Latest posts
-
The Buffet of Betrayal: Fake Friends and Their Discount Recipes

There is a certain genre of person who insists on showing up to your table with Tupperware in hand, uninvited, ready to scoop the last spoonful of your mac and cheese while loudly congratulating themselves for “being here for you.” These are the same people who clap when the plane lands, repost inspirational quotes on
-
Shutdown Showdown: When the Federal Lights Flicker, Standing Ground Might Be the Only Power Move Left

Washington, D.C. — the unfortunate date when “the lights go out” became literal again. After the Senate failed to pass a stopgap spending bill, the White House ordered agencies to activate shutdown protocols at exactly 12:01 a.m. on October 1. Through memos from OMB and OPM invoking the Antideficiency Act, the chaos began: mass furloughs,
-
Trump’s Gaza Ultimatum: 20 Points, 72 Hours, and a Peace Plan Written in Smoke

The spectacle began at the White House: President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu had unveiled a “Gaza plan”—twenty bullet-points in a scripted ultimatum: Hamas must return all hostages within seventy-two hours. Once that’s done (or claimed done), Israel would reciprocate with the release of 250 Palestinians serving life terms, plus some 1,700 Gazans detained
-
Fear and Long Guns on Michigan Avenue

Chicago has always thrived on theater. Jazz clubs, improv stages, opera houses, the permanent farce of city politics—this is a town that knows spectacle. But nothing quite prepared the Magnificent Mile for the latest federal roadshow: dozens of Border Patrol agents in tactical helmets, body armor, and long guns parading up Michigan Avenue like they’d
-
From Hypertext Dreams to Data Nightmares: Tim Berners-Lee’s Reminder That We Broke His Toy

The man who sketched the web on paper napkins at CERN now has to watch it shuffle around in stained sweatpants, working shifts for monopolies that surveil your cousin’s cat pictures and weaponize your grandmother’s political rants. Tim Berners-Lee, knighted not just for giving us hyperlinks but for unleashing the entire World Wide Web on
-
When the Supreme Court Pressed Snooze on $5 Billion: Democracy Aid Goes on Hiatus

On September 26, 2025, in a terse one-sentence emergency order, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to keep nearly $5 billion in congressionally appropriated foreign aid frozen—overturning a lower-court injunction and giving institutional blessing to what amounts to a year-end “pocket rescission” strategy. The effect: delay the money’s disbursement until it expires on
-
Disney’s Kimmel Imbroglio: Shareholders Su for Truth While Politics Invade the Boardroom

There are many ways for an entertainment empire to humiliate itself. Some settle for the small stuff: a blockbuster flop, a malfunctioning roller coaster, a streaming password crackdown that feels like a mugging. But every so often, a corporation aims higher—producing an operatic self-own so baroque it deserves its own tragic score. Thus we arrive

