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Code Monger, cyclist, sim racer and driving enthusiast.
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Criterion president Peter Becker reflects on how Closet Picks evolved from a spontaneous idea into a beloved ritual among cinephiles for its 40th anniversary roadshow celebration.
The post Criterion’s Mobile Closet Wasn’t About The Van—It Was About IRL Friendships We Made Along The (Five-Hour) Way appeared first on Aftermath.
On Saturday, millions of people across the U.S. attended “No Kings” protests—a slogan born in response to President Donald Trump’s self-aggrandizing social media posts where he’s called himself a king, including with AI-generated images of himself in a crown, and his continuous stretching of executive power. While Americans were out in the street, the president was posting.
In an AI-generated video originally posted on X by a genAI shitposter, Trump, wearing a crown, takes off in a fighter jet to the song “Danger Zone” like he’s in Top Gun. Flying over protestors in American cities, Pilot King Trump bombs people with gallons of chunky brown liquid. It’s poop, ok? It’s shit. It’s diarrhea, and in reposting it, it’s clear enough to me that Trump is fantasizing about doing a carpet-bomb dookie on the people he put his hand on a bible and swore to serve nine months ago. The first protestor seen in the video is a real person, Harry Sisson, a liberal social media influencer.
The video Trump reposted to Truth Social
But this was not clear, it seems, to many other journalists. Most national news outlets seem scared to call it how they see, and how everyone sees it: as Trump dropping turd bombs on America, instead opting for euphemisms. Some of the best have included:
The New York Post, never one to waste a prime alliteration opportunity, didn’t disappoint: “Trump’s fighter jet was shown dropping masses of manure.”
I can understand some of these venerated news establishments might be skittish about using a word like “poop” in their headlines, and I can also concede that I haven’t had an editor tell me I can’t use a bad word in a headline in a long, long time. I can imagine the logic: we can’t “prove” it’s meant to be shit, so we can’t call it shit. But there’s nothing in these outlets’ style guides that has kept them from saying “poop” in the headline in the past: “Women Poop,” the New York Times once proclaimed. Axios writes extensively and frequently about dog poop. CNN’s analysis extends to poop often.
Along with the above concessions, I can also promise I don’t feel that passionately about getting poop on anyone else’s homepages. But we are in an era where the highest office in the country is disseminating imagery that isn’t just fake and stupid, but actively hostile to the people living in this country. When I first saw someone talking about the Trump Poop Bomber video—on Reels, of all places—I thought it must be someone doing satire about what they imagined Trump would post about the protests. I had to search for it to find out if he really did, and what I found was the above: trusted sources of truth and information too scared to call fake poop fake poop. It’s not about poop, it’s about being able to accurately describe what we see, an essential skill when everything online is increasingly built to enrage, trick, or mislead us. AI continues to be the aesthetic of fascism: fast, easy, ugly. When we lose the ability to say what it is, we’re losing a lot more than the chance to pun on poop.
Add to this the fact that no one in Trump’s circle will say what we can all plainly see, either: that the president hates the people. “The president uses social media to make the point. You can argue he’s probably the most effective person who’s ever used social media for that,” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said at a news conference this morning. “He is using satire to make a point. He is not calling for the murder of his political opponents.” Johnson did not say what that point was, however.
During a cruel presidency where many people are in desperate need of hope, the inflatable frog stepped into the breach. Everyone loves the Portland Frog. The juxtaposition of a frog (and people in other inflatable character costumes) standing up to ICE covered in weapons and armor is absurd, and that’s part of why it’s hitting so hard. But the frog is also a practical piece of passive resistance protest kit in an age of mass surveillance, police brutality, and masked federal agents disappearing people off the streets.
On October 2—just a few minutes shy of 11 PM in Portland, Oregon—a federal agent shot pepper spray into the vent hole of Seth Todd’s inflatable frog costume. Todd was protesting ICE outside of Portland’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office when he said he saw a federal agent shove another protester to the ground. He moved to help and the agent blasted the pepper spray into his vent hole.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr says Internet service providers shouldn't have to list every fee they charge. Responding to a request from cable and telecom lobby groups, he is proposing to eliminate a rule that requires ISPs to itemize various fees in broadband price labels that must be made available to consumers.
The rule took effect in April 2024 after the FCC rejected ISPs' complaints that listing every fee they created would be too difficult. The rule applies specifically to recurring monthly fees "that providers impose at their discretion, i.e., charges not mandated by a government."
ISPs could comply with the rule either by listing the fees or by dropping the fees altogether and, if they choose, raising their overall prices by a corresponding amount. But the latter option wouldn't fit with the strategy of enticing customers with a low advertised price and hitting them with the real price on their monthly bills. The broadband price label rules were created to stop ISPs from advertising misleadingly low prices.
This week, Carr scheduled an October 28 vote on a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that proposes eliminating several of the broadband-label requirements. One of the rules in line for removal requires ISPs to "itemize state and local passthrough fees that vary by location." The FCC would seek public comment on the plan before finalizing it.
"We propose to eliminate the requirement that providers itemize discretionary, recurring monthly fees that represent costs they choose to pass through to consumers and which vary by consumer location," Carr's draft proposal said. "Examples include state and local right of way fees, pole rental fees to utility companies, and other discretionary charges where the provider does not set rates or terms directly. We seek comment on whether providers should instead display on the label the aggregate amount of such fees."
The proposal is part of Car's "Delete, Delete, Delete" initiative that aims to eliminate as many rules as possible. In the Delete, Delete, Delete proceeding, cable lobby group NCTA and other broadband industry groups asked the FCC to ditch the list-every-fee requirement and other broadband label rules.
The FCC was required by Congress to implement broadband-label rules, but the Carr FCC says the law doesn't "require itemizing pass through fees that vary by location."
"Commenters state that itemizing such fees requires providers to produce multiple labels for identical services," the FCC plan says, with a footnote to comments from industry groups such as USTelecom and NCTA. "We believe, consistent with commenters in the Delete, Delete, Delete proceeding, that itemizing can lead to a proliferation of labels and of labels so lengthy that the fees overwhelm other important elements of the label."
In a blog post Monday, Carr said his plan is part of a "focus on consumer protection." He said the FCC "will vote on a notice that would reexamine broadband nutrition labels so that we can separate the wheat from the chaff. We want consumers to get quick and easy access to the information they want and need to compare broadband plans (as Congress has provided) without imposing unnecessary burdens."
ISPs would still be required to provide the labels, but with less information. The NPRM said that eliminating the rules targeted for deletion will not "change the core label requirements to display a broadband consumer label containing critical information about the provider's service offerings, including information about pricing, introductory rates, data allowances, and performance metrics."
In 2023, five major trade groups representing US broadband providers petitioned the FCC to scrap the list-every-fee requirement before it took effect. Comcast told the commission that the rule "impose[s] significant administrative burdens and unnecessary complexity in complying with the broadband label requirements."
Rejecting the industry complaints, then-Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said that "every consumer needs transparent information when making decisions about what Internet service offering makes the most sense for their family or household. No one wants to be hit with charges they didn't ask for or they did not expect."
The Rosenworcel FCC's order denying the industry petition pointedly said that ISPs could simplify pricing instead of charging loads of fees. "ISPs could alternatively roll such discretionary fees into the base monthly price, thereby eliminating the need to itemize them on the label," the order said.
Assuming Carr's proposal is implemented, ISPs will have less incentive to simplify their pricing. In addition to ditching the list-every-fee rule, his proposed rulemaking would eliminate a few other label rules.
One rule on Carr's chopping block requires ISPs to read the labels to customers over the phone. The rule was instituted to make the labels accessible to consumers who shop for broadband service on the phone instead of online.
"We believe that because the label is a fundamentally visual medium, its format does not easily lend itself to presentation in a telephone conversation," the Carr FCC proposal said.
Another rule in line for axing requires providers to display the labels in customer account portals. The labels would still have to be available online when consumers shop for service. Citing objections from ISPs, the proposal said the "requirement may confuse customers over time and imposes a significant burden on providers. For example, as data and prices change, the original label [in the customer account portal] could become outdated and no longer useful."
One rule proposed for deletion requires ISPs to make labels available in machine-readable format. "We are unconvinced that the machine-readability requirement is a necessary component for transparency," the proposal said. "Machine readability might facilitate research or comparisons across many providers' plans by third parties, but the FCC's statutory mandate is to allow for the greater disclosure of information to consumers."
The FCC is also seeking comment on whether to eliminate a multilingual requirement that forces providers to display the labels in English and other languages spoken in their markets. Wireless lobby group CTIA asked the FCC to drop this rule.
Technically, the Carr FCC is not currently proposing to eliminate the multilingual rule. But including the question in the NPRM raises the possibility that it could be axed along with the other rules slated for deletion.
The NPRM is likely to be approved by the Republican-majority commission, though Democrat Anna Gomez could dissent. Gomez said in a statement provided to Ars today, "I believe that transparency in all aspects of a transaction helps consumers make fully informed decisions. I'm also deeply concerned about the proposal to remove the multilingual display requirement. If a company markets their service in multiple languages, then there should be no impediment to providing transparent information about the service in those languages. I'm reviewing all proposals in this notice with an eye to ensuring that consumers are not left in the dark as a result of our actions."
The Trump administration’s tariff regime and the elimination of fee exemptions for items under $800 is limiting resource sharing between university libraries, trapping some books in foreign countries, and reversing long-held standards in academic cooperation.
“There are libraries that have our books that we've lent to them before all of this happened, and now they can't ship them back to us because their carrier either is flat out refusing to ship anything to the U.S., or they're citing not being able to handle the tariff situation,” Jessica Bower Relevo, associate director of resource sharing and reserves at Yale University Library, told me.
After Trump’s executive order ended the de minimis exemption, which allowed people to buy things internationally without paying tariffs if the items cost less than $800, we’ve written several stories about how the decision caused chaos over a wide variety of hobbies that rely on people buying things overseas, especially on Ebay, where many of those transactions take place.
Libraries that share their materials internationally are in a similar mess, partly because some countries’ mail services stopped shipments to and from the U.S. entirely, but the situation for them is arguably even more complicated because they’re not selling anything—they’re just lending books.
“It's not necessarily too expensive. It's that they don't have a mechanism in place to deal with the tariffs and how they're going to be applied,” Relevo said. “And I think that's true of U.S. shipping carriers as well. There’s a lot of confusion about how to handle this situation.”
“The tariffs have impacted interlibrary loans in various ways for different libraries,” Heather Evans, a librarian at RMIT University in Australia, told me in an email. “It has largely depended on their different procedures as to how much they have been affected. Some who use AusPost [Australia’s postal service] to post internationally have been more impacted and I've seen many libraries put a halt on borrowing to or from the US at all.” (AusPost suspended all shipments to the United States but plans to renew them on October 7).
Relevo told me that in some cases books are held up in customs indefinitely, or are “lost in warehouses” where they are held for no clear reason.
As Relevo explains it, libraries often provide people in foreign institutions books in their collections by giving them access to digitized materials, but some books are still only available in physical copies. These are not necessarily super rare or valuable books, but books that are only in print in certain countries. For example, a university library might have a specialized collection on a niche subject because it’s the focus area of a faculty member, a French university will obviously have a deeper collection of French literature, and some textbooks might only be published in some languages.
A librarian’s job is to give their community access to information, and international interlibrary loans extend that mission to other countries by having libraries work together. In the past, if an academic in the U.S. wanted access to a French university’s deep collection of French literature, they’d have to travel there. Today, academics can often ask that library to ship them the books they want. Relevo said this type of lending has always been useful, but became especially popular and important during COVID lockdowns, when many libraries were closed and international travel was limited.
“Interlibrary loans has been something that libraries have been able to do for a really long time, even back in the early 1900s,” Relevo said. “If we can't do that anymore and we're limiting what our users can access, because maybe they're only limited to what we have in our collection, then ultimately could hinder academic progress. Scholars have enjoyed for decades now the ability to basically get whatever they need for their research, to be very comprehensive in their literature reviews or the references that they need, or past research that's been done on that topic, because most libraries, especially academic libraries, do offer this service [...] If we can't do that anymore, or at least there's a barrier to doing that internationally, then researchers have to go back to old ways of doing things.”
The Trump administration upended this system of knowledge sharing and cooperation, making life even harder for academics in the U.S., who are already fleeing to foreign universities because they fear the government will censor their research.
The American Library Association (ALA) has a group dedicated to international interlibrary lending, called the International Interlibrary Loan (ILL) Committee, which is nested in the Sharing and Transforming Access to Resources Section (STARS) of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA). Since Trump’s executive order and tariffs regime, the RUSA STARS International ILL Committee has produced a site dedicated to helping librarians navigate the new, unpredictable landscape.
In addition to explaining the basic facts of the tariffs and de minimis, the site also shares resources and “Tips & Tricks in Uncertain Times,” which encourages librarians to talk to partner libraries before lending or borrowing books, and to “be transparent and set realistic expectations with patrons.” The page also links to an online form that asks librarians to share any information they have about how different libraries are handling the elimination of de minimis in an attempt to crowd source a better understanding of the new international landscape.
“Let's say this library in Germany wanted to ship something to us,” Relevo said. “It sounds like the postal carriers just don't know how to even do that. They don’t know how to pass that tariff on to the library that's getting the material, there's just so much confusion on what you would even do if you even wanted to. So they're just saying, ‘No, we're not shipping to the U.S.’”
Relevo told me that one thing the resource sharing community has talked about a lot is how to label packages so customs agents know they are not [selling] goods to another country. Relevo said that some libraries have marked the value of books they’re lending as $0. Others have used specific codes to indicate the package isn’t a good that’s being bought or sold. But there’s not one method that has worked consistently across the board.
“It does technically have value, because it's a tangible item, and pretty much any tangible item is going to have some sort of value, but we're not selling it,” she said. “We're just letting that library borrow it and then we're going to get it back. But the way customs and tariffs work, it's more to do with buying and selling goods and library stuff isn't really factored into those laws [...] it's kind of a weird concept, especially when you live in a highly capitalized country.”
Relevo said that the last 10-15 years have been a very tumultuous time for libraries, not just because of tariffs, but because AI-generated content, the pandemic, and conservative organizations pressuring libraries to remove certain books from their collections.
“At the end of the day, us librarians just want to help people, so we're just trying to find the best ways to do that right now with the resources we have,” she said.
“What I would like the public to know about the situation is that their librarians as a group are very committed to doing the best we can for them and to finding the best options and ways to fulfill their requests and access needs. Please continue to ask us for what you need,” Evans said. “At the moment we would ask for a little extra patience, and perhaps understanding that we might not be able to get things as urgently for them if it involves the U.S., but we will do as we have always done and search for the fastest and most helpful way to obtain access to what they require.”
Published on October 14, 2025
Photo: Warner Bros. Japan Anime
Photo: Warner Bros. Japan Anime
A new trailer for the All You Need is Kill anime film adaptation just dropped, and the movie is certainly shaping up to be an incredible interpretation of its source material.
First published in 2004, Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s light novel All You Need is Kill tells the story of a young soldier who dies on the battlefield but soon finds themselves caught in a time loop that allows them to gradually hone their combat skills. If that sounds shockingly familiar to you, it’s because All You Need Is Kill was previously adapted into the live-action film, Edge of Tomorrow (also known by the far better title, Live, Die, Repeat). Though the Tom Cruise vehicle is a fantastic sci-fi action movie in its own right, it lacks some of the elements that helped make the novel so special. Specifically, Edge of Tomorrow changed the book’s ending (to mixed results), its title (to horrible results), and was only influenced by the incredible artwork that Yoshitoshi Abe contributed to the book.
Along with retaining the light novel’s title (a just move, my liege), previous previews of the adaptation confirmed that the movie will stick a bit closer to Abe’s visual style (with some pleasant alterations and reinterpretations thrown in). While it had previously been suggested that the movie will also stick closer to some of the book’s major story beats, it should certainly be noted that this movie will seemingly play out from the perspective of Rita rather than Keiji (who Cruise loosely played in Edge of Tomorrow). Without diving into spoilers, that could mean that the adaptation will also make some changes to the novel’s ending, though it’s more likely that the shift will be used to help set up that gut punch of a finale.
Regardless of the eventual specifics, this movie certainly looks like a pretty incredible blend of dark, airtight storytelling and misleadingly bright visuals and sounds. The bad news is that we still have no idea when (or if) it will receive a global release. Hopefully, we’ll learn a little more about the roll out plan as All You Need is Kill nears its Jan. 9, 2026, Japanese theatrical release date. [end-mark]
The post <i>All You Need is Kill</i>, the Inspiration for <i>Edge of Tomorrow</i>, Gets an Anime Trailer Worth Watching Again and Again appeared first on Reactor.
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