Hello, and welcome back! We have new TGIF T-shirts in the shop.

Classic, soft, screen-printed. I sleep in mine. In my community, we consider this lingerie. But enough about me and what’s being called “the T-shirt of the summer.” Let’s talk about the news.

→ Andrew Tate finally arrested: The war in Iran is back on. Plus, we’re helping Saudi Arabia develop nuclear power now, I guess. Don’t think too hard about it. But for our purposes, the top news in the world is that the wildly popular influencer Andrew Tate has finally been arrested in the U.S., with plans to extradite him to his former home, the United Kingdom. Tate, the man your sons and grandsons are probably obsessed with, is charged with rape, sex trafficking, it goes on for a total of 42 counts of that kind of unpleasant stuff. In bonny England he will, I assume, face a tribunal run by bitter, exhausted professional women (my girls!). This is only so interesting because Andrew Tate had been investigated before, suspected of trafficking and rape in Romania, and was barred from leaving that country. But then, in February of last year, seemingly after pressure from someone in the Trump administration, Tate was allowed to leave and took a private jet from Romania to, where else? Florida. (It seems as though Barron Trump was a fan.) When asked if Trump would intervene this time, Karoline Leavitt gave an emphatic “No.” Anyway, it’s also interesting because it gave us a photo of Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan being arrested. And I don’t know how to explain to you that these men are considered to be the pinnacle of masculinity by right-wing American Zoomers. This is the hardened male that they aspire to become. He has over 10 million followers on X alone.

The purple silk “shirt”—legally, I feel a shirt must cover the nipples—matches the purple transition lenses. There are the capris, the slip-on shoes. It looks like they’re dragging him out of Fire Island. Put a wig on this person and she’s late for her mimosas at Club Med. Put a wig on and it’s my quirky drunk aunt Annie Tate whose bra is always showing. His brother Tristan, in a three-piece suit and a hat that is both too big and too small, is almost as bad. Andrew Tate and his brother are actually a return to the male animal as a flamboyant, colorful thing, the brilliant male mallard next to the dull brown female. In that way we’re actually made for each other, as I, in Tevas and with limp hair, am a return to the female duck. Andrew, call me.

→ Wow, we eventually won Iraq, didn’t we: U.S. companies signed roughly $60 billion in agreements and partnerships with Iraq late last week, including deals to build alternative oil shipping routes bypassing the Strait of Hormuz amid the ongoing U.S.-Iran war. Goddammit, Dick Cheney, you lunatic, you did it. Credit where it’s due. Mission accomplished.

→ Just a strange, random clerical error: A totally silly little software glitch happened at the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission over the course of a year. There, when folks explicitly marked a box saying they were not U.S. citizens, it registered them to vote anyway. We’re told it’s only about 6,600 individuals, and only 400 of them actually voted after that. Here’s New Jersey governor Mikie Sherrill announcing the simple “software error”:

Last week I learned that a serious software error in New Jersey’s Motor Vehicle System led to the registration of roughly 6,600 people who indicated that they were not U.S. citizens between June 2023 and June 2024, almost three years prior to my taking office. These individuals answered “no” when asked on a keypad whether they were a U.S. citizen when applying for drivers’ licenses and identification cards, but through no fault of their own, the system registered them anyway.

It’s just like a computer to do that, right? When you click no on a form, beep boop mistake, it registers you to vote. It also accidentally votes up and down the ballot for Dems. Beep beep error alert, sorry, I don’t know why it keeps doing that. Ah, it withdrew $93 and donated it to the Democratic Socialists of America. Brrrk-k-k-k-k, this machine is always broken. Can someone turn it off and on again?

DMVs: Crank on.

→ Sounds fun!:

Wow, that sounds like some silly fun! Fireworks on the Plaza! America 250 ain’t over till it’s over! Thank you, NBC News! What really happened, since we seem to have clear video of it: Someone set off incendiary devices and poured a bucket of gasoline onto the stairs of a federal building and lit that puddle on fire. Apparently it was an anti-ICE thing. Like we said, just some kids doing fireworks! I remember those days. . . ...