"Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave representatives of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency access to the federal payment system late on Friday, according to five people familiar with the change, handing Elon Musk and the team he is leading a powerful tool to monitor and potentially limit government spending. — New York Times
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A lot of people doubted that my Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) could do what it set out to do. But I am proud to say that in just weeks, we have used the Tesla, SpaceX, and X playbook to make America’s collapse much more efficient.
It’s been obvious for years that the US system was declining with great waste and sluggishness. For example, did you know that before DOGE came along, government spending was influenced by an ad hoc network of billionaires behind campaign contributions, dark money groups, and shadowy think tanks? It’s far more efficient to reduce redundancy by placing the entire US Treasury under the centralized control of just one billionaire private citizen (me).
Or consider the waste and bloat in how the US government used to give away taxpayer dollars via an overcomplicated system of lobbying, tax breaks, and bloated contracts. This will become much more optimized once I force the entire US population to pay a 5 percent transaction fee to conduct Social Security transactions on X, The Everything Website (20 percent if they have pronouns in their bio).
Plus, now I can Control+F SpaceX competitors, put them into bankruptcy with one click, and seamlessly Alt+Tab back to Diablo IV.
We are also hustling to streamline and reduce redundancy in how Americans’ privacy is violated. Experian breaches, dark web data brokers, unregulated social media, Chinese PLA hacking? Who has time for it all? Now, we can get this done in one fell swoop by putting every US citizen’s Social Security number on a public Google Sheet administered by the nineteen-year-old who programmed Grok’s sense of humor.
My record speaks for itself. I have led X, which will now be crowdsourcing air traffic control via live posts, to become incredibly efficient at serving up pornographic Adolf Eichmann memes.
The decline of America’s creditworthiness has also been a halting, stop-start process every time the debt limit approaches. But now, DOGE will get it done for good, because the teenagers tracking the US government’s credit card balance have killed countless Neuralink monkeys.
We are also working weekends to eliminate the middlemen in foreign collusion. Think of how it used to work: winking political speeches, hack-and-leak operations, pro-Kremlin NATO policies. What a cumbersome system! It is far simpler for me to snort some ketamine and DM Vladimir Putin my US Treasury login during our weekly Teams call.
America’s downfall used to be so sprawling and overcomplicated—classic, low-IQ bureaucrats. Wealth inequality, white nationalism, transphobia, authoritarianism, conspiracy theories? Sure, they’re happening, but are they happening as straightforwardly as possible? Who is coordinating it all? Now I can say confidently the answers to those questions are (1) yes and (2) @ViktorOrbanFan1488, whose other main duty is leveling up my Diablo IV character.
Americans cry out for speed and efficiency!
For too long, our authoritarianism has been “creeping.”
Our oligarchy: “quasi.”
Our Nazis: “neo.”
But now, Americans will get what they want: a stripped-down, streamlined speed run of 1920s Germany meets Ex Machina.
I promise, America will soon be the Cybertruck of countries—uglier than you could have imagined, built for rich chuds, borderline inoperable, and on fire.
WASHINGTON—Fulfilling a campaign promise made by President Donald Trump, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced Wednesday that it was enacting a ban on unlikely animal friendships, effective immediately. “Starting today, any animal found frolicking or snuggling with an animal of another species—for example, a chimp cuddling a puppy or a magpie preening a pig—is in violation of the law and will be prosecuted accordingly,” said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, adding that the word “unlikely” would be replaced with the more scientifically accurate descriptor “unnatural” in all government documents going forward. “Americans are fed up with having adorable interspecies companions shoved down their throats. If you witness a fox paling around with a goat or a tortoise sharing a strawberry with a guinea pig, we ask that you report it to the authorities. And if you’re a lion who’s befriended a pigeon or a coyote thinking about napping with a chipmunk, just know that we see you and we’re coming for you.” At press time, Burgum denounced reports that his own pet golden retriever was friends with a local squirrel as “more lies from the left-wing media.”
Japanese-based Round One Corporation has been on an arcade-building spree in American Malls lately, and soon, Humble will join Arlington and Grapevine as the third Texas city to host one of their arcades. The new Round1 locations will be at Deerbrook Mall in Humble and Willowbrook Mall in Houston. The Deerbrook location will be the smaller of the two, taking up the space formerly occupied by Palais Royal in that mall. The Willowbrook location will ...
The following guest post from writer and editorial director JD Shadel is part of our Vanishing Culture series, highlighting the power and importance of preservation in our digital age. Read more essays online or download the full report now.
Once upon a time, everything on the Internet existed in one single location: on a Wal-Mart flat-pack desk in my childhood home. OK, that’s not technically accurate, but it felt very true to me then. When I sat on that height-adjustable ergonomic desk chair, the whole Internet seemed to rest on that particle-board desk, which sagged under the weight of the chonky desktop computer it held.
I first glimpsed the World Wide Web through an off-white monitor four times the size of my young skull. The first sound the Internet made was, of course, a screech—i.e., the symphonic shriek of dial-up. A kid in the hills of Appalachia, I turned up the volume knob on the clunky speakers to hear 19 or so screaming seconds of skooo skeee skooo skeee dooo skahhh skaaaaaaahhhh skahhhhhh on full blast.It made my mom cringe, which made me love it more. This was the fanfare for us early cybersurfers, a sound announcing that we were all logging on. And when this sound concluded, I saw this new world. Internet Explorer would load the web’s jittery rhythms: a seemingly endless sea of constantly looping GIFs that felt as cheeky and comical as they felt fresh.
For those who came of age with the early days of the World Wide Web as I did, that dial up shriek sounded like the future. And that future looked like the web’s emergent image filetype: the new Graphics Interchange Format combined multiple frames into a single file, displaying basic animations on repeat. It quickly came to define the dot-com aesthetic.
The limited bandwidth and capabilities of the day’s desktop computers helped GIFs transcend technical barriers to become an icon of the time. Soon, everything seemingly imaginable had been GIFed: dancing babies, dancing skeletons, and, of course, loads of cat GIFs. There were timely GIFs for everything from “The Simpsons” cartoons and e-pet like Tamagotchi keychains and a Furby blowing bubble gum (like those I have sampled on my writing website, which highlights a few dozen from my personal collection saved through the years).
As culture increasingly flourished on the Internet throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, culture increasingly looked like GIFs. GIFs became the first widely adopted computer art, the vernacular for the first-wave of Internet memes, and the way contemporary Internet users then expressed what we today might call our “personal brand.” If you click around a few personal pages from GeoCities, the first major platform that let individuals host their own websites (archived on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine), you’ll see how early Internet users would select a series of decorative GIFs like clip-art to express their identities and interests in these emerging virtual spaces. GIFs served functional purposes, too—they were used as spacers to define different sections of a page, for instance. They were also an animated way to invite someone to take some desired action, such as send you an email or sign your guestbook. On forums, GIFs even became avatars and the visual representation of our “netizen” personas at a time when not everyone was comfortable using real names or photos online.
But in my mind, nothing captures the creative spirit of the early-Internet era quite like the rich “under construction” subgenre, which I’ve cataloged in my own personal GIF collection I began archiving during the pandemic using GifCities.
Due to easier-to-use hosting services and the relative ease of learning HTML essentials, the landscape of personal websites in the web 1.0 felt handmade and do-it-yourself. If you were working on a new website but it wasn’t quite done, you’d be prone to make the incomplete version live and highlight the pages that weren’t finished with a litany of GIFs themed around building physical infrastructure—think animated flaggers holding signs, jittery construction workers operating jackhammers, and dump trucks and the like.
The physical construction metaphor speaks to the collective sense then that the World Wide Web was a place we were engaged in making together. Dropping a few construction GIFs on your page was a way to indicate “hey, this is a work in progress”—and it was a continual reminder that this new medium was something we could all play some small role in shaping. I don’t want to indulge in undue nostalgia. The early web was a capitalist place built on the backs of government-funded networking systems that had become accessible to folks outside academic circles with the World Wide Web. Many of our current challenges have roots in decisions made during the early Internet days. But there is a lesson inherent in that era that a lot of us have forgotten, as the Internet has started to feel more like a generic shopping mall as opposed to the digital public square it’s always been mythologized as.
Back then, there was a more palpable sense that we were all netizens—even the “noobs,” the irritating new kids like me logging on every evening from their parents’ computers. We were citizens of something collective. I might’ve been a nobody queer kid living on farmland in coal country. But when I got online, I was participating in building some corner of this wild thing we called the web. The web was never truly democratic, of course, but those early days did have a sense of openness and humanness that was apparent in its incompleteness. Whenever we advertised that the current reality was soon to change, we were drawing attention to the fact that we were all working on figuring out what this could become.
As with a lot of things on the web, GIFs were everywhere until the moment they weren’t.
As connection speeds increased and web 2.0 shifted toward a glossier and more sanitized user experience, early web GIFs faded into obscurity—looking as dated as the candy-like iMacs and the much clunkier but still colorful HP tower computer my family had.
Even so, GIFs would not die. While the file format itself may have faded into obscurity, video file formats that mimic the repeating nature of the original GIFs became somewhat incorrectly dubbed “GIFs” and embedded firmly in the meme stylings of Tumblr, Facebook, and soon every messaging app on the planet.
Today, the Internet doesn’t feel like a single place in our lives. The idea of having a designated space in your home where you engage with the digital world is old-fashioned. “I miss the computer room,” culture writer Kyle Raymond Fitzpatrick eulogized earlier this year in a cool short essay in their newsletter, The Trend Report. Many of us do our day jobs on laptops, are programmed to repeatedly check the notifications on our “phones”—which we primarily use to connect to Internet-enabled services rather than actually phone anyone—and if not that, we’re on our iPads or glancing at our smart watches. By referring to an era of the Internet when it was accessible only through designated corners of our physical lives, I’m showing my age—and also drawing attention to how quickly digital culture evolves as the technology fueling it changes.
Early GIFs off GeoCities websites are really only accessible thanks to the work of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine and the GifCities search engine that the Archive launched in 2016 in commemoration of its 20th anniversary. That, to me, underscores a fact about the modern Internet that we take for granted: with 5G common, including in many subway tunnels, and Wi-Fi in some jurisdictions a publicly funded utility freely accessible in certain cities’ streets, the Internet can seem like the air around us.
But the Internet isn’t invisible. It’s a very physical thing encompassing mind-boggling maps of wires and undersea cables, and networks including countless privately owned and operated data centers—and in this current era of the web, where so-called “artificial intelligence” is causing an up-tick in the environmental and human impacts of this technological infrastructure, it’s good to be reminded of the physicality of the digital world.
When somebody flips off the servers, as GeoCities did when it shuttered in the late 2000s, the world risks losing all artifacts of that culture if they’re not preserved. GIFs that seemed like they’d dance forever simply disappear—for example, if the only copy of the file existed on a floppy disk that was, say, burned in 1999.
This is, after all, the ephemeral truth of the Internet: if you don’t save it, even if it seems like it’s everywhere momentarily, it will just as quickly disappear.
When we preserve digital culture that would otherwise vanish, we don’t necessarily gain the keys to a richer creative future. Again, the web has largely moved on from early GIFs. I’ll be the first to admit that we don’t become more virtuous by being enthusiasts of outdated image types (in the same way that listening to music on vinyl records doesn’t necessarily make you cooler or a more conscious listener).
But when we preserve and revisit the remnants of digital culture’s recent history, it behooves us to remember that this networked realm, as imperfect and as frustrating as it can feel sometimes, is what we make it. And maybe if we realize that, we can start to again play a more active role in shaping a better collective future that many of us want. In the meantime, the GifCities database of millions of GIFs provides plenty of entertaining throwback material for your browsing pleasure. Heck, maybe it’ll even inspire your own GifCities-themed website, as it did with my recent website update. (I spoke to Chris Freeland, the Director of the Internet Archive’s Library Services, about it earlier this year. Yeah, it obviously features the bubble-gum blowing Furby.)
About the author
JD Shadel is a writer and editorial director from the Appalachian Mountains and now based in London, where they recently launched ESC KEY .CO, a new media outlet examining tech and modern life with skeptical curiosity. Their work often focuses on trends where the online and offline worlds blur. Before moving to the United Kingdom, they spent nearly a decade in Portland, Ore., where they freelanced widely as an editor and served as The Washington Post’s travel writer for one of America’s most consciously “weird” cities. Shadel launched the Future of Travel column for Condé Nast Traveler in 2023, serves as editor-at-large at Good On You, and has contributed to VICE, BBC News, Them, Bloomberg CityLab and other outlets. Their long-form reporting was named among VICE’s Best of 2017. They completed their MA with Distinction in international relations at the University of Exeter.
CLEARWATER, FL—Urging the middle school class to pay attention while he described the intimate process of revving the engine, throttling the clutch, and slamming the accelerator, local sex ed teacher Greg Flannery demonstrated to his class Wednesday how to drive a truck into an abortion clinic. “All right, kids, this might not make sense to you now, but one day you’ll find yourself in a situation where you’ll have to slam your car at full speed into the front of a Planned Parenthood,” said Flannery, who through giggles from his teenage students proceeded to show detailed diagrams, photos, and videos of reproductive health clinics that had been leveled into piles of smoldering wreckage. “First things first—put on your ski mask. Then, put the key in the ignition. And remember, safety first. Always have extra ammunition on hand in case the feds show up.” At press time, Flannery had reportedly separated the class by gender in order to explain the realities of killing an abortion doctor.
According to a new study, cognitively normal human brain samples collected at autopsy in early 2024 contained more tiny shards of plastic than samples collected eight years prior, with the average containing the equivalent of an entire standard plastic spoon. What do you think?
“When I die, I’m going to donate my brain to a picnic.”
Ryan Staviski, Corneal Surgeon
“Plassik? On my brame?”
Ton Venit, Rhinestone Applicator
“Now that you mention it, I do think about plastic a lot.”
Dear Old Man Who Bartered with My Cancer-Patient Daughter at the Community Yard Sale Fundraiser,
Thank you for attending the Alex’s Lemonade Stand community yard sale last Saturday. By “attending,” of course, I mean “looming over my ten-year-old daughter’s card table and haggling over the price of a sequined stuffed seal as if your Social Security payments depended on it.”
I imagine you saw the sign: ALL PROCEEDS DONATED TO CHARITY. The one my daughter painted with her one good hand while still hooked to a chemo pump like she’s the saddest science experiment ever.
Or maybe you noticed the giant cardboard cutout of her: bald head gleaming and feeding tube affixed to her nose like a fashion accessory from the Underworld’s spring/summer collection. The only thing better than having cancer is reminding the whole goddamn neighborhood about it with oversized props.
The table was covered with donated items: books, knickknacks, toys. Nothing priced over five dollars. This wasn’t Sotheby’s. This wasn’t even Goodwill. And yet, you, a grown man (and card-carrying member of AARP by my estimation) clutched a sequined stuffed seal like it was the Hope Diamond, and asked if I could knock it down from two dollars to one dollar.
You saw a child with cancer sitting next to a sign that screamed, “All this money will help kids like me not die,” and you thought, I think I’ll argue over the price of a mismatched salt shaker set.
When you woke up that morning and decided to show your face in public, did you think, You know what today needs? A child with cancer being forced to justify her pricing structure to me.
What is it that makes a functioning adult man look at a feeding tube and think, Ah, but what about my bottom line?
What were you going to do with that dollar you saved? Put it toward your retirement? Buy a hot dog at the Costco food court? Have you been saving up for a six-dollar latte, and my daughter’s blood cancer was in the way of your pumpkin spice destiny?
Or was it about principle? Were you staging a stand against price gouging at pediatric cancer fundraisers? History will not remember you as its hero. There will be no documentaries called The Man Who Saved Fifty Cents from Big Charity.
Don’t think I didn’t notice your wife trying to disappear into the bushes. She was shaking her head like she was trying to clear a swarm of bees, mouthing, I don’t even like him!
You stood there wearing cargo shorts with about sixteen functional pockets and an aggressive cologne and thought, These kids may be sick, but I still need to save a dollar so I can afford the early-bird special at IHOP. Do pancakes taste better after you make a bald child explain, “No, sir, the three-dollar stained-glass coaster set is not negotiable”?
I hope that sequined stuffed seal becomes a cursed object in your life. Its beady gaze will follow you around your house. Your granddaughter will pick it up, stare into the teal galaxies of its plastic eyes, and say, “Grandpa, this is the saddest toy I’ve ever seen. Did a dying kid give this to you?”
May the little gently used seal appear in your dreams. May it show up in strange places around your house: the bathroom mirror, your car dashboard, the freezer next to your generic-brand frozen waffles—its flip sequins spelling out: ALL PROCEEDS COULD HAVE GONE TO KIDS WITH CANCER, YOU SELFISH PRICK.
One day, when you shuffle off this mortal coil and stare into the abyss of whatever budget-tier afterlife awaits you, that fucking sequined seal will be there waiting. I hope it waddles up, its eyes sparkling teal and orange in the flames, and squeaks out, “Remember me, asshole?”
Back here in the mortal world, on the funeral home’s memorial page, I hope your family adds a link at the end of your obituary for people to make a donation to Alex’s Lemonade Stand in your dishonor.
Sincerely, Elizabeth Austin (The Mom Hosting the “Kick a Cheap Old Man for Charity” Booth at This Year’s Community Yard Sale Fundraiser)
In accordance with our informal tradition of updating documents every thirty years, whether they need it or not, our university is pleased to present this updated org chart that most accurately captures our system of governance (which management scientists term “Kafkaesque bureaucracy meets Lord of the Files,” though no one understands these references since we cut our literature requirements). Please click the image to enlarge for viewing, and if you don’t find yourself represented, definitely know that the exclusion was intentional.
President Donald Trump said that Americans could feel “some pain” from the emerging trade war triggered by his tariffs against Canada, Mexico, and China, with economists warning the duties on imports will likely reignite inflation. What do you think?
“If it’ll break through the numbness, I’m game.”
Jimmy Gadberry, Rope Strengthener
“Just let me know how much I should be contributing to my child’s egg fund.”
Mike Churchill, Cheese Critic
“Tariffs are a small price to pay for having to pay much larger prices.”
OTTAWA – Following a tumultuous weekend in which Donald Trump threatened Canada with steep tariffs on all goods, only to back down, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre angrily criticized the US president for bringing Canadians together right before his planned election campaign. “During these negotiations, President Trump’s actions led Canadians to unite in solidarity, and that […]
CHICAGO—Saying he ought to try standing up for himself every once and a while, sources reported Tuesday that local weak-will man Danny Reese did whatever the Cook County Circuit Court ordered him to do. “The judge tells him to stay 500 feet away from this place, stay 500 feet away from that place—and this pushover just sits there and takes it!” said courtroom spectator Drew Bernat, noting that anybody with even a little self-respect would speak up before agreeing to abide by the terms of a restraining order, attend mandatory drug counseling, and make regular child support payments. “You’d think at some point he’d grow a spine and at least cut off his ankle monitor. But nope, here he is, tail between his legs, not threatening to kill the defendant just because a judge has ordered him to have no contact with her.” At press time, sources confirmed Reese was so afraid of incurring the wrath of the court that he had voluntarily turned over his firearm to authorities without first firing a few rounds at the judge.
WASHINGTON—Complaining that all the extra income would likely bump him up to a higher bracket, President Donald Trump told reporters Tuesday he was worried that the day he spent working at McDonald’s while on the campaign trail would screw up his taxes. “Last year, my taxes were perfect, but this 1099 is going to send my earnings through the roof,” said the 45th and 47th president of the United States, adding that while he was accustomed to receiving significant refunds from the federal government, his paycheck from the fast food restaurant would likely throw everything off. “Sure, it was fun working the fryer and the drive-thru, but I’m not a full-time employee, so that self-employment tax is going to really screw me. And now I’m going to have to pay taxes in Pennsylvania. I should have just listened to my tax guy and taken cash.” At press time, reports confirmed Trump had opted to skip the hassle of filing his taxes and dissolve the IRS instead.
NORTH HEMPSTEAD, NY—Expressing relief after witnessing her become more confident and outgoing, sources confirmed Tuesday that a new preschool was really doing wonders for local mother Ellen Cline’s social skills. “Ever since preschool started back up after the holidays, Ellen is having fewer outbursts and is generally much happier,” said Cline’s aunt, Stacy French, noting that her niece often struggled with communication and interpersonal relationships since giving birth three years ago. “We were worried that she was lagging behind, but now she has all these friends her own age she gets to see [after she drops her son off at preschool]. She grabs her little bag and runs to the car because she’s so excited. Yesterday she was just beaming when she told me how one of her new pals likes the same TV show. It was so cute.” At press time, Cline was slumped on the floor screaming after learning preschool would be closed for a week due to spring break.
So far, nine HHSC employees have been fired for accessing without a “business” purpose the private information of Texans seeking public assistance that includes Medicaid and food stamps.
In brief: Today’s post discusses sea fog, of which there is plenty near the coast this morning. Beyond that, the forecast is proceeding pretty much as expected, with much warmer-than-normal weather for February expected through Saturday. Some sort of cold front arrives later on Sunday, probably, to bring somewhat cooler weather.
Sea fog
The closer you live to the coast, the greater the chance you’re experiencing sea fog this morning. This is caused by warmer air—such as we’re experiencing now, with air temperatures of about 70 degrees near the coast—moving over somewhat cooler nearshore waters in the Gulf. This fog forms when warmer air moves over the cooler waters, and the air temperature falls to the dew point temperature, saturating the air.
Note that air temperatures this morning are cooler right along the coast and just offshore, a key indicator that sea fog is possible. (Weather Bell)
A dense fog advisory is in effect until 9 am this morning, with visibility is some locations low as one-quarter of a mile. If you’re driving in this, please leave a little more space between vehicles, and use your low-beam lights. With warmer weather this week, fog will be possible in coastal areas through Friday or possibly even Saturday morning.
Tuesday
As noted in Monday’s forecast, the weather this week will vary little from day to day. We’ll see a persistent onshore flow all week, and this will lead to a warm and consistent pattern. High temperatures today will reach about 80 degrees, with partly sunny skies. Winds will be from the south at 5 to 10 mph. With dewpoints in the 60s, the air will feel somewhat sticky. Lows tonight will only fall into the upper 60s for most of the metro area.
Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday
Rinse and repeat. Expect warm days in the vicinity of 80 degrees, with partly to mostly sunny days, and mostly cloudy and warm nights. We can’t entirely rule out rain chances, but they’re quite low, perhaps on the order of 10 percent each day.
Expect a warm week ahead for Houston. (Weather Bell)
Saturday and Sunday
The first half of the weekend brings more of the same, however it now appears likely that some sort of front will push into the metro area on Sunday. The timing and strength are still to be determined, as well as the likelihood of rain with the front. At this point I’ll predict high temperatures in the low-80s on Saturday, a warm night, and highs near 80 degrees on Sunday with a modest chance of rain. Lows on Sunday night will fall into the 50s. All of this is in pencil, mind you.
Next week
With uncertainty about the strength of the front, and possibly a secondary push of cooler air mid-week, I don’t feel too confident about what to expect next week, except to say that it probably will feel more like February than this week does. I also think we’ll see more clouds and better rain chances. But as ever, the long-range details are fuzzy.
WASHINGTON—In an effort to patch things up in their relationship, billionaire Jeff Bezos reportedly changed The Washington Post‘s slogan to “Love You, Babe” Tuesday after getting into a fight with his fiancée, Lauren Sánchez. “As of now, these words of affection are emblazoned on The Post‘s homepage and on all copies of the newspaper, and they will remain there until the two of them make up,” said executive editor Matt Murray, adding that instead of the traditional black, the paper’s articles would be printed in lilac, which is reportedly Sánchez’s favorite color. “We’re hoping this is a small row that won’t last that long. A few months back they got into a big blowout, and we ended up having to publish an entire month’s worth of editorials about what a vibrant and sophisticated woman she is, plus a front page story about how their trip to Barbados was the vacation of a lifetime. But if this is just a disagreement about something trivial, we might be able to run a couple lifestyle features about the way the sunlight glints off her hair in the morning and leave it at that.” At press time, a groaning Murray confirmed that he was in for a difficult few days after seeing that the arrow in the Amazon logo had turned into a frown.
In brief: The forecast for this week is pretty boring, and unchanging. In fact, I give you permission not to check Space City Weather for a few days. We are going to be rather warm for February this week, with low rain chances. So this post addresses the question, is winter over?
The eastern half of Texas is already seeing mild weather this morning. (Weather Bell)
Winter update
Sunday was gorgeous, and it felt much more like spring than winter. And the truth is, the entirety of the coming week is going to be quite warm with daytime temperatures around 80 degrees and mild nights in the 60s. So it is natural to ask, is that it for winter this year in Houston?
That depends. As the calendar goes, winter in Houston lasts from December through February. So we’ve got a few more weeks to go. Based upon the questionable prognostications from Punxsutawney Phil, who saw his shadow during a ceremony on Sunday, we have six more weeks of winter. But what does the science of meteorology say?
As usual, we have few absolute answers. However, it does seem clear that Houston’s pattern will turn colder next week. Moreover, there is the potential for another significant outbreak of colder air during the second half of February. This is because our latest data indicates that the stratospheric polar vortex, which bottles cold air near the north pole, may split and allow some of this very cold air to come down into the mid-latitudes. The timing for this would be later in February, or early March.
So our advice is that, yes, this week is going to feel unseasonably warm for February. It’s definitely shorts-and-t-shirts weather. But don’t put away those sweaters just yet.
Monday
Temperatures in Houston this morning are generally in the lower 60s, and this is as cold as our weather is going to get until next Sunday or Monday. This pattern is due to a persistent onshore flow, and it’s not going to vary much this week. This kind of warmer weather at this time of year is supportive of sea fog, so there will be a chance of that most mornings this week. Highs today will reach about 80 degrees, with partly sunny skies. Lows tonight will drop into the mid-60s.
That is a consistent forecast for this week. (Weather Bell)
Tuesday through Friday
Not much changes for the rest of the week. Expect partly sunny days, with highs of around 80 degrees, and cloudy nights in the 60s. There is perhaps a 10 percent chance of rain each day. Winds will be from the south each day at about 10 mph. With dewpoints in the 60s, it will feel moderately humid. And that’s basically the forecast. I should take a holiday.
Saturday and Sunday
The weekend looks more or less the same, with highs of around 80 degrees, lows in the upper 60s, and a mixture of clouds and sunshine. Southerly winds may pick up a little bit on Saturday from the south. At some point a front is going to come trundling through, but it’s not clear to me whether that will happen on Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday.
Conditions should turn more seasonal across Texas next week. (Weather Bell)
Next week
Whenever said front arrives it will probably bring our first meaningful rain chances with it. The front will also usher in winter-like conditions back to Houston, probably driving low temperatures down into the 40s during the second half of next week. But the timing and intensity of such a cold snap remains pretty fuzzy, as we’re talking about a period 7 to 10 days from now.
WINDSOR, ON – Derryl Virkin, the sole Canadian who has been smuggling negligible amounts of fentanyl across the US border, has reported feeling “really flattered and kinda giddy but also kinda weird, eh?” in the wake of Trudeau’s recent announcement about a joint US-Canadian fentanyl task force. “It’s like, all of this for little old […]
2027 should be a big year for fans of Universal Classic Horror Films, as both Dracula and Frankenstein, both being released in 1931, should enter the public domain on January 1 of that year. But maybe Dracula's entry into to public domain may not be as soon as you might think.
“More than 50 interviews with Democratic leaders revealed a party that is struggling to define what it stands for, what issues to prioritize, and how to confront a Trump administration that is carrying out a right-wing agenda with head-spinning speed.” — New York Times
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In these terrifying times, the Democratic Party would like to assure you that there is nothing we hold more dear than democracy. Our nation’s core values are under attack, and standing up for what’s right takes bravery and courage. That’s why we, the Democrats, have decided to stay seated until we can figure out what to do.
We might take a stand at some point. A bold response isn’t completely off the table, but unfortunately, Elon Musk locked us out of the room with the table, and we haven’t been able to come to a consensus on which locksmith to call. Also, unfortunately, that’s the room with all of the Treasury Department’s payment information.
But we have not given up, and we will stand in this hallway and argue as long as necessary until we come up with a strategy. In the meantime, we have heard your demands for strong action. Some of you have called for a general strike to protest the Trump administration. We love that idea, with just a couple of minor tweaks. For example, what if, instead of a general strike, it was a national watch party of To Kill a Mockingbird?
Movie night aside, we recognize that our wavering response to Trump decimating the federal workforce is unsatisfactory. In our defense, we had absolutely no way of knowing that Trump was actually going to do all the things he said he would do, even though we told you throughout the election that democracy was on the line. In hindsight, we should have prepared more instead of just saying that to get votes.
But the past is the past. We promise to move forward and choose a strategy as soon as we figure out how to set up a projector in this hallway, because several of us have PowerPoints to share. We can’t agree on whether we should fight to uphold the rights of minorities, LGBTQIA people, women, immigrants, and the disabled OR exercise our constitutional right to sit with our eyes closed and our fingers in our ears while yelling, “LALALALA—CAN’T HEAR YOU.”
Speaking of the Constitution, we hear your criticism that we haven’t done anything about Trump letting Elon remove it from the National Archives and metaphorically (fingers crossed) blast that hallowed document into space on one of his exploding rockets. Look, we want to do the right thing about that and about all the other issues, but we just can’t agree on how. We’re organizing a rock, paper, scissors tournament as we speak, but that takes time.
Maybe you could help us? What should we do? Hold a hard line and vote unanimously against Trump’s cabinet picks? Throw lawsuits at every breach of the Constitution? Tell Elon that he won an award for creating the funniest meme to lure him into Conference Room A at the Treasury Department and then barricade him in there?
These are all great ideas, and we are definitely adding them to the list of possibilities for us to bicker about. But listen, closer to the midterms, we’re definitely going to do something.
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