Grossly inconsiderate of Mamdani to be governing so efficiently and effectively to date for all the conservatives and liberal democrats who now have to work that much harder to continue their efforts discrediting democratic socialism as an unrealistic framework for politics in the U.S.
I don’t do multiplayer games, so Elden Ring I think is at the top for me at around 200 hours. Although, if you looked on Playstation it would probably be one of the Spider-Man games because my kids use my account to just play them as a sandbox.
I like the Dualsense a lot at its best, but I go through roughly a controller per year probably. One of them something with the rumble loosened. Not noticeable in some games, but when I was playing Returnal it sounded like a jackhammer. Another the sticks got…sticky in a way that was really distracting. Stick drift on another, and my current one the right arrow stopped working. I had to re-map it to the left stick click to play Infinite Wealth, and other games like Elden Ring just won’t work with it.
“If you don’t figure out how to be excited to live here, you’re just going to be left behind.”
We got terribly swarmed in a very remote area in Michigan’s upper peninsula while walking in the woods. My partner and I grabbed pine branches and started waving them around us while we ran back, but my dog kept thinking I was playing as I tried to wave them around her and would run off from me. Within 20 minutes of getting back, she was covered in massive lumps all over her body, her lips and ears were grossly swollen, and she started breathing really, really shallowly.
There were no open or emergency vets anywhere nearby, so we tried to give her some benadryl and water as best we could. Luckily, she was well-recovered by morning. But the danger posed by swarms of mosquitos became abundantly clear to me.
“Actual malice” is the high legal standard that public figures must meet to prevail in a defamation case.
I was curious what side enjoys the benefit here given, y’know… the First Amendment, and it seems like this is definitely a performative move on the government’s side.
Adam Steinbaugh, a First Amendment lawyer at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, shared a different assessment on Monday.
“Patel said proving actual malice is a ‘lay up’ (no), but the allegations in this complaint don’t even hit the backboard,” Steinbaugh wrote on X. “It will, however, accomplish the primary goal: making media outlets weighing a story think about the cost for attorneys to get a meritless lawsuit tossed.”
I’m not sure this holds up logically. WaPo and NYT did gangbusters during Trump’s first term, before their ownership structure and content guidelines pivoted hard toward institutional supplication.
There is value to the credibility that comes from standing up to actual authoritarianism, if you’re not captive to the billionaire mindset. I have to imagine that the cost/benefit for publicity like this is pretty attractive to these publications’ accounting departments.
In the context of the article, this sounds merely like evidence for the appeals case aiming to overturn the order to block information sharing between the two agencies. So…at best they don’t get to continue breaking the law? Which seems appropriate - we can’t just shoot everyone in the back who breaks a privacy law 42,695 separate times. It’s not like they’re teenagers stealing snacks from Walmart.
The ongoing case over IRS and DHS data sharing is now set to be heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. DHS is actively appealing Kollar-Kotelly’s November order blocking the IRS from sharing data with DHS, which was signed last year by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. The then-acting commissioner of the IRS resigned after the deal was signed.
The linked article is from California’s office of the attorney general related to an existing lawsuit. As a non-Californian, I am supremely disappointed that this is happening just at the state level, but credit should still go where its due. And if their legal action sets a precedent that makes it easier for other states (or dare I hope, at the federal level if and when we get strong antitrust regulators like we had under Biden), then all the better.
Search results on Amazon are fully pay-to-play anyway. You don’t get anywhere near the top of the list without paying for the privilege. No big deal for slop producers who sell in volume, but basically useless for small businesses or private sellers.
“I have a chip on my shoulder,” she said, describing her drive to prove she can win over private equity in Silicon Valley based on merit, not inheritance or legacy …[T]he young founder hasn’t taken money from her parents for Phia. Instead, she’s insisted on raising outside capital even as some investors remain fixated on her personal life instead of her business venture.
I appreciate the sentiment, but it would be delusional to think her ability to “win over private equity” was divorced at all from her father’s legacy and last name. And actually, I’m not sure I appreciate the sentiment. In 2026, merit is way down the list, like scrawled sideways in the margins, of things that matter to private equity.
I did read the synopsis of it and thought it sounded like an interesting take. I’m not sure I liked the movie enough to bother with the sequel though. As an ending to its own contained story, it felt really tone-deaf.
I just watched The Black Phone last night. Spoiler:
The climax involves the child protagonist killing the villain. When he returns to school, all the kids whisper around him about how badass he is, then he goes to his class, sits next to the girl he has a crush on, and confidently tells her to call him “Finn” instead of “Finny” because he’s personally grown so much from being locked up in a dungeon and haunted by the dead kids who came before him.
I’ve gotten the opposite impression, especially with all those recent AI advocates getting booed and laughed at by students during university commencement speeches. It feels like the usual ‘powerful elites with huge platforms’ - including legacy and independent media - versus almost everyone else.