Mossy Character writes: War Risks Renewal 2025/26
(The Panama transits language was the same a year ago.)

Heebie's take: I'm not totally sure what I'm looking at. I think North Standard is an insurance company for boats on the ocean? And so Mossy is linking to one of the categories of risk-management that you might want to procure.

I was going to say "one of the more volatile categories" but then I decided that everything about the ocean is scary and volatile.

This guy seems pretty clear-headed about the scale of what's currently going on with Musk et al, but he's refraining from calling it a constitutional crisis:

So far in the Trump era, we've seen the executive branch trying to aggressively expand its powers. The specific powers are new, but the general trend is not: it is normal for presidents to want as much power as possible. We've also seen the legislative branch largely allow these power grabs to happen. Unfortunately, that's typical as well, disappointing as it may be. Let's call all that a "constitutional stress test," and maybe even an urgent one.

To me, a constitutional crisis will arrive when the third branch -- the judiciary -- steps in to constrain the president's powers, and the president openly ignores the court order. That's the makings of a democratic breakdown.

This maybe makes him sound like an idiot? Trump ignores court orders all the time, and also he knows he's got both the Supreme Court and the You're King! decision in his back pocket.

The part of his post that I did think was interesting was this:

Ironically, in his second term, Trump could find his life made even harder by a decision of the very 6-3 court he did so much to build. The court's opinion in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, issued last year, strengthened the ability of courts to strike down actions that are being reviewed under the APA, ending the decades-long Chevron precedent that encouraged courts to give deference to federal agencies in such cases.

The original Chevron decision, in 1984, was handed down by a conservative court, as a way to allow the Reagan administration to take (in his case, largely deregulatory) actions without facing heightened legal scrutiny. But it soon became a bête noire for conservative activists, as it allowed successive Democratic administrations to more easily implement regulations. In one final twist of fate, it was finally undone in Loper Bright, just before a Republican president was about to enter office, when he could have benefitted from the same ease of deregulation Chevron accorded to Reagan.

Now -- due to a decision made possible by his three appointees -- Trump could find his administrative actions facing even more hurdles in the courts.

Is this wishful thinking, like the first part? Or does this actually help slow the destruction?

Is the Department of Education going to be shut down? Are all Palestinians going to be forcibly relocated somewhere?

Hawaii read me this tweet yesterday:

which feels about right.

I can't imagine there's appetite to talk about anything besides the constitutional crisis. BUT, if there were, it could be how Bianca Censori (Kanye's wife) wore an essentially naked dress to the Grammy's on Sunday, and by all accounts looked so uncomfortable and miserable that people are speculating she was paraded out by Kanye against her preferences.

Semi-relatedly, I've had this link tucked away for a little bit, because it really bothered me.
1. It's exceptionally honest and heartfelt, which gives it a veneer of relatability.
2. His conclusion is ultimately correct: when men expect physical perfection from women, they're ultimately left lonely because they can't find a woman who achieves that standard.

It's just his description of his journey to enlightenment that's so revolting and disturbing to me.

Also Kloster, the new head of the OMB, apparently relishes describing himself as a raging misogynist.

I was going through all my old journals from the mid-2000s, when I became a feminist, and I was so filled with rage at the state of the patriarchy. And then I sort of became less perpetually angry about it. And now I can't quite wrap my head around how bad its all gotten.

Mossy Character writes: Warder recalls Kuveria killings

When I woke up I grabbed my first born son who is now 35 years old and working with Digicel. And I told my wife to put him on her breast or we might be heard if he started crying. So when we went out while they were kicking the front door, we went through the kitchen door and through the bush towards the cocoa garden to the nearest village. My wife told me to leave her there because she was a local woman saying "whatever happens and they catch us together, they will kill you on the spot, so just let me go and you fend for yourself." And so separated in the bush.

There was so much money sloshing around in Bougainville during 2024 that the stores ran short of goods and people could be found partying until dawn.

Heebie's take: You'll be surprised to learn I don't know very much about Bougainville, a small island located north of the Solomon Islands and to the east of Papua New Guinea. There are about 250K people there, and the most common language is Tok Pisin. The capital is the city of Buka, on Buka Island. The economy is based on agriculture and aquaculture. Thank you for reading my book report; it was a welcome distraction from the constitutional crisis over here. This is a list of all my sources.

Late Friday afternoon I got a "call me about an urgent matter" message from someone on my project, and of course it couldn't be good and of course it was about Elon and his Muskovites. They were trying to lock the govvies out of a critical tool, and the govvies were hoping that my org could offer some Hail Mary help. It didn't come to pass, and somehow the federal team talked their way into a reprieve, but it would have been a crazy and crippling thing to do to several high-profile projects.

The absolute illegality of what's happening is stunning when you've been steeping in government work for a while. I have to undergo a background check just to join some Slack channels, and these people who aren't elected, vetted, cleared, or even maybe Americans are literally walking into buildings and taking over entire systems. Yes, it's an administrative coup, and every part of it is bad.