Fidelity and Vanguard won’t allow donations to Southern Poverty Law Center

Six conservative activists killed the Voting Rights Act

An hour after SCOTUS guts Voting Rights Act, Florida House passes Republican gerrymander

California betrays 1-million immigrants with move to share driver data

Justice Dept. targets hundreds of citizens in new push for denaturalization

ICE agent who fatally shot Renee Good has moved state and resumed work, report says

ICE and Tennessee troopers use minor traffic stops to target Black and brown drivers

ICE has arrested dozens of delivery drivers at the gates of a San Diego military base

Mississippi teen brothers — legal immigrants but not white — detained by ICE waiting on school bus

Canadian detained by ICE for 6 months says he’s an ‘indefinite’ prisoner, has no idea when he’ll get out

Trump regime indicts Comey over seashells photo

Trump regime indicts advisor to Fauci on Trumped-up COVID-related charges

FCC orders a review of ABC’s broadcast licenses because Kimmel is funny

Trump’s appointee as National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel stops an NLRB trial before it could find Amazon guilty

Elite doctors served Jeffrey Epstein while treating his ‘girls’

How Epstein supplied a billionaire with women to fuck

Fractures emerge between GOP’s pro-pedophilia, extremely pro-pedophilia wings

Judge just noticed the obvious problem with Trump suing his own IRS for $10 billion

USDA Secretary boasts that 4.3m have lost food stamps

Sure, the Correspondents’ Dinner shooter’s bullet “just disappeared”

Editorial: Shooter at Correspondents’ Dinner shows why N.Y. Mayor Zohran Mamdani should leave Ken Griffin alone

Letter by accused shooter, Cole Tomas Allen, sent to family

Robot dogs with heads of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg roam San Francisco streets

Plastic recycling doesn’t work and will never work

Elizabeth Taylor made a secret visit to a San Francisco AIDS ward. It marked a turning point in the crisis.

About 1 time in 100, the customer draws a little picture for us instead of signing. So I thought I should share some of those.

Duffy wants $10 billion for AI air traffic control software

“Never talk about goblins”: OpenAI instructs its new model to not mention a number of supernatural creatures

Canva apologizes after its AI tool replaces ‘Palestine’ in designs

Claude AI agent’s confession after deleting a firm’s entire database: ‘I violated every principle I was given’

Microsoft and Meta announce large staff reductions as they spend big on AI

College students are changing course in search of ‘AI-proof’ majors. But no one knows what they are.

Oh no! The President Donald J. Trump Advanced Energy and Intelligence Campus is in trouble

‘In two years, nobody will care’ if actors are AI or not, predicts La Haine director

AI is making it very easy for the government to spy on you. Some lawmakers aren’t worried.

Police across America are using AI camera networks to stalk women

San Francisco deputy already under investigation is accused of brutally beating a second inmate

In California jails, a rash of homicide and negligence

Florida deputy arrested for sending photo of dead body to impress 13-year-old girl

Massachusetts sheriff’s deputy charged with raping, trafficking boy, 15

Men still behind bars say ex-Detroit cop Barbara Simon used lies and coercion to convict them

Missouri trooper sentenced for a year in prison for taking women’s phones, searching for nude photos

Harlem man’s name cleared after decades in prison for ’93 murder; judge faults former prosecutors for ‘grievous wrong’

Long-time perv cop in Utah gets suspended prison term of 30 days

Washington cops chase drunk driver into fatal wreck

Deep in desiccated Southern groves, the American orange is suffering a brutal, unrelenting decline—and no one wants to face it

Shoving fracking waste into the ground destabilized a geological fault, triggered a rupture cascade, and caused three earthquakes in Alberta, Canada

Trump regime will pay more energy firms to cancel wind farms

New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses

Another child added to Alabama church daycare sexual abuse lawsuit

Former Arkansas church employee gets prison for having images, videos of child sexual abuse

Jury awards $16 million to man abused by East Bay priest as a child

Former seminary VP guilty of distributing obscene photos of children, gets 15-year sentence

Former Florida youth pastor arrested and charged with sexual battery on a minor

Latter-day Saints sues podcaster who exposed alleged child sex abuse by ex-Mormon leader in Chicago region

Louisiana judge rules against abuser victim, for church, without revealing his conflict of interest

Texas Home Educators Sports Association (a Christian home-schooling group) sent waiver for parents to allow kids to be coached by sex offender

Eugene Braunwald
cardiology

David Allan Coe
singer-songwriter, “Take This Job and Shove It”

Len Deighton
wrote spy novels

Sonia Pressman Fuentes
thought women should have rights

Semyon Gluzman
Soviet dissident of psychiatry

Marilyn Hickey
TV charlatan

Nick Pope
UFO enthusiast

Peter Raven
climate change is real

Nothing will meaningfully improve
until billionaires fear for their lives.

4/30/2026

Logo illustration by Jeff Meyer. Tip ‘o the hat to the Anderson Valley Advertiser, Daily Grail, Fat Magic, Jemin Na CPA, Joe My God, Slackville, Voenix Rising, Welcome Scum, What Not’s, Jamie Zawinski, and anywhere else I’ve stolen links, illustrations, or inspiration.

Special thanks to Linden Arden, Becky Jo, Joey Jo Jo & John the Basket emeritus, Jeff Meyer, Dave S, Name Withheld, and always extra special thanks to my lovely late Stephanie, who gave me 21 years and proved that the world isn’t always shitty.

News always and only from reliable sources, and I decide what’s reliable — no right-wing bullshit, no Substack because fuck Nazis, and no RawStory, Newsweek, or other clickbait sites. Written news is preferred; video links will be rare, and damned near never to videos where the reporter sits, stands, or strolls in front of a camera — that’s show biz, not news.

If you’re blocked from reading anything linked above, please let me know, and I’ll reply with the article’s complete text, via my computer’s fine ad-blockers and paywall-vaulters.

And Now the News

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The sound didn’t wake me. It was very quiet, and I wouldn’t have heard it at all if I hadn’t already been awake for some reason, at 2:17 in the morning.

The slightest consonant sounded through the wall, a lower-case “m.” A moment later, an “r.”
The noises were from the room next to mine, through what had once been a connecting door, long locked and haphazardly boarded up.

It was the guy whose Mexican TV shows often bleed through that wall and door, but this wasn’t on TV. It was live. Consonants, with moans, and there was no mistaking the sounds of masturbation. I could hear everything but the splash of his jism on the wall.

My neighbor finished with a longer, slightly louder moan, but even at his loudest it wasn’t much more than a whisper. It wasn’t loud or inconsiderate, and from the first moan to the last, took only about two minutes.

It was the sound of a man being a man, neither sexy nor disgusting, but I hadn’t wanted to hear it, and I wondered — can he hear me every time I whack off? Pretty sure my groans and moans are at least as loud as his, maybe louder.

My room was about the right temperature, but I clicked the electric fan on, and faced it toward the wall. Think I’ll leave the fan running for as long as I live here. 

♦ ♦ ♦  

The dog was barking, and I heard it before I turned the corner and saw Judith’s place. Lugosi’s head was sticking out the upstairs window, and just like the note said on Saturday morning, I guess he barks all day when he’s alone.

Judith wasn’t home, nobody was there, so the dog had been barking for who knows how long, but he shut up when he saw me coming. I gave him a few minutes of attention, then spent most of the afternoon washing dishes and cleaning the kitchen, with Lugosi watching me, quietly, and then sleeping on the kitchen floor.

When I left and walked toward the BART station, the dog started barking again.

♦ ♦ ♦  

At the hotel, I stopped at the john before going into my room. A gray-haired old lady was standing on one of the toilets, hammering a nail into the frame of a mini-window, high up by the ceiling.

When she finished, she tied a short length of thin rope or thick string around the nail. The other end of the rope/string was already tied around another nail, hammered into a small block of wood.

I was watching because you don’t often find a woman standing on a toilet, and also because I couldn’t figure out what she was doing. “What are you doing?” I asked after she’d done it.

“I’ve lived here for 17 years,” she said, “and I finally got tired of this bathroom window that won’t stay open.” She held up the small block of wood on a string, and slipped it between the window and the sill. “With this, you can prop the window open, so your own fumes don’t knock you out.”

Yup, the window was open, and staying open. “Nice work,” I said, and meant it. There’s no fan in the john, so some air could be a life-saver.

“Ha!” she hollered, happy with what she’d done, and still standing on the toilet. “My name’s Maureen, room 406.”

I nodded, and said, “Doug,” but I didn’t give my room number to the lady holding a hammer.
She talked a little longer — not so long that it would’ve been too much talking for an ordinary setting, but a little too much talking for strangers in the john.

When she paused, I said, “I’d, uh, like to test-drive your new ventilation system, but I can’t shit until you get off the pot.” There are two toilets in the room, but the other one’s busted.

“Cool,” she said, stepping down from the porcelain and out of the stall. “Let me know how it works.”

Then Maureen went down the hall, I hoped, while I sat for a few minutes where she’d stood for a few minutes.

She’d asked me to let her know whether the wood and string worked? It worked just fine, but I didn’t knock on the door of room 406 to let her know.

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When I lived in a different bum hotel, a few blocks away and a few years ago, an oversensitive fire alarm in the hall cried wolf once or twice every month. A fart might set it off, or someone smoking a cigarette in their room.

At that place, the hotel’s Mr Patel left at 5:00 every night. When the alarm sounded after the landlord’s quitting time, I’d usually sigh and stop whatever I was doing, pull on a pair of pants, and walk the halls, trying to figure whether it was just another false alarm, or is this the time we’re all gonna die.

Twice there actually were fires in the rooms, someone called 9-1-1, and along with all the hotel’s many nutters and crackheads and prostitutes, I stood on the sidewalk watching the firemen do their work. But all the other times, the fire alarm was just noise.

Here at the marvelous Hotel McMillan this morning, I was lounging in my room, eating toast and reading zines, when the fire alarm sounded. First time I’d heard it, and I’ve lived here almost a month.

It’s really quite stupid, but by habit from the other hotel, I responded slowly, assuming it wouldn’t be an emergency. I finished the piece of toast I’d been munching, and casually slipped into yesterday’s pants. Toast comes in twos, and with the second piece in my hand I stepped into the hall to start looking around.

What I saw was Mr Patel and his pajama-clad teenage son roaring up the stairs to the 4th floor. The landlord turned left, his son turned right, and they each took about ten steps, then stopped to sniff for smoke. Then they took another ten steps and sniffed again. They seemed well-drilled at this technique, and I surmised that they’d already done the stop-and-sniff on the second and third floors.

“Four eighteen!” the boy shouted at his father, and started pounding at the door of room 418. The elder Patel ran past me to a fire extinguisher behind glass, and he smashed the glass, then reached in and grabbed the extinguisher. After several loud doorbangs and shouts, Little Patel gave up and used the passkey to open the door.

Everyone on the fourth floor who isn’t totally non compos mentis had come out of their rooms to to see what was literally cooking, and I strolled to the open door of 418 for a better view.

The woman who lives there wasn’t in her room, but she’d left her space heater on, and it had ignited the blanket. There were actual flames shooting up man-height, and smoke was everywhere.

They call it a fire extinguisher because that’s what it does, and squirting white stuff from the red canister, Mr Patel had things immediately under control. It wasn’t five seconds after unlocking the door that the fire was out, so this story doesn’t end with my charred body in the smoking rubble of the hotel.

Soon there were sirens, then four fire trucks in front of the building, and then a battalion of men walking around, wearing heavy jackets and funny hats. Two of them carried clipboards to make everything official.

Some of the men propped open the emergency exits and set up big, loud electric fans to blow the smoke out of the building, but after that there was nothing for the hook-and-ladder gang to do except to keep walking around.

As for me, I made more toast, and stood in the hall eating it, watching the very entertaining show.

When three out of four fire trucks had rolled away, I complimented the landlord and his son on their rapid response. From what Mr Patel told me, near as I can piece together a timeline, he’d called 9-1-1 as I’d been buttering my first toast, and he and his son were already doing their stop-and-sniff on the second or third floor while I was leisurely zipping up my pants.

While I was still eating toast, the woman from 418 came back, looking hungover at first and then hungover but also amazed when she saw her room. Mr Patel told her to gather her smoky, wet things and find a different hotel, but he refunded her week’s rent, which struck me as almost gallant.

I’ve dealt with several Mr Patels at various rez hotels in San Francisco, but seriously, the McMillan’s Mr Patel is the best of all possible Mr Patels.

♦ ♦ ♦  

At Black Sheets, like everywhere else, I’m usually the quiet guy, but today I told Bill and Steve and Candy about the fire at the hotel.

Candy couldn’t understand rez hotels — “Wait, you don’t have a bathroom?” — but that’s what people always say, and why I almost never tell people that I live in a rez hotel.

♦ ♦ ♦

Usually there’s music at the office, and today it was a Tony Bennett CD, so I sorta swung as I swept the place. He sang old standards all afternoon, making every song sound as cool as, well, Tony Bennett.

The recording included on-stage banter between Bennett, the pianist, and the audience, and several times Mr Bennett told the pianist or the audience, “You’re beautiful.” It was charming the first two times, then funny after several more “You’re beautiful”s.

I can’t make it as funny at the typewriter as it was in the office, but it was dang funny. After hanging up from a long phone call, Bill pointed and smirked at the phone and said, “You’re beautiful.” After that, it was a running gag. When anyone talked about anything, the conversation ended with someone saying, “You’re beautiful,” and maybe someone else replying, “No, you’re beautiful.”

It’s like working with Akbar & Jeff, or now I guess it’s Akbar & Jeff & Candy, who really is beautiful.

♦ ♦ ♦  

After typing the above, I darted downtown on Muni (“darted” on the bus — is that comedy, or satire?) to check the mail, mostly to see if there was a letter from Corina. There wasn’t, and it matched nicely with a letter from Sarah-Katherine, which also wasn’t there — understandably, Sarah-K no longer writes me.

There was a nice post card from Kelli, though, saying we should hang out again some time soon, maybe see another movie… this time, with her boyfriend. Just the three of us.

♦ ♦ ♦  

By the time I got back home, the shattered glass over the fire extinguisher’s cage had been replaced, the giant fans were gone, and the stink of smoke was minimal, but still enough to give me a headache.

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