I heard this metaphor growing up, and in my case, it backfired supremely, because I went out into my neighbor’s backyard where a rose bush was growing, and the one I tested had like 30 petals (it was yellow, but definitely a rose of some kind), and as a very logical lass, I came to the conclusion that you could have premarital sex AT LEAST ten times before your future husband would even notice something was up. Moral of the story? Test your metaphors on the weirdest and most neurodivergent child you know before writing your weird religious propaganda.
Every time I see this quote I realize how poor even very smart people are at looking at the long game and at assessing these things in context.
One of my favourite illustrations of this was in a First Aid class. The instructor was a working paramedic. He asked, “Who here knows the stats on CPR? What percentage of people are saved by CPR outside a hospital?”
I happen to know but I’m trying not to be a TOTAL know it all in this class so I wait. And people guess 50% and he says, “Lower,” and 20% and so forth and eventually I sort of half put up my hand and I guess I had The Face because he eventually looked at me and said, “You know, don’t you.”
“My mom’s a doc,” I said. He gave me a “so say it” gesture and I said, “Four to ten percent depending on your sources.”
Everyone else looked surprised and horrified.
And the paramedic said, “We’re gonna talk a bit about some details of those figures* but first I want to talk about just this: when do you do CPR?”
The class dutifully replies: when someone is unconscious, not breathing, and has no pulse.
“What do we call someone who is unconscious, not breathing, and has no pulse?”
The class tries to figure out what the trick question is so I jump over the long pause and say, “A corpse.”
“Right,” says the paramedic. “Someone who isn’t breathing and has no heartbeat is dead. So what I’m telling you is that with this technique you have a 4-10% chance of raising the dead.”
So no, artists did not stop the Vietnam War from happening with the sheer Power of Art. The forces driving that military intervention were huge, had generations of momentum and are actually pretty damn complicated.
But if you think the mass rejection of the war was as meaningless as a soufflé - well.
Try sitting here for ten seconds and imagining where we’d be if the entire intellectual and artistic drive of the culture had been FOR the war. If everyone thought it was a GREAT IDEA.
What the whole world would look like.
Four-to-ten percent means that ninety to ninety-six percent of the time - more than nine times out of ten - CPR will do nothing, but that one time you’ll be in the company of someone worshipped as an incarnate god.
If you think the artists and performers attacking and showing up people like Donald Trump is meaningless try imagining a version of the world wherein they weren’t there.
(*if you’re curious: those stats count EVERY reported case of CPR, while the effectiveness of it is extremely time-related. With those who have had continuous CPR from the SECOND they went down, the number is actually above 80%. It drops hugely every 30 seconds from then on. When you count ALL cases you count cases where the person has already been down several minutes but a bystander still starts CPR, which affects the stats)
That Vonnegut quote brings this particular moment to mind:
Yes, it’s just a pie. Yes, the pie itself doesn’t do much direct damage in the grand scheme of things. But the pie is resistance, and resistance inspires resistance. Resistance inspires survival. Throwing pies sometimes starts a movement. Throwing pies sometimes saves lives.
And of course, we haven’t spoken about the inherent morality of throwing pies at oppressors in a world where oppressors have outlawed pie throwing. At the very least, pie throwing is a reminder to the oppressors that no matter how much money they have, no matter how much power they have, there are still some people, some moments they can’t control.
I’d rather go out throwing pies than just rolling over and accepting that pie throwing isn’t going to solve anything. Yeah, the pie throwing doesn’t immediately solve the problem, but it doesn’t have to because it’s just a starting point. So throw the damn pie.
Reporters interview Eric Meyer outside of the Marion County Record office in Marion, Kansas, the site of a 2023 police raid, after an Oct. 7, 2024, court hearing for Gideon Cody, the former Marion police chief who led the raid. Meyer and others reached agreements with the county Monday for its role in the raids. (Photo by Anna Kaminski/Kansas Reflector)
TOPEKA — The county involved in a small-town Kansas newspaper raid in 2023 will pay a cumulative $3 million to three journalists and a city councilor.
In two of the four agreements, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office also crafted a statement admitting regret.
“The Sheriff’s Office wishes to express its sincere regrets to Eric and Joan Meyer and Ruth and Ronald Herbel for its participation in the drafting and execution of the Marion Police Department’s search warrants on their homes and the Marion County Record. This likely would not have happened if established law had been reviewed and applied prior to the execution of the warrants,” the statement reads.
Marion County’s board of commissioners approved agreements Monday with Eric Meyer, the owner and editor of the Marion County Record, and Ruth Herbel, the Marion city councilor whose home was raided in tandem with the newspaper office, and two other journalists. The agreements coincide with consent judgments expected to be submitted in their federal cases against the county.
The county was a secondary player in the raids, in Meyer’s eyes, but the agreements could play a part in the paper’s ongoing cases against the city.
“Everybody involved in this is 100% convinced we are going to go to trial with the city,” Meyer said. “This will make that easier in some regard.”
The county’s agreements with Deb Gruver and Phyllis Zorn, local journalists whose lives were upended by the raids, are more akin to settlements and don’t include admissions of regret.
The county agreed to pay Meyer $1.5 million, Herbel $650,000, Zorn $600,000, and Gruver $250,000, according to copies of the agreements obtained by Kansas Reflector.
Insurance covers most of those funds, but the county must pay Meyer $50,000.
In another lawsuit against former Marion police chief Gideon Cody, who is also facing criminal charges, Gruver settled earlier this year for $235,000.
According to Meyer, Zorn has retired from her position at the Marion County Record, effective immediately.
Monday’s deals settle the county’s obligations within four federal lawsuits against the city of Marion and Marion County governments and officials in the wake of the raids. Five cases were consolidated into a single federal lawsuit, and the four agreements give the county and the sheriff’s office immunity from any future legal action related to the Aug. 11, 2023, searches and seizures at the Marion County Record, Meyer’s home and Herbel’s home.
The county agreed to make available Marion County Sheriff Jeff Soyez, Detective Aaron Christner, and Undersheriff Larry Starkey for official interviews, which could be used in other legal disputes. Previously, the cases were stalled, preventing interviews from taking place.
Claims against the city of Marion, its police department and other officials, including former Mayor David Mayfield and former police chief Gideon Cody, are not involved in the agreements.
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the total sum of Phyllis Zorn’s settlement and her position at the Marion County Record.
Automattic, the company that owns WordPress.com, is asking Automatic.CSS—a company that provides a CSS framework for WordPress page builders—to change its name amid public spats between Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg and Automatic.CSS creator Kevin Geary. Automattic has two T’s as a nod to Matt.
“As you know, our client owns and operates a wide range of software brands and services, including the very popular web building and hosting platform WordPress.com,” Jim Davis, an intellectual property attorney representing Automattic, wrote in a letter dated Oct. 30.
“Automattic is also well-known for its longtime and extensive contributions to the WordPress system. Our client owns many trademark registrations for its Automattic mark covering those types of services and software,” Davis continued. “As we hope you can appreciate, our client is concerned about your use of a nearly identical name and trademark to provide closely related WordPress services. Automattic and Automatic differ by only one letter, are phonetically identical, and are marketed to many of the same people. This all enhances the potential for consumer confusion and dilution of our client's Automattic mark.”
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Do you have a tip? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at sam.404. Otherwise, send me an email at sam@404media.co.
Automattic “requests that you rebrand away from using Automatic or anything similar to Automattic,” Davis wrote.
Geary posted the full letter on X, where Mullenweg replied, “We also own automatic.com. You had to know this was a fraught naming area.”
“AutomaticCSS is called ‘automatic’ because it's the only CSS framework that does a lot of things automatically,” Geary replied to Mullenweg. “Congratulations on owning the domain name for a generic term. Let me know when that fact becomes relevant.”
In its trademark filing, Automattic lists the word “automatic” as a disclaimer, meaning an unregistrable word, “such as wording or a design that doesn’t indicate the source of your goods or services or is otherwise merely descriptive of them,” according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
This beef has gone on for months. On July 14, Mullenweg asked Geary publicly: “is it possible to get some text on automaticcss.com clarifying it has nothing to do with automattic?” “Sure, we'll add it to the footer,” Geary replied. Automatic.CSS has a disclaimer on the bottom of the page that says “(not affiliated with Automattic).”
And just a week before Automattic sent its request to Automatic to change their name, Geary and Mullenweg were beefing about whether making websites without coding expertise is sustainable... or something. “Best of luck selling your solution, I hope you can do so without creating FUD and dissing WordPress in the process,” Mullenweg said, midway through the argument. “You sound completely out of touch. When is the last time you coached someone on learning web design? For me it was yesterday. I’m the one that’s most in touch,” Geary replied.
Geary and Mullenweg have frequently sparred on X, especially after the legal battle between WP Engine and Automattic began last year. In September 2024, Mullenweg started publicly accusing WP Engine of misusing the WordPress brand and not contributing enough to the open-source community, which led to the companies volleying cease and desists, including Automattic demanding WP Engine change its name. “Your unauthorized use of our Client’s trademarks infringes on their rights and dilutes their famous and well-known marks,” Automattic’s September 2024 cease and desist said. This eventually escalated to WP Engine suing Automattic, claiming that Automattic extorted the company by suggesting WP Engine pay “a mere 8% royalty” on WP Engine’s roughly $400 million in annual revenue, which would amount to about $32 million.
Last week, Automattic filed counterclaims in that case, claiming, “This case arises from WPEngine, Inc.’s (‘WP Engine’) deliberate misappropriation of WordPress-related trademarks and its false attempts to pass itself off as the company behind the world-renowned open-source WordPress software,” and that WP Engine “sought to inflate its valuation and engineer a quick, lucrative exit” as part of a deal with private equity firm Silver Lake, and “exploited the reputation, goodwill, and community trust built over two decades by counterclaimants Automattic, Inc., Matthew Mullenweg, WordPress Foundation, and WooCommerce Inc.”
WP Engine told Techcrunch in a statement: “WP Engine’s use of the WordPress trademark to refer to the open-source software is consistent with longstanding industry practice and fair use under settled trademark law, and we will defend against these baseless claims.”
Geary and Davis did not respond to 404 Media’s request for comment.
I don’t feel for him with what he’s been doing of late, he even almost screwed up Pocket Casts last month. But if someone says “I’m using Automatic CSS for Wordpress” you’d likely think that’s by Automattic, and the average person likely doesn’t know it should have two Ts. This is one where I’d assume it’s valid.
If it weren't for PocketCasts, I wouldn't use anything MM/Automattic sells. I just haven't found a podcast app I like as much as I did Google Podcasts which I left PC for the first time.
This is Lowpass by Janko Roettgers, a newsletter on the ever-evolving intersection of tech and entertainment, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week.
This week, JJ Watt finally had enough. The former NFL star, who played for the Houston Texans for close to a decade, took to X to declare that he was ready to give up on watching Monday Night Football. "Just frustrating," Watt posted. "All of it."
Watt's ire was caused by the ongoing carriage dispute between Disney and YouTube TV, which resulted in ESPN, and a bunch of other Disney networks, going dark on the Google-owned pay TV service on October 30th. The two companies are fi …
Lego boldly goes where the company hasn’t gone before. | Image: Lego
Lego’s Star Wars partnership helped the company endure financial uncertainty in the late ‘90s, but for the first time it’s announcing a collaboration with that other iconic space franchise. Lego’s first Star Trek set is a 3,600 piece replica of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D from Star Trek: The Next Generation measuring nearly two-feet long. It will be available starting on November 28th from Lego’s online and brick-and-mortar stores for $399.99, and if purchased before December 1st, it will come with an additional set featuring a Star Trek: Type-15 Shuttlepod.
The Enterprise NCC-1701-D model features a detachable command saucer, a pair of warp nacelles with “distinctive red and blue detailing,” a shuttlebay that opens with a pair of miniature shuttlepods, and an angled display stand with a plaque listing details about the spacecraft including when it first was first launched and where it was built.
Making the $400 set even more tempting is a truly stellar lineup of nine Lego minifigures that each come with notable accessories from the TV series. Captain Jean-Luc Picard has a teacup, Commander William Riker includes a trombone, Lieutenant Commander Data is joined by his cat Spot, Lieutenant Worf brandishes a phaser, and Wesley Crusher uses a portable tractor beam generator. The other minifigures include Counsellor Deanna Troi, bartender Guinan, Dr. Beverly Crusher, and Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge with a tricorder, engineering case, and PADD tablet.
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Samantha Cole
