government

bloomberg.com
"As tens of billions of taxpayer dollars from the $2.2 trillion relief bill begin flowing out the door, Ramamurti remains the lone member appointed to the panel. With no colleagues, no staff, and no office, he’s had to rely on one of the few avenues he has to communicate with the public: his unverified Twitter feed."
Sounds normal. Probably nothing corrupt happening here.
nytimes.com
"Without proper training or equipment, some of the exposed staff members moved freely around and off the bases, with at least one person staying in a nearby hotel and leaving California on a commercial flight. Many were unaware of the need to test their temperatures three times a day."
Unbelievable. This seems worse than incompetence.
Vox
If you watch nothing else from the impeachment trial, please watch Schiff’s argument that truth should matter. See also: Is the Oath a Joke?

This is also a good time to mention impeachment.fyi. Daniel is watching every minute and then summarizing events so you don’t have to watch every minute. He’s doing a great service that’s worth pitching in for.
The Atlantic The Atlantic
image from The Atlantic
Eric Schlosser of Fast Food Nation fame makes an important point here about the Mississippi immigration raids and immigration patterns in general. They have been driven by the business need for cheaper, less organized labor.
bloomberg.com Bloomberg
Matt Levine has a good summary of the fine Facebook negotiated over the Cambridge Analytica scandal. But his analysis of why legislation doesn’t happen in the wake of scandals feels right on to me:
"...Americans are biased toward thinking of bad things as being already illegal, always illegal, illegal by definition and by nature and in themselves. If the thing that Facebook did was so bad, then it must have been illegal, so there is no need for a new law against it."
Our laws are not equipped for our current media age and we’re biased against thinking laws could be out of date.
washingtonpost.com washingtonpost.com
We have recently had regular E. coli outbreaks while the FDA was fully staffed. It seems like a bad idea to understaff them right now.

Update (1/11): Oh good.
  • Fascinating look at the domain name system and the complex DNS master key ritual. (Seems like an event that stopped international travel would keep the key locked away.)
  • "The truth is that individual health insurance is not easy to get." I second this. When I was a young, single, childless freelance developer I also found that insurance was difficult to get. I can't imagine what it would be like now that I'm older with a family. I'm lucky to have an awesome employer who provides insurance but we should fix this problem. [via rafe]
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