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Welcome to the Internet’s Messy Garage Sale Picture this: the Internet’s media stack is basically your uncle’s garage. Over in the corner, you’ve got an old RTMP bike frame that nobody rides anymore, leaning against a busted HLS lawnmower, while DASH is just sitting there, rusting, and WebRTC is duct-taped to a random car engine like some Frankenstein monster project. For two decades, we’ve been “solving” problems by just slapping protocols together like mismatched IKEA furniture. Streaming engineers have been like, “Oh, you want scale? Here, have HLS. You want low latency? That’ll be WebRTC. You want complexity so bad you’ll age 10 years just trying to debug it? Congratulations, you’ve already got all three.” Now Cloudflare swoops in on August 22, 2025, shouting: “We’ve got MoQ—Media over QUIC—the Marie Kondo of Internet protocols! It sparks joy AND maybe won’t make you cry blood when trying to stream a live auction.” Spoiler: this is less about joy and more about “finally cleanin...

If you’re an ag retailer, congratulations: you’ve been officially sitting naked at the poker table of agribusiness risk, and nobody even thought to lend you a pair of pants. Farmers get crop insurance. Consumers get price protections. Even hedge fund bros get their little safety nets when they screw up spectacularly. But you? You’re the guy holding the bag in the rainstorm, praying your balance sheet doesn’t look like a drowned raccoon by year’s end. Clayton Becker, Chief Commercial Officer at Vane, recently showed up on The Scoop Podcast with a revelation that sounds both obvious and yet somehow revolutionary: maybe, just maybe, ag retailers deserve risk management tools too. Wow. Groundbreaking. Next thing you know, we’ll be giving umbrellas to people standing outside in a hurricane. But let’s back up, because this isn’t just about Vane, crop insurance, or the latest “innovation” in agribusiness that should have been invented back when dial-up internet was still a thing. This is a...

The Rise of the Multigenerational Commune (aka “Welcome Back to 1971”) Let’s start with the obvious: Americans are once again discovering the revolutionary concept of… living with their families. Pew Research Center tells us that the number of people living in multigenerational households quadrupled between 1971 and 2021. Translation: the American Dream of “get married, buy a starter home, and banish your parents to Florida” has been repossessed by rising costs, student debt, and the brutal reality that wages haven’t kept up with the price of eggs, let alone mortgages. So yes, whether it’s your boomer parents clinging to life in your guest suite, or your 27-year-old “entrepreneur” brother still “launching” his podcast empire from your basement, multigenerational housing is back in vogue. Not because we love each other so much, but because Zillow keeps whispering “$4,000 rent for a studio” like a horror movie villain. Why People Actually Do It (Spoiler: It’s Not “Family Bonding”) ...

If you thought 2025 couldn’t get dumber, congratulations—you have underestimated both Donald Trump and the art of cultural grievance politics. On August 19th, Trump logged onto Truth Social—the world’s least social social media—and declared that the Smithsonian museums were “OUT OF CONTROL” for doing the unthinkable: telling the truth about history. Specifically, he was incensed that they dared to suggest slavery was “bad.” Yes, you read that right. We’re apparently at the point where “slavery was bad” is now a controversial partisan statement. Welcome to America, where the museums are out here fact-checking the Confederacy, and the President of the United States is throwing a fit like a toddler denied extra sprinkles on his ice cream cone. Let’s unpack this circus, shall we? Trump’s Beef with Museums: Because Paintings Hurt His Feelings First, let’s state the obvious: museums exist to preserve and teach history, not to audition for a MAGA rally playlist. But Trump doesn’t see it ...

Let’s all take a collective deep breath (but not too deep, because someone here is going to try to diagnose your lung capacity). Seton Hall University has decided to launch what can only be described as “Summer Camp: Hospital Edition,” a nine-day immersion experience where high school students get to play doctor without risking malpractice lawsuits. Think of it as Grey’s Anatomy meets summer enrichment, except the “patients” are plastic and nobody’s dating McDreamy in the supply closet. This is the inaugural Pre-College Health Professions Immersion Program, the brainchild of the School of Health and Medical Sciences (SHMS) and the Department of Continuing Education and Professional Studies. Translation: they gave teenagers a three-credit crash course in five different healthcare disciplines: Speech-Language Pathology, Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy, Physician Assistant training, and Athletic Training. Basically, everything short of letting them scrub into open heart surgery. Y...

Santa Cruz County is at it again. For one glorious week, the land of kombucha-brewing surfers, dreadlocked trust-fund kids, and retirees who “totally remember Woodstock” will transform itself into a food-and-drink Disneyland. From overpriced cider flights to wine festivals where half the crowd can’t pronounce “Cabernet,” there’s something for everyone—if by “everyone” you mean people who don’t mind paying $17 for a vegan donut. Grab your tote bag, dust off your reusable wine tumbler, and mentally prepare to be stuck in traffic behind a Subaru Outback with six bumper stickers about kindness. Because here comes Santa Cruz’s “best” food and drink events for Aug. 15–21. Friday, Aug. 15 – Farmers, Block Parties, and Lighthouse Nostalgia Watsonville Farmers Market – 2 p.m. Downtown Watsonville The Watsonville Farmers Market kicks off at 2 p.m. in downtown, where you can buy produce so fresh it still has trauma from being ripped out of the ground that morning. Yes, you’ll see tomatoes, y...

Let’s get one thing straight: the only thing more predictable than a newspaper website covered in pop-ups and autoplay ads is the little link buried at the bottom that says Accessibility Statement . You know, the online version of “we care, we promise” that nobody actually clicks—unless they’re trying to scroll past the cookie banner and accidentally hit it. Yes, the Washington Post (Democracy Dies in Darkness™) proudly waves its Accessibility Statement like a participation trophy: proof that somewhere, deep in the bowels of corporate compliance, someone remembered blind people exist. Bravo. Clap it out. Now, before you roll your eyes and say, “This feels harsh,” let’s remember the stakes. Accessibility isn’t some cute website garnish. It’s the difference between “I can actually read this article about constipation” and “I’m trapped in an infinite CAPTCHA loop where every traffic light looks suspiciously like a mailbox.” So buckle up, because we’re about to dig through the empty cal...