Super. Apparently AT&T left all of their customer phone numbers, calling and text records, and location data out on a cloud server somewhere, and “criminals” downloaded it. The timespan is from May—October 2022. Guess whose network is AT&T? I submit: the true criminals are the fuckheads at AT&T who continually leave this shit out on cloud servers for anyone to stumble across and download.
Countdown to useless, lawyer-enriching class action lawsuit: 10, 9, 8…
File this under It’s About Fucking Time: the Baltimore County School system will allow cellphone bans in their classrooms starting this coming year. Our daughter wasn’t allowed to bring her phone to school last year for various reasons, but I’ll be glad to have the rest of the students hang theirs up too. I’d link to some of the appropriate local news channels here, but they’re all behind paywalls or not even reporting on this.
This has been making the rounds, but not as loudly as the press’ continual hand-wringing over whether or not Biden is too old to serve: Robert Reich lays out the facts behind Project 2025, Trump’s plan to destroy the US Government and turn it—blatantly, nakedly—into an autocracy. It’s written by his people, for his people.
About five years ago I went to our local library and checked out a thick graphic novel that spun a hallucinogenic tale of a guy called a “cat master” navigating the underworld of a futuristic city with a ninja cat powered by syringes of super-powered juice. Part noir mystery, part samurai B-movie, part graffiti showcase, it defied all description and I burned through it in one sitting. I returned it and promptly forgot the name. Doing a search for another graphic novel (Tokyo Ghost, another futuristic dystopian romance story I enjoyed immensely) I found this one again: King City. Highly recommended.
Hey! It’s not often I get to write about our little state being on the front lines of solid legislation, but here’s an example: Two bills were passed by the state over the weekend that limit companies’ ability to collect data on our kids, and the other limits their ability to get kids to spend more time online through dark patterns (autoplay, time-based awards, or spam). Lobbyists for big tech, of course, are unhappy:
“The bill’s goal is laudable…but its chosen means are unconstitutional by imposing prior restraints on online speech, erecting barriers to sharing and receiving constitutionally-protected speech…”
Big tech always trots out the First Amendment to paper over their predatory behavior; it always pegs the bullshit meter.
Bloomberg does a retrospective of ten different metrics that show while Biden’s popularity is low, he’s actually done very well for the U.S. since he’s been in office.
I’ve always been a fan of the styling of the 1959 Buick Skylark Electra; It’s a rare example of how diagonally staggered headlights can actually look great. The way the headlight eyebrow is molded into the side of the car, flowing back to the side of the car below the wing, is a high point of late ’50’s design before things got square and boxy as a response. I saw an absolutely gorgeous example at Jalopyrama back in 2016 and fell in love with it in person. So this example on Curbside Classic checks all the boxes: sitting on a comfortable (but not egregious) lift, BFG All-Terrains, with a tough-looking roof rack holding a spare tire and other equipment.
Ha ha this McSweeney’s piece pretty much sums up why I’ve checked out of the craft beer thing (I bought a 12-pack of Pacifico this very afternoon, as a matter of fact) in a nutshell.
Hmm, this looks interesting. A self-described fan of The Three Body Problem novel series gives it a glowing review after seeing the screeners. It’s written and produced by the guys who fumbled the ball at the goal line with Game of Thrones, but hopefully (because the source material has all been written) this will be better. I’ll put this on the watch list, even though I rarely watch series TV these days.
Somehow I missed this when it first came around. Stereogum interviewed the band Air and went through each track on the 1998 album Moon Safari to explain their influences and background.