nick

Martinez ends her testimony with this:

"If there's not justice for the people, let there be no peace for the government."

But definitely peg the rates to specific goals (retirement and AARP) rather than dollar amounts. That way it can be automatically adjusted for inflation and other policy changes. When we reduce healthcare costs for all, the numbers automatically adjust down.

Make the wealth tax progressive and marginal: Start small, 1%, at the amount needed for a reasonably comfortable "middle class" retirement. Rapidly ramp it up to the AARP (actuarially assumed rate of return, 7%), to cut off passive investment income. By a billion $, it's siginificantly above 100%.

Exactly. The 'taxpayer money' myth is their masterstroke.

They framed the public budget as a finite household checkbook, making investment in our own well-being seem like theft.

It transforms a citizen's dream for a better society into a 'cost' we supposedly cannot afford.

The Epstein emails should really end the debate over whether society should have billionaires. "Do you want there to be a class of people so powerful they can fuck your kids and no one will even try to do anything" seems like an easy sell if everyone in politics wasn't trying to get on their payroll

Whether it's Democrats wanting the federal government to release the names of people who raped children with Jeffrey Epstein or Republicans wanting state governments to release the names of people who voted Democrat in 2024, both sides are seeking names for retribution.

Takeaway:
Any time the Trump administration says "AI" or anything about software or data, what you should hear is "repression as a service"

This has 2 parts:
1. AI as an excuse to consolidate data
2. AI to execute orders that humans would refuse

Nothing creates huge populations of profoundly desperate and totally unprotected children like poverty and warfare.

If you’re a Trump or an Epstein or a Musk, fostering conflict and misery is a strategic method of keeping your supply chains of children to rape open.

2006: Less is more, don’t repeat yourself
2016: Beautiful code prevents technical debt

2026: trillions of lines of generated spaghetti code that generate other spaghetti code will save us

My non-techie teenager bought themself a Linux laptop (which I cautioned against more than recommended, because I knew they wanted to use it for DAWs) and they've happily used it for Steam games, Discord, installed the Windows version of FL Studio (using Wine), etc. With zero tech support from me.

As a card-carrying member of The Linux Crowd (been my primary OS since 1998), 1) I still don't *recommend* Linux desktop to non-techies, and 2) I think it'd surprise you in how far it's come. Of course, many people have specific software they need that often rules it out as a serious contender.

In my experience, libertarianism practiced by thoughful empathetic people is a usually a transitional phase between the incoherant unjust conservativism they were raised on, and either market friendly liberalism or anarchist-leaning socialism (if they begin to see market worship as propertarianism).

"Afraid of appearing partisan, the Obama administration looked the other way when it came to prosecuting war criminals and torturers. The lack of confrontation is coming back to haunt us."

fellowtravelersblog.com/2018/03/13/a...

Settings > Content and Media > Autoplay Video and GIFs

Turn it off, now.

Yeah, I'm going off memory here, but I'm pretty certain the grammar just uses (or used) the same `args_list` production for both array literals and method args.

Average Sunday show interview:

OFFICIAL: we are going to dip enemies of the state into acid vats

HOST: how will you pay for it?

OFFICIAL: tariffs

HOST: critics say tariffs don't generate acid vat money

OFFICIAL: tariffs have generated more money than has ever existed

HOST: thank u for ur time

Again, I’m going to keep banging the drum that the fact we are threatening the territorial sovereignty of our closest allies is not only a gross violation of our UN & NATO treaty obligations & poses a massive threat to national security & world order but also should immediately end this presidency.

This isn't a left-right ideological issue. But it blows me away that anyone who is actually anti-Trump would think running back Joe Biden/Merrick Garland 2.0 will work the second time. No political party can tolerate a very large, armed secret police force committed to murdering its voters.

there’s no reforming or redeeming any of them.

Insane that we’re all in on this eccentric janky tech instead of the green energy transition.

If these monsters were trained, being outnumbered by crowds would be less effective.

As it is, they have absolutely no fucking clue what to do and they are getting run out of every situation they force themselves into.

Dems calling for training are just pushing more, worse violence.

this, driving a person to suicide because they had the temerity to want to work in public service, is what russ vought hoped to accomplish

This would be ominous no matter what the circumstances, but it’s not like she was working on national security or classified military information. She’s been reporting about federal workforce issues.

one of the weirdest things about the current moment is how the national media have to pretend like they don't know what this is about. official government social media accounts are posting about racially cleansing America and they have to pretend like it's not clear who the bad guy is.

Thanks for looping back on that one. I was tempted to be an annoying pedantic reply guy! 😇 You're right!

The year I was born, atmospheric CO₂ was 339ppm. Last year it was 425ppm. 20% of all the CO₂ in the atmosphere was put there during my lifetime, and we need to make that number go back down!

Like, it doesn't matter whether or not abolishing ICE is "a worthy strategy". It's an existential threat, so you'd better do what you can to *make* it a worthy strategy.

Also, ICE is effectively the paramilitary arm of the Republican Party, so any Democratic party strategy that doesn't start with abolition is just head-in-sand stupid. Reforming ICE is not possible, and leaving it intact is not compatible with democracy.

You have to take their money. Period.

If you saw Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in theaters or played Ocarina of Time on release, you were alive for an America without ICE. We didn't need it then, we don't need it now, and you already know what a world without them looked like.

First CES panel. Intuit CMO Thomas Ranese is proud of his company's integration with OpenAI, which involves giving AI read/write access to tax data. Since prompt injection attacks are unavoidable, I asked him who will be liable when customer data is exposed: Intuit, OpenAI, etc?

He had no idea.