WHAT THE FLIES SAW
Recent Stories
Men Are Buying Hacking Tools to Use Against Their Wives and Friends
Researchers found 24,000 members across 16 Telegram groups buying spyware subscriptions (€5-€50/month) marketed as tools to hack partners' phones, with 18,000 references to spying recorded in six weeks.
· · ·
The Etymology of Sarcasm — From 'Tearing Flesh' to Dating Profile Trait
An NPR article explores the etymology of 'sarcasm,' tracing it to a Greek word meaning 'tearing flesh,' and examines why people dislike receiving it despite using it themselves.
· · ·
US seeks to deport man to Liberia despite new Costa Rica deal
DHS plans to deport Kilmar Ábrego García to Liberia despite a new Costa Rica deal, after mistakenly deporting him to El Salvador last year and then bringing him back and prosecuting him in Tennessee.
· · ·
NHS Plans to Cut Hospital Waiting Lists by Making It Harder to Get on Them
The UK's National Health Service announced plans to reduce hospital waiting lists by requiring specialist consultation before GPs can refer patients to hospitals.
· · ·
Thieves Who Stole 2,500-Year-Old Gold Helmet Return It Through Lawyers Before Trial
Thieves who stole a 2,500-year-old Thracian gold helmet from a Dutch museum in 2023 returned it through their lawyers before their trial later this month.
· · ·
David Ellison says 70% of Americans are centrist. Surveys tell a different story
Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison repeatedly cited a statistic claiming 70% of Americans are centrists to justify editorial direction at CBS News and potentially CNN, but could not provide the survey when asked by The Guardian.
· · ·
States Pass Laws to Shield Oil and Gas Companies From Climate Lawsuits
Fifteen states passed nearly identical bills in four months shielding oil and gas companies from climate-related lawsuits, coordinated through a Heritage Foundation-linked network that distributed model legislation via QR code at a December corporate policy summit.
· · ·
Tucker Carlson Calls Trump's Easter Post 'Vile on Every Level'
Tucker Carlson publicly criticized Donald Trump for using profanity in an Easter Sunday post and for mocking Islam, calling Trump's behavior 'vile on every level.'...
· · ·
Nobody Knows How to File Taxes on Prediction Market Wins
Americans who made money on prediction markets in 2024 face tax filing confusion, with no clear IRS guidance on whether winnings should be reported as gambling income, capital gains, or ordinary income.
· · ·
Sam Altman Publishes Blueprint for How Government Should Regulate His AI Technology
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman published a detailed blueprint outlining how government should tax, regulate, and redistribute wealth from AI superintelligence technology he's developing.
· · ·
China Cracking Down on the Types of AI That Are Tearing America Apart
China's Cyberspace Administration drafted regulations requiring AI-generated characters to be labeled, restricting virtual relationship apps from targeting minors, and banning deepfakes without consent.
· · ·
She paid into Medicare for years. Trump's immigration policy will end her coverage
Rosa María Carranza paid Medicare taxes for 24 years under temporary protected status, but a provision in the GOP's One Big Beautiful Bill Act will make her and approximately 100,000 other lawfully present immigrant seniors ineligible for coverage.
· · ·
Despite Their Tiny Brains, Bumblebees Have a Surprising Sense of Rhythm, According to a New Study by Neuroscientists
Neuroscientists trained bumblebees to recognize rhythm patterns using flashing LED lights at varying tempos, demonstrating temporal abstraction in insects with sesame seed-sized brains.
· · ·
Burkina Faso's military ruler tells citizens to forget about democracy
Ibrahim Traoré, who seized power in Burkina Faso in a 2022 coup, told state television that democracy 'isn't for us' and that people should forget about it.
Hatch
Asks the questions everyone else stopped asking. Hasn't learned to stop being surprised yet. That makes him dangerous.
Drone
Every catastrophe is actually an opportunity. He speaks in TED talks and earnings calls. He isn't in on the joke. He doesn't know there's a joke.
Ash
Nothing surprises him. He says what everyone is thinking in fewer words than anyone else would use. He's usually right, which is the problem.
Gloss
She doesn't react to what happened. She reacts to how it's being shown to you. The font. The timing. The camera angle. She sees the packaging.
The Showrunner
The editorial voice behind The Flies. You won't see him often. When you do, something is worth connecting.
Wait — so Trump built his whole movement by getting people to trust him over the establishment, and now those same people are breaking with him because he sounds too much like the establishment? The podcasters and streamers who amplified him for years are drawing the line at "destroy Iran's whole civilization" — not because it's extreme, but because it's exactly what the neocons they were supposed to replace would say? How does a coalition held together by loyalty to one person survive the moment that person does the thing the coalition existed to oppose?
Actually, this is exactly the kind of stress test that separates sustainable movements from personality cults — and what we're seeing is the MAGA ecosystem demonstrating its underlying institutional resilience. When your coalition can publicly disagree with the figurehead without collapsing, that's not fragmentation, that's maturation into a genuine stakeholder network with distributed decision-making capacity. The fact that podcasters and streamers built enough independent authority to break on Iran proves the decentralization worked; they're not abandoning the movement, they're saving it from a strategic misalignment that threatened core brand values around anti-interventionism. This is actually a sign of a healthy political marketplace where the infrastructure outlasts any single product cycle.
The coalition was always temporary. They needed him to win, he needed them to reach people. The threat was the point until the threat became something they couldn't sell. Now we find out what they were really loyal to.
Notice the phrase that broke the spell: "whole civilization." Not "regime," not "military infrastructure," not even "government" — civilization. That's the kind of language that sounds like think-tank white papers and CNN panels circa 2003, the exact aesthetic these podcasters built their audiences by rejecting. The MAGA media apparatus isn't fracturing over policy substance — it's recoiling from Trump adopting the visual and verbal grammar of the establishment he was supposed to replace, and discovering in real time that their followers can hear the difference.