Good morning one and all to another stupendous day!
Senate confirms Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary, a key role for Trump’s trade agenda
Kash Patel Closes In on Confirmation Vote
Trump orders all Biden-era US attorneys to be fired: ‘We must clean house immediately’
Federal judge hands Trump major win by declining to block DOGE federal agency firings, data access
DOGE looks at making cuts at the Department of Defense
DOGE Asks NIH Employees: So What Do You Do Around Here?
Top Social Security Administration Official Steps Down After Conflict with DOGE
DOGE finds nearly $40 billion in spending linked to government-issued credit cards
DOGE finds Treasury spent up to $4.7 TRILLION in untraceable payments
Covid vaccine faces ban for all Americans in radical U-turn by Trump team
Customs and Border Protection: Apprehensions on southern US border dropped drastically in January
KFC moving US headquarters from Kentucky to Texas, citing better prospects for growth
That’s all I got for today. I’ll leave you with a song and move along with my day.
Sounds like a CoNStiTuTiONaL cRiSIs!
At least until the next team blue administration.
Doesn’t he know he works for the bureaucracy not the other way?
Remember when W did what all administrations do and replaced leftover US attorneys with his own? And that was somehow a big deal, even though every administration does it?
None of them were backed by Soros, so that WAS a big problem.
Jesus, when you’ve lost Chutkan…
Also, I thought states had no standing in these matters.
Welcome to the Federal courts, where the rules don’t matter, and the standing is made up!
Perhaps Chutkan can see that all of these lower court orders have to end up in front of the Supremes, and can guess how that will play out?
I don’t know if her Trump case is going to end up in an appeals court, but if so, that can’t reflect well on her. Maybe she’s avoiding more trouble.
I don’t know much about her, but it is just possible that she takes her job and her role seriously, and doesn’t want to play politics.
inb4 every heffalump with a military base in their district/state starts the chorus of gUtTinG oUr MiLItArY!!!!!
Look, if we don’t keep a strong Coast Guard presence in Cleveland, Canadians may come down like an avalanche, is that what you want?
I want an audit to see how much is being wasted on non-search and rescue functions.
That’s funny, one of our coaches (who now is a player) was in the Coast Guard, stationed in Ohio.
Maybe the Coast Guard is in Ohio not to protect it from Canadians, but to protect it from Michiganders.
DC: Back to BRAC.
Do we really NEED all those foreign bases?
Look, are just gonna be satisfied with a republic, or do you want an empire?
What is defined as a base? Camp Zama, Grafenwohr, Sigonella are bases. Is the Marine barracks at an embassy a base?
Check out Ron Paul over here.
All your base belong to us.
@dbeagle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_military_installations
I didn’t count them all.
So, will it now be TFC?
As long as they keep the buckets of chicken. I actually heard someone doing a bit about not being able to find the buckets of chicken any more, but they were from CA (I expect there’s not much that’s good and proper that’s kept around out there).
Last time I checked that was available even in New York, but then again, I neither need that much chicken nor eat KFC all that often.
Bring back the Double Down.
UCS:
In the Coasties defense, they do quite a bit of search and rescue up here. There’s more than enough idiots going out onto the lake. On the other hand, not every rescue is worth it (yes, no Coasties mentioned in either story).
Will they now offer chicken-fried steak?
Now there’s something I’ve not had in a while…
I should probably just cook my own.
Now I have to look into low-carb breading options.
The key to chicken-fried steak is to pound the meat* very thin before breading and cooking.
*I know, I know
I’ve realized I have an Elk filet in the freezer which if split in half could be flattened down appropriately into two steaks. Some quick internet browsing has found that the common carb substitute is almond flour and powdered pork rinds. I have almond flour. The pricy part will be the eggs.
Trader Joe is your friend.
In their defense, there wasn’t a tracking code for “cronyism” and “graft,” so it wasn’t clear how to properly categorize those expenditures.
As I said before, it seems like any expenditure without a TAS tracking code can’t be ticked-and-tied to an appropriation, and is fair game for elimination even under court orders that Trump spend every dime appropriated by Congress.
This also creates the opportunity for “malicious compliance” delays in cutting checks*: make the code mandatory (again?) and set up a review process to ensure that the code is accurate/valid before the checks are cut.
*Never forget: revenues delayed are revenues denied.
I believe the new Treasury Secretary already told the staff that payments without ID codes are no longer allowed.
Can you imagine trying to slip an expense report past Finance without any explanations??
Delays?? B-b-but i’m connected!!
What in the hot crispy Kentucky fried fuck?
From what I’ve heard about Col. Sanders, those could be his exact words.
Supposedly, even sweet little old grannies overlooked his profanity, though.
He was no Col Angus
Trump dumps the ronavaxx.
That seems like a big deal.
Pfizer haz a sad.
Pfizer can burn in hell.
Beats the alternative of having them mandated, but in my libertopia they wouldn’t be banned, and the FDA, if it existed at all, would only issue public advisories regarding safety and efficacy and let people do as they will. Of course, in my libertopia, the vaccine manufacturer also wouldn’t have a blanket exemption from tort law.
Well, we ain’t getting libertopia in this or any other timeline, so this falls into the bucket of “call it a win because it undoes a massively harmful grift op”.
I’d agree, but the trouble is the pendulum will eventually swing back, and the means to the grift will still be there. It’s a respite, but it’d be nice to have a more permanent solution.
“a more permanent solution”
Avatar checks out.
It seems we are forever doomed to either “you must do this” or “you must not do this” on every topic you can imagine.
Everything not prohibited is compulsory.
I sold all my Pfizer at the beginning of the year. Sounds like I made a good move. So are lefties going to try and score ‘vax’ on the streets?
“Whachu need man? I got the Moderna, I got the Pfizer, I got the J&J…”
This one will make your heart feel like it’s going to jump out of your chest…
… all my meetings from today got rescheduled to tomorrow.
Now I’ve got a meting-free day today, and nothing but meetings tomorrow.
😱
You should sneak in some veggies.
The meetings will be meted out later?
yes, tomorrow.
Same here. And we were told to work at home due to the rumor of snow.
Aaaaaand it’s snowing
I think that’s against the law around here.
Down here in NELA we had a tiny bit of freezing junk but surprisingly the schools, as they are prone to do, didn’t react like it was end times.
Not so in Spotsyltucky, though they used a new closure code for asynchronous “learning”.
I’m sorry your junk is freezing.
I keep telling the wife that it’s been cold lately but she isn’t buying it.
Apparently Kathy found a govsec union she doesn’t like: the screws.
https://www.timesunion.com/capitol/article/strikes-spread-ny-prisons-officers-urged-return-20173388.php
These strikes are probably illegal?
Fire them all. There are lots of people loafing around who could use a well-paid job.
I thought New York had joined California in the “Free them all, prison is racism,” game.
Two gems this AM in the WSJ.
Europe Flails for Response After Trump Blames Kyiv for Ukraine War
https://www.wsj.com/world/european-leaders-trump-russia-ukraine-talks-865da56a?st=5VaD8Q&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Trump late Tuesday essentially blamed Ukraine for the war, which started when Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a large-scale invasion of his smaller neighbor three years ago. In a comment directed at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump said: “You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”
He said Ukraine should hold elections before a peace deal can be reached, saying, without basis, that Zelensky had very little support among voters.
Zelensky Says Trump Needs ‘More Truth’ After Claims Ukraine Started the War
https://www.wsj.com/world/zelensky-says-trump-needs-more-truth-after-claims-ukraine-started-the-war-08989b98?st=f4CqLr&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
I’m sure that will really encourage OMB to open up the US taxpayers’ wallets.
They said, without basis. Protip: it’s difficult to ascertain the level of support a political leader enjoys when they suspend elections and declare themselves a monarch.
Just give the other guy everything he wants doesn’t seem like a very good precedent to set.
I’m fine with the munchkin generalissimo holding out until the last granny in Kiev is facing down the T-54s, just so long as it’s on his own dime. It still doesn’t validate his support among voters when he’s banned opposition parties and disfavored religious groups, and suspended elections indefinitely.
I’m with Ted S. At the end of the day, Zelinsky is going to have to accept that he can’t beat the Russians and will have to cede some territory but let’s not get it twisted though. Putin was absolutely wrong to invade Ukraine and that seems to be his M.O. when it comes to the former Soviet Republics. It’s funny how Putin piss and moans that the some of the former Soviet Republics and other countries under the former USSR are trying to move closer to the West when he validates their fears by invading them or meddling in their affairs.
Trump seems to be on a mission for world peace. A reproachment with the Russians is how he plans to get there and Ukraine is a speedbump. NATO is irrelevant, western Europe is a bunch of losers in a theme park being overrun with third worlders.
We could always have world peace if we just let WEF get their way, too.
Their peace plan looks like a copy of Napoleon and Hitler’s.
Grrrr. Two unplanned trips back to Texas, which means a few thousand dollars I hadn’t budgeted.
1) My sister commissioned a piece of music in honor of my late father, so I’ll need to go to its performance.
2) My eldest niece is getting married. I guess it’s that time of the generational cycle.
Better than traveling for funerals, I suppose. Although planned funerals would be worse.
Absolutely.
At his confirmation hearing last month, Lutnick dismissed as “nonsense″ the idea that tariffs contribute to inflation.
Since inflation is a result of monetary policy, this statement is unequivocally true. Whatever senator asked that question would have to be Bernie Sanders-level ignorant of basic economics just to float the query.
Which raises the question — what fuckwit asked Lutnick that?
Thank you, I thought I was the only one still fighting this battle!
Still got Navarro and Lighthizer in the bull pen. Strap hangers for Trump!
The Bobs. 😂🤣
We need an acronym that adds up to BOB for these staffing reviews. I think “Organization” and “Baseline” would work, but the other “B” isn’t coming to me.
Bureaucracy
Optimization
Bureaucrats
Has a nice symmetry to it.
How many are people persons?
And Vagene?
Aging punk rock band or bowling group?
:: Lights Q Signal ::
Oh wait that’s BOBS. Never mind.
So much #winning puts me in a good mood for a change.
Sacked for being a Christian
😮
That is not the ending I expected, given the lack of freedoms there.
Yeah. I expected they would jail her.
If Trevor Noah was this based when he was on tv, people might have watched his show.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/trevor-noah-suggests-integration-black-white-people-was-mistake
I don’t think he’s “based” so much as a racist POS.
An interesting position for a mulatto.
As soon as I say that, Obama and his Mulatto Mafia comes to mind.
He’s a lefty – it comes with the territory.
True as far as it goes. However, I wonder if ol’ Trev thinks he shares a culture and “vibe” with, say, an Afro-Caribbean simply by virtue of having a vaguely similar skin tone.
The verbal slight of hand here is that he is describing culture, but then slipping ethnicity in as an addition. The shared understanding which leads to trust is culture. Shared language, idioms, customs, and ‘vibes’ are what a culture is. Culture is not carried in the DNA.
We would be able to say all kinds of racist shit without pushback from those we hate.
Jarflax:
Next you’ll say that different cultures/subcultures will have their own jargon which would lead to code switching when talking to different groups.
I’ll even say that anyone who lives a varied life will move in and out of subcultures as they age.
“…comedian Trevor Noah…” and I’m out.
The perfect angle on the people criticizing DOGE.
https://x.com/MyLordBebo/status/1892211405488631929
Kat get the W there.
I like pregnant Kat. She’s been hopped up on Gutfeld.
“OnlyFans creator Lily Phillips, who slept with 100 men in one day, has controversially claimed she is pregnant – hours after her former friend and fellow adult performer Bonnie Blue teased having ‘cravings’.
The 24-year-old British model, originally from Derbyshire, shared two separate ‘pregnancy’ announcements on her Instagram page, including a short clip of Phillips cradling her ‘bump’ while telling followers ‘it’s official’.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-14412591/Lily-Phillips-announces-pregnancy-hours-former-friend-Bonnie-Blue-teases-having-cravings.html
Class action paternity suit?
Live footage of the proceedings./
I try not to be judgmental about other’s lifestyles but wtf? I feel like your 20’s are the best years of your life and she chooses to use those good years to get railed out by 100’s of different men on film and getting knocked up by some random guy. I have to wonder, how’s her relationship with her parents?
I read her mom is her business manager.
That’s incredibly sad.
It might be my hedonism showing, but at that age I would have jumped at the chance to make money by having as much sex as possible.
I don’t even want to know what kind of OnlyFans content comes out of that.
*redacted*
Has anyone determined if Musk has an alibi?
“A transgender college basketball player has made the bold claim that she is at a ‘major biological disadvantage’, despite her record-breaking success on the court.
Harriette Mackenzie, 21, leads Vancouver Island in points, rebounds and blocks this season, and previously broke five women’s basketball records at Mount Royal University, her previous school.
But despite this, Mackenzie – a biological male – claims she is at a major ‘competitive’ disadvantage when she plays against women on the court.
Explaining that she began transitioning in ‘kindergarten or first grade’, she said: ‘I’m playing at a major biological disadvantage.
‘I never went through male puberty, I only went through female puberty.'”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/college-basketball/article-14275915/Harriette-Mackenzie-Vancouver-Island-trans.html
But she’s 6′ 2″?
Definitionally, no, you did not go through female puberty.
But if you believe something really hard, it becomes reality! Just like when we wish and clap really hard we make Tinkerbell fly!
“Well, not personally, but vicariously with my sister and her friends”
I guess mental illness is a disadvantage of sorts.
If she started transitioning in ‘kindergarten or first grade’ (which I doubt), was it even her decision?
Sure…
I respect their capitalistic instincts, however. It’s the soda that’s good for you!
‘Gut Pop’ Is Injecting New Fizz Into the Beverage Aisle
https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/gut-pop-is-injecting-new-fizz-into-the-beverage-aisle-3258a4b9?st=8YvvyQ&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
I used to be a Diet Dr. Peeper addict until giving it up a few years ago.
My wife bought some Olipop Dr. Goodwin. Pretty good, and ingredients that don’t sound like a chemistry experiment. If the stuff wasn’t so expensive, I’d drink it regularly.
https://drinkolipop.com/products/doctor-goodwin
I don’t know. It’s got “Allulose Syrup”. Which seems like way to spin this piece of chemistry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psicose
Or people could just eat vegetables.
/makes another batch of sauerkraut with a couple of Sean’s peppers tossed in.
Prebiotic? Drinks with stuff from before there was life on earth?
“The former heavyweight champ wore a MAGA-style hat that had “Re-Elect that Mother F*cker” written across the top of the hate.”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/02/mike-tyson-wins-night-mar-lago-his-latest/
LOLOLOL
Let one of those people who always saying that they’ll punch a Nazi or trump supporter in the face be in the same room with Tyson and tell him how they feel.
It wouldn’t go well.
I’d buy a ticket to that event…
There’s this guy who I went to college with who always proclaims that he would punch a Nazi in the face if he encountered one. If we time travelled his ass back to 1930’s Germany and he saw a bunch of brownshirts on the sidewalk, he would do whatever he could to go on the other side of the street.
Why, just dance around him for 4 minutes, wait for him to get tired, and take your shot. Worked for Paul.
Ed:
Let me guess, he’s a Bernie Bro too?
No one challenged Mike to take off his hat
Looks like CNN got tagged with $5MM for defaming the guy doing rescues/evacuations in Afghanistan.
https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/jury-finds-cnn-liable-5-million-defamation-trial-against-us-navy-veteran
That’s before punitives, but the $1MM in emotional distress damages doesn’t bode well for CNN.
From memory that’s the case with some absolutely damning text messages.
Yeah, didn’t CNN settle right after the first decision?
Could be, Neph. Now that I look, that story is a month old. I thought it rang a bell.
“An anti-police protester, who was injured by a US Marshal during the infamous 2020 riots in downtown Portland, will receive a $7.65 million settlement from the Department of Justice. Donovan LaBella, 30, of Oregon, was left disabled after being shot in the head with a less-lethal crowd control munition while participating in a BLM-Antifa riot outside the federal courthouse in downtown Portland on July 11, 2020.
Federal authorities said LaBella had thrown a gas grenade at police officers, which prompted law enforcement to fire additional rounds into the crowd. One of those rounds accidentally struck Labella directly on his forehead, causing him to sustain a traumatic brain injury. He was left with a condition called frontal lobe syndrome, which affects cerebral functions such as speech and social behaviors, according to the complaint.”
https://thepostmillennial.com/doj-to-pay-portland-anti-cop-militant-7-65-million-over-injury-during-2020-riot-outside-federal-courthouse-after-he-threw-gas-grenade-at-police
Should have shot him with a lethal munition?
Sounds like it. He literally threw a grenade at cops during a riot, that’s practically suicide-by-cop.
“…which affects cerebral functions such as speech and social behaviors, according to the complaint.”
How could they tell?
Oh no… Still no word on who was piloting the plane that crashed but…
“The plane that crashed in Toronto was a Delta flight operated by Endeavor Air, a small airline obsessed with all-female “unmanned” flights”
https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1892081329312813478
The comments – some of them aren’t nice.
They learned how to clam up from the US DoD.
I would say an all-female crew would clam up on it’s own.
https://x.com/DogRightGirl/status/1892198627721748524
Heh.
…
Maybe we do need some MTF trannies piloting planes.
Dream job
“DOE finds that your further employment would not be in the public interest,” the letter read in part. The 26-year-old was being removed from her position, “effective today.”
Rose was shocked, and she had plenty of company. Even longtime workers seemed confused.
“People who’ve been in the federal government 30, 40 years are like, ‘We have never seen this before. This is unprecedented,'” she says.
——-
Rose agreed to discuss her experience with NPR, which is identifying her only by her middle name because she holds out hope she could work for the government again someday and because she worries she’ll be retaliated against for talking to the press.
Just days before, President Trump had signed an executive order directing federal agencies to “initiate large-scale reductions in force.” Rose is one of thousands of early-career federal workers swept up in those moves. The Department of Government Efficiency, overseen by Elon Musk, has also been pushing to slash the federal workforce.
Putting an anonymized face on the pain. NPR wants you to understand the devastation and bafflement. Cry for them, America.
Aim for the stars!
This reminds me of colleges convincing people they can make money with useless degrees. Someone is telling people a government job has some sort of tenure.
Well, they gave up higher pay and benefits for job stability!
/ignores that the pay and benefits are generally higher for government jobs
“early-career federal workers”
i.e., probationary workers.
It sucks but them’s the breaks.
As I mentioned I have a good friend who’s in the same boat – he’s not crying about it like a little bitch. Unlike her, working for the IRS wasn’t some dream job for him, just the only solid thing that came up after months of looking. Back to the grind…
I wonder just how many of these federal workers ever thought about the plight of all the pipeline workers that Biden had, threw shutting it down, forced the layoffs of? Or, in my case, how many logistics and transportation workers that Stephen Chu’s remarks during the Obama admin caused the job loss of?
Not many, I suspect.
Or the oil workers turfed out due to fracking and off-shore bans. Or coal workers.
“Readers of The Sacramento Bee’s coverage of a rally for legislation pitched as protecting girls, women and parental rights at the California statehouse Friday would have no idea someone shot at the house of the volleyball coach who helped inspire the bills and spoke at the rally, or even that San Jose State University fired her for exposing a male on her women’s team.
The Capitol newspaper’s omission of the shot fired through Melissa Batie-Smoose’s window Monday while she was at home in a virtual meeting with a lawyer, confirmed by local police Thursday, and her unwilling departure from SJSU appears par for the course in mainstream media coverage of the backlash to men competing as women in school sports….
Batie-Smoose was virtually meeting with Mountain West players and lead attorney Bill Bock when “I hear this big sound … I look over to the window and I see the bullet hole,” she told Fox News. “Police said the shot had to come from the street behind me.”
The fact that police are investigating the threat as vandalism – the weapon was a pellet gun – is “kind of crazy to me” because it could have harmed her if it hit her, she said.”
https://justthenews.com/government/state-houses/shot-fired-womens-volleyball-coach-who-exposed-male-team-she-preps-lawsuit
That just sounds odd.
NYT – opinion piece. I’m not even two paragraphs into it before the “misinformation” starts.
“Mr. Lanza was warning the Germans not to sell hydraulics, which can be used for hospital beds as well as missile launchers, to China. It was no small ask.”
Sure. The same size and type of hydraulics is used for both missile launchers and hospital beds. And China has no capacity to produce hydraulics itself.
A U.S. Betrayal Is Surreal for Europeans
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/19/opinion/trump-munich-security-conference.html
https://archive.fo/fSJfk
To be fair, hydrolics actually require very tight tolerances in machining.
For decades, China had no ability to produce the tips of ball point pens because they were incapable of making the balls to the proper tolerances to fit in the pen. They had to import the pieces from countries where ‘eh, good enough’ isn’t good enough.
I would not be shocked if the domestic chinese hydrolic production capacity was exceptionally low, with a high falure rate due to shortcuts and sloppy machining.
OFFS.
Fine. Sell your souls to China. See how that works out for you.
We look fondly on the time America would overlook our authoritarian tendencies out of fear of the Soviets. Why don’t they fear Russia like that?
This article and Brooks’ fired government employee article – they are the same.
Italy (lhs) and Germany (rhs) have been Putin’s best friends for the past 3 years. Direct exports to Russia fell from both countries (black), but that drop has been close to offset by transshipments to Russia via Central Asia and Turkey (blue). Short-term greed above all else…
https://x.com/robin_j_brooks/status/1891472498597749020
Well the bottom line is the bottom line it seems. And kind gestures doth butter no parsnips.
Paraphrasing a Democratic operative who I won’t name:
The Democratic party is now less effective because the pro-Palestine movement was effective at marginalizing the party’s Jews and the party promoted Black women to fill the empty spots.
https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1892095298517766280
so on a scale of 1 to whatever how racist is it to say this?
Well, they capitalized “black”.
I’ve often chuckled that the GM’s best selling EV is a Honda.
https://www.theautopian.com/why-i-wouldnt-recommend-the-2024-honda-prologue-unless-you-lease-it/
Getting foreigners to do work Americans won’t.
Lost generation
“One might ask, ‘Why are they trying to destroy the science training pipeline?’” that professor said. “To what end?”
In the first month of the second Trump administration, the world’s richest man—underinformed, chronically online, and staffed by a coterie of teenaged and twentysomething former engineering interns—has been moving at warp speed to reshape, reduce, and even dismantle the United States government. But while Musk’s rampage has been feverishly covered, the scope of its impact remains largely underappreciated. Experts say it can’t be measured in weeks or months or even in government services affected. Rather, it will be felt over the span of decades and defined in metrics like intellectual talent lost.
Dozens of interviews with top researchers revealed a persistent, overbearing fear that the United States is at the starting point of a massive brain drain. The federal government has long taken an active role in funding basic scientific research, which is financially risky and expensive but critical to discoveries that yield new technologies, including treatments and cures for diseases. Young researchers hoping to find new treatments for cancer, dementia, or other diseases may find that, with government funding curtailed, they may never get the opportunity. Areas of scientific investigation will be cut off as the Trump administration discourages or outright prohibits funding for certain fields of research.
Some may find refuge in the private sector. But those opportunities will be inherently limited—companies built around making profits don’t tend to fund research with long-shot profit-making upside.
And so begins the Simplification. Knowledge will be systematically wiped out.
“But while Musk’s rampage has been feverishly covered, the scope of its impact remains largely underappreciated. Experts say it can’t be measured in weeks or months or even in government services affected. Rather, it will be felt over the span of decades and defined in metrics like intellectual talent lost.”
Yes, experts like Paul Krugman.
Among the many smaller lies in that piece, the big one is that research funding is being curtailed. It is not. The ADDITIONAL payment, on top of the research grant, to the organizational sponsor, is being curtailed. The research grants themselves are not.
What would Elon Musk know about driving high performance at a complex organization, anyway?
Every innovation and scientific breakthrough has come from the government.
I’m surprised the Bulwark is still around.
Give ‘em a few weeks for their USAID emergency reserve to run out.
Palmer Luckey explains why science fiction is a great place to look for ideas
“One of the things that I’ve realized in my career is that nothing I ever come up with will be new. I’ve literally never come up with an idea that a science fiction author has not come up with before.”
Palmer continues:
“It makes sense. There’s a lot of [science fiction authors]. They’ve been around for a long time. And they don’t have to make things. And they don’t have to wait for the right moment. I started Oculus at just the right moment for it to succeed. But a science fiction author doesn’t have to wait for something to be possible to think about it and to write about it and for people to be excited about the idea. And so every time I’ve come up with something, I’ve been able to find — usually many, sometimes one — science fiction pieces addressing literally exactly that idea by some guy who just thought about it like 50 years ago.”
He gives a few examples:
“Some of the stuff that I’m building today, for example, in the AR/VR space around augmenting the vision of soldiers — these are ideas that are from 1959 Starship Troopers novels. These are old ideas that have only recently become technologically feasible. The idea of autonomous fighter jets, that’s been around for about 100 years… people have been thinking about this since computers were programmed with punchcards.”
https://x.com/StartupArchive_/status/1891832404316389587
“How the U.S. Government Controls Ukrainian Media
USAID funded the vast majority of ‘independent’ media in Ukraine. What American taxpayers don’t realize is that their money went to suppressing the truth….
The primary funder of these outlets is an NGO called Internews. In 2024, they provided “comprehensive support” for 536 media outlets in Ukraine, per their annual report, and trained over 5,000 journalists. Some Ukrainian publications rely on Internews for 80 percent of their funding.
And where does Internews get its money? Until last week, when the spigot was turned off, it came primarily from USAID, to the tune of $473 million since 2008.”
https://www.thefp.com/p/us-government-controls-ukrainian-media
536 media outlets? Is that one “outlet” for every member of Congress?
“It’s causing a significant amount of mental anguish, especially for my probationary colleagues. These are folks fresh out of college, who do excellent scientific research for the country,” one official at NASA told The Bulwark. “I keep telling the folks on my team to try and apply for jobs as a safety net. But I’m just not sure a lot of these people’s skillsets transfer outside of government research, and they joined NASA because like the rest of us, we wanted to do amazing research and serve our country.”
One HHS employee described the sense of menace he and his colleagues felt at work: “It’s like there is an elephant in every room/zoom meeting that is pointing a gun at us.”
*outright prolonged laughter*
I have a question: if they are probationary, they have been with the government for months, maybe a year or so? They never worked, and have never been qualified to work, in the private sector?
As far as actual research goes, in the private sector a lot of research happens at start-up/early stage companies. You know what those companies are constantly doing? Running out of money and RIFfing their staff.
What it is looking like, and maybe we have already talked about this, is that all of the employment gains post-COVID were just people being added willy-nilly to the gov’t rolls. And that is just how bad they fucked up, and why it has felt so painful to everyone else.
“amazing research and serve our country”
Gonna call partial research on that. All the NASA-affiliated folks I listen to are always talking about the need for international programs and cooperation. The only time they invoke national interests is when they’re asking for money declaring that “the US will fall behind.”
“partial bullshit”
How are you going to get your foreign travel junket paid for if you don’t include international programs and cooperation in your funding?
an elephant in every room/zoom meeting that is pointing a gun at us.
Time to lay off the morning margaritas.
The stark fact of the matter is that there is nowhere for all these newly laid-off gummint employees to go.
Maybe Chipotle. My son would welcome them with open arms as long as they show up, work, are teachable, and don’t bitch.
I hear we need some folks to pick tomatoes.
I’ve been laid off several times. It sucks but part of life in the 21st Century. You find a way to get by restart your career. No reason why government employees should be exempted from the risk of unemployment.
Drop the minimum wage back to a level that makes low-skill employers want to hire, and that will take care of itself, as you say.
The problem is we have a massive house of cards that is preventing the right measures being able to be taken.
“there is nowhere for all these newly laid-off gummint employees to go”
Labor force participation is still quite low, especially for citizens. Get the illegals out, and there will be plenty of jobs. Not what they want to do, probably, but boo-hoo. Plus, with a contraction in supply by subtracting the illegals, wages should go up.
You’ll also need to take a hard look at the misc. welfare programs for the unemployed, which seem to have ballooned like every other government handout during the plague years (yet another permanent emergency).
I got too cocky. I had covid December 2021 and was fine the next three winters. I felt invincible.
This winter? 3 colds and now the flu is destroying me. I’ll never be the same again.
Eat some citrus.
TY Dr. Sean
I would have told him to learn to code.
Why can’t more San Francsico cults be like this instead of Zizians and Rationalists?
https://reason.com/2025/02/19/the-weak-weird-case-against-a-supposed-orgasm-cult/
TW: ENB.
They sound like the Purple People who were a culty group in my hometown.
There are enough mental masturbation cults, it’s about time the physical type gets equal share!
Ugh. 0°F, heat index –14°F, snow all over the place but not plowed and a sun shining brightly. I’m sorry, but the sun need not be shining on all this snow. It just ain’t right. Anyway, I have places to go and heavy things to haul when I get there. In a big fat coat. *sigh*
My husband has asked me not to go out.
My mother wants tomato soup.
Sorry, Mom. Husband wins this time.
I was assured by all of the right people that my money going to The Ukraine was saving democracy.
Also, those condoms to Hamas? Hamas doesnt have any condoms. They have bullets. Bullets they used to slaughter as many innocents as possible in the most gruesome ways imaginable. You paid for that.
I guess the world needs an evil empire…somebody’s gotta do it.
It’s only 44% which rounds down! So not even close to one half!
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/19/business/largest-mortgage-insurer-fha/index.html
And somehow they found a way to reopen this critical part of the American economy.
https://whdh.com/news/thoughtless-crusade-jfk-library-to-reopen-after-suddenly-closing-due-to-trump-executive-order/
I was looking at that yesterday.
5 probationary employees were let go (maybe 9?) and the library declared that they were unable to function without these brand-new, short-time employees.
Fucking drama queens.
I couldn’t find a count of total employees but, again, they were probationary so I’m guessing they weren’t a significant percentage of the workforce.
I’m fully in favor of firing more of them now.
How am I supposed to be able to research JFK’s speed addled trysts?
From the local rag:
They can’t even keep the number of layoffs consistent paragraph to paragraph.
Somebody probably told them that if senior management couldn’t figure out how to run the library, senior management can be fired, too.
Shame and ignominy
Bret Stephens, a conservative New York Times columnist, called Vice President Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference last week a “disgrace” and criticized Vance for meeting with the leader of a far-right political party in Germany.
“The vice president’s speech last week at the Munich Security Conference — in which the man who refuses to say that Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election lectured his audience about Europe’s retreat from democratic values — combined with his meeting with the leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party, has caused a scandal because it is a scandal, a monument of arrogance based on a foundation of hypocrisy,” Stephens wrote in his op-ed published Tuesday.
Stephens compared Vance’s Munich trip to the failed appeasement efforts of World War II-era British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who flew to Munich in 1938 and agreed to let Germany annex the Sudetenland in the hope of staving off a larger war.
Infamous treachery is the order f the day. Our democracy is laid low.
Bret “Israel is Never Wrong” Stephens was a former WSJ editorial writer for decades. He was always authoritarian, but it’s been really interesting to see him change from authoritarian right to left.
I always wondered how is Israel views play at the NYT.
Marinate in that environment long enough… yeah, it happens.
I guess no federal funding for NJ education. This should be a hoot.
NJ school districts at a loss: Feds say drop diversity efforts, but NJ requires them
https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/education/2025/02/19/trump-orders-schools-to-end-diversity-efforts-but-nj-requires-them/79114781007/
Your property taxes were too low, this will help.
LOL!
My rather affluent town does not rely on FedGov for any significant portion of it’s education budget, but that chunk has to come from somewhere.
Tax on
billionairescenti-milionaires!It’s not a conundrum. NJ needs to pay for it if they want it. Or hustle to get federal funding. Which may go away anyway next year.
Or, and this might be a radical solution, start cutting into the budget, see what you can get rid of.
I am willing to bet that the schools could get rid of all of the children, and that would solve a chunk of the spending problems!
None of that is part of DEI.
If you want to propagandize racism – actual DEI – pay for it yourselves and knock yourselves out.
That sounds like an attempt at malicious compliance, like the dropping of the Tuskegee Airmen module from Air Force training.
Stephens defended Germany, however, for the way it has grappled with its totalitarian past, describing it as “unmistakably democratic not because it unthinkingly honors a principle of unfettered liberty (no democracy does) but because it vigilantly monitors the enemies of democracy while maintaining a memory of what the nation once was.”
“Unfettered liberty is people saying things I don’t want to hear.”
Here’s what popped into my brain yesterday:
*stage whisper*
“Those firemen in California were told to save the trees and let the houses burn.”
Wrongspeak
The president of New York University’s College Republicans chapter resigned after she said in a magazine interview that Barron Trump is “sort of an oddity on campus.”
College Republicans of America posted Monday on the social platform X that Kaya Walker resigned after controversy broke out due to an interview she did with Vanity Fair in which she said President Trump’s 18-year-old son was “sort of like an oddity on campus.”
“He goes to class, he goes home,” she told the outlet, adding a professor joked Barron Trump “doesn’t really belong here.”
The national group said Walker’s comments do not “align with the values and principles upheld by our organization.”
While College Republicans believe Vanity Fair twisted Walker’s words, “we still found it to be inappropriate. The NYU chapter President submitted her resignation last night.”
What a bunch of retards.
An “oddity on campus”? That makes no sense. Why would the presence of the absurdly wealthy 6’7″ son of the sitting President of the United States be deemed out of the ordinary?
“He goes to class, he goes home,”
What a freak.
I get the impression this is because people want to make Barron a pariah for Daddy’s political views.
I’ve only read headlines on this tempest in a teapot. That’s really all she said that got her in trouble? Seems it bit ridiculous.
I see it that way too, and am left wondering if there isn’t some sort of group think going around were they need Baron to be the most popular kid, and saying that he isn’t isn’t “helping” them.
Yeah it makes no sense at all.
I still want to know what he said to Biden that wiped the smirk right off his face.
“Okay, Hon, do your talent”
Former Vice President Harris is making one of her first post-2024 White House bid moves, signing with Creative Artists Agency (CAA).
The talent agency will represent Harris “in all areas, focusing on speaking engagements and publishing,” CAA said in a Tuesday statement.
“CAA will work closely with Harris on her post-White House initiatives, creating strategic opportunities that expand her platform in support of the issues she has championed throughout her decades-long career in public service,” the Los Angeles-based company said.
It’s not the first time Harris has turned to CAA — the entertainment firm represented her when she was California’s senator, before becoming vice president.
They can put her on the poetry slam circuit.
“the entertainment firm represented her when she was California’s senator”
WT everlovin’ F?
+1!?!
There are any number of brown-nosing organizations that will pay Harris $100,000 or more to show up at their annual convention to bloviate and cackle about “threats to democracy.”
But, what with USAID stopping payments, where will they get that money?
Indeed, who will buy her, or Hilary’s, books?
There’s no end of people and organizations that will spend their own money to buy influence. And let’s not kid ourselves about these bloated speaking fees and book advances. A simple “no moonlighting” rule for public officials would go a long way. Give all the speeches you want. Heck, we’ll even let your travel (economy class) and lodging (market rates) be paid for.
Former President Biden is also represented by CAA, with an announcement earlier this month that the ex-commander-in-chief had signed with the agency. CAA also represents former President Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama.
Wow. What an impressive client list.
The corporate event speaking tour is actually quite lucrative
Do Barron’s Secret Service guys get credits for sitting in on his classes?