The End of Google Search. The internet giant is “changing the formula” of its products and media folks are beginning to assume that there will be no search traffic in the future…and fretting about their survival.
Media Matters: “ABC, CBS, and NBC aired a combined 194 segments about the three major heat events” that hit the US this summer and not a single one of them mentioned climate change. Not one!
I just finished recording an episode of The TPM Social Club with Josh Kovensky. We had an awesome conversation with Jake Bittle about the state of the Colorado River, which unfortunately is vanishing. That episode will drop tomorrow and we hope you’ll check it out.
While we were recording, I noticed a notification from Slack: We had just published a major investigation showing how the Trump administration had repeatedly admitted in court to withholding grant money from blue states simply because they voted blue — a shocking thing to put in writing in a legal dispute. The authors of that story were Emine Yücel and my trusty co-host, Josh — although that doesn’t mean I knew it was imminent.
Fun little review by Marcin Wichary of a 1984 flying video game called Sopwith, which was never supposed to be released to the public (an event that the game’s creator didn’t learn about until years later).
In January 1933, five Bronx acquaintances — the press later called them "the Murder Trust" — took out life insurance policies on Michael Malloy, a homeless Irish former firefighter, and set out to collect the $3,500 (about $87,000 today) by getting him to drink himself to death. — Read the rest
The post When five men tried to murder "Iron Mike" with increasingly poisonous drinks appeared first on Boing Boing.
Camp Bonifas, the United Nations Command post 400 meters south of the Korean Demilitarized Zone, has a golf course. One hole, par 3, with an AstroTurf green — and minefields on three sides. Sports Illustrated called it "the most dangerous hole in golf," and there are reports that at least one shot detonated a land mine. — Read the rest
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Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo said the name "Officer Abdelnabi." Trump supporters booed. Lombardo had to explain that Abdelnabi was the Las Vegas police officer killed the day before.
So much for "back the blue." Lombardo was paying tribute to Austin Abdelnabi when someone in the audience began booing loudly. — Read the rest
The post The thin blue line encounters an unfamiliar last name appeared first on Boing Boing.
The New York Times has a piece today with the title “Moderate Democrats Prepare for ‘War’ Against an Ascendant Left.” Specifically it’s about the centrist pressure group Third Way and a plan with a budget of $15 million to, as the group’s president Jonathan Cowan puts it, “prepar[e] for the next war that is coming.” I’ll note that during the first two years of the Biden administration Third Way was notably and consistently supportive of President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda. It was a sign of the remarkable party unity that allowed Biden to push through a remarkably progressive agenda with a tied senate. I’ll also note that you place an article like this because you want to show the people who gave you the $15 million that you mean business. So talk of “going to war” is sort of what you want to show them.
That said, this is remarkably ill-conceived and a misunderstanding of the current moment.
A Circle K shopper posted a screenshot of an AI self-checkout screen that listed a few flavors of Gatorade at a few dollars apiece, then a line item of $8.5 billion for the American Red Cross, according to the New York Post. — Read the rest
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I love this little video of burbling pasta sauces (sound on). Wish there was a 10-hour YT version for work background noise…
In 2020 the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts picked up a one-star review that read "worst aquarium ever." It is a museum about the history of whaling, and it keeps no live whales. Six years later, the museum has printed the line on hoodies, T-shirts, crew necks, and bags, according to Boston 25 News. — Read the rest
The post A whaling museum printed its worst review on a hoodie. It sold out appeared first on Boing Boing.
Michigan election officials oversaw primary elections this week and also dealt with the Trump administration sending federal elections monitors to oversee polling sites in three blue municipalities — one of which Trump has repeatedly targeted with his election conspiracy theories.
While the Justice Department, under Democratic and Republican administrations, does regularly send election monitors to observe voting in Michigan and other states, the decision to send DOJ monitors to key polling sites in Michigan was suspect given this DOJ’s focus on investigating Trump’s election conspiracy theories. And, although, as election officials have noted, the presence of federal monitors in Detroit, Lansing, East Lansing, and Hamtramck was uneventful — their presence did still stir up fear and unease, election officials said.
“The fact that the DOJ felt it was necessary in the first place, it served to cast doubt,” Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum told Votebeat. “Now, tomorrow, they can speak with authority having been here — is that going to lend credit to future claims, even when they’re nonsense?”
It is, of course, no coincidence that the administration sent federal monitors to oversee elections in parts of Michigan where voters typically elect Democrats in an important battleground state that has previously been ground zero for 2020 election conspiracy theories. It’s just one of many ways that the Trump administration has tried to exert control over election administration and sow seeds of doubt in the election system.
Back in June, as my colleague Josh Kovensky reported, DOJ Voting Section Deputy Chief Timothy Mellett wrote in a letter to Detroit officials that voting monitors that were present in 2024 identified voting concerns related to allegedly long voting lines caused by a lack of provisional ballots. This is something that Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey disputes.
Mellet sent similar letters to officials in Lansing and East Lansing as well.
In response to the letter sent to Detroit, Winfrey said that the DOJ had drawn a “baseless conclusion that then becomes the pretext for additional monitoring of Detroit elections,” and that Mellet’s claims “are not a valid pretext for increasing monitoring in Detroit.”
“Michigan law provides not only a variety of ways to vote, but also plenty of opportunities to get involved in the election process,” Michigan’s Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel wrote in response to the DOJ’s letter last month.
“The law even provides parameters for federal and congressional poll monitors. We encourage everyone to participate and see for themselves how secure and fair our elections are – but make no mistake, my office stands ready to hold accountable those who attempt to unlawfully interfere with or intimidate Michigan election workers,” she added.
Nevertheless, the monitors were present at several polling places during Tuesday’s primary election and no issues have been reported by the DOJ thus far. But that did not stop President Trump from immediately promoting conspiracy theories about how the vote was counted in Detroit in the wake of Abdul El-Sayed’s victory.
“Wayne County (Detroit) in Michigan is one of the most corrupt voting areas in the United States, if not the World. It is strictly Third World! Miracles happen in Wayne County, including more votes being cast than there are voters, by a lot,” he wrote in a Truth Social post Wednesday.
As always, there’s lots more to unpack this week. Let’s dig in.
Yes, the DOJ has been handed two more losses in its failing campaign to seize sensitive voter data from the states. Last week, the DOJ earned its 19th loss to date (with zero wins) after a federal judge dismissed a case against Illinois with prejudice. Days later, it was handed its 20th loss after a federal judge similarly dismissed a case against Colorado.
Like the many other judges in the cases before him have concluded, U.S. District Judge Colleen Lawless ruled that the federal government is simply not entitled to the state’s sensitive voter data, which includes Social Security and driver’s license numbers.
For many many months now, the DOJ has been demanding that at least 44 states and Washington, D.C. hand over sensitive voter roll data. The DOJ has been relying on provisions in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and the Civil Rights Act of 1960 (CRA) to make its (very weak) case.
Lawless pointed out in his ruling that the CRA does not entitle the federal government to this type of information.
“…,the Court finds Title III does not provide the Attorney General with the authority to compel production of the unredacted voter registration list, and the written demand was deficient as a matter of law,” he wrote.
“Dismissal is additionally warranted because the Attorney General’s written demand did not include both a sufficient basis and legitimate purpose for requesting the unredacted voter registration list,” he added.
Then, early this week, U.S. District Judge Philip Brimmer, also ruled that the state’s unredacted voter rolls are not something the federal government is entitled to and also pointed out the administration never provided a “basis” for its request.
Over 2,000 voters were recently incorrectly flagged as potential noncitizens in Texas. The Secretary of State’s office is now directing election officials to reinstate the voters that it had incorrectly flagged as ineligible, Votebeat reported.
Per Votebeat, the state elections director, Christina Adkins, confirmed the citizenship status of some of the 2,724 registered voters who were flagged as potential being noncitizens. Adkins, however, did not confirm how many of the 2,724 voters flagged provided proof of citizenship to the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Yikes. So, how does such a mistake happen?
The voters were flagged after the state put its voter rolls through the Federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system, which has recently been used by the Trump administration to purge supposed noncitizens from the voter rolls. The system, however, which was originally developed as an immigration tool to verify immigration status of people applying for certain governmental benefits, is known to be unreliable.
So, it’s no surprise that a mistake like this happened and the whole episode helps bolster the case for why the database that the Department of Homeland Security is trying to force states to run their voter rolls through is not effective.
Votebeat reported that we don’t know exactly how many voter registrations have been canceled in total. Kristin Miles, the Bastrop County elections administrator and president of the Texas Association of County Election Official, made the following statement to Votebeat: “Counties are following appropriate list maintenance procedures under Texas law, and will ensure eligible voters whose registrations were cancelled are reinstated, and that only U.S. citizens remain on the voter rolls.”
TPM: Missouri Republicans Count on Foot Dragging to Help Jam Through Gerrymander
NBC News: Democrats put redistricting amendment on Maryland’s midterm ballot
The New York Times: For Trump, the Year Is Always 2020
On February 4, 1982, Arizonan David Grundman shot a 27-foot saguaro with a shotgun. The saguaro dropped 23 feet of itself on him.
The story is Grundman and his roommate drove into the desert near Lake Pleasant on February 4, 1982. — Read the rest
The post In 1982, a 27-year-old man lost a gunfight with a cactus appeared first on Boing Boing.
Tesla told federal regulators that the headlights on 19,900 Model 3 and Model Y cars were up to nearly twice as bright as the law allows, then argued it shouldn't have to fix them because the defect was "inconsequential" to safety. — Read the rest
The post Tesla headlights were twice as bright as legal appeared first on Boing Boing.
The Glad av Gillberga is a Swedish replica of a warship pulled from Denmark's Roskilde fjord and dated to around 1040. In nearly 30 years it has crossed the North Sea and sailed to Canada. Universal borrowed it for six months for Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, where it played one of the escort ships in Odysseus's flotilla — the Greek boats are thought to have resembled Nordic longships. — Read the rest
The post Swedish shipowner says Odyssey filmmaker won't pay $6,000 damage bill appeared first on Boing Boing.
Grandpa Pudding Brains collected $166 billion in tariffs under a law the Supreme Court says does not authorize tariffs. The government has now returned $100 billion of it, but the refund doesn't reach the folks who paid higher prices.
The Orange Menace claimed tariffs are a machine for restoring factories, winning trade wars and shrinking the federal deficit. — Read the rest
The post Trump's $100 billion tariff refund skips the people who paid higher prices appeared first on Boing Boing.
A State Department slide that mislabeled every country on a map of Africa — Nigeria landlocked in the Sahara, Mozambique moved to the Horn — has drawn an apology, the Guardian reports. The department said it takes "full responsibility for the confusion and misrepresentation it caused for attendees, including our African partners." — Read the rest
The post Every country was wrong on the State Department's map of Africa appeared first on Boing Boing.
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