A federal district court judge just rejected a Justice Department order for Maryland to turn over its voter rolls, which is another excellent win for democracy.
It’s unclear how the Justice Department planned to use the voting histories and personal data of millions of Marylanders. But the agency’s attorneys have stated in other court proceedings that it planned to share the lists with the Department of Homeland Security to aid immigration enforcement.
I’ve known about some of Google’s special operators for years, but librarian Hana Lee Goldin goes through all of the ones she knows about that supercharge search results beyond the usual five paid results and AI Overview at the top of the page. Bookmarked!
Apparently The Kids have found a couple of classic rock songs to replace the guitar freakout in Free Bird to accompany their Insta reels: I’ve heard Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls repeatedly to describe Gen-X related topics they have no firsthand experience with. Now it’s stuck in my head. I didn’t like this band when they were big, and I was sick of this song when it was popular. Goddamn it. [Cues up a Spotify playlist to wash the dirt out of my ears]
The Baltimore Banner does a quick article on independent restaurants in Baltimore County worth checking out. Some of these are close, some not so much, but there are a couple I’m interested in.
Well, fuck. The Brewer’s Art, a mainstay of Mt. Vernon, and host of one of the best basement bars in all of Baltimore (RIP Wroten’s), abruptly announced its closure on Monday, citing over $150K in debt. I don’t know what would have happened there—it was always busy—but this is a loss for Baltimore’s nightlife scene. I spent many an evening tucked away in a corner of the basement nursing an OZZY or four (Fuck you Sharon, it’ll always be OZZY to me), and have a special place in my heart for it.
Rian Johnson has published all of the scripts for the movies he’s written (minus The Last Jedi) on his website; this should be required reading for any aspiring screenwriter. I’ll be diving into the script for Brick later this evening.
Well, it looks like I got my drone at exactly the right time. The US Government banned all new foreign-made drones in the U.S., essentially shutting DJI out of the domestic market as of yesterday.
With the music going in so many directions—real instruments that seem like samples, samples that seem like real instruments, word-drunk poetry, near-rap, cavernous breaks—Steinberg was the glue that held everything together.
Pitchfork takes a look back at Ruby Vroom, the first album from Soul Coughing, released 31 years ago. I had to do the math on that twice. This album still bumps.
X just added a new feature where users can see where a particular account is based geographically. In a shocking twist, it turns out that a huge number of high-profile pro-MAGA accounts are based in foreign countries: Africa, Russia, and India, for example.