In this case the intentional overwhelm aspect seems like overthinking. I mean, maybe it is intended to shock and overwhelm, but it is also stuff they've been yearning to get done that they want to happen instantly. I'd hope that if we get back into office, we'd do exactly the same with executive orders because we want to replace the content of the previous orders.
As I keep saying, Trump did this huge gallop of throwing out four or five pieces of shit every day because we could only muster a response to two or three of them and the bottom ones would just slide by. I've wished we'd do the same but now I kinda wonder whether the Biden administration didn't do the same and just not talk about them, which might be even more effective.
I'll repost in this thread as I am enjoying it: (via Bluesky)
Everything they do can be sorted into 4 categories:
Nazi impulse/Toddler execution
Nazi impulse/Nazi execution
Toddler Impulse/Nazi Execution
Toddler Impulse/Toddler execution
In this case the intentional overwhelm aspect seems like overthinking. I mean, maybe it is intended to shock and overwhelm, but it is also stuff they've been yearning to get done that they want to happen instantly.
I agree with this - it's not an intentional marketing strategy like she's making it sound. It definitely has the freak-out effect on my nervous system though.
Elke was never at the national development level, but I saw the name of one of the kids from her rink go by: apparently he was scheduled to be on the crashed flight but missed it, so he's alive. One of the top U.S. competitors (not Malinin) lost both his parents. This is one of these things that just hits you in the gut -- I assume it has the same effect on parents when any kids' sport is involved in a tragedy. I'll be fine, obviously, while others will not. It's so sad. (A few days after the anniversary of the Kobe Bryant helicopter crash too, I just realized.)
Bring to mind the 1961 crash that killed the entire US Figure skating team on their way to the world Championships along with many members of their families.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabena_Flight_548
Yep, same country, same sport. Insanity.
This is the first I've heard about the passengers. That's awful.
I just put my wife on an AA flight before 6 am this morning; she's flying back to her father in an Oklahoma City hospital ICU. He went non-responsive yesterday, so they've moved him to palliative care. She wouldn't mind being too late, but really wants to be there for her mom and sister.
It wasn't a great week for us prior to that; our older cat (DC) had to be put down last Thursday. So it's been a week in an odd headspace, and today makes it look like we're up for another rough week.
Sorry about your father-in-law. That's rough.
Different country, different sport, but I'm always game.
So sorry, Mooseking. I'm not sure about this year. Early signs are not promising.
5: Right, and apparently a whole bunch of FAA staff were fired recently, and they have a new head.
https://www.theverge.com/news/603113/faa-chief-musk-dc-plane-crash-crisis
I haven't red the article, but it does seem to be the Silicon Valley mindset that you can just break things and then fix them, and it doesn't really matter. Sure, you need to improve things, but safety matters and you need to be mindful when you jettison what's worked.
10: Sorry to hear that.
Historically, Nazi Execution/Toddler execution is something of a false dichotomy.
2nd 13, and 3.
The people with the worst cognitive overload in the world are Trump's minions.
15: But they made the trains run on time (and the planes stay aloft).
Yes, the dichotomy between extremism and stupidity is largely a false one; not because all stupid people are extremists, but because extremists tend to be stupid. This is because not listening to other people who know more than you do is a very common way of being or becoming stupid, and most people who know more than you do (in fact most people full stop, by definition) are not extremists. The dangerous bit is when you have stupid extremists in charge of a legacy system composed of non-stupid people, such as the Wehrmacht, that can actually execute stupid extremist ideas with, initially, significant competence.
Senior Nazi officials were generally failures in life (Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Hess etc) up to the point where evil circumstance put them in charge, because they were stupid. Senior Wehrmacht officers were generally (again, by definition) not failures in life, and generally not stupid.
11 to 13: Thank you; it's been a rough start to 2025. Unfortunately, she hasn't been able to break her pre-breakfast scan of the news, so she's been really flattened most mornings before her day begins from everything adding together. Hopefully being present instead of worrying from a distance will be more rewarding and tangible - since it's unpleasant in any case. My wife is really hoping to lean on her "good in a crisis" skill set to get her through.
The FAA crisis has been building for years.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/06/us/near-collision-airport-runway-austin/index.html
Don't know the cause, but I'm guessing it parallels the demographic crisis among airline pilots.* If so, yet another case of the peace dividend not being dividend at all.
*AIUI, 1990s peace dividend pinched the military training pipeline at the same time ex-military pilots flooded the market and crushed the prospects for self-funded pilot training.
Just in case 17 isn't a joke: no, they didn't, neither in Italy (where the canard originated) nor in Germany, nor AFAIK in any other fascist country.
Well, so this seems to point to a corollary:
Goodness is a form of intelligence.
In other words, when we think "Intelligent but evil" we're actually failing to assess their intelligence comprehensively.
(Not saying it's correct, but I bet you could get pretty far arguing for this take.)
I think 19 gets at some of the difference between Trump administration 1 and administration 2. Admin 1 had a decent number of successful intelligent people in it (I'm thinking the Generals, and some more institutional Republicans like Haley or Priebus or Sessions). And now it's almost all loser morons.
23: Heebie, I'm surprised you would say this. It seems like you're defining intelligence in too-narrow a way ? is someone who can figure out how to amass a great deal of money or power, starting with very little of either, not intelligent? I would think that most people would agree that they are. How about someone who is able to make enormous advances in some scientific field ?
In both such cases [first case, many, many people, in the second, for sure Werner von Braun] we can imagine evil people who succeeded by any relevant measure.
It seems like you're defining intelligence in too-narrow a way ?
I specifically didn't say it was the only form of intelligence.
now it's almost all loser morons
Feels like at least a plurality of former Fox News hosts.
21: Pilot situation is a mess. The military trains pilots, but otherwise you have to pay. I knew a West Point grad, ironically enough, (pre-Afghanistan) who had served in South Korea. She was trying to become a pilot. Airlines weren't paying for it. At the time, there weren't full-time colleges, so you paid for classes and lessons out of pocket. A tough path if you don't have family or a spouse to support you.
One of the many excellent things about the anime Frieren is its presentation of villains (mostly, but not only, demons) as weak for reasons exactly parallel to Heebie's GQ idea.
Demons in particular are explicitly smarter, faster, and vastly stronger than humans, yet are in the long run incapable of beating humans because demons are inherently unsocial and faithless (as I read it, clearly allegories for sociopaths), and thus incapable of persistent cooperation.
I eagerly await the next season, but fear it will be so long I'll have to get into manga.
Everything I read this morning seem to suggest (r/aviation, r/ATC) this was a clear mistake made by the helicopter pilot, and not a problem with air traffic control or the FAA. The main policy issue seems to be that the Army wants helicopters flying up the Potomac in a way that's just too close to DCA, and no one wants to say no to the Army, especially when we're talking about helicopters whose job it is to fly VIPs around Washington.
(I have no relevant expertise here, just reading comments from people who do have some expertise.)
Anticipatory obedience scatter plot starting to fill in:
https://bsky.app/profile/kristenchapman.bsky.social/post/3lgxmept6q22c
https://bsky.app/profile/massago.bsky.social/post/3lgv7xph76c2s
Fascism is a class revolt where the class in question is like actual elementary classrooms.
5,7: One of the coaches on the plane had the same first name as my former coach (I "retired" from adult figure skating a few years ago). I couldn't remember my coach's Belarusian last name. I texted her with some dread, and she quickly reassured me that she wasn't on board.
30 is very Stepgen King - his villains are evil and cruel but also sort of weak and stupid and pathetic, and part of that is inability to cooperate with others.
26 is misguided. Von Braun made no great scientific advances.
I also would push back at heebie's elision of extremism and evil. I don't think all extremists are evil or all evil people extremists. John Brown was an extremist, and a stupid man, but not an evil one.
35: I walked past Von Braun's gravesite the other day. It's about a mile from our place. One of the few graves in that private cemetery that always has a U.S. flag marking it, which gives me pause.
Deservedly so. Von Braun may have been a bad German but he was a good American .https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/chasing-moon-von-braun-record-on-civil-rights/
I feel like I could defend good as a form of intelligence by relying heavily on stronger and stronger tautologies. Who wants in?
40: Since might is right, the stronger a tautology is, the more virtuous it is, as well.
I'd rather give Tom Lehrer - who apparently is still with us - a flag:
"Don't say that he's hypocritical,
Say rather that he's apolitical.
'Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department,' says Wernher von Braun."
40: Spot us an analogy or two, and we're good to go.
A tautology ban would be like a tautology ban.
I get a lot of joy out of Tom Lehrer, and Wernher von Braun is one of my two dozen favorites. (Lehrer only did something like two dozen tunes before giving up showbiz.)
Also topical from that tune:
Call him a Nazi
He won't even frown
Nazi, Schmazi
Says Wernher von Braun
34: I'm glad for you, but man, I just can't stop crying. This was apparently my emotional Achilles' heel. It seems like not a lot of people can bear to go into the skating rink today, but I am considering the possibility that it secretly matters to me and I should start up again. (Elke says she wants to skate again several times a week, but it's hard to pull the trigger. School and social life keep her occupied.) Did you do any of the dance tests?
44 made me laugh, thank you.
46: I hear you and get it. The 1961 crash is always there in U.S. figure skating and now this. And Boston is hosting Worlds this year...so so tough. I tested in Moves in the Field and enjoyed jumps. A woman once asked me to be her dance partner because, and this is a tight paraphrase, "there really [wasn't] much of a selection" at our rink.
Ce n'est pas une interdiction tautologique.
Ce n'est pas une interdiction tautologique.
I can't hear you, there's a tautology in my ear.
I know, I know; but the utter vileness of Trump, Vance, Hegseth immediately going to the "DEI" BS about the crash is just so over the top. Will anyone on that side finally get sufficiently revulsed? Briefly looked a tone write up which was marginally better in calling out the absolutely horrid inappropriateness of the response of these racist, misogynistic pig fuckers, but the shame if it for our country is a bit much for me right now. Please join me in a two-minute hate at 9:00 PM EST tonight. All you have to do is concentrate your hatred, and I don't know maybe the Pentagon will levitate or something...
I know, I know; but the utter vileness of Trump, Vance, Hegseth immediately going to the "DEI" BS about the crash is just so over the top. Will anyone on that side finally get sufficiently revulsed? Briefly looked a tone write up which was marginally better in calling out the absolutely horrid inappropriateness of the response of these racist, misogynistic pig fuckers, but the shame if it for our country is a bit much for me right now. Please join me in a two-minute hate at 9:00 PM EST tonight. All you have to do is concentrate your hatred, and I don't know maybe the Pentagon will levitate or something...
It's frustrating that the media still has to pretend to listen to what Trump says. I wonder if events like this cause him some physical discomfort -- where we might feel grief or empathy, he feels a disquieting sense of weakness -- to which the only natural response is to attack a known enemy.
It would be nice if journalists could at least introduce the idea that Trump is some kind of sociopath to normal discourse, although it would have to be framed as flattery. I don't know if they can spin up a fiction of "he's like a sociopath, but, um, it's actually a superpower!" (Am I failing to think of something obvious here?) I don't know or care enough about the other two to say whether they're just following the leader or not.
55: NPR, NYT, WaPo, Guardian
Without evidence, Trump blames FAA diversity initiatives for the crash
Trump Blames D.E.I. and Biden for Crash Under His Watch
President Trump's remarks, suggesting that diversity in hiring and other Biden administration policies somehow caused the disaster, reflected his instinct to immediately frame major events through his political or ideological lens.
Trump baselessly blames diversity program for fatal air collision
Without evidence, the president told the nation that his predecessors, Democrats and diversity were to blame for the collision involving an Army helicopter and American Airlines passenger jet near Reagan National Airport.
Was he grave, sombre, the consoler-in-chief? Are you kidding - this is Trump
Hours after the Washington plane crash, the president's desire to politicise tragedy was breathtaking in its audacity
And from the other thread pf had Slate with (along with a critique of 'unbelievably).:
Trump's Plane Crash Press Conference Was Unbelievably Vile, Even for Him
I guess he just signed an EO blaming Biden and DEI for flight dangers.
Also when asked if he'd visit the crash site he said, "What's the site, the water? You want me to go swimming?" I feel like if any of this got widely reported most people would say what the fuck is wrong with this guy but it will probably be cleaned up as usual.
On canceling MLK and Juneteenth, this seems like a dumb unforced error because low-info Trump supporters will notice losing a three day weekend. He obviously should have renamed them something impossibly offensive, like Stewart Rhodes and Enrique Tario Days or something, but no one asked me.
It's not going to be Stonewall Jackson Day or Bull Connor Day?
I was braces for a Trump win, but I kind of had forgotten the visceral sensation of how awful a Trump presidency feels.
I see the new editorial approach at the LA Times is to print an opinion piece with a headline that birthright citizenship was never what anyone intended back in the 19th century. I didn't read the piece and won't*, the subhead indicates it's just the mainstreaming of the longstanding anti-birthright citizenship arguments that have been around for decades on the right.
Also in the op-eds: a Trump supporter who went from joyful at the inauguration back to hating LA, California, and America, I presume.
*I'm not a subscriber anymore anyway.
Scrolling down the RSS feed: "How RFK Jr. has captured the attention of everyday moms". Yes, a real headline. Byline is Lee Fang, taking a break from producing garbage at The Intercept, I guess.
I could also learn from another Op-Ed that "Trump's healthcare disruption could pay off - if he pushes real reform"
Every one of these Op-Eds looks like a piece commissioned from a non-regular author, which is why I'm assuming it's the new editorial stance from the ignorant billionaire. The pieces with bylines from the regular Op-Ed columnists seem like what those columnists normally write.
OK, everybody hate their little buns off for the next two minutes.
63: I think for me it's the sheer number of kids and young adults who are coming of age with this guy as a role model, with very little or no memory of how Obama was different, say (or how the majority of 20th century presidents conducted themselves in a different way). There was a lot of dissent during Trump's first term, and a reasonable amount during the Biden years, even if lots of people just knew him as that old geezer who couldn't get a sentence out on TikTok. But now Trump won the popular vote -- he's popular! -- and gets four more years. I don't know what the consequences will be, exactly, but it's not a large-scale uncontrolled experiment that I was eager to run.
The media seems to be going through some version of a bullied film character's vengeful mean-girl transformation.
69: Ah, so that's why the Pentagon didn't levitate. Not blaming; just saying.
NMM to Dick Button, crazy that he died the day after the plane crash.
Dick Button
Creativity is rarely a good trait in a urologist.
I've been watching All Creature's Great and Small using the PBS app, so I got into this murder show set during World War 2. There are so many things which feel similar. The last episode featured a major British industrialist who signed a secret deal to provide food (oils and marine, specifically) to the Third Reich. They wanted their business to do well no matter who won.
Followup to 31: this video gives a really clear explanation of what likely happened in the Washington mid-air collision. I don't know why, but this clear-headed description made me sadder than any of the headlines or stories so far.
I am surprised, most of all, that the US army is routinely running helicopter pilot training flights at night in the approach to a fairly busy civilian airport.
Has it ben n confirmed as a "training" flight? Scenario I could imagine is a pilot who is already well-trained but is new to this route and they are doing a flight without passengers to familiarize. would that be classified as training?
My (possibly mistaken) understanding was that it was an annual recertification for being able to do exactly this sort of flight, which is common in the DC area due to VIPs going between the Pentagon and DC.
Nothing to see here, just DOGE in the process of getting access to the government payment system. (WaPo gift link.)
This is where it ends up; with malevolent actors with their hands on every lever of the workings of government.
At least there are a few serious people like Marco Rubio who can keep things on a more even keel... You know lik eprioritizing the Greenland stuff.
This interview with Bannon is good evidence of how factional and incoherent this administration is going to be - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/31/opinion/steve-bannon-on-broligarchs-vs-populism.html
I'd wager the only "populist" things they are going to successfully do is target and scare public sector employees, trans people, and immigrant communities. And they've already done that.
The next 4 years are just going to be attempts to do favors for whatever powerful person has Trump's ear for a minute (like, e.g., the Tik Tok stuff and AI initiative) and punish whoever doesn't (like, e.g., the security detail stuff and the fight with the Colombian President).
On the subject of OP, weirdly enough I'm doing great. This month was so much less stressful at work than the same month was last year, which has given me a huge sense of relief, and I'm finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel of quitting this role. Bought some linen pants for the summer and wearing them around the house is very comforting. Mostly succeeded in clearing news out my life, it's weird not reading saiselgY daily after 20+ years of doing so, but sticking with it. I see news stuff only here or on bsky when it's something big enough that someone who is 90%+ not news says something about it. Feeling better about this paper I'm working on finishing that I had a really bad attitude about last semester.
82: "This role" meaning admin or a new job at a new university?
Clearly a new job at a new university with different pants requirements.
Clearly a new job at a new university with different pants requirements.
I Can't Believe It's Not Butter
I Will Believe It Is Not Butter Only When I Have Put My Hand In It
I Believe It Is Not Butter Because It Is Impossible For It Not To Be Butter
I Have Not Seen That It Is Not Butter And Yet I Believe That It Is Not Butter
The Fool Hath Said In His Heart, This Is Butter
It is butter, or it is not butter. But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here.
The HEB generic knock-off is called "You'd Think It's Butter!"
Quaere:
if you can't believe it's not butter, can you also simultaneously not believe that it is>/i> butter? Or is "I can't believe it's not butter" logically equivalent to "I believe that it is butter"?
If you're nice to me, I'll go fix that italics tag.
It's clear Elon's goal is to become the world's first trillionaire, just for the title since money at that level is meaningless. The only place with that much money is the US government. It wouldn't surprise me if he directly siphons some money if he gains control of the payment system- if he doesn't get caught we'll never know, if he does get caught he'll claim it was just a pen test and anyway Trump will pardon him.
Surely then he'll get the respect he craves.
Because It Is Butter, And Because It Is My Heart
I've had a temporary admin role in my department, which I'd signed up to do for 3 years, but decided to quit after the second year. It's been very stressful (partly because it's stretching my administrative competency, but largely because there was a changeover in staff at the same time I've started), and I've been pretty miserable. This summer I'll be free!
The pants are unrelated to the job, I've just gotten into clothing a little bit this year, after 45 years of not caring at all about clothes.
92: Yeah, I've seen some commentary on the payment system thing that implies he's trying to target political enemies, which, maybe, but I think it's more likely he's just trying to steal the money.
I Believe It Is Butter, Because It Is Absurd That It Would Be
I love I Can't Believe It's Not Butter jokes. Decades running and still a rich loam. Like a warm blanket. And apparently it's still a product on shelves!
66: According to the opinion writer on Blue Sky, the headline is not accurate and several of his damning criticisms of RFKjr were cut right before publication without his knowledge.
I once saw Fabio at a mall, doing promotional work for I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. This must have been in 1999 or 2000. I knew something was going on, because there were dozens of people standing around in what was normally an empty plaza, and then I saw him sitting at a table. It seemed to me that there were both more and fewer fans waiting to get an autograph than I would have expected. Like, he was instantly recognizable and his whole deal was that he was supposed to be very desirable, but on the other hand, wasn't he primarily known for margarine commercials, and why would anyone care about that? But I think he had a career modeling for romance novel covers before the commercials, and maybe he amassed a fandom that way.
About twenty years later I saw him again, at a television studio employee cafeteria (I was visiting a friend who worked there). He looked the same. I don't know what he was eating, but I don't believe it was margarine.
What kind of fuckery do you think is going on with the NTSB investigation right now?
101: I hadn't seen that, thanks. Sucks to be him, and even more damning to the LA Times editorial operation.
103: Probably looking for a non-white non-man to assign a backdated job title with just enough connection to safety to be blamed.
102: Two random Fabio sightings? This seems beyond any possible coincidence. Have you considered the possibility that he is waiting for the exact right moment to kidnap you and keep you in his castle until you fall hopelessly in love?
I had no idea Fabio did not-butter ads. There was a while in the 90s when I listened to a radio morning show where the hosts mentioned him in jokes for some reason. I gathered he was a model, maybe with long hair?
Scalzi Bluesky post I saw earlier:
Oh, man, I grew up in the 70s and 80s when so much advertising money was thrown into the idea that margarine was just as good as butter, and then I stayed the night at my friend Rick's house and they had pancakes with real butter and I was SO ANGRY I had been lied to by the oelo-industrial complex
107: Same. I knew him as being a celebrity, originally from the romance covers but becoming the free-floating type after that. Not the margarine at all.
(I saw him at a Whole Foods in Oakland last decade - I think there was some self-branded product he was flogging.)
I have a vague memory of the Fabio not-butter ads, but I mainly know him as the model for romance covers. That he became famous for this kind of amazed me. It didn't even seem possible that this was a thing -- I would have guessed the illustrators of romance covers just used their imagination.
I can't think of Fabio without thinking of the roller coaster bird strike incident
Nowadays we'd have a conspiracy theory that the goose strike was deliberately engineered to gin up sympathy for a faltering margarine shill.
The margarine thing is ancient. In Murder Must Advertise there was a bit about how to say the margarine was as good as butter but without too directly implying it was a dairy product or better than butter. Butter is easier because "buying butter is a natural impulse."
I had no idea Fabio did not-butter ads.
I remember the ads!
Like Fabio, I also have not done butter ads.
Right - margarine was at its peak in the period that people were avoiding saturated fats above all others.
I remember the ads, too. Meanwhile, romance novel cover models were indeed a big deal, and they often appeared at romance novel conventions.
A friend of a friend went on a date with Fabio once, and while I don't remember the story at all (I was drunk when it was being told), I remember it being hilarious.
116.2: Was the goose still stalking him?
An actual subgenre -- https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/fabio-on-the-cover
118. Wow -- those plot summaries are...really something.
I'm trying to work out my ire at the present situation in ways that healthy and petty. So, today I blocked the box at a redlight where a Tesla was waiting to turn left onto the street I was driving on. No one was behind the Tesla. And it worked. The Tesla backed up to go out a different way.
It was illegal to dye margarine yellow in Wisconsin until 1967.
My mom talked about dying the margarine. But that was during the war.
103, 105: I think this is a difference between T1 and T2. This time around he would not need to the hurricane sharpie; it would be done for him by the agency.
122: I assume it was OK for individuals and that you just could not sell it dyed.
Yes. The dye was included in a separate packet and you had to mix it at home. Job for a kid, if you have one around.
Tim is stressed about these Tariffs against Canada. He's worried about retaliation from Canada as well.
It was illegal to dye margarine yellow in Wisconsin until 1967.
Theodore Lowi reminisced about having the chore of dyeing the margarine yellow as a child in Mississippi in the 40's.
Yellow was the included dye. There's nothing to stop you from dying it blue if you had food coloring.
Included as in packaged with the uncolored margarine, I presume?
Years ago (almost 30), I worked at a place that sometimes supplied copies of historical documents for various governmental anniversaries. Wisconsin's sesquicentennial as a state was coming up and we found some stuff related to dairy and margarine but this many years later I don't remember what it was. I think it might have been an anti-margarine petition with thousands of signatures.
Yes. My mom described it as a pellet.
New Hampshire used to require that margarine be dyed pink for sale, I guess to make it extra disgusting.
Or packet? I forget. It's been a while. She also used to talk about eating horse meat being in the stores during the war too.
I knew margarine was dyed, and that it used to not be dyed. But I'm doubly flabbergasted that:
1. they included DIY dye, and
2. people bothered to do so.
I just hate doing chores more than I hate embarrassingly white margarine.
Triply flabbergasted if you include 132.
Fabio, catch me, I'm swooning!
Is that what the guards chant in the Wizard of Oz?
Yes. The yellow brick road represents butter and Dorothy's red slippers the color that New Hampshire required margarine to be dyed.
Someone should do a wellness check on Megan. Trump flooded some farms in Tulare to fight the LA fires.
140: Indeed, as the man himself says:
Photo of beautiful water flow that I just opened in California. Today, 1.6 billion gallons and, in 3 days, it will be 5.2 billion gallons. Everybody should be happy about this long fought Victory! I only wish they listened to me six years ago - There would have been no fire!
Doesn't California save billions of gallons of water so that it can irrigate with it?
I must admit, I take some very, very grim satisfaction (OK, actually horror) in the following from the Pentagon:
Each year, one outlet from each press medium - print, online, television and radio - that has enjoyed working from a physical office in the Pentagon will rotate out of the building to allow a new outlet from the same medium that has not had the unique opportunity to report as a resident member of the Pentagon Press Corps.
This year, the following news outlets will begin their rotation by vacating their physical office space effective Friday, February 14, 2025:
Print - The New York Times
TV-NBC News
Radio-National Public Radio
Online News- POLITICO
In their place, the following outlets from each medium will be invited to move into the Correspondents' Corridor workspaces formerly occupied by the above four outlets.
Print-New York Post
TV-One America News
Network Radio-Breitbart News Network
Online News-HuffPost News (aka The Huffington Post)
The water stuff is giving me "engineered famine" vibes, tbh.
The Army Corps later agreed to more measured releases, alleviating a mad scramble to alert first responders and have crews on standby in case river banks were breached and levees overtopped, as happened during the 2023 floods.
As I said in the other thread, probably the stupidest thing he's done yet, up against some very strong competition.
140: Oh, thanks for the concern. No, this doesn't bother me. Trump wasted water that would have gone to huge growers this summer for no benefit whatsoever. It is just funny to me.
Actually 148 makes me feel better too.
Irrigation is a concern for me, because of my corn. But we use well water.
But is your well water well used?
Probably. Obama did a thing where the people who actually do science looked at the aquifer and said, "We need to lose less water if we want farmers to keep going." So he ran a program to subsidize updated irrigation systems that don't waste water. The OG system would shoot water into the air and lose a bunch to evaporation.
Mandating official communications use X? I hope they didn't get the idea from me.
The government is how Musk's companies make money.
154: Thailand!! I know people who are starting to speculate about that country as a longer-term destination and not just an affordable place to get surgeries (don't search for "Suporn technique" unless you have a lively interest), but I don't know much about conditions on the ground.
I think it's rainy for at least part of the year.
155: It's so weird that it's X and not Truth social. How is it that Trump has let Musk take over the government, but he still can't get Trump back on Twitter?
I have to admit, the nation is crumbling faster than I expected.
The impacts are coming here so soon - US alcohol won't be sold in the provincially run liquor stores starting next week. We don't have private liquor stores.
Plus you know, everything will be 25% more expensive. We'llprobably squeak by with the bathroom remodel that's already planned but may not go ahead with the new metal roof.
I should go buy a case of Jameson before the EU part of the trade war starts.
So wait. Today alone:
- gutted the FBI
- privatized WH communication through xitter
- Musk flounced into OMB and demanded all the data, and they said ok
- put 10%/25% tariffs on China/Mexico/Canada.
Am I missing anything from today?
I have to admit, the nation is crumbling faster than I expected.
We learned from the Afghanistan government.
It also reminds me of the Coalition Provisional Authority De-Ba'athification and privatization craziness in Iraq.
And I enjoyed someone on Bluesky's analogy (yeah, I fucking know) with regard to the way the prees has been covering this.
Something like:
They do a story on a known criminal who has suggested robbing a bank entering a bank.
They do a story on him pointing a gun at the teller.
They do a story on him leaving the bank with a bag of money.
They do a story on him leaving quickly in a car that comes screeching up.
They do a story on the bank having missing funds.
But they do *not* do a story about a bank robbery, because that would involve editorial decisions about motives and connecting events.
Aslo from someone on Twitter:
I was led to believe by R.E.M. that I would feel a lot better about this
I'm genuinely shocked they're going through with these tariffs. Surely this will crash the stock market, right?
I don't know. I wonder if the bar will raise the price of Crown Royal now or wait until it has to pay a higher price for new stock.
As long as they're personally insulated from a crash, I don't think they care about a crash. The most extreme might prefer one.
It started down on Friday. You would think the general chaos and Musk in the systems would have a deleterious effect as well, but I no longer have faith in my instincts on things like that anymore.
The money guys know he's a demented criminal, but they think he's their demented criminal.
163
- scrubbed USAID off of the internet, down to the DNS records
- Online passport renewal also down
I forgot
- HIV data removed from CDC website and a ton of other stuff we paid for too
What can we DO about all of this?
Call and write your Representatives and Senators- both Democratic and Republican
169: Krugman has been expecting it, and I trust his judgment.
173 and 174: They also took down the website with the ACIP recommended vaccines - all of them. Well, now it just says it is being modified to comply with Trump's executive orders.
https://www.cdc.gov/acip-recs/hcp/vaccine-specific/index.html/
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Therefore, they decided to simulate a combat engagement, pitting the F-5E against a MiG-21. An Ethiopian pilot was at the controls of the F-5, while an experienced Soviet pilot flew the MiG. Similar to the results in the war, the F-5 soundly defeated the MiG-21, to the great surprise of the Soviet advisors. Afterwards, the Soviet pilot was admonished and sent home in defeat...just like the Somalis had been in the Ogaden.|>