A large measles outbreak in Texas that has affected 762 people has now ended, according to an announcement Monday by the Texas Department of State Health Services. The agency says it has been more than 42 days since a new case was reported in any of the counties that previously showed evidence of ongoing transmission.
The outbreak has contributed to the worst year for measles cases in the United States in more than 30 years. As of August 5, the most recent update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a total of 1,356 confirmed measles cases have been reported across the country this year. For comparison, there were just 285 measles cases in 2024.
The Texas outbreak began in January in a rural Mennonite community with low vaccination rates. More than two-thirds of the state’s reported cases were in children, and two children in Texas died of the virus. Both were unvaccinated and had no known underlying conditions. Over the course of the outbreak, a total of 99 people were hospitalized, representing 13 percent of cases.
Measles is a highly contagious respiratory illness that can temporarily weaken the immune system, leaving individuals vulnerable to secondary infections such as pneumonia. In rare cases, it can also lead to swelling of the brain and long-term neurological damage. It can also cause pregnancy complications, such as premature birth and babies with low birth weight. The best way to prevent the disease is the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. One dose of the vaccine is 93 percent effective against measles while two doses is 97 percent effective.
A measles outbreak is considered over after 42 days if no new cases are discovered because it is double the disease’s maximum incubation period—the longest time it can take between when a person is exposed to the virus and when they develop symptoms.
The CDC defines an outbreak as three or more related cases. The West Texas outbreak has been linked to cases in neighboring states, Mexico, and Canada.
While the Texas outbreak has ended, measles cases are still being reported elsewhere in the country. According to the CDC, 40 other states have reported cases, and a total of 32 US outbreaks have been reported in 2025, compared with 16 outbreaks in 2024.
The ongoing outbreaks put the country’s measles elimination status at risk. The designation means there is no ongoing domestic spread of measles for longer than 12 months. The US achieved that status in 2000 after years of increasing vaccination rates but almost lost it in 2019, when measles cases swept through undervaccinated Orthodox Jewish communities in New York for much of the year.
As vaccination rates continue to decline in the US, public health researchers warn that outbreaks of measles and other diseases are likely. One recent peer-reviewed paper found that at current state-level vaccination rates, measles could reestablish itself and become endemic again within the next two decades.
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![Masochistic YouTuber Punishes Himself by Writing a First Person Shooter Entirely in COBOL
So: masochism. You might know that it takes its name from 19th-century Austrian nobleman and writer Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch—and specifically from the content of his famous work, Venus in Furs, which catalogued the narrator’s submissive nature and fondness for experiencing pain and humiliation. Masoch himself was apparently not amused by the fact that his name became attached to such predilections—probably fair, given that the term was first used in a book entitled Psychopathia Sexualis, which also pioneered negging by speculating that Masoch himself “would have achieved real greatness had he been actuated by normally sexual feelings.” Happily, modern attitudes to the “S” part of BDSM are significantly more enlightened than they were in the 1880s and 1890s. In entirely unrelated news, a YouTuber by the name of icitry—whose bio on the site reads simply “try now, suffer later”—has written a whole first-person shooter in freaking COBOL. If you’ve never had to deal with COBOL, well, good for you, and you should probably keep it that way. The language is amongst the oldest computer languages, and was developed in the 1960s for managing business mainframes. It’s probably what drove poor Ginsberg in Mad Men out of his mind. COBOL remains in use today, largely in such legacy mainframes and other places where it’s not feasible to replace existing systems that, for all their foibles, still work.
One purpose for which it absolutely does not remain in use—and, in fact, has never been used—is programming first-person shooters. So why in the name of all that is good and holy would anyone do this to themselves? [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzpZQe7JT-o[/embed] In his video, icitry explains that the project started with him wondering, “What’s the dumbest but still technically possible language for writing a small FPS style game?” The answer was, yes, COBOL, and because the laws of the universe dictate that anything that can happen must happen, icitry got to work. Long, painstaking, tedious hours of work.
As he points out, COBOL is “old, verbose, missing most features even the shittiest modern languages have … and is definitely not created for game development.” All of this is true, although in fairness to COBOL, it was created at a time when people were still figuring out how programming should work and what a programming language should aim to be. Its earliest standard predated the idea of structured programming, although it soon attracted criticism from advocates of that concept— Edsger Dijkstra, in particular, famously hated the language and said its use “cripples the mind.” To modern eyes, just trying to parse a COBOL program is enough to induce a headache, let alone trying to write a game in it—but, miraculously, icitry manages to get his Wolfenstein 3D-esque project to work. He dodges COBOL’s complete lack of graphical functions by basically treating the game as what he calls a “frame generator”: his code computes the contents of each frame and uses a standard output function to write the results into a simple image format. This is rendered by ffplay—which, yes, is probably cheating, but not even old Leopold would try to write an entire graphics API from scratch in COBOL.
Elsewhere, icitry dodges COBOL’s lack of input management by using the console to input single characters to his game. He doesn’t so much dodge COBOL’s lack of any vector math functions—which are kind of important for a game where the entire gameplay loop revolves around calculating and manipulating 2D movement vectors—as he does just work around them by kinda writing them himself. And then, as if this wasn’t all enough self-punishment, he goes the extra mile by implementing DOOM engine functions like variable ceiling height. The whole project is a testament to mankind’s ingenuity, resourcefulness, and ability to withstand all manner of self-inflicted punishment. Watching the game run, you’d never guess it was written in a language so manifestly unsuited for the task at hand. Still! At least it’s not FORTRAN, right? Right?? *smash cut to an Austrian aristocrat at his desk with a copy of The Fortran Automatic Coding System for the IBM 704 and the DOOM source code* #Masochistic #YouTuber #Punishes #Writing #Person #Shooter #COBOLCOBOL,Doom,Wolfenstein 3D](https://i1.wp.com/gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2026/06/cobol-fps-1280x853.png?ssl=1 "Masochistic YouTuber Punishes Himself by Writing a First Person Shooter Entirely in COBOL
So: masochism. You might know that it takes its name from 19th-century Austrian nobleman and writer Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch—and specifically from the content of his famous work, Venus in Furs, which catalogued the narrator’s submissive nature and fondness for experiencing pain and humiliation. Masoch himself was apparently not amused by the fact that his name became attached to such predilections—probably fair, given that the term was first used in a book entitled Psychopathia Sexualis, which also pioneered negging by speculating that Masoch himself “would have achieved real greatness had he been actuated by normally sexual feelings.” Happily, modern attitudes to the “S” part of BDSM are significantly more enlightened than they were in the 1880s and 1890s. In entirely unrelated news, a YouTuber by the name of icitry—whose bio on the site reads simply “try now, suffer later”—has written a whole first-person shooter in freaking COBOL. If you’ve never had to deal with COBOL, well, good for you, and you should probably keep it that way. The language is amongst the oldest computer languages, and was developed in the 1960s for managing business mainframes. It’s probably what drove poor Ginsberg in Mad Men out of his mind. COBOL remains in use today, largely in such legacy mainframes and other places where it’s not feasible to replace existing systems that, for all their foibles, still work.
One purpose for which it absolutely does not remain in use—and, in fact, has never been used—is programming first-person shooters. So why in the name of all that is good and holy would anyone do this to themselves? [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzpZQe7JT-o[/embed] In his video, icitry explains that the project started with him wondering, “What’s the dumbest but still technically possible language for writing a small FPS style game?” The answer was, yes, COBOL, and because the laws of the universe dictate that anything that can happen must happen, icitry got to work. Long, painstaking, tedious hours of work.
As he points out, COBOL is “old, verbose, missing most features even the shittiest modern languages have … and is definitely not created for game development.” All of this is true, although in fairness to COBOL, it was created at a time when people were still figuring out how programming should work and what a programming language should aim to be. Its earliest standard predated the idea of structured programming, although it soon attracted criticism from advocates of that concept— Edsger Dijkstra, in particular, famously hated the language and said its use “cripples the mind.” To modern eyes, just trying to parse a COBOL program is enough to induce a headache, let alone trying to write a game in it—but, miraculously, icitry manages to get his Wolfenstein 3D-esque project to work. He dodges COBOL’s complete lack of graphical functions by basically treating the game as what he calls a “frame generator”: his code computes the contents of each frame and uses a standard output function to write the results into a simple image format. This is rendered by ffplay—which, yes, is probably cheating, but not even old Leopold would try to write an entire graphics API from scratch in COBOL.
Elsewhere, icitry dodges COBOL’s lack of input management by using the console to input single characters to his game. He doesn’t so much dodge COBOL’s lack of any vector math functions—which are kind of important for a game where the entire gameplay loop revolves around calculating and manipulating 2D movement vectors—as he does just work around them by kinda writing them himself. And then, as if this wasn’t all enough self-punishment, he goes the extra mile by implementing DOOM engine functions like variable ceiling height. The whole project is a testament to mankind’s ingenuity, resourcefulness, and ability to withstand all manner of self-inflicted punishment. Watching the game run, you’d never guess it was written in a language so manifestly unsuited for the task at hand. Still! At least it’s not FORTRAN, right? Right?? *smash cut to an Austrian aristocrat at his desk with a copy of The Fortran Automatic Coding System for the IBM 704 and the DOOM source code* #Masochistic #YouTuber #Punishes #Writing #Person #Shooter #COBOLCOBOL,Doom,Wolfenstein 3D")
![Masochistic YouTuber Punishes Himself by Writing a First Person Shooter Entirely in COBOL
So: masochism. You might know that it takes its name from 19th-century Austrian nobleman and writer Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch—and specifically from the content of his famous work, Venus in Furs, which catalogued the narrator’s submissive nature and fondness for experiencing pain and humiliation. Masoch himself was apparently not amused by the fact that his name became attached to such predilections—probably fair, given that the term was first used in a book entitled Psychopathia Sexualis, which also pioneered negging by speculating that Masoch himself “would have achieved real greatness had he been actuated by normally sexual feelings.” Happily, modern attitudes to the “S” part of BDSM are significantly more enlightened than they were in the 1880s and 1890s. In entirely unrelated news, a YouTuber by the name of icitry—whose bio on the site reads simply “try now, suffer later”—has written a whole first-person shooter in freaking COBOL. If you’ve never had to deal with COBOL, well, good for you, and you should probably keep it that way. The language is amongst the oldest computer languages, and was developed in the 1960s for managing business mainframes. It’s probably what drove poor Ginsberg in Mad Men out of his mind. COBOL remains in use today, largely in such legacy mainframes and other places where it’s not feasible to replace existing systems that, for all their foibles, still work.
One purpose for which it absolutely does not remain in use—and, in fact, has never been used—is programming first-person shooters. So why in the name of all that is good and holy would anyone do this to themselves? [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzpZQe7JT-o[/embed] In his video, icitry explains that the project started with him wondering, “What’s the dumbest but still technically possible language for writing a small FPS style game?” The answer was, yes, COBOL, and because the laws of the universe dictate that anything that can happen must happen, icitry got to work. Long, painstaking, tedious hours of work.
As he points out, COBOL is “old, verbose, missing most features even the shittiest modern languages have … and is definitely not created for game development.” All of this is true, although in fairness to COBOL, it was created at a time when people were still figuring out how programming should work and what a programming language should aim to be. Its earliest standard predated the idea of structured programming, although it soon attracted criticism from advocates of that concept— Edsger Dijkstra, in particular, famously hated the language and said its use “cripples the mind.” To modern eyes, just trying to parse a COBOL program is enough to induce a headache, let alone trying to write a game in it—but, miraculously, icitry manages to get his Wolfenstein 3D-esque project to work. He dodges COBOL’s complete lack of graphical functions by basically treating the game as what he calls a “frame generator”: his code computes the contents of each frame and uses a standard output function to write the results into a simple image format. This is rendered by ffplay—which, yes, is probably cheating, but not even old Leopold would try to write an entire graphics API from scratch in COBOL.
Elsewhere, icitry dodges COBOL’s lack of input management by using the console to input single characters to his game. He doesn’t so much dodge COBOL’s lack of any vector math functions—which are kind of important for a game where the entire gameplay loop revolves around calculating and manipulating 2D movement vectors—as he does just work around them by kinda writing them himself. And then, as if this wasn’t all enough self-punishment, he goes the extra mile by implementing DOOM engine functions like variable ceiling height. The whole project is a testament to mankind’s ingenuity, resourcefulness, and ability to withstand all manner of self-inflicted punishment. Watching the game run, you’d never guess it was written in a language so manifestly unsuited for the task at hand. Still! At least it’s not FORTRAN, right? Right?? *smash cut to an Austrian aristocrat at his desk with a copy of The Fortran Automatic Coding System for the IBM 704 and the DOOM source code* #Masochistic #YouTuber #Punishes #Writing #Person #Shooter #COBOLCOBOL,Doom,Wolfenstein 3D](https://gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2026/06/cobol-fps-1280x853.png "Masochistic YouTuber Punishes Himself by Writing a First Person Shooter Entirely in COBOL
So: masochism. You might know that it takes its name from 19th-century Austrian nobleman and writer Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch—and specifically from the content of his famous work, Venus in Furs, which catalogued the narrator’s submissive nature and fondness for experiencing pain and humiliation. Masoch himself was apparently not amused by the fact that his name became attached to such predilections—probably fair, given that the term was first used in a book entitled Psychopathia Sexualis, which also pioneered negging by speculating that Masoch himself “would have achieved real greatness had he been actuated by normally sexual feelings.” Happily, modern attitudes to the “S” part of BDSM are significantly more enlightened than they were in the 1880s and 1890s. In entirely unrelated news, a YouTuber by the name of icitry—whose bio on the site reads simply “try now, suffer later”—has written a whole first-person shooter in freaking COBOL. If you’ve never had to deal with COBOL, well, good for you, and you should probably keep it that way. The language is amongst the oldest computer languages, and was developed in the 1960s for managing business mainframes. It’s probably what drove poor Ginsberg in Mad Men out of his mind. COBOL remains in use today, largely in such legacy mainframes and other places where it’s not feasible to replace existing systems that, for all their foibles, still work.
One purpose for which it absolutely does not remain in use—and, in fact, has never been used—is programming first-person shooters. So why in the name of all that is good and holy would anyone do this to themselves? [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzpZQe7JT-o[/embed] In his video, icitry explains that the project started with him wondering, “What’s the dumbest but still technically possible language for writing a small FPS style game?” The answer was, yes, COBOL, and because the laws of the universe dictate that anything that can happen must happen, icitry got to work. Long, painstaking, tedious hours of work.
As he points out, COBOL is “old, verbose, missing most features even the shittiest modern languages have … and is definitely not created for game development.” All of this is true, although in fairness to COBOL, it was created at a time when people were still figuring out how programming should work and what a programming language should aim to be. Its earliest standard predated the idea of structured programming, although it soon attracted criticism from advocates of that concept— Edsger Dijkstra, in particular, famously hated the language and said its use “cripples the mind.” To modern eyes, just trying to parse a COBOL program is enough to induce a headache, let alone trying to write a game in it—but, miraculously, icitry manages to get his Wolfenstein 3D-esque project to work. He dodges COBOL’s complete lack of graphical functions by basically treating the game as what he calls a “frame generator”: his code computes the contents of each frame and uses a standard output function to write the results into a simple image format. This is rendered by ffplay—which, yes, is probably cheating, but not even old Leopold would try to write an entire graphics API from scratch in COBOL.
Elsewhere, icitry dodges COBOL’s lack of input management by using the console to input single characters to his game. He doesn’t so much dodge COBOL’s lack of any vector math functions—which are kind of important for a game where the entire gameplay loop revolves around calculating and manipulating 2D movement vectors—as he does just work around them by kinda writing them himself. And then, as if this wasn’t all enough self-punishment, he goes the extra mile by implementing DOOM engine functions like variable ceiling height. The whole project is a testament to mankind’s ingenuity, resourcefulness, and ability to withstand all manner of self-inflicted punishment. Watching the game run, you’d never guess it was written in a language so manifestly unsuited for the task at hand. Still! At least it’s not FORTRAN, right? Right?? *smash cut to an Austrian aristocrat at his desk with a copy of The Fortran Automatic Coding System for the IBM 704 and the DOOM source code* #Masochistic #YouTuber #Punishes #Writing #Person #Shooter #COBOLCOBOL,Doom,Wolfenstein 3D")
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