So far, the strongest pushback against the rapid, chaotic cuts and changes being made by the Trump administration has happened in courtrooms, and tangentially, in protests at Tesla dealerships. But on Saturday, things will be different. 

“Hands Off!” protest rallies are scheduled for cities across the country on Saturday. Local grassroots organizations and bigger activist groups like Indivisible and MoveOn arranged rallies in all 50 states, and Democrats Abroad will host a Hands Off! rally in Toulouse, France. 

Indivisible lists 17 rallies in 16 cities around Iowa on Saturday, including two in Des Moines.

“Since his inauguration, Donald Trump has launched an unprecedented power grab — driving up prices, slashing funding for essential programs, and creating instability at every turn,” Johnson County Indivisible Iowa and MoveOn, organizers of the Iowa City protest, said in a news release. “Enabled by Elon Musk and Republicans in Congress, his corrupt agenda is making life harder for everyday Americans while eroding our democracy. We can’t afford to wait any longer to fight back.”

The Iowa City Hands Off! is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday. Most of the other rallies are happening at approximately that time, but the 90-minute rally in Ames starts earlier, at 10 a.m. The rallies in Red Oak, Windsor Heights and Fairfield aren’t scheduled to begin until 2 p.m., and the hour-long rally in Keokuk won’t start until 3:30 p.m.

Fairfield’s rally at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds will also incorporate a town hall to which Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks has been invited. Organizers say they “will hold the town hall with or without her” and it will feature “a panel of speakers discussing the community and state-wide impacts of the policies supported by Miller-Meeks.” 

Organizers in Cedar Rapids and Windsor Heights have posted the time for their rallies, only sharing the locations with those who register through the Indivisible site. 

“This mass mobilization day is our message to the world that we do not consent to the destruction of our government and our economy for the benefit of Trump and his billionaire allies,” the Indivisible registration page says. 

Hands Off! rallies in Iowa, April 5, 2025

• Ames: Bandshell Park (125 E 5th St), 10-11:30 a.m.
• Cedar Rapids: Location provided after registration, noon-2 p.m.
• Davenport: Friends of MLK Park and Interpretive Center (501 N Brady St), 11 a.m.-1 p.m. 
• Decorah: Mary Christopher Park (E Water St), noon-1:30 p.m. 
• Des Moines: Outside the office of Rep. Zach Nunn (400 Locust St), noon-2 p.m. 
• Des Moines: Franklin Avenue Library (5000 Franklin Ave), 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. 
• Dubuque: Washington Park (700 Locust St), noon-1 p.m. 
• Fairfield: Cambridge Learning Center, Jefferson County Fairgrounds (2606 W Burlington Ave), 2-4 p.m. — includes a town hall
• Lisbon: Lincoln Square Park (135 W Main St), noon-1:30 p.m.
• Keokuk: Lee County Courthouse (25 N 7th St), 3:30-4:30 p.m.
• Maquoketa: Glovik Park Greenspace (199 S Main St), noon-1 p.m.
• Mason City: City Hall parking lot (10 1st St NW), 12:30-3 p.m. 
• Mount Vernon: First Street Community Center (221 1st St W NE), noon-1:30 p.m.
• Red Oak: Legion Park (Broadway at Cherry St), 2-3 p.m.
• Vinton: Benton County Courthouse (111 E 4th St #4), noon-3 p.m. 
• Waterloo: Lincoln Park (401 E 4th St), 1:30-3 p.m. 
• Windsor Heights: Location provided after registration, 2-4 p.m.

One of my favorite Disney YouTubers digs deep into the similarities between two Star Wars rides and whether the new one is intended to "replace" the old one.

Disneyland's Star Tours is a fantastic ride. Over the years, I have loved its many, many iterations. — Read the rest

The post I pick Star Tours over Smuggler's Run every time appeared first on Boing Boing.

Hi friends! I am so excited to announce It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton, my new podcast. Our first episode drops on March 26th.

This idea emerged from my creative self the same way that Tabletop did. It spung, fully-formed, into my face when my friend who has been writing since we were in high school told me that he had finally been published.

I was so excited for him, and I loved his story so much, I thought it would be cool to narrate it for him, one friend to another, in celebration of something that’s been such a long time coming. As I pulled my mic out of the closet, and opened up Audacity to do one of my signature DIY, lo-fi thingies, a voice in my head said, “Hey, man. I think this could be the basis of a podcast. Hear me out: you’re a respected and acclaimed narrator. What if you looked for new works from great authors who haven’t yet found their audience, and narrated them? What if you used the privilege you have earned to help boost other people’s creative voices and careers?”

This was a good idea, I thought. But I didn’t know that anyone else would agree, so I attempted to tackle it entirely on my own.

Two miserable, frustrating months later, I concluded that I am not cut out to be a slush reader, or a content editor, and if I was going to move this from idea to thing, I needed help. So I asked some friends who had relevant experience, and built an all-star creative and technical team to do all the things I couldn’t, which allowed me to focus on narrating the stories, which is the part of this I know how to do.

I’m going to yadda yadda over the next year, which was marked by starts and stops, enormous technical challenges, and lots of very good work that kept me going through all of it, and jump ahead to last summer, at the Burbank airport departure terminal A.

I was there with LeVar Burton, waiting to board our flight to a convention.

LeVar had just finished his podcast, which I loved and listened to regularly. When I went looking for a similar podcast to replace it, I couldn’t find one that checked all the boxes that his did … and that’s when I realized I was making the podcast I wanted to hear, profoundly inspired by him and all of his work. I absolutely wasn’t going to move forward without his blessing; he’s family and I’m not going to step on his toes.

So I told him all about it, and asked him if he was cool with it.

To my utter delight, he was as excited about it as I am, and he encouraged me the way a loving parent or family member encourages their kid to follow their dream. Even if this podcast doesn’t find its audience, and only lasts one season, that moment will stay with me for the rest of my life.

I’ve been doing lots of press, and I’ll share those links when they are released. For now, I’d love for you to see the video I made of myself recording the trailer that dropped today:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Wil Wheaton (he/him) (@itswilwheaton)

Here’s everything you need to know, copied from my official podcast page:

You may recognize Wil Wheaton’s name from his acting work in television shows like The Big Bang Theory, Leverage, and Star Trek: The Next Generation, or 1985’s timeless classic, Stand By Me. You may recognize his voice from one of the many audio books he’s narrated, including number one New York Times bestseller, Ready Player One, John Scalzi’s award-winning Collapsing Empire Trilogy, or even his own bestselling memoir, Still Just A Geek.

Now, Wil brings you It’s Storytime, with Wil Wheaton, a weekly audiobook podcast, featuring stories that Wil loves, pulled from the pages of Uncanny, Lightspeed, On Spec, and others. You’re going to meet authors you don’t yet know you love, including some who are being narrated for the very first time. Listeners will travel through time, meet some gods, watch people fall in and out of love, and more, brought to life by Wil’s remarkable narrative voice.

It’s Story Time With Wil Wheaton is available wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every Wednesday, beginning March 26.

Subscribe now at

• Apple Podcasts
• Stitcher
• Spotify
• Pandora
• iHeart
• Amazon

I hope you’re as excited about this as I am, and I hope you’ll help me let other people who would enjoy this, know that it exists. The easy part was narrating all these stories and writing all the stuff that went with it; the hard part is helping it reach its audience.

I’ll be checking comments for the next few hours, if you have any questions.

I suck at mornings, so it was kind of rough to get up earlier than usual so I could make it to KTLA to be on the morning news. But I was so excited to be there, and so excited my new podcast was finally out in the world, I practically jumped out of bed when the alarm went off.

Two cups of coffee and one surprisingly smooth commute into Hollywood later, I made a post on Instagram while I was in the Sam Rubin green room:

I’ve been on national and international broadcasts. Once, I was the guy BBC World Service went to for the governor election when Schwarzenegger ran the first time. True story!

But I’m one of those kids who loved the local news when I was growing up. It felt like something everyone watched and talked about. I don’t know if that persists in the current media landscape, but being invited to KTLA to talk about It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton is a very big deal for me, easily as exciting and meaningful (maybe a little moreso) than all of that other stuff. While I wait to go on my inner child is doing zoomies while I do my best to maintain decorum in the green room.

It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton dropped today, and you can find it wherever you get your podcasts.

I had a fantastic time while I was there. I felt more comfortable, more focused, more present than I expected. I always get nervous and I always feel like I’m a beat behind the action because a big part of my attention is burned on tracking reactions — how much am I fucking up? — than it is on just enjoying the moment.

I did this thing where I reminded myself that I was invited, that I deserved to be there, and the thing I was there to promote is genuinely a good thing that I worked hard to make, so it’s totally cool to feel proud and enjoy talking about it. I even mostly listened to myself!

They were so wonderful to me. I have had interviews with people who are obviously just doing their jobs, who aren’t interested in me or what I’m talking about beyond whatever their producer prepped for them. This wasn’t that, at all. All of the anchors at the desk were just lovely! They were genuinely interested in me before the segment started (crazy, since they have so much on their minds and so much pressure being live) and stayed that way until I was finished. I was totally floored by how welcomed and celebrated I felt.

Can anyone else see how the news team is like YO THIS IS GREAT while my posture is just DONT FUCK UP WIL BE COOL AND STAND THERE LIKE A NORMAL PERSON MAKE SURE YOUR POSTURE IS GOOD SO NOBODY LAUGHS AT YOU ugh. I will eventually be able to pose like a human in one of these pictures, I promise.

Anyway, I had a blast. The producer who took these pictures (I lost her name; sorry she was lovely) told me my segment would be online, and when it is, I’ll link to it. EDIT: Here it is! https://ktla.com/video/wil-wheaton-describes-recording-his-own-podcast/10573518/

Late yesterday afternoon, one of my friends told me they loved the episode, and asked me how I was feeling. I tried to nail down and describe all the complex emotions (many of them conflicting) roiling around inside of me, and I settled on something like this: You don’t celebrate winning the game because you got a single in the first inning that didn’t even get a run across, but you absolutely celebrate your first single of the season, and hope that it’s one of the many things you need to do to eventually win the game. All the while, you try to find a way to enjoy the game, because playing the game is so much fun (and it’s what you’ve dreamed about doing forever), while also taking the job of playing the game seriously. There’s a LOT of game left, but our starter is looking great and the bat just feels very comfortable in my hands today, and I’m doing my best to stay out of my own head and just see the ball. I’m not even thinking about the stuff that’s out of my control. Yet.

It’s incomplete and imperfect, but so am I, so that’s what you get.

But for now, I just wanted everyone to know that my first episode, an absolutely magnificent story by the wonderful Caroline M Yoachim, is just a podcast, standing in front of an audience, asking them to listen to it.

Enormous thanks and gratitude to all of you who have listened, rated and reviewed, and told your friends. I wouldn’t have gotten on base without you, and you’re going to be a huge part of why I score any runs.

Two bits of business before I elbow and send.

First, the subscribe to my blog emails thingy:

And finally, the obligatory collection of links to subscribe to It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton:

Subscribe now at

• Apple Podcasts
• PocketCast
• Stitcher
• Spotify
• Pandora
• iHeart
• Amazon
• or grab the RSS directly from me right here.

Thanks for reading, everyone. I’m grateful for the opportunity to entertain you. It is a privilege that I do not take for granted.

A few days ago I was at the bookstore and Vicky asked if I’d seen the duck someone had left me as a gift and I was like, “Is it dead? Because I’m running low on space for taxidermy” and she was like, “Of course it’s dead, but also I think you’re going to wantContinue reading "Unexpected gifts"

"I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library," wrote Jorge Luis Borges.

I've visited NYC's Morgan Library & Museum, above, and it is most certainly paradisiacal. Smithsonian magazine has shared many others in this collection and I want to collect them all! — Read the rest

The post These are the world's most breathtaking libraries appeared first on Boing Boing.