Powderhorn

If we hit 270, the Nazis will go scorched earth in the courts. They know they aren't popular overall, so rigging the system is the only lever they consistently go for. And with a compromised Supreme Court, they'll find a way to rule this illegal.

A national majority vote for president is one step closer to reality after the Virginia governor, Abigail Spanberger, signed the national popular vote bill into law, joining an interstate compact with 17 other states and the District of Columbia.

Under the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, states would assign their presidential electors to the winner of the popular vote, regardless of the results within the state. The compact takes effect when states representing a majority of electoral votes – 270 of 538 – pass the legislation and thus would determine the winner of the presidential contest. With Virginia, the compact now has 222 electors.

Every state that has so far enacted the compact has Democratic electoral majorities, including California, New York and Illinois. But legislation has been introduced in enough states to reach the 270-elector threshold, including swing states like Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

A further escalation in the Iran war could trigger a global recession, spiralling inflation and a sharp backlash in financial markets, the International Monetary Fund has warned.

Against an increasingly volatile backdrop, the Washington-based fund said the economic damage from the Middle East conflict was steadily rising as it cut its growth forecasts for 2026 based on the impact from the war so far.

In its half-yearly update, the IMF said the UK would suffer the sharpest growth downgrade and joint highest inflation rate in the G7 this year, even if the fallout from soaring energy costs can be contained by the middle of 2026.

However, under a worst-case “severe scenario”, involving a drawn-out war and persistently higher energy prices, it said the world would face “a close call for a global recession” for only the fifth time since 1980.

Ken, a copywriter for a large, Miami-based cybersecurity firm, used to enjoy his job. But then the “workslop” started piling up.

Workslop is an unintended consequence of the AI boom. It’s what happens when employees use AI to quickly generate work that seems polished – at least superficially – but is in fact so flawed or inaccurate that it needs to be heavily corrected, cleaned upor even completely redone after it’s passed on to colleagues.

For Ken, the problem started after his company’s CEO laid off several of his colleagues and mandated that remaining workers use AI chatbots, saying it would boost their productivity. While initial drafts were a breeze to create, Ken and his co-workers had to spend more time rewriting, correcting errors and resolving disagreements between each other’s chatbots than if they had never used AI at all.

“Quality decreased significantly, time to produce a piece of content increased significantly and, most importantly, morale decreased,” said the copywriter, who spoke under a pseudonym for fear of losing his job. “Everything got a whole lot worse once they rolled out AI.” Ken said the company’s executives shifted the blame to staff when they pushed back about AI-fueled productivity decreases.

Gut writing and editing staff, insert hallucinatory LLMs. That's got to be great for the product, right?

The 72nd meeting of the Bilderberg group, the elite and secretive policy conference that is the longtime subject of endless conspiracy theories, was held at the weekend in Washington DC. A security cordon went up around the opulent Salamander hotel for the notoriously media-shy summit, which was packed as ever with prime ministers, military leaders, tech billionaires and the heads of giant investment companies.

Bilderberg, which since the 1950s has been the intellectual engine room of Nato, took place this year at a time of immense crisis and uncertainty for the alliance. In recent weeks, with Trump threatening at every turn to withdraw from the “paper tiger” of Nato, the “Trans-Atlantic Defence-Industrial Relationship” (as it’s called on the agenda) has reached a strained breaking point.

The head of Nato and Bilderberg regular Mark Rutte arrived at the conference fresh from a “very frank” conversation at the White House. But away from Trump’s bluster, and for all his rhetoric about abandoning Nato, there were no signs that the Americans are withdrawing from Bilderberg. Far from it – the Americans were there in force.

Imagine you've just met someone, but both of you know that you are meant for each other. This actually happens all the time.

Well, not all the time, but we aren't unique. Things escalate wildly in timeframes that are not accepted by others.

People said I was moving too fast with my editor in college. It was eight days from hating each other to me waking up in her apartment. You just fucking know.

This was glacial.

Except you don't. It's viewed as hate. Trying to figure out what the fuck is going on takes cognition. While everyone else in the newsroom is well aware of the trajectory.

It takes love to hate. I'd have liked to learn that earlier.

And thus, I became a journalist. Seriously, it was one woman, not an interest in the field. But you know how it goes with your girlfriend when she knows how to design pages better than you.

This means war. And I of course went raver because I was too scared of having middle-age sorted out at 19.

But let's say you're not needing a career. Now the concerns are different.

And then you find out why the term "soulmate" exists. As with porn, you know it when you see it.

The main issue is you can't see what you're looking for. No one in their right mind is looking for the other half of them.

I suppose a better term is "twin flame," and what we proceeded to do suggests this as a more valid label. We still support each other.

I realize why we can't possibly work, but that doesn't change the physical feeling when she touches me or I touch her. This was initially alarming.

In 2009.

So we got married, This was not a great idea, as neither of us wanted what had happened. Sometimes, wants have to cave to reality.

We've been divorced for a decade, but this seems irrelevant once one considers the touch. It's, uh ... not what you expect out of life, but what ever is?

She remains Mrs. Powderhorn. And we are scrambling to figure out how the fuck we still can't detatch. There's no world in which we act any other way than as decadeslong partners.

This has made looking for new partners over the last decade difficult. When you have irritating, challenging perfection, what the fuck's the point of anything else?

I should likely stop here, as this sounds insane unless you've felt it.

Serious question. We had a perfectly serviceable word, yet everyone decided to shift. Is it just that it's shorter to type?

If so, I feel for your colleagues trying to parse your code when all your variables use abbreviations.

Man, I really wish I could "retire" for committing sexual assault.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas said Monday he will retire from Congress amid bipartisan calls to expel him.

Gonzales had already said he would not seek reelection after admitting to an affair with a staff member who later died by suicide. His announcement came just hours after Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of California said he would be resigning from Congress as he also confronted allegations of sexual misconduct.

House Republican leaders had already called on the three-term Gonzales to not seek reelection. And the House Ethics Committee had initiated an investigation. Under House ethics rules, lawmakers may not engage in a sexual relationship with any employee of the House under their supervision.

“There is a season for everything and God has a plan for us all,” Gonzales said in a social media post. “When Congress returns tomorrow, I will file my retirement from office.”

Can't you just do that via email and stay in Texas? Or do our happy-ass taxpayer dollars have to pay for your round-trip?

"Hey, Mike, it's me: Tony. Not going to be able to make it to the House tomorrow."

This is so fucking juvenile. "You can't block the strait; we will!" Solving, exactly, what economic problem?

I swear, the junta is just day-trading oil via tweet.

Donald Trump has said the US will begin blockading the strait of Hormuz in an attempt to take control of the strategic waterway from Iran in the aftermath of failed peace negotiations between the countries in Pakistan.

The US president also threatened to bomb Iran’s water treatment facilities, power plants and bridges if Tehran did not agree to abandon its nuclear weapons programme, the key sticking point between the two sides.

Trump’s surprise announcement of a blockade came after face-to-face peace negotiations between the US and Iran in Islamabad that lasted 21 hours collapsed on Sunday morning.

To be clear, I am not asking for sympathy, but when I was very young, I talked about my life in Texas.

Problem was, I grew up in Arizona and had never been here short of a Dallas layover. Some 11 years into being in Austin, the fact that I could talk about living in Texas but could not provide details is to be expected when one first starts talking as a toddler.

Thing is, I don't really know much about the state outside of its climate and politics. This all feels rather circular.

One explanation is that not-quite-reincarnation is real, and I've hit the end of the cycle and will end up back in Phoenix in 1979, a la Groundhog Day. Do I believe that? No. But Occam would suggest such an explanation, because it's damn specific.

I sort of feel as though I've done what I was meant to do.

If I get towed tomorrow because of the paving being done on my street, where No Parking signs were erected Friday alongside heavy machinery being parked here all weekend, I no longer have the home I built out. My sole hope is that being in the van will mean I can't be towed, as it's illegal to tow an occupied vehicle.

I actually had a knock on the van today, and upon emerging, a guy asked me if I was interested in selling my van. I said I actually was. He asked how much I wanted, and I answered $16K, which was too rich for his blood. I personally designed and installed $8K of upgrades to a $12K vehicle that I only put 1,000 miles on, so that's a deal.

I'm not really sure what he was expecting. I pointed at the solar panels, the R-15 insulation on all sides in the living space and the 600Ah of LFP. I think he just wanted a tool truck, but seriously, who goes up to a van in the middle of a rainstorm and asks if you're looking to sell a 26-year-old Class 5 commercial vehicle?

One thought that occurred to me was offering to sign a waiver for any damage, and as I'm about 30 inches (~75cm) from the asphalt, having looked at the equipment hanging out roadside, nothing looks quite wide enough to actually do much damage.

But I have nowhere to go and my starter batteries are dead (I have a jump box, but also, have you seen diesel prices lately?).

To say nothing of the fact that I've been running a fever for a week and a half and have not been legal to drive in that time. I was actually, at my mom's urging, considering going to the ER, but once the temporary towing signs sprouted up, if I leave my van for that, I may have no home to come back to.

This is an ideal time to self-medicate.

I have altered policy in many places as a writer and editor. I interviewed (several more times than necessary) a queer activist and wrote the copy for his GoFundMe last month. I saved my ex from a decaying complex just this week.

I'm really good at saving others, but this isolation and shit continuing to go wrong while feverish is not an ideal circumstance.

Over the past 18 months, I've gotten now 22 direct offers of help and solutions, and zero have panned out. It's like job applications, but applied to mutual aid.

I'm exhausted, my sleep schedule is totally fucked, and god only knows when the paving starts in the morning.

I usually know how to pull off miracles, but there's too much here at once in a compromised state. I have six figures of debt, my dad died last fall, my fridge hasn't been reliable in over a year, and my roof vent went off the track last year, so if we have a south wind and rain, I have indoor rain. It also appears my insurance was canceled, which saved me $150 this month, but when I started my policy, I hadn't let my credit go to shit yet.

Oh, and I learned the place I had an appointment with for new dentures doesn't, you know, well, actually do dentures.

I'm sick of having hope. The geopolitics don't help. I live in a constant state of fear and anxiety, having been told by society my skills don't count. That's why I implored the admins to give me the U.S. News community when it started up three years ago. It's not exactly the same as being an editor, but selecting stories off the wire and presenting them to an audience is just ... what I know how to do. I just have more sources now.

I don't know what comes next, but as I said, I feel as though I've done what I was meant to do in life. Years in a choir, a semester as an exchange student and then winning national awards for editorial and column writing, hed writing, design, graphics ... you get the idea. I had no intention of going into journalism, but it tends to find you if you're the right person.

At least, it used to.

I hope my worst fears here aren't borne out, but I have too much data of late to believe otherwise. My little oven is squalor, but it's my squalor. Losing it won't end well.

This too shall pass, they say. And it would take a miracle. I'm too exhausted to storm the castle.

I know this is a fraught topic, but blowing up entire villages is past a red line. Just as with Gaza, they're blowing up people just because they can. We in the U.S. are complicit in this.

Just to reiterate, opposing Bibi is not antisemitism, it's anti war-crime. Like how opposing Trump isn't unamerican but rather saying "this is wrong."

The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations.

The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims.

The demolitions came after Israel’s minister of defence, Israel Katz, called for the destruction of “all houses” in border villages “in accordance with the model used in Rafah and Beit Hanoun in Gaza” to stop threats to communities in northern Israel. The Israeli military destroyed 90% of homes in Rafah, in south Gaza.

The tactic of mass destruction of homes in Gaza, where Israel has been accused of committing genocide, was described as domicide by academics, a strategy that is used to systematically destroy and damage civilian housing to render entire areas uninhabitable.

She's as hard-headed as I am, so when she asked me to help last month with the issues at her apartment complex by demanding I do nothing, I had to rely on the communication style one can only read decades in.

"I don't want to talk to a journalist."

Babe, what the fuck do you think you're doing right now?

The original issue was her water being about to be turned off in her apartment complex, and while she is my ex-wife, I can't just let her go without water.

After contacting two news outlets in her city counter to her explicit request, the water stayed on. No stories were published that I'm aware of.

Well, the situation has worsened, and the woman I fell in love with is back to her shenanigans. She's sleeping out on the porch tonight because of the German roach infestation that had been solved a few months back, but pest control does unit-by-unit spraying, thus sending the unwanted roaches into someone else's unit.

She does not have hot water after the maintenance guy broke her water pipes "fixing" a leak. As such, her grandson can't stay with her, as is customary for a weekend.

If you think pissing off a mother is bad, it's worse when it's Oma.

When we were together, years ago, and an emergency happened, we could handle it with blinding speed. Basically, triage, and we'll figure it out later. Just without the time in the waiting room.

Things have further deteriorated (roaches were not an improvement), and she has an appointment with her lawyer (via the EAP) at 2 p.m. today. At 4 p.m., the Herald reporter will be showing up. Meanwhile, she went so far up the flagpole that two of the complex's owners flew down from New York and will be there from 2 to 5 p.m.

This is not by accident.

It is, however, a reminder of why her independence and grit was such an attractive force. I mean, her manic-pixie look got my foot in the door, but when I realized she was just as manipulative as I am, I think the deal was sealed. We'd already agreed to lie to her brother the night before I met her, so this has a rich and storied tradition.

Some 15 years later, she has the city investigating multiple violations like not having smoke detectors or fire extinguishers in units. My initial work on her behalf last month meant this was a folo, not a random story for the Herald.

So, now it was time to plan the whole interaction. She smartly told the reporter to meet her at the leasing office instead of her unit. If they bring a photog along, that's not particularly useful, but she's now happy to let them in.

She has been amassing fellow residents beyond pissed to participate in this mutiny. The complex is 80% occupied by military, unsurprising given that Killeen essentially exists only because of Fort Hood. The military pays for off-base housing in certain situations (not my wheelhouse) and has decided the complex no longer meets their standards.

So, we've got the lawyer coming, the press coming, the owners coming and base commanders coming -- all at the same time. It almost sounds like a porn.

And, in a way, it is: competence porn.

Over the course of a two-hour call, I managed to steer her in the directions I thought would be most useful. First off, they have a community grill, so I asked if she had hot dogs and buns. The fastest way to a journalist's heart is through their stomach (she's assuming the reporter will be male, which exposes her latent bias, but I'm not going to gender ahead of time).

And if she's got at least six residents along with everyone else, it's always good to break bread in order to break the ice.

I also told her what part of the story to lead with. There are several concurrent problems here, and she was doing the whole manic thing of "oh, my god, the roaches!" Well, there are multiple lease violations, including forcing fees not listed in the lease.

"If you want to bring them down, babe, lead with the lease violations. Sure, being unable to bathe and the roaches is human interest, but that's not near as strong of a story as 'hundreds of people have been paying junk fees for months.' Make it a widespread issue."

The Herald only publishes a print edition on Sundays (I looked it up, trying to figure out what timeline to expect). So Saturday at 4 p.m. is about the sweetest spot you can hit. They may hang out for an hour or two, but if they're headed back to the office by 6, there's plenty of time for this to become Saturday for Sunday (newsroom jargon).

She assumed that meant it would have to wait a week. Well, I mean, they publish online daily, but a print edition still carries weight, and why the hell she thought a story couldn't go through the sausage machine in five hours is beyond me. I mean, I was married to the woman for years, and she still finds journalism to be a black box. To a certain extent, this isn't all that surprising since she doesn't care how a newsroom works.

Just that she can pull the strings.

Sound like anyone else you know?

What the country is really clamoring for is a useless monument. Cancer cured! Mideast at peace! Now, let's build an arch!

I'm going to break with policy and provide the full story, because it's so short that doing my usual excerpt thing wouldn't be useful.

The Trump administration on Friday released new renderings of the triumphal arch the president wants to install in Memorial Circle at the foot of the Arlington Memorial Bridge.

As part of Donald Trump’s legacy-building quest during his second term in office, the so-called “Arc de Trump” would stand 250ft tall, feature a 60ft golden Lady Liberty, and include a viewing deck. The phrase “One Nation Under God” would stretch across the top of the structure, according to the latest plans from Harrison Design.

The mock-up was submitted to the Commission of Fine Arts (CFA), who are next due to meet on 16 April to consider the proposal.

Trump dismissed all six commissioners last year and replaced them with loyalists. The panel is one of two bodies responsible for signing off on his proposed White House ballroom. Although the CFA approved that project in February, a federal judge halted construction weeks later. The president, however, had already demolished the historic East Wing to make room for it.

The National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC), which ​is chaired by one of Trump’s former lawyers, also greenlit the building project days later, but the status of the work remains in limbo following the district court ruling.

The administration believes the arch will be “one of the most iconic landmarks not only in Washington DC, but throughout the world”, said Davis Ingle, a White House spokesperson, in a statement.

He added that the positioning of the arch, near Arlington National Cemetery would serve as “a visual reminder of the noble sacrifices borne by so many American heroes throughout our 250-year history so we can enjoy our freedoms today”.

A White House official also told the Guardian that the estimated cost of the triumphal arch was “still being calculated” and would be shared in the near future. The White House anticipates “some combination of public and private funds” to be used to pay for the project, according to the official.