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Senate Technology Committee Prepares Comprehensive Internet Regulation After Discovering Computers Can Connect to Each Other

Senate Technology Committee Prepares Comprehensive Internet Regulation After Discovering Computers Can Connect to Each Other

Following extensive hearings in which senators expressed genuine surprise that social media platforms operate using electricity, Congress has produced a landmark 847-page bill that accidentally regulates everything except social media. The legislation includes helpful definitions such as 'algorithm: a mathematical process that does math' and requires all digital content to be approved by a committee that meets twice yearly.

Department of Tomorrow Proudly Presents Yesterday's Blueprint for Next Week

Department of Tomorrow Proudly Presents Yesterday's Blueprint for Next Week

The Bureau of Strategic Foresight has finally released its comprehensive 2022-2025 Vision Statement, arriving fashionably late in December 2025 with all the timeliness of a sundial at midnight. Officials remain confident the document accurately predicts what should have happened eighteen months ago.

America Has 137 Offices Dedicated to Cutting Government Waste, and They Are Thriving

America Has 137 Offices Dedicated to Cutting Government Waste, and They Are Thriving

Somewhere in a federal building in Washington, a task force is meeting to discuss the elimination of redundant task forces. Across town, a separate task force is meeting to discuss the same thing, unaware the first one exists. A third is preparing a report on both of them, though it has not yet been told about either. This is, experts say, the system working.

Senate Clarifies What 'Infrastructure' Means on Page 841, Retroactive to Events That Have Already Happened

Senate Clarifies What 'Infrastructure' Means on Page 841, Retroactive to Events That Have Already Happened

Buried inside the Consolidated American Infrastructure Investment and Renewal Act — between a provision extending tax credits for certain categories of gravel and a sub-clause exempting a specific bridge in western Pennsylvania from the definition of 'bridge' — is a 900-word rider formally defining what the word 'infrastructure' means. The definition is effective retroactively. Experts say this raises questions. The experts have not agreed on what those questions are.

The Government Has a 400-Page Plan to Have Fewer Plans, and It Is Going Exactly as You'd Expect

The Government Has a 400-Page Plan to Have Fewer Plans, and It Is Going Exactly as You'd Expect

The Office of Administrative Streamlining has released its landmark Strategic Reduction of Strategic Planning Initiatives report, a 400-page document recommending the immediate formation of three new subcommittees to oversee the elimination of subcommittees. The report took four years, cost $14 million, and has been filed in a cabinet for which no one appears to own a key.

Wisconsin Man Who Stopped Reading Political Emails in 2008 Is Quietly Winning at Life

Wisconsin Man Who Stopped Reading Political Emails in 2008 Is Quietly Winning at Life

By every available metric — financial stability, sleep quality, blood pressure, and general outlook — a 47-year-old accountant from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, has outperformed the combined legislative output of the 118th Congress simply by unsubscribing from everything and going to bed at ten. Political consultants are reportedly furious. He has since been asked to run for Senate.

Bold New Plan to Save American Democracy Requires, Quite Coincidentally, Several Million Dollars Paid to the People Who Wrote It

Bold New Plan to Save American Democracy Requires, Quite Coincidentally, Several Million Dollars Paid to the People Who Wrote It

The Brookings-Adjacent Center for Sensible Discourse has released what it is calling the most comprehensive roadmap for democratic renewal in a generation, a 14-point framework that its authors describe as both urgent and, in a development they stress is entirely coincidental, exclusively implementable by the Center itself at a cost of $4.7 million per phase. The Center's executive director has called for immediate action, beginning with a funded feasibility study to determine the feasibility of funding the feasibility study.

The Agency That Watches the Agency That Watches the Agency Has Finally Watched Something

The Agency That Watches the Agency That Watches the Agency Has Finally Watched Something

After thirty-seven years of careful preparation, the Federal Office of Interagency Review Coordination has published its long-awaited assessment of an agency most of its own staff believed to be fictional. The report runs to 847 pages, 612 of which are appendices explaining why the other 235 pages should not be taken as definitive. Nothing will change.