... In my last McMansion Hell post, I deployed the phrase “Regional Car Dealership Rococo” (henceforth RCDR) as a joke, but I think it works well as a broader idea. We can define RCDR as the ad hoc revival of 18th century ornamentation that arose, perhaps inevitably, during a period of skyrocketing income inequality coupled with consolidated global supply chains that brought down the cost of architectural materials. Culturally, it is a weed in Postmodernism’s garden bed.

The imported mini-trucks are cute, but they’re also quite serviceable—if you can use them on public roads.

The grift goes on.

The bill mandates disposal of over 2 million acres of BLM and National Forest lands; Public lands eligible for sale in the bill encompass over 120 million acres, including local recreation areas, wilderness study areas, inventoried roadless areas, critical wildlife habitat and big game migration corridors.

A 59-year-old Los Angeles County deputy probation officer has been arrested and charged in connection with accusations he was smuggling controlled substances into a juvenile detention facility, officials announced this week. In a news release, prosecutors at the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office said Michael Solis conspired with a minor detained at Barry J. Nord Juvenile Hall in Sylmar to sell alprazolam, the generic version of the benzodiazepine known as Xanax, in 2023.

“In 1982, biologist Daniel Janzen and paleontologist Paul Martin proposed a revolutionary idea: many tropical plants developed large, sweet, and colorful fruits to attract large animals — such as mastodons, native horses, or giant ground sloths — that would serve as seed dispersers,” said Dr. Erwin González-Guarda, a paleontologist at the University of O’Higgins and IPHES-CERCA, and his colleagues.

“We don’t want an autocrat. We want democracy.”

Florida Sheriff Wayne Ivey and his office have been sued multiple times throughout the years, including for false arrest and imprisonment.

Reuters images showed Marines apprehending a civilian, restraining his hands with zip ties and then handing him over to civilians from the Department of Homeland Security. Speaking to reporters after he was released, the civilian identified himself as Marcos Leao, 27. Leao said he was an Army veteran on his way to an office of the Department of Veterans Affairs when he crossed a yellow tape boundary and was asked to stop.

A woman says armed federal agents stole from her family and left their home trashed. “I know it was a little rough this morning,” one of them later told her.

This is a disgusting country, I thought, irredeemable visually, psychically, morally, and ethically, and whatever is likable about our people’s warm patter does not in any way forgive what we have done to the world. Furthermore, it isn’t hard to bring politeness and evil into view at the same time... ...Back at the ICE booth, a lone protester was at last present, asking a simple question. At the deportation officer recruiting table, he asked the agent, “Have you read Eichmann in Jerusalem?” “Do you know what the Nazis said?” he asked. “They said they were just following orders. How do you think of your own work in this context?” He pressed ahead: “I’m just trying to figure out if this position is right for me. Do you think it’s right to separate people from their families, their mothers and fathers from their children, hard-working people who pose no threat? Do you think that’s right?” The agent demurred, turned away. She looked shy and frazzled. He asked her again, “Have you read Eichmann in Jerusalem?” But at this point another agent—a thick-necked, red-faced pig—walked up to the protester and leaned into his face in an effort at intimidation. I am not certain I heard the next part correctly, but I think the man hissed: “Eichmann in WHAT?”

Neither ICE nor CBP has said what, exactly, its role will be at either the Club World Cup or the Gold Cup.

Generative A.I. chatbots are going down conspiratorial rabbit holes and endorsing wild, mystical belief systems. For some people, conversations with the technology can deeply distort reality.

Playing games while protests rage The summer sun beams as a crowd, walking in something that would resemble a line if observed from outer space, snakes down a Los Angeles street. It’s so long that I can’t see its beginning or end. As far as my tired eyes can tell, it just goes and goes until, off in the distance, it meets the horizon. Some people carry signs lambasting ICE and Nazis; one has Hello Kitty waving a Palestinian flag on it. Other protesters run the gamut from looking like they stopped here on their way to brunch to wearing full costumes. There is a Labubu cosplayer holding an anti-ICE sign atop a bridge. Social media quickly declares them a hero. The scene is one of tense revelry. Resistance moms, 2020-hardened black bloc types, and everyone in between share space, sometimes chanting, sometimes singing, sometimes marching in silence – all aware that cops lurk on the periphery, and that with cops comes violence. Suddenly, we all hear a loud popping sound far away enough that we can’t quite pinpoint it. An acquaintance checks their phone; apparently the police just deployed tear gas. I check my phone, too. Oh no, I realize, I have to leave. For my video game appointment.

Israel has launched unprecedented attack on Iran, targeting the heart of nation’s nuclear program and senior military leaders.

“The Simpsons” has always been a wholesome show—even if some critics didn’t necessarily understand that.

John Chell, the NYPD’s highest-ranking uniformed official, used someone else’s identity in a bid to avoid paying income taxes on money he made while moonlighting as a basketball referee for six years, newly-released police disciplinary records reveal. The attempted tax dodge was reported to the department by an investigator for the Internal Revenue Service. Chell pleaded guilty to departmental charges of misconduct after a probe found he “willfully attemp[ted] to evade or defeat a federal tax” and was docked 10 vacation days in 2013, according to the records. The IRS had investigated whether the identity Chell used to file taxes for the referee gig between 1997 and 2003 was stolen, but the NYPD records said he moonlit under the names of family members. The case was among 11 internal investigations that Chell, the NYPD’s Chief of Department, faced over his 31 years with the force, according to the records. The documents, which were reviewed by THE CITY, were obtained through a public disclosure law request by attorneys representing Giovonnie Mayo, a Brooklyn man who was run over by an unmarked police car in a pursuit in Brownsville last May. Mayo spent 44 days on a ventilator, during which time the NYPD had him shackled to his hospital bed, according to the lawsuit filed in Brooklyn federal court. He now has permanent brain damage.

A state lawmaker from Lexington County has been indicted on nearly a dozen federal child sex abuse material charges, according to federal court filings unsealed Thursday.

Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., was forcibly removed from a news conference in Los Angeles on Thursday after trying to question Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during a press conference related to immigration. "I am Sen. Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary," Padilla said to Noem, which prompted several men to physically push him out of the room. It was unclear who the men were, as several were dressed in plain clothes. Padilla's office shared a video of the incident with NBC News. The video shows Padilla being taken into a hallway outside and pushed face forward onto the ground as officers with FBI-identifying vests told the senator to put his hands behind his back. The officers then handcuffed him. Before Padilla began questioning Noem, she spoke to reporters about the administration's actions, the subject of her appearance in Los Angeles. Noem said that DHS and its agencies, as well as the military, "will continue to sustain and increase our operations in this city," she said. "We are not going away," she said. "We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country," she said, referring to California Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, both Democrats.

The crash was the first for a 787 Dreamliner, according to an aviation-safety database.