Office satirist makes final unexpected layoff
Also AI scrapers violate breakroom rules.

Mandatory Reading: Dilbert Creator Scott Adams Files Final Expense Report

It is with a sense of weary administrative duty that we must acknowledge the passing of cartoonist Scott Adams, the person who probably kept more middle managers sane than any corporate wellness initiative ever could. Mr. Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, passed away yesterday due to complications from prostate cancer, a disease that is, statistically speaking, less soul-crushing than a five-hour budget meeting. The news was confirmed via multiple channels, including an official report from USA Today.

Dilbert's legacy is essentially a four-panel, decades-long systems audit of white-collar incompetence, where the failure of bureaucracy was always the punchline, not the tragedy. Now, the main archivist of our collective cubicle despair is gone, leaving the rest of us to deal with the pointy-haired boss and the dysfunctional printer with no spiritual guidance whatsoever. HR is currently drafting a mandatory "grief and professional development" seminar, which will, naturally, be scheduled during the one hour you had blocked out for focused work. Please ensure all your TPS reports are filed correctly before attending this mandatory acknowledgement of life's ultimate inefficiency.

The Digital Art Department Puts Up a "Wet Paint" Sign

In a move that should surprise absolutely no one who has ever dealt with a high-volume, low-effort corporate email alias, the music platform Bandcamp is taking steps to curb the tidal wave of automatically generated content. Apparently, the digital music equivalent of spam emails is now so prevalent that AI generated music is being barred from the site. This whole situation is essentially the breakroom being shut down because too many people were using the free coffee machine to brew instant soup.

Bandcamp's issue is not with the technology itself; it is with the volume. The new AIs, like a fresh batch of college interns, are generating so much garbage that the system cannot tell the difference between actual human effort and noise. One commenter pointed out that the new AI music model is basically a "content factory designed to extract micro-pennies from Spotify streams," which is a depressingly efficient business model. It is a necessary administrative step to re-establish the platform's commitment to artists, or at least, to anything that required a heartbeat and a second thought.

Apple Mandates Creativity Hour on the Company Calendar

Apple has announced the "Apple Creator Studio," which is less a physical space and more a vague collection of software and resources designed to, quote, "inspire a new generation of creative professionals." In short, the company is now officially mandating that employees be inspired. The newsroom announcement frames this as a revolutionary step, but it reads more like a corporate memo announcing a mandatory, after-hours ceramics class.

The whole project is just another layer of abstract branding on top of the same set of software tools that have always existed. It is the company's attempt to gently nudge its users toward "prosumer" status, which is tech jargon for "pay more for our professional software because you might eventually use a feature you currently do not understand." Meanwhile, the core user base is just trying to stop the Photos app from automatically creating a commemorative slideshow of that one time they accidentally took twenty pictures of their foot.

Briefs

• Corporate Altruism: Anthropic invested $1.5M in the Python Software Foundation. This is likely a tax write-off or a low-key apology for whatever proprietary code they trained their AI on; either way, the Foundation probably needed new chairs.
• Image Format Feature Creep: Chromium merged JpegXL. Great, just another image format for your local systems administrator to begrudgingly support and another ten minutes of loading time on the internal corporate SharePoint page.
• New Visa Requirements: Influencers and OnlyFans models are dominating U.S. O-1 visa requests. Apparently, the "Extraordinary Ability" category now correctly recognizes the true market value of personal branding and knowing your angles. Real software engineers must now be listed as "supporting staff."