Antitrust laws

"Pavilion" from Different Beasts is a political thriller about a corrupt regime that knocks down a heritage property to rebuild it as a crass facsimile designed to lure people into the lair of a giant, oil-swilling insect. It's about right now! Today, even!

Yessss

Dutch food is the AI slop of global cuisine

You like cheese? You like mustard? Welcome to Amsterdam; here's the world's worst sandwich

Lot of bad food out there, but credit bitterballen for being consistently both mundane and repulsive

Here we are in agreement: Meta should be better. Good luck asking them.

I'll let you to your beliefs, but will correct this: I did reply to the guy who says Meta & OpenAI are lobbying for this. Meta wants age checks on the app store cause it puts the problem on Apple and Google. This is Meta's litigatory engine, NetChoice. netchoice.org. Congrats: you're on their side.

Meta doesn't run an app store. This is them trying to avoid having the liability assigned to them so it falls on Apple and Google instead.

Do you use a bank? Or fly?

Rebutting House E&C Majority's "Myth vs. Fact: Age Verification"  - NetChoice The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee Majority’s “Myth vs. Fact” document on age verification attempts to downplay the severe privacy, security, and constitutional risks associated with mandato...

This is Silicon Valley's lobby, NetChoice. You're on their side. netchoice.org/rebutting-ho...

Ooh yeah that's the stuff

Finally, consider revenue models for each type of business. Age assurance providers tend to charge clients per check. Collecting data and selling it is not their business model -- that's social media. So if you want to worry about privacy, worry about Meta, not whichever company is asking your age.

Anyway, know your facts, and know who you're defending. This is a fraught issue with the world's biggest companies pushing and paying for a specific agenda. If people were that worried about centralized data stores, *they would never be on social media.* And age assurance doesn't even require that.

A LOT of the pushback to age checks is Silicon Valley companies leveraging their bottomless budgets and legal lobbies to frame it as a threat. Arguments against age checks bolster Meta, X, Snap and so on's assertion that they limit freedom. This is bullshit. Cigarette companies did the same thing.

Also: governments will not be doing it. It will be third party providers -- who, in toto, are way more trustworthy/interested in your privacy than social media companies.

This is incorrect. Age checks are not identity checks. The tech exists to give a yes/no age status (yes I'm 18/no I'm not) without disclosing any other information. Identity verification requires ID; age assurance does not. ZKPs, the double blind model and tokenization make this possible.

I double checked this. The answer is, few enough that you have to look into it.

Makes me think part of why I love Mamu is that he's the rare NBA player who looks like he also plays in a metal band.

Of course he does

My Mamukelashvili The double-edged sword of "different", vocal stimming, and the Georgian big man Sandro Mamukelashvili.

For Toronto Raptors fans, weird people and probably Georgians: I wrote about my favourite NBA player, Sandro Mamukelashvili.

www.basketballfeelings.com/p/my-mamukel...

Keir Starmalade, anyone? Will marmalade really have to be rebranded in UK? Britain is reportedly considering aligning with EU rules in what Daily Mail is calling the PM’s ‘breakfast reset’

Don't tell the Brits!

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

In One Season, Neemias Queta Has Gone From Playing Garbage Time to Helping Create It A lot had to go right for the Celtics to be where they are right now, 52-25 with a firm grip on the second seed in the Eastern Conference. There's no one player

In the Star Wars spirit of creating infinitely expanding universes, I give you: www.si.com/nba/celtics/...

I have made two stops on my route. There are 16 people left in the car. At the next stop, I kindly ask them all to exit, offering no reason for what is to occur. My loins tingle. Once the last rider is out, I close my eyes and push the button:

Her heart will go on
www.cbc.ca/lite/story/9...

Tell them this guy says hi

This is my old garage and it's super weird to me that it turned into a gallery. When we lived there the only art was a needlepoint of a samurai with a peacock. The impression in the concrete on the right is from when I lit a BBQ chimney starter on it and it exploded. Raccoon city. Good times.

The Seventh Seal (1957)

Tomorrow's matchup was inevitable. It has always been thus and it was always going to be thus: hammering chests and slow drowning. This is the Dream of Ben and Celine.