Sorry if I got you excited to see our favorite anthropomorphic rock back, this is a different one. As part of my job, I am (metaphorically) sitting at the feet of one of the major pioneers of glass mechanics, and specifically failure mechanisms. Along the way, he invented the technology that’s the basis for Gorilla Glass. He’s getting on in years a bit (he’s the only person in our department who can call me “Sonny”), but his brain is massively stuffed with great knowledge and insight. And he is a terrific human being and incredibly patient teacher. I’ll never have his insight, but I’m trying to scoop as much of the knowledge as I can. So I’m looking at half penny and Palmqvist cracking mechanisms this week. Geeky for sure, but that’s my middle name. And at least one person found that endearing…
Birthdays today include some dead white slaveholder who needs to be canceled; a guy who must have been a Catholic priest in an earlier life; the answer to “What’s the frequency, Kenneth?”; a fellow who had a rather acid approach to life; the best of the early SNL personnel; a murderer blandly described as a “soldier, lawyer, and politician” (and we sure dodged a bullet with this one!); a terrific but forgotten pitcher; the best ever mayor of Portland; and a guy who now swims with the fishes.
So let’s do some Links before we shatter.
There soon will be a popcorn shortage.
Look, anyone can make a mistake now and then.
Well, if some of the NGOs would offer to pick up all the costs instead of lining their own pockets…
Wait, I was assured that Adams was in bed with Trump. Don’t tell me that legacy media lied!
If this isn’t Trump’s stupidest idea, it’s certainly in the Top Five.
A grifter said it, it must be true.
“We have a lovely office in Nome, Alaska as well. Would you prefer that?”
The Hitler narrative: the first thing he did was eliminate bureaucracies, right? Liberal porn is a weird thing.
Translation: when you don’t cherry-pick the data, the narrative collapses.
I realized that it’s been too long since I put up a Matt Lorentz song. Who else can play slide guitar, drums, and do Tuvan throat singing simultaneously? No-one. Check how he uses the same hand for strumming and the drum stick. And the song is a brilliant piece of writing.
What’s the OMWC plan, again?
“We are withdrawing all troops. We are closing the borders to Israel, and will supply no water, food, electricity, or anything else. Work out whatever you want with Egypt or any other of your allies. As far as we’re concerned, you’re a sovereign country and we’ll leave you alone to run it as you see fit. But any further attack on Israel or rocket fire at us, you are officially an enemy and we will level the place without mercy.”
That’s rather my foreign policy in general for the US as well, frankly.
Thanks!
I think I ask you that, every time you mention it.
Before the Oct7 attack I would have agreed with you Sir but I think we are past that now.
Lots of white vans on the streets of Gaza to convert the next generation? Probably cheaper than a USAID funded Sesame Street.
What’s more worrisome is that STEVE SMITH has signed on to spearhead the effort….
Plus Gazan kids have trouble with the rolled rr’s.
Happy birthday the faithful centurion?
Happy birthday Albert Hoffman?
Happy birthday Jason Momoa?
I’d really rather forget the DC Live action universe please. (And honestly a lot of their more recent animation as well…)
I think Chappelle had the correct take on Aquaman 28 years ago.
If I had my way Momoa would be swimming with the fishes.
Trump administration tosses protections from deportation for Haitian migrants
Someone needs to find a judge who will block the president from exercising authorized discretion.
Shouldn’t be hard. Who was the clown that decided Trump couldn’t end DACA because chocolate Jesus’ executive orders are actually legislation?
Hawaiian/DC/NY federal judge to the rescue then…should be easy enough to find one that amenable.
NGOs are incapable of operating without a constant stream of taxpayer cash from the feds, but are totally non-governmental. Totally.
The US Congress of Catholic Bishops (or whatever they named themselves) nods sagely.
Also, the Federal Reserve is about as Federal as Federal Express.
Because, you know, Federal Express was founded by an act of Congress, and the CEO is appointed by the US President, and the government allows no other company to print money—I mean, deliver packages.
NGOs are nothing but front group workarounds for stuff the feds aren’t technically allowed to do. Nongovernmental my ass.
The term for that is a cut-out. And not only the NGO should be sanctioned, the government decision makers that funded it need to be terminated – possibly with extreme prejudice.
Morning old man. I heartily endorse your Gaza plan.
I’ve been playing this daily baseball trivia lately.
https://www.sbnation.com/2025/2/22/24370011/sb-nation-mlb-daily-trivia-in-5-february-22
I got lucky this morning and got it on guess #2.
Here I thought the USA didn’t have a sovereign, and hence a sovereign wealth fund would be a non-sequitur.
The People, collectively, are the sovereign. So much horseshit.
IMO it would turn into a new USAID/foreign aid money spigot on steroids. Regardless how it’s structured.
From “Trump’s stupid idea” article:
A sovereign wealth fund, as defined by Investopedia, is a state-owned investment fund composed of money generated by the government, often derived from a country’s surplus reserves.
The FedGov is 30 odd trillion dollars in debt. It has no surplus reserves of money.
What do you mean I’m out of money? I still have checks.
A sovereign wealth fund would be an absolute festival of corruption, graft, grift, and theft.
At most, dangle it as something that can be considered when the debt is paid off. All $30-odd TT of it. Give the spineless and corrupt sociopaths in Congress a reason to vote for spending cuts.
All we need to do is print 37 T worth of cash, pay off the national debt and save on the interest. It’s so simple even a…
No no, it doesn’t work that way. You mint 37 $1T coins so you can cut out congress from the process. Do you even MMT, bro?
The feds are sitting on roughly 200,000 bitcoin. That’s close to $20 billion.
lmao. Yes, the party of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib should definitely play the anti-Semitism card.
Funny; she doesn’t look Druish.
Not signing some bullshit statement they try to jam up your ass for nebulous reasons is tantamount to an admission. Sure.
DRUMPF REFUSES TO SIGN STATEMENT INDICATING HE STOPPED BEATING HIS WIFE!
My exact thought and I’m not even some genius book writer person.
Maybe, Jared, he just hates you – like everyone else.
Mornin’ yo. Trump telling Maine’s gov to go fuck herself is a sight to behold. Shit pissing the left off most: The utter inability to come to grips w how ‘there’ Trump is compared to the walking corpse they implanted in ’20. Gotta burn, but they don’t know where to put the salve. Well. Despondent rage can act the part, I spose…
I’m astounded that a tiny fractional increase in the atmospheric gas that plants use to convert energy, along with a warmer environment in which plants grow, doesn’t lead to crop collapse 🙄️
Am I laughing in rage, or raging while laughing, at this?
On the very long list of things Trump needs to get around to is reversing the EPA’s finding that CO2 is a pollutant. Which was purely administrative, and can be reversed the same way.
THE SCIENZE IS SETTLED!!11!! [firehose of spittle]
There was a lawsuit at some point that confirmed that ridiculousness, at least in CA or confirming CA could treat it as a pollutant. I remember some CA talking head “looking forward to the day CA is CO2 free” without irony.
The same article or a summary of it is posted on Judith Curry’s Climate Inc blog.
Britain’s new blasphemy laws imperil us all
Only a Hitler would support free speech.
You know, even Goebbels wouldn’t have tried that big of a lie.
Bureaucrats are the new Jews. Firing them is the new Kristalnacht
Only Jews had the keys to unlock the doors at camp.
“effectively putting a Google Maps pin in him for the convenience of Britain’s Islamist scumbags.”
-Subtext: Come and get him boys.
The King is supposed to be the head of the Church of England. Both the King and the Church are worthless.
To be fair, the blasphemy laws aren’t just against Islam but also other religions such as Transgenderism and Diversity.
whaddup doh’
covfefe in front of the fire waiting for the snow to melt
How did OMWC not land this gig?
Next thing you know, he’ll miss out on all the PSA money thrown at preventing bicycle theft.
Young James has his first bike already waiting for him. It was an inheritance from his grandmother, who somehow acquired it in Minnesoda.
Did it belong to Prince ?
What musical instrument do you have picked out for him based on that pucker? (Thanks for the pic, BTW! 😍👶)
Likely flute.
I would have guessed banjo based on those pickin’ fingers.
It’s not a purple girls Ward’s Hawthorne is it? Hand-me-downs can be a bitch. Also, the purple suggested maybe it was Prince’s.
That ain’t Lake Minnetonka.
Yesterday’s news, so likely already covered, but this is just delicious.
Wouldn’t it be nice if it were IN THE FUCKING LINKS?
Wait, there’s links?
You expect people to read the links?
(what’s sad is I missed it again when I re-checked the OP to see if you were putting me on until I re-re-checked)
LOL. Perhaps I had a few too many today, but news is moving fast these days.
Occam’s razor suggests my retardation as the more likely explanation.
::looks at AM Lynx::
🙄
Drugs/ass and all of that
Saw Kash a while back talking about his plans. Said he throw agents out of DC and tell them to “go be cops”. No more Praetorian Guard bullshit.
I hope he puts a stop to that mega-campus in VA or MD or wherever that was.
I would prefer he threw them out of the FBI and told them to go be cops on an actual, you know, police force.
I know what you mean, but, as always, the right tears are small beer.
A principled president from the party that controls both houses should simply prosecute (pardon the pun) his mandate, to propose and sign legislation to simply eliminate offending constructs such as the FBI.
There is only one reason not to do so: competence doesn’t satisfy the drooler-in-chief’s need to turn everything into a self-important yankfest. He’s a one-time loser who is too dumb to know he easily could go down as the greatest president in four decades by simply doing all the right things in the right way, so he turns to other would-be autocrats to preen and thrust in ridiculous ways worthy of all the other moronic presidents. They love and tinker because they are all too idiotic to know the simplest thing: there is no right way to FBI. The choice is tear it all down or simply be the most recent temporary stain whose “accomplishments” will be painted over by the next main in the Oval Office.
Everything must be youre-fired-voted-off-the-island nonsense: lazy, stupid, inefficient, distracting, bad examples unto the children, FoxNews, and other idiots.
He has a choice, Don. Exercise the powers that are his to exercise, or go to a Congress that will never pass the legislation you propose. Never. At least, not without 80% turnover, which is literally impossible for the next two years, and a pie-eyed fantasy for the 2026 elections.
Given that choice, I don’t think he’s a drooling moron for not blowing a once-in a generation opportunity on Congress. In fact, I would say that his actions so far are astoundingly not those of a drooling moron. I would even say going your “principled” route would be an act of naïveté bordering on idiocy.
Yes – he learned the hard way with Paul Ryan that half the Republican party is worse than useless.
Get what you can from them, like confirmations, then ignore them.
Can We Really Cut Half of The Military Budget? You Bet!
If Trump can break the Republican party of this addiction, I will be very impressed.
Make ammo costs cheap again!
They aren’t entirely wrong that cutting defense will weaken us. The half (or more) that is stolen is all carefully protected by promises to flag officers of sweetheart jobs post retirement, enormous direct payments to, and smaller sweetheart contracts to companies in the districts of, Congresscritters. So when it comes time to cut defense spending somehow we never cut any of the waste, we just reduce training budgets, stockpiles of boring, but actually useful, things like bullets, and bases that have an actual point. The boondoggles, $450 toilet seats, bases a 1000 miles from anywhere, aircraft that won’t fly, billion dollar destroyers that have less firepower and armor than old school pt boats etc., all continue.
First thing that needs to change is to return to the ratio of FOGOs to enlisted we had in WWII.
I’d go even earlier than that. We were already top heavy, especially in Europe, during WWII. But I agree with your point. The military is a bureaucracy like any other, the only difference is that it is a bureaucracy that probably needs to exist, but that does not imply that it needs to exist in its current form, and it absolutely needs to have someone gut the personal fiefdoms that motivate generals to resist improved efficiency. A peacetime army’s job is to prepare for war, that means serious, combat oriented training, personnel selection, stockpiles of munitions and procurement. I would court martial every officer who pushed the idiotic social engineering oriented training over the past decades. It is a criminal violation of their duty to prepare the men for combat, done purely for personal advancement. It will absolutely lead to unnecessary casualties if we have to fight.
Everybody talks about spending and readiness and all that, but nobody ever talks about what the actual purpose of our military should be. I for one am not a fan of the current “bomb anyone, anywhere, any time, for any reason” purpose.
You could cut our military by 80% and not have to worry about anybody invading the US. I suppose there is an interesting discussion to be had about the Navy and maintaining free transit of the seas.
Service equity!!!! You can’t fund one without funding all three, that’s not FAIIIIiiRRRrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!
The question about the ultimate purpose of the military is a good one. IIRC they still maintain the capability for us to fight two major wars at once. I’m not sure we need that.
@Tonio
The military long ago abandoned the fight two war concept. It went through a fight one strong and conduct a holding action in another period. It is now a fight with limited forces until we can bring additional power to bear and deter a 2d from starting.
The military was short everything required to fight a near peer competitor before the Ukraine and Gaza wars kicked off. We are very short of everything now. No surprises there. The US lacks the defense industrial base to rapidly repair damage, much less make up losses or to build additional systems.
The way that the ITO and ATO’s were fought, combined with the messy draw (at best) in the ITO, and the loss in the ATO hurt recruiting even before the massively incompetent end to the ATO. Throw the DIE crap on top of it and we will not be able to recruit sufficient numbers to fight a big war- at least for a generation. The exception would be a willingness for a massive draft and I don’t see that on the horizon.
“IIRC they still maintain the capability for us to fight two major wars at once. I’m not sure we need that.”
We don’t need that, thank goodness, because we can’t do it under present circumstances.
Pull most of our heavy divisions out of Europe. Fix the Navy. Keep the Marines Corps ready. Start transitioning the Air Force to drones and away from expensive boondoggles like the F-35.
Fix the Navy.
Berlin stabbing suspect planned to kill Jewish people, police believe
No way!
Yeah, it was the ’tism what done it.
Mental illness is just the contemporary substitute for demons driving our bad behavior.
The modern version is actually worse. At least when it was blamed on demonic possession people still recognized the need to get rid of the demon. In the modern version we coddle the ‘sufferers’, and vilify any attempt to change them.
Well, we used to allow for extraction of the demon potentially leading to death of the possessed. Now we think we can cure something we don’t even understand.
In case any sane German wasn’t voting Afd today.
“…suggested a religious motivation.”
We aren’t sure yet. We are still investigating but we can never be sure.
But we are sure “climate change” will kill us all.
The Slate History of the World. Just what I needed.
Hamas – “we have lots of dead children in storage, does this one work?”
“a murderer blandly described as a “soldier, lawyer, and politician” (and we sure dodged a bullet with this one!)”
You know who didn’t dodge a bullet?
Gen. Sedgwick.
Ok…again, good morning all. I fell back asleep so playing ketchup here.
The best was Radner, on and off of the stage.
Get rid of the woke fake-soldiers.
Hamas: Level Tehran. Turn the Ayatollah and the Revolutionary Guard to ashes then move the Pali’s to Iran or exterminate them if they refuse. We are beyond enough of this evil.
I want this country fundamentally changed…re-embrace our fundamental ideals. We have gone too far towards “Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.”
“No, we are not going to state that our product contains no kitten blood.” must mean those widgets contain kitten blood, right? Oldest, cheapest, stupidest rhetorical dishonesty around.
Nome sounds good to me. I am sick of hearing sob stories from the scum that has been lording over us for 100 years. Dont you morons get it? The more you cry the more we know we are doing the right thing.
Slate….wow. That non-sequitur was a masterful example of replacing true/false, right/wrong, good/evil standards with further/hinder our insatiable thirst for power.
Stopping executive agencies from holding in-house star chamber courts handing over that power to a separate independent branch is the same as declaring oneself a monarch? Bravo Slate. Never change.
That last link? Holy shit. I was told that if we dont continue forking oceans of money over to research science will collapse. What science are we talking about because I dont see any around.
(As it has always been there are actual scientists out there doing actual science but they aren’t people you hear much or anything at all from. They certainly aren’t the people the government fraudsters are talking about. No one has had their reputation usurped/plagurized more than actual scientists).
I know, I am late. When I show up late I find a lot of dead horses. I have to kick each one at least once.
There is a reason you don’t go around kicking live horses.
Why do you hate the people of Nome? What have they ever done to you?
Such brave
At a White House event with a bipartisan group of governors Friday, President Donald Trump briefly sparred with Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills after threatening to withhold federal funds from her state over the issue of transgender athletes.
The back-and-forth came as Trump discussed his executive order banning transgender athletes from women’s sports.
“Are you not going to comply with that?” Trump asked Mills directly.
She responded that she would comply with state and federal laws.
“Well, I’m — we are the federal law,” Trump said, adding, “Well, you better do it. You better do it because you’re not going to get any federal funding at all if you don’t.”
Mills responded: “See you in court.”
It’s not like she would say, “Well you just keep your filthy money, then,”
I think if she wanted to get re-elected she just blew it.
I’m not so sure. There seems to be a lot of lunacy coming out of Maine.
The sun doesnt come out there much, does it?
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7210535/
“The new market figures come after researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology published a report pointing to a deadlier type of coronavirus called HKU5-CoV-2.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14423719/new-coronavirus-reported-wuhan-pfizer-moderna-stock-market.html
No.
I guess those researchers really want to be fused into the ground in a nuclear strike?
Create the problem, sell the cure. Everything old is new again.
Despite their proven record of success!
The federal office that funds housing and other support for homeless people across the country is slated to shrink dramatically, a prospect that advocates warn would make record-high homelessness even worse.
The Office of Community Planning and Development, within the Department of Housing and Urban Development, is slated to lose 84% of its staff, according to a document seen by NPR. That target is the deepest of any office in the agency.
“That proposed cut is massive. And the potential for adverse impact at the community level and at the national level is also massive,” said Ann Oliva, who spent a decade at HUD and is now CEO at the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
We have more homeless people than ever. They need a bigger budget.
If we deport a few million illegal immigrants, housing would open up for those who remain.
The Community Planning and Development office at HUD disperses more than $3.6 billion in federal funding for rental assistance, mental health and substance use treatment, and outreach to try and get those living outside into shelter or housing. “It’s the “backbone” of local communities’ response to homelessness, Oliva said, “in blue states and red states alike.”
Cutting so much staff would mean firing not only people at headquarters in Washington, D.C., but also those in field offices around the country, she said. And that means it would likely take longer to get funding to the thousands of local nonprofits who provide housing and other support.
Oh, horror.
mental health and substance use treatment
Isn’t that in the remit of HHS and not HUD?
No. The latest fad is to park them in free housing with “support services”. Then they can continue to shoot up and deal drugs from the comfort of a warm home.
If the good people of NY or Boston or Seattle have a mental health and homeless problem, surely their taxpayers will happily open their wallets and vote for tax increases to offset the federal cuts.
Oh, and I just posted a bridge for sale on Craigs List if anyone is interested.
This was my thought too. Why are my tax dollars going to “help” the homeless 2500 miles away? Shouldn’t the populations in those areas where homelessness primarily exists be paying for their own shit?
How many DC bureaucrats does it take to operate a laundromat?
And the people don’t realize they just took out a loan with interest by government mandate.
https://www.wcvb.com/article/massachusetts-utility-delivery-rate-gas-bill-dpu-cut-reaction/63872086
Money spends different in the summer, it is known.
LOL. Quid pro quo is de rigeur. Just ask the likes of Dershowitz.
It is also obviously a political persecution as the not-yet-charges against Adams are laughably trivial. Watching Hochul veer off the left edge of the planet in her zeal to join the fray is kind of funny, if sad.
Hochul ‘dont worry, this law is only for Trump’ is a booger eatin’ moron. What is it with the left putting people like that up for office? It appears to be their SOP. Clown puppets for the win?
Because in Liberal Utopia businesses don’t pass the costs on to consumers.
Oh fuck off.
What a stinking pile of religious bullshit. These people need deprogramming.
“social cost of carbon”. JFC.
Unfalsifiabel assertions are unfalsifiable. They are as bad as the cryptozoologists.
Talking point, dead ahead
Many members of the House skipped holding large, public events while out of Washington this week. But the Republicans who did hold town halls back home got an earful.
At events from Georgia and Wisconsin to Oklahoma and Oregon, House Republicans faced sometimes-hostile crowds furious about the sweeping budget cuts and mass firings of federal workers that President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency are carrying out.
With the House on recess and many lawmakers returning to their districts, this week was the first opportunity for them to hear directly from constituents about Trump and Musk’s scorched-earth strategy to cut spending and shrink the federal government’s footprint.
At City Hall in Roswell, a suburb of Atlanta, on Thursday night, attendees jeered and talked over Republican Rep. Rich McCormick as they peppered him with tough questions about the cuts — and the seemingly indiscriminate way some of them are being carried out.
Massive backlash and outrage. How dare they shrink the government and cut back vital services?
“Tax us harder, for the love of God!!!!1!!1!”
You’d like to hope this shit was astroturfed.
Yes.
Good skiing?
Cold, dark, and isolated.
Like an African in the arctic?
That’s pretty much where I am.
“Agent Sloper, meet your new partner: The KKaped avenger!
“Under the “Menstrual Equality for All Act,” a California state bill passed in October 2023, all public schools offering grades 3 to 12 are required to feature period products in both sex bathrooms.”
https://thepostmillennial.com/california-school-district-installs-tampon-dispensers-in-3rd-grade-boys-bathrooms
Do the bathrooms have water?
Can one of our CA Glibs confirm whether tampons are one of the few products not known by the State of California to cause cancer?
I wouldn’t be surprised if they actually did cause cancer, for a number of reasons.
Wait, we’re down to only two sexes now? That’s not very progressive.
Since anyone can go into any bathroom they want, I’m not sure why they still have separately designated bathrooms.
I’m seeing “all-gender” restrooms now.
Surprisingly, they only fit one person.
One person, but zero Trigglypuffs!
Do Better!
I thought the Danes were taking them off of our hands? Was it the Danes?
“Menstrual Equality for All Act,”
When do they pass the menstrual equity for all act?
Under that law, men have periods whether they want them or not.
Silicone Saturday will do its best fake orgasm just for you.
https://archive.is/lWOYE
Started off strong with #1, finished strong with #33.
Mileage may vary. There’s only a handful worth ruining a marriage over.
“I would prefer the implementation of The OMWC Plan”
That doesn’t sound like a recipe that will keep children safe.
The Bibas family might disagree.
“A cannibal in Connecticut has been granted conditional release from a psychiatric hospital after brutally killing a man with an axe, eating one of his eyeballs, and part of his brain.
Tyree Smith had been found “Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity” in 2013 and sent to Connecticut Valley Hospital in Middletown for “up to 60 years” for the murder and cannibalism of 43-year-old Angel Gonzalez.”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/02/connecticut-cannibal-who-killed-man-axe-ate-his/
Now that’s old-school crazy.
That sort of thing happens more often than we hear about. We had one here released after having been in and out of mental hospitals 2x for two separate murders. Sure as the sun comes up he was found, after being released for the third time, to have committed the same act yet again and had 2 bodies buried in his back yard. Experts decreed that he was safe to let loose.
“Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers has eliminated the term “mother” and replace it with “inseminated person” in the latest budget bill.
In the legislation put forward by his office, Evers crossed out the words “man,” “father,” “mother,” and “wife” in statutory language.
Evers also changed the terms mother and father to simply “parent who gave birth.”
Words such as “husband” and “wife” are also being replaced with “person” and spouse.””
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/02/wisconsin-gov-tony-evers-has-eliminated-mother-replaced/
CWAA
You can’t even make this stuff up.
Lol. Congrats, ladies. 50 years of feminism so that the governor can legally describe you as a cum dumpster.
And can we really say that a woman who has an IVF pregnancy has been inseminated?
What about adoptive parents?
Norman J. Warren was ahead of his time.
Amazing how they end up objectifying everyone they claim to show compassion for. It is almost like they only see other humans as game pieces that they can move around on the board to win the game of thrones.
Adoptive parents are child maintenance units.
It doesn’t even make sense in the context of appeasing the radical tranny lobby.
There is nothing in the word “mother” that requires the chest-feeder to be called a “woman”.
“When I think of an activist, I think of a normal person without logic or rationality.”
Jack Nicholson’s character in As Dumb As It Gets
“Making sense” and “radical tranny lobby” are, shall we say, uneasy bedfellows.
“Translation: when you don’t cherry-pick the data, the narrative collapses.”
What I got from skimming it:
‘torture the data until it tells us what we want to hear’
‘models’ are dumb for stuff like this.
Ransom note
Gov. Gavin Newsom late Friday sent a request to congressional leaders outlining nearly $40 billion in federal funding to cover the long-term recovery and rebuilding effort for last month’s devastating Los Angeles fires.
Driven by hurricane-force winds, the firestorms destroyed more than 16,000 structures in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena in what’s estimated to be the most expensive disaster in U.S. history.
In the 14-page letter, addressed to House Speaker Mike Johnson, Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Reps. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) and Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) of the Appropriations Committee, Newsom wrote that as the state continues to assess the damage while conducting active response and recovery efforts, officials expect to identify additional funding needs beyond the $39.68 billion he outlined Friday.
“Make no mistake, Los Angeles will use this money wisely,” Newsom wrote. “California will ensure that funds will serve individuals, communities, property owners, and businesses that suffered losses from these devastating fires.”
Added Newsom: “California has long been the tentpole of the American economy, a state whose GDP is the fifth largest on the planet and which contributes more tax receipts to the federal government than any other state — by far. California’s success is America’s success.”
“We’ll let you know when we need more.”
Then what the fuck do you need to steal money from that Tulsa retail clerk to rebuild the palaces of your state’s millionaires for, you greasy prick?
Well if the greedy insurance company fatcats won’t pay for it, the Tulsa retail clerk will have to do.
Tragic
The stakes are especially high for one group of scientists this morning, as a federal judge in Massachusetts hears arguments on whether she should allow President Donald Trump’s administration to slash the overhead costs the National Institutes of Health (NIH) pays to institutions for medical research.
Researchers who use tens of millions of rodents and thousands of nonhuman primates each year are especially dependent on these NIH “indirect cost” payments to support major animal research facilities, where complex housing, staffing, medical care, and regulatory oversight requirements push up costs. It’s not uncommon for large research universities, for example, to have “mouse houses” that support tens of thousands of rodents.
Indirect cost rates can be relatively high at universities; at Stanford University, for instance, they are 54%, meaning an NIH grant with direct research costs of $100,000 would come with an additional $54,000 to pay for administration and facility costs. But at animal facilities, the rates can rise above 80%. Although scientists using the animals must pay per diems out of their own grants for the use of the animals and the procedures they undergo, those payments don’t cover the cost of running the centers.
Those lab rats might starve to death before we can torture them.
What a world, what a world.
Stanford has a $36.5 billion endowment. Even at $100 bucks a rat (procurement representing probably 10% of that), that’s 365 million rats they could buy and house until they have to start tapping the alumni. Even if a primate costs 50x as much as a rat, that’s 7.3 million chimps.
Regulations push up the cost so the solution is to give them more money. Got it.
“Indirect cost rates can be relatively high at universities;”
Self-licking ice cream cone. Cut what they get to cover those costs, and they will spend less, I guarantee you. And if they need more than the 15%, well, it’s their mission, so they can spend their own damn money on it.
At facilities that house primates, “This sort of cut would cause a death spiral,” says Deborah Fuller, director of the Washington National Primate Research Center at the University of Washington. The center—one of seven such facilities supported by NIH—would lose $5 million of a $30.5 million budget if NIH cuts its rate to 15%, according to one of two legal challenges to the NIH proposal, filed by 22 state attorneys general. The center’s negotiated indirect cost rate is 83.1%, the lawsuit notes. A cut would force it “to reduce or eliminate the 800 nonhuman primates in its care,” it states.
In its “care”. Yeah, they’re running a big vacation resort for monkeys up there. Luxury accommodations and non stop fun.
If you can’t have fun with 800 monkeys are you even trying?
I find it hard to believe that housing the experment subjects is not a direct cost of the experiments.
There is also that, although a lot of it may be a fixed cost rather than in incremental cost per test subject.
Let’s say you’re interviewing someone to hire them, and the interviewee comes prepared with some in-depth, probing questions about management style, team dynamics, and office “culture”. Not just the usual questions about salary and benefits and office hours.
How would you react?
(BTW, I’m going to ask these questions regardless, since work environment is almost more important to me than salary. Just curious about how those types of questions would be viewed)
I would view them favorably. But I don’t hire people.
I think that any place that found these questions to be problematic is a work place that you don’t want to work at.
So, you get the information you want one way or another.
I hire people. But those questions would be sort of unrelated to the positions I offer.
🤷🏼♂️
(BTW BTW – I view an interview as 50-50. I’m interviewing them just as much as they’re interviewing me.)
Personally, I think it’s a good thing that both parties want a good fit. Whether they’re a good fit or not depends on the exact questions.
As an interviewee I’ve asked questions in this vein, obviously you have to be more tactful than ‘do you micromanage your staff?’
My suggestion is to probe a bit on a first (non HR) interview, but save those questions for subsequent interviews.
There is nothing wrong asking those questions it’s just when and how you do it.
I want my hire to be a good fit so I don’t have to go through the hiring process again.
Depends on how they treat the rest of the interview. If they give weak answers to enough questions, but are all about personal issues, then they are a hard pass. If it comes across as being secondary to the job requirements, then they are on a list that will at least get a call back of some sort.
The bottom line is that we are about to be in a glut of ex-feds, and too much asking about office culture is kind of a red flag.
I view the first interview as me learning about you and your skill sets.
The second and subsequent is will you and your skills work for my organization.
Somebody who comes into an initial interview with a bunch of questions about personal stuff is a huge red flag.
Again, office environment to me is pretty much just as important as salary. I’ve had some real doozies in my career.
I had one boss tell us (in an office that administered college scholarships) that we work in a factory, and we are to be seated at our desks, hands on keyboards, no later than 8:45 am. That boss literally viewed her employees as children to be monitored and disciplined, rather than colleagues that were all working hard to meet the goals of the program. I won’t tolerate that attitude in a boss ever again.
I just came from the most productive, collaborative work environment I’ve ever experienced. It was the gold standard of teamwork.
I have 30 minutes in front of a hiring committee. I get 5 minutes to ask questions. I have no idea if there’s a 2nd step. I need to learn just as much about them as they do about me.
My parting question was always, “What reservations do you have about my fit for this position?” At least if it were a job I wanted.
If they view their candidates as beggars coming to them with hat-in-hand rather than potential colleagues, I want nothing to do with them. To me, it’s a 50-50 process the whole way through.
I like that one.
That right there wouldn’t make me happy. That’s not enough time and too many people for any kind of rational decision making.
I would just use those 5 minutes to probe how my skills will or won’t meet their expectations and hope for a better discussion one on one.
So where is the opportunity for the interviewee to decide whether your organization fits them? Sounds like it’s pretty one-sided.
Part of it is, in my view, that you will be on any given team for only a short period, so whatever answers to that would be so likely to change at any given point as to be semi-meaningless. In much the same way that you will not have the same boss for any position the entire time you are doing that work, you will not be an employee for the same team in any given time period.
The question for me would be whether you can work in any given situation, or are you only good in certain hot house environments?
The other part of the reason for my response to this is I was once laid off into a crushingly bad economy, and at first I was selective in what I wanted a work situation to look like, and after being unemployed for two years, I should have realized I rapidly needed to change my outlook but that the window on my career had closed.
On the subsequent interviews. I’m happy to answer the questions. I don’t want to go through hiring hell again. It sucks. I want you to be happy.
But a first interview is one sided in my view. You applied to me not the other way around.
‘You applied to me not the other way around.’
Not always true, but fair enough in most circumstances.
In my hiring manager days, that would be 100% a positive.
In academia, just the opposite, but what the culture is there is a given.
BTW #3 – of all the interviews I’ve done in 30 years, I’ve only not been offered the job twice.
DoomPorn fantasy world
As the first few weeks of the Trump administration’s actions have clearly shown, the president’s agenda is revolutionary, hoping to bring about rapid, comprehensive and fundamental change to American life. If past revolutions from above are any guide to the future of Trump’s endeavor, his revolution will not only fail to achieve its goals, but also generate its opponents and gravediggers.
Trump’s revolution will fail because rapid, comprehensive and fundamental change is too complex, with too many imponderables and unknowns to succeed. Unintended consequences will appear, problems will arise and sooner or later the whole project will come to a standstill. Except of course that it will have ruined the lives of millions of people — usually those with the least to lose.
The affected elites and masses, which will comprise everyone besides Trump’s fanatical supporters, will likely take to the streets and demonstrate that “people power” can be an effective tool of resistance to revolutionary elites with inhuman agendas. The administration would respond with threats and violence, but, unless it’s willing to engage in mass terror in the style of the French Revolution, the coercion would only harden the resolve of the protestors. The mass marches would continue.
But a certain segment of the opponents would draw a different lesson from the government crackdown. Like the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers and Young Lords in the U.S., and like the Red Army Faction in Germany and the Red Brigades in Italy, they may conclude that violence must be countered with violence.
Expect bank robberies and assassinations, campuses in turmoil. The National Guard would be mobilized. But the key line of defense, the FBI, would likely be too disorganized and too demoralized to track down the terrorists.
Philip K Dick did it better.
LOL all the left does is yammer on about “rapid, comprehensive and fundamental change”.
Spent a half day this week in a skid car. 💯, would do it again. Way better than fucking around in an icy parking lot. If I won the lottery, I’d pour a 5 acre skid pad and buy one of those systems.
“Determined to salvage the relationship, Meyer planned a romantic evening. He bought his wife a dress, ordered takeout, and decorated their home with drawings of the Eiffel Tower for a Parisian-themed celebration, according to the outlet. The couple reportedly danced to their wedding song before tensions resurfaced.
Meyer claimed Deborah left the house briefly after dinner, which he believed was to meet her alleged boyfriend, according to WAVE 3 News. When she returned, he demanded her phone, leading to a violent altercation, WAVE 3 News reported. The affidavit, according to the report, alleges that Meyer choked her, forced her to the ground, and sat on her back while searching through her messages. He then allegedly called the person, blaming them for the situation.
As Deborah fought back, Meyer allegedly struck her repeatedly with a wine bottle before retrieving a kitchen knife and allegedly stabbing her approximately 40 times, the outlet reported. He then allegedly used her phone to send a picture of her body to the contact listed as “My Best Friend Emily” with the message: “Your Fault.” He also allegedly messaged her family and friends, confessing to the killing, according to the local report.”
https://dailycaller.com/2025/02/21/indiana-man-stabbing-wife-forty-valentines-day-paris-theme-date-co-worker-contact-reports-charges/
So how was the take out?
It doesnt say, who is ‘My Best Friend Emily’? Did she really sneak out to get a quickie or did she have some other reason?
For KK, although the video title isn’t quite accurate. It doesn’t go completely vertical.
https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1iuqtd8/tu134_flies_toward_his_forever_home_storage/
Thank you! Lovely flight
Spent a half day this week in a skid car.
Nice.
MAGAs in the mist
As an anthropologist of U.S. political culture, I have been studying the Make America Great Again, or MAGA, movement for years. I wrote a related 2021 book, “It Can Happen Here.” And I continue to do MAGA research at places like this year’s CPAC, where the mood has been giddy.
Into the deepest darkest heart of MAGAland, armed with nothing but a pith helmet and a notebook.
In a two party system it is important to have both sides right about most things, rational, and only disagreeing on points of method, not of end goals.
We have never really had that, have we?
Now, now, He also brought a smug sense of superiority. That is far more important than the pith helmet and notebook. It’s more or less the key to anthropology.
Note who gets the scare quotes:
Starve in a wildfire, proggie shithead.
No Human Is A Rapist
The MAGA faithful believe that Trump is restoring an era of American exceptionalism in which the U.S. is an economic powerhouse, common sense is the rule, and traditional values centered on God, family and freedom are celebrated.
And they believe in a future where the U.S. is, as Trump said in his inaugural address, “the envy of every nation.”
Ewwwww.