Okay, there’s a lot to unpack in this story, so hang with me here. For the past month or so, Americans and American businesses have been stuck in tariff hell. Blanket and additional tariffs issued via executive order by Trump have been in a seesaw pattern for a month now. This tariff program was a […]
Last year, we were thrilled with the success of our Kickstarter campaign for One Billion Users, the Social Media Card Game. In case you missed it at the time, One Billion Users is a fun, fast-paced game where 2-4 players compete to build the biggest and best social media network. Now, the game is about […]
Support us on Patreon » We probably don’t need to tell you that the current tariff situation is causing complete chaos in global supply chains, in large part due to the uncertainty — for all we know, the exact rules will have changed since this episode was recorded just yesterday. But we wanted to get some […]
When last we checked in with CBS, the company was preparing to fold under pressure from the Trump administration, amidst bogus accusations that 60 Minutes had unfairly made Donald Trump look bad. As we’ve noted previously, the accusations are utterly baseless, but that’s apparently not stopping the CBS board from kissing authoritarian ass and throwing […]
The “Party of Free Speech” is at it again. House Speaker Mike Johnson just bragged about using legal threats to remove his opponents’ political advertising — perhaps the most constitutionally protected form of speech that exists. And he did it while lying about them lying. As he says in that clip: Do not believe the […]
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Donald Trump’s two terms in office have proven Orwell right. No, not the “1984 is not an instruction manual” thing. The other one. Animal Farm. Some animals are more equal than others. At the top of the heap? The pigs. Trump led off his first term in office by threatening to create a police state […]
Google is developing a tried and true reputation for buying products people like, making them worse, then pulling the rug out from under users’ feet. That’s been a particular problem with Google’s purchase of FitBit, which has generally resulted in less useful hardware, more paywalls, more annoying nickel-and-diming efforts, and just a more miserable user […]
Roughly two weeks ago, in a post about how America was risking losing its elimination status for measles as the current outbreak is exploding thanks to the inaction from RFK Jr. and his Health and Human Services department, I wrote the following paragraph: At the start of April, we were at 483 confirmed reported measles […]
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. A Treasury Department inspector general is probing efforts by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to obtain private taxpayer data and other sensitive information, internal communications reviewed by ProPublica show. The office of the Treasury Inspector General […]
USA Today has secured the DOJ’s official rules of engagement for mass deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. (Better yet, it has shared it with everyone, rather than keep it to itself!) Trump’s resurrection of a law no one thought the Land of the Free would ever use again is disturbing enough. What’s in the […]
The FTC’s politically motivated inquiry into “tech censorship” has managed to prove exactly the opposite of what it intended: the government agency is now actively censoring public comments from people complaining about being censored by tech platforms. It’s almost too perfect. The FTC, under Chair Andrew Ferguson, launched what it called an investigation into “tech […]
The administration’s justification for reviving the justifiably reviled Alien Enemies Act is the literally unbelievable claim that the Venezuelan government has sent Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang members to the United States to wreak general havoc, something the Trump Administration claims is a literal act of war. It’s just not happening. There’s no link between […]
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We generally understand how LLM hallucinations work. An AI model tries to generate what seems like a plausible response to whatever you ask it, drawing on its training data to construct something that sounds right. The actual truth of the response is, at best, a secondary consideration. It does not involve facts. It does not […]
When Biden FCC boss Jessica Rosenworcel stepped down, we noted how she couldn’t be bothered to even mention that terrible things were brewing at her agency. Same for Democratic FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks, who recently decided to sheepishly step down without, again, so much as acknowledging the dangerous and radical zealotry Brendan Carr has been […]
You know, there’s stupid, and then there’s stupid on a level that is unbelievably dangerous. While RFK Jr. is very busy attempting to ensure that America loses its measles elimination status through a combination of vaccine skepticism, pushing alternative treatments, and generally being unable to present a solid message around the current outbreak, you will […]
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. The attacks on Judge John Barberis in the fall of 2016 appeared on his personal Facebook page. They impugned his ethics, criticized a recent ruling and branded him as a “politician” with the “LOWEST rating for a judge in Illinois.” Barberis, […]
Oh hooray. Another part of our new normal under Trump 2.0. Here’s the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel with the gory details: Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan was charged April 25 with two felonies on allegations of trying to help an undocumented immigrant avoid arrest after he appeared in her courtroom. According to a 13-page complaint, Dugan, 65, is accused […]
Here’s a puzzle: How do you write a law that’s so badly designed that (1) the people it’s meant to help oppose it, (2) the people who hate regulation support it, and (3) everyone involved admits it will be abused? The answer, it turns out, is the Take It Down Act. The bill started with […]
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