You may have heard that the US Senate was unable to agree on a stopgap funding measure that would keep the government open by its midnight Friday deadline. This means the US is officially in a government shutdown. Here's what that means.

Many of us, when we move on from a job, have dreams of sending a special message to the management. Whether that's an especially cutting resignation letter or some sort of memorable parting gesture, we all want to make our mark. And it turns out a former Twitter employee had their 15 (or actually 11) minutes of fame when they deactivated President Trump's press secretary, I mean Twitter account. And while that's pretty funny, it highlights how important it is to have good controls around what exiting employees can do.

President Trump's campaign chairmen, Paul Manafort, was indicted yesterday and ordered to surrender to authorities. According to the New York Times, he is charged with funelling "millions of dollars through overseas shell companies and the money to buy luxury cars, real estate, antiques and expensive suits." His associate Rick Gates was also charged. The Times notes that this represents "a significant escalation in a special counsel investigation that has cast a shadow over Mr. Trump's first year in office."

On Wednesday, US President Trump revealed his plan to give his country's tax code a major overhaul. This has potential ramifications beyond the US, both in terms of the global economy and other nation's future budgets. Nothing is set in stone yet, and there weren't many details, but here's what the administration is proposing.

If you look at social media a lot, as I do, you might be startled by how many people were... unbothered by Nazis and white supremacists marching in Charlottesville two weeks ago. In the days after the clashes in Virginia that led to the killing of Heather Heyer and the beating of DeAndre Harris, a good number of people popped up in my social media feeds, countering that "Antifa" and Black Lives Matter activists were equally as violent as the Nazis and white supremacists who came to a "peaceful" rally armed with semi-automatic weapons.

This morning, the US president decreed that the country's military "will not accept or allow" transgender people to serve (fact check: they already do), citing "tremendous medical costs and disruption." So, hang on a sec, what's the dollar amount there?

Earlier this week, the US Supreme Court ruled that parts of Donald Trump's travel ban were acceptable, leading the State Department to create a set of new guidelines on the ban, which applies to nationals from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, with a few exceptions. To travel to the US from those six Muslim-majority countries, travellers must prove they have a "bona fide relationship" with "a person or entity in the United States" that was "formed in the ordinary course, rather than for the purpose of evading" the ban. The guidelines are now being enforced as of this morning.

It's a lot, right? It's a lot. It is a firehose of news. How are we supposed to live our lives, cook a meal, uncrimp our hunched-over necks? Even when I shut my computer, it still flashes its little light in the corner, ready to alert me to the horrors of the world like some kind of pulsing Hellmouth.

Brief news items of note for Lifehacker readers, including: The 15 best science fiction and fantasy noir films, Australia's wage freeze explained, Trump-FBI saga heats up.