• Seattle: Cascade PBS Ideas Festival, May 30
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cascade-pbs-ideas-festival-tickets-1251699710529

• PDX: Teardown 2025, Jun 20-22
  https://www.crowdsupply.com/teardown/portland-2025

• PDX: Picks and Shovels with bunnie Huang at Barnes and Noble, Jun 20
  https://stores.barnesandnoble.com/event/9780062183697-0

• Tualatin Public Library, Jun 22:
  https://www.tualatinoregon.gov/library/author-talk-cory-doctorow

• London: How To Academy with Riley Quinn, Jul 1
  https://howtoacademy.com/events/cory-doctorow-the-fight-against-the-big-tech-oligarchy/

• Manchester: Picks and Shovels at Blackwell's Bookshop, Jul 2
  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1308451968059

• Manchester: Co-operatives UK Co-op Congress keynote, Jul 3
  https://www.uk.coop/events-and-training/events-calendar/co-op-congress-2025-book-your-place

• New Orleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12, 2025
  http://www.contraflowscifi.org/

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Recent appearances (permalink)

• Fireside Fedi
  https://video.firesidefedi.live/w/huevh4L6r1yMYXqcQMi8gR

• Ctrl-ctrl-ctrl (Understood)
  https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/1353-the-naked-emperor/episode/16145640-ctrl-ctrl-ctrl

• Remember when the internet was… good? What happened? (The Current)
  https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-63-the-current/clip/16145000-remember-internet-was…-good-what-happened

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Latest books (permalink)

• • Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
• The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)

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

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.

• "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

• "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

• "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

• "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

• "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

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Upcoming books (permalink)

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

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

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

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

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Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

• Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay for Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Status: second pass edit underway (readaloud)

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

---

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

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Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

---

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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

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House Bill 2988 was centered on who pays the legal fees of those who successfully defend themselves against libel or defamation lawsuits.

The bill would cap out-of-state political donations to a candidate or lawmaker to $5,000 for a statewide election, $2,500 for a district office and $1,000 for a county office.

With Princeton leading the Texas pack, the state continues to set the pace for the rest of the nation, with seven of the 15 fastest-growing cities.

An unlikely group of Republican allies joined Democrats to approve repealing the ban, which has been unenforced since 2003. It is the first time the bill has made it to the House floor since it was first proposed decades ago.

In brief: Heat records are continuing to fall across the region as Houston (and much of Texas) falls under the sway of high pressure. In today’s post we explain just how abnormal this is for May, and look ahead to a hot weekend. There is a modest chance of some relief next week.

Heat records fall

As expected, the city of Houston broke its high temperature record on Wednesday. The new mark of 96 degrees surpasses the old record of 93 degrees, set back in 2018. The local office of the National Weather Service also provided some additional nuggets of information to put this May heat wave into context:

• The average date of the city’s first 95-degree day is June 13, this year we did it on May 13
• Before this year, the last time Houston was this hot, this early in May was 1967 (96 on May 8)
• This year’s mark of 95 on May 13 is the fifth earliest we’ve been that hot it in a calendar year

In addition, we are likely to tie or exceed the city’s record high temperature today (94 degrees, set in 2018) and possibly on Friday (94 degrees, 2022) although by then we might see a very slight moderation in temperatures.

Thursday

If you’ve stepped outside during the last couple days, you have a pretty good idea of what to expect for Thursday. Partly cloudy skies this morning will give way to a sunny afternoon, with high temperatures generally in the mid-90s in Houston, with upper 90s possible further inland, and slightly cooler highs closer to the coast. Southerly winds will, again, be gusty from the south at up to 25 mph. Lows tonight will only drop into the upper 70s.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday

Not much changes this weekend, when most of the area should see highs in the low- to mid-90s. There may be some variance in cloud cover, with a few more clouds on Friday and Sunday, but in general I still expect there to be a fair amount of sunshine during the daytime hours. We can expect that persistent southerly breeze through the weekend, with gusts peaking during the afternoon hours. Nights remain the same, warm and muggy. Rain chances are close to, but not quite zero.

Next week

The first half of next week starts out warm, essentially a continuation of this week’s weather. However much of our model guidance is now hinting at a weak front approaching, and possibly pushing into the area by mid-week. This certainly is no guarantee, and its impact should be limited. But at least it may spark some showers, and give us a bit of drier air. We’ll just have to see how the forecast evolves over the next few days.

Federal judges, some of whom are overseeing cases involving the Trump administration, are sounding the alarm over unsolicited deliveries of pizzas to their homes, which they view as a tactic of intimidation against them. What do you think?

The post Judges Claim Pizza Deliveries Sent To Their Homes Meant To Intimidate appeared first on The Onion.

WELLAND, ON ― Feline traitor to Canada Seersucker has stubbornly refused to switch to any of several varieties of locally-sourced litter, her owner Lily Sasaki reports, opting instead to do her business on shoes and carpets until the old American litter was reinstated. The standoff between the selfish cat and Sasaki, who has made numerous […]

The post Trade War Update: Unpatriotic cat still refuses to use Canadian litter appeared first on The Beaverton.

“Progressives have long pined for another FDR. Here in the first couple of months of 2025, they’ve gotten one.” —Rich Lowry, National Review

We know, it’s alarming that Trump is talking about running for a third term. But FDR did it, and he ended the Great Depression. Well, it ended on his watch. I guess what I’m saying is if FDR did it, it can’t be that bad.

Sure, he’s intentionally driving us into a recession. However, there was a recession in Reagan’s first term, too, and he went on to oversee one of the greatest economies in US history. Sort of. At least according to the New York Times op-ed section. If Reagan did it, it can’t be that bad.

Okay, the serial abuse of women is a problem. But ever heard of a guy named Bill Clinton? Bill Clinton, who left office with the highest approval rating in modern history?? If Clinton did it, it can’t be that bad.

Obviously, gutting Medicaid to fund tax cuts for rich people isn’t, like, “awesome.” But it’s also just standard Republican policy. And you know who else was a Republican? Abraham Lincoln. So he’s fine. If Lincoln did it (which he didn’t), it can’t be that bad.

When he fell for his own team’s propaganda about Kilmar Abrego Garcia having MS-13 tattooed on his knuckles, we were all a bit like “Twenty-Fifth Amendment Time!” But you know who else was unable to serve for health-related reasons? JFK. After he got shot. If JFK did it, it can’t be that bad.

Yes, he’s gone overboard with the tariffs. Then underboard. Then back overboard again. Then underboard again. At this point, it’s kinda like when you microwave and then refrigerate the same leftovers sixteen times in a row and wonder why they taste weird. But you know who else was all about tariffs? William McKinley, and he acquired Hawaii, without which we wouldn’t have The White Lotus. If McKinley did it, it can’t be that bad.

I mean, if we’re being nitpicky, he did accept a $400 million jet from the Qatari royal family. But he’s surely not the first President caught in a corruption scandal. Ever heard of a man named “Warren G. Harding” and a scandal called “Teapot Dome”? If you haven’t, that’s fine; he’s one of our more forgettable presidents. But hey, that means he was considerate enough to not still be in our faces a hundred years later. If Harding did it, how bad can it be?

Fine, he’s trying to abolish the Department of Education. But you know who else didn’t believe in public education? Henry VIII, and he had six wives—how many women have ever married you? If Henry VIII did it, it can’t be that bad.

So he purged all the generals who might have any knowledge of how to keep the US out of another war. But so did a man by the name of Joseph Stalin, and he helped us win WWII. So at least, when WWIII happens, we’ll have… someone Stalin-like in charge. It’s not comforting, necessarily, but it’s not the opposite of comforting, is it? If Stalin did it, it can’t be that bad. Oh, and I think we just found their 2028 campaign slogan.

Yes, he’s come for the universities. But so did Chairman Mao. And no one has anything bad to say about Mao. At least, not in public in China, as anti-Mao speech is openly suppressed. If Mao did it, it can’t be that bad.

Fair point, it’s a little weird that he wants to invade Greenland. But you know who else invaded random places? Genghis Khan. And we’re all descended from him, I think. To insult The Geng is to insult yourself. If Genghis Khan did it, it can’t be that bad.

And I think we were all a bit alarmed when he revived himself from the dead (politically) to come back and ruin the world. But you know who else did that? Voldemort. And in the end, he was fictional. I wish I could say the same about our president.

“Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday sidestepped a question about vaccines and whether he would choose to vaccinate his children today against a number of diseases, saying, ‘I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me.’” — NBC News

We’ve heard many complaints about our handling of the largest measles outbreak in the United States since the disease was eradicated. Let us make this perfectly clear: Our official policy on measles is that it can’t hurt us if we’re all already dead.

In support of this policy, we are pursuing every avenue available to us to encourage people to die. Not just from measles, but pretty much anything that’ll do the job. That’s why we’re cutting cancer research funding, shutting down federal advisory groups, ignoring the spread of bird flu, firing FAA workers, and—in an underreported move—leaving banana peels on sidewalks across the country. We want to make life easier on all of us. Once we’re dead, nothing else bad can happen. That’s science, folks.

Many of you have follow-up questions. Questions like “Did you consider trying to prevent preventable illnesses?” and “Did you think about expanding programs that keep us safe?” and “Did you ask even one doctor about any of this?” The answer to all of those questions is: Of course not. We’d be wasting our time. Here’s something you probably didn’t know: Everyone eventually dies. Our official policy is to get that over with, sooner rather than later.

This line of thinking is related to our decision to cut funding for aid around the world. Does our aid make people live forever? No? Everyone’s still bound to their mortal coil? Then what, exactly, are we spending our money on?

Now, let’s get one thing straight. When we say, “Nothing can hurt us if we’re already dead,” the “us” in that statement is not literally inclusive of us. It’s more of a you thing. Does that make sense? Doesn’t matter. Just know what we really mean is “Nothing can hurt you if you’ve already slipped on a randomly placed banana peel and fallen into an open manhole.”

Listen, we made a promise. We’re committed to making America healthy again, and the way we’re going to do that is by removing the one major variable when it comes to health: people. We’re working quickly on larger-scale solutions. For instance, global nuclear war could solve measles in an instant. Nobody has to get vaccinated if nobody’s around to get vaccinated, right?

But we’re also developing less drastic remedies. For instance, we’re encouraging all our top researchers and scientists to leave the country. We’re rolling back every safety regulation we can find. We’re also, as of this writing, doubling our efforts to cover the country’s footpaths in banana peels. That should speed things along.

In the meantime, if you’re looking for medical advice, look elsewhere. We might be in charge of public health funding, programming, and everything in between, but that doesn’t mean we’re qualified to actually do any of that. If you need medical advice, go buy a plane ticket to whichever country your doctor just decided to move to. And if you need a pre-peeled banana, please let us know. We have too many to count.

Variety:

The surprise announcement, made less than two months after Max tweaked its logo to look more like the classic black-and-white HBO color scheme, was revealed at Warner Bros. Discovery’s upfront presentation to ad execs in New York on Wednesday.

In a press release, WBD said “returning the HBO brand into HBO Max will further drive the service forward and amplify the uniqueness that subscribers can expect from the offering. It is also a testament to WBD’s willingness to keep boldly iterating its strategy and approach — leaning heavily on consumer data and insights — to best position itself for success.”

Everyone should be clear on what to make fun of here. We should not be making fun of the fact that they’re changing the name back to HBO Max. No one likes to admit to mistakes. It’s intensely uncomfortable. And people who are good at politics and PR are good at spinning mistakes as not-mistakes. We should, in fact, congratulate them for admitting to this dumb fucking mistake and re-embracing the “HBO” name.

What we should be making fun of is the original decision to name the platform “Max”, which was obviously stupid at the time, and has been obviously stupid every single day since. “Max” is one of those trendy words like “Plus” and “Pro” that companies append to their brand names when naming premium tiers. You can’t just name a service “Max” or “Plus” or “Pro” without any other words. It’s stupid. And to make it worse, Warner Bros. Discovery (itself an incredibly awkward and dumb-sounding name — just call the company “Warner Brothers” or “Warner” — no one gives a shit about Discovery) already owned the brand name that stands for “prestige TV”: HBO. They already owned it. People loved it. And now they’re like, “Oh, geez, I guess we should use that?”

I wrote two years ago that David Zaslav might be stupid. That it took him two entire years to reverse this name change proves that there’s no maybe about it — he is stupid. If you were interviewing candidates to be the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery (a dumb name that a good candidate for the job should suggest changing), and one of them told you that they’d like to name the company’s streaming service “Max” — just “Max” — you should end the interview right there. If I were interviewing someone for the job and they insisted that they were serious about removing “HBO” from the name of the service I’d start wondering if I smelled alcohol on them. If you had Dr. Evil-style ejector chairs you’d dump them into the shark tank or whatever. But instead, they hired the guy who thought “Max” was a great name. It’s absolutely unreal how much brand equity Zaslav has squandered.

South Africans are resilient and don't run away from their problems, President Ramaphosa says.

The criticism from the new PM comes as Canada prepares for a visit from King Charles III and Queen Camilla.

Watch the moment Congressman Blake's name is called and colleagues nudge him awake.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
Later, the darwinian eats the creationist and uses the calories to protect his offspring.

Today's News:

Aurora Picture Show will celebrate the grand opening of its newest location on Thursday, May 22, from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., with a housewarming party featuring DJs, atmospheric video projections, bites, and beverages. 

The nonprofit media arts organization moved in late 2023 to The Plant in Houston’s Second Ward, and now opens its latest home on Navigation Boulevard, also in the East End district. The new space is a renovated 1938 brick warehouse near Buffalo Bayou’s Turkey Bend, two miles east of where Aurora and fellow nonprofit Buffalo Bayou Partnership teamed up for the annual Night Light outdoor video art event earlier this year. 

The Navigation Boulevard venue will offer an open, flexible space for film screenings, including the Extremely Shorts Film Festival on Friday, May 30 and Saturday, May 31, multimedia performances, art installations, community gatherings, and workshops such as the 2024 My Robot Friend community film project collaboration.

A media announcement emphasized Aurora Picture Show’s ongoing commitment to fostering community expression and inclusion: “At a time when community space, artistic expression, and shared experience are especially needed, we’re proud to open these doors! Aurora Picture Show is a place for all y’all.”

The grand opening party will feature DJs Gracie Chavez and Flash Gordon Parks, beer from longtime Houston-based arts supporter Saint Arnold Brewery, cocktails by Double Trouble Caffeine & Cocktails, and light bites by Phoenicia Specialty Foods. Admission is free.

Learn more about Aurora Picture Show and its upcoming programs via the organization’s website.

The post Aurora Picture Show Announces Grand Opening Celebration for its New Location appeared first on Glasstire.

Following up on my gripe regarding the alternative a glyph used in Apple Notes, here’s Kevin Fox, tweeting on Threads:

While we’re waxing nostalgic on the Original Mac, a Daring Fireball post today (below) reminded me of another piece of Mac 128k trivia.

Until shortly before the official release, the ‘a’ in Geneva was a single story ‘a’ like you see currently (and to some, infuriatingly) in the Notes app.

The screenshots in the original Mac 128k user manual show the OS using the pre-release single-story ‘a’ before it was changed.

I double-checked using the (amazing) classic Mac emulators at Infinite Mac, and it turns out, Apple actually shipped System 1.0 with a version of Geneva with a single-story a glyph — but only in the 9-point version of Geneva. At 12 points (and larger), Geneva’s a was double-story. Here are screenshots of the Finder showing Geneva 9 in System 1.0 (with single-story a):

And System 2.0 (with double-story a):

And a screenshot of MacWrite running on System 1.0 showing Geneva 9 and 12:

Geneva 9 — the eventual version, with a double-story a — is so intimately familiar to me that looking at those screenshots from System 1.0 makes me feel weird. It’s so clearly wrong. (What it feels like, to me, is the original Palm OS, from the one-bit Palm Pilot / Handspring Visor days. Palm’s small sans serif font was very Geneva-9-ish, but their single-story a was distinctive.)

Fox also posted a link to Vintage Apple’s high-res scan of the amazing original Mac user manual, which, because it had to go to press before the 1.0 software was finished, contains screenshots of a few icons that changed by the time the original Mac was in customers’ hands. What a remarkably good user manual this is — everything from the typography, to the clarity and tone of its writing, to its comprehensiveness is exemplary.

Here’s where it really gets nutty though. Marcin Wichary — whom you may recall from his recent remarkable deep dive on the Gorton typeface (“The Hardest Working Font in Manhattan”), or from Shift Happens, his encyclopedic book on the history of keyboards — chimed in on Bluesky after observing that a few of the screenshots in that System 1.0 user manual show an early version of Chicago 12 with a single-story a. Seeing a single-story a in Chicago feels more blasphemous than that AI-generated image Trump tweeted of himself as the new pope.

One last note: I of course am not opposed to single-story a’s. Futura’s a is single-story, and Futura, depending on my mood, might be my answer if asked to name my favorite typeface of all time. I just don’t particularly care for the alternate single-story a in San Francisco (Apple’s modern San Francisco, not the one from 1984), and to me it just gives an ever-so-slightly wrong — a little silly or unserious — vibe in the Notes app.

The post Bill Belichick Fairly Sure He Clapping for Correct Beauty Pageant Contestant appeared first on The Onion.

This newly renovated home has everything you need to move right in, including a loving Cantonese family ready to welcome you with open arms.

Reference #41845

The post Turn-Key Stunner appeared first on The Onion.

Mary Stevenson, 82, passed away Sunday. Her family asks that anyone interested in joining her in the coffin please reach out ASAP.

The post Mary Stevenson appeared first on The Onion.