- I’ve been using the free native Apple Reminders app for over a decade now and at this point I’d be lost without it.
- The Best Black Friday Heist: They Told People It Was a Scam. People Paid Anyway. – via @froggyb.bsky.social
- How to read the entire Dog Man universe in order
- “If you’re going to talk shit about Kamala Harris‘ Bluetooth avoidance, please be aware Taylor Swift also follows a similar threat profile. For paparazzi spying on new music files before release.” – via SwiftOnSecurity
- If you didn’t read this the previous time I posted it, here’s a second chance: AI is a great idea if you think nobody at your company is great at what they do. [See also.]
- Did you hear about the cannibal who was expelled from school? He was buttering up his teacher.
- Olympic Gold Medalist Dominates the 100m at Her Kid’s Sports Day Event – via kottke
- Last year, Pakistan installed an incredible 22 gigawatts of solar power – more than Canada has ever built, and more than the UK has added in the past five years combined.
- I’ve (finally) started watching Andor S2 and am riveted. It’s definitely not as kid-friendly as the usual Star Wars fare, but I think it’s fantastic.
Hand Covers Bruise:
- POTUS signs (technically non-binding and illegal) executive order directing federal funding cuts to PBS and NPR.
- Despite their formal attire, penguins simply aren’t known for conducting commerce with the USA.
- Migrants held in Texas fearing deportation to notorious El Salvador prison work together to form human SOS.
- Beginning in the 2025-26 school year, thousands of high school students in Oklahoma will be required to learn about debunked claims that the 2020 election was tainted by fraud. The lesson will not be part of a course on conspiracy theories, but an official component of the new social studies curriculum created by Republican Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters.
- A third of parents with children aged 0 to 13 reported wishing they had more time to read to their children, and the number of parents saying their children have too much schoolwork to read books has risen significantly. – via kottke
- The official White House account posted an AI-generated picture of the POTUS holding a red lightsaber on Sunday, May 4th – the unofficial Star Wars day – intentionally mocking the point of the entire franchise. – via my dad
Posts tagged “White House”
- AI is a great idea if you think nobody at your company is great at what they do. This is an absolute must-read from Anil.
- My son sent me a silly YouTube short about a guy stumbling upon some ancient Greek statues buried at the beach. It sounded fishy to me, and the YouTube short gets many of the details wrong, but the Riace bronzes are very much real and the true story is just as wild. – via my son
- The Weird History of Fuzzy Toilet Seat Covers and Accessories – via my dad
- Why isn’t the state of Florida producing highly ranked quarterback recruits?
- I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned these, but I highly recommend getting JETech screen protectors for all your digital devices. There are oodles of companies that make screen protectors, but I like these because they’re so inexpensive, they work well, and they come with a cool installation kit that makes it very easy to apply the thing straight and without any air bubbles.
Everybody Wants to Rule the World:
- The Senate voted down a resolution to block the POTUS global tariffs. Everyone is angry at Whitehouse for skipping the vote, but it was never going to pass the House, and would have gotten vetoed regardless.
- It’s frightfully clear that, worm-infested or not, Kennedy‘s brain is marinated in wild conspiracy theories and dangerous misinformation.
- Internet laughs at White House briefing with Temu Draco Malfoy
- The Vietnam War Is Still Killing People, 50 Years Later
- Staff members at the National Science Foundation were told on April 30th to, “stop awarding all funding actions until further notice.”
- Jill Sobule, Singer-Songwriter of Groundbreaking 1995 Song I Kissed a Girl, Dies in House Fire – via @scalzi.com
- Egyptologist in Paris Discovers Secret Messages on the Luxor Obelisk: The 3,300-year-old monument has sat in the French capital’s center for almost 200 years, but no one else noticed these strange encryptions.
- I took the boys to see Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith in the theater on the 20th anniversary of its release. I saw it in Century City (several days before the official release) two decades ago (and then again a few days later!) and am happy to report that also viewing it hundreds of times on a TV did not detract at all from the thrill of seeing it on the big screen. We loved it. It’s wild that the re-release of a twenty-year old movie made north of $42M over the weekend. Related: I love reading about Star Wars movie mistakes.
- “The choice of wood was completely incomprehensible,” isn’t the best line in this story about a concentration camp violin, but it’s up there.
- In sport, turning 30 was once the point where pundits started sharpening retirement speeches. But Cristiano Ronaldo, LeBron James, and Lewis Hamilton didn’t just stretch the narrative, they shattered it.
Boulevard of Broken Dreams:
- “DOGE” has tapped into some of the most sensitive and valuable data in the world. Now it’s starting to put it to work.
- Related: “DOGE” says it has saved $160 billion. Those cuts have cost taxpayers $135 billion. – via @heidiyounggrasshopper
- Public health, modern medicine, and disease mitigation will suffer under RFK Jr. because he sees sick people – not sickness – as the problem.
- Vince Vaughn poses with POTUS in the Oval Office. Pathetic.
- Senate Democrats who took heat for government shutdown vote now feel vindicated. Pathetic.
- Oh Great, Millionaires Are Racing Sperm Now
- The Supreme Court’s Late-Night Alien Enemy Act Intervention
- 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.
- 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.
- Your Worst Is Not the Worst, the latest issue of Making It Work from Youngna Park, is powerfully relatable. Trying to explain to young children what’s happening in the world in 2025 is so, so hard.
- Behind the Collapse of Technicolor and Why Its Failure Is Sending Shockwaves Through the VFX Industry
- I quickly fell in love with the Hulu sci-fi series Paradise, starring Sterling K. Brown and James Marsden. Check it out.
- How Pop-Tarts turned an easy-to-forget bowl into one of the college football season’s best moments
- “There is not one Yeezy shoe left,” said Adidas chief financial officer. “It has all been sold and that episode is behind us.”
And now, the bad news:
- How “DOGE” Cuts to the IRS Threaten to Cost More Than DOGE Will Ever Save
- Marco Rubio is often the last to know when foreign policy decisions are made in the White House.
- A truly troubling read: “We believe this rush to comply is a sign that universities are willing to become an institutional wing of the new segregationists.”
- POTUS Signs Executive Order Handing U.S. Public Forests Over to Private Logging Industry
- The Strategic Crypto Swindle: A bitcoin reserve would be a government-backed grift.
- A leaked memo calls for VA to lay off as many as 83,000 employees this year.
- New jazz fellowship honors the genre’s elders and gives them each an unrestricted $100,000 grant. – via @phillewis.bsky.social
- Welcome to Chicken Town presents exactly what its URL says it does. – via @erikahall.bsky.social
Thomas Perry is likely the strongest player in the 2025 NFL Draft. You’ve probably never heard of him.- While the individual accumulation of wealth offers an illusion of safety, does it simply create more instability and insecurity in the long run?
- After Pressure from Georgia Senator Ossoff, White House Restores Funding for HBCU Students Studying Agriculture
- College Football 25 broke video game records. Can EA Sports keep everyone happy?
- You Have No Rights
- Good News for People Who Love Bad News
- Once social security checks stop showing up, millions of Americans will finally understand the scope.
- After All This
- The Environmental Protection Agency will move to reverse its 2009 declaration that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare — a step that would threaten most major climate regulations and make it harder for future presidents to enact new ones. – via @vanhollen.senate.gov
- “You’re not going to like what I’m saying next, but we are in the middle of a totalitarian fascist coup in this country.” – via @anildash.com
- FDA Cancels Meeting of Vaccine Experts Scheduled to Advise on Flu Shots
- It IS Happening Here
- The White House on Wednesday denied reporters from Reuters and other news organizations access to [the administration’s] first cabinet meeting.
- It seems almost unavoidable that we are headed for a deep, deep recession.
- Reps. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) and Gwen Moore (D-Wisc.) barged into the office of House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday and challenged him about the “DOGE” team gaining access to a sensitive payment system at the Department of the Treasury.
- Workers at NASA were told to ‘Drop Everything’ to scrub any mentions of indigenous people and women from its websites.
- Federal Judge Blocks Executive Order Intended to End Birthright Citizenship
“It’s sad that Wile E. Coyote will always be remembered for his failures and not his amazingly realistic tunnel paintings.” – via @sean_with_an_ean_damnit- This is the sort of thing that makes my blood boil. Federal law mandates wholesome lunches, but much of it gets trashed because there isn’t time to eat it. – via Jodi Ettenberg
- The “DOGE” Government Data Heist Is the Entire Ballgame is a chilling plea written by a federal employee.
- The US Treasury Claimed “DOGE” Technologist Didn’t Have ‘Write Access’ When He Actually Did: Sources tell WIRED that the ability of Marko Elez to alter code controlling trillions in federal spending was rescinded days after US Treasury and White House officials said it didn’t exist.
- All of this, of course, depends on a functioning justice system. (Things Are Going to Keep Getting Worse Until They Get Better, Part 339.)
- CDC Posts, Then Deletes, Data on Bird Flu Spread Between Cats and People
- Conservative “Christian nationalist” Russell Vought, former vice president of Heritage Action for America and one of the architects behind Project 2025, believes there is nothing left to conserve. He desires revolution — and to burn down the system. And the Senate just confirmed him to be the head of OMB. (I would link you directly to the official White House website for OMB, but… it’s been deleted.)
- This tutorial on installing a newsletter replacement for Jetpack looks promising.
- “Just gonna slide this information in here. The Eagles refused to go to the White House after their Super Bowl victory in 2018. Do with that what you will.” – via @brandi-rene.swifties.social
- Oh, and Taylor Swift is expected to attend the Super Bowl on Sunday night. Obviously, she won’t be sitting in the same suite as POTUS.
#FridayFive: A Better House
View the Friday Five from November 15th, 2024
Official White House Response
That’s no moon …