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Posted on Substack on January 16, 2026
Hey folks, back with another round of things that caught my attention last week. Fair warning: this one starts with some government branding that’ll make your eyes roll, but stick with me—there’s actually some good tech news mixed in.
Trump’s Government Branding Spree
If you’ve been paying attention to .gov domains lately, you’ve probably noticed something... unusual. Trump has been slapping his name on everything from prescription drug websites to immigration programs to actual federal buildings. There’s TrumpRx.gov (a prescription drug price comparison site), TrumpAccounts.gov ($1,000 government-funded savings accounts for kids born 2025-2028), and the Trump Gold Card (pay $15,000 processing fee plus $1-2 million to fast-track your U.S. residency).
But wait, there’s more. He’s renamed the U.S. Institute of Peace to the “Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace” and—this is the one that really got people fired up—changed the Kennedy Center to “The Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.” You know, the building that Congress named after JFK in 1964, after his assassination. That one.
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The Kennedy Center board (mostly Trump appointees) claims the vote was unanimous. Rep. Joyce Beatty, a board member, says that’s a lie—she was muted when she tried to speak during the virtual meeting, and participants weren’t allowed to voice concerns. You can’t call a vote “unanimous” when you literally silence the people who disagree.
The renaming may actually be illegal. As other Democratic members of Congress pointed out, “Federal law established the Center as a memorial to President Kennedy and prohibits changing its name without Congressional action.” That hasn’t stopped them from putting up new signage on the building anyway.
I was disgusted to learn they renamed the Kennedy Center by adding his name. It will always be the JFK Center for the Performing Arts to me.
Changing your Email Address
Speaking of things I’ve wanted forever, Google is finally—FINALLY—letting people change their Gmail addresses. For years, if you were stuck with cooldude2006@gmail.com or xXxGamerGirlxXx@gmail.com, your only option was to create an entirely new account and manually transfer everything. Now Google is rolling out a feature that lets you change your @gmail.com address to a new @gmail.com address while keeping all your data, photos, emails, Drive files—everything.
Your old address doesn’t disappear—it becomes a secondary address. Messages sent to your original email will still land in your inbox, and you can use either the old or new address to log into Google services. There are some guardrails: you can change your address only 3 times total, and once you change it, you have to wait 12 months before you can create another address. The feature is rolling out gradually (it first appeared on Google’s Hindi support pages), so not everyone has access yet.
I checked to see if it’s rolled out to my account yet. It hasn’t. Still waiting.
I've been wanting this for YEARS. My current email address looks ridiculous, and I've been too lazy to move everything over. This is brilliant—why didn't they think of this sooner?
“Slop” Named Word of the Year
Speaking of digital nonsense, Merriam-Webster named “slop” as its 2025 Word of the Year. It’s their term for low-quality digital junk churned out by AI—think absurd videos, weird AI-generated ads, fake news that looks convincing, garbage AI-written books, and yes, lots of talking cats.
The word’s been around since the 1700s, when it described soft, muddy ground. By the 1800s, it referred to kitchen scraps fed to animals, and eventually it came to mean trash or something worthless. Now it’s the perfect word for the flood of AI-generated garbage clogging up our social media feeds. As Merriam-Webster put it: “The word sends a little message to AI: when it comes to replacing human creativity, sometimes you don’t seem too superintelligent.”
I appreciate that we’ve landed on a term that’s more mocking than fearful. “Slop” perfectly captures the wet, unpleasant, oozing-into-everything quality of low-quality AI content. It’s everywhere, it’s annoying, and somehow people keep eating it up anyway.
The Chicks Open a Chic Laundomat
On a lighter note, Emily Strayer from The Chicks just opened the chicest laundromat I’ve ever seen. It’s called SOAP Laundry Lounge, and it’s in San Antonio. Picture this: 28 washers and 36 dryers with hospital-grade sanitization technology, a full coffee bar serving espresso drinks and pastries, free WiFi, and an interior designed by an Austin firm with natural materials, warm colors, and bubble-inspired details. It’s basically a coworking space where you can also do your laundry.
Strayer and her husband bought the building as a long-term investment in their adopted hometown. She says she got the idea from laundromat/coffee shop combos she saw in New York and wanted to bring that concept to San Antonio. The space accepts EBT cards, offers wash-and-fold service starting at $4 per wash, and genuinely looks like somewhere you’d want to hang out rather than a grimy place you’d avoid if you could.
I ♥️ this idea! I used to go to a laundromat when I was young, living in DC, and I dreaded carrying my laundry bag about 10 blocks to get there. That was no fun. And what's more, when I'd finally arrive, there was nothing but laundromat machines—I had to sit there for a couple of hours with nothing to do. What if I wanted a latte while waiting for the laundry to dry? It’s really cool that they have a coffee cafe in a laundromat. Why didn't we think of that? It would be a good business, don't you agree?
Laundry is one of those necessary evils that nobody enjoys—68% of young adults say they dread doing it because it’s time-consuming or they hate specific parts of the process, like folding. So why not make it pleasant? Give people decent coffee, good lighting, comfortable seating, and suddenly it’s not just a chore—it’s an excuse to get out of the house and maybe catch up on work or read a book while your clothes tumble. This is the kind of small-business investment in community spaces we need more of.
The End of U.S. Penny
And finally, the U.S. Mint officially stopped making pennies. After 232 years of production—the first penny🪙was minted in Philadelphia in 1793—U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach pressed the button on the last circulating pennies in November. Trump ordered the Mint to stop production back in February because pennies cost 3.86 cents each to make, which is obviously terrible economics.
There are still 300 billion pennies in circulation (that’s about $3 billion worth), so they’re not disappearing overnight. They remain legal tender. But no new ones are being made, which is already causing problems for retailers who don’t have enough change and are having to round prices to the nearest nickel.
Some of the final pennies minted were auctioned off in December. One set sold for $800,000, another for $180,000, and in total, the final pennies sold for nearly $17 million.
The last small-change coin the U.S. canceled before this was the half-cent in 1857. The U.S. isn't alone—Canada ditched its penny in 2012, and Australia and New Zealand eliminated their 1- and 2-cent coins back in the early 1990s. Killing penny production is estimated to save about $56 million a year, which isn't nothing. Still, there's something bittersweet about the end of the penny. It was the first American coin to feature a president (Lincoln, in 1909), and it's been a fixture of American life for over two centuries. Now it joins the half-cent in the coin jar of history.
See you in the next one.