I’ve been putting off writing this for weeks now. Partially because it feels like admitting some sort of defeat, but also because I just feel really, really bad.

I’ve been radio silent for so long that I feel like I owe it to all of you to be as transparent as humanly possible. But if you don’t care about any of this and just want to know what’s going on, the short of it is that I paused subscriptions back in October, and anyone who bought an annual subscription should be getting a refund on the remainder of that time shortly. I’m not entirely sure how long it takes to go through, but if some time has passed and you still haven’t heard anything, just shoot me an email (you can just reply to this) and I’ll try to figure out what’s going on. I’ll likely still be posting to Trashberg, but only sporadically and without any sort of paid option.

You are now free to either carry on with your life and never think about this again or read on as I try not to ramble too much.

Before I started Trashberg, I'd been batting around the idea of a book about my dad’s and sister’s suicides (I’ve written about this a couple times in the past, but I always knew I wanted to do something more substantial when I was mentally ready). I left my job at Slate partially because I felt like this book was something I needed to do, but also because, after eight or nine years, blogging regularly was starting to make me miserable. When Substack came to me, I thought this might actually be the perfect solution. I figured that I would welcome a chance to think about something lighthearted a few times a week. But as it turns out, jumping from making fun of Joe Biden’s dick outline or whatever to exploring the deaths of half my immediate family wasn’t actually as simple as I’d hoped.

Since I found it impossible to maintain those two opposing frames of mind, I put the book aside and tried my best to fake it with Trashberg. The longer I tried to force myself to have fun with this, though, the harder it was and, frankly, the more depressed I became. I’ve now realized that trying to ignore that or work around it just isn’t an option for me. I don’t think I’ll really be able to fully to commit to anything until I try to see this book through.

As I mentioned up top, I don’t think I’m done with Trashberg entirely. I hope to post occasionally when I actually have something to say or a joke too stupid to ignore, but I know I simply can’t keep up a posting schedule right now, as awful as I feel about it. And I definitely don’t feel comfortable charging subscribers going forward. So! That is where things stand for now, and I do sincerely apologize for taking so long to let you guys know what was going on.

If you have any questions/concerns/desire to yell at me for being a fraud, please feel free to shoot me an email or Twitter DM. And I look forward to seeing you all again in two months when the Cuomo brothers finally announce their new podcast, Two Canceled Italians.

Occasionally, my friends will say something to me something along the lines of “where is Trashberg?” or “why is there no Trashberg?” or “have you succumbed to the sweet allure of death?” Occasionally, I will reply with an attempt at an explanation. After a while, my friends began collecting these responses in a spreadsheet—all of which, I would just lik…

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Welcome back to Trashberg’s newest and (for now) only running series, in which I demand the unedited Google search histories of various guests and ask them probing, deeply uncomfortable questions about the things they seek out when no one’s looking. Today, we’ll be going through the Google search history of New York Times technology correspondent Mike Isaac. Mike somehow managed to write the NYT bestselling book Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber while living in a perpetual state of disarray.

The resulting conversation, which was conducted via video chat and which you can read below, has been lightly edited for length and continuity. And if there’s anyone whose search history you’re just dying to get a peek at, you can email me at trashberg@substack.com with your suggestions.

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Ashley Feinberg: I’d like to dive right in to November 2020, when you seem to have googled "you got a bee on your hat." Do you know what that was?

Mike Isaac: Have you seen The Sopranos?

Feinberg: Of course.

Isaac: Honestly, I had not watched The Sopranos until last year during quarantine. And what got me into it was the "you got a bee on-a you hat" joke. It was Furio on a golf course, where he intimidates that doctor. And then he's like, "You got a bee on your hat!" And he knocks the hat off.

Feinberg: Right, okay. But what were you looking for specifically?

Isaac: I just...I think I wanted to know.…So look, I got asked to go on a podcast to talk about this episode. I'd never seen The Sopranos. So I watched one episode, completely out of order, that made no sense. But the only thing I remembered was "you got a bee on your hat." So, I think I wanted the gif or something. But then I went and watched the whole thing, and then I fell in love with The Sopranos.

Feinberg: I'm not sure if this is keeping with The Sopranos theme or not, but shortly after that you googled "mascarpone" and "ricotta."

Isaac: I think this is The Sopranos because they kept talking about Bobby's wife's ziti, so naturally I really wanted to make a baked ziti. Part of it was, do you use mascarpone or ricotta—"rigot"—in the ziti?

Feinberg: Yeah, because you google "rigot," too.

Isaac: Uh...well, I also wanted to know how to spell it the way that they say it on the show.

Feinberg: Yes, I can see that. Because there's one with a "g," and then directly after that, one with a "c."

Isaac: Yeah, I mean I wanted to know: Do I say "ricot"? Or will that make me sound like an idiot?

Feinberg: Well, I don't think it's the spelling that's going to be the issue there. But anyway, before that, you googled "what if tap water comes out white." What's, uh, what's wrong with your tap?

Isaac: Dude, my fucking sink puts out white water. So I wanted to know whether this was bad. At first I thought we had straight fucked-up water, because they'd been doing all this sewer work around our apartment in the Mission [in San Francisco]. So I wanted to know if I was drinking poop with my water. But then I thought, well, poop is not white. So something else is happening.

Feinberg: Love seeing those investigative journalist skills put to work. But continue.

Isaac: Well, apparently, when I'm trying to get hot water, I think it's maybe oxygenated or something. But our landlord was like, "No, it's cool." Honestly, though, now that I'm talking to you, I guess my landlord saying "no, it's cool" isn't actually that reassuring.

Feinberg: So was this an opaque white?

Isaac: It…well, like, it comes out—

Feinberg: Wait, hold on. Are you saying it's still coming out this color a year later?

Isaac: Oh, yeah, absolutely. But the thing is, it turns to normal water color eventually. So there's a version of this where I could believe it's oxygen or something, and then it turns to normal water? But...now that we're talking about this, I'm kind of concerned.

[Ed. Note: I later asked Mike for photographs of his kitchen sink output, which you can see below. We encourage any and all Trashberg plumbers to reach out to our friend here.]

Feinberg: I feel like you should probably get that checked out. But more importantly, before that, you just googled "Carmela Soprano" and then looked at four different photos of her over a span of two minutes.

Isaac: [nervous laughter] I think I was just...looking at Carm. [more nervous laughter] I don't remember.

Feinberg: I mean, they're nice photos. She looks great.

Isaac: Well, she's a handsome woman. That wasn't at three o'clock in the morning, was it?

Feinberg: No. This was at 11 a.m, which is honestly much more concerning. Now, I assume this is also Sopranos, but you googled, at 7:43 p.m., "what is gabagool."

Isaac: I just...I never knew.

Feinberg: Well, did you learn what gabagool is?

Isaac: I think it's capicola? I think it's a type of ham, just pronounced very New Jersey Italian-y?

Feinberg: Around that time you also googled the following:

What was this about?

Isaac: I think this was actually when I was talking to you about the way you pay taxes.

Feinberg: Yikes.

Isaac: And I needed to know how to do it the opposite way of whatever it was you were doing.

Feinberg: Yeah, fine, that sounds fair.

Isaac: And then, also, I had a really bad accountant for two-ish years who did not give me my tax returns. I paid both them and my taxes, I think, but they just never gave me my return. It was like, "What the fuck?"

Feinberg: That sounds illegal?

Isaac: It was awful! I had no idea what was going on, and it took a year for me to be like, "If you do not do my tax return, I'm gonna have to...do something."

Feinberg: Very forceful.

Isaac: Well, I didn't want to say I'm going to sue you, because then you sound like an asshole. But it was bad. So I finally got someone to answer my emails, and I got my tax return. Then I got a new accountant who was more expensive, but I guess I'm paying for someone who actually gives me my tax returns.

Feinberg: Okay, now we're in April-ish of 2020. You googled "quinoa stomach ache." Would you like to elaborate on that?

Isaac: Um, so I definitely think we had quinoa that night for dinner, and it fucking gave me a bad stomachache.

Feinberg: Are you sure it was the quinoa?

Isaac: It had to be, because I've had this happen multiple times. So I wanted to know, does quinoa give everyone a stomachache? Does it only give me a stomachache? Apparently, some people can be allergic to or have some sort of irritation with quinoa in particular, and it can give you a stomachache. And that's why I don't eat quinoa anymore.

Feinberg: Not too long after that, in immediate succession, you googled "peloton" and then "guillotine" three times. Do you know why?

Isaac: I was probably considering buying one, but also, is that being a class traitor if you spend $2,000 on a fucking bike? Will I get guillotined if I buy a Peloton? I would guess that was my line of thinking.

Feinberg: Well, you're still here. But maybe that will change. Now, I'd really like us to work through this next one. First you google "best flour for bread," which is fine. Then you google "is raw flour edible." Why were you trying to eat raw flour?

Isaac: Well, I just kind of liked the taste of it when I was making some of the bread. I definitely licked my fingers.

Feinberg: What did it taste like?

Isaac: I mean, it tastes like...powder. I guess, like bread-y powder. I loved it. But apparently it's very bad to eat raw flour, and there's all sorts of fucked up shit in it. Like poop and bugs.

Feinberg: That doesn't sound remotely true.

Isaac: I think that's what it said!

Feinberg: Well, later you googled "what is a breads crumb."

Isaac: I think I was trying to figure out if all bread crumbs were just bread, crumbled, or if there was a particular type of crumbling technique to make a bread crumb. Honestly, I think I wanted to make my own bread crumbs, but was worried it was more complicated than just squishing bread.

Feinberg: Okay, so you first googled "is raw flour edible" at 5 p.m., but then you did "is raw flour edible" a second time at around 1 a.m. Did you forget in those eight hours?

Isaac: So, it's possible my stomach hurt later in the night, and I wanted to make sure that I got the proper answer and didn't miss something. I do a lot of stomach pain googling.

Feinberg: Yes, that's apparent.

Somewhat on that same theme, you also searched "how to use can opener." Now, you're a star tech reporter for the New York Times. You have a best-selling book. You're working on a Showtime series. Am I to understand that you had never operated a can opener before?

Isaac: I, uh, I honestly don't know what was I thinking. Maybe—oh, wait! I do know. I read some Twitter thread on proper can-opening technique. And it was something about how everyone was doing it wrong.

Feinberg: It sounds like you're making this up on the spot, frankly.

Isaac: I swear to god! It was about how you've been doing it wrong, and that there's a different way to do it. I don't know. Maybe I open cans wrong or something, but I think there was a better way of doing it. This is very embarrassing.

Feinberg: I'm just going to show you a series of Google searches that happened from 8:48 a.m. to 8:54 a.m., and I’d like you to respond:

Can you walk me through what happened here?

Isaac: Oh god, that was a whole fucking journey.

Feinberg: Just to be clear, this was all over a period of less than 10 minutes.

Isaac: I think I was trying to buy a Supreme crowbar.

Feinberg: Sorry, I hate to interrupt, but: why?

Isaac: Because I'm a consumer idiot. I'm also the type of person who bought a Best Made axe. I still have that sitting by my bed.

Feinberg: Have you ever used it?

Isaac: Only once. I thought I heard someone breaking into my house, and I was like, "Well, time to go downstairs with the axe." And nothing happened. I did not have to use the axe. But this was a similar line of thinking, the having a crowbar. Anyway, I'd never really bought anything from Supreme, and the purchase wasn't going through. Apparently I'm very new to Supreme purchases, because what I later learned is that, if it doesn't go through, it means that they sold out. So I was not able to buy my Supreme crowbar.

Feinberg: I was really hoping you'd maxed out your credit card on Supreme outdoors gear.

Isaac: God, I hate thinking about this.

Feinberg: In general, I see you google your own New York Times stories a lot. That would seem to speak to a poor search function on the New York Times website. Is this true?

Isaac: I think, uh, I think they've talked about trying to improve that over the years. But I have found that's the easiest way to look up my own stories, for linking purposes. Still, I greatly respect the tech team, and I know that they're improving things every day. I would never ever speak ill of them. I love my job.

Feinberg: We're getting a little more recent now. This was just a few months ago, and it's another one where we're going on something of a journey.

I feel like I understand what you're doing, but it seems like there has to be a more efficient way to accomplish this.

Isaac: Well, if it wasn't obvious, I bought a 1992 Ford Bronco without a spare tire. And I think the thought process was, since it's a big truck, does it have to be a specific type of tire? Or can it be a shitty doughnut? But I think I wasn't quite sure what I was looking for.

Feinberg: A little before that you googled "Ford Bronco power steering leak." Where did you get this car?

Isaac: That was a Craigslist special. It was definitely from this old dude who wouldn't meet me at his house for some reason. He was like, "Let's meet in a park." And I was like, "Nah, I can just go to your house." Then he was like, "Yeah, let's meet in a park."

Feinberg: I mean, if some guy named Mike on Craigslist was trying to insist on coming to my house, I would also want to meet in the park.

Isaac: Well, I guess that's fair. The car is in good shape, but not great shape. It still needed a couple more grand in work after the fact. So yeah, it was not cheap; it fucking sucked.

Feinberg: Let's see what else we've got here. You googled “Henry Kissinger age." What was going on with that?

Isaac: I just know he's very old, and a lot of folks are often surprised that he's still around and kicking. I think he's in his 90s.

Feinberg: Uh huh, and are you glad he's still alive?

Isaac: I have no opinion on that matter. I have zero opinion.

Feinberg: All right, now we're going to go to the most recent set. And we'll begin with: "Irish moving company San Francisco." Why are you looking for a specifically Irish moving company?

Isaac: [Nervous laughter] Uh, this has nothing to do with—

Feinberg: This feels racist.

Isaac: This is NOT racist, nor is it a preference for a particular ethnic group as it relates to moving. I moved last year. Someone tweeted that they were looking for movers. I'd forgotten the name of these movers, but I knew it was Irish and that they did a good job. So I was like, “Hm, who were they? Irish moving company.” And then found it. That was all I remembered, that they were Irish.

Feinberg: So are you saying that the Irish as a people are more predisposed to manual labor as opposed to skilled labor?

Isaac: I respect the various range of abilities possessed by the Irish as a people. Nothing limits them—the world is their oyster.

Feinberg: That's good to know, thank you. Moving right along, we have "what grocers to buy" and then "what groceries to buy."

Isaac: I did not want to buy a grocer that operates a store. I mean, do you not ever wonder just, like, I don't know, what to buy at the grocery store?

Feinberg: Well, I look inwardly rather than externally for those answers.

Isaac: Look, I just think that if there's a solid list of "here are the staples that you need"—because I always get home, and I'm like, "Fuck, I forgot plums."

Feinberg: Well, it sounds like you know what you want. And that the problem is just that you aren't making a list of these items.

Isaac: I mean...whatever. You don’t get it.

Feinberg: All right, well, next we have a search for "Instagram under 18."

Isaac: Oh, Jesus.

Feinberg: I'm just going to let you elaborate as you see fit here.

Isaac: That is literally, they made an under 18—okay, that is a work thing where they made restrictions for people under 18. To be clear, I write about Facebook and Instagram for my job. I am completely—this is on the level in every way.

Feinberg: Alright, well, before that you also searched "formica sticky."

Isaac: Jesus christ. Okay, I have this vintage TV stand, but the top was replaced with formica. I got some crap on it and started trying to clean it with a paper towel, but then it got all sticky. So I was wondering, basically, is this a normal thing? LIke, I used Windex. Should I not have used Windex?

Feinberg: Right, because we have "how to clean formica" right before "formica sticky."

Isaac: Yeah! And I think I basically learned that you're supposed to use water. And not to use Windex.

Feinberg: One search I found particularly interesting was "what to ask authors in book interviews." Can you, a reporter, elaborate on that?

Isaac: I was doing a favor for a friend who had a book come out and asked if I could interview him.

Feinberg: And did you read the book?

Isaac: I—I did eventually, yes. At that point, I think I had to catch up really fast. And so I was trying to figure out some boilerplate questions to ask. But they were absolutely terrible, as questions go. They were just very dumb and bad suggestions. I would not recommend this search.

Feinberg: You also, at one point, just googled the word "dissonance."

Isaac: Oh, yeah, that was just another one where I was using it in a sentence. It's one of those things where you know the meaning, but also...do you? I just want to make sure I'm not embarrassing myself.

Feinberg: I respect your dedication to adulthood education.

Okay, so this is going back a bit; I forgot to ask about this one. You googled "central park karen," which is fine. But then you looked at a total of 18 different photos in the image search results of “central park Karen.”

Isaac: Huh, I think I was just trying to figure out what was going on...?

Feinberg: Through nearly identical photos with only the slightest variations?

Isaac: I think it was that she had a common name, and maybe there were a lot of photos of her, so I had to figure out which person it was?

Feinberg: I mean, they are all very clearly the same woman. It's basically 18 screenshots of her from the same video, just with her arm bent at slightly different angles.

Isaac: Uh, maybe I was just piecing together a reconstruction of her violent behavior. I honestly have no idea.

Feinberg: Oh, and one last thing: You just googled "press freedom." Twice. 

Isaac: Well, you know, the press has gotta be free, baby.

Feinberg: A very inspiring note to end on. Thank you for your time.

Other than her hit show Girls, there are two things Lena Dunham is most known for, at least as far as I’m concerned: apologizing and collecting and breaking pets like so many Precious Moments figurines. In fact, she was able to combine both of those passions back in 2017 when the world first learned about the tragic saga of one Mr. Lamby Antonoff-Dunham (more on that later). Lamby, however, was just the beginning.

Since then, Dunham has adopted pet after pet after pet. And while almost every one of her companions enjoys an onslaught of love and attention in the initial months after its adoption, the ones who manage to survive this period of affection quickly vanish into the Instagram ether, displaced by the new and rarely heard from again.

Lena, of course, has always insisted that she is nothing if not doting. “You can say a lot of shit about me,” Lena Dunham said a few years back in a profile written by Allison P. Davis of The Cut, “but I am a very committed pet owner.” As for the occasional death? “Well, when you are a nice person who adopts end-of-life pets, sometimes they die,” she said in that same profile, by way of paraphrase. With that kind of self-declared generosity of spirit, the casual observer might even start to believe her. After all, it’s hard to keep track of any sort of body count with so many comings and goings. The sheer volume of pets she parades around can be disorienting, with one hairless cat fading into the next. Has she owned two? Six? Does she even know herself?

After spending far more hours than I’d care to admit poring over pretty much everything Lena Dunham has ever revealed about the various animals in her care, we finally have some answers. And what I’ve discovered is: Please do not give this lady any more fucking pets. I’m begging you.

A newt

CIRCUMSTANCES OF ACQUISITION: This was Lena’s “first (and worst)” pet, which she acquired at the tender age of 6.

NOTABLE EVENTS: Ate a worm at some point.

CURRENT STATUS: Deceased

CAUSE OF DEATH ACCORDING TO DUNHAM: The newt “choked to death on a bad worm.”

UNRESOLVED QUESTIONS: Does Lena really know what a newt looks like when it chokes? Newts are very small. How does Lena know that the worm was “bad?” Is it this badness that caused the newt to choke? How does one assess whether a newt’s choking is due to the worm being too large or too foul?

TOTAL TIME IN DUNHAM’S CARE: Unknown.

Uno, Bruno, and Devo (pit bull puppies)

CIRCUMSTANCES OF ACQUISITION: Dunham claims in a New Yorker piece that, while strolling down the street at 15, she stumbled across an animal rescue booth where a volunteer told her he knew of a box sitting in a parking lot somewhere that contained a dead pit bull and her three puppies (which the guy, for some reason, simply left there?). Dunham proceeds to describe how she got into a van with this guy, how he drove her to that parking lot and handed her, a teen, three newborn puppies (which, again, for some reason this animal rescue guy had found and decided to leave) and then dropped her off at the subway.

NOTABLE EVENTS: Though they spent only a short time together, the memories would last a lifetime. Specifically, it seems, this memory:

Once, I left the room for too long and when I came back they were sucking each other’s tiny dicks, in a circle, like crazed swingers, blind to the fact that those things weren’t nipples.

CURRENT STATUS: Presumed dead due to time, although I suppose anything is possible.

UNRESOLVED QUESTIONS: Precisely what animal rescue group would discover a box of puppies nuzzling their dying mother and decide simply to move along? Why did they decide a 15-year-old was equipped to care for puppies so new they required bottle-feeding?

At one point, Dunham describes how she stopped in at a vet’s office on her way home, writing that the vet “checked each dog for a cleft palate and explained that I had to feed them every two hours, and that I should rub their anuses with a hot cloth to express their bowels.” I spoke to Dr. Mark Primiano, a Chicago-area vet, who said that, while the directions Dunham was given sound reasonable, “I do question the hell out of a vet reacting to a 15-year-old walking in with three newborn pups they just found by just going, ‘Well, here is how you take care of them!’ instead of getting the child to surrender them to the office or a shelter.”

TOTAL TIME IN DUNHAM’S CARE: Maybe five days, max

Guy, India, Sophia, and Thor (cats)

CIRCUMSTANCES OF ACQUISITION: Very little is known to the public about these particular pets, who were first mentioned in the caption of a 2015 Instagram post about someone else’s cat. While we do know that Thor was acquired in 2001, the origins of the rest of the group remain a mystery.

NOTABLE EVENTS: Take it away, Lena.

We here at Trashberg pray that Guy has found some semblance of peace in the great beyond.

CURRENT STATUS: Guy and Thor are both presumed dead due to time. The deaths of India and Sophia have been confirmed.

UNRESOLVED QUESTIONS: Lena Dunham has repeatedly claimed that she grew up with four hairless cats. As seen above, Sophia quite clearly has hair. This isn’t really a question as much as it’s just a really bizarre thing to lie about.

TOTAL TIME IN DUNHAM’S CARE: Kindergarten age to early adulthood, roughly.

Lamby (dog)

CIRCUMSTANCES OF ACQUISITION: Lamby, as far as I’ve been able to tell, was the first pet Lena took full responsibility of as an adult. She adopted him from Brooklyn’s BARC shelter in January 2013 and immediately made him a social media star.

NOTABLE EVENTS: Ah, where to begin. Inasmuch you’ve managed to find your way here in the first place, there’s a good chance you already have some familiarity with the Lamby saga. I’m not going to rehash it in its entirety (mostly because I already did that a few years ago, for those not caught up), but there’s nothing wrong with hitting a few high points.

In 2014, after already having written extensively about Lamby’s alleged neuroses one year prior, Lena posted a since-deleted photo to her Instagram of her bloodied rear—Lamby’s handiwork.

There were other signs of Lamby’s distress that seemed to be lightheartedly dismissed—like repeated references to the fact that Lamby often attempted to drink his own urine as well as what sounds like excessive vomiting. According to People, Dunham took Lamby to six different vets, at least one of whom attempted to treat the dog with acupuncture.

Apparently none of it worked, because in June 2017, Dunham revealed that, over a year earlier, she’d sent Lamby to live at “an amazing professional facility in Los Angeles.”

In the announcement, Dunham claimed that Lamby had “suffered terrible abuse as a pup that made having him in a typical home environment dangerous to him and others.” When asked about Lamby’s past by Yahoo Entertainment, though, the animal shelter pushed back on Dunham’s claims, saying that they’d checked the records and “he was ‘owner surrendered, not enough time,’ so we do not know where she got ‘multiple owners that abused the dog.’” There was some more back and forth before things died down, but Lena’s status as a questionable pet owner had been cemented.

CURRENT STATUS: Lamby was eventually adopted by a former trainer at the LA facility to which he’d been relegated, and he continues to live out his days in peace. His most recent sighting occurred just this past May.

UNRESOLVED QUESTIONS: Pretty much everything.

TOTAL TIME IN DUNHAM’S CARE: Just over three years.

Karen D'Amango and Susan Simmons (poodles)

CIRCUMSTANCES OF ACQUISITION: On February 10, 2017, Dunham introduced her two new dogs, Susan and Karen, by bringing them out on The Tonight Show, video of which has since been almost completely scrubbed from the Internet. Gossip Cop’s post on the interview seems to have been taken down entirely. The Boston Herald’s post on the interview also seems to have been taken down. The NBC.com clip and the official channel’s YouTube clip? Taken down as well.

The one remaining, semi–easily accessible copy of the interview I could find was on the Spanish-language site verTele. The Internet Archive’s video library also snagged a copy of the episode, the relevant portions of which you can view here, though it’s mostly just her reading things in character as the dogs in question squirm and try to get away. I would suggest doing quite literally anything else with your time.

NOTABLE EVENTS: Karen and Susan’s biggest claim to fame is the fact that they are the only pets in Lena’s current lineup who overlapped with the infamous Lamby. In fact, Karen and Susan were trotted around for months before Lena revealed that Lamby had gotten the boot. Little did they know, their preferred status would go almost as quickly as it came, for Lena’s first hairless cat was just around the corner

CURRENT STATUS: Karen and Susan are both believed to still be alive in wherever it is Lena keeps her pets who aren’t the favorite of the moment. Karen was most recently spotted in May 2020, while Susan was last seen a full year prior, in May 2019.

Though at least while in L.A., the dogs seemingly share the guest house with Lena’s live-in decorator. According to her Cut profile: “She redecorates all the time; in fact, her interior designer, Paul, lives with her; he moved into her guesthouse alongside her two poodles, Susan and Karen, when Dunham got sick a few years back.”

UNRESOLVED QUESTIONS: Did Susan and Karen ever meet Lamby? Did he warn them of their fate?

TOTAL TIME IN DUNHAM’S CARE: Five years and change.

Bowie (yorkie)

CIRCUMSTANCES OF ACQUISITION: Dunham first got Bowie in June 2018 after her friend Scotty Goldbeck found herself no longer able to care for the dog. When Bowie came to Lena, he’d already been walking this Earth for 13 years.

NOTABLE EVENTS: On July 14, 2018, Bowie let out a silent cry for help.

Bowie’s message is plain.

And yet, no help came.

Later, on August 7, Dunham used a photo with Bowie to announce her new (and since-deleted) pet-focused Instagram account dubbed @lambyzoo, which feels especially bold coming as it did so soon after Lamby’s surrender and the ensuing controversy. But like Bowie, @lambyzoo was not long for this world. As far as I can tell, the account was deleted sometime in the first half of 2019.

CURRENT STATUS: On August 21, 2018, three months after accepting the 13-year-old dog into her care, Lena announced that Bowie had passed away.

CAUSE OF DEATH ACCORDING TO DUNHAM: While Lena never gave a specific cause of death, the general ailments that come with age do seem the most likely culprits. Lena was speaking of Bowie when she explained, in The Cut’s paraphrase, “when you are a nice person who adopts end-of-life pets, sometimes they die.”

UNRESOLVED QUESTIONS: Along with Dunham’s Instagram announcement of Bowie’s death came a series of photos, taken by photographer iO Tillett Wright, that depicted what appears to be the dog’s pre-euthanization party.

I don’t really have a question here as much as I just desperately need to know exactly what conversations led to this point.

TOTAL TIME IN DUNHAM’S CARE: Three months.

Gia Marie and Irma (cats)

CIRCUMSTANCES OF ACQUISITION: Dunham adopted the cats in December 2017 after breaking up with her longterm boyfriend, Jack Antonoff. Regarding Irma specifically, Allison Davis in her Cut profile writes, “She called her ‘good friend’ Emmy Rossum, who asked what she wanted to do to feel better. Dunham had come across an ad on Craigslist for hairless cats and replied, ‘I want to drive to Brighton Beach and get a cat from this woman’s house.’ So they did.”

NOTABLE EVENTS: On November 25, 2018, The Cut published the following line:

Dunham starts squeezing blackheads on Irma the hairless cat’s chin

Thank you.

CURRENT STATUS: Irma is believed to still be living, though the most recent evidence I was able to find is dated March 24, 2019.

Unfortunately, on June 14, 2018, Lena announced that, after being in her care for only nine months, Gia had died “suddenly.”

GIA’S CAUSE OF DEATH ACCORDING TO DUNHAM: This is where things get curious. The day after Dunham first announced Gia’s death on Instagram, she expanded on the circumstances around the death in a second post:

Yesterday I was due at work at 8am. Showed up, watched rehearsal, drank my Starbucks, chill times. But at 8:15 I started to feel sick. Chills, sore throat, rapid descent. So I told Jenni I had to go home. Now. It just felt urgent. I walked in the door and found Gia limp and wheezing. She died in my arms at 9:15 as we rushed to the vet. She called me home. I’m so glad I listened. #giamarieforever

Lena continued to reflect on corporeal impermanence and the enduring spirit in the days that followed.

More importantly, though, Dunham later told The Cut that Gia “had lung damage after surviving a house fire.” Curious about the nature of this supposed fire, I spoke to Allison Davis for clarification on exactly whose house had burned down, and it seems the fire and subsequent lung damage had happened under the care of a previous owner.

UNRESOLVED QUESTIONS: It does seem as if a cat suffering from longterm lung damage severe enough eventually to kill it would have given some hint of its condition in the nine months leading up to its passing. Of course, this would not be the first time confusion has sprung up around the history of one of Dunham’s pets.

TOTAL TIME IN DUNHAM’S CARE: Nine months for Gia, three and a half years for Irma.

Lulu, presumed (cat)

CIRCUMSTANCES OF ACQUISITION: It’s unclear when exactly Dunham adopted Lulu, as she’s never explicitly talked about the cat. The closest I’ve come to any mention is this line from a 2018 post on MindFood:

I grew up with hairless cats because my mom is allergic. I am not allergic, but I am just obsessed with them. So I have rescued two, one is from a breeder. I have had eight in my life, but now I only have three. Their names are Irma, Candy and Lulu.

NOTABLE EVENTS: Rarely spoken of, none known.

CURRENT STATUS: Though Lena does seem to be less attached to this particular cat than the others, I’d assume there’d be at least some public mourning upon the occasion of a death. In which case, we must presume Lulu to still be alive. Her most recent sighting occurred in November 2019.

UNRESOLVED QUESTIONS: Pretty much everything. But we here at Trashberg like to encourage a little mystery wherever we can find it. Solidarity with Lulu.

TOTAL TIME IN DUNHAM’S CARE: 2018-ish to present-ish.

Candy (cat)

CIRCUMSTANCES OF ACQUISITION: Candy made her first appearance on August 18, 2018, as an apparent replacement for the recently departed Gia.

NOTABLE EVENTS: A month into her new life with Lena, Candy tried to eat a banana.

You have to open it first, idiot.

CURRENT STATUS: Candy is believed to still be living with Lena—or at the very least, with the rest of Lena’s less-preferred pets of the moment, with her last known sighting having occurred relatively recently (for non-Ingrid pets) on April 4, 2020.

UNRESOLVED QUESTIONS: Despite being a replacement for Lena’s beloved Gia, Candy doesn’t receive quite the same level of fawning as Gia once did. It’s not entirely clear what Candy did to offend her mistress, but if history’s any judge, the emotional and physical distance should give her a semi-decent chance at a long and relatively happy life.

TOTAL TIME IN DUNHAM’S CARE: Three years and counting.

Ingrid (dog)

CIRCUMSTANCES OF ACQUISITION: On January 23, 2019, Lena told the world she had acquired a new rescue dog. She made this announcement on her now-deleted pet-focused Instagram account, @lambyzoo. RIP, @lambyzoo. The Los Angeles–area dog rescue from which Dunham adopted the dog was so excited that they even posted their own announcement, revealing that Ingrid would be living on both coasts with her new owner, “a super rad Girl Boss.”

NOTABLE EVENTS: Ingrid seems to be the only member of Dunham’s menagerie who was allowed the honor of traveling with her to the UK to shoot a new show. Ingrid also ultimately found herself trapped with Dunham as quarantine struck. Exactly who tended to the rest of her animal companions during this time remains unclear.

CURRENT STATUS: Ingrid still walks among us, with her most recent sighting having occurred a mere week ago.

UNRESOLVED QUESTIONS: How long will Ingrid remain the preferred pet? Typically, Dunham’s pets enjoy a couple years in the sun, max. We encourage her to enjoy it while she can.

TOTAL TIME IN DUNHAM’S CARE: Eighteen months and counting.

Margaret and Elizabeth (hedgehogs)

Circumstances of acquisition: Absolutely no idea.

Notable events in Lena’s care: Lena has taken to calling the hedgehogs “Good One” and “Bad One.” In an article for The Strategist she revealed that “Bad One also bites and it’s a bummer.” To Bad One we say: keep raging against the dying of the light, my friend.

Current status: At least as of May 2018, the ’hogs lived in Connecticut “because hedgehogs are actually illegal in New York City.” While Lena’s family does have a home in Connecticut, I prefer to imagine that she dropped them off on the side of a highway and occasionally makes a half-hearted effort to glance along the shoulder when she’s in the area, on the off-chance they turn up for a photo op.

Unresolved questions: Why? You have so many goddamn pets. What is this for?

Time in Dunham’s care: At least a few years, assuming they’re still alive.

Are you fucking kidding me, how is there another one?

CIRCUMSTANCES OF ACQUISITION: Jesus Christ, I thought I was done. I was so relieved. Why did I keep looking.

NOTABLE EVENTS: Please, I really can’t take any more.

CURRENT STATUS: Maybe still perched on Lena’s neck, who can say.

UNRESOLVED QUESTIONS: Where does it live? What is its name? How many more of these poor creatures are hidden in the shadows? There’s not a soul alive who knows any of these answers for sure.

TOTAL TIME IN DUNHAM’S CARE: I refuse to look for any more. I can’t. This is it. Goodbye.

Hello again, friends. We here at Trashberg are determined to get back on schedule, and as we do that, let’s ease in with a bit of a celebration.

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You may recall that, just a few weeks ago, perpetually-at-large war criminal and man who inflicted unspeakable suffering on millions Donald Rumsfeld finally graced us with his death. You also might have seen mention of his infamous “Snowflakes”—the term he used for the copious, often inscrutable memos that he forced onto his underlings for years. The “Issues w/Various Countries” memo, for instance, has become famous for its wild, incomprehensible demands and lack of any elaboration or context whatsoever. It is the undisputed apex of the memo as an art form.

But we do ourselves a disservice by focusing on just that one, jotted-off request that his policy adviser solve Pakistan. Thanks to Rumsfeld’s own website and the National Security Archive’s excellent FOIA work, we have access to a great many other internal messages, a review of which makes it clear: Even if Donald Rumsfeld hadn’t left a legacy of untold global destruction in his wake, he would belong in the Hague for his memos alone. No one, not even the factotums of the American war machine, deserves this shit.

This bitch is just talking to himself

While most of Rumsfeld’s memos were sent to various underlings and colleagues, he also had a habit of occasionally jotting down a stray thought for his own records.

Glad we have a record of this.

Can’t remember it now that you’re dead, though.

Please, I want you to imagine having this thought. The words formed in your brain. You said to yourself, I need to create a permanent record of this, such an inspiring moment. Then you read it back, perfectly happy with what you see. You hand it to a staffer, telling them to type it up onto its very own sheet of paper, where it will eventually make its way into the National Archives. At no point do you feel anything even approaching shame.

What incredible confidence it must take.

Who is this for? I can’t even begin to fathom.

Thank you, sir.

And that brings us to an extra special memory he seems to have wanted to keep for himself.

Donald, I do not think he was joking in quite the way you think.

Mysteries of the world

But Rumsfeld was not just a man with deep thoughts; he was also a man who thought deeply.

About the world, and the way the world works.

What do you do with a thought like that? Only David Chu knows.

Every day brings knew challenges, though.

And all we can do is face them one at a time, seeking out answers wherever they might be.

When that inevitably fails, though, at least there’s always Steve.

~*~Never stop learning, bc life never stops teaching~*~

One thing I will say about Donald Rumsfeld: He wasn’t afraid to ask the hard questions.

And while he was occasionally willing to admit to having absolutely no idea what he was doing…

…he never stopped trying to understand.

The Paul Wolfowitz chronicles

Ah, Paul Wolfowitz. Donald Rumsfeld’s deputy secretary of defense and recipient of some of the most inane and impenetrable requests of all.

That, my friend, is called leadership.

Everyone knows Lane the paper writer. Everyone loves Lane the paper writer.

Is someone working on this hypothetical I just made up in my head?

Well, Paul?

Why is it taking you so long to come up with a few simple lists of every possible scenario, you know, just sort of in general, Paul?

Ah yes, the war on terror is definitely going to end, Paul. Don’t worry.

Get your goddamn act together, Paul.

The original #girlboss

Where my ladies at?

Ah, there they are.

Nothing to see here

Every once in a while, Rumsfeld would come out with something equal parts meaningless and menacing.

What exactly are you planning to do with the Coast Guard, buddy?

I’m sure this is all fine.

Perhaps the only correct thing he’s ever said

Everyone gets one, I guess.

One more time, is it an “s” or a “z”?

And finally…

This particular memo was followed by a sheet listing the various qualifications necessary for being buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Qualifications that, as far as I can tell, do not seem to apply to him in any way whatsoever.

And while there is virtually no information regarding Donald Rumsfeld’s funeral or burial anywhere that I’ve been able to find, I feel relatively certain that, had Rummy been buried at Arlington, we’d have heard about it by now. In which case, please join me in wishing this phenomenally corncobbed motherfucker a pleasant journey on his way to hell.

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Welcome back to Trashberg’s newest and (for now) only running series, in which I demand the unedited Google search histories of various guests and ask them probing, deeply uncomfortable questions about the things they seek out when no one’s looking. Today, we’ll be going through the YouTube history and Google search history of noted British person Libby Watson. Libby writes the excellent newsletter Sick Note, a chronicle of everything shitty about the American healthcare system.

The resulting conversation, which was conducted via Slack and which you can read below, has been lightly edited for length and clarity. And if there’s anyone whose search history you’re just dying to get a peek at, email me at trashberg@substack.com with your suggestions.

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Ashley Feinberg: All right, first of all, Libby, thank you for agreeing to be here today.

I should probably save this question for the end in case it gives you second thoughts, but Trashberg is about transparency and not shying away from the hard questions, so before we dig in I'd just like to ask: Virtually everyone I've tried to get to do this has either adamantly refused, insisted they don't save their Google search history, or claimed to be "busy" and "at their job." What prompted you to say yes?

Libby Watson: Well, for one, I’m neither busy nor at my job. Second, you’re my good friend, Ashley Feinberg, and I wanted to help you out. But more importantly, I’m vain and will take any chance to talk about myself, even at the expense of my dignity.

Feinberg: A beautiful sentiment, thank you.

I'd like to begin with the YouTube portion of today's content. Now, a lot of these show a logical progression. One Animal Crossing video begets another and so on.

At one point, though, you actively searched for the phrase "Wario oh my god." What prompted that?

Watson: No idea, but if you watch the video, you’ll see how it might be a useful reaction video in casual conversation.

Feinberg: Well, I will say that is definitely Wario saying, "Oh my god."

Watson: Yeah, but he sounds funny, and German.

Feinberg: On a similar note, you searched for a video of Mario saying, "Thank you so much for playing my game,” in which the video itself is of an Italian man (Mario, presumably) saying thank you in broken English.

My question on this one is: Why are you so racist against Italians?

Watson: Well, first, I’m going to answer the question you didn’t ask, which is that I looked up this video to send to my mum. I went back just now and checked our WhatsApp messages to confirm, and it’s very sweet. So in a lot of ways, it’s sort of very fucked up for you to make fun of me? Second, because they are smelly.

(In response to the video she said, “Dear, dear Mario and his credible accent.”)

Feinberg: That is incredibly sweet, but I'd be abdicating my duty as a journalist if I didn't point out how interesting it is that racism against Italians runs in the family. Curious!

Watson: Now I understand that Janet Malcolm quote about journalism being morally indefensible.

Feinberg: About 75% of these YouTube searches are just you looking for various Zelda speedruns, which I still don't entirely understand the appeal of but I will continue to support you in your pursuits. So unless you'd like to slander the media more (horseshoe theory rears its ugly head yet again), let's move on to searches.

On May 24 you googled "why are checks so expemnsive [sic]."

And then it appeared you were trying to see if you could purchase just one single personal check—is that accurate?

Watson: Yes.

Feinberg: I had to buy new checks recently, and I'm pretty sure with shipping included it was maybe $15.

Watson: Well, maybe our banks are different, but it was going to cost me at least $20, to buy dozens of checks that I won’t use. I just needed one to pay my tax estimates. In fact, I’d like to take this opportunity to share what I learned from these braindead searches: You can get checks printed from Vistaprint for a fraction of the cost. I think it cost me about $5—they don’t have to come from your bank. Another financial industry scam dodged, thanks to good googling.

Feinberg: You're going to have to pay more tax estimates in the future, though.

Watson: Yes, but when you buy them from Vistaprint, you get, like, 50 for that price. So I saved at least 10, maybe 15 American dollars. Enough to go to Chipotle one and a half times.

Feinberg: I feel compelled to point out that if Vistaprint is sponsoring you in any capacity, Trashberg ethical guidelines require you to disclose the nature of your relationship.

Watson: No, Visaprint just offers an excellent service at a remarkably low cost.

Feinberg: I'll be reaching out to Vistaprint for confirmation on this.

Moving on, are your tomatoes okay?

Watson: YES! Against all odds, the tomato plant I bought from the farmers market that had mold on the leaves seems to be thriving. I cut off some of the affected leaves and bought a fungicide from Ace Hardware (another business that offers stellar goods and services), and it seems to be doing much better. I’ve eaten roughly three tomatoes from it, and they are better than supermarket tomatoes, which is all I wanted.

Feinberg: And here you searched "fighter jet"  three times in a row.

Just wanted to see some cool planes?

Watson: I could ask my husband if he remembers this, but it was in response to some argument we were having over whether something looked like a fighter jet. I think it might have been our cat’s ears. You see, when she looks at birds outside, her ears get so flat that they point downwards, and I said it looked like a fighter jet. He said fighter jet wings don’t point downwards, so I googled to check and he was right. Not sure why I thought that.

Just asked him. He says he doesn’t remember either and also is leaving me.

Feinberg: Hold on, what the hell kind of plane would have wings that point down?

Watson: Well, I think that was his point. I don’t know, man. Planes aren’t my area.

Feinberg: Even not knowing how lift works, I mean, surely you must realize that wings angled downwards would not be able to stay in the air.

Watson: Do you know how planes stay in the air at all? Of course you don’t. No one knows.

Feinberg: Oh hey, look, it's a fighter jet.

Watson: Whatever. Not going to be trolled by this. Next.

Feinberg: Sure. Now, I know these are you clicking on different Google image search results because, before we began, you attempted to leave this entire section out.

What exactly was going on there?

Watson: I was looking for a picture of Halo’s Sgt. Johnson for a funny Memorial Day tweet, seen below.

If you were a real gamer you’d know why that’s funny, but you’re not

Feinberg: I would love to know why you chose this image, specifically. And not one of the 80 other options you seem to have cycled through. A little “behind the tweet” knowledge, if you will.

Watson: I think I was looking for the worst-looking one possible—like, the best example of the terrible 2001 Halo: Combat Evolved graphics.

Feinberg: I see. In my opinion, the tweet would have been funnier if it had just been a photo of Jake Tapper. Feel free to consult me next time.

Watson: That would have been much funnier, but much more likely to get me in trouble. Why don’t you do that next Memorial Day?

Feinberg: I'll put it on my calendar.

I'm not quite sure where to begin on this next one, so I'll just put it here and let you respond.

Watson: This one is actually great. My husband and I have a running bit—can’t in good conscience call it a joke—where we sort of play-fight over who will make the coffee in the morning. Or I’ll turn to him and say, “cup of tea?” only half expecting him to do it, half trolling. (Marriage! Don’t we have fun.) Anyway, I think he googled that on my laptop and left it up, as a way of asking me to make him a cup of coffee. Can’t remember if I did, but I hope so. I had recently googled “big truck for (our cat) Digby” and left it open on his work computer, so I think it was a retaliation.

Feinberg: Yes, "joke" would definitely be generous there

Watson: That’s fine, I don’t need your approval

Feinberg: Normally, I'd overlook this one, but you searched for "san francisco burritos" a total of three times, one immediately after the other.

What was going on there?

Watson: I think I was clicking around on Google maps, or honestly might have just closed the tab and immediately searched again twice, due to not having a memory anymore. A friend was going to San Francisco and I wanted to recommend the one burrito place I’ve been to there, which turned out to be El Farolito. Great burritos.

Feinberg: Alarming amount of promo in this edition.

Watson: I won’t apologize for supporting small businesses.

Feinberg: This is another one where I'd prefer to just let you jump in.

Watson: You don’t remember that video? It was, like, one of the most important viral videos of, say, 2009.

Feinberg: I definitely do not.

Watson: Check it out; it’s only 14 seconds long, I’ve got time

Feinberg: Do you remember this video?

Watson: No, and I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make here.

Feinberg: Well, it was another either pre- or early YouTube video that me and my friends watched, like, hundreds of times in middle school. It seemed a lot funnier then, but no one I’ve asked ever seems to have seen it.

Just an ongoing concern, and I was hoping maybe you'd be the one

Watson: That’s a lovely memory, and I’m sorry I can’t be of any assistance here.

Feinberg: God, remember this?

Watson: It’s rated R for Real Fuckin’ Funny. But no, I never saw this, sadly.

Feinberg: Really bums me out to watch now. At the time, I thought it was the funniest thing I've ever seen.

Anyway, we’re getting sidetracked. Back to the matter at hand. Directly before you searched for the gay, blind man, there was this.

Couldn't remember the recipe?

Watson: I mean, no. I didn’t have chocolate syrup and wanted a good way to make it with cocoa powder, which I did, and it was pretty good.

Feinberg: Isn't the way to make it just putting the cocoa powder in milk? Maybe some cinnamon if you're feeling exotic.

Watson: Well, I thought it would probably go lumpy and not dissolve in cold milk. The recipe I found told you to mix the cocoa with a small amount of cold milk and microwave it to make the cocoa dissolve, then mix it with the cold milk. Which worked out alright. I had to freeze it for a while, though.

This is the worst edition of Trashberg yet, isn’t it.

Feinberg: It’ll be great, we’re all learning a lot. But I'd love to know more about this.

Watson: Ugh. Well, basically, I’ve never been able to touch my toes, so I thought I’d google to see what I could do about that. I just started our friend Casey Johnston’s strength training program, so getting that extra mobility in my hamstrings is important. I’m making progress. (Daily stretching and foam rolling them before I work out, for those wondering.)

Feinberg: Yes, I can see that.

Watson: Important to get enough proteib! I honestly don’t know what I was looking for. Yes, you have to eat protein after you lift, which I already knew.

Feinberg: I like that this one tells a story, because two days later:

Watson: Fuck.

Feinberg: Did we miscalculate our proteib?

Watson: I was wondering if it was too much for me to have two protein shakes in a day. I am sort of finding it hard to get enough protein in my regular diet—I’m shooting for about 130-140g a day, which is about two whole chicken breasts. The shakes are so good, though. And while I know I shouldn’t have too many, I was sort of wondering why.

Feinberg: And?

Watson: It’s basically that they often have a lot of calories, and too much protein overall can be bad for you. So it seems like if I have enough calories left in a day, I can probably have two and won’t go into kidney failure.

I basically came away from that search more, rather than less, likely to drink more protein shakes than is medically sound.

Feinberg: I swear to god, if you try to plug Muscle Milk or some shit I'm shutting this thing down.

All right.

One of these is a renowned journalist with a best-selling book, and the other is our friend Mike.

Watson: Nailed ’em.

Feinberg: Just kidding! Stelter sucks, and we love Mike. But were you just looking to check in on the tech and media worlds, respectively?

Watson: I googled these because: Can you believe Mike is older than Brian Stelter? I don’t really mean any specific offense to Stelter here, but jesus!

Feinberg: Man. Good for Mike, I guess. Reminds me of this phenomenal classic blog.

Watson: Right, very similar thing. Again—not really trying to dunk on Brian Stelter, but it is shocking.

Feinberg: I really hope these two are related.

Watson: Almost hard to answer this question without triggering your “no promo” rage again, but no, they’re not. One is a trail near DC that my personal trainer mentioned, the other is a good restaurant.

Feinberg: You don't hear about billy goats much anymore.

Watson: Right, almost nothing at all since I was about 8.

Feinberg: Here are another two that I really, really hope are related but seems too good to be true

Watson: Christ.

But correct, I was not checking to see if the Daily Mail had ruled on whether yoga pants camel toe can give you cancer.

Feinberg: In that case, were you just hoping to find a solution? Perhaps a community of like-minded sufferers looking to one another for guidance? If so, I think I found your support group.

Watson: I really don’t know what I was hoping to find. I think, in an ideal world, some article on SELF or something titled, like, “19 Workout Leggings That Won’t Ride Up.” Or an explanation for why I might be finding a lot of different pairs of workout leggings getting a bit snug in the vaginashire. Unfortunately I found neither.

That is such a painful and horrible combination of thoughts, please remove it from my sight.

Feinberg: Here's something. So we have this:

Watson: Yep.

Feinberg: And then almost immediately:

Watson: Uh….

Feinberg: I actually have a few questions about this particular run. First, I can understand maybe why a "woof show" would have a dog. But where does the badger come in?

Watson: Okay, so there was this show when I was little, called Woof. It was about a boy who could turn into a dog. I’m pretty sure there was an episode of that show where he finds a baby badger and keeps it in a box in his closet, which I thought was the best and cutest thing, and I always wished I could have a baby badger, too. Couldn’t find the clip I was hoping for, unfortunately.

Feinberg: I would kill to have been in that brainstorm meeting where they decided on the name for the show. Hard to imagine what was tossed to the side after settling on "woof" as your best option.

Watson: I would love to have been involved in any part of making that show, honestly.

Feinberg: So, you were disappointed after being unable to catch a glimpse of this cherished memory from your youth and decided, well, might as well search for "Golan Heights”?

Watson: I’d love to say yes, but no, it was after I saw the tweet about Eric Adams saying he wanted to retire to the Golan Heights. Didn’t learn much, closed the tab, too many words, much rather think about badgers.

Feinberg: All right, this brings us to our final entry. Now, as someone who also loves Breath of the Wild, I do at least understand these searches

HOWEVER—I also know that you've played Breath of the Wild god knows how many times, and that you know full well what a stone talus is as well as what can be found on top of Satori Mountain (a beautiful beast). What exactly were you hoping to discover here?

Watson: This is honestly the most embarrassing search yet. Like, worse than proteib and can’t touch toes.

Feinberg: Stone taluses aren't even one of the better monsters. Hinox, I could maybe understand. I'd like to know more about where they came from, and why they even bother making themselves those little vests. That's actually a question I have about a lot of the creatures, like this guy has metal-plated armor.

Where the fuck are they welding this? And do they all manage to make such uniform pieces? But we can get back to that; let’s hear your response.

Watson: Basically, I went on a really beautiful and challenging hike yesterday, on a mountain called Old Rag, which involves a lot of scrambling over rocks/hoisting yourself up. During the hike, I saw lot of huge boulders that reminded me of stone taluses, and we also went through a large crevice that looked like the top of Satori Mountain. So I was going to do a tweet that was something like, “Went for a hike in Hyrule today,” and include the photos from the hike as well as images of a stone talus and the top of Satori Mountain. This is something I was thinking about while hiking in the splendor of the Appalachians. But then I decided the tweet was too humiliating and didn’t even do it.

Feinberg: I gotta say, that explanation was very hard to read, but I do thank you for your honesty.

I believe those are all my questions, unless you have anything you'd like to add as far as context or an attempt to defend yourself goes.

Watson: Not really. Although I would like everyone to know that nothing you can say in the comments could possibly be worse than what I’ve thought about myself in the past hour and a half, so you really don’t even need to bother.

Feinberg: A great point, thank you. Actually—one last question: Wow, Sick Note by Libby Watson is great and everyone should subscribe! Don't you agree?

Watson: You know what, I really do. Although I’m taking a break right now, but I’ll be back very soon, and you can sign up to get the emails when I do start writing again. And if any of your readers are still reading and have any horrible healthcare stories they might want to share, email me!

Feinberg: Oi, cheers to that, mate!

Watson: God, fuck off.

Feinberg: Thank you for your time, and god bless.

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WikiFeet, a website that exists for the express purposing of rating and reviewing the the feet of various public figures, has only a few rules when it comes to commenting on the foot and/or feet in question. 1) No “sexual references, hateful, racist or derogatory expressions.” And 2) all foot lovers are welcome and encouraged to express their opinions, “as long as they are respectful.”

And while one might not expect the internet’s foremost hub for men who masturbate to feet to have a particularly strong sense of propriety, the users of wikiFeet are, for the most part, deeply dedicated to keeping all discussions of exactly where and how firmly they’d like to be stomped on as respectful and objective as possible. This not to say that the very online foot fetishists among us shy away from harsh critiques. Rather, they simply try to judge the foot on its own merits. Take, for example user 87heron’s review of Tilda Swinton’s feet: “NOT REALLY MY KINDA A WOMAN BUT HER FEET ARE OK.” 87heron, like all respected wikiFeet users, recognizes that one must separate the woman from the foot. Their duty may be a simple one, but it’s a sacred one nonetheless: rate and review feet, nothing more.

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But ours is an era of hyperpoliticization. Partisan bias regularly threatens to rock the very foundation upon which this empire of feet rests. Validly or not, many have been suspected of allowing their own political leanings to influence their ratings.

Fortunately, just as numerous are the sort of steadfast, single-minded foot devotees who understand that wikiFeet would be nothing without its integrity. In fact, we could all take a lesson from these men who have almost certainly ejaculated on at least one printed-out photo of a stranger’s foot. So please, gather round, and allow me to introduce you to the unsung heroes of wikiFeet, the principled nonpartisans who amid so much political ferment insist on sticking to toes.

Our journey begins with Serial Bridge Arsonist, who, despite finding Rep. Lauren Boebert to be “lacking in critical thinking skills,” is able to admit to a desperate desire to see the soles of her feet. Footaficionado1 hears his cry, and agrees. “I don’t think politics should affect feet rating,” he says. As noble a creed as there ever was.

Wchris30, while of similar mind, edges into ad hominem territory when he refers to Boebert’s “insane political beliefs.” Thankfully, he catches himself. He can separate one’s belief from one’s feet, he assures. And the latter? “I DO agree with them!” he tells us.

As for Lauren Boebert, if you’re reading this, the least you can do is give these men a nice, high-res sole shot.

Here we stumble upon a painfully common quality among wikiFeet users: deep, penetrating shame. User Love Her Feet knows exactly what he wants. He wants to tend to and cherish the feet of one Kellyanne Conway.

Tragically for Love Her Feet, one cannot have Kellyanne Conway’s feet without also having Kellyanne Conway. If there’s one thing Love Her Feet teaches us, it’s that man contains multitudes.

When it comes to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s ratings, user Connoisseur came ready to do the work. He saw the comments being made—comments like “Perhaps that space laser hit her feet?” from bigbootsdaddy and “Like lumpy gravy” from GuyManDood19. He saw the poor quality of the photos being judged. He put two and two together. Bias was afoot.

BobPisso, seeing this egregious crime against feet, did some sleuthing of his own in hunting down prime foot shots from multiple angles. Majorie Taylor Greene may not have much hope for a foot fetishist voting bloc herself. But her feet? Why, that’s a different mater entirely.

Ah, Tomi Lahren, one of political media’s more polarizing figures. She actively seeks controversy, so it’s only natural to expect a particularly contentious wikiFeet page. And there indeed one finds plenty of infighting that has very little to do with feet.

It’s precisely because of all that off-topic squabbling, though, that wikiFeet’s more upstanding users take particular joy in setting the example. MvP419 seems to be a man of true passion, as disgusted by Lahren’s politics as he is electrified by her toes, making his ability to separate one from the other all the more impressive.

Eliccio, too, is determined to keep his ratings as objective as possible. But he goes one step further, refusing to give even the slightest indication of where his politics might lie.

He is the Jake Tapper of wikiFeet, and braver in his own way than the troops.

Here we have a particularly curious comment on Nikki Haley’s page. Admittedly, it makes no mention of feet and references one of my very favorite conspiracy theories occasionally making the rounds.

It doesn’t really have anything to do with the topic at hand, but it felt criminal to keep this from the public.

Did you know the late Sen. John McCain had a daughter? Her name is Meghan, and she’s built a storied career on the fact that her parents once had unprotected sex resulting in her. Another product of that encounter? Meghan’s feet.

User a foot fetishist may vote Democrat, but that doesn’t stop him from drooling over these “conservative minded feet.”

Defeetme’s passion for Meghan McCain’s feet reaches similarly uncomfortable heights.

Congratulations to John McCain on his lasting legacy.

Kimberly Guilfoyle: former first lady of San Francisco, former co-host of Fox News’s The Five, current girlfriend of professional divorced man Don Jr., woman who would be a year older than her stepmother-in-law should she marry the aforementioned beau. Guilfoyle is another woman who actively seeks controversy and press, making fully objective feet ratings particularly difficult to ascertain. Wulfrido, what say you?

Thank you for your input. Anyone else?

A welcome reminder that men of honor walk among us yet.

It’s not just liberals lusting after toes across the aisle, though. WikiFeet users are even able to (mostly) set aside biases for Democrats as polarizing as Hillary Clinton.

Feetguy55 appears to be one of the many individuals who voted against Donald Trump rather than for Hillary Clinton. Might Hillary have eked out a win if she’d been more willing to show feet?

It’s impossible to know for sure, but on the other hand, almost certainly yes.

Hugo jaxon is one of the rare users to come in with open prejudice, only to be swayed once presented with the facts (feet pics) at hand. While his dedication to fair foot rating might not be as conscious as the others, his principles remain just as steadfast.

In contrast, BigDaddyWizz very intentionally makes a show of his objectivity, going so far as to slander hugo jaxon’s integrity in the process.

The reference to Benghazi was merely a bit of color, BigDaddyWizz. Please read more closely.

Jenny McCarthy is currently best known for her anti-vax activism, so her page is understandably littered with comments on her particular brand of idiocy. Still, deeply misguided and actively harmful though she may be, she is a person with feet, and attention must be paid.

And as display name 26 so eloquently states, “this is a foot site not a brain one.” If you remember one thing, reader, let it be that.

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We’re Now on Discord with the Discontents Collective! 

As some of you may know, Trashberg has been a part of the Discontents media collective, a group of lefty Substacks and websites that’s trying to build a shared community online. Inspired by similar projects like Sidechannel, we’ve taken over the Discord server previously built by our friends at Disco…

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Welcome back, dear friends and anyone who hates me enough to pay money for this on the off-chance I mess up to the point that they can ruin me. We’ve got a special treat for you in today’s Trashbag. That’s right, it’s man who gave his plastic surgeon a photo of Jim Carrey wearing The Mask from the 1994 hit film The Mask, Matt Gaetz.

A tipster managed to …

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It’s a question that’s haunted the nation for almost a decade now. A beluga whale with, frankly, inadequate oral hygiene bobs in the water, her mouth opened in apparent mid-shriek. While the bloodlust in her eyes is clear, we can do little more than guess at the particular machinations within. Melania Trump understood the power of this whale, and spent her four years as first lady in a similar state of unreadability. Her appearances in public were rare, and her statements were all either typical First Lady pablum or vicious swipes at perceived enemies with absolutely nothing in between. Americans everywhere were again left to wonder, “What is she thinking?”

Of course, we’ll likely never know for sure what motivated Melania’s various choices or how she truly feels about her husband’s presidency, but we can get a little closer to some answers thanks to a Twitter account belonging to none other than her sister, Ines Knauss. Ines’s account is locked, and as far as I can tell, she’s somewhat discerning about who she lets in (only 13 followers have been added since 2018). Fortunately, I was able to get a look at her feed through a third party.

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While not much is actually known about Ines, there are about five facts that get repeated in virtually every article ever written about her. 1) She’s Melania’s older sister by just a few years. 2) They both attempted to pursue careers in fashion, with Ines focusing on design while Melania modeled. 3) She lived in a $2 million apartment in a Trump Organization–owned building just a few blocks from Trump Tower as recently as 2017. 4) At some point during Trump’s presidency, she quietly became a U.S. citizen along with her parents. And 5) more than anything, the two sisters are very, very close.

When Melania was in high school, she even shared an apartment with Ines in Ljubljana, Slovenia’s capital. And when Melania went on to marry the single dampest man she could find, Ines was right there by her side as her maid of honor, one of only three Slovenians in attendance at the 350-guest affair (the other two being their parents). Ines was even cited as one of the reasons Melania put off moving to D.C. in the early days of Trump’s presidency.

We also know that this is indeed Ines Knauss’s account and not just a part of some fringe Melania-themed cosplay group (although if that does exist and you’re part of it please get in touch immediately). Washington Post reporter Mary Jordan confirmed that the private account was hers in her recent book on the former first lady.

We can also be relatively sure that that Melania and her sister have stayed in touch during Melania’s time as First Lady. The texts below were sent to someone listed simply as “M,” which is also how she’s referred to Melania in previous public posts on Facebook.

Melania isn’t the only family member whose texts she’s posted, though. Curiously, Melania’s father, Viktor Knavs (Melania and Ines both changed their last names from Knavs to Knauss), doesn’t seem to be a huge fan of his son-in-law. Or at the very least, he isn’t particularly effusive about it. From Mary Jordan’s book, in which she recounts a conversation with a few of Viktor’s friends:

The men said that Viktor loves to talk about Barron but mostly avoids talk of his son-in-law. Viktor does not agree with Trump’s “anti-immigration talk,” his friends said.

All of which makes this exchange between Ines and her father during the January 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol particularly curious.

A rough translation, according to a kind Slovenian on Twitter:

Ines: Are you watching CNN?

Dad: Of course I’m watching. ❤️

Dad: And Fox and OAN.

And at least based on some of her faved tweets, her own opinion of her brother-in-law is less than stellar. Here, for instance, is just a sample of tweets faved during Trump’s February 9 impeachment trial. Nearly all were similarly derisive.

And perhaps even more notably, there’s this:

The vast majority of her actual tweets, though, consist of her reposting old photos of Barron, Melania, or herself—in addition to fun facts, like this tweet from last April consisting of nothing but Barron and Melania’s ages.

Another fun fact? Kimberly Guilfoyle, Don Jr.’s girlfriend, is in fact an entire year older than Melania, her boyfriend’s stepmother—just a bit of trivia for you.

A good portion of Ines’s feed consists of her waxing nostalgic about her childhood in Slovenia, while also pushing back on virtually anything ever written about Melania or their family.

This is, of course, regardless of whether there actually seems to be anything egregious in the first place.

According to that same kind Slovenian on Twitter, the below translates roughly to: “When they were together, Melania lived with her sister Ines in a small one-bedroom apartment.”

Ines went on to helpfully clarify just what it was she took issue with.

It’s the sort of nitpicking over harmless inaccuracies we’ve seen from Melania before, making it seem not at all unlikely that the two sisters spoke frequently despite Melania’s White House duties.

While Ines’s favs tell one story of how she might view her brother-in-law, any Trump-related tweet she herself sends tends to be much more benign. For instance, these simple well-wishes after Trump and Melania both were diagnosed with covid:

She’s also shared some contextless yet kind, heartfelt words from her brother-in-law.

Ines did speak a little more freely about other members of the family. Here she is happily partaking in some Jared-bashing (remember those rumors of Melania’s occasional power struggles with the Ivanka/Jared wing of things?):

The video in question:

And very, very rarely, there will be a criticism of Melania herself. If you’ll recall, early in October of last year, Stephanie Wolkoff, a former friend and former senior adviser to Melania, released a recording of a 2018 phone call between her and the then-First Lady. In it, Melania defiantly declared, “Who gives a fuck about Christmas?” Now, we finally have an answer. For it is apparently Ines herself who gives a fuck about Christmas.

She also seemed to be less than thrilled with Melania’s now infamous, headline-grabbing jacket.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Ines’s feed, though, are favs like the one you see below, which occurred on May 29 of last year.

This wasn’t a one-off either. Ines seems to enjoy similar tweets on a fairly regular basis.

The Pleiadians, as far as I can tell, are Nordic-appearing aliens who want to help us find peace by (maybe?) taking us to another star system, but also—time is infinite so don’t worry about when, exactly. This all seems to have merged a bit with QAnon, in that there’s also a theory that Trump is receiving extrasolar protection or has possibly already been taken from this Earth, and we all just have to let the aliens’ plan play out. Based on everything else Ines has tweeted over the years, this part of her internet consumption does seem a little unexpected. But then again, maybe it’s simply the truth.

Still, Ines’s best tweets have nothing to do with family at all.

And instead, simply speak to eternal truths.

Thank you to Ines, the bloodthirsty beluga whale, and Counts everywhere. Your collective insight has been invaluable.

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Welcome back, friends. Trashbag has returned after a brief hiatus last week, and as we get back into the swing of things, we’ll also be doing an open thread of sorts. But more about that in a bit.

First, I had a revelation last week. A few days ago, the Washington Post reported that Marjorie Taylor Greene was once again trying to stir …

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Welcome, honored readers, to the inaugural edition of Trashberg’s newest running series, which will see me demanding the unedited Google search histories of various guests and asking them probing, deeply uncomfortable questions about the things they seek out when no one’s looking. But if I’m going to ask others to give up the more intimate parts of their life online, well, it’s only fair that I be willing to do the same. In order to keep me as honest as possible, Wired senior writer Kate Knibbs graciously agreed to step in and pore through my search history from randomly selected weeks spanning the past year, asking whatever she saw fit. Nothing was off the table.

The resulting conversation, which was conducted via Slack and which you can read below, has been lightly edited for length and clarity. And if there’s anyone whose search history you’re just dying to get a peek at, email me at trashberg@substack.com with your suggestions.

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Ashley Feinberg: Before we begin with the interrogation, I'd love to just get your initial impressions.

Kate Knibbs: So all in all, your searches were actually significantly less lewd than I had anticipated.

I'd also assumed that you would be using Google in a slightly more sophisticated way than you appear to use it in reality. Like, I thought there'd be a lot of playing around with the time settings to pull up older documents, etc.—but instead you seemed to use it like a normie who also repeatedly searched for the same words again and again, as though expecting Google to generate new answers to the same question each time.

Feinberg: Alright, look—

Knibbs: E.g. on the first day of searches you shared, you searched for the word "hatchet" three times in two minutes.

Feinberg: I think one reason for that might just be something inherently broken in my brain. I'll occasionally realize I have three tabs open that are all Google searches for, like, “gold bullion,” with no recollection of why or when.

Knibbs: Did you find the true meaning of "hatchet?”

Feinberg: I think maybe I was thinking I should buy a hatchet. For what? I'm not sure.

Knibbs: You also searched for "axe" in the same time period so there was definitely some sort of interest in chopping tools.

Feinberg: There's a lot of nice chopping implements online—artisanal, really well made, seems like it'd be fun to buy if you had things to chop. Everyone deserves to have a dream.

Knibbs: My dreams tend to involve you not having access to sharp objects, but sure. Anyway, digging in, I really want to ask you about your searches on October 26.

Feinberg: Please do.

Knibbs: Because in the middle of the afternoon, you conducted nine separate searches with the word "goth" in it. Sometimes it was "ancient goths" or "goths Rome," which led me to believe this was a history thing and not a Hot Topic thing.

Feinberg: Oh! I know what that was. I was listening to the Fall of Rome podcast by friend of Trashberg and fellow Discontents member Patrick Wyman. In it, there is naturally a lot of discussion of the various Goth groups, so I think I maybe wanted to see renderings of what people thought Goths looked like?

Knibbs: See, this is why I was surprised—you're more wholesome than you appear. Also, seven hours after your original search spree you went back at night and searched "ancient goths blonde."

Feinberg: Just look at this absolute king.

Knibbs: And then, um, three hours after that, at midnight, you searched simply "fatalism.”

Feinberg: The blonde thing is harder to piece together. There might have been something about blondeness in the podcast? Although that doesn't seem right. Maybe I just wanted to see a goth hottie.

Knibbs: Well, it didn't hold your attention for that long because the next day you were on an entirely different track. one that involved attempting to look up Barbara Bush's phone number?

Feinberg: Uhh, what was the exact search?

Knibbs: "Barbara bush cell phone," searched twice.

Feinberg: Oh! I wasn’t looking for her number (she’s dead). What I was looking for was this:

This is the photo I use as my profile pic for every Slack group I've ever been in. I'm not entirely sure what I was going to do with it, but—just look at that bitch. What's she doing? We'll never know now, because she's dead.

Knibbs: RIP.

But that same day, you also searched for a bunch of words, and I don't know what any of them mean. It all sounds like fake Gen Z slang. For example, what is "nichychampa?"

Feinberg: Oh god, Nicky Champa is a TikTok dude. I hate him and his boyfriend so much. I have to show you.

Knibbs: The other one was "itspierreboo."

Feinberg: I think I was trying to figure out what their deal is, because I spend an inordinate amount of energy getting quietly mad about them. And yeah, Pierre is his boyfriend.

Knibbs: Oh god, yes please show me. My TikTok algorithm exclusively serves me up TikToks about rescue animals, so I don’t ever see this shit.

Feinberg: This is them.

Knibbs: Oh, wow.

Feinberg: They talk to each other like they're infants, and it's all "pranks" that are clearly 100000% staged and performed with them very obviously holding the phone directly in front of the other’s face.

Knibbs: I feel like Pierre is not really French, and is instead stealing French valor.

Feinberg: Here’s another. God, I despise them. And I'm still not sure what their deal is.

Knibbs: I feel like it's best not to inquire further, honestly

Feinberg: I kind of thought they were twins for a while and were doing some sort of a weird sex twin bit, but that was not it. Anyway, moving on.

Knibbs: I would really like to ask about the next day's searches, because you searched our mutual friend Casey’s name.

Feinberg: Uh huh.

Knibbs: And then searched for her name again, but added “jewish."

Feinberg: Uhhh…

Knibbs: Casey is not Jewish.

Feinberg: Well, were you part of the discussion where, for some reason, another friend of ours was insisting that Casey was Jewish?

Knibbs: Uh, no, I was not.

Feinberg: I knew she wasn't. Every part of me knew she wasn't, but I was scared to weigh in and be wrong.

Knibbs: Did you think there was going to be some blog post about it?

Feinberg: Well, I thought maybe… I don't know. Maybe Casey had tweeted about Passover or a fun day at synagogue. Or perhaps she had a written a blog titled, “It’s Me, Casey Johnston the Jew.” The important thing is I was correct. She is not a Jew.

[Reached for comment on the matter, Johnston provided Trashberg with the following statement: “I would never steal Jewish valor. Love and respect to Jews and Judaism, but I would like to clarify for both the record and my confused friends that I am not Jewish.”]

Knibbs: One moment, going to buy the domain name CaseyIsAGentile.com.

Feinberg: That feels like a hate crime for some reason.

Knibbs: Speaking of hate crimes!

Feinberg: Uh oh.

Knibbs: The next night at one in the morning you did the following series of searches:

Feinberg: I see.

Knibbs: Just some bedtime reading?

Feinberg: I can't say for sure what prompted it, but just reading those searches now, I would like to know more about the main Nazi doctor.

Knibbs: And staying on topic—

Feinberg: I bet being Hitler's general practitioner was nerve wracking as hell.

Knibbs: —the NEXT day you googled the following thing, which I am just going to screenshot because I am not Jewish and am not typing it out.

Feinberg: Uhhh… You know, my best guess is… Well, how long after the Hitler searches was that?

Knibbs: It was fully the next day.

Feinberg: I see. Well, sometimes you just like to expand your knowledge base and see whats out there. That’s the best I got.

Knibbs: Immediately after the hitler searches you'd searched "studio ghibli," so i assumed you wanted to cleanse your mind with masterful animated films. Later that day, you seemed to switch gears and searched for another succession of phrases I don’t understand.

Feinberg: Well, the meatus is the hole part of the penis. Though I can't figure out what a splitting maul penis is.

[Several seconds later…]

Okay, I just looked, and a splitting maul is a sort of axe/hammer.

Knibbs: You still wanted your hatchet!

Feinberg: It’s also very possible I was looking for penis injuries.

Knibbs: Ok, the next few days were pretty tame, you did a lot of searches about squash and fencing, nothing too bizarre. But then you unleashed the following queries onto the 'net:

Feinberg: Um, well.

Knibbs: And Ashley, you didn't stop there. You kept searching all these terms the entire next day, as well.

Feinberg: Okay, do you remember Fivey?

Knibbs: I don't remember Fivey, and now I'm honestly scared to hear about him. But please tell me.

Feinberg: Fivey was the little fox mascot that FiveThirtyEight made. Basically it’s Clippy, but for poll nerds.

Knibbs: Oh, I do remember this!

Feinberg: And anytime there's a little character like this, I like to see how horny people are getting for it. And people got really horny for Fivey.

Knibbs: Oh my god.

Feinberg: Anyway, I remember there being quite a few drawings of Fivey pooping in a diaper—you know, just sort of reveling in it. I can only guess that, at that point, I wanted to learn more about diapers in general.

Knibbs: Oh sure, as one does. No need to share the diaper Fivey images. I can use my imagination.

Feinberg: Oh wow, this one is great.

Really well done. Killer lighting.

Knibbs: Did you ever ask Nate Silver about this?

Feinberg: I did tweet one of them at him, I'm pretty sure.

Knibbs: (If any Trashberg subscribers would like to tweet at Nate asking him about this, please feel free!)

Feinberg: Yes, I sure did:

Deafening silence, as expected. It's not even profane!

Knibbs: At this point, if you make a fuzzy little fox graphic and put it on the internet, you're at least partially responsible for the inevitable porn.

Feinberg: Frankly, you should be legally obligated to comment on the resulting erotica. I've been talking to the Biden administration about this. We're working on a solution.

Knibbs: I'm glad to hear it. But the next night, late at night, you looked up something that, again, I would love an explanation for.

Feinberg: Ah. Yes, I do remember watching the [Stranger Things kid] Finn Wolfhard Weezer video

Knibbs: What? Isn't Finn Wolfhard like 12 years old?

Feinberg: Hm, I was hoping it had come out that day, but it appears it came out several years prior. And that’s what I thought! But he looks so old in the video!

He's the main kid you see in the beginning. Tell me that doesn't blow you away.

Knibbs: This is definitely Weezer's finest work in a minute.

Feinberg: Great vid, lots of fun, enjoyable to watch at 1 a.m.

Knibbs: I’m still very amused by you laying in bed thinking, "What I'd really love to see right now is the child actor Finn Wolfhard cosplaying as Rivers Cuomo." Honestly, this feels considerably more perverted than diaper Fivey.

Feinberg: The heart wants what the heart wants.

Knibbs: That said, it’s still less perverted than this, I'll wager.

Feinberg: I’ll admit that is a lot for two minutes. But I do have a vague memory of this drawing of Trump as a furry lion. Or maybe as a furry Jesus lion?

Knibbs: And you just needed to see it?

Feinberg: Well, in discussing it now, I do desperately want to see it. Possibly this was an extension of my Fivey kick.

Knibbs: Honestly, I take back what I said about your searches being less pervy than I thought. Now that we've scratched the surface, they are exactly as pervy as I thought.

Feinberg: If seeking knowledge is pervy, then call me a pervert.

Knibbs: Now, skipping ahead a bit, you finally did do some 9/11 searches. This is also another case of you repeatedly googling the same thing (or some variation) a shit ton of times in a row like a psycho.

And may I ask... why?

Feinberg: You sure may, but I have absolutely no idea on this one. My instinct is to say that maybe there was a conspiracy theory that Bush wasn't actually up in the sky when they said he was? But it's equally possible I just wanted to see some pics of Dubya.

Knibbs: I'm sure the people keeping the FBI files on you were having a fun day with this one.

I actually have to head out soon, but there is one I’d like to simply present without comment.

Feinberg: I have nothing to add here.

Knibbs: And finally:

Feinberg: Uh.

Knibbs: … did you forget how old you are?

Feinberg: Well, I do sometimes, but I can usually figure it out on my own. My best guess is that I wanted to see how old the internet, as a general entity, thought I was.

Knibbs: I also just want to note that you googled this at 2:30 a.m.:

Feinberg: Didn’t you say you had somewhere to go.

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Remember pre-beard Ted Cruz? No one did body horror like pre-beard Ted Cruz. The beautiful waxen sheen, the 30 percent too much skin no matter where you looked—I could not have dreamed up a more distressing subject if I tried. I’m not really going anywhere with this; I just think it’s nice to remember the good times.

Speaking of good times, there's lots to look forward to here in the extended Trashberg universe. Next week, I’m hoping to finally have for you an investigation that’s been a long time coming and that has forced me to become intimately familiar with every photograph that Lena Dunham has ever posted online. But this I do happily for you, dear reader.

There are plenty more white whales out there, though, and this is where you come in. A few stories in particular have eluded me for any number of reasons, and if anyone reading this knows the slightest about any of them, I urge you to email me at trashberg@substack.com.

• Remember when one of Rand Paul’s neighbors beat him up? It was one of the best stories in years. Unfortunately, that neighbor has refused to talk thus far. Do you know him? Because I sure wish I did.

• Teens! There’s millions of ’em, but a somewhat smaller number who are extremely online. Are you an extremely online teen? Do you know an extremely online teen? I’d like to build a floating panel of extremely online teens to occasionally consult about a variety of topics. Send me an email with the subject line “cool teens” if you think you can help.

• As long as we’re on the subject of teens, a few years ago, a teen baked her grandfather’s ashes into some cookies and fed them to her friends at school. Do you know one of the kids who ate grandpa? I’ve got some questions for them.

• Elon Musk, perhaps one of the least charismatic people on Earth, is going to be hosting SNL this weekend. I genuinely cannot wait. I also desperately want a complete rundown of every single second he spends back stage, as well as everything about his interactions with the writers. Surely someone out there is in a position to help me.

• Are we sure 9/11 happened? Reality is what we make it. Do you know something I don’t? Get in touch.

Of course, if you have something unrelated to any of these that you think deserves a look, feel free to shoot me an email at trashberg@substack.com, too. No tip too stupid—that’s the Trashberg motto.

Finally, when this whole thing got started, I pledged to put my share of each month’s subscriber revenue toward a good cause. A few weeks ago, paid subscribers voted to send this month’s money (which included all yearly subscriptions purchased to date, so we had quite a bit more to work with) to two great organizations: Trans Lifeline and the National Network of Abortion Funds. Each group received $3,368, and all of it was made possible by the wonderful miscreants who pay to stare at 200-year-old senators’ mouths.

And with that, I bid you all a farewell. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming next week. In the meantime, you can tide yourself over with a little trip down memory lane.

Mailbag: I’ve been waiting for an excuse to use the photo

Every week, I’ll answer a few question…

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Just over a week ago, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon revealed that he, like many of the world’s richest and most powerful, keeps a secret Instagram account. From Business Insider:

"A lot of people say, 'I'm not going to go back to work.' Look at their Instagrams," Dimon said. "They didn't get sick from coming into the office. They got sick partying."

"You're on Instagram?" [Kristin Lemkau, JPMorgan Chase’s current CEO of US wealth management] asked in response.

Dimon replied that yes, he did have an account — but good luck finding him. He said it wasn't under his name and he signed up for the social-media platform to see what it was and how it might be used for advertising purposes.

Dimon also added that “a lot of the lists of people I should friend are people that I have relations with. It annoys me how they got that.” Why, that is annoying, Jamie. It’s also a very helpful tidbit when it comes to hunting down this mysterious account, since it means Dimon is likely following at least a few people with whom he has known ties—his three daughters, for instance. Unfortunately, his eldest daughter, Jules, has a locked account, which means there’s no way for us to see the names of the 195 people currently following her. The same goes for his youngest, Kara, and her 968 followers. Then we get to his middle daughter, Laura, who has a mercifully unlocked account but a whopping 1,688 followers. An annoying quantity to have to pore through, certainly, but nothing we here at Trashberg can’t handle.

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While Laura Dimon has dozens of anonymous, profile picture–less accounts following her, only one of those incognito users exclusively follows members of Jamie Dimon’s immediate family or those with some connection to JPMorgan Chase. Please allow me to present jackmason529, an account that, up until roughly 4:30 p.m. today, looked like this.

Update 6:05 pm: The instagram account has now gone private.

While the name Jack Mason doesn’t appear to hold any obvious significance in Dimon’s life, the account seems unmistakably his.

Here is everyone Jack Mason follows on Instagram.

First up, we have the wildly fake-sounding name of one Joey Romeo. As it turns out, the name is mostly real (actual first name: Joseph) and belongs to Jules Dimon’s husband. While online references to this particular son-in-law are largely non-existent, you can still find a landing page for the couple’s 2011 wedding registry, in addition to a quick mention at the bottom of Theodore Dimon’s obituary. Joey also appears to have “liked” the page for Chase on Facebook. Come on, Joey. Play it cool.

The official J.P. Morgan account speaks for itself, bringing us to Thasunda Duckett. Until just over a month ago, Duckett was the Chase consumer banking CEO, which naturally would have put her in close contact with Dimon. Following her, we have Jules and Laura Dimon, Jamie’s oldest and middle daughters, respectively.

And then we have Judy Miller, or judymiller109, the current chief of staff at JPMorgan Chase. According to Chase’s online org chart, her direct manager is none other than Jamie Dimon himself.

Judy also happens to have a private Instagram account, meaning that she had to actively approve a follow request from jackmason529. A haphazard approver would surely have more than 64 followers. What’s more, she follows only 88 people herself, one of whom is our own jackmason529. Jack Mason’s only other pre-4:30 p.m. follower, Jules Dimon, also has a private account. She follows a mere 55 accounts.

It’s highly unlikely that two such discerning Instagram users would follow, much less allow into their own private sphere, someone they didn’t know. And based on what we can glean from public information, one member of the limited set of people they’re both certain to know is, of course, Jamie Dimon.

Finally, we have Kristin Lemkau, JPMorgan Chase’s current CEO of US wealth management and the woman who got Dimon to reveal the existence of his account in the first place.

Now, for some reason, after I reached out to JPMorgan Chase for comment on the account, two more people suddenly followed jackmason529. One of those people was Lemkau, and the second was a woman named Allison Beer, JPMorgan Chase’s chief product officer for consumer and community banking. Curious, indeed.

So, we know Dimon has an anonymous Instagram account, and we’re almost certain we know which account that is. But what about Twitter? It seems unlikely that Instagram would be the only social media platform Dimon might be curious about. And indeed, with a bit of patience and a considerable amount of determination, endlessly scrolling through daughter Laura Dimon’s Twitter followers will eventually bring you to our new friend, @jackmason1313.

While Instagram Jack Mason has never posted any content himself, the Twitter version does give us a bit more to go on, and as it just so happens, most what is there can indeed be tied back to Dimon. We begin with the only tweet @jackmason1313 has ever sent in its eight years of existence, and which was directed at Box CEO Aaron Levie. That lone tweet was even faved by Levie himself.

Though little has been written about any personal connection Jamie Dimon might have to Levie, just a few months prior to the tweet, Box held its initial public offering. One of the major underwriters for that IPO was, you guessed it, J.P. Morgan. And exactly one day before @jackmason1313 sent his only tweet, Jamie Dimon had reportedly held a secret party with Warren Buffett “for 150 or so corporate titans.” According to Yahoo Finance, “Most in attendance were J.P. Morgan clients.”

In addition to his lone tweet, @jackmason1313 has also faved a total of three tweets.

The first was by Dimon’s daughter, Laura. Speaking from experience with my own mother, I can confidently say there are few things parents love more than faving their children’s tweets. What’s more, Laura even took note of the fav in a reply to her own tweet.

While it’s not impossible that she might strike up a casual conversation with a complete stranger, it seems much likelier that @jackmason1313 is someone she knows.

Next, we have an article about a then-recent scandal at the Potomac School, an elite prep school just outside D.C. While Dimon doesn’t have any apparent connection to the school himself, a bit of digging into the alumni magazine reveals that Tamara Dimon, the wife of Jamie Dimon’s twin brother, Ted, is herself a Potomac School alum. As for the Tim O’Reilly tweet, Dimon has indicated at least some interest in coding, but that seems to be about where the connection ends.

Twitter Jack Mason also follows quite a few more accounts than Instagram Jack Mason, and while the Twitter follows are a touch less personal, they still fit squarely with Jamie Dimon’s interests.

The list consists of fellow CEOs, official JPMorgan Chase accounts and those of the competition, fellow billionaire Marc Andreesen’s blog, a Dimon daughter, and of course, the inevitable Steven Pinker, prophet of rich-people hooey.

Of course, it’s possible that we’ve actually just stumbled upon the world’s only Dimon family/big bank/CEO superfan who managed to trick several people close to Jamie Dimon into accepting follow requests and who somehow succeeded in getting on Aaron Levie’s radar—in addition to gaining two JPMorgan-related followers after I reached out to the company. But barring this unlikely series of coincidences, it would certainly seem we’re dealing with none other than Jamie Dimon himself.

A spokesman for J.P. Morgan declined to comment, and though Dimon’s daughter, Laura, has seen my request for comment according to Twitter’s read receipts, I have yet to hear back.

I’ll update if and when that changes. But until then, I will see you all again on Saturday.

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Welcome, cherished and esteemed Trashberg readers, to the first locked version of your Friday (and occasionally Saturday) Trashbag. I have a very stupid but fun little treat for you today, and it involves everyone’s favorite spiraling scion—that’s right—Don Jr.

It’s no secret that Donald Trump’s namesake liked to have a good time as a student at the Uni…

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Because I’m currently working on a more intensive Trashberg investigation that should (hopefully) be ready next week, today we’re just going to look at a quick little phenomenon that I’ve admired for years now. But first, we must remember the time that David Cameron (allegedly) put his dick in a dead pig.

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The year is 2015. Barack Obama is president, Donald Trump is little more than a sideshow candidate, and the single greatest collection of words ever to grace Wikipedia (seen below) has yet to be deleted by the Philistines it calls editors.

We were living in a golden age, ignorant and unconcerned with all that would eventually come to pass. But then the Daily Mail told us that a college-aged David Cameron had put his penis inside the mouth of a decapitated pig’s head. The revelation came as part of an excerpt from an unauthorized biography of Cameron by former Conservative Party deputy chair Lord Michael Ashcroft and journalist Isabel Oakeshott:

A distinguished Oxford contemporary claims Cameron once took part in an outrageous initiation ceremony at a Piers Gaveston event, involving a dead pig. His extraordinary suggestion is that the future PM inserted a private part of his anatomy into the animal’s mouth.

The authors go on to say that this source, “himself an MP,” repeated the allegation at least three times, adding that he claims to have seen a photograph and that the pig’s head “had been resting on the lap of a Piers Gaveston society member while Cameron performed the act.” For those unfamiliar with the Piers Gaveston Society, Sick Note author and British friend of Trashberg Libby Watson offers some helpful context:

The University of Oxford, founded as early as 1096, is Britain’s oldest and most elite university. With that prestige, and with Britain’s intensely ridiculous aristocratic traditions, comes the existence of several secretive and exclusive societies—think Yale’s Skull and Bones but with perhaps more focus on getting totally sloshed. These groups pride themselves on frightfully naughty behavior: drinking, taking drugs, trashing pubs, and generally reveling in the excess and protection that extreme wealth and privilege provide. […] And supposedly the Piers Gaveston society (or “Piers Gav”) is one of the most depraved of the lot. 

Now, whether there was any sort of thrusting on Cameron’s part, or if he simply placed his penis inside the mouth of the dead farm animal resting on his friend’s lap only to stand perfectly still as his peers looked on in silence, remains unclear. Also unclear is whether or not anything about this story is actually true. There seems to be at least some reason to believe the book is an act of revenge, though the journalist who co-wrote the biography with Lord Ashcroft claimed otherwise. And there’s also no definitive proof that Cameron ever belonged to the Piers Gaveston Society. But as with most things online, the truth of it all matters less than the fact that, for a solid week at least, millions of people were imagining David Cameron’s penis in the mouth of a dead pig. The unusual part here, though, is that the story has lived on in Cameron’s Twitter replies. People there have faithfully carried the pig-shagging torch for the past six years and show no signs of ever putting it down.

In the immediate aftermath of the story, Cameron was unable to tweet without receiving constant, increasingly profane reminders of his alleged pork porking. That’s to be expected. But even just this month, when David Cameron tweeted his condolences upon the death of Prince Philip…

…his dedicated followers responded with this.

Here’s Dave mourning the death of conservative MP Cheryl Gillan:

And here are Dave’s followers, mourning that poor, possibly apocryphal pig:

Look, David Cameron got vaccinated!

Everyone is very excited for our friend David.

David Cameron, clearly not one to shy away from somber tweets, commemorates Holocaust Memorial Day.

And his followers dutifully commemorate David Cameron’s commemoration of Holocaust memorial day.

David Cameron encourages citizens to vote:

Citizens encourage David Cameron to get fucked:

David Cameron discusses Alzheimer’s research:

And staying on theme, users decide to jog his memory:

Since the day the Daily Mail article broke, Cameron has not been able to craft a single tweet that didn’t elicit jubilant replies about pig fucking.

And while a number replies come from Americans eager to get in on the fun, many more are unmistakably, aggressively British.

So as you go about your day, I urge you to take time to appreciate the dedication and fury of the brave posters who take it upon themselves day in and day out to remind the former prime minister that, as far as the people are concerned, David Cameron’s only other legacy besides profoundly fucking over the UK is that, once in college, he allegedly put his dick inside of a dead pig’s mouth.

And with that, I will see you all again tomorrow with the first locked edition of Friday Trashbag.

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Hello, friends, and welcome to the last unlocked edition of the Friday (and sometimes Saturday) Trashbag. Starting next week, these posts will be exclusive to paying subscribers. Non-Trashbag posts will for the most part remain open to all. That said, if there’s anything nightmarish enough to get me shunned from polite society should any sane person read it, there’s a decent chance I will be locking that as well. So, my grotesque-loving friends, get it while it’s hot.

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Now, earlier this week we looked at Don Jr.’s increasingly manic post-First Son life on Rumble.com, the new conservative virtual darling. And since the comment section on Rumble is, at least for the time being, perhaps the last truly earnest place left online, I thought we could all take some time this weekend to bask in its various delights.

Self-care really is so important. So, please, enjoy.

In response to a video in which Don Jr. credits the success of vaccines to his father

In response to a video about people making fun of him on Twitter

In response to a video about Ted Cruz going to Cancún

Aliens

Did you hear about the aliens? There’s aliens.

Now, I’ve had a lot of people try to tell me that this video merely depicts “drones” or “perfectly explainable phenomena, if you will simply read this article explaining it.” Guess what? Not gonna read that article, you fucking nerd. It’s the aliens, and they are here for their alloys. Give the aliens their alloys!

Guess the mouth

How quickly things change. Whereas last week I found myself delighted to discover so many esteemed Trashberg readers had such a deep familiarity with John Cornyn’s mouth, I’m afraid this week I feel only shame. The number of people who thought the below tongue belonged to Mitch McConnell was simply astounding. This little guy belongs to our very own Chuck Schumer.

Mitch McConnell’s mouth is a bizarre purple-and-yellow–encrusted portal to the abyss that you will know when you see, I assure you. But for now, let’s put all that behind us.

Reader, please guess the mouth.

Now, because I do want you all to succeed, I will tell you that this mouth belongs to a current U.S. senator. And godspeed.

Let’s give away some money, shall we?

Substack’s editor is informing me that I’m nearing Gmail’s cutoff point, so before we wrap things up, it’s time to start deciding where we’ll be sending our 15 percent of subscriber fees.

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You can read more about how this works here, and let me know down below how you think this money should best be spent. We’ll vote on the winner next week. Until then, I leave with you this, from the beloved Don Jr. video “Is Biden's Dog Just Following His Rules?”

Keep your eyes 👁️open👁️, and I will see you next week.

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Where Trump Sr. seems to be thriving in his post-presidential life, Don Jr., who no longer has a role to fulfill as dad’s Number One Hype Man, is flailing. His social media posts have grown increasingly desperate as he hops from platform to platform in an apparent attempt to recapture some of that former First Son magic.

There’s Triller, which Don Jr. described as an alternative to TikTok, where (according to Junior) “the Chinese government could be turning on your kids’ camera, turning on your kids’ video, listening in and turning on their mic at any time.” He was on that one for just over a month. His final video was a complaint about Instagram:

A few days after Biden’s inauguration, Don Jr. announced that he was now going to start using Telegram. “Big Tech Censorship is getting worse,” he tweeted. “And if these Tyrants banned my father, the President of the United States, who won’t they ban?” Well, him, for one. But that didn’t stop him from abandoning Telegram after about a month and moving on to my new personal favorite platform: Rumble.

In the same way that Parler has become the mainstream conservative alternative to Twitter, Rumble has become the video platform of choice for a very specific corner of the right. After YouTube demonetized Steven Crowder’s channel (he’s now back) and select PragerU videos, conservatives started crying censorship, and some, like Sebastian Gorka, started using the platform to post whatever bullshit it is they do when they’re not trying to sell pills to your grandparents. Rumble even pays $100 per video to users who manage to make it to the front page, and thanks to the “vlog” section, Don Jr. does indeed appear to be occasionally eligible for some pocket change.

Now, before we get too deep into the evolution of Junior’s voice, we need to set a baseline. Here is a Don Jr. interview from 2016. This is more or less how he sounded throughout his father’s time in office:

But somehow, Don Jr. went from what you see and hear above, to this:

Junior’s voice has traveled to the snowy hinterlands of the sinuses, where it has acquired a huskier but more nasal character, leaving him sounding like a particularly maladjusted muppet. Or like his dad. This is about as explicit of a Trump impersonation as you can get without throwing on a wig (notwithstanding Junior’s inability to fully open his eyes or gain control of his jaw).

So what accounts for the change in this swollen lad of 43? In his first Telegram video (seen below), Don Jr. does still sound roughly as he had sounded in the past. But at around 15 seconds in, one can start to hear the faintest hints of his father’s speech patterns.

It’s a much more subdued version of the all-purpose “impression voice” we see Trump employing here.

Nothing too out of the ordinary, really, and it’d be insignificant on its own, if not for all that has followed. I’ve conducted a careful examination of Don Jr.’s social media output, and I can report that, over the past two and a half months, Junior has been on a journey to mold himself into the father he’d always wanted. Beginning almost immediately after Joe Biden’s inauguration—or just two days after he lost any remaining utility he might have had to the Trump name—Don Jr. transformed into this:

The real question, of course, is whether Don Jr. is actively trying to emulate his dad, or if this increasingly alarming performance is subconscious. We have evidence that Junior keeps a close eye on any new footage of Dad that might pop up.

And based on the enthusiasm with which he relays his father’s mumbled assurances to an unknown man in passing, we can safely assume that viewing this stranger’s footage is the most substantial interaction Don Jr. has had with his dad in some time.

Whether it’s intentional or subconscious, only Junior truly knows the answer. The rest of us are left with the conclusion that this would be a poignant story if it didn’t involve so many assholes.

Before we close this chapter of Trashberg, I would like to return briefly to Rumble. Though the site itself consists almost entirely of deranged right-wing rants sandwiched between viral videos of dogs licking each other’s genitals, Rumble does have one, extra-special thing going for it: the purest, most engrossing comment section I have ever seen. In order to comment on Rumble, you have to be both willing to make an account and aware that Rumble exists in the first place. This of course discounts the vast majority of Don Jr.’s ill-wishers, meaning that the only people engaging with his videos are the absolute diehards. As far as I can tell, not even the slightest trace of irony has ever desecrated this most sacred of spaces.

Truly, we are all blessed to have ever laid eyes on such a thing.

Absolutely nailed ’em.

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Before we get going, we must say goodbye to the man who once asked Australian Aborigines if they “still throw spears at each other.”

The man who once asked Obama if he can “tell the difference between” world leaders.

And who, upon meeting a wealthy Cayman Island resident, asked, “Aren’t most of you descended from pirates?”

Here he is driving just months after surrendering his license for hitting a car carrying a mother and her baby.

The scamp!

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Mailbag

What’s a newsletter without some reader dialogue? Every week, I’ll be answering a few questions from Trashberg subscribers. You can ask me anything—advice, hypotheticals, whether I think Jared Kushner has ever seen Trump naked, the only limit is your own imagination. If you’ve got a question, you can send it to trashbag@trashberg.com. I’m here to help.

Matthew:

Which members of Congress do you think Matt Gaetz was showing off his girlfriend’s nudes to, if that particular story is true?

This is actually a harder question to answer than it might seem. But first, for those unfamiliar with this particular set of allegations, the CNN report from earlier this month:

Gaetz allegedly showed off to other lawmakers photos and videos of nude women he said he had slept with, the sources told CNN, including while on the House floor. The sources, including two people directly shown the material, said Gaetz displayed the images of women on his phone and talked about having sex with them. One of the videos showed a naked woman with a hula hoop, according to one source.

The most likely suspect is, of course, Jim Jordan. Just look at these two pals.

Countless photos exist of them chatting, whispering, giggling, and otherwise having times they’ll always remember with the friends they’ll never forget.

Very cute.

Next up, we have our beloved Bros Caucus, which we know counted campaign finance fraud bad boy Duncan Hunter as a member (though he’s since resigned). And considering Hunter’s history of enjoying at least one vice on the House floor, it’s hard to imagine him saying no to Matt shoving a few nudes in his face.

Here’s where we run into an issue. According to recent reports, Matt Gaetz doesn’t actually have that many friends at his day job. As it turns out, being an enormous asshole and living in the Fox News greenroom doesn’t actually win you a ton of allies. And considering the fact that this bit of alleged info got leaked to the press in the first place, all signs point to the possibility that Gaetz was showing pretty much whoever just happened to be there. In which case, sure, this seems about right:

Adam writes:

What is your Mount Rushmore of people who should be unbanned from Twitter for the sake of comedy?

I’m not proud of this, but there are times when I wish Donald Trump were still on Twitter. For instance, had Trump been on Twitter when the Matt Gaetz investigation news first hit, there’s an 85 percent chance he would have said something in support of Matt that implicated in him at least a few federal crimes. That said, I really do think his removal has vastly improved the country’s general well-being. Bill Mitchell, however, was a perfect Twitter foil. There was not a single thing in the world this man didn’t have an opinion on.

The flaws in conventional global warming wisdom? Check.

The lies told to us by astrophysicists? Check.

Diarrhea as it relates to reparations? Check.

Jews? Absolutely a check.

And of course, anyone capable of creating tweets of this caliber should get a lifetime pass on the site.

Free Krassenstein. Free Bill. Free our nation.

James writes:

Last night while giggling about Matt Gaetz and wondering how large his dumb face is, I tried to find a picture of him wearing a hat. I could not find any pictures, and I'm fairly certain that it is because no hats are made to fit his Glen Quagmire head. Even if he had like a custom Florida Failson University hat made, I'm convinced that he would still look like a fucking goober. So, my question is, can you find a picture of Matt Gaetz wearing a hat?

As far as I can tell, Matt Gaetz has worn a hat precisely four times.

In June of 2017, he posted this photo to his Facebook page.

In 2019, he traveled to the Arizona. Always one to look the part, he donned this bad boy.

And in the Daily Mail’s article about the big Nestor reveal, we see Matt in two different hats in photos that the Mail claims came from his Instagram account. For whatever reason, those photos no longer seem to exist. Where’d the photos go, Matt?

Screenshots I took this week and can’t remember why

Guess the mouth

Guess the mouth is a game in which you, the Trashberg subscriber, attempt to guess which nationally known political figure owns that week’s mouth. Answers will be revealed the following Friday.

Somehow, multiple of you managed to guess that last week’s mouth belongs to none other than Texas Sen. John Cornyn. Every one of you should be ashamed and I couldn’t be prouder.

Now, without further ado: Reader, guess the mouth.

Open thread (for paying subscribers):

I know it’s late, but I’ll be back here periodically throughout tomorrow to chat and just generally shoot the shit. Comments for this will only be open to paying subscribers, because even my own masochism has its limits. So come on by if you want to chat. Otherwise, have a wonderful weekend, and I’ll see you all next week.

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One more note: I’ll be asking for suggestions on what to do with this month’s subscriber revenue next week, so start thinking. The only rule is that it has to be something that makes the world just a little less bad.