- Ten Ways to Get a Tee Time at Augusta National – via my son
- What Is Italian Brain Rot? The Surreal TikTok Obsession, Explained
- A cephalopod captured on video in March has been confirmed as a juvenile colossal squid, the first live colossal squid observed in its native habitat.
- I visited the Disney website to find the hours of the EPCOT Flower & Garden Festival and was asked to complete a survey. Here was my answer to their question about Lightning Lane passes: “I have been an AP holder (at Disneyland for 5+ years and at Disney World for 10+ years) and still absolutely cannot understand how Lightning Lane works. It’s incredibly confusing compared to Fast Passes and it’s reprehensible and indefensible that AP holders must pay for Lightning Lane passes.”
- Italy enacted a law in March 2025 making it so only individuals who can prove at least one parent or grandparent was born there will can be considered citizens from birth.
- Wow. The U.S. government is phasing out the penny, whose use has spanned more than two centuries.
- The Sports Bra, a small chain of bars that only show women’s sports on their TVs, announced that it’s opening new locations in Boston, Las Vegas, Indianapolis, and St. Louis.
- Bobby Tables: A guide to preventing SQL injection
Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing:
- POTUS resurrected a hallmark policy of his first term, announcing that citizens of twelve countries would be banned from visiting the United States and those from seven others would face restrictions.
- The [current] administration revoked EMTALA guidance for emergency rooms to provide abortions when pregnant patients’ lives are in danger.
- Even the pro-gun lawyer working at the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives opposed the current administration’s move to allow the sale of forced reset triggers.
- While ICE patrols court houses for law-abiding immigrants, friends of the President get a free pass.
- Staff of the Federal Emergency Management Agency were left baffled after the head of the disaster agency said he had not been aware the United States has a hurricane season.
- Close your eyes and point in almost any direction, and you’ll find an area of knowledge loss.
Posts tagged “corruption”
- Andor was phenomenal. Full stop. It wasn’t simply a great Star Wars story. It was a brilliant story even if you had — quite inconceivably — never even heard of Star Wars. It also managed to stay full-throttle awesome from S1E1 through S2E12, and somehow it did this even though everyone watching knew exactly what happens next, which had to have been unimaginably difficult to execute. (And I am not ashamed to admit that I didn’t realize Andor was “and/or” until several episodes into the first season, even though anyone unlucky enough to be the recipient of a professional email from me can tell you that’s one of my favorite conjunctions.)
- Related? The CIA Secretly Ran a Star Wars Fan Site
- The New York Liberty Became the First $450M Women’s Team
- I (mostly) agree with the list Bruce Feldman compiled of the 25 best players of the millennium (so far). I have bigger issues with the list David Ubben put together of the best college football games since the turn of the century. I was somewhat surprised to see Florida ranked tenth in the list Stewart Mandel made of the best programs of the 2000s. It’s hard to believe how long it’s been since we had the best QB in history.
- Take It on the Run by REO Speedwagon holds up.
- Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Oneil Cruz recently sent a home run out of PNC Park at 122.9 mph (against the Milwaukee Brewers), recording the hardest hit ball in the Statcast era.
(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction:
- Dozens of staffers walked out when NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya promoted an unproven COVID origin story.
- [Current] administration orders Michigan coal plant to stay open
- The Belief System Behind the Palm Springs Bombing
- “[D]on’t worry about making your products safe for your customers. Even if you kill them, just pay a small fine and move on.” Apparently not prosecuting criminals is how to make America great again.
- It’s always a bummer to learn that a perfect domain name is already taken.
- Every high school theology, civics, social studies, and American history teacher should show the Bible lesson scene from The West Wing (The Midterms, S2E3) at least once each semester.
- How Jeffrey Lurie, Jason Kelce, and the Eagles saved the tush push.
- Police in France have found the long-lost graveside bust of Jim Morrison.
- It was never meant to be proprietary. That’s just one of many good points Anil makes in MCP is the coming of Web 2.0 2.0.
- Pope Leo XIV heads the Catholic church from Vatican City, where a secret tennis court awaits.
- Holy smokes. That Preakness win by Journalism was incredible.
- The epic collapse of Florida governor Ron DeSantis is well deserved.
Stuck in the Middle With You:
- The current administration is trying to repeal a Biden rule that requires lead water pipes to be replaced. – via kellster.bsky.social
- U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi sold between $1M and $5M worth of shares on April 2, just before the POTUS “Liberation Day” press conference that sent the stock market tumbling. – via darthbluesky.bsky.social
- I strongly agree with this statement, because it’s hard to stomach the idea that Everyone Is Cheating Their Way through College – via my friend
- Is anyone truly surprised that Kristi Noem, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, has no idea what habeas corpus means? See also: The Questionable Case of Kristi Noem’s $50 Million Luxury Jet
- Criminal investigation launched related to Hope Florida, the sham charity championed by DeSantis and his wife. – via progressflorida.org
- In September of 2023, geophysicists across the world started monitoring a very odd signal coming from the ground under them. (I love stories like this!) – via mikeachim.bsky.social
- The Wikipedia List of Unexplained Sounds – via my son
- I enjoyed this quick profile on Howard Katz, the man behind the NFL schedule.
- Someone on bluesky asked, “Do you remember the hardest you’ve ever laughed at anything?” That was an easy answer for me: I remember watching the SNL All-Drug Olympics sketch when it aired in October of 1988. I was fifteen and thought it was the funniest thing I’d ever seen. I still think it’s hysterical.
- Related: I’ve seen Overboard (1987, Kurt Russell, Goldie Hawn) at least 1,000 times and Mother’s Day 2025 was the first time I noticed that one of the VHS tapes in Grant’s collection is clearly a porno titled Pink Clam.
- Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, became an instant hit among trading card collectors.
- Can confirm: It Only Tuesday
How Is Any of This Happening?
- POTUS is attempting to place Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the guy who defended him in his porn star hush money trial, as the interim acting librarian of Congress. I cannot fathom how anyone is acting like this is… normal. (How does the AP even allow that headline?!) POTUS and/or anyone in the Executive branch cannot simply hire or fire someone who is de jure employed by the Legislative branch. It’s the Library of Congress, not the Library of the President, ffs!
- I couldn’t have said it better myself: POTUS accepting a $400 million jet from the royal family of Qatar is banana republic shit.
- The ICE detainment of progressive Twitch streamer Hasan Piker is a cautionary tale for multiple reasons.
- A contestant (justifiably!) feels betrayed after spending $10,000 auditioning for a fake singing competition on the Nathan Fielder
HBOMAX series The Rehearsal. - “This is insane. Republicans have inserted language into the budget reconciliation bill that would ban states from regulating AI in any capacity for 10 years.” – via bcmerchant.bsky.social
- Employees who use AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini at work face negative judgments about their competence and motivation from colleagues and managers, according to a new study. – via sethpartnow.bsky.social
- Even in his darkest time, Van Gogh was able to capture, with eerie accuracy, one of nature’s most complex and confusing concepts a century before scientists had the technology to do so. – via my dad
- The Los Angeles Rams will hold a minicamp in Maui this June; players will also help build four Habitat for Humanity homes in Lahaina, a historic town destroyed by wildfires in 2023.
- Self-styled prophets are claiming they have “awakened” chatbots and accessed the secrets of the universe through ChatGPT.
- And now: The Nations of the World, brought to you by Yakko Warner!
- The Death of the Screenplay Industrial Complex – via The Dailies
- People with the lowest LDL levels are less likely to develop dementia. – via Arnold’s Pump Club
Good News for People Who Like Bad News:
- Trillion-dollar Pentagon budget proposal cuts competitors out of NASA budget and could add billions to SpaceX defense contracts.
- The new president of the University of Florida is slated to make up to $3M/year, more than any other public university president in the country and more than twice what he made at the University of Michigan, and all he has to do is be a boot-licking sycophant. I am terribly disappointed in my alma mater and fearful of what this portends.
- Senate Democrats chose not to use the leverage they had to deal with the latest POTUS crypto scam, effectively allowing politicians to speculate personally in perhaps the most fraud-riddled financial market in human history. Pathetic.
- ICE efforts in Washington, D.C. thwarted by solidarity.
- God help us all, but I <gasp> agree with Laura Loomer, regarding the POTUS nomination of Casey Means – who has no government experience and dropped out of her surgical residency program: “[W]e can’t have a pro-COVID vaccine nepo appointee who is currently embroiled in a medical malpractice case and who didn’t go to medical school in the US,” as the surgeon general.
- I cannot believe this has happened three times now: More Troops Injured as U.S. Planes Keep Plunging into Red Sea
- The Falconer time travel sketch is genius, and I can’t believe it took me almost twenty years to see it.
- Space Pants is almost as good. (Check out its Reddit thread and backstory, too.)
- Ballad of a Thin Man has always reminded me of The Second Coming. It’s more than a little disturbing that they’re equally relevant these days. – via my dad
- The Roman Empire’s original smartwatch: portable sundials
- I have been using Dotster as my registrar for this site for more than 25 years. I was a little miffed to learn last year that they were acquired by Web.com, but didn’t think much of it because my site’s registration is paid far in advance and I rarely think about it. Today I got an email telling me that Web.com was acquired by Network Solutions, and I cannot stand their platform. Most of my 50+ domains are registered at Dreamhost, so I’ll likely be switching soon.
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world:
- “The last ship from China will dock at a West coast port on the 29th, and the last Chinese ship will dock on the East coast around May 10th. […] We’re screwed.“
- [Current] administration officials are placing dozens of posters of arrested unauthorized immigrants along the White House driveway.
- POTUS pardons Nevada politician who paid for cosmetic surgery with funds to honor a slain officer.
- A little-known firm with investors linked to JD Vance, Elon Musk, and POTUS could get a piece of the federal expense card system — and its hundreds of millions in fees.
- Republicans are trying to steal an election in North Carolina.
- Please understand that when 2A cultists point their fingers at bizarre tragedies – like what happened recently in Vancouver – as some sort of justification for their infantile predilection for firearms, an excruciatingly rational response is that the entire automobile industrial complex is also misguided, cancerous, and evil.
- Crumple Zone: What Car Crashes Reveal About Human Hubris and Fragility
- I’m A PGA Golf Coach – Here’s Why I Made Sure My Kids Can Play Golf – via my dad
- I’ve seen some people saying how AI-generated text is now as good as certain published authors, and honestly I think it’s really brave for these folks to admit in public how poor their reading comprehension has to be.
- Officials in Cinque Terre, Italy have introduced several strict measures to control overtourism, including a 2000€ fine for wearing flip-flops. – via Jenny
- Gray goo is a hypothetical global catastrophic scenario involving molecular nanotechnology in which out-of-control self-replicating machines consume all biomass (and perhaps also everything else) on Earth while building many more of themselves.
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.
- How Much Did Congress Make Off Market Turmoil and Why Are They Allowed to Make Anything at All?
- The great thing about fighting back against [fascism] is that if you end up losing anyway you get the same outcome you’d have gotten from complying but you don’t have to fucking hate yourself too.
- [The Administration] Is Gaming Out How to Ship U.S. Citizens to El Salvador – via gtconway.bsky.social
- This is severely bad: Artificial intelligence hallucinating nonexistent software packages with plausible names leads to a new malware vulnerability: “slopsquatting.” – via janelleshane.com
- If you wrote a story about a regime so comically evil that it literally snatches people from their citizenship interviews, you’d be accused of over-the-top imaginings.
- [Administration] freezes $2.2 billion in grants to Harvard over campus activism – via stardustbluepr.com
- A Masters win for Rory McIlroy gives him, at last, a seat at the table.
- The Last of Us S2 on
HBOMax premiered this weekend, so it’s a great time to read some perspectives from an epidemiologist and a plant scientist. - What can we learn from the books being read by the characters in White Lotus S3?
- Lorne Michaels is going to produce a British version of Saturday Night Live starting in 2026.
- Great quote from physicist Brian Greene: “My best teachers were not the ones who had all the answers. They were the ones deeply excited by questions they couldn’t answer.” – via Austin Kleon
Dreaming of a song, but something went wrong:
- A federal judge sided with the [current] administration in allowing immigration agents to conduct enforcement operations at houses of worship for now.
- Death is the point.
- Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard signed a sworn declaration stating that she was a resident of the State of Texas, and then voted in Hawaii. – via mehdirhasan.bsky.social
- Vice President JD Vance fumbles trophy during Ohio State football’s White House visit
- I can think of a few thousand better ways the AP could have worded this headline to more accurately convey just how corrupt this weirdo is: DeSantis Defends $10M Donation from State Agency Settlement to Charity Linked to His Wife
- The American Dream Is Over: He did this with the enthusiastic support of the entire Republican party and conservative movement, and a plurality of American voters.
- The AARP strikes again, this time with a quick and easy form you can use to urge your representatives to protect Social Security.
- A few weeks ago I was behind a woman in a bright blue Jeep Wrangler with one of those custom spare tire covers on the back. It was emblazoned with “Life Is Better in Flip-Flops” in cursive. Now, I cannot stand flip-flops. I hate them with the burning intensity of a million suns. I think they’re annoying and slovenly and uncomfortable and I detested every time either of my beloved grandmothers bought me a pair for the beach. (Even though they hardly knew each other and were separated by 1200 miles, they somehow both bought me and my siblings multiple pairs over the years.) Wearing flip-flops gave me blisters every time and they always broke or got snagged on something. I hate flip-flops. But, and I mean this so hard, that crazy woman in her Jeep does not hurt me at all by loving flip-flops. This is America. If it doesn’t hurt you (or anyone else), let people love what they love. [This is not about flip-flops.]
- Tina Fey Sparks Debate After Calling Out Rich Celebrities Who Have A ‘Side Hustle’… on an episode of the Amy Poehler side hustle podcast Good Hang.
- The Hubble Space Telescope explores the universe 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That means it has observed some fascinating cosmic wonder every day of the year, including on your birthday. – via kottke
- It’s too bad there’s no trustworthy way to add third-party custom Apple Watch faces, because I would love making mine look like the Fallout 4 Pip-Boy.
- One more thing? It just feels wrong to watch The Handmaid’s Tale on Disney+.
Garbage World:
- Here’s a depressing (but important) crowdsourced Google Doc detailing all the resignations, layoffs, terminations, and general bad news from the US Department of Health and Human Services – via YLE
- POTUS pardoned a company sentenced to $100 million in fines for breaking money laundering laws, because he clearly thinks money laundering is what makes America great.
- The national security of the United States is in the hands of incompetent miscreants who don’t understand anything about technology or security.
- The U.S. Naval Academy has removed nearly 400 books from its library after being told by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to review and get rid of ones that promote diversity, equity and inclusion.
- The current administration is actually dedicating federal resources to investigate the feasibility of invading Greenland.
- The administration has fired staff who were working on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration bird flu response as part of its mass layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services.
- A paralysed man can stand on his own after receiving an injection of neural stem cells to treat his spinal cord injury.
- From the Department of NSS: Media Use Is Linked to Lower Psychological Well-Being “The more time spent on screens, the greater the negative effects—especially among young people. The study suggests excessive media consumption disrupts essential psychological needs, such as real-world social interaction, physical activity, and sleep quality.” – via Arnold’s Pump Club, which is a surprisingly informative daily newsletter
- Lionel Messi trading card controversy: Who is signing his autographs? (See also: Why do companies buy memorabilia like the Ohtani ball and Skenes card? It goes back to Babe Ruth.)
- Tesla Is Dying, and Polestar Wants to Kill It
- The nightmare scenario for Hollywood has arrived: Viewers are choosing free creator content over premium subscriptions. Nielsen data for February 2025 show YouTube now dominates nearly 12% of total TV viewing time—more than Disney and about equal to Netflix and Amazon combined. And this doesn’t even count viewership on phones and tablets, where creators dominate even more. – via The Dailies
- Good news: Kentucky governor vetoes GOP abortion bill, says it undermines doctors and endangers pregnant women.
- Big Thunder Mountain Railroad opened at the Magic Kingdom in 1980 and I still think of it as one of the newer rides.
Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?
- I don’t understand why the AP bent over backwards to avoid mentioning the political party affiliation of an ex-North Dakota lawmaker sentenced to ten years in prison for going to Europe with intent to pay for sex with a minor.
- Lest We Forget the Horrors: An Unending Catalog of [the Current Administration’s] Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes
- “DOGE” claims it’s not an agency that has to comply with FOIA requests, so The Intercept is suing them.
- POTUS nominates Republican once accused of mishandling taxpayer funds as HHS watchdog
- For Fascists, Hypocrisy Is a Virtue