Oh, Massachusetts, No

2:50 AM on a Sunday is also a particularly scammy time for this to be sent.

Tuesday, August 18th, 2026

This past Sunday, I received an email from “Do Not Reply” with the subject line “Vehicle Registration Renewal Reminder”. Here’s what it looked like:

This is a very, very bad email, beginning with the awful A.I. slop image at the top. Here’s a larger look at just that:

An A.I. generated image of a colonial man on horseback, on cobblestones, carrying a banner reading “Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Registration is Expiring!

Lest you have any doubts whatsoever as to the origin of this image, note that they didn’t even crop out the Gemini logo from the bottom right. While I’ve compressed the image above, the original of this needless image was also a needlessly large 760 KB png file. Awful.

When I saw this email, I was quite certain it was a phishing scam. I assumed that the link inside would take me to a scammy replica of a government website, one that would steal credit card numbers. But no! As far as I can determine, this is a legitimate email from the RMV.1 The lone link in it does indeed go to http://mass.gov/rmv, which forwards on to the official RMV site.2 And indeed, my car registration is expiring in a couple of months.

In the past, I have always received an official form in the mail which can be used to renew my registration. For many years, that letter has simply prompted me to go online to renew. Given that, a switch to email notifications make sense. They sure ought to look a lot more official than this, however.

Footnotes:

  1. What’s most often known as the “Department of Motor Vehicles” (DMV) is indeed called the “Registry of Motor Vehicles” (RMV) in Massachusetts. Why? Just to be difficult, I assume. But we’re far from the only ones. ↩︎

  2. I’m not sure why the original link is http:// rather than https://, but the forward does lead to a secure page. ↩︎

Subsidized Internet for Vacant Homes ∞

In this case, the internet is a series of tubes to nowhere.

Monday, August 17th, 2026

Adak Island is 1,200 miles from Anchorage, and all but deserted since its naval base closed in 1997. Nevertheless, it receives government-subsidized internet service at a cost of over $340,000 a year. And it seems not a single person is using it.

We know this because we flew to the island in June and visited every building the company itself told regulators it serves. We knocked on every door. Talked to every person we could find.

Not a single one told us they subscribe to the island’s subsidized internet service.

What an incredible waste of money.

Betting on the Wedding ∞

The classiest wedding bet is on how long the marriage will last.

Friday, August 14th, 2026

I’ve been quite horrified by the rapid spread of gambling in American society in recent years, but even still, betting on weddings seems like a tacky new low to me.

And the Daytime Emmy Goes to…John Oliver’s Wig! ∞

“This…is Devlin St. John.”

Thursday, August 13th, 2026

Recently, comedian and TV host John Oliver has made guest appearances on two different soap operas. For his “Days of Our Lives” stint, he even brought his own wig, and it is magnificent:

A dramatic close-up of John Oliver playing “Devlin St. John”.
[Photo credit: Days of Our Lives]

I like to think that if I were a celebrity, this is the kind of nonsense I’d get up to.

Three Stellar Race Photos

Ah well. The price was right.

Wednesday, August 12th, 2026

After running a 5K last week, I was pleased to receive an email letting me know I had complimentary race photos available. It read as follows:

You crushed it at the Shoreline 5K! Your complimentary photos from MarathonFoto are ready to download and share.

It was 85° and sunny at race time, and while I was happy to land in the top 100 out of 1500+ finishers, I most certainly did not “crush it”. I was more than two minutes slower than my personal best, and in such a short race, that’s a lot. Nevertheless, I’ll happily snag a few photos from the race. Free is a much better deal than usual.

When I clicked the email link to grab my pictures, I was taken to a gallery of 11 images. Did MarathonFoto provide a way to download all my photos at once? Don’t be ridiculous. Technology hasn’t advanced to the level where that sort of convenience would be possible. Maybe someday.

For now, I was able to click the “Free Download” button on each photo, which turned into “Download Now” on hover. Rather than actually downloading the image, that took me to a second page featuring just the photo in question. There, I could click a “Download” button which finally did download the photo. After that, I could click “Back to Gallery” to repeat the tedious process ten more times.

Anyhow, let’s have a look at what the course photographers captured. Here’s a pretty nice shot of, apparently, stranger-to-the-site Ramgopal V. :

A picture of a stranger, and also, I’m in there.

It is not so hot of a photo of me, though. I’m the out of focus guy in the blue hat, someone you’d retouch right out of there if you were Ramgopal:

A picture of a stranger, now retouched so he runs alone

There we go. Now it’s a great shot of this man who is unknown to me. I hope he finds it and enjoys it.

What else have we got? Well, here I am, once again on the left and out of focus:

A photo of several runners, including your humble author

Folks, level with me. Am I just naturally blurry, like Bigfoot?

The lousy photos above do demonstrate something notable. While race photos formerly keyed solely off OCR with a runner’s bib number, that’s changed. I recall being confused the first time one of these systems presented me with a photo where my face was visible, but my bib was not. I quickly surmised, however, that they were employing facial recognition. The future can be a real creep show.

Facial recognition wasn’t needed for our final photo though, nor even any use. Please enjoy this winner:

A picture of your humble author, whose face is entirely covered by a blurry elbow in the foreground

I think I’ll print that out and get it framed.

Sunfish Smashing ∞

Chill out, orcas.

Tuesday, August 11th, 2026

Humanity may deserve having killer whales sink our boats, but I don’t think sunfish deserve to be rammed so hard they explode.

Grenoble’s War on Visual Pollution ∞

Getting rid of both ads and the structures they lived on is a real win.

Monday, August 10th, 2026

Here’s a nice contrast against BMW’s recent misconduct. Since the mid-2010s, the French city of Grenoble has been working to reduce visual pollution by removing billboards and other needless advertising structures. It’s certainly nice to think of being less inundated with advertising.

The Nicest Man in New York ∞

He has no malice in his heart.

Friday, August 7th, 2026

I fear it’s been a bit of a negative week here on OFT, so let’s end it on a higher note. There’s good news, as all “Chuck Norris Facts” are now about this Chuck Norris. He is very clearly the superior specimen.

The Ultimate Advertising Machine ∞

🎶 Look out! Here comes the Spider-Man ad! 🎶

Thursday, August 6th, 2026

Surprise! You don’t really own your BMW.

Don’t Build a Snow Room ∞

Christ, what assholes.

Wednesday, August 5th, 2026

Thanks to the New York Times for alerting me to something more odious than a yacht: a yacht with a snow room.

As the changing climate wreaks havoc on the four seasons, some people with means are fashioning their own. They are equipping their homes (and even their yachts) with indoor winter wonderlands, aided by companies like the Italian snowmaker TechnoAlpin, which blasts snow onto ski mountains, and an American company, the Spa Butler.

I’m sure these snow rooms are lovely places to relax and wait for the lower classes to come with the pitchforks.

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