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24 Feb 17:40

Shh, Boyfriend Doesn’t Want To Talk During Part Where They Blowing Up Pentagon

by The Onion Staff

MURRIETA, CA—Reiterating his unwavering message about the importance of staying quiet during the cool parts of the movie, local boyfriend Sean Cohen reportedly didn’t want to talk Monday during the scene where they’re blowing up the Pentagon. “Shh, babe—the helicopter is doing something,” Cohen said to his girlfriend, swatting the air with a vague “keep it down” gesture while his eyes remained fixed on the screen depicting one of several large CGI explosions. “Now’s not the time to ask questions about the movie, okay? I think those guys with the flamethrowers are terrorists in disguise, so this scene is probably gonna be important. Babe, come on, stop—if you’re talking, I can’t hear any of the machine guns.” At press time, sources confirmed a visibly angry Cohen was rewinding the movie and turning up the volume so they could give their undivided attention to a scene where a Russian assassin attempts to gun down a rogue SWAT vehicle emerging from the flaming wreckage of the Pentagon.

The post Shh, Boyfriend Doesn’t Want To Talk During Part Where They Blowing Up Pentagon appeared first on The Onion.

24 Feb 17:40

Tips For Getting Involved At Your Child’s School

by The Onion Staff

Serving as a parent volunteer is a great way to bolster your child’s education as well as give back. The Onion shares tips for getting involved at your child’s school.

Donate unwanted frogs and other dissectable specimens.

Establish open communication with your child’s teacher by emailing them to complain about how math is different now.

Read The Art Of War and run the school dance bake sale accordingly.

Buy a pair of binoculars and serve as an unofficial recess monitor from your car.

Prepare your child’s class a nutritious snack of turnips, cabbage, and jellied eel to sustain them for their after-school shift at the mill.

Get involved in drama club by beating out Jessica Porter for the lead in Bye Bye Birdie.

Donate a teacher.

Drop acid with the other cool parents before the kids’ hand-bell recital. What are you, scared? No way we get caught.

Go beyond doing all of your child’s homework by doing every other student’s too.

The post Tips For Getting Involved At Your Child’s School appeared first on The Onion.

24 Feb 17:35

Pluralistic: We bullied HP into a minor act of disenshittification (22 Feb 2025)

by Cory Doctorow


Today's links


Four men in business-suits sitting around a boardroom table. The center figure is holding an old fashioned phone receiver to his head. All of their heads have been replaced with poop emojis. In the center of the table is an HP inkjet printer. The sheet of paper sticking out of the printer bears an ink-spattered 1950s HP logo. Behind the men are two oil paintings of men in suits; only one of the faces of the men in the paintings is in frame. That face has been replaced with the face of David Packard.

We bullied HP into a minor act of disenshittification (permalink)

Here in the darkest days of the enshittocene, enshittification is low quality and plentiful, but even in this target-rich environment, one company stands out as pioneering champions of enshittification: HP.

Every page in the enshittification playbook was printed in farcically expensive HP ink, and if you try to run a copy off for yourself, the printer will stop five times and force you to print a "calibration page" that is solid color from top to bottom, consuming about $10 worth of ink. Don't like it? Die mad.

HP drips with contempt for its customers. They make printer-scanners that won't scan unless all four ink cartridges are installed and haven't reached their best-before dates. They make printers that won't print black and white if your $50 magenta cartridge is low. They sell you printers with special half-full cartridges that need to be replaced pretty much as soon as the printer has run off its mandatory "calibration" pages. The full-serving ink you buy to replace those special demitasse cartridges is also booby-trapped – HP reports them as empty when they're still 20% full.

HP tricks customers into signing up for irrevocable subscriptions where you have to pay every month, whether or not you print, and if you exceed your subscription cap, the printer refuses to work, no matter how much ink is left. Now, about those HP ink subscriptions. When the company launched them, they offered a pot-sweetener meant to tempt in the wary: a one-price "lifetime subscription" that would let you print 15 pages every month, for so long as you owned the printer. But a couple years later, all those "free ink for life" customers got an email telling them that they were being migrated to a monthly payment plan, and if they didn't like it, they could eat shit and throw away their printers:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/06/horrible-products/#inkwars

HP pioneered the use of copyright law to prevent third parties from refilling ink cartridges or making their own compatible cartridges. Section 1201 of Bill Clinton's Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it a felony to distribute a "circumvention device" to bypass access controls on a copyrighted work. By designing its cartridges to undertake a little cryptographic handshake with the printer to verify their "authenticity," HP ensures that anyone who markets a bypass device to let you choose which ink you use in your own damn printer is a felon, liable to five years in prison and a $500 fine under DMCA 1201.

Of course, nature finds a way. Hardware hackers have come up with some insanely cool bypass devices for HP printer cartridges, like these paper-thin, flexible, adhesive-backed circuit boards that wrap around third party cartridges, intercepting communications between the printer and a salvaged HP security chip:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/30/life-finds-a-way/#ink-stained-wretches

But HP fights back, and they fight dirty. For example, they periodically push out "security updates" for their printers that break compatibility with third party cartridges. To prevent HP customers from discovering and blocking these fake security updates, HP designs them to lie dormant for months after installation, until everyone has clicked "OK," and then all those Manchurian Printers wake up and betray their owners by refusing to use their ink:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

All of this has allowed HP to monotonically raise – and raise – and raise – the price of printer ink to the point where it is now the most expensive fluid a civilian can purchase without a permit. Printer ink now runs over $10,000/gallon, meaning that you print out your grocery lists with colored water that costs more than the semen of a Kentucky Derby winner.

HP is truly the poster child for enshittification, and also, patient zero in the enshittification pandemic:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/18/ink-stained-wretches/#hache-pe

HP's enshittificatory impulses run wild. They hunt relentlessly for ways to make things worse for their customers in order to make things better for themselves. Last week, they came up with a humdinger, even by their own standards. They announced that people who called their customer service line would be subject to mandatory 15-minute waits, even if there was a rep who was free to talk with them:

https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/20/hp_deliberately_adds_15_minutes/

During this mandatory 15-minute wait, customers would be bombarded with a recorded voice demanding that they solve their problems by consulting HP's website and its awful chatbots. In a competitive market, businesses can contain their customer service costs by making better products. In a monopolistic market like the printer racket, companies can deliberately introduce maddening antifeatures to their products, and then fob off the customers who reach such a peak of frustrated rage that they resort to calling a customer support number or chatbot that will use its spicy autocomplete to hallucinate nonexistent drivers and imaginary troubleshooting steps.

When I saw this, I thought, whelp, that's HP all right. Shameless.

But they're not entirely shameless. Within a day of Paul Kunert breaking the story in The Register, HP had reversed its policy, citing "feedback" (a corporate euphemism that means "fury"):

https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/21/hp_ditches_15_minute_wait_time_call_centers/

This is a rare win for the forces of disenhittification and it deserves recognition. It turns out that in these Mangionean times, companies can actually be bullied into comporting themselves with marginally less sleaze and cruelty. It's especially noteworthy that this took place in the UK, where Prime Minister Keir Starmer has invited tech companies to pick Britons' pockets without fear of consequence, by firing the top competition regulator and replacing him with the former head of Amazon UK:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/22/autocrats-of-trade/#dingo-babysitter

Even in these degraded times, we can get these fuckers. When Sonos enshittifies its smart speakers, we can get its CEO fired:

https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/13/24342179/sonos-ceo-patrick-spence-resignation-reason-app

When Unity sticks its hand in the pockets of every game dev in the world, we can get its entire executive team shitcanned:

https://venturebeat.com/games/john-riccitiello-steps-down-as-ceo-of-unity-after-pricing-battle/

It doesn't always work. Enshittifiers rack up some Ws, and make bank even as they immiserate 500 million users (looking at you, Steve Huffman – the people have long memories):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Reddit_API_controversy

But if we can bully the psychotic monsters who populate HP's Executive Row out of their enshittificatory plans, then it's worth trying it every time.

Hey look at this (permalink)


A Wayback Machine banner.

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Woz speaks out against Apple’s lawsuit https://web.archive.org/web/20050223132909/http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/000473.html

#20yrsago HP BIOS locks out all cards save those on a whitelist https://web.archive.org/web/20050223051147/https://hogbender.blogspot.com/2005/02/welcome-to-trusted-computing.html

#20yrsago Kottke blog goes full-time https://web.archive.org/web/20050223022348/http://kottke.org/

#15yrsago FBI investigating Lower Merion School District over laptop spying (plus a commemorative tee) https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Parenting/pennsylvania-school-webcam-students-spying/story?id=9905488

#15yrsago School spying: infected laptops mandatory, jailbreaking grounds for expulsion https://web.archive.org/web/20100225184603/https://strydehax.blogspot.com/2010/02/spy-at-harrington-high.html

#15yrsago Laptop surveillance kid was disciplined when spying authorities mistook candies for pills https://reason.com/2010/02/20/lower-pervian-school-district/

#15yrsago Video: English cops terrorism-harassing photographer for taking photos of town Christmas decorations https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/feb/21/photographer-films-anti-terror-arrest

#15yrsago Objective reporting and American politics https://web.archive.org/web/20100224234003/https://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2010/02/21/innocence.html

#15yrsago London councils issue themselves parking tickets, fight them in court https://www.thetimes.com/article/london-councils-sue-themselves-for-parking-offences-x2sgdhtkwgx

#15yrsago ACTA leak shows US Trade Rep lied about “3-strikes” https://web.archive.org/web/20100223183426/http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4808/125/

#15yrsago ACTA “internet enforcement” chapter leaks https://memex.craphound.com/2010/02/21/acta-internet-enforcement-chapter-leaks/

#5yrsago Gopher shows us how adversarial interoperability was there from the start https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/21/pluralist-a-daily-link-adose-21-feb-2020/#gopherspace

#5yrsago Private Equity has sabotaged every attempt to end emergency room "surprise billing" https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/21/pluralist-a-daily-link-adose-21-feb-2020/#sickening

#5yrsago Tumblr's ad policy https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/21/pluralist-a-daily-link-adose-21-feb-2020/#hardtruth

#5yrsago Bloomberg's campaign NDA is a gag order that covers sexual abuse and other crimes https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/21/pluralist-a-daily-link-adose-21-feb-2020/#more-31

#5yrsago Wells Fargo will pay $3b for 2 million acts of fraud https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/22/pluralist-your-daily-link-dose-22-feb-2020/#banksters

#5yrsago ICANN should demand to see the secret financial docs in the .ORG selloff https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/22/pluralist-your-daily-link-dose-22-feb-2020/#unethos

#5yrsago What Marc Davis lifted from the Addams Family while designing the Haunted Mansion https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/22/pluralist-your-daily-link-dose-22-feb-2020/#poltergeist

#5yrsago Tax Justice Network publishes a new global Financial Secrecy Index https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/22/pluralist-your-daily-link-dose-22-feb-2020/#enablers

#1yrago The majority of censorship is self-censorship https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/22/self-censorship/#hugos

#1yrago Google reneged on the monopolistic bargain https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, holding a mic.


A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast.

Recent appearances (permalink)


A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..

Latest books (permalink)


A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.

Upcoming books (permalink)

  • Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 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


Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Peter Sayer.

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

  • Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2025

Latest podcast: Picks and Shovels virtual launch with Yanis Varoufakis and David Moscrop, presented by Jacobin https://craphound.com/novels/redteamblues/2025/02/16/picks-and-shovels-virtual-launch-with-yanis-varoufakis-and-david-moscrop-presented-by-jacobin/

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.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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.

How to get Pluralistic:

Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

Pluralistic.net

Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic

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https://doctorow.medium.com/

Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://twitter.com/doctorow

Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic

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

ISSN: 3066-764X

24 Feb 17:29

Killing Me Softly singer Roberta Flack dies aged 88

The star's other hits included The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face and Feel Like Makin' Love.
24 Feb 17:28

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Message

by Zach Weinersmith


Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
I didn't finish reading the second half of the comic but hopefully it was funny.


Today's News:
24 Feb 15:28

Spring has arrived in Houston, and it is unlikely to go away

by Eric Berger

In brief: After a very cold period over the last 12 days, much milder weather is on the way for Houston. And with March just around the corner, I’m confident enough in the forecast to predict that the Houston metro area is done with freezes for the remainder of this winter and early spring.

February, a tale of two halves

The first 12 days of this month were incredibly warm in Houston, with several days of record high temperatures. Since then we have been mostly below normal for the region. So far this month, because of the blistering start to February, the average temperature is running about 2.5 degrees above normal.

Temperatures this month in Houston. (National Weather Service)

It may have felt like spring had arrived at the beginning of the month, but if you’ll recall we warned you three weeks ago that winter was not yet over. And so it wasn’t. Well now, my friends, we can pretty confidently say that we’re not going to experience another cold spell like that again this season. From a climatological perspective winter does not end until March 1, but from a practical point of view, winter in Houston appears to be over.

Will it freeze again?

Probably not. In the Houston metro area, historically, there is about a 30 percent chance of a freeze after this point in the year. (It drops to 10 percent by March 18). However, because we can safely say there is not going to be a freeze at least over the next 10 days, I would say we are most likely done with freezes this season. So unless you live north of Conroe or in College Station, I’d feel pretty confident planting your gardens and setting tropical vegetation outside.

Monday

The moderate to dense fog we’re seeing this morning is one sign of warmer temperatures coming. Air temperatures and dewpoints this morning are virtually the same, in the upper-40s across the metro area. The fog will dissipate as temperatures rise, and we’re going toward highs in the upper 60s today. After the fog lifts we’ll see sunny skies, with light winds. Lows tonight will drop into the upper 40s again for most of Houston, with partly cloudy skies. We’ll likely see the development of some additional fog early on Tuesday morning.

Houston’s weather will be mild for the foreseeable future. (Weather Bell)

Tuesday and Wednesday

These will be a pair of mostly sunny, pleasant days with high temperatures in the low 70s on Tuesday, and mid- to upper-70s on Wednesday. Both nights will see partly to mostly clear skies, with lows in the 50s.

Thursday and Friday

A weak front arrives to cool us down slightly for the end of the week. Although I think the frontal passage will be dry, I cannot guarantee it. Anyway, we should see partly sunny skies on Thursday in association with the front before sunny skies arrive on Friday. Highs will be around 70 degrees both days, and I expect slightly cooler nights in the upper 40s.

Saturday and Sunday

The weekend looks mild. There should be plenty of sunshine on Saturday, with highs in the low- to mid-70s, and a mild night in the 50s. (It should be nigh on perfect weather for Mardi Gras, so come see us in Galveston). By Sunday we’ll see an increasing chance of rain, but overall chances are probably less than 50 percent. We’ll see.

Next week

The first half of next week could be warmer as we slide into March, possibly with some highs reaching 80 degrees. A modest front likely cools us off by Wednesday or so, but again it may be the kind of thing where lows just drop back to around 50 degrees. We’ll see.

24 Feb 15:27

Democratic Leaders Stand Real Still In Hopes No One Notices Them

by The Onion Staff

WASHINGTON—With the elected officials trying their hardest not to move a muscle, reports confirmed Monday that top Democratic leaders in Congress were standing real still in hopes that the American people wouldn’t notice them. “Don’t make any sudden movements, or they’ll spot us,” Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said out of the corner of his mouth, tightly squeezing his eyes shut as he reminded Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to hold their breath anytime a member of the voting public walked by. “Did it work? I think we’re in the clear for now, but that was a close one. They could have talked to us, for crying out loud, or worse—demanded that we do something. Unless we put our hands up in front of our faces and crouch down behind our briefcases, some of these voters may realize we’ve been standing here all along.” At press time, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) had reportedly been dragged into a conversation with a constituent after the otherwise motionless lawmaker forgot to silence her phone.

The post Democratic Leaders Stand Real Still In Hopes No One Notices Them appeared first on The Onion.

24 Feb 13:23

Amazon-produced 007 movie pits Bond against fulfillment center workers who want to unionize

by Evan Klim

SEATTLE, WA – With Amazon now holding the rights to the 007 film franchise, the company’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, announced the first movie will pit Bond against his greatest enemy yet: ungrateful workers in fulfillment centers who want to unionize. At a board meeting held in a subterranean, Bezos laid out his vision for the […]

The post Amazon-produced 007 movie pits Bond against fulfillment center workers who want to unionize appeared first on The Beaverton.

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24 Feb 13:23

Awkward Zombie - Important Princess Business

by tech@thehiveworks.com

New comic!
Today's News:

Sometimes there is important princess business happening at the bottom of the well, you see.

24 Feb 13:22

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Down

by Zach Weinersmith


Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
Just make sure to always go counterclockwise or you're gonna be real sad.


Today's News:
24 Feb 13:21

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Right

by Zach Weinersmith


Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
That Bell Inequality joke is comedy gold, whether you like it or not.


Today's News:
24 Feb 13:19

Part 1.53

Part 1.53
24 Feb 13:16

Ten degrees of recline

by John Allison

You can read Solver part 3 in full (in hi-res PDF format) on my Patreon.

Part 3 begins! I’ve never been on a sleeper train. I’ve slept on trains but never for more than about half an hour. A good deep sleep it was, though. Really thickened the blood. If you want to go from Glasgow to Sheffield on a sleeper train after reading this comic – perhaps to have a Solver-themed holiday, I’ve got some bad news. You can’t.

 

The post Ten degrees of recline appeared first on Bad Machinery.

24 Feb 13:14

Algorithms are breaking how we think

by Technology Connections

This surely won't make me seem like a crank.
Further watching:

@HGModernism on addiction to scrolling and the Skinner box mechanism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNOol5OTasw
@acollierastro on the AI hype cycle and how professionals understand there's nothing new here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFGcqWbwvyc

Technology Connextras (the second channel where I put stuff sometimes)
https://www.youtube.com/@TechnologyConnextras

Technology Connections on Bluesky:
https://bsky.app/profile/techconnectify.bsky.social

Technology Connections on Mastodon:
https://mas.to/@TechConnectify

Have you ever noticed that I've never done that whole influencer thing? That's all thanks to people like you! Viewer support through Patreon keeps this channel independent and possible. It's how I can express my true thoughts on what YouTube's business daddy (and Silicon Valley at large) are up to. If you'd like to join the amazing folks who fund my work, check out the link below. And thank you!
https://www.patreon.com/technologyconnections
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24 Feb 13:13

Lawmakers to DOGE: Use a scalpel, not a sledgehammer at the Pentagon

by Jennifer Hlad
As DOGE focuses its attention on the Pentagon, two members of the House Armed Services committee are urging caution. 

“I welcome the audit. I welcome the transparency,” Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., said in Feb. 14 remarks at the Honolulu Defense Forum. “We've always wanted a successful audit of the Pentagon, and we've not had a good audit of the Pentagon that's passed. So I’m glass-half-full on that. All I ask is…don’t throw the baby out with the bath waters…because we’ve been doing that in some of these agencies.”

Bacon used the example of cuts to U.S. foreign aid that could have had significant consequences: “We put a foreign-aid freeze out there, and we realized at the last minute—thankfully, if we had gone another couple minutes it would have been too late—that we prevented the funding of the Kurds that were detaining 10,000 ISIS terrorists. We were within a day or two of releasing these guys because the funding was pulled.”

Rep. Pat Ryan, D-NY, shares Bacon’s concern, and noted in his remarks and in an interview with Defense One that the U.S. military “cannot afford to have any blinks or any pauses” in successful programs. 

“I think the focus [of the Trump administration] on driving defense innovation and understanding the urgency, specifically in INDOPACOM, presents a real opportunity,” Ryan said. “The worry I have is: so much of the momentum we have established in things like Replicator, we can’t take our foot off the gas on that… The biggest mistake we can make is: new administration comes in, says ‘Oh, the old guys did this. Everything’s bad that they did,’ and that would dramatically hurt the warfighters and hurt our national security.” 

[[Related Posts]]

While Ryan said he is in favor of “creative disruption,” he hopes the Pentagon can avoid “destruction.” 

On the topic of reform, Ryan and Bacon both praised the Defense Innovation Unit and said the rest of the DOD should take a page from their playbook as the Pentagon works to change its acquisition culture. 

“There is no doubt that we’re finding innovations and some new ideas, but we’re having a hard time fielding that at a level that will have an impact [in a] fight with China or a fight with Russia,” Bacon said. “There’s a lot of talk. We’ve got to figure out how to get things into mass production and get things fielded at the unit level, at a level that makes a difference.”

Ryan said  the Pentagon has a tendency to engage in “innovation theater,” meaning a loud display of ineffective effort. He said Indo-Pacific Command leader Adm. Sam Paparo “so clearly can articulate where he sees the adversary, what the needs are, what his sort of operational concept is. And yet, if you look at what we’re doing and where dollars are flowing and where programs of record are, and even where leaders’ attention is, it is nowhere near in alignment there, which is incredibly scary and dangerous, given again, the urgency moment that we’re at.” 

]]>

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22 Feb 04:52

Structure holding iconic Sears sign to be preserved as part of Houston redevelopment project

by Adam Zuvanich
A collection of businesses and residents in the North Shepherd Drive area, along with two Houston preservation organizations and a former city council member, lobbied a developer to save the 75-year-old sign structure. The idea also had the support of the Houston Planning Commission.
22 Feb 04:51

Majority of students at Houston ISD’s Sam Houston HS were absent on ‘A Day Without Immigrants’

by Colleen DeGuzman
Several of HISD’s schools with the largest Latino enrollments saw drastic drops in attendance on Feb. 3, when a nationwide protest was observed.
22 Feb 04:50

Trump fires top US general CQ Brown in shake-up at Pentagon

The new Pentagon chief had accused CQ Brown of a "woke" focus on diversity, equity and inclusion programmes.
22 Feb 04:50

Harris County joins legal fight against spending cuts to National Institutes of Health

by Tom Perumean
Harris County is part of a coalition of local governments that signed on to an amicus brief filed this week in a federal court in Massachusetts, arguing NIH’s funding cuts are unjustified and would devastate research institutions.
21 Feb 22:27

Trudeau swipes at Trump as Canada revels in hockey win against US

Trudeau posted on social media "You can't take our country - and you can't take our game".
21 Feb 22:25

Poetry Prompts for Detained Children

by Joaquín Zihuatanejo

Write about the untouchable. Something out of arm’s reach, like freedom, the stars, or you.

Write an ode to misfits. A poem of praise for those who don’t belong here or there. A lyric ballad for the children of nowhere. Employ the interjection Oh at some point in the poem. Remember it can be used to capture their joy or your pain.

Write a how to poem about something mundane that most people take for granted. How to hear your mother’s voice. How to see the sky. How to trust a man in a uniform. How to breathe.

Write about things that are out of order. Broken vending machines. Raging defense attorneys. This border. This country. 

Become that something that doesn’t love a wall. Give it a name. A history. Tell us in verse why it hates walls so desperately. Why we all should.

Write a poem from the point of view of a firefly trapped in a jar with holes hammered into the lid. Make the reader experience what it is to be something small and beautiful locked away into a restrictive space. 

Write a persona poem in the voice of something that doesn’t acknowledge the existence of borders: monarch butterflies, FM radio waves, rivers.

Write a sestina where the six repeating words are: 

mother
tongue
light
slip
silt
forgive

Write a poem about a young person armed not with a fist or a gun, but an idea. An idea that could free us all.

Write a poem about a door unlocking. Opening. And what it feels like to walk through it without anyone there to tell you, you can’t.

Poems are selected by Poetry Editor Lupe Mendez, the 2022 Texas poet laureate and author of Why I Am Like Tequila. To submit a poem, please send an email with the poem attached to poetry@texasobserver.org. We’re looking for previously unpublished works of no more than 45 lines by Texas poets who have not been published by the Observer in the last two years. Pay is $100 on publication.

The post Poetry Prompts for Detained Children appeared first on The Texas Observer.

21 Feb 21:27

Trump Unable To Focus In Meeting As Pressure Of Booking Kennedy Center Summer Jazz Series Looms

by The Onion Staff

WASHINGTON—Amid efforts to prove himself as an effective chair of the performing arts organization, President Donald Trump was reportedly unable to focus in a national security meeting Friday, distracted by the pressure of booking the Kennedy Center’s upcoming Summer Jazz Series. According to sources, the sound of his Cabinet members’ voices was essentially white noise to the otherwise preoccupied commander-in-chief, who was struggling to decide whether free jazz, hot jazz, or jazz fusion would make a better theme for the month of July. The president was said to have buried his face in his hands as he realized the enormity of the responsibility that came with putting on original, educational, and fun musical programming, and he responded to a half-heard question from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth with “Skabba-dee-doo-bop—I mean, yes, send the bombs.” At press time, reports confirmed Trump had accidentally deployed Herbie Hancock to the border.

The post Trump Unable To Focus In Meeting As Pressure Of Booking Kennedy Center Summer Jazz Series Looms appeared first on The Onion.

21 Feb 21:27

Trump Claims Ukraine Started War

by The Onion Staff

President Trump appeared to blame Ukraine’s leaders for the three year war with Russia, arguing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “should have never started it.” What do you think?

“Oh, like you understand geopolitics so perfectly.”

Jacob Bogardus, Salad Visionary

“You mean the special military operation?”

Brad Lyons, Band Namer

“It’s not the president’s job to understand world affairs.”

Melody Greenberg, Rebate Coordinator

The post Trump Claims Ukraine Started War appeared first on The Onion.

21 Feb 21:26

Political Profile: Eric Adams

by The Onion Staff

Despite calls for his resignation, New York City mayor Eric Adams has stated he is “not going anywhere.” Here is everything you need to know about Adams. 

Nickname: This fuckin’ guy 

Religion: Born-again MAGA

Second-In-Command: Whoever hasn’t resigned yet

Favorite Borough: Istanbul 

Price: Recently lowered

Turkish Airlines Status: Elite Plus

Greatest Achievement: Making Bill de Blasio look good by comparison

Favorite Quid: Pro quo

Future Ambitions: Somehow

The post Political Profile: Eric Adams appeared first on The Onion.

21 Feb 21:26

Don’t Tread on Me—Unless You’re a Billionaire with a Ketamine Addiction, in Which Case I Enthusiastically Support It

by Maggie Downs

Listen, I don’t know how to say this, but I think I’m finally okay with being trodden on. Just a little. Just enough to feel the reassuring weight of a billionaire’s boot pressing gently against my liberty-loving neck.

For years, I stood tall against tyranny. I flew my DON’T TREAD ON ME flag so high it violated three HOA regulations and traumatized at least one bald eagle. I stockpiled an arsenal so vast that Bass Pro Shops sent me a Christmas card. I wrote Facebook posts in all caps demanding FREEDOM FROM GOVT OPPRESSION while using the same device the NSA is probably reading this on right now. But in the midst of it all, I had a revelation.

What if I’ve been focusing on the wrong tyrants?

What if, instead of fearing the iron fist of Big Brother, I actually feared the absence of a firm, guiding hand? A hand that knows how to launch a car into space for no discernible reason? A hand that cradles the future of humanity like it’s a cryptocurrency—overhyped, weirdly fragile, and only available to a select few investors? A hand that pops ketamine like it’s a biohacker’s multivitamin? A hand attached to a man who has definitely read Atlas Shrugged as a how-to manual?

Yes, I used to fear centralized control. But now I understand that true oppression isn’t the federal government taxing my diesel F-150. Oppression is NOT having a billionaire tell me what to think about immigrants, free speech, and which letter of the alphabet is the coolest. And folks, if this tweeting tycoon says “X” is the best letter, then I say, by God, let’s rename the entire alphabet.

I once declared I would rather die than let anyone take my guns out of my cold, dead hands. But now? If a billionaire knocked on my door and asked for my AR-15 to melt down into a Neuralink prototype, I would personally hand it over and say, “I hope this helps you install X into our brains, sir.”

Because you see, I trust this guy. He’s not like the others. When the government tracks you, that’s tyranny. When a billionaire does it? That’s innovation.

You know who taxed me last year? The IRS. You know who DIDN’T tax me? This self-made genius. (By “self,” I mean family money and government contracts.) And that, my friends, is why he is a man of the people. The Lord of Layoffs understands that taxes are just a way for the Deep State to fund things like roads, schools, and weather-manipulation robots. Meanwhile, he spends money on things that actually matter, like tanking a social media platform and legally renaming his child a CAPTCHA test.

The wealthiest reply guy on earth could be living the easy life on a yacht somewhere, but instead, he’s up at 3 a.m., posting memes about the selfless work he’s doing to help people find a new career path by personally firing them. He toils, not for wealth, but for the betterment of humanity, bravely battling SEC regulations and woke park rangers. Mother Teresa wished she’d had that level of devotion to humankind.

Some of my so-called friends say, “Hey, weren’t you just ranting about personal freedom last week?” And to that, I say: Exactly. PERSONAL freedom. And PERSONALLY, I feel freer knowing that a man with unlimited wealth, influence, a Nazi fetish, and a mysterious South African backstory is steering the ship of civilization toward Mars.

Liberty isn’t about resisting power; it’s about choosing the right overlord. And I, for one, welcome our Tesla-driving, meme-posting, allegedly ketamine-fueled king. If you disagree? Well, that just means you haven’t been trodden on correctly.

So, I say this with love: Tread on me, Megaboss. Roll your Cybertruck right over my previously untreadable body. I eagerly await the tire tracks of progress.

21 Feb 21:25

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - News

by Zach Weinersmith


Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
My comics are probably the most enjoyable non-fiction.


Today's News:
21 Feb 21:24

Scream Cipher

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21 Feb 21:24

SpaceX engineers brought on at FAA after probationary employees were fired

by Vittoria Elliott and Aarian Marshall, wired.com

Engineers who work for Elon Musk’s SpaceX have been brought on as senior advisers to the acting administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), sources tell WIRED.

On Sunday, Sean Duffy, secretary of the Department of Transportation, which oversees the FAA, announced in a post on X that SpaceX engineers would be visiting the Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Virginia to take what he positioned as a tour. “The safety of air travel is a nonpartisan matter,” Musk replied. “SpaceX engineers will help make air travel safer.”

By the time these posts were made, though, according to sources who were granted anonymity because they fear retaliation, SpaceX engineers were already being onboarded at the agency under Schedule A, a special authority that allows government managers to “hire persons with disabilities without requiring them to compete for the job,” according to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

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21 Feb 17:25

Aligning themselves with Trump works out just as well for U.S. hockey players as it did for Ted Cruz

by Luke Gordon Field

BOSTON – After explicitly praising Donald Trump’s support of their team and even hoping they can “win for him” U.S. hockey players discovered what Ted Cruz and numerous other politicians discovered years ago: aligning yourself with Trump never works out. “We tried our best. It just didn’t go our way,” said Brady Tkachuck, making a […]

The post Aligning themselves with Trump works out just as well for U.S. hockey players as it did for Ted Cruz appeared first on The Beaverton.

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21 Feb 15:09

Exhausted Friends Slowly Realize They Were Playing Board Game Wrong Entire 6 Hours

by The Onion Staff

MILWAUKEE—Growing more despondent as each turn brought them no closer to a conclusion, an exhausted group of friends was reportedly coming to the realization Friday that they had been playing the board game Wingspan incorrectly for the past six hours. “Wait, were we supposed to have set up these goal tiles earlier?” said Elliott Barnes, 31, grabbing the expansive rule booklet to confirm his dawning suspicions that he and the other players had misunderstood fundamental playing mechanics of the game. “Oh, okay, it looks like we were all supposed to discard some food tokens at the beginning, which we totally skipped over. And apparently we should be placing the bird cards in the correct habitat. And now that I look closely, I’m pretty sure a lot of these are game pieces from Stratego that got put away in the wrong box. Goddammit, I knew we should have just stuck to Clue.” At press time, sources confirmed the group of friends was two hours into playing the correct version of the game, which they all agreed was significantly less fun.

The post Exhausted Friends Slowly Realize They Were Playing Board Game Wrong Entire 6 Hours appeared first on The Onion.