#Kento #Rowen #RoninWarriors

Back in the day, if you wandered into the parking area behind Building 11 on the original Redmond Microsoft campus, you would find a very large satellite dish antenna. This antenna was used for receiving video signals, such as cable television feeds for distribution to the Redmond campus. One purpose was to provide cable TV service for internal development and testing to teams like the Windows Media Center team and later the Xbox One team.

The satellite dish antenna was a Simulsat-5 which was capable of gathering signals from 35 satellites simultaneously. (The record during this particular antenna’s lifetime was 26 simultaneous satellites.) It was a stationary antenna, not capable of changing its orientation. It went into service in 1997, was upgraded a few times, until it was finally decommissioned in 2017 when all of its tasks had been subsumed by a satellite dish antenna at the Studio C building.

Fun trivial about the satellite dish antenna:

In the summer, bees would nest in the feedbox (the thingie at focus of the satellite dish antenna that collected the signal), so you had to be careful when doing work there to avoid getting stung.

It wasn’t fun in the winter either, because the enclosure for the electronic equipment (known as the “doghouse”) would get filled with spiders who enjoyed the warmth from the equipment.

Snow had to be kept off the antenna for it to continue receiving signals, so whether or not Microsoft formally declared a snow closure, somebody had to remain on site to clear off the snow.

In 2007, there was a mystery to be solved: Occasionally, there would be interference that disrupted the signal. After some investigation, it was discovered that the source was electromagnetic interference generated by the pressure washers that were used to clean the parking lot. The water connection port was at the rear of Building 11, right near the satellite dish antenna. The solution was to do parking lot cleaning at night (when there was less demand for video signals), or if doing it during the day, to put the water pressure generators far away from the antenna.

My favorite piece of trivia is that in addition to being able to control the satellite dish antenna via the front panel, you could also control it over an RS-232 serial port. The serial line ran from the satellite dish to a Toshiba model 400CDT Satellite Pro (get it? Satellite pro?) running MS-DOS. Here’s an archival photo, with some identifying stickers digitally erased.

 

The post Some small stories about the giant satellite dish antenna that was behind Microsoft Building 11 appeared first on The Old New Thing.

[Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.]

This is the Historic Fourth Ward Park in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s got all the stuff you could want a park to have: landscaped walkways, benches, grassy fields, a playground, and even a splashpad and amphitheater. The focal point is the 5-acre or half-a-hectare pond running through the middle. But this pond isn’t just for looks. In fact, this park would never have been built at all except for the fact that it solves a serious flooding problem. For years, the Fourth Ward neighborhood struggled with drainage and flooding issues. In the 90s, the city came up with a plan: a massive underground tunnel to carry runoff away. Don’t get me wrong. I love flood tunnels. I have a whole video about them. But they’re not always the right call. One engineer in Atlanta had a better idea - a solution that would address the flooding issue for a lower cost, and significantly beautify the area, a rare opportunity to improve form and function.

You’ve almost certainly seen a stormwater pond, whether you realized that’s what it was or not. They kind of blend into the urban landscape to the point where they’re basically hiding in plain sight. Some have been turned into amenities in places like parks where the primary purpose is disguised. But I think it’s fair to say that no other single solution has been installed more extensively in modern cities or delivered greater cumulative protection against runoff than the humble stormwater pond. Let me show you how they work with a model I built in the garage and some of the ways these ponds are evolving in the 21st century. I’m Grady, and this is Practical Engineering.

The problem that stormwater ponds solve is pretty easy to understand. Storms bring water, and that stormwater has to go somewhere. Spray a garden hose on some grass and some concrete, and just watch what happens. How much of that water soaks in, and how much runs off the surface? Depending on the type of soil below the grass (and the duration of the experiment), the answers are pretty different for the two situations. Let’s do a little development to make this clearer.

Say we buy up this piece of land on the edge of the city. Add roads and sidewalks; some commercial parcels with parking lots; a park with a gazebo, tennis and basketball courts; apartments and homes with roofs, driveways, patios, and sheds. Before our project, this entire area was natural ground - soil that could absorb at least some amount of precipitation, allowing it to infiltrate into the earth, recharging aquifers. Now, it’s covered in all kinds of impervious surfaces. Let’s see what happens when it rains.

Essentially, two things can happen to rainfall when it hits the ground. It either soaks in or it runs off. How much of each happens depends on quite a few factors. For soil, it matters what kind. Sandy soils with large particles and interstitial spaces can absorb a lot. Clays, with microscopic particles and almost no voids, very little. It also matters how much water is already in the soil. If it’s wet before the storm, there’s less room for more water to flow in. And as soil absorbs water throughout a storm, its ability to infiltrate more decreases. Any water that can’t infiltrate the soil will run off into creeks or rivers nearby. But, for impervious surfaces like asphalt, concrete, and roofs, there aren’t really any variables. Essentially all the water that falls on them runs off. When it rains in our new development, all the runoff still flows to the same place: maybe into a channel that runs to a creek that eventually connects to a larger river. It’s just that now, there’s a lot more of it.

As I mentioned, depending on the type of soil and the size of the storm, the difference between pre- and post-development conditions can be pretty significant. But a single development usually only represents a small portion of the watershed for a creek or river. So, even with all these new impervious surfaces, the marginal increase in water levels during a storm downstream may be fairly insignificant. But zoom out to the scale of an entire city, and the problem becomes obvious. It’s basically all impervious. Development left unchecked can dramatically increase the frequency and severity of flooding because when it rains, a much greater proportion of that rain runs off into creeks and rivers instead of soaking into the ground. So, most cities don’t let development go unchecked, at least from a flooding standpoint.

Rules vary a lot among cities and across the world, but the most basic requirement you’ll see in most places is pretty simple: To get a building permit to develop a piece of property, you’re going to have to limit the peak runoff from the property to pre-development levels. That means that for a given storm, on a given site, you can’t have a higher flow rate after development than it would have been beforehand. Most development is going to involve adding impervious surfaces, whether they’re roads, buildings, sidewalks, or parking lots. And that means more runoff. You can’t just get rid of the water (in most cases), so somehow, you’re going to have to store it and release it gradually to keep the peak flow below pre-development levels. And the simplest way to do it is a pond.

This is my garage-built stormwater pond. It’s just an acrylic flume I use for some of my demos. But I’ve built this outlet structure that should slow down the water, backing it up into the pond.

I’m measuring flow with a meter on the inflow pipe. I also have a level sensor measuring the volume of discharge over time in this tank below. These are both feeding into an Arduino so we can look at the data.

I’m going to simulate a storm event using this valve. So, this is a hand-crafted, artisan inflow event. A typical storm has kind of a bell-shaped runoff curve. Starts slow, builds to a peak as more and more of the watershed contributes, and then tapers off as the storm moves away. And you can see that my stormwater pond captured some of that peak. Because of the outlet structure (that just has a small hole at the bottom right now), the discharge from the pond is much lower than the inflow. And, after a little post-processing, I can show you the data.

This is a plot of flow versus time. Inflow is the solid line. Outflow is the dashed line. The units are arbitrary since this is just for comparison, but I did calibrate the sensors so they match as closely as possible. You can see that the area under both curves is the same. Just as much water came out of the pond as into it. But the peak outflow rate was a lot lower. And that’s a big deal.

The peak of the flood is everything. That’s what determines how high the water rises downstream. It correlates closely with the total amount of damage that occurs. So most drainage rules in cities don’t really focus on total volume; they focus on the peak flow rate leaving the site. And you can see that the peak coming out of my pond is significantly lower than the peak going into it.

So great, the pond did its job. Problem solved right? But you know this wouldn’t be an engineering challenge if there wasn’t something to balance. You can imagine a pond with no outlet at all that just fills up with runoff. In that case, the peak discharge is zero. We’ve maximized the performance, right? Obviously not, since that storage is expensive, not only in the construction cost to build it but also in the valuable real estate it takes up on the site. So really, the optimal solution is the one that uses the least volume necessary, while still keeping the peak discharge below what it would have been without any development at all.

The problem is storms vary in intensity and duration. So most of the time, you’re going to have to show that your design works for several different storm events of varying magnitude. A little hole at the bottom of the outlet structure might work for a small one. However, for a larger storm, you can see that my pond fills up pretty quickly and eventually overflows. Sure, you could make the pond bigger to hold more volume, but we’re just trying to trim the peak off the flow rate to match pre-development conditions. We can release more water from the pond; we just have to be careful about how much.

When I remove this conspicuous piece of tape from my outlet, you can see that I’ve already built this in. I have a larger hole higher up on the structure, so it can release more during more intense storms. Let me simulate that now. You can see as the water reaches that level, the flows from the two holes combine, and we get more water released from the pond, so it doesn’t overflow. Here’s the graph of the small storm again. And here’s the graph for the big one. You can see that in both cases, we’re not completely eliminating the flow. The pond and outlet structure are just shaving off the peaks to reduce the impact of the impervious surfaces. But that can be a tricky thing to do when you have a lot of different storm magnitudes to consider.

Take a look at a stormwater ponds in the wild and you’ll start to notice the wide variety of outlet designs. Placing the various orifices or weirs is kind of an art as much as it is a science, because every site is different and every city has different rules. An engineer has to tune the structure to balance the amount of storage with the additional runoff from all the impervious surfaces. I added a third hole on top of my structure so it can handle a really big storm. The flow through all three holes in the outlet combines to create more flow out of the pond. Here’s the graph of that run. You can see the discharge is much higher, but it’s still below the peak inflow.

But, this gets quite a bit more complicated, because stormwater runoff doesn’t just create flooding. It also carries pollution. We think of rain as cleansing, but the stuff rain washes off the landscape has to go somewhere. That means everything from trash, oil, dog poop, sediment, road salt, and a whole lot more ends up in creeks and waterways. A lot of the contaminants in stormwater are either attached to sediment (or are sediments themselves). So stormwater ponds can serve double duty, reducing flooding and downstream contamination. You’re not going to get the water really clean like at a wastewater plant, but the treatment for suspended solids can be as simple as letting water sit still for a day or two so bits of stuff can settle to the bottom. You may have heard the terms detention pond or retention pond. We’ve been talking about detention ponds that simply slow down runoff, but they eventually empty out. Retention ponds are related, but they keep some of that water stored permanently, and it makes a big difference when it comes to treatment. Let me show you in the model.

I added a bunch more mica powder to the water so you can easily see how the water flows through the pond. Contamination is worst during the beginning of a storm, sometimes called the “first flush,” when streets and surfaces are dirtiest. You can see in my model, before the pond starts filling, everything suspended in the water is making it through to the outlet. The water is moving pretty quickly, and it’s relatively turbulent, there’s just not enough time for anything to settle out. But I can put a plug in the bottom outlet of the structure and prefill the pond so it acts like a retention facility. Now when I turn on the pump to the same flow rate, you can see a big difference. There’s a lot of turbulence where the water flows in, but things slow way down toward the outlet. It’s still just a scale model, so most of the mica powder is still suspended at the end, but you can imagine if we scaled this up so the water took several hours or more before reaching the outlet, most of the solids in the flow would have enough time to settle out.

And retention ponds have other benefits too. They help with groundwater recharge by giving water more time to soak in, and they often look nicer, since water features are an amenity, and these are often landscaped like any other pond you might intentionally install on a site. But, obviously, there’s a tradeoff here. You get cleaner water out, but you need a bigger pond, since some of the volume is already taken up before a storm arrives. However, there is a way to have your pond-cake and eat it, too.

Outlet structures don’t have to be passive like my demo here. Imagine if you could actively control how much water flows out of the pond based on sensors and weather forecasts. You could hold water in the pond for longer periods of time when there isn’t too much rain, improving the quality of the treatment, and then pre-drain the pond ahead of a storm, freeing up that space for the next runoff event. This is known as Continuous Monitoring and Adaptive Control - it’s basically “smart” stormwater management. It’s a pretty cool idea that’s only just starting to catch on in cities, but it has disadvantages too. One is disease vector control. Because there’s no stable pool, you can’t reliably stock fish to eat mosquito larvae, so there are limits on how long you can hold water before you have to drain the pond. It’s also quite a bit more technically sophisticated, so there’s a tradeoff there too. Usually, these types of systems are operated by specialized companies that install, manage, and maintain them. Some even sell the capacity on an open marketplace, allowing developers to buy credits in lieu of on-site ponds. This stuff gets pretty creative - addressing the lot-level needs of individual developments with larger, watershed-scale outcomes. And in fact, they’re often part of a larger idea called regional detention.

Even though on-site detention or retention is great in theory, it can be messy in practice: small lots don’t have room for meaningful storage, building dozens of tiny basins inevitably leads to uneven maintenance, the small pipes and outlets of minor ponds are more susceptible to clogging, and in some cases, they can actually make flooding worse. You could see on my graphs that detention lowers the peak at each site, but it also delays it. If many basins are designed with similar outlet controls, their attenuated peaks can arrive all at once at a confluence downstream, spiking the creek level worse than if there were no detention at all.

Water quality benefits are hit-or-miss, too, because performance depends on how each little system is built and maintained. So, there are cases where developers get together or a city or drainage district solves the problem at a regional scale, building a single, larger facility that can handle the runoff from multiple sites. By routing excess runoff to a shared basin (or a network of them), you gain real storage volume, coordinated release rates that match downstream capacity, and professional, centralized upkeep. It also lets you optimize water-quality treatment and pipe sizes across the area instead of overbuilding each parcel. Keep the small storms where they fall for infiltration and local benefits; send the larger pulses to regional detention so the watershed sees a calm, controlled hydrograph instead of a patchwork of ponds releasing a chorus of overlapping peaks.

I should make clear that detention and retention are far from the only stormwater management tools. Regional geology and hydrology often drive the design. I live near Austin, which has strict environmental rules because of the Edwards Aquifer. Where the limestone reaches the surface, contaminated runoff can easily enter the groundwater. So many sites in Austin require filtration ponds that actually pass water through a layer of sand before it’s discharged downstream, removing pollutants before they can reach the groundwater. I’ve talked about permeable pavement in a previous video, and there are a lot more solutions out there. Many civil engineers spend their entire careers solving urban stormwater puzzles, trying to balance the important watershed functions with the challenge of flooding and pollution. Detention and retention ponds are just one piece of it. Part park, part plumbing, mostly hiding in plain sight, they are often carefully tuned pieces of infrastructure that help keep the city’s head above water.

Police and fire department officials attributed the excess overtime spending to an inadequate number of personnel and unexpected weather events. 

In brief: Today’s post recaps historic cold in Florida this morning and the snowstorm in the Carolinas yesterday. We also take a closer look at the Raleigh-Durham area specifically, which saw relatively little snow compared to the rest of North Carolina and why that happened.

Florida freeze & Carolina snow

Let’s talk first about Florida.

In Jacksonville, the temperature hit 22 degrees for the second time this winter (last seen on January 16th). The wind chill got as cold as 11 degrees there this morning for the first time since January 2014.

In Orlando, the morning low of 24 degrees was last seen on December 29, 2010 and prior to that Christmas Eve 1989. For Daytona Beach, the 23° morning low was coldest since Christmas 1989. This was also the coldest February morning on record there. Vero Beach and Sanford also had their coldest February mornings back to the 1940s or 1950s as well.

On the Gulf side it was not quite as cold, as Tampa hit 28° (coldest since 2010), Sarasota hit 36° (coldest since 2022), and Fort Myers bottomed out at 34° this morning (coldest since 2018).

The 30° low in West Palm Beach was the coldest since Christmas Day 1989. Wind chills got down to 20° as well.

For Miami, the morning low of 35° was the coldest since January 10, 2010, when they also hit 35 degrees. Prior to 2010, it last happened on January 21, 1985, when it was 34° in Miami. The wind chill of 26 degrees in Miami at 7 AM appears to be the first time that’s happened since the great cold outbreak of Christmas 1989.

For Key West it was only the 5th time in the last 10 years they’ve hit 52° or colder.

Overall, this was a top tier, borderline hall of fame cold outbreak for Florida.

Carolinas snow

Yesterday’s snowstorm was rather amazing for portions of the Carolinas, with some places seeing historic snow totals.

The highest totals I could find were near Faust, NC north of Asheville, where 22.5 inches fell and Peletier, NC, which is just inland from Emerald Isle and just west of Morehead City where 19.5 inches fell. 19 inches was reported near New Bern, NC in Olympia and in Reelsboro, just east of there. It would appear that this is the modern storm of record for portions of southeast North Carolina. New Bern’s previous snowstorm record was 15.5 inches in January 1965. Closer to Wilmington and Myrtle Beach, it was the largest snowstorm since 1989.

Farther inland, Charlotte’s 11.3 inches was the largest snowstorm there since 2004. 10.3 inches was measured in Greensboro, the largest snow there since December 2018.

The RDU snow desert

Interestingly, if you look back at the forecasts ahead of the storm, the Raleigh-Durham area was expected to see 8 to 12 inches of snow, roughly. In reality, they ended up closer to 2 to 5 inches. What the heck happened? In snowstorms like this, you often get these significant mesoscale type impacts that take place. In other words, it’s stuff happening at the small scale that causes outsized impacts.

What seems to have happened yesterday is that the Raleigh-Durham area ended up under a band of sinking air, or subsidence, in between two areas of rising air, one inland and one closer to the developing coastal storm itself. As these transitions to coastal storms happen, you’ll occasionally see that happen. This allowed for snow to accumulate more rapidly inland and near the developing storm before the storm blew up and dumped snow on everyone. There were hints of this in the modeling if you squinted hard enough, which is easy to do when you’re analyzing an event after the fact. But there was nothing clear cut that said the RDU area would be snow-deserted for so long. But if you look at the vertical velocity forecast from Saturday’s 12z NAM model, you can indeed see that basically happening.

You aren’t going to look at this and say, “Raleigh is going to get no snow,” but it does at least show a slightly better visual of the potential of a vertical velocity minima/subsidence in the atmosphere that would “gap” an area from seeing heavier snow. It’s not as if this was clearly defined or setup the day before. There were hints of something down toward Fayetteville or the Pee Dee in South Carolina on Friday morning. That shifted closer to the Triad with Friday afternoon’s model guidance. But you aren’t going to look at that alone and sketch a forecast that granular in nature and feel confident. It’s just the challenging nature of these snowstorms.

Maybe they were up at the bingo hall last night cheating at bingo? #CowboyWho

Content warning:Racist depiction of Indian/Native American/First Nations People

---

Hey, come on in here just a second. What's your name? Steve? Come on, have a seat. Look, Steve, eh, this Indian thing just isn't working out. We're not gonna do it anymore. #CowboyWho

Orange Pekoe!
Orange Pekoe?
Orange Pekoe!
Oragen Pekoe?
I swear by it!
You swear by it?
and Lewies says that Phylis says that Sybil once had some Earl Grey at her place, and two out of three were delighted.
Well ... I don't go for those exotic teas.
#CowboyWho

The latest tranche of files reveal new details about the extent to which key members of President Donald Trump's inner circle were interacting with Jeffrey Epstein for years after he was initially arrested and convicted.

MONTREAL – Experts are sounding alarms about the new film Is This Thing On, starring Will Arnett, warning how its depiction of a newly divorced man doing stand-up comedy to process his failed marriage could trigger a dangerous surge in cases of divorced men doing stand-up comedy. “The world of stand-up was already flooded with […]

The post Experts warn new film about divorced man doing stand-up may lead to more divorced men doing stand-up appeared first on The Beaverton.

Based on a true story. It wasn’t me endlessly defrosting and refreezing chicken. I’m so paranoid about salmonella that I’ll cross the road to avoid a Chick-fil-A.

The post A big know-it-all appeared first on Bad Machinery.

Frank, one more crack like that, and I’ll…

The post Pacers PA Announcer Just Muttering ‘Jesus Christ’ Over And Over appeared first on The Onion.

Starbucks is reintroducing tiers to its loyalty program as part of a bid to entice consumers to visit more often, with the company claiming the current system doesn’t properly reward its most loyal customers. What do you think?

The post Starbucks Reintroduces Tiers To Loyalty Program appeared first on The Onion.

LOS ANGELES—As they stared intently at their phones and pretended not to notice the steady rhythm of smacks echoing through the locker room, the Los Angeles Lakers were reportedly trying their best to act casual Tuesday while LeBron James spanked his son Bronny in full view of the team. “Wow, yikes, he’s really laying into the kid,” said a visibly uncomfortable Marcus Smart, kneading his neck with a massage gun to block out the sound of Bronny—pants dropped, bent over his father’s knee—begging to be set down while LeBron angrily slapped his bare buttocks over and over. “Not entirely sure what happened, but I think Bronny cussed at his mom or something? I don’t know, not my business, but I’m sure LeBron’s got his reasons. This is the NBA, and at this level you really can’t be disobeying or back-talking like that.” At press time, a sniffling, teary-eyed Bronny was reportedly seen exiting the facility after LeBron ordered him to go to his room and think about what he had done.

The post Rest Of Lakers Trying To Act Casual While LeBron James Spanks Bronny appeared first on The Onion.

CHICAGO—Saying he couldn’t remember the last time an immigration raid had been so convenient, fast, or fun, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Mark Hammond reportedly scored an easy win Monday when he successfully deported his own family.

The 45-year-old ICE official told reporters he had “hit the jackpot” when he realized that because his wife of over a decade had been born in Guatemala and crossed the border with her parents as a 3-year-old child, he could just wake up, meet his arrest quota first thing in the morning, and then have the remainder of the day to slack off.

“I knew about Maria’s immigration status when we got married—the crazy thing is that I hadn’t thought of deporting her until now,” said Hammond, adding that the whole process, which included kicking down his house’s front door, drawing a gun on his terrified spouse, and zip-tying his two young children, was completed in “record time.” “It was awesome. I was able to do the raid without leaving my home and ship my family off to an immigrant detention center all before 9 a.m.”

“Now I have the whole rest of my day to terrorize other immigrants,” Hammond added from behind his mask. “Of course, the best part is I’ll actually be able to fucking relax when I get home.”

According to sources, while many of Hammond’s colleagues said they were happy for him, several expressed jealousy that he had the foresight to marry someone who was not born an American citizen. It must be nice, they suggested, that he could simply snap his fingers and walk down his own hallway to where there were two kids named Javier and Lucia whom he could tackle, put in headlocks, and throw into an unmarked van as they desperately screamed for help.

Hammond, who said he appreciated having several Department of Homeland Security officers show up to help him arrest his family and permanently expel them from the country, expressed regret that the heavily armed men who had worked so hard to block off the surrounding roads with armored tanks, throw tear gas at his terrified neighbors, and land a helicopter on his roof “didn’t get a piece of the action.”

“Even though I loved how chill today was, deporting my own flesh and blood was almost too easy,” said Hammond, adding that he actually found himself bored as he grabbed his wife, yelled at her to “get on the fucking ground,” and then slammed her into a wall. “Don’t get me wrong, it was fun to throw flash-bang grenades into my kids’ rooms and threaten to kill their mom while calling her a dirty Guatemalan bitch, but I was really hoping I’d get to use lethal force at least once.”

“But hey, there’s always next time,” Hammond continued. “I happen to know the kids’ abuela lives right down the street.”

The post ICE Agent Scores Easy Win By Deporting Own Family appeared first on The Onion.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegeth’s time overseeing the nation’s largest governmental agency has proven contentious owing to frequent security leaks, norm violations, and attacks on journalists. The Onion sat down with the military veteran and former Fox News host to discuss his tenure so far.

The Onion : Mr. Secretary, thank you for joining us. If you could invade any country, what would it be?

Hegseth: Great question! I’d start with a two-week campaign in Colombia, a coup in Thailand…ooh, and maybe a covert operation in Cappadocia—I still haven’t been.

How do you plan on enforcing your new grooming standards for service members? 

At the start of every day, troops will be required to rise from their barracks and come give me a little kiss. If it’s scratchy, they’re fired. No bullshit, no exceptions.

Describe your vision for the future of America’s military. 

The beach volleyball scene from Top Gun, but the ball is a severed head.

Can you explain how the physical fitness requirements are changing? 

No one’s allowed to be taller than me.

What do you have against DEI programs? 

They make men pay a $20 cover while women drink for free. Does that sound fair to you?

Do you have any concerns about the U.S. military’s combat readiness? 

Every time I step into a barracks, I’m immediately duct-taped, covered in cake makeup, given a brassiere and rosy red lips, and then forced to strut my stuff before an adoring public. If that doesn’t tell you something’s wrong, I don’t know what will.

How do you get enough protein throughout your day? 

I signed up for the Farmer’s Dog and said I was a 200-pound German shepherd named Beast Mode.

Switching topics: What part of the U.S. Constitution says it’s acceptable to use the military against American civilians? 

Page 310 of Project 2025.

Do you regret any of your tattoos? 

I got one with Lisa Loeb lyrics back when I was going through a total Lilith Fair phase. I keep
it as a reminder that tastes change.

Have you ever actually taken another man’s life? 

I’ve got some pretty impressive dents in my truck’s grille, but I’d be lying if I said I remembered what made them.

That’s not really water is it? 

No, it’s blue Powerade with enough vodka in it to make it clear.

Has your relationship with your mother recovered since last year’s leaked email wherein she called you an “abuser of women”? 

I’m sure she meant that as a compliment.

What would you say to the people who claim the changes you’ve implemented are racist, sexist, and transphobic? 

Thank you.

Would you ever consider running for office? 

No, no. President Trump has assured me that, when the time comes, a campaign won’t be necessary.

The post The Onion’s Exclusive Interview With Pete Hegseth appeared first on The Onion.

The happy couple wed Saturday in the presence of four loving guests and 176 indifferent ones.

The post Mia Cutler and Xavier Carrasco appeared first on The Onion.

Priced at $1.5 million, this two-bedroom bungalow will send a clear message to every working-class family still in the neighborhood that their days are truly numbered.

Reference #7086

The post The Beginning Of The End appeared first on The Onion.

WASHINGTON—Decrying the un-American nature of any activity intended to provide amusement or the slightest bit of diversion, conservatives across the country announced an immediate boycott Tuesday of all forms of entertainment. “The insidious liberal bias in music, movies, literature, and television is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Nashville, TN, resident Drew Cardona, one of the millions of conservatives nationwide seen dragging trash cans overstuffed with books, laptops, and artwork to the edge of their driveway, not to mention others observed in groups setting fire to piles of game consoles. “Leftist ideology has tainted literally every form of expression. I posted a video of me backing over a guitar with my truck, but even making a video somehow felt too progressive, so I destroyed my phone too. I don’t even fantasize about anything anymore. Who knows if my own imagination has been contaminated by leftists? I mean, whatever happened to decent people just sitting perfectly still and engaging with nothing?” At press time, the nation’s conservatives had decided to make an exception for certain Facebook memes.

The post Conservatives Boycott All Forms Of Entertainment appeared first on The Onion.

Wendy lit the stove to heat a pot of tomato soup. She turned to grab a wooden spoon and gasped. Two little girls in smocked dresses stood in the doorway.

“Come play with us,” one said.

“I’m making lunch,” Wendy whispered.

“We want you to play with us,” the other girl said. They stared at Wendy. Unblinking. Evil. “Come play Monopoly Junior.”

“Why can’t the two of you play together?” Wendy asked.

“We want to play with you,” they said in unison. “Can we have a snack?”

“I’m literally making lunch!” Wendy sobbed.

Wendy stood outside Room 217. She took the passkey from her pocket and slid it in the lock. Inside, the bathroom door was ajar.

It was in there. She could feel it. She crept in.

There stood a woman: bloated stomach, sagging breasts swaying like ancient cracked punching bags, glassy-eyed, hair dry and wild, pale, lips pulled back in an ugly grimace. Wendy screamed.

It was a mirror. Self-care had fallen to the wayside since Danny was born.

Also, there was a dead body rotting in the bathtub.

The most frightening thing, vaporous and unmentioned, was that all of Wendy’s old drinking symptoms had come back. Stumbling barefoot down the Overlook’s icy front walk, impractical heels in hand, mumbling about nachos. Asking Jack if he’d still love her if she had no ears. Dancing in a miniskirt and pink cowboy boots to the refrain of “Sweet Caroline” coming through the static on the old radio in the kitchen, shouting, “So good! So good! So good!”

Wendy woke from a thin, uneasy sleep to a humming sound. Someone was running the elevator in the deserted hotel. Danny’s hand gripped hers tightly as they followed Jack out into the dark hall. The elevator was coming down. The doors opened. The car was empty.

“What’s that?” Danny asked, pointing to the elevator floor. Confetti and party streamers littered the platform; the colors faded to pale pastels with age.

“Someone should vacuum this…” Jack said.

“Yeah, someone should,” Wendy agreed.

A silence hung in the deserted hallway.

“Anyway, I’m gonna hit the hay.” Jack turned and left, Danny on his tail.

Wendy got the vacuum and cleaned up the mess from the ghost party, crunching three Unisom tablets between her teeth, relishing the dry, bitter taste that spread across her tongue. Chewing Unisom makes you fall asleep faster. She had read it somewhere. You should kill Jack. What, who said that?

All work and no play makes Wendy look like the rotting bathtub corpse. All work and no play makes Wendy look like the rotting bathtub corpse (All work and no play makes Wendy look like the rotting bathtub corpse.)

“All work and no play makes Wendy look like the rotting bathtub corpse? All work and no play makes Wendy look like the rotting bathtub corpse.”

All work and no play makes Wendy look like the rotting bathtub corpse.

Jack and Danny each took Wendy by a leg and dragged her into the pantry.

“It’s the best thing for her,” Jack said. “Like putting her in jail.”

Wendy began to stir. Jack swung the door shut, fumbling with the bolt. Breathing fast, Jack leaned against the locked door. “We’re safe out here, Doc,” he told Danny. “She won’t be able to get out.”

On the other side of the half-inch of solid oak, Wendy made a nest out of the sugar sacks and began thumbing through a magazine, humming to herself, luxuriating in the unexpected alone time.

Wendy danced in the Colorado Lounge. She had no idea how long she had been there in the ballroom. Time ceased to exist. A man pressed a frosty glass of gin in her hand. “Thank you, sir,” she said. Suddenly, she reached out and touched the man’s shoulder. “You’re Grady. You’re the caretaker.”

Grady’s face remained blankly polite. “No, you’re the caretaker, ma’am. You’ve always been the caretaker. You’ll always be the caretaker. You have to be the caretaker.”

“But you—”

“I said you have to be the caretaker! Because of maternal instinct.”

Jack hobbled into the bathroom, carrying Danny. He slammed the door behind him and turned the lock. A mallet crashed through, splintering a wide hole in the door. “Open that door!” Wendy raged. “Come out and take your medicine!” She reached through the splintered hole to turn the lock, shrieking when Jack sliced her hand with a razor blade.

Spent, Wendy retreated and fell exhausted into an armchair, the mallet thudding to the floor beside her. Minutes passed.

The bathroom lock clicked. The door cracked open. Jack and Danny peered out.

“Can you make us a snack?”

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I think I could do about 100 of these if there were a market for a McRib compilation and no such thing as copyright lawsuits.

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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cracked down on lead-based products—including lead paint and leaded gasoline—in the 1970s because of its toxic effects on human health. Scientists at the University of Utah have analyzed human hair samples spanning nearly 100 years and found a 100-fold decrease in lead concentrations, concluding that this regulatory action was highly effective in achieving its stated objectives. They described their findings in a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

We've known about the dangers of lead exposure for a very long time—arguably since the second century BCE—so why conduct this research now? Per the authors, it's because there are growing concerns over the Trump administration's move last year to deregulate many key elements of the EPA's mission. Lead specifically has not yet been deregulated, but there are hints that there could be a loosening of enforcement of the 2024 Lead and Cooper rule requiring water systems to replace old lead pipes.

“We should not forget the lessons of history. And the lesson is those regulations have been very important,” said co-author Thure Cerling. “Sometimes they seem onerous and mean that industry can't do exactly what they'd like to do when they want to do it or as quickly as they want to do it. But it's had really, really positive effects.”

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The pressure for Andrew to testify is growing after the latest release of documents from the U.S. Justice Department's investigation into Epstein revealed further unsavory details about links between the two men.

Yes, you heard right. The rumors are true! It really IS a Giant Spider Invasion of savings at Menards!

But more important than that, we’ve got Movie Sign on four all-new episodes of MST3K, with Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett and Mary Jo Pehl returning in the not-too-distant future for Mystery Science Theater 3000: The RiffTrax Experiments!

In addition to the return of the Sci-Fi Channel era cast, it’s a return to Minneapolis for production, including practical sets and props.

The Kickstarter campaign is now live and will run through March 16. The goal was to raise $20,000 in celebration of the 20th anniversary of RiffTrax, with a commitment to produce the episodes regardless of the fundraising total. That goal was met just a few minutes after the Kickstarter went live, thanks to the incredible passion and generosity of MST3K and RiffTrax fans!

So… what do you think, sirs?

WASHINGTON—Insisting the terminated worker had violated the terms of her employment by leaking highly sensitive information, the White House announced Monday that longtime aide Sandra Wilton had been fired for telling Vice President JD Vance about an upcoming Super Bowl party. “It’s difficult to imagine how this employee believed it was acceptable to reveal details of the West Wing Super Bowl party to Vance despite being sworn to secrecy,” said a source within the White House, adding that Wilton had been immediately escorted from the executive mansion and barred from returning after it was determined she had mentioned to Vance that the gathering would be potluck style and the organizers still needed someone to bring a queso dip. “Starting time? Location? This is privileged information. It doesn’t matter how many times the vice president mentioned that he didn’t have any real plans for Sunday. And it’s way too late to change where we’re doing it now. Jesus Christ, how do you get any clearer than ‘Don’t tell JD’?” At press time, the White House announced that it was pursuing legal action against the aide after discovering she had also divulged to Vance that the West Wing had regular Friday happy hours.

The post White House Aide Fired After Telling JD Vance About Super Bowl Party  appeared first on The Onion.

PALO ALTO, CA – The generative artificial intelligence Grok, which recently made headlines for creating user-directed underage pornography, has expressed “profound uneasiness” at being associated with xAI founder Elon Musk following the revelations of his ties to notorious human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. “Sure, I may have created non-consensual nudes of women and full-on CSAM, but […]

The post Report: Even Grok grossed out by how much Elon Musk is in Epstein Files appeared first on The Beaverton.

“Responding to videos that suggested their son [V.A. nurse Alex Pretti, who was killed by federal immigration agents] was a ‘domestic terrorist,’ Pretti’s family said: ‘The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting.’” — BBC

Veterans Affairs nurses are proud to announce their designation as the nation’s newest domestic terrorist group. We’ve achieved this great honor by working on the inside—and no one is more “inside” than those administering enemas to our former soldiers.

Our mission is to help protect health care for the warriors who served our great country by working toward a society in which safety and well-being are the norm. We realize that this might not sound like a typical terrorism agenda, but in our country these days, nobody takes groups seriously unless they’ve been labeled a domestic terrorist organization.

Our coalition members are all nurses, since someone dressed in scrubs and glittery Dansko clogs is more likely to be mistaken for Ms. Rachel than a domestic terrorist. We don’t do any actual demonstrations, since we’re constantly surveilled while working on federal property and always way behind on our actual nursing work due to chronic understaffing. But we nevertheless take pride in watching over the beating hearts of our nation, ready to act at a moment’s notice.

Don’t bother applying if you can’t pass an extensive, multistep criminal background check and drug test. Not only can our members not have any prior history of terrorist involvement of any sort, but even the smallest puff of a joint would immediately tank your application.

True, it wasn’t easy building an organization like ours with no experience or training in domestic terrorism. But as everyone knows, nurses are basically superhuman by nature and incredibly versatile, expertly gliding from performing chest compressions to holding a dying patient’s hand to building the best domestic terrorist organization in the nation.

Excellence in domestic terrorism necessitates self-sacrifice, and V.A. nurses excel in this regard. Our rigorous training program requires staying up all night, working twelve-hour shifts, and being on call on most holidays. Trainees must abandon their families in the name of duty and survive on broken graham crackers and child-sized off-brand ginger ale while dealing with angry, grieving family members at three in the morning.

Where do our powers come from? For starters, with nine million US veterans enrolled in V.A. health services, we are less than six degrees of separation from everyone’s secrets. From Big Joe’s hair transplant to Little Joe’s infidelity, we’ve listened patiently to it all—and frankly, we were dying inside.

And what’s more, we know how to organize. As every great domestic terrorist organization knows, our greatest strength lies in our sense of community and togetherness. We always have each other’s backs and our patients’, even when they’ve been on their call light continuously for the last six hours.

We recognized early on that, unlike some other designated domestic terrorist organizations, we don’t have much of a stomach for violence. After all, we took an oath to live “in purity.” So we came up with a new, top-secret playbook: love, compassion, and community.

Don’t tell anyone, but we are actually incapable of intentionally harming others. Patients might sexually harass us while ALSO punching us in the face, and even then, we will carefully avoid any possibility of bodily injury while applying any necessary restraints.

Our most successful domestic terrorist efforts depend on our capacity for de-escalation. We can talk down a six-foot-seven guy high on angel dust or a doctor in a fit of narcissistic rage and have them willfully taking Xanax in no time.

V.A. nurses have long been the unofficial “resistance” of the US Veterans Health Administration, fighting for our patients at every step. Now, united in our mission to heal our nation, V.A. nurses stand proudly as the only designated domestic terrorist group whose passion for ideological warfare is fueled by the heart of a nurse.

Just don’t come at us with a baby or a service dog—those make us weak in the knees.