Donald Trump last year amassed one big beautiful rap sheet of scandal and criminality, with multiple instances of corruption that made Teapot Dome look quaint. But the president’s bogus new “settlement” with his own administration’s IRS, which he had sued in January for $10 billion over the leak of his tax returns in 2020, hits scorching new heights of depravity. The deal’s contours were bad…

Today's links A fascist paradigm: The change that changed everything. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Openstreetmap x Isle of Wight; Found grocery lists; Mayor wants to pray away potholes; Designing a D120; "Too Like the Lightning." Upcoming appearances: Barcelona, Berlin, Hay-on-Wye, London, NYC, Edinburgh. Recent appearances: Where I've been. Latest books: You keep…

Hungary has been ordered to amend its child protection law after the EU’s top court sided with the European Commission.

VPNs (when integrity is maintained and the owners aren’t sleazy scammers) have long been the mortal enemy of shitty, surveillance-happy governments. And when shitty, surveillance-happy governments try to block or degrade the use of VPNs, bad things can happen. As Russia found out recently when a ham-fisted effort to block VPN users from accessing Telegram […]

Right wing broadcasters are having a very good time under Brendan Carr, who has looked to destroy all remaining media consolidation limits to let them merge. Such companies, like Sinclair, Nexstar, and Tegna, don’t do journalism so much as they do soggy, right wing propaganda and infotainment, usually with endless fear mongering about drugs, homelessness, […]

Netflix has retreated from its protracted bidding war with Larry Ellison for control of Warner Brothers, giving the Trump ally likely control of Warner, CNN, and HBO. In a statement, Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters said that Paramount’s latest offer made the acquisition financially irresponsible: “The transaction we negotiated would have created shareholder […]