- 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.
- Whoa! Archaeologists Discover Tomb of Unknown Ancient Egyptian Pharaoh. (Doesn’t that make two this year?!)
- My son and I somehow got sucked into a rabbit hole watching Michael Jordan YouTube highlight videos and I had fun trying to explain to him just how jaw-dropping the 1997 flu game was to watch live.
- I recently listened to the Smartless podcast interview with John Lithgow, which reminded me that for a couple of years I lived on the fringe of Beverly Hills and frequently saw him walking his dog around the neighborhood when I’d go on my morning runs. (We never interacted beyond a gentlemanly nod, but he seemed like a lovely man.)
- France‘s far-right leader Marine Le Pen has been barred from seeking office for five years after being found guilty of embezzling funds from the European Union. It’s always refreshing to see powerful politicians held accountable for breaking the law. We should try that in the US.
- The first Shohei Ohtani card to sell for $1 million included a coveted piece of his pants.
- I really love these LEGO picture frames, shelves, and office organizers.
- Apple is pretending to sell the computers from Severance, which I think is a cute little marketing gimmick.
Good News for People Who Like Bad News:
- Turkish student at Tufts University detained by masked men claiming to be police
- Top FDA Vaccine Official Resigns, Citing RFK Jr.‘s ‘Misinformation and Lies’
- FCC commissioner opens investigation into Disney and ABC for diversity policies
- How a Landlord and a Florida PR Firm Helped POTUS Kick Off the Tren de Aragua Gang Panic
- Administration Abruptly Cuts Billions from State Health Services
- The Florida State Health Department released a letter with a surprising new recommendation that contradicts standard of practice guidelines for measles outbreaks. – via YLE
- 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
- In the new documentary Secret Mall Apartment, a group of artists recount how they turned a hidden nook in a Providence shopping center into a living space for four years. – via my dad
- If you’re ever in Los Angeles, check out The Nicolosi Estate. The long-abandoned 8700-square-foot, 4-bedroom, 5-bath home is encircled by an amazing 300-foot-long serpentine swimming pool, complete with rock bridges and grotto-style hot tubs, which is visible from the road. The estate was commissioned by Johnny Weissmuller, who won five gold Olympic medals in swimming (and a bronze in water polo!) and portrayed Tarzan in a dozen films from 1932 to 1948.
- Apple is losing a billion dollars per year on Apple TV+ and that’s just fine. – via @TrungTPhan
- I cannot tell you how many times I’ve used these CSS drop-shadow snippets.
- Technofossils: How humanity’s eternal testament will be plastic bags, cheap clothes, and chicken bones. – via kottke
This Is Exhausting:
- “Under the previous administration, we looked like fools. Not anymore.” – Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, shortly before accidentally texting war plans to a journalist.
- A federal judge temporarily blocked the Environmental Protection Agency‘s attempt to recoup $20 billion in Biden-era climate grants, dealing the latest judicial setback for [the current administration]’s attempt to assert unilateral control over spending.
- There Is No Method to [the President]’s Madness. He’s Simply Insane.
- The corporation behind Roundup herbicide has paid out nearly $11 billion in lawsuits. Now it’s backing an EPA rule that would stop the bleeding.
- An Austin attorney is suing the Department of Education after seeing her student loan payments skyrocket.
- A Coast Guard Commander Miscarried. She Nearly Died After Being Denied Care.
- A lovely story about Dav Pilkey, author of the Dog Man series: He paid for a whole school’s book fair!
- I adore this brutally honest bio of Jane Krakowski from a recent Broadway production.
- You need to read this behind the scenes article on Minnesota Timberwolves coach’s decision to start Joe Ingles in a “must-win” game so his 8-yo son with autism could see him play. – via @richarddeitsch.bsky.social
- If you have an Apple computer, you can disable the incredibly annoying feature that attempts to guess what you’re about to type. Go to System Settings > Keyboard > Text Input and click the Edit button next to your input source. Toggle “Show inline predictive text” so it’s disabled and click Done.
- Great reporting on how a false story about the Dropkick Murphys getting banned for mocking the administration went viral.
- Bluesky made more money selling T-shirts mocking Mark Zuckerberg in one day than it has in two years of selling custom domains – via @hpsc24.bsky.social
Gross Stuff:
- The story of what happened recently at the United States Institute of Peace is just inconceivable.
- The USPS Union President has sent out an email to employees warning them of impending privatization concerns after [administration] moves to fire 10,000 postal workers. – via @girlsreallyrule.bsky.social
- The Constitutional Crisis Is Here: By shipping men to a Salvadoran prison without due process, [the administration] has begun defying court orders in earnest. – via @kairyssdal.bsky.social
- A lawsuit accuses the [current] administration of unlawfully shutting down the Voice of America and asks a federal court to restore the outlet that for decades has supplied news about the United States to nations around the world — including many that lack a free press of their own.
- A CDC clone site with false vaccine claims is hosted by Children’s Health Defense, a non-profit, anti-vaxx organization started by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. – via YLE
- “if the democratic party had a functional propaganda arm it could make a lot of hay of the fact that a non-trivial number of MAGA personalities and politicians are child sex offenders“
- Researchers in Japan have developed a durable and recyclable plastic that fully dissolves in the sea and doesn’t leave microplastic pollution in the oceans because it breaks down in the water over time. – via @oceanbluestar.bsky.social
- Early entry for the best news of the year? Ted Lasso is returning for a fourth season.
- I recently finished Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. It is easily the best work of fiction I’ve read in the last twenty years. After five pages I was enjoying it so much that I decided to pace myself so I could inhabit its story as long as possible, but ended up devouring it in just a couple of days. My only regret is that I will never get to read it for the first time again. 1
- Happy belated 27th birthday to kottke.org, the website that inspired me to start blogging a quarter-century ago.
Notes from the firehose:
- Conservative former federal Judge J. Michael Luttig issued a stark warning about what he described as [the President’s] escalating attacks on the legal system.
- Former Spiritual Adviser to POTUS Indicted for Sexually Abusing a Child
- Top Democrats Warn “DOGE” Employees of Potential Criminal Exposure from Ethical Misconduct – via @beyer.house.gov
- “Mr. Schumer’s stated approach of waiting for Trump to ‘screw up’ and continue this inexplicable embrace of the slippery slope is wholly inadequate and an astonishing failure of leadership.”
- [The President’s] deportation of Venezuelan migrants may have violated a direct court order, leading to what the former general counsel of the FBI, Andrew Weissmann, has called a potential “doomsday scenario.”
- [The President] has already implemented at least half of Project 2025’s objectives in eight areas.
- If you can’t get excited about Jack Black as Steve, you really need to spend more time interacting with elementary school children.
- We need to work on bringing the phrase, “the whole megillah,” back into regular use. I feel like abandoning this wonderful expression was a bad idea, even though I’ll freely admit that I thought it was spelled “magilla” until about ten minutes ago.
- I have started listening to the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast and really love it. Of course, the three episodes I’ve heard so far were ones featuring interviews with Harrison Ford, Tom Hanks, and Jeff Goldblum, three of my favorite actors, so my opinion may be biased. But all three had me laughing out loud at one point or another and it’s nice to hear Conan’s voice again.
- A month after the death of his mother, Tiger Woods says he’s recovering after surgery to repair a ruptured Achilles, likely ending his 2025 season.
- An 11-year-old boy who pulled the Paul Skenes MLB Debut Patch card will likely sell it for more money than Skenes will make from his 2025 Pirates base salary. – via @jacksongagne.com
- Tim Walz to launch national tour of town halls in Republican House districts. (Go get ’em, Tim!)
Madness:
- The Pentagon Keeps Pouring Cash Into Golf Courses – Even As [Administration] Slashes Government Spending
- USDA ends program that helped schools serve food from local farmers
- Department of Justice Official Says She Was Fired After Opposing Restoring Mel Gibson‘s Gun Rights
- Pete Hegseth is expected in the coming weeks to start a sweeping overhaul of the judge advocate general’s corps as part of an effort to make the US military less restricted by the laws of armed conflict. – via @jamellebouie.net
- NIH officials have urged scientists to remove all references to mRNA vaccine technology from their grant applications in a move that signaled the agency might abandon a promising field of medical research. – via @kwcollins.bsky.social
- You probably never considered how awesome it would be to hear Rick Astley perform an acoustic cover of the Chappell Roan hit Pink Pony Club, did you? – via @jacksongagne.com
- The team at The Athletic put together a sweet Bluesky college football starter pack.
- Mustaaaaaaaaaard! – via kottke
- As a kid I only ever barely paid attention to Star Trek — we were a Star Wars family — but the way Chekov (Walter Koenig) repeats, “Botany Bay,” as he realizes his predicament is just phenomenal.
- Humor is vital to effective protest, and the Democrats suck at it. – via @kurtandersen.bsky.social
- I may have linked this already, but it’s worth a repost: “Wherever you get your podcasts,” is a radical statement.
- “If no laws have been broken, there should be nothing to hide.” – via @beyer.house.gov
I’m terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought:
- The detention of Mahmoud Khalil means we are a hop, skip & jump away from political persecutions. It’s a steep, slippery slope from here to “speak out against [the administration] and go to jail.” – via @joycewhitevance.bsky.social
- I don’t even want to include the subject matter here, but these people are pure evil.
- McLaurine Pinover, the chief spokesperson at OPM and the current administration’s official tasked with defending “DOGE” personnel cuts, posted fashion influencer videos from her office.
- Listening to Chris Hayes interview Robert Garcia (D–CA) on his Why Is This Happening? podcast is not likely to make you feel any better about the future of our country, but it is pretty interesting.
- California, New York, and Maryland all confirmed their first cases of measles this week.
- EPA head says he’ll roll back dozens of environmental regulations, including rules on climate change
Twenty-five Years of Blogging
Happy birthday to this website!