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via:

[ed. Juilliard School of Fine Arms.]

["We're working to make sure the images are as up-to-date and accurate as possible, with a minimum number of sponsored galaxies."]

via: xkcd

[ed. Why is God talking to himself?]

via: xkcd

Choosing Sides

[ed. Fact check: not from the Onion.]

President Trump has made no secret of his desire for total control over the historically independent Justice Department, publicly directing prosecutions and declaring that government lawyers must follow his interpretation of the law.

It is a norm-busting approach that has resulted in criminal investigations into several of his perceived political enemies. But his extraordinary influence over the department is now a potential obstacle to one of Mr. Trump’s other apparent goals: receiving a $10 billion payout from the government he leads.

In January, Mr. Trump sued the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns to The New York Times in 2019, arguing that the agency should have done more to prevent the disclosures. Mr. Trump, as well as his family business and two of his sons, demanded at least $10 billion in damages.

Officials at the Justice Department, which represent the I.R.S. in federal court, have struggled with how and whether they could defend the case, given that doing so would necessitate that they contradict the president on a legal question. A government attorney has yet to make an appearance in the case, and lawyers for Mr. Trump, not the Justice Department, asked to give the government more time to respond to the suit.

That has left the federal judge overseeing the case, Kathleen Williams, an appointee of President Barack Obama in the Southern District of Florida, wondering whether the Justice Department even disagrees with Mr. Trump’s claims in the suit.

“Although President Trump avers that he is bringing this lawsuit in his personal capacity, he is the sitting president and his named adversaries are entities whose decisions are subject to his direction,” the judge wrote in an order on Friday. “Accordingly, it is unclear to this court whether the parties are sufficiently adverse to each other.”

Judge Williams ordered the government and Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers to submit briefs on the question, essentially forcing the Justice Department to state its position on Mr. Trump’s suit. As the judge explained in her order, the Constitution requires that the two parties in a lawsuit are genuinely opposed to each other — and not colluding to engineer a legal ruling favorable to both sides. Without a conflict, the lawsuit is void and the judge must dismiss it. [...]

Charles Littlejohn, a former I.R.S. contractor, not only leaked Mr. Trump’s tax returns to The Times, but also provided tax information about thousands of other wealthy individuals to ProPublica. Some of those other wealthy Americans have also sued the I.R.S. on the same grounds as Mr. Trump. In response to those suits, the Justice Department has contended that the I.R.S. should not be held liable for the conduct of Mr. Littlejohn because he was a contractor, not a direct employee of the agency.

Those arguments may or may not actually prevail in court. But for the government to not even raise them in Mr. Trump’s case would be a glaring change of course. Gilbert S. Rothenberg, a former tax lawyer at the Justice Department who signed the amicus brief, said he was hopeful that the judge would dismiss the suit, or delay it until Mr. Trump left office.

“That would hopefully be the result, because there would not be a case or controversy,” he said. “The new D.O.J. is not independent of the president in the way it used to be.”

But even if the judge dismissed Mr. Trump’s suit, the Justice Department could still potentially settle the case. Most government settlements are paid out of the Judgment Fund, an uncapped pot of money that does not require congressional approval for any individual payment. Top Justice Department officials, including Mr. Blanche, Mr. Trump’s former personal attorney, control the money spent from the fund.

“If this judge finds there’s no legitimate case before the court at this time, that doesn’t mean that a settlement would be illegal,” said Paul Figley, a former Justice Department official who worked on torts. “If the Department of Justice settles the claim, then the Judgment Fund would pay it.” [...]

Mr. Trump’s lawsuit against the I.R.S. is not his only attempt to extract money from the government. In private administrative claims, he has also asked for the Justice Department to pay him $230 million as compensation for the federal investigations into him. Mr. Trump’s I.R.S. suit seeks an order of magnitude more money, though. His demand for $10 billion, if fulfilled, could more than double his net worth.

Mr. Trump has said he would donate the taxpayer money to charity.

“Nobody would care, because it’s going to go to numerous, very good charities,” he said in January.

by Andrew Duehren, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Kenny Holston/The New York Times

[ed. Oh, ok. Everybody supports numerous, very good charities.]

Gary Larson

via:

via: uncredited

Potential Slogans for J. D. Vance’s 2028 Presidential Campaign

J. D. Vance: Moderate Again

Playing the Long Game

Don’t Blame Me—I Was on Vacation the Whole Time

Trump’s V.P. in Name Only

America Deserves Someone Who Was Barely Involved

“Hillbilly Elegy”

I Kept My Head Down, for You

Just Following Orders, But Also I Wasn’t There

Better Me Than Eric

Better Me Than Don, Jr.

Better Me Than a Third Term

This Time I Mean It

Down to Be Memed

The Tariffs Weren’t as Bad as People Expected, and Also I Wasn’t Involved

Laura Loomer Won’t Get Access

Not in the Epstein Files, I Don’t Think

Protecting Democracy from the Inside, Kinda

The Adults Were Never in the Room, But, if They Were, I Wasn’t One of Them

I’m Just a Guy, Standing in Front of His Country, Asking It to Ignore the Past Decade of His Life

I Never Even Had the Nuclear Codes

Trump Routinely Forgets My Name

Trust Me, I Hated It, Too

Oh, Like Ron DeSantis Would Do a Better Job Than Me? Get Outta Here, Losers

I Really, Really, Really Need This

Hey! It’s Me, J. D. :)

by Ginny Hogan, New Yorker |  Read more:

Images: Jesse Shamon

[ed. No way, José (bet there's an actuarial table hidden inside his bible). If I were Trump, I'd avoid stairwells and have my burgers taste-tested. See also: Pope James David Vance the First (Atlantic).]

I'm Super, Thanks for Asking

via:

Arby’s Reclassifies Their Food As Entertainment

Restaurant Says Menu Items Intended For Amusement Purposes Only

ATLANTA—In a move widely interpreted as an effort to exempt its offerings from health and safety standards, American chain restaurant Arby’s issued a statement Tuesday reclassifying its food as entertainment. “Whether it’s our Classic Beef ’N Cheddar, our Chicken Cordon Bleu, or our famous Jamocha Shake, the menu items at Arby’s are not meant to be construed as edible substances subject to FDA regulation,” said an Arby’s spokesperson, adding that the restaurant was not required to display a disclaimer identifying its sandwiches as entertainment because their non-nourishment status should be obvious to any discerning adult. “When we say, ‘We have the meats,’ that statement is not a legally binding claim of said meats being suitable for human consumption,” she added. “Our offerings are intended to be enjoyed as entertainment in a meal-adjacent format. The Smokehouse Brisket is a commentary on nutrition, not nutrition itself. If a customer chooses to interpret our food as appetizing or digestible, the responsibility for that interpretation lies exclusively with the individual. Obviously, our roast beef wouldn’t be gray if you were supposed to eat it.” The restaurant’s decision follows a court ruling last year in which Arby’s was ordered to pay plaintiffs $47 million after it was found liable for knowingly misrepresenting its cherry turnovers as “dessert.”

via: The Onion

Gil Scott-Heron

[ed. Welcome home Artemis II. Safe and sound. See also: NASA Announces Plan To Put Moon On Mars By 2040]

A.I. Logic

via: The Onion

[ed. See also: Anyone Else Have Those Weird Dreams Where Sobbing Future Generations Beg You To Change Course? ~ Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI

Joke of the Day: Prediction Markets

White House staff were warned last month not to use insider information to place bets on predictions markets.

The email was sent to staff on 24 March, a day after US President Donald Trump announced a five-day pause on his threat to attack Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure.

It referred to press reports that raised concerns over government officials using non-public information to place bets on platforms like Kalshi or Polymarket.

White House spokesman Davis Ingle told the BBC that "any implication that Administration officials are engaged in such activity without evidence is baseless and irresponsible reporting."

The Wall Street Journal first reported the email on Thursday.

Ingle also said that all federal employees are subject to government ethics guidelines that prohibit the use of insider information for financial gain.

"The only special interest that will ever guide President Trump is the best interest of the American people," he added.

The BBC has contacted Kalshi and Polymarket for comment.

by Osmond Chia, BBC |  Read more:

Image: via

[ed. That's some weapons-grade PR spin right there. Of course they know who placed the bets. Despite current directors, the FBI and CIA aren't stupid. They just don't want it to be too obvious.]

Fuck's Fucking Fucked

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran,” he wrote a little after 8 a.m. “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH. Praise be to Allah.”  ~ Donald Trump, 4/5/2026

Fuck had run its course. For the beloved curse word, the future did not bode well. Gross overuse of fuck had continued to degrade TV and film, music and prose. Rap, the musical genre in which fuck had become most unironically parodic was a fat, ripe, slow-moving target and was the first to be hit. Pop a cap in your bottom? No, not that dire. The minor profanities seemed fine. Even the nastier ones looked to be okay. Only the fucks were fading. What were fans saying? 

Soon to follow their fuck-dependent rap brethren, standup comics were next to feel these winds of change, the gentle breeze starting to gust. Most starkly and notably, the fuck that is delivered by the comic to get the customary post-punchline second laugh, a laugh as good as guaranteed, no longer seemed to be working.

You know the bit, we all do.

The comic delivers his punchline, which is, let’s say, “The guy has no clue.” As the audience laughs at the punchline, the comic walks the few steps to his stool for a sip of bottled water. Lifting the bottle to his lips as the laughter generated by the “no clue” punchline begins to wane, the comic aborts his sip and says, “No fucking clue.”

According to a longstanding formula, the repeating of the punchline here, reinforced by the strut that is fuck, should be an easy second laugh. Not anymore. Such was indicative of the diminishing power of fuck, an early warning sign, the not-funny-a-second-time-unless-supported-by-fuck punchline no longer getting those easy second laughs. The comic may hear more chortle than laugh, a laugh of manners, a laugh forced not earned, or, there may be no laugh at all. Among the comics, fears of fuck failing in its role as reinforcer is why deliveries of the second, fuck-dependent punchline would usually occur during the sip of water, for should you find yourself sipping in silence at least you have something to do.

This was the moment in entertainment when audiences were letting it be known that they weren’t finding the word funny or shocking or dramatic anymore. To the artist, the audience was saying, “We need more than your cursing. We don’t find it impactful. We’re not twelve years old. It’s kind of insulting.”

For comedians, the message was clear enough. They abandoned the formula that is the fuck-supported second laugh—but it didn’t stop there. Even the fuck-supported first laugh, the fuck-supported laugh in general, was losing traction, losing its cultural standing, the comics coming to fear that even to use fuck, let alone overuse it, had become cliché. The “fuck comics,” the comics who continued to use fuck, soon became less appealing to audiences and then unappealing, the least funny of the comics. There was no question by this time, with rappers and comedians blatantly beginning to tidy up their vocabularies, that the demise of fuck was upon us. The people were making it clear: they were not just tiring of the word, they were telling artists that they needed to do more than lean on the creative crutch that is fuck. For fuck, the writing was on the wall. Amongst themselves, the fucks were talking. 

“Now what the fuck are we supposed to do?”

“Fucked if I know.”

All fucks were nervous, all were concerned. The fucks knew that a cultural shift of this magnitude would result, more or less, in their immediate extinction. There was confusion and fear. Lots of questions. The union would be no help on this one. There were jobs, families. The future.

“Fuck. Fuuuuuck. Bro, this fucking sucks.”

“And like, zero fucking warning, bro.”

“And that German fuck. He didn’t fucking help. That German fucker fucking fucked us.”

“Not only him, fucking him and a whole fucking movement.”

The “German fuck” was Dr. Kalba Brenin, the German linguist and film critic. Dr. Brenin engaged the fuck catastrophe innocently enough. He had commented on his podcast that a limited series he had been watching and was intending to review used fuck so often that he stopped watching after two of eight episodes. A highly touted series about sexy young corporate lawyers dispatched to the world’s largest cities to ply their trade and defend and sustain capitalism, Dr. Brenin became frustrated by the “near constant” use of fuck that would commence in any scene that “required dramatic acting.” Rolling his eyes and ultimately laughing at fuck-choked so-called dramatic scene after fuck-choked so-called dramatic scene—the excessive fucks turning the drama into unintended comedy—instead of a review Dr. Brenin wrote his now infamous essay, A Welcome Overstayed, in which he called for fuck to be banned from all recorded entertainment—not for reasons of censorship of profanity—but “for the sake of preserving what human beings have for five millennia called art.”

In his essay, Dr. Brenin transcribes an exchange from the show.

“Becca should be told this case is now a fucking homicide.”

“Becca’s in the Andes, mountain climbing, off the grid, how the fuck am I supposed to get in touch with her?”

“Well she’s fucking president of this firm, you fucking better find a way.”

“Fuck you, Tristan.”

“Fuck you, too, Emma. And fuck Becca.”

Exeunt Tristan.

Dr. Brenin was relentless in his criticism.

“Fuck is anti-art. Fuck is an art killer. Writers, as of now, you must remove fuck from your lexicon. Distance yourself. Save yourself while there’s still time. It’s over.” [...]

For the linguists and pop culture scholars who attempted to explain the decline of fuck, the similarities to tattoos were often cited, that the way in which tattoos had lost their edge, their cred, their cool, should have been seen by fuck as a cautionary tale.

Tattoos had gone from ships-at-sea and prisons and cheap boarding rooms to spas and moms and pretty junior bank tellers with full sleeves. The tattoo was defanged. The tattoo had been corporatized, commercialized and, of special concern to men, feminized, as tattoos had become, near the final stages of the tattoo era and the rise of the tattoo removal era, more popular with women than men. Once the lone province of the hairy forearm, the tattoo had spread all over the body, a metastatic migration that could only result in homogenization. Fuck was on a similar trajectory. The word had become homogenous. It was as if once the film and television industries were finally permitted to say fuck, after years of censorship, fuck was all they wanted to say and now, after decades of relentless and unforgiving fuckery the people were tired, they had heard enough, they didn’t want to hear it anymore.

by Brutus Macdonald, Substack | Read more:
Image: George Carlin via: "the seven words you can't say on tv".

Monty Python: Summarizing Proust Game Show

[ed. "Well, there you go, he must have let himself down a bit on the hobbies... golf's not very popular around here." Ha! See also: Literature: Marcel Proust's 'A la recherche du temps Perdu' (In search of Lost Time); and Marcel Proust documentary (YT).]

The Explainer: 'The Save America Act' and Data Centers By the Numbers

What To Know About The SAVE America Act

If passed into law, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act will create new barriers to voting in federal elections by requiring documentation of citizenship to register and imposing strict photo-identification rules at polling places. The Onion shares everything you need to know about the SAVE America Act.

Q: What is the goal of the bill?

A: To ensure the pristine integrity of American elections by making sure they never happen again.

Q: What form of ID can be used to confirm citizenship?

A: NRA membership cards.

Q: Is the Senate expected to pass the SAVE America Act?

A: Depends on which senators die between now and the vote.

Q: Where’s my birth certificate?

A: Did you check the bottom drawer of the living room cabinet? There should be a purple folder underneath all those old receipts.

Q: Why did Trump endorse it?

A: To stop the many thousands of immigrants who aren’t here anymore from voting.

***

Data Centers By The Numbers

The surge in AI, cryptocurrency, and other digital assets is rapidly increasing demand for computational infrastructure around the country. The Onion examines the key facts and figures behind data centers.

0.8
New pH of your groundwater

$900,000,000
What 16GB of RAM will cost next year

4,000
Palm fronds fanned to cool the servers

1
Security guard job that Mom thinks might help you get back on your feet

3-2
City council vote that could have stopped this

600 billion
Goddamn wires to untangle

7
People profiting from this

***

[ed. See also: Anyone Else Have Those Weird Dreams Where Sobbing Future Generations Beg You To Change Course? (Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI:]

The human subconscious is such an interesting thing. No matter how much you think you’ve got it figured out, it’ll always spit out the most random stuff. Take me, for example. After coming home from a long day at the world’s most groundbreaking artificial intelligence organization, I’ll go to bed and have the weirdest dreams where people from the future are sobbing and begging me to change course.

Anyone else ever have these?

It’s funny. Some people have dreams where their teeth fall out; others where they show up to high school tests naked. But the second my head hits the pillow, I’m suddenly in a cold gray smoky void where all I can make out are broken, haunted swarms of people pleading with me to “end this now while there’s still time.” Really peculiar, right? I wish there was some way to find other people who have had them. But when I search “endless crowds of weeping silhouettes telling you this is a terrible mistake” dreams on Reddit, it turns up nada.

It’s tough, because I don’t have much time during the day to think about them. I asked my spouse, Oliver, if he’s ever had the old “people screaming for help from the devastated wreckage of a future world” dream, and he said he didn’t know what that was. I even joked about it while I was out grabbing morning coffees with some venture capitalist buddies. I said, “Sorry if I’m a little off the ball today, guys—I had another one of those dreams where you’re on a scorched, desolate landscape desperately pushing past men who grab you by the lapel, shake you, and cry out, ‘Please understand: This isn’t a dream. It’s a warning.’”

They just looked at me like I was crazy, though... [read more:]

via: Judiana/X

[ed. haha... I'd totally do this with an easy installation.]

'Banality of Evil Personified'

A fake ICE tip line reveals neighbors reporting neighbors.

Ben Palmer, a stand-up comic in Nashville, has built a following online with his signature style of elaborate deadpan pranks, stumbling his way onto court TV shows and pyramid-scheme calls to poke fun at the latent absurdities of American life.

Then last January, he had an idea for a new bit: He’d set up a fake tip line that people could use to report anyone they thought was an undocumented immigrant. It was darker than his other stunts, but it felt topical, the kind of challenge he wanted to try. At the very least, he thought, he might get a few calls he could talk about at his next show.

Instead, his website has received nearly 100 submissions from across the country: people reporting their neighbors, ex-lovers, Uber drivers, strangers they saw at the grocery store. One tip came from a teacher reporting the parents of a kindergarten student at her school.

“I mean, they seem like nice people or whatever,” the woman told Palmer on the call. “But if they’re taking up resources from our county, I’m not into illegal people being here.”

What began as a comedy routine has become one of the most viral pieces of social satire during President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation campaign. The kindergarten video has been watched more than 20 million times on TikTok and exploded across Facebook, Reddit and YouTube, where one commenter called it “one of the most creative, nonviolent and effective acts of resistance” they’d ever seen. [...]

Will Johnson, a pro-Trump podcaster and content creator in Texas, said Palmer is “leading people on who think they’re reporting a crime” and that he could go to prison for impersonating law enforcement.

“He’s making people who are reporting people taking advantage of the system look like just bad human beings,” Johnson said in an interview. In cases like the kindergarten video, he added, it may “look bad, but at the same time we are a nation of laws.” (ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.)

But neither Palmer nor the website say they represent a government agency, and the sites’ privacy policies include disclaimers at the bottom saying they’re intended only for “parody, joke purposes and sociological research.” (Palmer spoke on the condition that The Washington Post not name the websites, so as not to ruin the bit.)

His supporters have argued the strategy is worth it because it has helped reveal the horrors of America’s immigration crackdown, exposing the moral contradictions and hidden inhumanities of deportation politics — and reaching viewers, through their TikTok and Instagram feeds, who might otherwise be politically disengaged. One commenter said the teacher video showed the “banality of evil personified.”

Matt Sienkiewicz, a Boston College professor who studies political comedy and saw the video on social media, said Palmer’s satire has been effective because he plays the conversations as straight as possible, letting the caller deliver an unimpeded justification that slowly crumbles under its own weight.

“It creates this uncomfortable irony, where he's letting the person deliver the argument and it just beats itself, because it's so morally problematic or hypocritical or wrong,” he said. “You can kind of sense that they think they're doing the right thing, and then he just repeats what they said, and they kind of realize they're doing something terrible.”

Palmer's project, Sienkiewicz said, feels especially distinctive in the short-video era because he does not copy the style of many social media ideologues by “rage-baiting” viewers into an immediate emotional response.

“So much of contemporary internet culture is showing something offensive and telling people how to feel about it,” he said. “It’s his refusal to act enraged that allows the audience to then choose their own level of anger.” [...]

After reading dozens of reports, he said he was stunned by how many people seemed driven by personal annoyance. One woman reported the new girlfriend of her ex-husband. Another homeowner reported his neighbor after he used his trash can.

One tipster called after she went to Publix and the worker who helped her find the water didn’t speak English. “And then she did help you find the water?” Palmer asked on the call, to which the woman responded, “Right, she walked me right to it.”

Many of the tipsters spoke as if the government was “their own personal army,” Palmer said. “If these are the calls I’m getting, as a fake, not legitimate person, imagine what’s happening at the actual ICE.”

In the kindergarten call, the teacher said she’d decided to report the student’s parents after looking them up in the school files and seeing that they were born in Honduras and El Salvador. She said the student was born in New York, and was 5 or 6 years old, but that she didn’t like people “taking up resources from our country.”

When Palmer read back her report in a flat tone, she scoffed. “You make it sound terrible,” she said. Later in the call, she asked to speak to Palmer’s supervisor after saying she didn’t like his attitude.

“I can’t help that they have a 6-year-old. That’s on them,” she said. [...]

Dannagal Young, a political communication professor at the University of Delaware, said Palmer’s videos could help reach Americans turned off by politics and uninformed about how deportations work. She noted that immigration, once one of Trump’s most popular policy issues, has become the one area where he’s lost the most support.

“There’s something really powerful about witnessing someone have to reckon with their own moral judgment in the moment, especially because they think they’re calling a welcome receiver, and they think they’re going to be applauded,” Young said.

“He is describing to them the reality of what they’re requesting as though it is completely fine and desirable, and through that calm matter-of-fact representation, it reveals itself to be absolutely inhumane,” she added. “The greatest nightmare for this administration is [normal people] paying attention.”

by Drew Harwell, Washington Post |  Read more:

Image: Natalie Vineberg/The Washington Post; Screenshots from Ben Palmer's YouTube and reportaliens.us; iStock

[ed. 'Banality of Evil' ~ Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem]

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