onfocus

In many cases it’s still unclear what exactly DOGE engineers have done or intend to do with that data. Despite Elon Musk’s protestations to the contrary, DOGE is as opaque as Vantablack. But recent reporting from WIRED and elsewhere begins to fill in the picture: For DOGE, data is a tool. It’s also a weapon.

Sounds like blackmail everyone all the time is the strategy.

If a ludicrous idea started building momentum, the ringleader and their affiliates would get pushed out of an organization, then another one, and another one, before being deemed so poisonous that society in general would exile them to some tract of rural land to farm beets and / or start a cult. If they were still interested in spreading their ideas, their options were limited to the physical media they could afford to purchase — a monthly pamphlet sent through the mail, a ham radio, or a sign on the side of the road. Barricaded from the tightly controlled mass communication networks of print distribution and broadcast signals that informed the nation and the leaders they chose, they were forever stuck on the fringes.

That was where “crazy” used to die.

We also got wikipedia so maybe we can start shunning weirdos again and keep the good parts of the Internet.

The FDA this month also suspended existing and developing programs that ensured accurate testing for bird flu in milk and cheese and pathogens like the parasite Cyclospora in other food products.

Seems like a bad time to cut back on testing. But maybe they're trying to thin out the population? Maybe we just all do our own food safety testing individually?

Sarahi says what followed her arrest "felt like a kidnapping." She told NPR that her family was placed in a windowless office space near the bridge. For close to six days, she said they were given no access to a lawyer, told to sleep on cots without proper accommodations for the children (no diapers or appropriate food). She says a few days in, her children began to get sick, and there was no first aid available.

Who are these Americans keeping families with sick kids in a windowless room for a week because they took a wrong turn?

The White House kept hinting that the Chinese were beginning to negotiate, seeking a way to end the tariffs. In fact, the strategy that Beijing appeared to be following was to wait for Mr. Trump to feel the pain of his own actions. The expected phone call from President Xi Jinping never came. And Mr. Trump didn’t want to be the first to call, either — a sign of desperation.

The maga tough-guy shtick is not working vs. reality. Cult leaders can create a convincing reality for their followers but they can't coerce everyone in the world to go along with it.

“I can’t think of anything more vile and small and pathetic than terrorising the smallest, most vulnerable community of people who want nothing from you, except the right to exist.”

Pedro Pascal is right. Grow up, idiots.

In the 24 hours after Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 announced that he would not comply with the White House, the University received more than 3,800 online donations totaling more than $1 million, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Universities are important institutions and people are willing to support them even if the government is attacking them.

The majority’s decision to wade in straightaway points to a skepticism that the Justice Department was telling the truth. It’s damning, too, that the majority did not even wait for DOJ to file a brief with the court before acting. The only plausible explanation for the court’s order is that a majority feared the government would whisk away the migrants to El Salvador if it did not intervene immediately.

Trying to stop the lawlessness.

Round and round it goes with no resolution.

I don't think this is an accurate description. The constitutional crisis arrived when the administration pretended to not know what 'facilitates' means. That was the fuck you to the Supreme Court that signaled they were done pretending this is America.

The Food and Drug Administration is drawing up plans that would end most of its routine food safety inspections work, multiple federal health officials tell CBS News, and effectively outsource this oversight to state and local authorities.

I’m sure state and local authorities have the budget, staff, and training to make this a smooth transition. In the meantime we can all reread The Jungle.

Many of the things that winemakers regularly buy often come from abroad. Three notable examples: glass bottles, corks and barrels (which are used to age wine and refine its flavor).

Just one of the (checks notes) every industry that is going to be hurt by trying stop a global economy.

“Failure to provide notice and an opportunity to be heard violated Mr. Ortega Gonzalez’s rights under the Fifth Amendment,” attorney Stephen Manning, executive director of Innovation Law Lab, wrote in the complaint. Ortega Gonzalez is at risk of arrest and detention for removal proceedings, Manning said.

I'd be worried about even just trying the leave the country at this point. You have to interact at the border and there's no guarantee you'd get due process there. I think suing for rights is the right thing to do.

Trump appeared today in the Oval Office with the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, who, when questioned by reporters, refused to return Garcia, saying flatly, “Of course I’m not going to do it.” Although he could put a diplomatic end to the entire matter by asking Bukele to return the illegally deported U.S. resident, Trump sat there and allowed the president of a tiny Central American country to run the Oval Office appearance as if he were in charge.

This is such a shameful time for America. The end result of Republican reactionary politics is destroying the country they pretended to love.

Evoking the Declaration of Independence, the draft insists “he has demonstrated his character is marked by every act which may define a tyrant.” Arguably a truer description of Trump than of George III. He openly pines for dictatorship, autocracy, even un-American monarchy. He recognizes no limits on his power, no law he must obey, no rights he must respect.

There's a lot of work to do. Let's get going.

Costco, which defied demands from the Trump administration for private companies to spike their DEI programs, notched its 15th straight week of foot-traffic gains, although this week just by the skin of its teeth, with a gain of 0.3%.

Good. We should continue to only do business with companies that want a functioning society.

In its strange inversion of American politics, the Trump administration has come far closer to executing a Marxist theory of power than any of its progressive predecessors. It has waged class warfare, not against billionaires but against a far more ubiquitous enemy. And it has done so with a certainty that justifies terrible excesses, a desire to purge that it has only just begun to realize.

Still thinking about this article. This description of an attack on the PMC (Professional Managerial Class) rings true to me.

As grim as some of these responses feel, I hope there’s at least some small solace to be taken from the fact that so many artists remain firm in their resistance to AI technology that devalues their work, and are championing human creators in the face of it.

This is a tough read but a good antidote to the ai cheerleading you see everywhere.

The truth is that, assembled in the U.S. or not, the iPhone is a truly international device that is full of components manufactured all over the world and materials mined from dozens of different countries. Apple has what is among the most complex supply chains that has ever been designed in human history, and it is not going to be able to completely change that supply chain anytime soon.

This administration uses pure BS to justify destroying the US. It’s a lot like their mode of governing during election denialism at the end of Trump I.

The suit argues that there is no connection between the fentanyl epidemic – which Trump has cited as a reason for invoking the emergency powers – and the tariffs. “The means of an across-the-board tariff does not fit the end of stopping an influx of opioids, and is in no sense ‘necessary’ to that stated purpose,” the complaint filed on behalf of Simplified argues.

When you've lost the libertarians...

Even on a long enough timeline, there is no world in which the techno-optimist utopia comes to be in the United States under protectionist, isolationist policies. The Trump administration has also set to work dismantling the academic, scientific, research, and immigration infrastructures that have allowed business and innovation to thrive in the US, and the soft-power structures that have made it easy for tech companies to enter and dominate markets all over the world.

Yes, they are destroying all of things that allowed the techbros to come to power. But maybe this administration is them pulling up the ladder behind them now that they have power? They don't want competition from anything new. (They've read The Innovator's Dilemma.)

Nobody in the world – not one single human being anywhere – knows how to make a mouse. It’s orders of magnitude too complex for a solitary mind. Like a thousand other everyday objects, it is a staggering achievement of modern society, the product of a thousand thousand simple ideas working together.

This post from 2012 illustrates why bunker mentality for a country won't work in the modern world. If we want a modern technological society, we need to be interconnected with people across the globe.

The immediate political challenge for Trump is that, regardless of the prospects of his policies boosting U.S. manufacturing over the long term, in the short term they are likely to inflict pain on two major constituents of the G.O.P. coalition: working-class maga voters and Republicans in business.

Right!? You would think this is the case in a normal world. I guess we’ll see how strong the cult thinking is.

The administration argued that it cannot bring back Abrego Garcia because he’s in Salvadoran custody and knocked down concerns that he’s likely to be tortured or killed at CECOT.

If this isn’t pure evil I don’t know what is. In the future, please vote for people who won’t send people to foreign countries specifically to deny them due process and then refuse to act when they made a mistake. If these people are guilty, bring evidence and let them have their day in court. That’s the American way.

Crawford defeated Brad Schimel, who received financial support from Elon Musk and an endorsement from President Donald Trump. Her victory means that the nonpartisan court's 4-3 liberal majority will remain in place.

Good to know there are some things Musk can't buy.

The Trump administration has laid off the entire staff of a $4.1 billion program that helps millions of low-income households pay for heat during the winter, unnerving state officials who are now wondering whether they will still receive millions of dollars in expected federal payments.

Just your regular reminder that Republicans want suffering and they are making it happen. This money will go to Musk types instead so they can upgrade the pool on their backup yacht.