Latest posts
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The Million-Dollar Letter: Austin’s “A” and the Art of Public Branding
On September 4–5, 2025, Austin unveiled its first-ever unified city logo: a wavy blue-green “A” allegedly inspired by the hills, rivers, bridges, and violet-crown skies that define the Texas capital. It is, in the words of the city, a “strategic modernization.” In the words of the internet, it’s “Dallas-adjacent,” “corporate clipart,” and “the most expensive…
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Trump vs. Harvard: When Federal Grants Become Campaign Props
On September 3, 2025, U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs did something rare in modern America: she called bullshit in a ruling and put the federal government back in its constitutional corner. Her decision ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze nearly $2.2 billion in research grants to Harvard, a freeze that was less about academic…
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Cash Me Outside the Constitution: How the Presidency Became Trump’s Most Profitable Side Hustle
The polite version says markets respond to policy. The honest version says markets respond to who writes the policy—and whether he’s already holding the bag you’re about to fill. On September 1–2, 2025, the Trump family’s crypto venture World Liberty Financial flicked its neon “OPEN” sign, listing the $WLFI token across major exchanges and conjuring…
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In Defense of the Binge: Why Autoplay Is the New Therapy
On August 29, 2025, researchers at the University of Georgia committed the academic equivalent of saying the quiet part out loud: binge-watching might actually be good for you. Their peer-reviewed study, published in Acta Psychologica, didn’t just poke at the pop culture habit everyone denies and everyone does—it blessed it, like a priest sprinkling holy…
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The Great Victory Parade: When History Becomes State-Sponsored Fanfiction
There are two things authoritarian governments love more than power: parades and revisionist history. So it was no surprise that on September 1–3, 2025, Beijing gave us both in one dazzling, over-produced spectacle—an 80th-anniversary Victory Day parade so self-congratulatory it made the Oscars look humble. Xi Jinping, standing tall on his reviewing platform, hosted none…
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iPhone 17: The Awe-Dropping Slab We’ll All Pretend Not to Need, Then Buy Anyway
On September 9, 2025 at 10 a.m. PT, Apple will once again transform its glass spaceship into a megachurch of consumer longing, inviting the faithful to witness what it calls the “Awe-dropping” keynote. The name alone is a corporate sleight of hand: awe as in wonder, drop as in your rent money, and keynote as…