Ten years on, and still funny. From the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2016 Shakespeare Live! celebration for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.

(Sadly, in the U.S. I can find only paid options to watch the full two-hour show: Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video (affiliate links). It’s available on BBC iPlayer for viewers within the U.K. Everyone else would need to jump through several VPN and registration hoops and face the wrath of the BBC TV license authority.)

Nikita Prokopov, after reading the Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines from 1992 (“Don’t … overload the user with complex icons”):

Fast forward to 2025. Apple releases macOS Tahoe. Main attraction? Adding unpleasant, distracting, illegible, messy, cluttered, confusing, frustrating icons (their words, not mine!) to every menu item: It’s bad. But why exactly is it bad? Let’s delve into it!

Prokopov catalogues in tremendous detail the myriad ways macOS 26 Tahoe’s use of icons is inconsistent, confusing, and downright maddening. For example, Prokopov identifies twelve different icons for a “New” menu item.

It’s a brutal and well-deserved takedown.

My take is that the icon inconsistency is clearly iOS-inspired, where (virtually) all menu items have an associated icon, and seemingly stems from an apparent remand that all macOS menu items should also have icons for “consistency,” as if someone decided that consistency across operating systems was more important than decades of Macintosh user interface design—despite the current HIG explicitly stating “Not all menu items need an icon.” (It’s easy! Just pick one of the thousands of icons we’ve already designed! I can imagine that someone saying.)

I’m still running macOS Sequoia 15.5 on my main MacBook Air which—with few exceptions—doesn’t use icons in menus, and I’ve never once felt I was missing out.

(I have no plans to “upgrade” this system to macOS 26 Tahoe unless it becomes untenable. I use Tahoe on a test system. It’s… painful.)

I hold out hope that someone at Apple sees this icon transgression and is humble enough to fix it.

Update: Unrelated, but the snowfall effect on Prokopov’s article made it difficult to read and caused my iPhone 17 Pro to heat up to the point of being hard to hold. Disabling the snowfall also swapped an otherwise readable blue background with a garish yellow one. Every creative has their unmurdered darlings.

Dan Rice at The Hard Times:

In a stunning instance of miscommunication between departments, ICE agents have deported Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro back to Venezuela just hours after he was abducted by the DEA.

Remember, in this timeline, “satire” is just something that hasn’t happened yet.

See Also: “Trump Is Boasting About an Alleged Land Strike in Venezuela — Here’s Why He Is Still a Pedophile”:

A regime change in Venezuela will not erase Trump’s relationship with sex trafficker Jefferey Epstein

It’s an open secret that Trump’s real goal here is to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a known dictator who just so happens to be sitting on some significant oil and rare earth mineral reserves. It is, however, also an open secret that Donald Trump bonded with Jefferey Epstein over their shared love of coercing sex from women under the age of 18. Trump himself has called this a “Wonderful secret.”

Jeffrey, but still: The Hard Times goes hard.

Meg Kinnard and Michelle L. Price, writing for AP News:

Months of covert planning led to the brazen operation overnight, when President Donald Trump gave an order authorizing Maduro’s capture. The U.S. plunged the South American country’s capital into darkness, infiltrated Maduro’s home and whisked him to the United States, where the Trump administration planned to put him on trial.

Months of planning.

Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at Trump’s news conference that U.S. forces had rehearsed their maneuvers for months, learning everything about Maduro — where he was at certain hours as well as details of his pets and the clothes he wore. […]

Rehearsed for months.

Trump said on Fox that U.S. forces had practiced their extraction on a replica building.

“They actually built a house which was identical to the one they went into with all the same, all that steel all over the place,” Trump said.

Built a house.

I don’t know how long it takes to build a replica of a heavily fortified presidential compound, but I’ll guess it’s not a short period of time.

I’m left wondering exactly when this operation “Absolute Resolve” was initially broached, and whether the attacks on alleged “drug-carrying” boats off the coast of Venezuela, which started in September and have killed at least 115 people, were mere pretext and distraction.

Rebecca Solnit:

1:

They are saying it baldly: this is an oil grab.[…]

How Venezuela stole its own oil on its own territory is something I would love JD Vance to explain in a war crimes tribunal, but the short version is imperialism plus the habit of Republican administrations of regarding the fossil fuel industry as inseparable from government and making its interests the top priority.

3:

It is also an attack on international law. It undermines any US opposition to China seizing Taiwan, which appears to be a possibility this year, and normalizes the invasion of Ukraine by the Putin regime. […] When Trump is finished, this country will have immense repair work to do to reestablish the rule of law at home and rebuild international alliances. If we return to normal. If we remain a nation.

4:

This is serious and important and we must pay attention to it. But we must not lose sight of what the Trump Administration would love us to lose sight of: a wildly unpopular president doing his utmost to harm the people of this country and enrich himself, his family, and his cronies while in rapid mental and physical decline and in an ongoing panic over what the Epstein files could tell us about him.

Solnit punctuates her post with social media screenshots from politicians and others illustrating the depths of this regime’s illegal, unauthorized, and dangerous actions.

Isaac Chotiner for The New Yorker (soft paywall; Apple News+):

On Saturday morning, President Donald Trump announced that the United States military, working with American law-enforcement officials, had carried out a strike in Venezuela, capturing the country’s President, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores. Maduro was indicted in a federal court in New York for his role in what the Administration claims is a narco-terrorism conspiracy. At a press conference later on Saturday, Trump said, “We are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.” He also said that he was not concerned about “boots on the ground,” referring to an American military presence.

I spoke by phone on Saturday morning with Oona Hathaway, a professor at Yale Law School and the director of its Center for Global Legal Challenges. She is also the president-elect of the American Society of International Law. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed whether Maduro can legally be tried in American courts, the long history of U.S. meddling in Latin America, and what makes Trump’s decision so uniquely dangerous.

Chotiner’s first question:

What is the legal basis, such as it is, for this action?

Unfortunately, I don’t think there is a legal basis for what we’re seeing in Venezuela. There are certainly legal arguments that the Administration is going to make, but all the arguments that I’ve heard so far don’t hold water. None of them really justify what the President seems to have ordered to take place in Venezuela.

The United States is a rogue state controlled by a dictator and his apparatchiks, with a feckless Congress doing absolutely zilch to stop them.

Reporters Annie Linskey, Josh Dawsey and Meridith McGraw of The Wall Street Journal in a knives-out look at Donald Trump’s health (paywalled; Apple News+):

Trump, 79, the oldest man to assume the presidency, is showing signs of aging in public and private, according to people close to him.

The piece is filled with several face-palming examples of Trump’s poor health regime (he “uses aspirin for ‘cardiac prevention,’” and takes 325 milligrams a day—which he’s been doing for 25 years—because he wants “nice, thin blood pouring through” his heart), but this bit made me chuckle:

His physical signs of aging are becoming more evident to some of his closest advisers. His skin is so delicate that Pam Bondi, now his attorney general, caused his hand to bleed when she nicked him with her ring while giving him a high-five at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

This paragraph was under the subhead “Delicate skin.” So much for metaphors.

Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle, at Duke University School of Law’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain:

On January 1, 2026, thousands of copyrighted works from 1930 enter the US public domain, along with sound recordings from 1925. They will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon. The literary highlights range from William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying to Agatha Christie’s The Murder at the Vicarage and the first four Nancy Drew novels.

I had no idea the Nancy Drew books I enjoyed in the 1970s and ’80s were first written in the 1930s. (The Hardy Boys books started in 1927!)

Other interesting public domain works: The Marx Brothers’ Animal Crackers, Mondrian’s Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow, Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon (the book, not the fantastic movie), and Betty Boop.

Via Ellen Wexler at Smithsonian magazine, who summarizes and adds helpful context to a few of the books, movies, and music that entered the public domain this year, including Betty Boop’s first appearance in the 1930 short, Dizzy Dishes, which I’d never seen and is a mind-bending trip.

Over lunch, my friend Matt reminded me of this article from Michael Green (“How a Broken Benchmark Quietly Broke America”) on the origins and impact of the poverty line (part 1 of a three-part series):

This week, while trying to understand why the American middle class feels poorer each year despite healthy GDP growth and low unemployment, I came across a sentence buried in a research paper:

“The U.S. poverty line is calculated as three times the cost of a minimum food diet in 1963, adjusted for inflation.”

I read it again. Three times the minimum food budget.

I felt sick.

The formula for the poverty line, Green learned, was developed by Mollie Orshansky, an economist at the Social Security Administration, after observing that groceries accounted for one third of a family’s income:

Orshansky was careful about what she was measuring. In her January 1965 article, she presented the poverty thresholds as a measure of income inadequacy, not income adequacy—“if it is not possible to state unequivocally ‘how much is enough,’ it should be possible to assert with confidence how much, on average, is too little.”

She was drawing a floor. A line below which families were clearly in crisis.

The poverty line formula was “a measure of ‘too little,’” below which “you were in genuine crisis,” and above which “you had a fighting chance,” writes Green.

The cost of supporting a household has shifted dramatically since 1963. Childcare “didn’t really exist as a market,” notes Green, and can consume 20 to 40 percent of a household budget, while housing and healthcare costs have exploded (ranging from 35 to 45 percent and 15 to 20 percent, respectively). Food now accounts for just 5 to 7 percent of expenses, not a third.

If you keep Orshansky’s logic—if you maintain her principle that poverty could be defined by the inverse of food’s budget share—but update the food share to reflect today’s reality, the multiplier is no longer three.

It becomes sixteen.

Which means if you measured income inadequacy today the way Orshansky measured it in 1963, the threshold for a family of four wouldn’t be $31,200.

It would be somewhere between $130,000 and $150,000.

And remember: Orshansky was only trying to define “too little.” She was identifying crisis, not sufficiency. If the crisis threshold—the floor below which families cannot function—is honestly updated to current spending patterns, it lands at $140,000.

What does that tell you about the $31,200 line we still use?

It tells you we are measuring starvation.

Green pursues this argument through “The Valley of Death”:

Once I established that $136,500 is the real break-even point, I ran the numbers on what happens to a family climbing the ladder toward that number.

What I found explains the “vibes” of the economy better than any CPI print.

Our entire safety net is designed to catch people at the very bottom, but it sets a trap for anyone trying to climb out. As income rises from $40,000 to $100,000, benefits disappear faster than wages increase.

He spotlights the societal support that exists for families making $35,000 (“The ‘Official’ Poor”), which erode as those families increase their earnings.

At $45,000 (“The Healthcare Trap”), a $10K raise loses them access to Medicaid, which then costs them $10,567 in premiums and deductibles.

At $65,000 (“The Childcare Trap”), childcare subsidies are eliminated; the $20K raise costs the family $28,000.

When you run the net-income numbers, a family earning $100,000 is effectively in a worse monthly financial position than a family earning $40,000.

At $40,000, you are drowning, but the state gives you a life vest. At $100,000, you are drowning, but the state says you are a “high earner” and ties an anchor to your ankle called “Market Price.”

Green also uses the Covid lockdowns as a “proof of concept” that illustrates how the “working poor” benefited from eliminating several of these expenses for a time:

In April 2020, the US personal savings rate hit a historic 33%. Economists attributed this to stimulus checks. But the math tells a different story.

During lockdown, the “Valley of Death” was temporarily filled. Childcare ($32k): Suspended. Kids were home. Commuting ($15k): Suspended. Work Lunches/Clothes ($5k): Suspended.

For a median family, the “Cost of Participation” in the economy is roughly $50,000 a year. When the economy stopped, that tax was repealed. Families earning $80,000 suddenly felt rich—not because they earned more, but because the leak in the bucket was plugged. For many, income actually rose thanks to the $600/week unemployment boost. But even for those whose income stayed flat, they felt rich because many costs were avoided.

I found Green’s arguments compelling: it is ridiculous that a formula from 1963 remains the basis for determining poverty levels six decades later. It’s likewise unjustifiable that a salary increase can actually cost you money as subsidies are phased out.

Unsurprisingly, Green received a lot of pushback—in particular, for the $140,000 number itself, which some argue is artificially high—which he dutifully addresses in Part 2 of his series (“The Door Has Opened”).

While I, too, initially found the headline number exorbitant, and the math didn’t always math, it quickly became clear the actual number wasn’t the point: it was the significant delta between the putative poverty line and the actual “cost of participating, the cost of working”—the reality that “the threshold where a family can afford housing, healthcare, childcare, and transportation without relying on means-tested benefits” is well above $31,200. The $140,000 number may be high, but it’s directionally, if not mathematically, accurate.

(Part 2’s section on “The Wealth Lie” and the “phase transition […] from Class to Caste” is an especially withering assault on the notion of upward mobility via wealth inheritance. “You aren’t inheriting a fortune. You are inheriting a hospice bill,” writes Green.)

In Part 3 (“The Pursuit of Happiness”), Green starts to address solutions. He introduces the “Rule of 65,” which he calls “a simple, aggressive strategy” that shifts taxes from workers and onto “idle capital” by raising taxes on corporations, cutting FICA rates while increasing the FICA cap, and eliminating benefit cliffs by expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit.

(While Part 1 by itself is provocative (deliberately or not, I can’t be sure), Parts 2 and 3 frame and contextualize Green’s argument. I recommend treating them as one long piece.)

Surprisingly, Green is not a liberalist calling for massive wealth redistribution, but a small-c conservative (“just one that is tired of the lies”) who once managed the personal capital of Peter Thiel and founded a hedge fund seeded by George Soros. His recommendations are rather tame compared to what some are seeking, and don’t neatly align to liberal/conservative orthodoxy.

I can’t honestly say I follow all of his arguments (and his conservatism sometimes peeks through; for example, he deems “government-directed expenditures (housing vouchers, SSI, Nutrition, Unemployment Insurance)” to be “even worse” than lowering taxes for the rich), but it was an immensely eye-opening read.

Paul Waldman on Donald Trump’s “frenzy of construction and renaming” (the illegally renamed Kennedy Center, a proposed “Arc de Trump,” the East Wing ballroom, “Trump Class” battleships, TrumpRx, Trump Accounts, Trump Gold Cards…):

Some of these are programs and websites, but the ones that are most important to the president — the ballroom, the ships, the signage on buildings, the arch — are the ones that have physical form.

What’s going on here? Narcissism, insecurity, self-aggrandizement, the mania of the cult leader — sure. But there’s something else at work.

Trump is haunted by mortality.

That’s the most succinct explanation I’ve seen of Trump’s desperate attempts to avoid becoming a forgotten footnote in history.

I wholeheartedly endorse Waldman’s recommendations for addressing Trump’s narcissism:

In the first hours and days of the next president’s term, there must be a concerted effort to utterly expunge the name “Donald Trump” from every federal building, outpost, sign, website, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse, and doghouse, except where necessary for historical accuracy.

And not just the name, but every vulgar trace of him: Chisel off the letters, take down the photos, melt down the stupid coins, tear out his patio and replant the Rose Garden, strip all the chintzy gold appliques from the walls of the Oval Office. Maybe even demolish the ballroom, but at the very least remodel it so it doesn’t look so much like an obscene mashup of the Winter Palace and Saddam Hussein’s bathroom, then rename it for someone he hates. The Obama Ballroom has a nice ring to it.

I’ll bet all the money in my pockets against all the money in your pockets that Donald Trump would sooner destroy the world than see “his” ballroom named after President Obama.

Ryan MacTheodore Schleifer and Heather Knight, reporting for The New York Times (gift link):

Billionaires including Peter Thiel, the tech venture capitalist, and Larry Page, a co-founder of Google, are considering cutting or reducing their ties to California by the end of the year because of a proposed ballot measure that could tax the state’s wealthiest residents, according to five people familiar with their thinking. […]

The moves are being driven by a potential California ballot measure from the health care union, Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, the people said. The proposal calls for California residents worth more than $1 billion to be taxed the equivalent of 5 percent of their assets.

Don’t let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya.

These are the same sorts of people who promised to flee New York City if Zohran Mamdani won the mayoral election—there’s been no such exodus.

The proposed tax would cost Page, worth an estimated $258 billion, more than $12 billion; Thiel, worth about $27.5 billion, could pay more than $1.2 billion.

How will they ever survive?

The measure faces opposition from Silicon Valley investors and others, including Gov. Gavin Newsom. At The New York Times DealBook conference this month, Mr. Newsom said a wealth tax was not pragmatic. The Democrat, who has been close with people like Mr. Page, is raising money for a committee to oppose the measure.

Can Page and Thiel take Newsom with them when they leave?

“The inevitable outcome will be an exodus of the state’s most talented entrepreneurs who can and will choose to build their companies in less regressive states,” Chamath Palihapitiya, a tech investor, said on social media this week.

The only meaningful outcome will be a handful of incredibly wealthy individuals avoiding taxes by claiming domicile in poor states so they can continue extracting wealth from the system.

There’s better than even odds that if you’re reading this site, you already know MKBHD, but his latest video, in which he explores the infinitesimally small interior of Apple’s M5 chipset at “human scale,” was especially impressive. It’s a collaboration with Epic Spaceman, who regularly creates this style of video for his own channel, and his companion video is even more remarkable. Both do a tremendous job contextualizing just how astonishingly tiny these processors have shrunk.

(Also, in a sign I’ve watched too much 30 Rock, I can’t help pronouncing his handle Epic Spa-che-man.)

I played several Infocom text-based games in high school (Zork being the most famous example) and loved the Invisiclues system: a booklet with hints to the Infocom puzzles, printed in invisible ink that you swiped with a special marker to reveal the answers. I recently discovered they’re available online for all of Infocom’s games, with obscured answers that you must click to reveal.

What made Invisiclues especially fun and clever was that the booklet wouldn’t immediately give you a direct answer. Instead, it would often start with a vague solution—for example, in Zork, the first answer to “How do I open the egg without damaging it?” is “You don’t”, hinting at another who could—with the answers increasing in specificity before finally revealing the explicit solution.

(The booklets also included fake or unhelpful clues, which I found terribly amusing. In Zork, the answer to “Is the gas of any use?” is “It’s great for blowing up dim-witted adventurers who wander into a coal mine with an open flame.” Having been one of those dim-witted adventurers, I chortled.)

This is a completely niche site for People of a Certain Age and Geekiness, and I’ve already spent an inordinate amount of time exploring it.

Bilge Ebiri, in Vulture, with a terrific oral history of How the Grinch Stole Christmas (via New York magazine in Apple News+):

It is the strangest movie. When Ron Howard and Jim Carrey teamed up to make a live-action feature-film adaptation of Dr. Seuss’s beloved children’s book How the Grinch Stole Christmas, some might have expected a straightforwardly heartwarming family picture, but the resulting 2000 film was nothing of the sort.

I really enjoyed reading this history of this movie, which has become a holiday classic—but I’ve never seen it (I can only take Carrey’s manic energy in small amounts). It intrigued me enough to finally consider watching the darn film, a quarter-century later. The history also left me deeply impressed by Carrey’s commitment to his over-the-top performance.

When this story came out a couple of weeks ago, the anecdote making the rounds was about Carrey’s panic attacks during filming and needing an intervention to help him survive the full-body makeup process:

Carrey: Richard Marcinko was a gentleman that trained CIA officers and special-ops people how to endure torture. He gave me a litany of things that I could do when I began to spiral. Like punch myself in the leg as hard as I can. Have a friend that I trust and punch him in the arm. Eat everything in sight. Changing patterns in the room. If there’s a TV on when you start to spiral, turn it off and turn the radio on. Smoke cigarettes as much as possible. There are pictures of me as the Grinch sitting in a director’s chair with a long cigarette holder. I had to have the holder, because the yak hair would catch on fire if it got too close.

Later on I found out that the gentleman that trained me to endure the Grinch also founded SEAL Team Six. But what really helped me through the makeup process, which they eventually pulled down to about three hours, was the Bee Gees. I listened through the makeup process to the entire Bee Gees catalogue. Their music is so joyful. I’ve never met Barry Gibb, but I want to thank him.

Quite the fun Christmas Day read.

I was (and remain) a huge fan of Alton Brown’s Good Eats (and its various reboots and related books), so I’m thrilled to see he’s back with a new YouTube series, Alton Brown Cooks Food (episode 1, The Big Bird, revisits his classic roast turkey recipe). He’s five episodes in, and it’s everything I love about AB and Good Eats—from cameras-in-ovens to detailed-yet-digestible food concepts to his sarcastic sense of humor (which very much aligns with my own)—just with less over-the-top stagecraft. Even if I’ll never make a standing rib roast or gluten-free sugar cookies, I’m happy he’s returned to my screen.

Rob Carlson:

Interesting (but entirely anecdotal) note since I started responding with human trafficking assistance resources to every incoming sha zhu pan (“pig butchering”) text message -- they have stopped completely. I believe I got added to some exclusion list the criminals pass around. So I can endorse this strategy on several levels now.

Pig butchering “is a type of online scam where the victim is encouraged to make increasing financial contributions over a long period,” often initiated via a text message or phone call with a seemingly random query—“Are you free tomorrow?” or “I found your number while checking my contacts. Did I save the wrong number, or have we chatted before? 😅”—which I got today.

These “misdirected” text messages and phone calls rely on our human tendency to be helpful (“sorry, wrong number”). Once you’ve responded, the scammer will strike up a conversation, which will eventually—perhaps weeks or months later—lead to a request to send or make money.

I usually block-and-report these messages and calls as spam, but Carlson takes a different approach, recognizing that the scammers are themselves often victims. From that aforelinked Wikipedia entry:

Perpetrators are typically victims of a fraud factory, where they are lured to travel internationally under false pretenses, trafficked to another location, and forced to commit the fraud by organised crime gangs.

In an effort to combat this, Carlson responds with this message:

Sometimes people who send messages like this aren’t doing it by choice, and are being forced or trafficked into it. If that’s what’s happening, you don’t have to tell me details but please know you can get help confidentially and for free. You can message @BeFree (233733) in the U.S. or visit humantraffickinghotline.org for local numbers in other countries. They can connect you with safety, shelter, and legal help without involving the police unless you want that.

The potential dual benefits of reducing scam texts and addressing one of the underlying causes have me reconsidering my block-as-spam approach—though I remain wary of engaging.

Others in the thread have noted that Carlson’s options are U.S.-centric, and they’ve suggested other global resources, including:

• Thailand (via badsamurai)
• Australia (via Stib)
• Norway (via Lemmus)

I expect several more resources will be added to the thread.

If you’re curious to learn more about pig butchering—and how to protect yourself from the scam—read these three articles:

• Stay Safe Online: What Is Pig Butchering And How To Spot The Scam (2024)
• investopedia: Pig Butchering Scams: What They Are and The Red Flags You Must Spot Early (2025)
• ProPublica: What’s a Pig Butchering Scam? Here’s How to Avoid Falling Victim to One (2022)

I’ll end with this advice from Investopedia:

If you have already invested money with someone you suspect may be a scammer, stop all communication with them immediately and contact your bank or financial institution to report the incident and discuss your options for recovering your funds. You should also report the scam to the appropriate authorities, such as the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).

What to Do If You’ve Been Scammed

1. If you suspect you’ve fallen victim to a pig butchering scam, you should immediately take the following steps:

2. Stop all contact with the scammer immediately.

3. Notify your bank or broker and block any further payments to the scammer.

4. Report the crime to local law enforcement and file a complaint with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).

5. Gather all documentation related to the scam (text messages, screenshots, financial records, etc.) to assist investigators.

6. Consider seeking counseling to help you cope with the emotional impact of the financial loss and the other effects of being scammed.

The Kansas City Chiefs have played in Kansas City, Missouri since 1963, and in Arrowhead Stadium since 1972 (the third oldest stadium in the NFL). Come 2031, they’ll have a new stadium in a new city, and be known as… the Kansas City Chiefs:

Today we are excited to take another momentous step for the future of the franchise. We have entered into an agreement with the State of Kansas to host Chiefs football beginning with the 2031 NFL season. In the years ahead, we look forward to designing and building a state-of-the-art domed stadium and mixed-use district in Wyandotte County, and a best-in-class training facility, team headquarters, and mixed-use district in Olathe, totaling a minimum of $4 billion of development in the State of Kansas.

I believe this is unique in sporting history, with no other professional sports franchise moving from one city to another and keeping its full city and team name. The only other team that could realistically do this is… the Kansas City Royals.

The new stadium won’t be cheap. Clark Hunt, chairman and CEO of the Chiefs, as quoted in The Kansas Reflector (the headline for which—“Chiefs moving to Kansas with $3.3 billion plan for domed stadium, training facility”—I’d originally misread as “doomed stadium” and thought, that’s awfully pessimistic):

“The stadium we estimate will be approximately $3 billion,” Hunt said. “The practice facility will be approximately $300 million and then we have committed to do a mixed-use district that will have at least $700 million invested both in Olathe and Wyandotte County, and it could go up from there.”

Fortunately, Kansas is ponying up 60% of the cost. Plus, the team can save on rebranding expenses.

The Athletic offers an FAQ on the move, including this delightful nugget:

What other features will absolutely be at the new stadium?

Hunt highlighted two important factors based on fan surveys: Having a loud stadium and one that features great tailgating.

“We’ll work really hard on both of those,” Hunt said, “to make sure that we deliver something that’s as good or better than they have now.”

Donovan said he believed there were design possibilities available that could make the Chiefs’ home stadium even louder than it is now.

Arrowhead is already the loudest football stadium in the league. I hope the new stadium comes with earplugs.

Muhammad Ali, “The Greatest,” is finally getting his wish:

Ali once said, “I should be a postage stamp, because that’s the only way I’ll ever get licked.”

(Of course, today’s stamps are self-adhesive, so Ali gets his stamp, but still won’t get licked.)

Ali’s wife Lonnie and broadcaster Bob Costas will host a “first-day-of-issue event” on January 15, 2026, ahead of the tenth anniversary of Ali’s death. I don’t usually get excited about postage stamps, but I’ve preordered these (and the associated Field Notes notebook).

Jim Harrington, The Mercury News (gift link):

The San Francisco Giants have just made an important acquisition.

But, no, it’s not a power-hitting second baseman so the team can better compete with the World Champion Los Angeles Dodgers in 2026.

It’s actually the Curran Theatre.

This news came out of left field. It’s being covered by Around the Foghorn and the SFGate sports section, and by Playbill and Deadline—quite the double-play.

Larry Baer, president and CEO of the Giants:

Acquiring the Curran expands our commitment to San Francisco and reinforces our core belief that sports, arts and culture are essential to San Francisco’s identity, economy and resurgence.

The Giants also are 50% owners of the Mission Rock neighborhood across from their ballpark; buying the Curran reinforces that they’re as much a real estate business as they are a baseball team.

This shouldn’t have shocked me; back in March, after the Giants sold a 10% stake in the team to a private equity firm, Baer was quoted in The New York Times:

“This is not about a stockpile for the next Aaron Judge,” he said, referring to the New York Yankees star. “This is about improvements to the ballpark, making big bets on San Francisco and the community around us, and having the firepower to take us into the next generation.”

Buying an historic, 103—year old theatre is an undeniably “big bet,” and certainly a commitment to the City, yet despite my love of both baseball and broadway, I’d much rather the Giants spend their windfall improving on-field performance.

Though perhaps they could commission a new play: Damn Dodgers.

(Via Cathy Hammer.)

Steve Hayman, “freshly retired” after 32 years at Apple (and a former colleague), on Saturday:

On this day in 1996, I was summoned to a phone call - which I took at a pay phone at the Steamtown Railroad Museum for complicated reasons involving new baby - in which we learned that Apple had agreed to buy NeXT.

My immediate reaction was: "wait, WHO is buying us? Apple? They're the only company going out of business faster than WE are."

It worked out pretty well.

Longtime Apple watchers like to joke that NeXT bought Apple for negative $400 million. It’s hard to argue against that. The NeXT merger remains the most consequential in Apple’s history. It is singular in its downstream effects; entire businesses and industries would not exist without it. The NeXTSTEP operating system became the foundation of Mac OS X, and thus, over time, of iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Apple Watch, and HomePod. And, of course, the return of Steve Jobs set the stage that transformed a moribund business into a $4 trillion behemoth.

Steve wrote an expanded version of his post that offers more detail of that day, including this charming anecdote:

Two weeks earlier, I’d got a call from a former NeXT colleague Barb, who’d gone to work for Apple. She wanted to know if I wanted to come along.

“No thank you”, I replied politely, when what I was really thinking was “What, that bunch of losers? Why would I go there? They’re the only company going out of business faster than WE are.”

But the merger happened anyway, and Barb called me about a minute after it was announced to say “Well, we really wanted to hire you, so this is the only plan we could think of.”

The LADbible Stories YouTube channel released this fascinating video a couple of weeks ago:

In this episode of Honesty Box, Former CIA Spy and Whistleblower, John Kiriakou spills all about working for America’s primary intelligence agency.

I watched this with my mouth agape as Kiriakou unflinchingly answered questions like “What skills make a good agent?” (“people who have sociopathic tendencies”); “Are hitmen real?” (yes; a committee meets every morning at 9 am to review a “kill list”); “How does the CIA recruit spies?” (they spend lots of money and time “becoming best friends” with future “assets”); and “Does the CIA listen through our phones and laptop cameras?” (yes—and they can “remotely take control of your car… to make you kill yourself and make it look like an accident”).

What surprised me was hearing him give unequivocal “yes, and…” answers, with details, context, and examples behind them—no prevarication, no hedging—he just outright said it. His forthrightness made me wonder just how much of what he was saying was true and how much was simply believable. It certainly lends an air of both invincibility and inevitability to the CIA—something I’m sure they’re happy to cultivate.

For context (which I didn’t have before this video), Kiriakou was a CIA officer who in 2007 exposed the CIA’s waterboarding of al-Qaeda prisoners, and was convicted and sentenced in 2012 to 30 months in prison for “passing classified information to the media” (he served 23 months). I remember the waterboarding disclosures and outcry, but not the person, nor the arrest and trial that followed.

He was also a script advisor on The Bourne Ultimatum, Burn Notice, and a couple of other spy shows. (One note of advice he offered for watching shows: “If somebody calls the CIA ‘The Company,’ turn it off.”)

After watching Kiriakou, I wished I was able to ask him my own questions, like “How do you recognize a foreign agent?” and “Do you believe there are foreign spies working at high levels of the U.S. government?” and “What would a spy be doing differently compared to what some members of Congress are doing today?”

(Via my friend and former colleague, Jason Yeo.)

Hamed Aleaziz, New York Times (gift link):

The Trump administration plans to ramp up efforts to strip some naturalized Americans of their citizenship, according to internal guidance obtained by The New York Times, marking an aggressive new phase in President Trump’s immigration crackdown.

The guidance, issued on Tuesday to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services field offices, asks that they “supply Office of Immigration Litigation with 100–200 denaturalization cases per month” in the 2026 fiscal year.

There were 90 criminal and civil denaturalization cases filed in 2018—the most since the 1990s—but they plan on processing up to twice that every month? That’s not a legal process, it’s an assault on citizenship.

I continue to bang on about this because it’s more than an intimidation tactic to silence 26 million naturalized Americans—it’s a precursor to the Trump regime deciding, without any legal recourse, who it counts as “citizens” and who are therefore worthy of the government’s protection.

It’s not hard to grasp the Trump regime’s twisted logic here: naturalized citizens represent ten percent of eligible voters; 55% of them live in four states (California, Florida, New York and Texas); they are overwhelmingly non-white (Hispanic or Asian); and they lean Democratic across most ethnic groups.

Voter suppression by any other name smells as foul.

Sam Becker, Fast Company:

In a surprising move, Trump Media and Technology Group (DJT) said on Thursday that it is fusing itself to a fusion company.

The company will merge with TAE Technologies—a privately held fusion energy firm that’s backed by Alphabet, Chevron Technology Ventures, and others—in a deal that’s worth more than $6 billion.

It’s an all-stock deal, which is expected to close sometime next year, and is a huge and eyebrow-raising move for Trump Media, which is best known as the owner of President Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social.

Of course. It makes perfect sense for a social media company owned by the president of the United States to merge with a fusion energy firm that’s funded by Google, Chevron, and—checks notes—the government of Russia.

This has so far been great news for investors in DJT, which is up 40% today on the news (but still down 63% from its 2025 high).

From the press release:

Upon closing, shareholders of each company will own approximately 50% of the combined company on a fully diluted equity basis.

Donald Trump owns 41% of Trump Media—which he controls via a revocable trust of which he is the sole beneficiary and his son, Donald Trump Jr., is the sole trustee—garnering him about 20.5% ownership of the merged company, worth over $1.2 billion. I’m sure there won’t be any conflicts of interest.

The companies have posted supplemental slides to their respective websites, all of which can be accessed at tmtgcorp.com and tae.com.

tae.com:

Truly confidence-inspiring.

Deal to combine TMTG’s access to significant capital […]

TMTG is controlled by the president of the United States, who has the power to regulate the energy industry, and he knows people. That capital can come from anywhere—sovereign wealth funds, billionaires, American taxpayers. We don’t know. We don't care.

The transaction will combine the strength of TMTG’s strong balance sheet with TAE’s leading technologies. As part of the transaction, TMTG has agreed to provide up to $200 million of cash to TAE at signing and an additional $100 million is available upon initial filing of the Form S-4.

TMTG lost $54.8 million on $973,000 in revenue last quarter. Investor’s Business Daily: “Trump Media stock has a low 1 Composite Rating out of a best-possible 99. The stock also has a 6 Relative Strength Rating and an 11 EPS Rating.”

This is not a good business.

TAE’s next-generation fusion technology is poised for commercial application. After more than 25 years of research and development, TAE has significantly reduced fusion reactor size, cost and complexity. TAE has built and safely operated five fusion reactors […]

Fast Company: “Notably, there are not currently any operating fusion power plants. […] Further, the latest annual survey from Fusion Industry Association found that 75% of respondents don’t expect fusion power plants to start supplying energy to the grid until the 2030s.”

This is not a good business.

[…] and raised more than $1.3 billion in private capital to date from Google, Chevron Technology Ventures, Goldman Sachs, Sumitomo Corporation of Americas, NEA, the visionary family offices of Addison Fischer, the Samberg Family, Charles Schwab, and others.

And it’s high time we cashed out.

The transaction […] is expected to close in mid-2026, subject to customary closing conditions, including shareholder and regulatory approvals.

Did we mention that the president of the United States is a 20.5% shareholder, now? We anticipate no regulatory issues.

The mission of Trump Media is to end Big Tech's assault on free speech by opening up the Internet and giving people their voices back. Trump Media operates Truth Social, a social media platform established as a safe harbor for free expression amid increasingly harsh censorship by Big Tech corporations, as well as Truth +, a TV streaming platform focusing on family-friendly live TV channels and on-demand content. Trump Media is also launching Truth.Fi, a financial service and FinTech brand incorporating America First investment vehicles.

Harnessing the power of the sun is a natural next step.

What incentive was there for TMTG to merge now with TAE? The subhed of their pitch deck (“Advancing America’s energy dominance and powering the A.I. revolution”) offers one clue. Another is noted by TechCrunch:

Last week, industry representatives met with Energy Department officials, urging them to help direct billions of dollars toward fusion projects, and earlier this year, the DOE announced a new roadmap to guide commercial efforts in the sector […]

Ah. Coincidental, I’m sure, that the president’s administration is urged to invest in America’s fusion future, and, before doing so, the president’s personal company invests first.

Is that what they mean by “front-running”?

Or is it still cronyism?

I absolutely love this. Three years ago, Donald Trump sued the Pulitzer Board for defamation after it awarded its 2018 National Reporting prize to The Washington Post and The New York Times for their stories on Russian election interference. That case has been wending its way through the court system. Now, reports The New Republic, the Pulitzer Board has responded:

President Trump’s spiteful defamation suit against the Pulitzer Prize Board may backfire, as the latter is now demanding Trump’s psychological records, prescription medication records, and tax returns in the discovery process. […]

“To the extent You seek damages for any physical ailment or mental or emotional injury arising from Counts I-IV of Your Complaint, all Documents (whether held by You or by third parties under Your control or who could produce them at your direction) concerning Your medical and/or psychological health from January 1, 2015, to present, including any prescription medications you have been prescribed or have taken,” the board wrote in their filing. “For the avoidance of doubt, this includes all Documents Concerning Your annual physical examination. To the extent you do not seek such damages in this action, please confirm so in writing.”

This is exactly how everyone who’s targeted by Trump’s frivolous lawsuits should respond: by demanding extensive discovery of sensitive or potentially embarrassing documents. It’s a virtual certainty that Trump will now quietly drop this lawsuit before it gets too far into discovery (or push for a settlement so he can claim victory). If every Trump litigation target pursued this aggressive discovery strategy, perhaps he’d stop using these asinine lawsuits as a bullying tactic.

See also: BBC says it will defend Trump defamation lawsuit over Panorama speech edit.

Vanity Fair’s glossy, hagiographic profile of Susie Wiles, Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff, is fascinating for the candor of its subject as for anything else. (If paygated, here’s a News+ link and AP’s summary.) The attention-grabbing quotes (‘Trump has “an alcoholic’s personality.”’; J.D. Vance ‘has been “a conspiracy theorist for a decade.”’) are juicy, the normalization of Trump is maddening, the sane woman in an insane world vibe is deeply disingenuous, and the non-denial denials are flying fast and furious, but here’s what caught my attention:

Wiles’s childhood had prepared her for difficult men. She was raised in Stamford, Connecticut, and Saddle River, New Jersey, the only daughter and eldest of three siblings. It was her famous father, Pat Summerall, who put Wiles on a path to the pinnacle of political power. Summerall had been a kicker for the New York Giants and afterward parlayed his knowledge and mellifluous baritone into fame and fortune as the “voice of the NFL.”

I had no idea she was Summerall’s daughter.

The “alcoholic’s personality” description of Trump comes from her experience with her father’s alcoholism:

The most valuable gift Susie got from her dad was hard-earned. Summerall was an absentee father and an alcoholic, and Wiles helped her mother stage interventions to get him into treatment. […]

“Some clinical psychologist that knows one million times more than I do will dispute what I’m going to say. But high-functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink. And so I’m a little bit of an expert in big personalities.” Wiles said Trump has “an alcoholic’s personality.” He “operates [with] a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing.”

That’s also, coincidentally, the personality of a megalomaniac who hubristically believes that opposing him is a cause of death.

Then there’s this:

Wiles is the most powerful person in Trump’s White House other than the president himself; unlike any chief of staff before her, she is a woman.

That’s not true. Everyone knows C.J. Cregg was the first female Chief of Staff, during the final two years of President Josiah Bartlet’s second term.

Donald Trump’s despicable attack on Rob Reiner (which he later doubled down on) prompted former CBS journalist Sam Litzinger to opine:

The day Trump dies should be declared a world holiday.

I disagree. Trump would welcome that, even in death, because it keeps his name alive. Instead we should all simply forget him. Refer to him simply as “the 45 and 47th president.” Render him as obscure a figure as John Tyler and as unmemorable as James Buchanan. Nothing would trouble Trump more than knowing he’ll be a forgotten footnote in history.

Keith Olbermann, on a “special bulletin edition” of his Countdown podcast (Overcast; Apple Podcasts):

To be that sick, that soulless, that self obsessed, that messianic—every word I have spoken in ten years of pointing to Trump’s insanity and Trump’s evil has evidently been insufficient. Whatever they total to, Donald Trump is twice as sick and twice as evil as I have said. […]

We do have a prominent public figure suffering from a massive, unyielding and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known to have driven people crazy by his raging obsession and obvious paranoia, and that public figure is Donald Trump, and his emotional and psychological incapacity for the presidency or any public role in this country is so obvious and so overwhelming that every further minute he is permitted by his enablers to stay in that job he risks the life of every living thing on this planet. Eventually, he and those enablers will wind up in hell. I pity them. But right now, a man this sick, this evil, this disconnected from reality, will physically do to us, if he feels he must, what he has just metaphorically done to the late Rob Reiner. He has celebrated his own claim that he helped cause this man’s death. We are next.

Few do outrage as well as Olbermann, and he captures mine perfectly, especially Trump’s need to be “the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral.” The scales are also falling from the eyes of even some of Trump’s staunchest supporters. Maybe, just maybe, we’ve reached a turning point.

I debated linking to this but, well, here we are; Donald Trump, on his blog^[1]:

A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace!

Absolutely pathetic.

In writing this self-aggrandizing screed, Trump effectively blames Reiner for his own death—implying Reiner was killed because of his opposition to Trump, with the inference being that the perpetrator is themself pro-Trump. It’s not much of a logical leap to read this as a warning to those opposing Trump—dissent is dangerous.

Variety, Sunday evening:

Rob Reiner, who segued from starring in “All in the Family” to directing movies including “This Is Spinal Tap,” “A Few Good Men” and “When Harry Met Sally…” was found dead Sunday afternoon in his Brentwood home alongside his wife Michele Singer. He was 78.

The deaths are being investigated as a homicide, according to the LAPD. The couple was reported to have been stabbed to death.

Then this morning:

Nick Reiner, the 32-year-old son of Rob and Michele Reiner, is in custody after the apparent homicide of the director and his wife on Sunday afternoon.

Just tragic and heartbreaking on every level. Inconceivable, even.

I could not stop reading Zach Helfand’s New Yorker story on “The Airport-Lounge Wars” (paywalled; Apple News+), in which he dissects the lounge experience, the history of these liminal spaces, and the very nature of waiting:

Airport lounges are about who gets in and who does not. There are lounges with hot dogs on rollers, lounges with pedicurists, and lounges with personal butlers. Ease of admission varies accordingly. Most people at an airport don’t visit a lounge. If they did, it would kind of defeat the purpose.

And:

Kevin James, a history professor at the University of Guelph who has studied airport lounges, called their product offering “an enhanced experience of stasis”—waiting but better. Peter Greenberg, CBS News’ travel editor, who, fifty years ago, bought lifetime lounge passes with six airlines, said, “What they want people to say is ‘Well, it’s better than nothing.’ And that’s usually what they are—slightly better than nothing.” A lounge is the kind of place that puts fruit in your water. One better-than-nothing criterion to judge a lounge is its bathrooms. An Air France lounge in Paris has rest-room suites with padded leather walls and blown-glass chandeliers, like a jewel box for bowel movements.

Most of the lounges I’ve frequented are dreary places with mediocre food, but one of the primary reasons I visit them (other than complimentary alcohol) is for the restrooms—they’re almost always more spacious, more private, and much, much cleaner than the regular restrooms. I can do without the fruit in my water, though.

I also learned from the piece that the airport lounge was started by what I can only describe as an exceedingly eccentric fellow:

The airport lounge was created in 1939 by American Airlines’ C.E.O., C. R. Smith, as a way to build support for commercial aviation. Smith called his first lounge, at LaGuardia, the Admirals Club. (He referred to his planes as the Flagship Fleet.) Membership was private, free, and at the company’s discretion. A manual listed those eligible: generals, congressmen, governors, judges, members of the U.N. Secretariat, “persons listed in Who’s Who.” New “Admirals” were commissioned in faux naval ceremonies. Often, they’d get a writeup in the local paper. Smith would send personal letters about Admiral business. (“Dear Admiral: As you know, we are not permitted to extend membership in the Admiral’s Club to the ladies. . . .”) He’d sign off, “C. R. Smith, Fleet Admiral.”

One would-be patron was denied access to the Admirals Club and filed a “discrimination complaint […] seeking to open the clubs to the paying public.” It wasn’t appreciated:

One American Airlines executive asked, “If we let just anybody become an Admiral, why would anybody want to be an Admiral?”

A succinct and snooty mashup of “I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member” and “Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.”

American Airlines lost, the clubs were opened up, and now every airline and credit card company is trying to “out-fancy” its competitors with over-the-top amenities:

The Centurion Lounge at LaGuardia was nice, with refreshing lemon-cucumber water, but a little cramped. If this was once world-class, it is no longer. So, this summer, American Express rolled out a new buffet menu—crab frittata, cornflake-crusted French toast—created by four James Beard Award-winning chefs, including Kwame Onwuachi, the star chef of Tatiana. […]

The Chase Sapphire Lounge, next door, offers private lounges within the lounge, starting at twenty-two hundred dollars for three hours. Each is a suite that comes with a PlayStation, a shower, and bathrobes. Dana Pouwels, Chase’s head of airport lounges, showed me around. “Typically, when you arrive at the suite, you would have welcome caviar and champagne,” she said. The suite seemed unnecessary; the rest of the lounge was nice enough. There was an Art Deco bar, custom wallpaper, and carpentry imported from Germany. Everything was JPMorgan blue. Water taps were built into the wall. “We rotate this quarterly to maintain seasonality,” one of Pouwels’s deputies said. “This rotation includes a blackberry-sage spa water.”

There was also a photo booth, a faux fireplace, and a spa. “The Sapphire Reserve customer is an experience maximizer,” Pouwels said. I was booked for a facial.

I just want a clean bathroom, edible food, and a glass of Scotch.

It’s the holidays and for reasons unknown, it’s the one time of year I drink Irish cream. Back in December 2019 I discovered Smitten Kitchen’s homemade Irish cream recipe and I’ve been making it ever winter since. It’s delicious on its own—way better than the “real thing”—and, I’m told, terrific in coffee. For a couple of years, we distributed a carafe of this liquid ambrosia as holiday gifts—a definite crowd-pleaser.

Here’s the basic Smitten Kitchen recipe, with the espresso/coffee powder variant that adds “a faint coffee flavor,” which I think adds depth and should be standard:

• 1 teaspoon unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon instant espresso or coffee powder
• 1 cup (235 ml) heavy or whipping cream
• 1 (14-ounce or 415 ml) can sweetened condensed milk
• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup (235 ml) Irish whiskey (I used Jameson)

In the bottom of a pitcher, whisk [instant espresso or coffee powder,] cocoa powder and a spoonful of cream into a paste. Slowly, whisking the whole time, add more cream a spoonful at a time until the paste is smooth and loose enough that you can whisk the rest of the cream in larger splashes. Once all of the cream is in, whisk in condensed milk, whiskey and vanilla. Cover with lid or plastic wrap and keep in fridge for up to two weeks, possibly longer.

(While the author uses Jameson, Costco brand Kirkland Irish Whiskey works fantastically. It’s massively less expensive—especially if you’re whipping up a big batch for gifting—and subtleties get lost in the cocoa powder, cream, and milk. Save the Jameson for sipping. On the other hand, if you’re feeling especially splurgy, go for a Powers, Redbreast, or even Jameson Black Barrel and live it up.)

There are several other variants out there that may be worth trying. For example, there’s Spend with Pennies, which trades heavy cream for roughly double the volume of light cream or half-and-half, yielding a lighter, milkier Irish cream. Smitten Kitchen leans richer, creamier, and more decadent—much more my style.

(I have some ideas for my own variant, which, if it works out, I’ll share here.)

Whichever recipe you choose, homemade Irish cream is easy to make and better than store-bought. Whip up a batch—it beats Baileys.

I grew up watching Thunderbirds in reruns, and it’s one of my most beloved childhood TV shows. I watched it primarily for the beautifully designed vehicles—Thunderbird 2 and Thunderbird 4 are my favorites—though I may have also had a grade-schooler’s crush on Lady Penelope.

While I missed the actual 60th anniversary of the series debut (September 30), part of the ongoing celebration is the release of a “full remastered and restored” Blu-ray collector’s edition of the complete 32-episode series, along with three anniversary episodes and over eight hours of bonus content. My nostalgia demanded I buy it. It’s available for preorder ($150) on GerryAnderson.com (which has a ton of other wonderful items for sale, not just for Thunderbirds, but also for Space: 1999, which also has one of the most beautiful spaceships.)

One curiosity from the trailer: it touts as one of the improvements “Cropped Shots Uncropped”… with the uncropped shot example showing the hand of the marionettist moving Tin-Tin Kyrano around. I’m not sure how that’s an improvement!

Lastly, in a sign of the times, the pre-order page warns US customers that “this item may be subject to customs charges due to imposed tariffs,” while also promising on the checkout page that “The total amount you pay includes all applicable customs duties & taxes. We guarantee no additional charges on delivery.” America!

(Via The Iconfactory, which is currently offering iPhone wallpaper images inspired by the show’s anniversary.)