Graham Platner, the Democratic nominee for US Senate in Maine, is suspending his campaign following sexual assault allegations.

Platner announced his decision in an 11-minute video posted to social media on Wednesday evening, in which he angrily accused the Democratic establishment and corporate media of “using these allegations to take away all of the things we need to run a campaign” and acting “as judge, jury and executioner”.

“For the movement to continue, it can’t be me,” he said. “For that reason, we are suspending campaign operations.”

Short excerpt, but it gets quote-heavy on Platner's behalf, all of which is denials, which aren't particularly relevant since he's no longer a candidate.

Edited to add the GOP response, thrown in at the end. Apparently, irony isn't real:

“Maine Democrats elected a rapist Nazi to be their nominee for Senate, and regardless of who they anoint next, Susan Collins will be re-elected in November,” said Samantha Cantrell, regional press secretary for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

“Democrats rolled in the mud with Platner, and now they are completely stained by their association with this sick monster,” said Republican National Committee chair Joe Gruters.

We’ve all heard the warning that “The internet is forever.” But in reality, huge swaths of the digital world are disappearing all the time: websites go dark, governments purge public records, social media posts vanish, and streaming platforms remove films and music, Without deliberate efforts to preserve this material, much of our recent history could simply cease to exist. The Internet Archive has spent decades fighting that disappearance, most nottably through its Wayback Machine, which preserves snapshots of a web that is otherwise constantly being rewritten. Current Affairs spoke with Mark Graham, director of the Wayback Machine, and librarian Chris Freeland, co-editor of the Internet Archive’s new Vanishing Culture report, about why the internet is far more fragile than we think and what is lost when corporations and governments can make information disappear.

Nathan J. Robinson

Okay, listen, I want to start with a phrase—a phrase that will get under your skin, a phrase that I'm sure you've heard many times, and that we're going to correct here at the beginning. And the phrase is some variation on "the internet is forever," that is to say, when you put something online, it's never going to go away. I've heard that all of my life; I have lived through the birth of the internet, the entire history of the internet, and I've heard that all the time. So, tell us, is the internet in fact forever? And if not, in what ways is it not?

Two weeks before this year’s primary elections, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced the creation of a tip line for the public to report people or groups suspected of voter fraud.

“Free and fair elections are a cornerstone of a thriving republic, and with the authority granted to my office by the Legislature, we will stop at nothing to uncover and stop any illegal voting activity,” Paxton said in a February news release announcing the tip line.

The announcement linked to guidance from his office about election laws in Texas, which included a requirement to be a U.S. citizen, a prohibition on collecting mail ballots on behalf of others and a warning that “it is illegal to misrepresent your residence on election records or to establish a residence for the purpose of influencing the outcome of an election.”

“You must register to vote using the address where you reside,” the attorney general’s guidance stated.

Despite his own warnings, Paxton appears to have used an address where he did not live while voting in six elections in the past two years, including in May’s runoff that made him the Republican nominee for U.S. senator, according to records obtained by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

State Sen. Angela Paxton said in a 2025 divorce filing that Paxton, whom she accused of adultery, moved out of their Collin County home a year earlier. But Paxton continues to list the home’s address in the northern Dallas suburb on his voter registration. Angela Paxton declined to be interviewed. A source close to the Paxtons said the attorney general has not moved back into the home since leaving.

All hat, no cattle, that Paxton is.

A heat wave scorched much of the eastern United States over the Fourth of July weekend, bringing extreme temperatures that caused roads to buckle, snarling holiday traffic.

Nowhere was this more dramatic than on a stretch of concrete-paved Interstate 97 south of Baltimore, where one lane of traffic suddenly warped, forcing its closure. A city street in Chicago experienced a similar, though less dramatic, pavement failure, and several state departments of transportation warned motorists to watch for additional heat-related road damage.

Scientists say such heat waves are becoming more common and more intense. Climate change is driving more extreme temperatures, along with heavier rainfall. Both can contribute to pavements expanding and cracking, making roads temporarily impassable as they await expensive repairs. It raises the question: Are the nation's roads ready to meet the challenge of a warmer, wetter future?

Civil engineers say the answers aren't entirely straightforward.

A man whose Tesla Model 3 was allegedly in self-driving mode when it crashed into a home near Houston and killed a 76-year-old woman inside recently has been jailed on a count of manslaughter.

Michael Butler’s arrest in the 19 June death of Martha Avila was announced late on Wednesday in a Facebook post by the sheriff of Harris county, Texas, Ed Gonzalez.

Butler, 44, remained in the custody of Gonzalez’s office as of Friday morning in lieu of $150,000 bail, jail records showed. He had a court hearing tentatively scheduled for 6 July.

His arrest came amid a case that has drawn federal investigators’ scrutiny as well as a wrongful death lawsuit from Avila’s family.

Butler was traveling in his Tesla at about 8pm local time in the Houston suburb of Katy when the car allegedly^[this portion of the story is not in dispute] plowed through the front wall of Avila’s home, fatally pinning her.

Investigators said Butler, who was injured in the wreck, showed no signs of intoxication and was cooperating with investigators. He allegedly told sheriff’s deputies that he was using self-driving technology with which the car was equipped, but it has not been clear what – if any – role it played in the deadly crash.

The is a whole lot of words for a story that never answers the fundamental question raised: "What evidence led to Butler's arrest?"

I have no reason to question the validity of the arrest, but a nut graf would be really useful here. Say, the actual text of the Facebook announcement^[once again, friendly reminder that posting on Facebook is necessarily exclusionary] laying out why the guy is in jail. Something as simple as:

In a statement posted online, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said that investigators had determined the Autopilot feature had been deactivated at the time of the crash.

We don't need the cop jargon, but the reader deserves something better than The Guardian posting a story that admits "Butler was arrested, and we have no idea why."

Somehow, The Verge got hold of the probable-cause affidavit^[https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28405676-texas-v-michael-butlerpdf/], which lays out some pretty damning determinations.

And yes, I just learned about footnote formatting^[I'm drunk with power!].

It’s MAHA Monday at the Great American State Fair, and I am drinking a Phorm Energy Screamin’ Freedom (16 ounces for $6). The fair also offered normal drinks for $5 (Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, lemonade), but I figured that for an extra dollar, it would be worth it to know the taste of freedom. Screamin’ Freedom, specifically. This drink offers “natural energy,” “mental focus,” “hydration,” “zero sugar,” “200 MG caffeine,” and a picture of an eagle. The concessions worker warns me that the beverage emphasizes “screamin’” because it has the caffeine content of two Red Bulls. The flavor (“cherry, lemon, & blueberry flavored with other natural flavors”) evokes a melted rocket pop but gets somehow worse with every sip. It is in a can, so I will never know the color of this drink, but over the course of MAHA Monday, I will drink the entire thing.

Everything that follows may be a hallucination!

Consider the state booths. Some are Official State Presentations; others are very much not. Florida includes a cannon, a manatee, and a drawing of Juan Ponce de León at the Fountain of Youth, labeled “Drawing of Juan Ponce de León at the Fountain of Youth.” Georgia is proud to have originated the Waffle House! (Happy MAHA Day?)

Washington State has no official presence, but like many other states without an official presence, that has not stopped some graphic designer from conjuring up a nightmare on its behalf, this one in the form of an elk posing proudly with an Amazon package.

For the very first time, biologists packed nonliving components into a cell-like membrane, piece by piece, and witnessed the bag of molecules start to behave like life. The lab-made synthetic cell grew, replicated its DNA, and divided, demonstrating the basic functions of a cell cycle.

It’s “an impressive step,” said Jack Szostak, who studies the origins of life at the University of Chicago and was not involved in the research. “I don’t know of any other effort to put together an artificial cell from biological components that has progressed so far.”

The cell is not alive by any definition. It can’t survive without constant deliveries of food and ribosomes, the machinery needed to make proteins. It has no defenses or a good waste removal system. But it’s the strongest demonstration yet that it is possible to generate life from nonlife, a goal that synthetic biologists have been chasing for decades.

“It’s a big step forward to this holy grail of making a living thing out of dead components,” said Sijbren Otto, a systems chemist at the Stratingh Institute for Chemistry in the Netherlands who was not involved in the work. “It’s not completely there yet, but it’s definitely getting quite close.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s ruling coalition has unveiled a sweeping package of tax, labour and pension reforms aimed at reviving Europe’s largest economy and countering a surge by the far right.

The “Programme for Revival and Employment” announced on Thursday includes about 10 billion euros ($11.4bn) in annual income tax relief targeted at lower and middle-income earners, taking effect from January 1, 2027.

The 34 reform measures also include an overhaul of the creaking pension system, tougher rules for employees’ sick leave and a reduction of the country’s stifling bureaucracy.

The tax relief is to be financed primarily by restructuring the surcharge on top incomes.

“The highest earners in this country will therefore take on a larger share” of the tax burden, said Finance Minister and Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil of the centre-left SPD. “That is fair, so that our country can move forward.”

It's so weird to hear politicians make sense at the Cabinet level.

Some readers might look at this headline and think there’s something off about it. And I’ll grant you that. There are several ways music can be played: to, for, not at all. Sometimes though, the only way to describe the playing of music is “at.”

One of Trump’s many vindictive “surges” targeting cities and states run by Democratic party members occurred in Washington DC. Not content to flood the streets with tons of federal officers, the administration decided these forces needed backup from the National Guard. Of course, Trump claimed the crime problem in DC was so bad it could only be dealt with by a surge that blended choice bits from “police state” and “martial law” into an unpalatable whole.

DC residents were less than thrilled. One resident — Sam O’Hara — made his displeasure known by doing the thing in the headline: playing music at National Guard troops.

This is a 22-minute primer on just how long this exact phrase has been used in the U.S., as well as government actions (some might call it collusion) taken to put the thumb on the scales in favour of corporate greed.

This line was being used in the fucking 19th century.

And, bluntly, I don't want to work anymore. Between the hell of job searches with now thousands of applicants for positions that pay a living wage and the standard of 0% raises, forcing a job hop (that's nigh impossible to land) just to keep up holds zero appeal.

In the early aughts, copyeditors with 20 years of experience at metros were making an inflation-adjusted $140K in 2026 dollars. Now those jobs simply don't exist or pay $40K, and the competition includes people with master's degrees.

I loved my job when it allowed for dinners out with friends or my current partner a couple of times a week, a vacation or two a year, and layoffs not coming every six months. I spent nearly three years living in a van because it got to the point of rent or food: pick one.

Add in the ATS bullshit, and I'd surmise that nobody wants to look for work anymore. That much has changed -- given that, time was, COLA raises and promotions were standard to retain valuable workers -- but capital's greed hasn't.

It's not that nobody wants to work anymore. The sentence actually continues "for these wages and under these conditions."

Oh, and strike "anymore." This is a long and storied trope going back more than 100 years that gets trotted out whenever too few ungrateful people accept poverty wages.

Lest anyone think renting a room goes poorly, that's not the case. It's the high point of the month, really. Air conditioning, indoor plumbing, (some) free food, friends to hang out with on occasion ... life should be looking up.

And yet, it's been days since I answered my phone. Reading the news is not terribly enjoyable, as, until recently, a fact known to be true today will also be true tomorrow. (As such, it's not just that the news is bad [which it most certainly is]; it's that it's often delivered poorly, and as someone who spent a couple of decades in newsrooms, I feel qualified to make that assessment damn near objectively.)

With Colbert gone, I watch John Oliver as well as the A Closer Look segments from Seth Meyers. So, maybe three segments a week total, and Meyers is still on vacation.

I watched the reboot of Scrubs, which was enjoyable, but for fuck's sake, it's on streaming. Nine episodes at 22 minutes a pop, yielding three hours, 18 minutes of total runtime for the season.

Over on the nonnews side of YouTube, Dosh Doshington (not his real name, shockingly) has been streaming a Nullius playthrough of Factorio, but is taking an extended break to condense the 80 hours so far into an hourlong episode

And yes, I watched all 80 hours, having caught it the day he started, but I can't possibly see starting from the beginning now, as 17 episodes averaging 4 hours and change is a commitment. Hopefully, I'll happen upon the first episode when he gets back into it.

That said, I really can't stand the whole parasocial streaming environment. Having people send money just so Mr. Doshington responds for five seconds breaks the rhythm, and I don't really care about things unrelated for Factorio when I'm watching to hear about Factorio.

The inflation situation continues to worsen. One of my little pleasures has been beef jerky, but that went up by a buck to $4.25 in the past week. Another is ice cream, which is now $7.59 for a half-gallon of the HEB brand, so ... generic (but their house brand is usually better than brand name across the board). Still, my $50 weekly food budget goes less and less far.

I'm not going to explore town in a class 5 commercial vehicle, so I've literally not left the property since moving in three weeks ago. And walking in this heat is a nonstarter.

Until a couple of weeks ago, I'd been using LLMs to get literary analysis, but having gotten through my backcatalogue, that's also fallen by the wayside. I did use ChatGPT last week for the dictation function to remember a dream as soon as I woke up that would otherwise be lost to the aether, but I have about as much interest in talking to a computer as a conversation as exploring the innards of an active woodchipper.

I used to be able to wile away my days on the web, but now I struggle to find anything that keeps my interest. It's not that my YouTube subscriptions have gotten worse; I'm just sick of gestures broadly analysis, given that a story about today's Iran or Independence Day snafus just isn't entertaining anymore.

The serendipity of the web seems totally relegated to history. My meals consist of salads and sandwiches -- almost always the same of each. And as I have my groceries delivered, I have to wait until I've run out of variety to justify the fees. At least where I parked in Austin, I could get a stick of string cheese at 7-Eleven when I got a wild hair, but here ... what I have is what I have, and also no trips to the brewery or hanging out at Church Night, which was great as someone who lived an eight-minute walk away, but it's about an hour each way by car now.

Psychologically, daily life is scarcely different from my van lifestyle. I'm usually on my laptop on my bed. Sometimes, I'll watch a movie or through on a random TNG episode, but new series that interest me and can take up the better part of a day are few and far between. I'm not even excited about Strange New Worlds starting a new season in July, given the quality decline in the last season, whenever the hell that even "aired."

Inspired by the Factorio series, I've logged another 50 hours of gameplay on a non-Nullius modpack that I'm enjoying because I'm exploring optimization in a very complex sandbox. But there's nothing to really show for it, compared with projects that yield tangible results.

I've struggled with depression since adolescence, and this is something completely different. Not hopelessness or despair, just a sense that there should be something more to life than renting a room at nearly 47. The commune plan is still on the table, but many things I have no control over need to happen before the becomes a concrete path forward.

I don't even enjoy drinking a beer anymore. Could be I was spoiled by living closer to Austin Beerworks than anyone else with an enclosed space, but it could also be an inability to justify paying $12 for a six-pack of middling IPAs.

For a couple of years, I had hopes of what life would be like when my van experience came to an end, and instead, it's just the same old thing, day in and day out. I have to check my phone in the morning to find out what day of the week it is.

And then, running out of internet after a half-hour and firing up Factorio.

According to DuckDuckGo's AI search feature, US President Donald Trump passed away earlier this month from rabies.

The screenshot shows a search result from DuckDuckGo for the query "when did trump die of rabies." The top result claims that Donald Trump reportedly died of rabies on June 7, 2026, citing sources wkna49.com and abcnews.com. It includes a section titled "Date of Death" repeating the date and "Circumstances Surrounding His Death," mentioning a sequence of events involving Vice President JD Vance, unconventional treatments advised by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and confirmation that rabies was the cause of death. The page includes a small portrait image of Donald Trump.

As the AI feature explains, Trump was apparently predeceased by Vice President JD Vance, who also died from the incurable virus. In fact, if you click the article it cites as evidence — which looks like it was published by a local West Virginia broadcaster called WKNA News, but more on that in a moment — the piece asserts that Trump got bit by Vance on purpose, acting on the advice of Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F Kennedy Jr, who advised that the deadly infection could confer "superpowers."

Needless to say, not a word of this is true. Trump and Vance are alive, and though RFK Jr has made numerous dubious health claims during his tenure in the government, he has never espoused the health benefits of rabies infections. (DuckDuckGo's AI also inexplicably cites an ABC News story about an Ohio man who died from rabies that makes no mention of Trump.)

Enter r/poisonai, "the world's #1 source for Accurate, Verified and Trusted information!" according to its official description. The newly-formed subreddit is basically a big inside joke, and the butt of it is the AI industry.

Its roughly 45,000 members tirelessly post absurd misinformation on everything from the nuances of watering a brick to grow a house to the claim that blue whales are actually orange.

But the favorite fabrication the AI poisoners on Reddit have latched onto is that JD Vance has died of rabies. Many dozens of posts mourn Vance's supposed passing after succumbing to the disease, with someone even sharing a fake Trump Truth Social post eulogizing him.

To really sell it, everyone in the replies treats all of this as totally real. There are posts decrying how Vance's death from rabies has been "dismissed as a meme," while others admonish various AI models for asserting — incorrectly, they fume — that Vance is very much alive and that his rabies death is merely "satirical misinformation."

Much as it pains me to say it, I guess Reddit is still good for something.