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Bill and Melinda French Gates were married for 27 years before they finalized their divorce in August 2021. They had three children together, Jennifer, 27, Phoebe, 22, and Rory, 25. It was messy, and there were a lot of dramatic revelations about Bill that came out during those months in between when Melinda filed and their divorce was finalized. No one knows the exact figure, but Melinda ended up getting several billion dollars as a part of their settlement, which includes billions in stock.

Post-divorce, Melinda has continued with her philanthropy through her foundation, Pivotal Ventures. She’s also been a vocal critic of Donald Trump. In late 2022, she started dating reporter Jon Du Pre, but their relationship ended sometime earlier this year. It looks like she has a new man now, though! On Wednesday, Melinda was spotted in New York City, holding hands with her new boyfriend, an entrepreneur named Philip Vaughn, who founded a craft beer delivery service in 2011. One other fun fact about Philip: he worked for Microsoft for almost nine years in the early 2000’s.

The 60-year-old philanthropist, who divorced billionaire Bill Gates in 2021, was seen holding hands with her new boyfriend, entrepreneur Philip Vaughn, in photos exclusively obtained by Page Six.

The couple was snapped getting off a helicopter ride in New York City Wednesday morning with Vaughn exiting first and Melinda following close behind. The pair then walked hand-in-hand before getting into an awaiting SUV.

For the outing, Melinda wore dark-colored pants and a short-sleeved overcoat. She completed the look with a floral scarf around her neck and a pair of sneakers. Meanwhile, Vaughn sported an Army green T-shirt under a blue sweater and dark-colored pants.

According to Vaughn’s LinkedIn profile, he worked at Microsoft — the company Melinda’s ex-husband, Bill, co-founded, for nearly nine years. He is also the founder and chairman of Tavour, a craft beer delivery service, which was started in 2011.

Melinda’s new relationship comes three years after she and Bill, 69, announced and finalized their divorce. During a March 2022 interview with “CBS Morning,” the mom of three revealed that the tech giant’s relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as well as his affairs, played a role in their split.

“I did not like that he had meetings with Jeffrey Epstein, no. I made that clear to him,” she shared with Gayle King before adding that she met Epstein, who died by suicide in jail in August 2019, “exactly one time” because she “wanted to see who this man was.”

“I regretted it the second I walked in the door,” she explained. “He was abhorrent. He was evil personified. My heart breaks for these women.”

Bill also had a lengthy affair with one of his Microsoft staffers in 2019. However, Melinda said she and her ex had moved past his indiscretion before their divorce.

“I certainly believe in forgiveness, so I thought we had worked through some of that,” she explained to King.

“It wasn’t one moment or one specific thing that happened. There just came a point in time where there was enough there where I realized it just wasn’t healthy, and I couldn’t trust what we had.”

Following the divorce, Melinda said she and Bill remained “friendly” but certainly weren’t “friends.”

[From Page Six]

Get it, Melinda. After what Bill put her through, she seriously deserves to find someone who makes her happy and treats her like a queen. I can’t find too much info on Philip, but it looks as though, like Melinda, he’s based in the Seattle area. It’s funny that he used to work for Microsoft. I wonder if they knew each other before now, but it’s been almost 25 years since he worked for the company, so it’s probably just a coincidence. Although, it would be pretty wild if they’ve been longtime friends since his Microsoft days, and it recently turned into something more.

Anyway, I wish nothing but the best for Melinda and hope she continues to speak out in favor of reproductive rights and advocate for women and families. She and MacKenzie Scott should form their own version of the First Wives Club. It could be made up of fellow billionaire ex-wives who get revenge on their sh-tty ex-husbands by using their settlement money for good.

Melinda French Gates holds hands with new entrepreneur boyfriend Philip Vaughn as they arrive in NYC via helicopter https://t.co/bWt30Z8YnS pic.twitter.com/18KU758PWK

— Page Six (@PageSix) October 30, 2024

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Multiple things can be true about Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, all at once. She was the victim of a particularly vicious and long-running smear campaign. She was an American divorcee who was deemed unsuitable for the heir to the British throne. She had legitimate ties to Nazi officials, and she and Edward had cozy relationships with many high-ranking people in the Third Reich. Wallis probably never believed that she would cause Edward VIII’s abdication and that she and Edward would end up in exile for the rest of their lives. All of that is true, from what I’ve read over the years and from the historical record. Well, there’s a new book about Wallis called Her Lotus Year, about how a British spy planted stories about Wallis and her seductress adventures within British society:

Wallis Simpson, the American divorcee who married Edward VIII plunging the British monarchy into turmoil when he abdicated in 1936, was the victim of an extraordinary disinformation campaign. The plot was masterminded by a British spy, who characterized her as a libertine who learnt an exotic sex technique called “The Shanghai Grip” in a Chinese brothel.

A new book claims that a fabled briefing document full of salacious stories about Simpson known as the “China Dossier”—a copy of which has never been found but was allegedly passed around high society—was the work of an “incredibly powerful” intelligence officer based in Shanghai named Harry Steptoe.

Supporters of Meghan Markle, another American divorcee who married into the royal family without entirely happy consequences for the institution, are likely to see parallels with establishment efforts to discredit Wallis. Although Meghan was outwardly welcomed into the family, Meghan herself complained that she was the victim of a “smear campaign” when she was accused of bullying by palace operatives, and her and Prince Harry have both alleged that the media have long colluded with the palace to sully their reputations.

Simpson lived in China in 1924 with her first husband, Earl Winfield Spencer Jr, whom she split from while living there. She subsequently spent several months in the country as a single woman. A report in The Times of London says that the titillating tales in the dossier included claims that Wallis, when living in China, had been a p–n model and had visited brothels to learn a sex technique supposedly called “the Shanghai grip.”

The carefully planned sexist and racist slanders are described in the new book, Her Lotus Year, as “one of the most successful whispering campaigns of all time.” The secret of the dossier’s success, author Paul French says in his book, was that the stories of sexual excess were all existing rumors and scandals in Chinese society which were transposed onto Wallis by the intelligence operative. The goal was to stop Edward plunging the nation into turmoil by marrying a divorcee: “They just wanted to scupper this relationship somehow,” French told The Times.

[From The Daily Beast]

“A fabled briefing document full of salacious stories about Simpson known as the “China Dossier”—a copy of which has never been found but was allegedly passed around high society…” This is what they did in the 1930s before the British media became so powerful. They created a dossier and spread it around the aristocracy. The modern version of this is the monarchy authorizing the public smear campaign on Meghan, with courtiers and royals providing off-the-record accounts of how Meghan “bullied staffers” and “made Kate cry” and “sent 5 am emails.” As for Wallis… as I said, multiple things are true at once. Wallis was the victim of a really disgusting smear campaign… but she was also a problematic woman with ties to Nazis.

Also: “The goal was to stop Edward plunging the nation into turmoil by marrying a divorcee: ‘They just wanted to scupper this relationship somehow.’” That was also the goal of the smearing of Meghan, by the way. A century later, and it’s still the same fundamental play, to smear the American woman in the hope that they can somehow convince a prince not to marry someone they don’t like. In some ways, Harry’s marriage to Meghan was not as high-stakes as Edward marrying Wallis a year before England got pulled into WWII. In other ways, the Sussex marriage and Sussexit certainly feels more consequential in the modern era.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

We’ve said all along that Roevember Is Coming. We’ve said all along that the male politicos had completely underestimated women’s rage at our rights being stripped away by Republicans’ Christofascist anti-woman agenda. Now that Roevember Is Here, MAGA bros are shocked. They’re shocked by the gender gap in early voting, shocked by the sheer number of women who are agitated and engaged in this election and going all-in on Kamala Harris. A few days ago, I saw a right-wing commentator snorting in disgust that so many young women were single-issue voters on abortion. The data reflects that, and it’s gotten to the point where even the biggest MAGA douches are panicking:

Two of former president Donald Trump’s most prominent backers in the right wing influencer sphere fretted Wednesday after early voting numbers showed massive early turnout among women that could imperil their candidate’s path to victory.

“Male turnout in Pennsylvania for Trump has been a disaster,” tweeted Mike Cernovich on Wednesday. “Unless this changes, Kamala Harris takes PA and it’s over.”

Cernovich is a longtime far right gadfly and commentator with a massive online following. He’s been around long enough to have played a role in the anti-feminist Gamergate harassment campaign and to have helped spread the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, though has disavowed the alt-right and drifted closer to the mainstream conservative movement in recent years. (Trump’s eldest child, Donald Jr., once said he deserved a Pulitzer Prize).

When a follower questioned his assessment, Cernovich pointed out that conservative organizer Charlie Kirk, who he called “one of the most significant [get out the vote] activists in the country,” had also raised the alarm.

“Early vote has been disproportionately female,” tweeted Kirk earlier Wednesday. “If men stay at home, Kamala is president. It’s that simple.”

Preliminary data supports their concerns. A Politico analysis of early vote data in battleground states published on Tuesday showed a 10 point gender gap in early voting, with women comprising 55 percent of those who had cast ballots. Nation-wide early voting data compiled by NBC showed Thursday that, of roughly 58 million mail-in and early in-person votes cast across the country, 54 percent came from women.

National and swing state polls show Trump’s Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, with a commanding double digit lead among women voters.

“In some states women are actually exceeding their vote share from 2020, which is at this point shocking to me,” Democratic strategist Tom Bonier told Politico. “I never would have bet on that.”

In a follow up post, Cernovich praised Trump’s strategy of appearing on a string of podcasts with overwhelmingly male audiences—including the Joe Rogan Experience mocked—as a way of getting his message out without going through traditional and legacy media. But he also mocked the demographics of the podcast listenership, noting the Republican campaign should do more to reach women voters—presumably more than Trump’s babbling about how he’ll “protect” women if he gets back into the White House.

[From The Daily Beast]

We’ll have to wait until all of the election data is compiled, but my vibe is that while Trump did a “good job” in radicalizing young white men (the toxic podbro demo), the Harris-Walz campaign has actually done a good job in speaking to normcore dudes of all races about how reproductive issues will radically change their lives too. But yeah… women are mad. Women are voting in HUGE numbers. Women are not telling the men in their lives who they’re voting for either. Speaking of, this Harris-Walz ad has enraged the right. Julia Roberts did the voiceover. It’s so effective, which is why the bros are mad.

This is the excellent Julia Roberts ad that so provoked Snowflake Charlie Kirk.pic.twitter.com/KVZK6RV6So

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) October 31, 2024

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.

It has begun! It’s an annual tradition at this point, the months-long game of Is Prince Harry Coming To England For Christmas? Followed quickly with The Windsors Snubbed Harry For Christmas, which is always bizarrely followed by Harry Probably Thinks He’s Too Good To See His Father For Christmas Anyway. This will be the sixth Christmas in a row where the Sussexes have not been anywhere near Sandringham for Christmas. One holiday in Canada, and then the past five Christmases in California. I’m pretty sure Harry and Meghan have created all new Christmas traditions for themselves and their kids. And yet, the royalist commentators love nothing more than dusting off this annual tradition:

Prince Harry has reportedly not been invited to spend Christmas at Sandringham with the rest of the royal family, according to a royal expert. The Duke of Sussex last spent the festive period with his family six years ago, and has only done two with wife Meghan Markle.

Former royal correspondent Emily Andrews wrote in Woman: “Prince Harry is keen to spend the Christmas holidays in the UK with his wife and children — but Meghan wants to stay in the US. It’s a tricky time for Harry — he hasn’t spent Christmas here for six years and he could be forgiven for feeling rather lonely and estranged from his Windsor relatives.”

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have reportedly been extended an invite to spend Christmas with Harry’s uncle Charles Spencer at Althorp House in Northamptonshire. However, they would be missing out on seeing their extended family.

Emily added: “All the royals will gather at Sandringham in December, and I’m told that all the cousins, such as Eugenie, Beatrice, Zara and Peter Phillips, all look forward to the fun.”

Editor-in-chief of Majesty Magazine Ingrid Seward told Fabulous: “I think the Duchess of Sussex’s views on coming back to the UK are probably pretty negative. I don’t imagine you would want to come back to a country where you are so universally disliked. And also there’s the problem of the security which is still not solved, and Harry says he won’t bring his wife and children back here until he feels that he is in a secure position. I do think that Harry and Meghan have a dilemma with their family life, because the children are getting older, and the children are probably absolutely intrigued to know what their cousins are like. They wouldn’t remember them. And I think that maybe an invitation from Charles Spencer might be attractive, and they would meet other cousins.”

Ingrid claimed that “hunkering down in California” with their kids Archie, four, and Lilibet, two, is “more their style” than coming over to England for Christmas, but added “it is possible.” She continued: “But then it’s going to raise a lot of questions. Is Harry going to see his father? Is he going to see any other members of his family? So I would think at the moment they’re undecided. They seem to make a lot of fairly last minute decisions in their lives.”

[From The Sun]

Something that just occurred to me is that the “Archie and Lili are curious about their cousins” bullsh-t is projection too. That’s all about the royal kids (maybe even the Wales kids) wondering about Uncle Harry’s children. It’s also frankly about the adult Windsors’ desire to exploit Archie and Lili by any means necessary. Please, two cute little redheads, one of whom is Diana’s only blue-eyed grandchild? They would be center-stage at any family event. Which is another reason why Harry keeps his kids far away. And all of this breast-beating about “Meghan refuses to come but Harry is keen but Charles won’t invite him!” Jesus H. I hope Harry takes his kids surfing on Christmas and there are photos and the royalists cry all day.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Archewell.

Angelina Jolie was out in LA this week, attending yet another screening/premiere for Pablo Larrain’s Maria at the Writers Guild Theater. The paparazzi swarm was so intense, Jolie looked like she barely got into the theater, and she was traveling with her bodyguards too. As you can see in these photos, Angelina wore a bronze-y Armani dress and a black double-breasted coat. Meanwhile, Maria hasn’t even had a theatrical release and Angelina keeps picking up special-recognition awards. It’s the perfect storm for her – one of the last movie stars of that generation, in a comeback role which is getting widespread acclaim. She’s already been honored at the Toronto Film Festival, and the Santa Barbara Film Festival announced plans to give her an award in the new year. Now the Gotham Awards are giving her something special:

Angelina Jolie is set to receive the Performer Tribute at the 2024 Gotham Awards.

The event will take place Dec. 2 at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City. The Gotham Film & Media Institute said the Oscar winner will be honored for performance as the legendary, but troubled, opera singer Maria Callas in Pablo Larrain’s upcoming film Maria.

“Like the legendary figure she portrays, Angelina Jolie transcends mere performance to craft something extraordinary. Her interpretation captures both Maria Callas’ complexity as an artist and the cultural resonance that defines an icon,” The Gotham executive director Jeffrey Sharp said in a statement.

[From THR]

I love it, honestly. Every other year, I’m like “there are too many awards shows, the awards are less special, it’s too much noise.” But this year, I’m like: give Angelina all of the awards, please. I know that this is Gotham’s way of confirming Angelina’s attendance, ditto for Santa Barbara and Toronto. But it’s still nice! Chances are, the big “win” will be if Angelina gets an Oscar nomination, not the Best Actress Oscar itself. So I’m fine with her racking up the special awards at festivals and critics’ award shows.

What else? Angelina was asked if she would ever consider doing a Broadway musical now that she’s sung opera in a movie. She replied: “I would love to, but I’d be very shy. But if you asked me if I would be singing opera a year ago, I probably would have said no. I started with Strasberg and I started in theater so of course I would love to. But deep deep down, I probably don’t think I’m good enough.” I don’t think she should do a stage musical, but I absolutely think she could do a play on Broadway. I still believe we’ll see her move full-time to New York when Vivienne and Knox go to college. Speaking of, Jolie was also asked if her kids will follow her into acting, and she said: “No, I think they’re especially shy, very private people…and they want to be private.”

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

Twenty years ago, it was considered “bad” that Democrats had so many celebrities supporting them. The Republicans would insult “Hollyweird” and say snide sh-t about “California liberals.” Then an orange reality star became a Nazi hero to an uneducated cult and they called it the Republican Party. Now the GOP can’t say sh-t about celebrities supporting Democrats, because Donald Trump is sick with jealousy and bronzer poisoning because cool celebrities don’t support him. All he’s got is Scott Baio and Amber Rose. Meanwhile, dozens of A-listers have descended upon the swing states to work on the ground, canvassing and doing GOTV awareness and meeting with Democratic volunteers. There’s a real “we’re all in this together” convivial atmosphere.

I was thinking about all of this as a new slate of celebrities are due to make their first campaign appearances with VP Harris in the last days of the election cycle. Today, VP Harris will be in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She’s got guest stars: Cardi B, GloRilla, The Isley Brothers, Flo Milli, MC Lyte and DJ Gemini Gilly. If Kamala Harris doesn’t get on that stage and say “Got a million and one haters and they all can kiss my ass,” then what are we doing here? I will also accept Kamala saying “These bitches with me pretty/and they all can fight.” (God I love that song.) Honestly, though, I didn’t expect Glo to get involved, but she’s tight with Megan Thee Stallion and I bet Meg was like “girl, go support Kamala!” Cardi is also a surprise – she said she wasn’t getting involved back when President Biden was in the race, but she’s been vocally supporting VP Harris in recent months, so I guess she decided to do an event. Cardi’s such an American history buff too, you know the historical aspect of the first (Black/Indian-American) woman president is exciting to her.

Meanwhile, LeBron James did his big presidential endorsement on Thursday. Unsurprisingly, he’s all-in on Kamala Harris. He thinks Donald Trump is a bum. King James previously endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden/Harris in 2020. I don’t know if his production company made his video endorsement, but it’s really well done.

What are we even talking about here?? When I think about my kids and my family and how they will grow up, the choice is clear to me. VOTE KAMALA HARRIS!!! pic.twitter.com/tYYlTmQS6e

— LeBron James (@KingJames) October 31, 2024

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

The ratings are in for the first night of Prince William: We Can End Homelessness. According to Broadcast Now, Part 1 of the ITV documentary had a viewership of 1.5 million, “well behind 2.4 million slot average.” As in, ITV can usually put anything in that Wednesday timeslot and easily break 2 million viewers. But not when it’s an angry egg yammering about being keen to solve homelessness with hope. For some perspective (Broadcast Now cites these as comparison): Camilla’s Country Life in 2022 got 2 million viewers. Prince Harry’s January 2023 interview on ITV (when he was promoting Spare) got 4.7 million viewers. Gulp. Meanwhile, Newsweek is highlighting some of the terrible reviews:

Prince William’s campaign to end homelessness has spawned a TV documentary described by one reviewer as “dismal television.” Although the show, We Can End Homelessness, focuses on an indisputably good cause it got a rough ride in the media after it was broadcast on Wednesday, October 30, with many suggesting a contradiction bearing in mind his privilege and multiple homes. It all suggests William might have an uphill battle ahead of him as he works to carve out a legacy during his time as next in line to the throne.

Marianne Levy for i News was perhaps most scathing in her assessment, arguing the royal needed to grapple with the political causes behind rising levels of homelessness.

“For if homelessness in the UK is to end, we need to know why it is at an all-time high,” she wrote. “We need to know about cutbacks to social services, how the NHS is struggling to provide frontline care, the burden on GPs (general practitioners). We need to know about investment in and the building of social housing. Of these issues, and the many more that have contributed to the crisis William has announced his intention to solve, there was nothing. It made for dismal television.

“The contributors talked of hope, but what this documentary was missing was anger. William is clearly committed to his cause, but he simply cannot galvanise his audience at the ballot box, in the workplace, and in the wider social arena to fix this inhumane problem once and for all. As an hour of factual television that was supposed to prove it is possible to end homelessness, this documentary was an abject failure.”

[From Newsweek]

Abject failure just about covers it, although I still have to admit that Jan Moir’s column in the Mail was probably the most scathing takedown I’ve seen of Baldy’s Big Keen Homeless Adventure. I’m sure the BAFTA president will find a way to give himself another BAFTA though, what do you want to bet?

Photos courtesy of ITV and Cover Images.

Olivia Rodrigo has been riding some big highs lately — like selling 1.4 million tickets for her GUTS World Tour, releasing her concert film of that tour (out on Netflix now), and of course, meeting the King of Australian king penguins, Pesto the giant baby penguin (we’ll still love you once you fledge, baby boy!!!). But there still have been some low moments, too, even if Olivia has picked herself back up and taken things in stride. Sometimes literally, like when she fell through a hole on stage mid-performance at a show in Melbourne, that fans helpfully caught on camera from multiple angles. I still can’t believe how quickly she popped out of that hole and kept going; I wouldn’t have been that nimble even when I was her age. And now Olivia has shared another less-than-stellar incident. She was just on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon to promote the GUTS film, where she told a very unsavory story about being interrogated for a half hour by federal agents at the Canadian border:

Speaking about her tour to Jimmy, Olivia began: “I got in trouble with the law for the first time in my life.”

“We’re going from Canada to Portland or something, we’re at border control, I give them my passport, like: ‘OK, whatever,’ then they knock on the door and they’re like: ‘We need Olivia,’” the star explained.

“I’m like: ‘I just played a few shows, maybe their daughter wants an autograph,’” she continued. “I come out, it’s 3 a.m. and I’m delirious, and they take me to a room, and it’s an interrogation room and there’s a big cop with a gun and he’s like: ‘Have you ever been arrested?’”

“I’m like: ‘No! I haven’t been arrested!’” Olivia recalled. “He’s like, ‘Are you sure?’ and I’m gaslighting myself, like: ‘Oh my god, maybe I was arrested and I didn’t know it!’”

“He’s like: ‘You know, you can go to jail for lying to a federal officer, this is really bad,’” Olivia went on. “I’m freaking out, like: ‘I’m not going to get into America!’ I’m so scared, I’m, like, having a panic attack.”

She then concluded: “After 30 minutes of interrogation, he looks at me and goes: ‘What’s your name?’ [I said] ‘Olivia Rodrigo: R O D R I G O,’ and he’s like: ‘Oh, there’s a girl who looks just like you that’s the same age that’s been arrested multiple times and her name’s Olivia Rodriguez.’”

Visibly still in disbelief over the whole ordeal, Olivia admitted to the host: “Jimmy, I was pissed! I’m like: ‘You didn’t look at the name on the thing and you’re interrogating me for 30 minutes?!’ but phew, crisis averted.”

The segment ended with both Olivia and Jimmy wondering who the real Olivia Rodriguez is as they warned her to keep a low profile.

[From BuzzFeed]

Ugh. To borrow the parlance of Olivia’s generation: this story gives me “the ick.” She did say it was three in the morning, which means the officers were tired too. But reading and confirming a person’s frickin’ name has to be the very basic of first steps. It barely even adds up, because Olivia had already handed them her passport! Who flagged her name, anyway, and was it from reading the passport or from hearing an agent say her name? I want a full-scale investigation into this!! I’m glad Olivia called him out after the cop copped to getting the wrong name! Again, double checking the name with the alleged criminal you’re looking to bring in, really is the absolute lowest of expectations for law enforcement. At least Olivia was able to make good late night TV fodder out of this. She was so funny describing how easily she started second-guessing herself, “Wait, have I been arrested?”

Later on in the interview, she also shared a sweet follow up to that whole falling-in-a-hole-on-stage episode. After she finished the concert, Olivia went to the hospital to make sure she didn’t have a concussion. The nurse who tended to her was Filipino and had the same name as her late grandfather, so Olivia thought it was him giving her a nod from beyond that she’s ok. Aw, that story gives me “the feels.”

Photos credit: Miles Leavitt/Netflix, Emilio Madrid/Getty Images for Netflix

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Score another win for consumers under the Biden/Harris administration. Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission and the Dept. of Justice took on a cause that’s near and dear to many of our hearts: the broken ice cream machines at McDonald’s. McDonald’s ice cream machines are so notorious for breaking that there’s an entire website called McBroken that’s dedicated to tracking broken machines in real time. The issue was McDonald’s policy of making restaurants wait for one of their own “authorized” technicians to fix the machines instead of letting franchise owners fix the machines themselves or hire a third party to fix them. The typical wait time for an authorized Mickey D’s tech is 90 days. That’s a long-ass time to not be able to sell a McFlurry and owners estimated that they were losing thousands per month.

In March, the government ruled in favor of franchise owners having the right to use a device called Kytch, which was created by two innovators as a code-reader to help troubleshoot ice cream machine issues. But, there was still one more hurdle. The machines are made by a company called Taylor, which owns the copyright. Under a 1998 law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, only Taylor’s repair people are allowed to fix the machines. Enter the U.S. Copyright Office. Last week, they issued a set of exemptions that now allows restaurants like McDonald’s to repair their own equipment.

A broken ice cream machine is a familiar inconvenience to McDonald’s customers. Franchise owners have complained about difficulties fixing the machines, McDonald’s itself has poked fun at how often the machines are seemingly broken, and there is even a dedicated independent site for customers to see when and where they might be denied a McFlurry.

Those worries may soon be a thing of the past, after the U.S. Copyright Office issued a new set of exemptions last week that allows restaurants to repair equipment used in “retail-level commercial food preparation,” which includes those soft-serve ice cream machines used to make McFlurrys.

Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy group, and e-commerce website iFixit petitioned the U.S. Copyright Office for the exemption, which went into effect Monday.

“There’s nothing vanilla about this victory; an exemption for retail-level commercial food preparation equipment will spark a flurry of third-party repair activity and enable businesses to better serve their customers,” said Meredith Rose, senior policy counsel at Public Knowledge.

Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it illegal for third parties to bypass digital locks on any copyrighted material, including software used in commercial devices like those McDonald’s ice cream machines, even for repairs.

What that has meant for McFlurry fans until Monday is that every time an ice cream machine in a McDonald’s location breaks or has any kind of technical problem, it can only be repaired by the manufacturer and copyright holder.

Since 1956, McDonald’s has partnered with the Taylor Company, an Illinois-based manufacturer, for its ice cream machines, leaving only the Taylor Company with the “right to repair” them. According to iFixit, which looked inside a McDonald’s ice cream machine last year, the devices contain “lots of easily replaceable parts.”

Rose called the new exemption “an overdue shake-up of the commercial food prep industry.”

[From USA Today]

This is great news! I am absolutely all for creators maintaining the right to their own work, but within reason. If you’re going to be greedy or use it to create a monopoly and stifle competition then you’ve lost me. McDonald’s and Taylor screwed themselves over by making easily-breakable machines and constantly dragging their feet on fixing them. The system wasn’t working for business owners, and they were losing out on a lot of money. It also wasn’t working for customers who really just wanted some soft-serve vanilla ice cream blended with tiny M&Ms after a hard day’s work. I’m glad the FTC/DOJ/USCO stepped in to solve the problem. So, to conclude, the next time someone in your life asks, “What did Joe Biden and Kamala Harris actually do?” You can tell them that they fixed the McDonalds ice cream machines, lol.

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Happy Halloween! Hope everyone has a fun & safe holiday!

Megan Thee Stallion slayed in purple at her documentary premiere. [JustJared]
The winners of Jezebel’s annual scary-story contest. [Jezebel]
The rehabilitation of Johnny Depp continues, with a lot of help from Hollywood and Depp’s A-list friends. Disgusting. [Pajiba]
I cannot wait to see Anora. [LaineyGossip]
Aubrey Plaza claps back at Tony Hinchcliffe. [OMG Blog]
There was a molasses flood in Boston in the 20th century? [Buzzfeed]
Should the Menendez brothers be given clemency? [Socialite Life]
What are the best horror movies of all time? [Hollywood Life]
Connie Nielsen wore Stella McCartney to the Gladiator II premiere. [RCFA]
Never forget that Paddington Bear is Peruvian. [Seriously OMG]

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