SOMEWHERE BETWEEN FORT WAYNE AND THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST (The Daily Whatever Press)—We published 16 stories and two episodes this week, for a show that officially goes live once a week. The news did not take the hint. Here it is, day by day, with every story one click away.
Sunday, October 11
• Airlines got a federal hall pass (Dana): Starting October 19, the airline’s own broken plane counts as outside its control. DOT priced the airlines’ reprogramming at $112,567 and called your losses impossible to estimate.
• Ukraine unplugged the bot farm (Lawrence): Drones knocked out three Yandex data centers, bot traffic fell to zero, and Yandex called a building on fire “power interruptions.”
Monday, October 12
• Measles is back, and it’s burying people (Dana): 3,887 U.S. cases, five dead in Pennsylvania (two of them babies), and the measles-free review pushed past the midterms.
• The DOJ searched Ilhan Omar’s home (Dana): No name, no crime, no charge. Just leaks, a Tom Homan victory lap on Fox, and an election three weeks out.
• Episode: “May Their Memories Be a Blessing (to Nobody)”: We went live on Yandex, measles, and AI-cloned Adobe apps until the Omar news broke on the air.
• Susan Collins’s allies can’t find Maine (Lawrence): A GOP super PAC aimed its anti–Troy Jackson ad at Portland, Oregon, and handed him a million free impressions.
Tuesday, October 13
• Guards allegedly filmed a woman giving birth (Dana): A lawsuit says Michigan officers kept body cameras rolling through Natalie Forrest’s delivery, 17 days after a written felony warning.
• Trump looked at Jon Husted’s ass (Lawrence): “I don’t do this with men very often,” said the president. Lawrence, a veteran, has notes on his cruising technique.
Wednesday, October 14
• Travis Kelce liked Shane Gillis calling women whores (Dana): His camp says he was “supporting a friend.” Dana’s question is for Taylor: “We’re worried about you, babe.”
Thursday, October 15
• AI researchers are smoking for the singularity (Lawrence): Palantir’s CTO says they light up to prove AI will cure cancer. He named zero of them, and his own office stocks free nicotine pouches.
• Texas killed a musical rather than let a girl play Seymour (Dana): Grand Prairie ISD canceled Little Shop of Horrors over Ana Mota’s casting. Another school in the district is staging the same show.
• Trump told his crowd they’re “collateral damage” (Dana): He says his doctors would let a fallen supporter die. Dick Cheney’s cardiologist says that’s false.
• Jaime West wants to fire all Republicans (Lawrence): A county council candidate in Connersville, Indiana, said it out loud, and 8.2 million people watched, in a county of 23,000.
Friday, October 16
• Episode: “Effed-up Friday with Anne P. Mitchell, Esq.”: We opened with the shooting at Silver Rail Elementary in Bend, Oregon, then pitched a press secretary’s law license, Little Shop, and the smoking AI researchers.
• Meta pays homophobes for engagement (Lawrence): At least 29 anti-LGBTQ accounts are in Meta’s monetization program, and with the fact-checkers fired, nothing counts as false.
• Katie Miller blames women’s careers for the fall of Rome (Dana): Augustus was pushing Roman babies nearly 500 years before Rome fell. Miller, with four kids and a podcast, is the career energy.
• The tradwife dating app is here (Dana): Match Group’s Upward gives men the first message and women 72 hours to answer. “Wanted for life. Or 72 hours, whichever comes first.”
Saturday, October 17
• Hey, NBC: the word is murder (Dana): NBC wrote that a college student “died after she was drugged and raped.” Dana put the man prosecutors accuse back in the sentence.
That was the week: an agency that counted the airlines’ money and not yours, a president who called his own crowd expendable, and a newsroom that wrote a dead woman’s headline with nobody in it to blame.
The midterms are November 3, 17 days out. Vote early if your state lets you, and we’ll see you Friday at 10 a.m. Eastern.
Thanks for stopping by!
We’re Dana DuBois and Lawrence Winnerman, lifelong BFFs and co-hosts of The Daily Whatever Show — our independent home for smart, irreverent conversations about culture, politics, media, creativity, relationships, aging, and whatever else is shaping modern life this week.
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