I’m looking at new apartments this week here in Portland, Oregon. It’s time for an upgrade.

This has triggered a debate I often have with myself: If I’m going to move, why not leave dysfunctional, far-left Portland altogether?

Had I become so comfortable with the bad vibes of Portland that I would stay here indefinitely, out of inertia or laziness or not wanting to start over?

This is my chance to move to a different city. Or another state. Somewhere with fewer drug addicts and criminals roaming the streets and fewer democratic socialists roaming city hall.

I grew up in Portland. I have lived here off and on throughout my life. During my most productive years as a writer, I lived in bigger, more media-oriented cities, mainly New York and Los Angeles.

But I’ve always loved coming back to Oregon and assumed I would settle here when I retire. Portland always felt like my place. I love the tall trees, the gentle rain, the misty Oregon coast.

Free radicals

Unfortunately, over the last 15 years, Portland has become a hotbed of radicalism and political intolerance. So much so that it has affected my daily life.

I’ve always socialized with creative types. But in Portland, the artistic community is often more hysterical than the violent protesters in the street.

Once it became known I was conservative, I lost about 80% of my writer friends. And maybe half of my other friends. This social exclusion was especially bad during the years around #MeToo, and then COVID, and of course the constant presence of Trump derangement syndrome.

Un-friendzoned

The result is that living here has been like living on a desert island. I feel unwelcome at art events. I avoid literary parties and gallery openings.

One egregious example: I didn’t attend the celebration of life for one of my most important literary mentors, a beloved Portland poet who encouraged me as a young writer and helped advance my career.

I owed so much to this man, and I couldn’t go to his funeral!

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Tiny bubbles

Recently, I saw a TikTok video by a woman whose family had moved from Seattle to Wyoming.

Her message was simple: “No matter how much you think you are aware of the bubble you live in, when you get out of these far-left cities, a whole new world opens up to you.”

This hit me hard. Had I become so comfortable with the bad vibes of Portland that I would stay here indefinitely, out of inertia or laziness or not wanting to start over?

My own private Idaho

One reason I’m reluctant to move to a red state is I’m not sure I would fit in.

Take for example, Boise, Idaho, the closest red city to Portland. I’ve visited there many times. It’s clean. There are no homeless. The people are super nice. It’s very “churchy” and family-oriented. There’s a large Mormon population.

But could I adapt to such a place? I’ve lived in liberal cities MY ENTIRE LIFE. I have never lived in a place like Boise. Would I find people who understand my sense of humor? People who like the obscure music I listen to? Or read the books I read?

Yes, the people of Boise would share my core values. But would they share my urban tastes?

Go east, young man

I had a Republican friend here in Portland who moved to Florida during Trump’s first term. At the time, that seemed like a drastic change.

For a couple of years, I emailed him every few months to ask how he was doing. He had settled right in. Florida was great. He loved it there.

As he grew more comfortable in Florida, I grew less comfortable in Portland. Now, in 2026, moving to Florida 10 years ago seems like a genius move. I am humbled by his foresight.

The great escape?

So what should I do? Be the latecomer, arriving in Tampa or Austin or Nashville a decade after all the smart people already moved there?

I guess it’s never too late. I could still escape.

But what about the tall trees, the gentle rain, and the misty coastline I love so much? What about my roots in the place where I grew up?

Robert E. Lee didn’t abandon his home state of Virginia in the face of a civil war. But Virginia was famous for its proud history and strong cultural heritage.

I’m from Portland, famous for people with orange hair who don’t know what gender they are.

Fall into the gap

I’ve always assumed Portland’s current political extremism would fade over time. Sooner or later, people would calm down and return to some form of normalcy.

But whenever I try to connect with my former liberal friends, I quickly learn that the derangement is stronger than ever.

So, should I stay or should I go?

These are the decisions we have to make during these difficult times — as we struggle to maintain our sense of ourselves and of where we came from.

Why the Pentagon just called Detroit's Big 3 automakers

There’s a conversation happening behind closed doors in Washington that should make every American pay attention, and it has nothing to do with EV mandates or fuel economy targets.

This time, it’s about war, capacity, and whether Detroit is about to be pulled into something far bigger than the auto business.

GM is expected to compete for a major Army contract to develop the next-generation infantry squad vehicle, a platform designed to replace the aging Humvee.

According to the Wall Street Journal, senior Pentagon officials have been quietly engaging with leadership from General Motors and Ford Motor Company, including CEOs Mary Barra and Jim Farley. The message is not subtle. The U.S. may need its automakers to help build the tools of modern warfare.

Donato Fasano/Getty Images

Running on empty

This is a direct response to a growing problem that Washington can no longer ignore. Ongoing conflicts abroad have exposed a reality that’s uncomfortable but unavoidable. The United States does not currently have the industrial capacity to produce munitions, missiles, and advanced defense systems at the speed and scale modern warfare demands. Stockpiles are being drained faster than they can be replenished, and the traditional defense contractor base is under pressure.

While the Pentagon has dismissed these claims, the fact remains the U.S. military seems to be on the hunt for manufacturers. And when you need scale, speed, and manufacturing expertise, there’s one place you go: Detroit.

Let’s be honest about what this really means. This is not a routine government outreach effort. This is Washington signaling that America’s industrial base may need to shift priorities, and fast. The auto industry, which has spent the last decade being pushed toward electrification at enormous cost, is now being evaluated for something entirely different: its ability to support national defense on a large scale.

History of help

There is precedent for this, and it’s not ancient history. During World War II, American automakers famously halted civilian vehicle production and became the backbone of military manufacturing. Tanks, aircraft, trucks, engines, all of it rolled out of facilities that once built cars for Main Street. It was called the arsenal of democracy, and it worked.

The question now is whether history is about to repeat itself, not through mandates, at least not yet, but through “collaboration,” which in Washington terms often means something a lot closer to expectation than suggestion.

These discussions are still in the early stages, but don’t mistake “preliminary” for unimportant. Pentagon officials are asking hard questions. Can automakers pivot their production lines quickly? Do they have the workforce flexibility? Can their supply chains handle defense-grade manufacturing? And perhaps most importantly, what regulatory and contractual barriers stand in the way?

Companies like GE Aerospace and Oshkosh Corporation are already part of the broader conversation, bridging the gap between commercial manufacturing and defense production. Oshkosh Corporation in particular has long operated in both civilian and military spaces, producing tactical vehicles while maintaining a diversified portfolio. That kind of hybrid model may soon become more common if Washington gets its way.

Boon or boondoggle?

But this isn’t just about national security. It’s also about economics, and that’s where things get complicated.

Automakers are navigating one of the most challenging environments in decades. Sales growth has cooled. Profit margins are tightening. The cost of electrification has ballooned beyond early projections, putting enormous pressure on balance sheets. Billions have been spent chasing EV targets that consumers have been slower to adopt than expected.

In that context, defense contracts start to look less like a burden and more like an opportunity. Stable, long-term revenue backed by government funding has a certain appeal, especially when your core business is under strain.

That doesn’t mean this is an easy pivot. Building consumer vehicles and building military hardware are fundamentally different businesses. Defense manufacturing comes with layers of compliance, extensive testing requirements, and procurement cycles that can stretch for years. This isn’t about slapping a different badge on a pickup truck and calling it a day.

Factories would need to be retooled. Workers would need retraining. Entire supply chains would need to be adjusted to meet military specifications. And all of it would have to happen within a regulatory framework that is far more complex than anything the auto industry deals with today.

Factory flex

Still, if there’s one thing American manufacturers have proven, it’s that they can adapt under pressure. During the COVID-19 pandemic, both GM and Ford shifted production to build ventilators in partnership with medical companies. It wasn’t perfect, but it was fast, and it demonstrated something important. When pushed, this industry can move.

Now, the Pentagon is betting that same flexibility can be applied to defense production. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been explicit about the need for what he calls a “wartime footing” in manufacturing readiness. That phrase matters. It doesn’t necessarily mean the U.S. is entering a traditional war, but it does mean planning for sustained, high-volume production of military equipment.

And the financial scale behind that planning is enormous. The Pentagon’s proposed $1.5 trillion budget would be the largest in modern history, with significant allocations for munitions, drones, and next-generation battlefield technologies. That kind of spending demands one thing above all else: capacity. And right now, capacity is the bottleneck.

There’s also a strategic shift happening here that shouldn’t be ignored. For years, the U.S. has relied on a relatively small group of defense contractors to supply its military. Those companies are highly capable, but concentration creates vulnerability. Expanding the industrial base to include commercial manufacturers could increase resilience and reduce dependency on a limited number of suppliers.

Civilians sidelined?

That’s the upside. The downside is just as real.

What happens when civilian manufacturing capacity is redirected toward defense? What does that mean for vehicle production, pricing, and availability? And how does this reshape the long-term business models of companies that were already in the middle of a massive transition toward electrification?

These are not abstract questions. They are practical concerns with real economic consequences.

Timing is another factor that adds urgency to the conversation. These discussions reportedly began before recent escalations in global tensions, but the current geopolitical environment has only intensified the pressure.

Some automakers are already positioned to step into a larger role. General Motors, for example, operates a defense subsidiary that produces an infantry squad vehicle based on the Chevrolet Colorado platform. It’s a relatively small part of the business today, but it serves as proof of concept. Automotive technology can be adapted for military use, and it can be done efficiently.

Looking ahead, GM is expected to compete for a major Army contract to develop the next-generation infantry squad vehicle, a platform designed to replace the aging Humvee. This isn’t just a transport vehicle. It’s being envisioned as a mobile command center, a power hub, and a critical component of modern battlefield operations.

That kind of project sits squarely at the intersection of automotive engineering and defense innovation. It’s also a preview of what could become a much larger trend.

In the near term, expect more discussions, more feasibility studies, and more pressure from Washington. The Pentagon is clearly signaling that it wants industry to be ready, not just willing. Readiness is the key word. This is about preparation for a scenario where demand spikes and the current system can’t keep up.

In the longer term, this could fundamentally reshape how we think about American manufacturing. For decades, the auto industry has been driven by consumer demand, regulatory requirements, and technological innovation. Now, national security is entering the equation in a much more direct way.

Detroit has always been a symbol of American industrial strength. Now, Washington is looking at it as something more, a potential force multiplier in a world where manufacturing capacity is becoming a strategic asset.

My 1990 World Cup sticker book — and a glimpse of football's simpler past

It was 1990, and I was in my final year of middle school. The Ultimate Warrior had just defeated Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania VI, Bon Jovi was poisoning the airwaves, and bubblegum still held its flavor.

The law of the jungle was merciless. The concrete schoolyard was just a warm-up for the clique wars to come — if you weren’t smoking Marlboro Reds or rocking Nike Air Max 90s, you didn’t stand a chance. If your parents picked you up in the "wrong" car, it was reputational suicide.

Back then, footballers looked like real blokes — sweaty, scruffy, and rough. Take Peter Beardsley: magic on the pitch, but no one was swapping stickers for his smile.

Summer break was just a few weeks away. While everyone else seemed ready to spend six weeks climbing trees, aimlessly riding their bikes from dawn till dusk, staring awkwardly at girls they liked, or searching for dead bodies in the woods, I had other plans.

Fever pitch

That summer, my true obsession was the Italia 90 World Cup sticker album — a glossy shrine to footballing glory, celebrating a tournament set in Italy and far more engrossing than my favorite comics. To top it off, England had an all-star lineup and, for once, stood a good chance of reliving the glory days of ’66, when we routed the Germans. I set myself a a mission worthy of Pelé himself: to fill every page with those adhesive, elusive footballers. Forget superheroes and cliff-hangers — completing that album was the only epic saga that mattered to this 11-year-old boy.

Mark Leech/Offside/Getty Images

Everyone wanted Maradona or one of the coveted shiny stickers. We devised what I can only describe as a unique system of exchange. Forget Wall Street; this was playground economics at its rawest. We would huddle around while each of us cycled through our spares, chanting “got, got, got,” until someone finally shouted, “NEED!”

The true value of a sticker seemed to rise in direct proportion to the volume of that shout — sometimes it seemed like it could be heard in the next city. The whole system was rooted in supply and demand, but deals were sweetened with chocolate, soda, or the promise of a date with someone’s older sister.

Mullet over

The Soviet Union was in its death throes. This was the era before German reunification. Although the Berlin Wall had technically fallen — famously serenaded by "Knight Rider’s" very own power balladeer, David Hasselhoff — Germany still played as West Germany in the World Cup.

For all the horror associated with the communist regime, the most haunting images in my young mind were those notorious mullets — that and the East German female athletes, so heavily doped on steroids that they looked more like men than women.

March Leech/Offside/Getty Images

Flicking through my album, the West German squad looked less like a football team and more like a group of metalheads heading to a Mötley Crüe concert. Still, some of our own lads were sporting that same achy-breaky hair — most famously Chris Waddle, who blasted the ball over the bar in England’s semifinal defeat against West Germany. Proof, if ever it was needed, that mullets make you miss penalties.

The Fat Cat pub

Blokes at work

This tournament’s sticker book hit the shelves at the end of April, ahead of the World Cup kicking off in North America — a whopping 980 stickers for obsessives to collect. The game has changed since those halcyon days — both financially and, perhaps most bizarrely, aesthetically.

Today, pampered millionaire footballers seem to look perma-tanned and Botoxed, more suited to the red carpet than the muddy touchline. Back then, footballers looked like real blokes — sweaty, scruffy, and rough. Take Peter Beardsley: magic on the pitch, but no one was swapping stickers for his smile. For Americans, imagine pulling a Don Mossi Topps card — bags of talent, but not much glamor.

L-R: Peter Beardsley, Don Mossi. Shaun Botterill/Betmann/Getty Images

Patience and hope

Of course, my mission failed spectacularly. I didn’t complete the album in a month. In fact, I never completed it. But maybe that was the point. I belonged to the last generation to grow up without the internet, when patience and hope were virtues and instant gratification had yet to rear its head. Now we’re kept constantly distracted, our attention fought over by algorithms, notifications, and endless scrolling.

Our sticker quests were slow-burn adventures, each new pack a lesson in anticipation, disappointment, and the long game. Trading and collecting weren't just a playground pastime; they were a rite of passage, a physical reminder of a slower world where you couldn’t always have it all, all at once.

I am giving some serious thought to picking up the 2026 album. But this time round, the sticking point isn’t patience; it’s money. With 48 teams and nearly 1,000 stickers to collect, completing the book is now estimated to cost at least £1,000, ($1,400) to complete. As tempting as it is to rekindle my childhood love affair, I may have to sit this one out. Still, I did get the Maradona sticker — maybe not a complete album, but a complete memory.

I love my dogs, but I refuse to spend more money on their dinner than on mine

I love dogs. I have two: a pug and a Jack Russell. They run my house like they pay the mortgage.

The pug snores like a dying lawn mower and produces gas that has, on numerous occasions, cleared a room of human beings. The Jack Russell stares at the mailman the way Manson stared at juries. They're a handful, but they are mine. So please know that what follows comes from a co-conspirator, not a critic.

Pet humanization is one of the most reliable consumer trends of the past two decades: recession-resistant and demographically expanding.

Golden Child is the latest entrant in America's premium pet food gold rush, a venture-backed, direct-to-consumer brand that thinks your dog should be treated like royalty. It pitches itself as a wellness system for canines, and that’s exactly what it is. There are recipes and drizzles. There is talk of amino acids and gut flora, the kind of language once reserved for humans recovering from something serious. There are five-star meal plans at $90 a month.

The dogs in question, meanwhile, eat their own vomit when no one is looking.

Dog's life

The product is fine. The cultural moment producing it is the problem. Americans now spend roughly $158 billion a year on their pets (the combined GDP of Azerbaijan and Bolivia). A meaningful slice of that goes to food alone, and the premium tier keeps climbing while regular grocery budgets shrink. Households that order DoorDash four nights a week and that haven't touched a vegetable since a wedding in 2022 are reading ingredient labels on dog food the way oncologists read blood panels. The Labrador eats grass-fed bison sourced from a single Montana ranch. The owner eats a frozen burrito over the sink.

A Pew survey found that 51% of dog owners consider their pet as much a part of the family as a human member. Estate lawyers, one assumes, have noticed. Wills are being rewritten. Somewhere, a daughter is being cut for a dachshund.

The figure climbs even higher among Millennials and Gen Zers, who are having fewer kids, getting married less, and writing personal essays in which their dogs appear as therapists, life partners, and the last remaining reason to get out of bed. For many, a labradoodle has assumed the role of romantic partner, co-parent, and emergency contact. There is a real and growing market of people who tell pollsters they would rather come home to a dog than a spouse.

Tommaso Boddi/GC Images/Getty Images

Petting zoo

To some, this looks like harmless eccentricity. It is, in fact, the visible surface of a deeper rearrangement. A generation of people are pouring into their pets the care and attention they cannot seem to direct at themselves or at one another. The dog gets the supplements. The dog gets the bone-broth topper. The dog gets the orthopedic bed engineered by a former Tesla designer. The owner, meanwhile, hasn’t seen a primary care doctor in four years and sleeps on a mattress purchased during the Obama administration.

Wellness, as a cultural product, has performed a strange migration. It started as a self-improvement promise, mutated into an aesthetic, and has now landed on the family pet, where it can be practiced without the burden of self-discipline.

Buying Golden Child is easier than cooking dinner. Researching your dog's microbiome is more pleasant than confronting your own. The dog cannot push back, cannot disappoint you, cannot leave. Devotion flows in one direction and returns as tail wags. It is the most effortless emotional transaction available in modern American life.

To be clear, companies like Atomic (the venture studio behind Golden Child) aren’t villains. They’re simply responding rationally to a market that has decided dogs are the last acceptable recipients of unconditional generosity.

Pet humanization is one of the most reliable consumer trends of the past two decades: recession-resistant, demographically expanding, and immune to the kind of guilt that suppresses other luxury spending. A Birkin invites judgment. A supplement regimen for your dog's joints invites applause.

Paw patrol

Zoom out, and the absurdity compounds. American life expectancy fell during the pandemic and has barely recovered. Roughly half of adults take a daily prescription medication. Anti-anxiety drug use among young adults has risen sharply in recent years. One-third of Americans now report what can only be described as an existential crisis. More and more are self-medicating — with alcohol, with drugs, with whatever is closest.

The same population producing these numbers is the population debating whether the schnauzer should be on a raw or gently cooked diet. The schnauzer, for the record, would devour a sock, cough it up, and devour it again.

Of course dogs deserve to be treated well. They should be cared for, fed properly, and protected. But people spending more on their pets than on themselves or the people around them ought to pause and reconsider.

Loving animals well is a real and decent thing, and dogs deserve a great deal of what they receive. The discomfort lies elsewhere. Somewhere along the way, caring for a dog became a substitute for the far less photogenic work of caring for ourselves and each other.

Habsburg-maxxing: What an inbred Spanish king taught me about our cultural literacy crisis

There’s a famous episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” I often think about these days. Entitled “Darmok,” it finds Captain Picard stranded on a planet with only an alien named Dathon for company. Naturally, they don’t speak each other’s language.

Normally this wouldn’t be an issue, thanks to Picard’s 24th-century computer translator. Except that Dathon is a Tamarian, a people whose language is entirely metaphorical and based on stories and cultural allusions you have to be Tamarian to get. So Picard must try to make sense of translated phrases like, “Shaka, when the walls fell.”

As pleasant as Star Trek’s liberal utopian dream can be, we live in reality.

Make it so ... difficult

When I encounter Americans younger than I, I often identify with Picard. This is not just because the average Zoomer’s struggle with basic English grammar and diction makes me feel like the Shakespeare-trained Patrick Stewart by comparison.

Another, less discussed result of our literacy crisis — the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress report reveals that only one-third of fourth-grade students read at the “proficient” level — has resulted in young people who are also ignorant of the kind of cultural background knowledge and history that used to allow adults to talk and joke with each other across generations.

Of course, changing fashion, technology, and entertainment always produce a gap between generations. But there’s always remained enough of a shared culture to form a bridge. Not anymore. With the coming of the Millennials and Generation Z, the gap became a vast, impassable canyon.

So maybe it’s Dathon, not Picard, I identify with. I make some historical or cultural reference I’ve always assumed was common knowledge, and suddenly I’ve got a young person looking at me as if I’ve just said, “Temba, his arms wide.”

Meme me up

I had a moment something like this on X recently. I came across some video of Rachel Zegler, the patriarchal-prince-hating star of Disney’s disastrous live-action “Snow White” reboot, hobnobbing with her fellow “beautiful people” at the Met Gala. The weird way she was mugging for the camera, repeatedly jutting out her jaw as if subject to some drug-induced tic, reminded me of something. So I posted the following:

I thought it was pretty funny. I still do, even though I’m about to make a bore of myself by explaining my own joke. Because while lots of people got it, lots of people didn’t get it too, and I suspect far fewer people “get it” in 2026 than they would have even 20 years ago.

Wit snit

I thought Zegler looked like she was imitating a well-known portrait of a member of the most famously inbred family in the world, the Habsburg dynasty of Austria.

The guy on the right is Charles II, King of Spain from 1665 to 1700. He was one of many Habsburgs who endured mockery for their “Habsburg jaw” or “Habsburg lip.”

If any readers didn’t get the joke, that’s OK, and I’m not trying to castigate individuals. I’m pointing out that what you might call “walking around cultural-historical knowledge” is disappearing. While knowledge of European royal courts was never universal for the average American, it’s simply true that a greater number of everyday adults would have gotten the reference 20 or 40 years ago.

And if they didn’t, they would simply assume there was an easily correctible gap in their collective knowledge — rather than reacting with bored incomprehension or hostility.

How many young people today understand the phrase “tilting at windmills?” How many know that “to tilt” means “to joust with a lance as a knight”? How many would even recognize the book title “Don Quixote”?

Ernst Haas/Getty Images

Cursing cursive

It’s not just the normal knowledge turnover. We’re not talking about current slang or technology that goes out of date in 10 years. We’re talking about basic knowledge about modern Western civilization (the 1600s were in what is called the modern period) that’s not supposed to have the built-in obsolescence of an iPhone.

The problem is not restricted to “high culture” knowledge either. Many young people in America are not even getting the basic instruction in how to live as an adult from their parents. Anyone 40 or older has seen it. Kids who can’t read analog clocks. Students who can’t read cursive handwriting, which means American kids who cannot read letters written by their own grandmothers.

Here’s a video of a schoolteacher attempting to teach cursive to what looks like a room of fifth graders. Notice the student reactions — they’re giggling in embarrassment and covering their faces after showing off their struggle to form cursive letters. This kind of scene would be unbelievable to any of us who grew up in the ’80s or ’90s if we couldn’t see it for ourselves.

The problem is worse than a lack of skill — the kids in this age set think they “can’t” learn what are, in truth, simple things. Writing in cursive is not “hard,” but it does take practice. Reading an analog clock is not “hard” — it can be learned by a child in a couple of lessons, or by an adult in just a few minutes. We can see what happens to student skill levels and confidence in their own ability to learn when we take away that early instruction.

Washing out

I’m afraid it gets even worse. Too many young people did not get basic chore lessons from their parents. This video from a young woman in that position touched my heart as I was contemplating this topic. It’s not like most other “car videos” in which a young person complains and whines in an unsympathetic way. This young lady is frustrated and in tears because she understands that she should know how to do laundry at her age, but no one in her family cared to teach her.

She’s not crying because she doesn’t know how to do laundry. She’s crying because she never got the parenting and family connection that would have taught her how to do basic adult tasks. Sure, you can say, “Just look it up on YouTube or ask ChatGPT,” but that misses the point. AI and instructional videos can teach tasks, but they can’t fill a hole inside that’s supposed to contain love from family.

With the usual Star Trek optimism, the writers of “Darmok” have Captain Picard and Dathon conversing with each other in Dathon’s language by the end of the episode. But as pleasant as Star Trek’s liberal utopian dream can be, we live in reality.

What are we to do about our own failure to communicate? That’s hard to answer, as these are problems that are best dealt with by avoiding them in the first place. And the way we avoid these problems is by properly parenting our children. For millions like that young woman in the laundromat, that ship has sailed.

But young people like the girl in the laundromat can be helped because they know that they don’t have skills that they should have. What sets this “crying car video” apart from others is that this girl wants to learn, and she’s not blaming other people for embarrassing her. It’s clear that she’s capable of learning and willing to do it.

How can we help her and the rest of her struggling cohort?

Are gas prices about to drop? What the UAE leaving OPEC means.

If you think this is just another oil headline, think again. This one hits your wallet directly, every time you start your car.

The United Arab Emirates, one of the most powerful players inside OPEC, is walking away from the cartel. That’s a huge change to the system that has controlled oil prices and, by extension, what Americans pay at the pump for more than half a century.

The UAE’s departure exposes long-standing tensions inside the group. Some countries have followed production limits; others have ignored them.

And for drivers already dealing with high gas prices, this matters more than anything coming out of Washington right now.

Market mover

For decades, OPEC has operated as a coordinated force, adjusting production to influence global oil prices. Less supply meant higher prices. More supply meant relief, but only when it suited the producers. It was never a true free market; it was controlled output designed to protect revenue.

Now one of the few countries that actually had the power to move markets is stepping away.

The UAE isn’t just another member. It is one of the rare producers with real spare capacity, the ability to quickly increase output and stabilize supply during disruptions. Alongside Saudi Arabia, it helped anchor OPEC’s influence. Take that away, and the cartel doesn’t just weaken; it loses control of the narrative.

So why should the average driver care?

Because this could be one of the first real signs that global oil pricing is shifting away from centralized control and back toward competition. And when competition increases, prices tend to come down.

Dire Strait?

But don’t expect that relief overnight.

Here’s the reality drivers are dealing with right now. Gas prices in the U.S. are already elevated, sitting above $4 per gallon in many areas. That’s not just about oil supply; it’s about geopolitics. Tensions tied to Iran and disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz, one of the most critical oil shipping routes in the world, are driving volatility and keeping prices high.

That’s the immediate pressure on your fuel bill, not the UAE’s decision — at least not yet.

The UAE exit is a medium-term shift. It means the country is no longer bound by OPEC production quotas. It can pump more oil if it chooses, and it has made it clear it wants to expand output significantly. More oil supply should push prices lower, but only if that supply actually reaches the market.

Mehmet Yaren Bozgun/Anadolu/Getty Image

And that’s the catch drivers need to understand.

Volatile for a while

Oil prices don’t drop just because more production is possible. They drop when that oil is flowing freely, refined, and distributed. If geopolitical tensions continue to disrupt shipping lanes or production, the added supply won’t fully offset the pressure.

That’s why, in the short term, volatility is still the story.

So let’s answer the question every driver is asking: Will this lower gas prices? And when?

In the next one to two weeks, probably not. Prices will continue to react to global tensions more than anything else. But within two to six weeks, that’s when things could start to change. That’s typically how long it takes for shifts in crude oil prices to filter down to what you pay at the pump. If the UAE ramps up production and tensions ease even slightly, drivers could start seeing prices move down by late May into June.

We’re not talking about a sudden return to cheap gas, but a drop of 20 to 50 cents per gallon is realistic if conditions line up. For families commuting daily, running businesses, or planning summer travel, that kind of relief will help. And yes, this ties directly into the broader automotive landscape.

High fuel prices don’t just affect what you pay at the pump. They influence what people buy. When gas spikes, consumers start rethinking vehicle choices, holding off on larger SUVs, reconsidering trucks, or delaying purchases altogether. Automakers feel that shift immediately, especially as they try to balance EV investments with ongoing demand for gas-powered vehicles.

When prices ease, even slightly, it stabilizes that decision-making. It gives consumers more flexibility and helps normalize the market. That’s why this OPEC fracture isn’t just an energy story; it’s an automotive story.

Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

Priming the pump

Looking farther out, the bigger implication is what happens to OPEC itself.

The UAE’s departure exposes long-standing tensions inside the group. Some countries have followed production limits; others have ignored them. That imbalance has been building for years, and now it’s starting to break apart. When a cartel loses discipline, it loses its ability to control prices.

That’s good for drivers, but it comes with a trade-off.

Less coordination means more volatility. Prices could swing more sharply in response to global events. That’s not ideal for consumers or automakers trying to plan ahead, but it does reduce the ability of a centralized group to keep prices artificially elevated.

There’s also a strategic shift happening behind the scenes. The UAE wants flexibility, not restrictions. The country is investing in expanding production capacity and positioning itself to produce more oil, not less, in the years ahead. That aligns more with a competitive market than a controlled one.

For the United States, that could quietly become a win. More global supply, less cartel control, and increased competition all point toward lower energy costs over time. But again, timing is everything, and right now, geopolitical instability is still the dominant force.

So here’s the bottom line for drivers. The UAE just weakened one of the most powerful forces controlling global oil prices. That opens the door to lower gas prices and more competition. But in the short term, the same geopolitical risks that pushed prices higher are still in play.

If tensions ease and supply increases, you could see relief at the pump within weeks. If not, expect more of the same volatility that’s been hitting your wallet every time you fill up. Either way, this isn’t just another oil story. It’s a shift that will play out on American roads, in dealership showrooms, and, most importantly, at the pump.

OnlyFans models are offended by Sydney Sweeney mocking their degeneracy on her TV show

Dressing up like a dog is apparently too degrading for some OnlyFans creators.

On the show "Euphoria," Sydney Sweeney's character has taken on the ridiculous task of doing pornography in order to pay for $50,000 worth of flowers for her wedding. The insane storyline has Sweeney posing as a dog and dressing as a baby — portrayals that have some involved with the subscription-based website up in arms.

'You have to really grow and nurture a fan base.'

Leathers report

Several women who make money from the overwhelmingly pornographic fan site reacted to Sweeney's scenes in a set of comments to Hollywood-centric outlet Variety. The women accused Sweeney's character of being an over-the-top and rather unbecoming representation of a porn actress.

Scenes that showed Sweeney dressed as a baby or an animal have already disturbed regular audiences on their own, but the content was seen as "ridiculous and cartoonish" by these apparent industry professionals.

"There's so much that they have her doing that is not even allowed on OnlyFans, and that alone is infuriating," Sydney Leathers, an OnlyFans veteran, told Variety. "The age-play stuff, where she’s dressed as a baby in a diaper, for example. Credit card processors have very strict rules that you have to abide by, and the rules are getting stricter all the time."

Former "Boy Meets World" star turned porn actress Maitland Ward said Sweeney was only perpetuating "stereotypes that sex workers have no moral compass and that they will do anything for money."

Monica Schipper/Getty Images

Lewd awakening

Calling it "beyond troubling," Ward argued that any idea that sex work is connected to abuse is false.

"There's always this untrue stigma that somehow sex work is synonymous with sex trafficking and abuse. And they just said, let's make a joke of it. That is so funny. I'm not laughing."

Ward reportedly makes at least $100,000 per month from OnlyFans and also reportedly does traditional pornography.

Same goes for Alix Lynx, another nude actress and OnlyFans creator, according to Variety. She stated that there were actually some good ideas hidden in the "Euphoria" script.

"When [Sweeney] goes to the influencer's house to get video, coming from a marketing background myself, I thought, 'OK, that's f**kin' smart. That's a great formula.'"

However, Lynx said that it's only a myth that being attractive and performing lewd acts are a ticket to the top.

- YouTube

Naked ambition

"It’s portrayed that if you just dress up and do crazy s**t, you'll instantly make money," she explained. Another idea that "you just have to be hot and have big boobs and you'll instantly cash out," is also allegedly a myth, she claimed.

"It doesn't work like that. You have to really grow and nurture a fan base."

All the women Variety spoke with reportedly argued that it is too difficult to start an OnlyFans page and garner a grassroots following; women must first have a large online fan base. The task of building a subscriber base to pornographic content was described as a near-impossible feat.

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Mandami's 'food desert' lie: How millions of your tax dollars are spent fixing fake urban famine

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) has a new solution for urban poverty: government-run grocery stores.

The plan, announced as part of his first 100 days in office, would spend roughly $70 million creating city-owned supermarkets across New York, beginning with a flagship location in East Harlem. The stores would operate through private contractors under city oversight, with subsidized staples — cheaper eggs, cheaper bread, cheaper basics — guaranteed by government rather than market competition.

Fast food, the supposed cheap fallback of the food-deprived, has out-inflated inflation itself and is now closer to a sit-down dinner than a quick bite.

Mamdani justifies this spending by invoking a persistent, infrequently examined assumption of liberal policymakers: that cities in America are riddled with blighted urban zones where fresh produce and healthy groceries remain frustratingly out of reach.

These are called "food deserts."

Hunger games

Never mind that a quick look around the proposed East Harlem site reveals multiple grocery stores within walking distance, including produce markets sitting blocks from where the city plans to spend tens of millions constructing another one.

Yet the language persists. Reading recent coverage of America's "food deserts," you would be forgiven for thinking we have all woken up in the back half of "The Road," scavenging tin cans in ash-choked ruins while a feral child clutches our pant leg.

ABC News informs us that 17 million Americans live in a federally designated food desert, a term so bleak it sounds like it should come with a Pulitzer and a black-and-white photo of a barefoot kid staring into the middle distance.

Tara Colton of New Jersey's Economic Development Authority calls food deserts a product of structural racism, neighborhood redlining, and disinvestment — three abstractions stacked into one sentence, which is the literary equivalent of a turducken. Malcolm Gladwell is taking notes.

To be clear, there are real people in these stories who deserve real help. Take Knoxville, for instance, where an elderly disabled woman with a walker needs three to four hours to buy groceries. There are many like her. No car, no one to call when the fridge needs to be restocked.

But is that really a food problem, or is it a loneliness problem in disguise? A what-happened-to-neighbors problem? Whatever it is, it isn't fixed by the nearest Kroger relocating two blocks closer, but by a person with transportation and 20 free minutes.

Couch-bound

Which brings us to the definition itself, because the definition is where this whole conversation instantly falls apart. Per the USDA, a food desert is a low-income area where residents live more than one mile from a supermarket in a city or 20 in the country.

The rural number is its own conversation. The urban one deserves a closer look. One mile. That is the apocalyptic threshold, the line past which we reach for the language of famine and structural decay. One mile is the distance between your couch and the place you were going to walk to anyway before you decided to "treat yourself" to DoorDash. There are CrossFit gyms charging $200 a month to make people walk farther than that carrying objects on purpose.

Then there is the part the hellscape correspondents won't touch. A Big Mac combo now averages $9 nationally. A large pizza that feeds two or three people runs $15 to $20 before tip and delivery fee and the mysterious "service charge" that has crept onto every receipt in America. A medium fries alone is $4 now, a price point that used to get you the whole meal. Fast food, the supposed cheap fallback of the food-deprived, has out-inflated inflation itself and is now closer to a sit-down dinner than a quick bite.

Shop right

Meanwhile, in the so-called desert, a bag of dried lentils is $1.79. A pound of rice is a dollar. A dozen eggs, even after the great egg panic, is around $4 and gives you a week of breakfasts. Frozen vegetables, the great equalizer of American nutrition, run $2 or $3 at any Dollar Tree, which, surprise, exists in basically every "food desert" I've ever set foot in. A whole rotisserie chicken at Walmart is $5.97 and feeds a family for two days. A can of black beans is a dollar. An onion is 50 cents.

So when an able-bodied 28-year-old with a working car and a smartphone tells me he can't eat healthy because he lives in a food desert, what he means is he doesn't want to. He wants the Crunchwrap Supreme combo for $9. He wants the door to open and the food to be hot and the wrapper to crinkle.

That's a preference, not a famine. Calling it a crisis is an insult to people who actually are in one — like, say, the woman with the walker — because it lumps her struggle in with some slob's Tuesday-night laziness and gives both the same vocabulary.

Fertile ground

Either way, the term "food desert" seems deliberately designed to invoke panic. Maybe so taxpayers will look the other way when, say, New Jersey passes a $240 million Food Desert Relief Act and starts paying restaurants to deliver hot meals.

But there are no ash plumes. No one is barbecuing cats or plucking ducks from ponds. Well, very few are.

Battlefield Farm, a Knoxville nonprofit, understands this. It doesn't tweet about food apartheid. Instead, it grows actual collards and drives them to actual people in an actual van. The company is planning a low-cost grocery store.

That's the thing about real problems. They tend to have real, boring solutions, and they tend to require us to acknowledge reality before we can do anything about them.

The 53 million Americans the USDA classifies as having "limited" food access are not all starving in a wasteland. Most of them are within walking, biking, or one-bus distance of a place that sells apples and carrots. Most of them know this, and a lot of them are cooking meals right now. The ones who genuinely cannot get there need rides, ramps, and delivery — not a fatalistic op-ed painting America like a Ken Burns documentary nobody asked for.

I want to like our Kindle, but I'm hopelessly addicted to real books

The Amazon Kindle was released on November 19, 2007. A little tablet full of countless books you can take with you anywhere — it was a cool idea then, and I suppose it’s still a cool idea now. Over the years there have been a bunch of new versions. Amazon updated theirs, and other companies have released their own versions of what is now known as an e-reader.

My wife’s got one. She just bought it a few months ago. She wanted it because she was sick of looking at her phone when nursing our daughter in the middle of the night. It’s worked well. She hasn’t been scrolling; she’s been reading instead.

Sometimes I like thinking about my kids coming across my books when I’m old or dead and gone and finding these little things I’ve written.

I’ve held hers and played with it a little. It’s very cool, and I want to like it. I want to load one up with lots of books, read it on the airplane or right before I drift off after midnight with all the lights off in the bedroom, and join the future with all other fellow e-readers (the people, not the object).

But I just can’t; I like books too much.

Judging covers

I like the way the real pages feel on the pads of my fingers. I like how it sounds when I flip the page. I like to fold back the edge and mark my spot. There’s something about the smell too, especially the old books. You know that smell, don’t you? If you put your nose near the inside of the binding and sniff, you will get it. It’s the faint scent of a college library and an old house.

I love the covers of paperbacks and how they change over the years as new editions are released. I most particularly love the old(ish) ones most. I can always pinpoint the decade based on the fonts and colors. It’s funny how deeply infused a book is with the aesthetic sensibilities of the decade in which it was printed and just how easy it is to discern when one was released.

The 60s were simple and modern. The 70s had loopy fonts with lots of brown, greens, and yellows. The 80s were colorful with floral patterns, some neon, and sharp lines. The 90s were classy and simple with understated serifs and an air of sophistication.

Paperback delighter

One of my favorite things to do is lie in the hammock on a Saturday afternoon reading. A small, flimsy paperback in my right hand, two fingers on the inside holding the pages open, and three others on the outside for support. The summer breeze, the leaves on the birch above, the ropes of the hammock on my back, and a little paperback.

I love to write in my books too, mostly the more intellectual ones. I underline sentences, bracket paragraphs of importance, and write things in the margins. They are things I want to remember. Even if I don’t know when I will come back to the book again, I want to make a note in the event I do. Sometimes I like thinking about my kids coming across my books when I’m old or dead and gone and finding these little things I’ve written. Maybe they will want to read what I wrote; maybe they won’t.

I’ve heard that we don’t remember words we read on the screen as much as words we read on a page. I don’t know the science behind it, but I feel like it’s true — or at least it is for me and my wife. I asked her what she thought as a newly minted e-reader enjoyer, and she said she agrees. She said it feels like she remembers ever so slightly less. Like it doesn’t stick quite as much or like it just doesn’t go deep enough into her brain.

Slightly foxed

The books on the e-reader remain perfect forever. They look the exact same on every single device. In the event the device falls in the lake, you might be out $200, but soon enough you’ll have a new one, and all 500 books will appear on that little screen just as they were before.

Real books don’t stay perfect for very long. The pages get bent, the binding gets broken, the margins are full of ink, and the edges of the pages yellow as the years pass. The more we read a book, the more we know a book, and the more beaten a book becomes. Old floppy paperbacks that look like they’ve been through a war are coveted in the same way leather bags with beautiful patina are.

I want to like the e-reader. I want to join the future. I would feel so futuristic and so efficient with one in my hand. But I can’t, and I won’t. I like the physicality of books too much. I like the wear they have; I like the time they show; I like the fact they tell a story of who and where we were when we read them.

'Traitor': Former FBI spy-catcher spills interrogation secrets in gripping new book

Former FBI counterintelligence agent Wayne Barnes says one of the best ways to catch a spy is to ask a simple question — like when his birthday is.

Barnes, whose new book "A Traitor in the FBI: The Hunt for a Russian Mole" came out last month, spent nearly 30 years in counterintelligence, where he debriefed a record number of Soviet and Soviet-Bloc assets. In an interview with Align, Barnes described the psychological tactics, subtle tells, and ethical contrasts that defined Cold War espionage.

'You have to have the straightest poker face you could ever imagine.'

Born yesterday

While Barnes acknowledges that his career could occasionally involve the kind of dramatic deception shown in the movies, he often employed more mundane subterfuge.

Take the man from Afghanistan who applied to join the FBI in the 1980s. While his background could have made him a useful asset, Barnes, then working as a security officer in Washington, D.C., wanted to vet him first.

The interview happened in late December. Noticing that the man had listed his birthday as January 1 on his application, Barnes decided to see how he handled a simple question.

"I asked, 'Do you have any plans for your birthday?' and he said, 'Why'd you ask that?' And I said, 'Well, it's in a couple weeks.'"

Without thinking, the man corrected Barnes: "Oh no, my birthday is July 6."

"For most people, the day they were born is a day that they won't forget," Barnes remembers telling the applicant.

From there, the man's story began to fall apart. Eventually the agency concluded that the applicant was working for the Afghan mujahideen.

RELATED: The doomer delusion

Nathan Posner/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Poker face

Barnes describes his interview technique as a "verbal polygraph"; it's not an exact science, but if you know what you're doing, it will "ferret out" a lot of people.

That required intense discipline from FBI agents themselves. When debriefing Soviet intelligence officers or defectors, Barnes says agents had to carefully conceal what they already knew.

"You have to have the straightest poker face you could ever imagine," he says.

Agents would sometimes spread out photographs of Soviet embassy personnel they suspected of spying and casually ask whether the subject had seen them at a restaurant, training class, or bar. Every response mattered — not just what was said, but how long someone spoke, how nervous they appeared, or whether they seemed too rehearsed.

"[Did] he talk about him too long? Did he talk about him too short?" Barnes explains. "Debriefing intelligence officers is very tricky ... and ... very narrow."

Barnes also notes that it was standard for agents from the Soviet Bloc to claim they had already compromised Western forces.

"Whether the Romanians or Czechs, or Poles or Hungarians, they always say, 'Oh, we have you penetrated.'"

On the hook

Barnes also describes how Soviet operatives recruited Americans willing to sell secrets.

"Follow a guy from the Soviet embassy in his car. He leaves at 5:30, and [you] see he lives in a garden apartment someplace in Alexandria, Virginia," Barnes details.

"He goes inside, and you have a note in your hand, and you put it under his windshield wiper, and the next morning he gets it. It says, 'I have secrets to sell ...'"

"The Russians almost always followed through," Barnes says.

At first, the payments were small — just enough to create leverage.

"They'd say, 'This was good stuff, but it's only worth $5,000. If you want another $5,000, you need to bring more.'"

Once an American accepted money, Barnes says, fear and blackmail often kept them cooperating. In reality, however, the chances of the Russians exposing a spy were slim.

"The Russians won't turn him in," Barnes explains, as their priority is to extract as much information as possible.

Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Moral difference

The Soviets were also not above pressuring their own agents by threatening family members, Barnes says.

"If your brother's in college, his life is over," Barnes says. "That's the leverage [they] had on the KGB people."

For Barnes, that dynamic highlighted what he viewed as a major moral difference between the United States and the Soviet Union. While Soviet intelligence services allegedly threatened defectors' families, American handlers often tried to help them — including offering medical assistance or protection.

Many Soviet defectors, Barnes adds, changed sides not because of ideology, but because they realized they had been lied to about life in America.

"They'd come here and see stores full of food — entire stores just selling cheese," Barnes says. "It was a, 'They've been lying to me,' sort of realization."

That contrast, he says, often planted the seed for future cooperation with American intelligence.

"We live in a land of freedom," Barnes concludes. "Compared to the Soviet Union, there's nothing like America. ... Their system was set up in such a way that was so different than ours. ... So it was really a terrible place."