Michael Powell

What is your take on breaking? It seems to be more embraced these days at “SNL” than in the past. I was never a fan. You have to earn the right to break. And you earn it by having a long track record of committing to the material, playing it straight, and not breaking. Then, every once in a while, you’re allowed. I never objected when John Mulaney would give Bill Hader Stefon jokes he’d never seen before on-air, and Hader would fight like hell not to break. That, to me, is fine. Phil Hartman, for instance, may have been in more sketches than any cast member in history, and he broke exactly once, in a piece Jack Handey and I wrote. The set started to collapse around him. All hell broke loose. Everyone else in the cast was breaking, and Phil held out for as long as he could, but eventually he lost it. Then you had guys like Horatio Sanz, who I don’t recall ever not breaking. It always seemed cheap to me. Norm hated it. He thought it was an easy laugh. He used to say comedy is like Russian slaw: the cheap stuff can drive the good stuff out of circulation, because it’s easier to make. He used to say his least favorite audience members were the ones who laughed and said, “Oh, that’s cute.” It’s too cute. Too cloying. So, put me down as a hard no on breaking.

I love this excerpt from jim downey on the scourge of "breaking" on SNL

the debian project would never contribute funds to the white house ballroom

Musk's Twitter is broadly on his side and has enough of a reactionary right wing presence that it will be protected, whereas Bluesky might be destroyed by Trump and his wealthy allies and fellow travelers, for example.

I think the argument is that big tech has enough resources and is sufficiently under Trump's thumb that they will be able to navigate a 230 repeal transition, whereas smaller players will likely be crushed by a combination of SLAPP lawsuits and Administration harassment.

I continue to sincerely want the term “Kavanaugh Stop” to be a badge of shame for the rest of Brett Kavanaugh’s days; the only bit of writing he’s known or remembered for; his sole contribution to the Law; for him to perceive, in little stabs of self-awareness, that this will be his rancid legacy.

Now starting a running list of everybody who was terrifyingly correct about AI misinformation and its effect on the internet:
Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear Solid 2)
Neal Stephenson (Fall; or, Dodge in Hell)

Fox Business reporter Charles Gasparino, via Twitter: https://x.com/cgasparino/status/1981496719863955913 SCOOP: A Trump official tells @nypost that the administration favors Paramount Skydance to buy Warner Bros. Discovery – and a number of rival bidders are likely to face stiff hurdles from US regulators in the blockbuster auction. “Who owns Warner Bros. Discovery is very important to the administration,” a senior Trump administration official told On The Money. “The Warner board needs to think very seriously not just on the price competition but which player in the suitor pool has been successful getting a deal done. And that points to the Ellisons.”

Not simply fascism. Monarchism.

atlantic article screenshot headline: no one knows how big pumpkins can get sub head: a decade ago, the worlds heaviest pumpkin weighed 2,000 pounds. now the 3,000 pound mark is within sight by yasmin tayag

this headline hums with ancient autumnal dread

This is a screenshot of Graham Planter in a conversation, six years ago, about how the Totenkopf was an SS symbol.

If you are one of the people on here who actually believes that he did not know what the tattoo was until just recently it's because you WANT to be lied to

Oh my god some fucking tech dingdong posted this on Twitter with the caption "AI games are going to be amazing" totally seriously, you have to watch it. You have to. In full screen.

Every time I read about this goddamn ballroom the price goes up $50M

NYPost headline reading “Prince Andrew had a network of staff, pals to ‘arrange girls’ for sex – and he had a type: biographer”

People kvetch about the chaos-inducing serial comma, but you can also do a lot with a colon! Beware, biographers!!

If Trump orders the DOJ to settle $230M with him and the Supreme Court says that's cool I'm gonna fucking lose it

y'all gotta see this clip where ESPN abruptly deleted the EPSN Bet promo by ripping off the whole bottom bar live because of what they're talking about

I don’t need to explain why it’s wildly unacceptable for the military to be illegally privately financed by the president’s wealthy allies, right?

This is far from the most important issue here, but the Ontario govt was under no obligation to "seek...permission to use and edit" any recording of Ronald Reagan that is in the U.S. National Archives/Reagan Library, as is the case here. And the Reagan Foundation has *no* relevant role here.

Hegseth doesn't dispute the existence of a memo planning for the establishment of a "National Guard response force that's gonna be trained in crowd control and civil unrest and deployed in all 50 states by April 2026."

Brought to you by the same voters who started losing faith in the government when government forces attacked the Branch Davidian complex in Waco in 1993

....sigh

Ohio National Guard member Sgt. Devon Beck was not amused by this satire. On September 11, 2025, Mr. O’Hara saw Sgt. Beck, along with several other Guard members, walking in uniform in the Logan Circle neighborhood, near the intersection of 14th and R Streets NW. Mr. O’Hara calmly walked behind the Guard members, began playing The Imperial March aloud on his phone, and started recording. In less than two minutes, Sgt. Beck turned around and threatened to call D.C. police officers to “handle” Mr. O’Hara if he persisted. Mr. O’Hara continued recording and playing the music. Sgt. Beck contacted the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). Defendant MPD Officers Brown, Campbell, Reyes-Benigno, and Lopez Martinez came to the scene and, in essence, did what Sgt. Beck had threatened, putting Mr. O’Hara in handcuffs and preventing him from continuing his peaceful protest.

The DC ACLU is suing on behalf of a man who was arrested by a National Guardsman and MPD officers for playing the Imperial March (from Star Wars) as an act of protest. www.acludc.org/app/uploads/...

Judge orders ex-police chief who led raid on Kansas newspaper to stand trial for deleted texts • Kansas Reflector Former Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody probably committed a felony crime when he told a witness to delete text messages they exchanged before, during and after he led raids on a newspaper office and t...

The former Marion, Kansas police chief who ordered a raid on the newspaper that was investigating him is set to stand trial for telling a witness to delete text message evidence (via @journalist-sherman.bsky.social)

Again, anytime you contemplate changing the contours of free speech on the internet, ask yourself “does this benefit me or Peter Thiel more. I noted the episode you ran about the Gawker guy failed to mention that Hulk Hogan was working as a catspaw for him in the lawsuit

Your idea, absent a new rule, makes every site a publisher of every piece of content on it. They will have to enforce strict ideological purity lest they be sued for anything not conforming to their corporate voice. Your position is reckless.

It’s not so much second guessing as “ok where is the money fountain?”. I wouldn’t be surprised if that 30% number was on a presentation at some point

What rule would you craft that would prevent that, but would protect you and me talking yang about Trump? It’s impossible

Yeah but since then I’m sure he’s been in dozens of meetings where they’ve pointed at a chart and said “look at all this money we could have incinerated on AI but instead went towards your dumb division”

I cannot believe how naive you are about the kind of censorship that will come down from billionaires and our captive federal government if this Congress were to change the rules.

Do you think Microsoft’s bean counters have forgotten about $75B? They were already complaining about how COD didn’t drive Game Pass subs. Phil unquestionably had to write a lot of checks to get that deal approved, and MS is trying to cash them.

had to put this one together from the archives but: called it again

1) Jesus Christ. This is divorced from reality.
2) Once again, one name stands out here: Amy Hood. Though I’m sure Satya Nadella and Brad Smith are key factors as well.

When you pay for a record merger the cost side of that equation is probably nuts

If it got “revisited” right now what you’d get is every social media that doesn’t filter everything but right wing propaganda getting sued by the Justice Department