Trump administration made big moves to realign federal law enforcement in this country — purging top leaders at the FBI and multiple federal prosecutors at the DOJ.
John Fugelsang sums brilliantly sums up the current situation:
They care about their authority symbols, and they’re proving it right now. This is Joker taking over, firing commissioner Gordon and letting all the crooks out because Gotham was tired of woke Batman.
Dell is the latest tech company to announce it’s ending its hybrid and remote work policy. Victoria Song reporting for Verge:
“What we’re finding is that for all the technology in the world, nothing is faster than the speed of human interaction. A thirty second conversation can replace an email back-and-forth that goes on for hours or even days,” Dell writes.
Intersting to see how Dell will explain this stance to its remote work solutions customers who are given the official sales pitch noting that remote work offers:
benefits such as flexibility, reduced commute times, and cost savings for employees, while employers can access a broader talent pool, reduce overhead costs, and increase productivity.
Hypocrisy much?
Open Culture on an intersting video of Nirvana before they were Nirvana:
Here’s a strange home video of Nirvana when they were unknown, playing inside a Radio Shack in the band’s hometown of Aberdeen, Washington. The video was recorded on the evening of January 24, 1988, after the store had closed. In those days the group went by the name of Ted Ed Fred.
Only the day before, the band had recorded its first demo tape at a studio in Seattle. Guitarist and singer Kurt Cobain asked his new friend Eric Harter, who managed the Radio Shack, to videotape the band playing “Paper Cuts,” one of 10 songs from the demo. Along with Cobain, the video features Nirvana co-founder Krist Novoselic on bass and Dale Crover of the Melvins on drums.
Google announcement on X:
We’ve received a few questions about naming within Google Maps. We have a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources.
For geographic features in the U.S., this is when Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is updated. When that happens, we will update Google Maps in the U.S. quickly to show Mount McKinley and Gulf of America.
Also longstanding practice: When official names vary between countries, Maps users see their official local name. Everyone in the rest of the world sees both names. That applies here too.
How this will lower the price of groceries I have no idea.
A 4K restoration of Akira Kurosawa’s epic master piece Seven Samurai is now available for streaming. You can watch it on:
If your haven’t seen Seven Saurai - it significantly influenced Hollywood cinema, specifically the Western film genre, most notably with the Hollywood remake “The Magnificent Seven” by adapting the core themes of honor, duty, and protecting the vulnerable to an American setting. You should add it to your watch list.
From Roger Bert’s review:
Akira Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai” (1954) is not only a great film in its own right, but the source of a genre that would flow through the rest of the century. The critic Michael Jeck suggests that this was the first film in which a team is assembled to carry out a mission–an idea which gave birth to its direct Hollywood remake, “The Magnificent Seven,” as well as “The Guns of Navarone,” “The Dirty Dozen” and countless later war, heist and caper movies. Since Kurosawa’s samurai adventure “Yojimbo” (1960) was remade as “A Fistful of Dollars” and essentially created the spaghetti Western, and since this movie and Kurosawa’s “The Hidden Fortress” inspired George Lucas’ “Star Wars” series, it could be argued that this greatest of filmmakers gave employment to action heroes for the next 50 years, just as a fallout from his primary purpose.
Here’s the trailer:
Oliver Darcy posting on the Status Substack:
The anchor, I’m told, signaled to associates in private conversations over the weekend that he intends to depart the network after its chief executive, Mark Thompson, booted him from the morning programming lineup — a move that conspicuously coincided with Donald Trump’s return to power.
CNN brass, as we first reported earlier this month, decided to strip Acosta of his 10am show, which he has anchored to great ratings success over the last 11 months, at times even seeing higher viewership than programs in the channel’s prime time bloc.
Acosta was instead offered the less-than-desirable option of anchoring a show from midnight until 2am ET.
CNN pitched the gig to Acosta as anchoring during prime time on the West Coast and said he could move to Los Angeles to host the program. But the reality is the program would have aired at a time in which cable news viewership is at its lowest levels.
Acosta’s morning ratings were high. The only reason for CNN forcing him to midnight was to appease Donal Trump. CNN executives showing their absolute lack of journalistic integrity.
Tom Warren, writing for The Verge:
Earlier this month you could search for “Google” on Bing and get a page that looked a lot like Google, complete with a special search bar, an image resembling a Google Doodle, and even some small text under the search bar just like Google search.
The misleading UI no longer appears on the Google search result of Bing this week, just days after it was originally discovered by posters on Reddit.
Steve Jobs summed up Microsoft’s culture and DNA perfectly in 1995:
They just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste and and what that means is I don’t mean that in a small way. I mean that in a big way in the sense thaty don’t think of original ideas and they don’t bring much culture into their products.
Couldn’t have said it better.
Brian Tallerico, for RogerEbert.com:
David Lynch saw my dreams. As a teenager growing up in suburban America in the ’80s, “Blue Velvet” and “Twin Peaks” hit like a bolt of lightning. Not only did they capture something about the sinister, surreal underbelly of life under the picket fences, but they said something directly to anyone who thought they could be an artist: You don’t have to do what everyone else is doing.
Lynch was one of those creative voices who found his own octave, doing for film what people like David Bowie or Prince did for music, shattering expectations of what a piece of art could be. Even when his work missed the mark, which was rare, Lynch was never anything less than a singular artist, a creator who never once succumbed to the desire to please that derails so much potential in his industry. When people point to Lynch works like “Mulholland Dr.” or “The Straight Story” or even those of us who love “Lost Highway,” it’s not just that specific film that speaks to them — it’s the sense that the potential of the form is limitless as long as people like Lynch are involved. The entire art form was shifted by him and is now lessened by his absence. We owe it to him to burst through the doors he opened. […]
Lynch’s fifth film, 1990’s “Wild at Heart” would be one of his most divisive — it’s often pointed to as Lynch at his most excessive — but it was what he did on television that same year that rocked the entertainment world: “Twin Peaks.” I could write a book about what “Twin Peaks” meant to a 15-year-old entertainment junkie. To summarize, it exploded the potential of the form. People who watch “Twin Peaks” over three decades later need to understand the TV landscape on which it landed. I’m not saying there wasn’t quality TV in the ’80s, but there was less risk-taking than in the 2020s, and watching the saga of Laura Palmer next to formulaic dramas or laugh-track-heavy sitcoms felt like a true shock to the system. For more on “Twin Peaks” and why it mattered, check this out.
Jane Mayer, reporting for The New Yorker:
Hegseth has admitted to excess drinking in the past, but he has vowed that, if confirmed to lead the Pentagon, “there won’t be a drop of alcohol on my lips while I’m doing it.” In December, he said that he was “a different man than I was years ago,” describing his life as “a redemption story.” But even as he has attempted to reassure senators, additional reports continue to raise questions about when, and whether, he has reformed. As recently as the spring of 2023, according to an account shared last week with The New Yorker, Hegseth ordered three gin-and-tonics at a weekday breakfast meeting with an acquaintance in Manhattan. “It was an extremely strange experience,” his companion that morning told me. “We met at Fox News in New York for breakfast, and he suggested we go across the street to a bar. It was, like, ten in the morning. Then he ordered two gin-and-tonics at the same time for himself. To be polite, I ordered one, too. But it was so strong I couldn’t drink it, so I ordered coffee. Then he had a third gin-and-tonic. I don’t know how he could pass a security clearance. But they’re trying to create a culture where whistle-blowers are uncomfortable coming forward.”
No. Donald Trump and the Republicans are lowering the standards.
Finland’s amazing success in combating homelessness:
Finland’s success is not a matter of luck or the outcome of “quick fixes.” Rather, it is the result of a sustained, well-resourced national strategy, driven by a “Housing First” approach, which provides people experiencing homelessness with immediate, independent, permanent housing, rather than temporary accommodation (OECD, 2020). A key pillar of this effort has been to combine emergency assistance with the supply of rentals to host previously homeless people, either by converting some existing shelters into residential buildings with independent apartments (Kaakinen, 2019) or by building new flats by a government agency (ARA, 2021). Building flats is key: otherwise, especially if housing supply is particularly rigid, the funding of rentals can risk driving up rents (OECD, 2021a), thus reducing the “bang for the buck” of public spending.
Too often it is required to have money first, which requires a job. But you can’t go to work from a showerless breakfastless crumpled stinky street corner. Having a home first enables is a prerequisite to employment. Something we here in the US need could do well to learn.
Danielle Kurtzleben reporting on GOP tax cuts and the middle class:
To help ensure their bill met the budget limits Republicans had set for themselves, lawmakers set many individual income tax changes to sunset after 2025 (however, they made cuts to corporate tax rates permanent).
For example, the bill changes tax rates across income brackets, increases the standard deduction and increases the child tax credit — but only until the end of 2025.
As a result, the Tax Policy Center predicts that in 2027, the average tax cut would amount to $160, or just a 0.2 percent income bump.
This would mean a tiny tax bump for many lower- and middle-class households — the average $50,000 to $75,000 — earning household would have a tax bill that is $30 higher than today. The average household earning more than $1 million would get a cut of more than $23,000.
Put another way, in 2018, households earning $1 million or more — or, 0.4 percent of all tax filers — would be getting 16.5 percent of the total benefit from the bill.
In 2027, households earning $1 million or more — estimated to be 0.6 percent of all filers — would be getting 81.8 percent of the total benefit, even though their average tax break would be about $46,000 smaller in 2027 than in 2018.
Yep. Thats right, if you make less then $75,000 your income loose $30 dollars or higher than today. Whats is even perverse is that those make over $1 million or more would see their income go up – by as much as $46,000.
FAFO.
Standing before a global map, Claudia Sheinbaum responded to Donald Trump’s proposal to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Golf of America exposing Trump as the international clown that he is.
Obviously, the Gulf of Mexico’s name is recognized by the United Nations, by a United Nations agency - but why don’t we call it (United States) América Mexicana? Sounds nice doesn’t it?
Don Moynihan writing on his substack:
The blame largely lies with Republican political leaders. Mitch McConnell punted on ending the career of a guy he detests. Kevin McCarthy decided to resurrect Trump out of pure self-interest. John Roberts and other Republicans on the Supreme Court extended a measure of retroactive legitimacy for Trump’s actions leading up to Jan. 6.
McConnell laid the blame for Jan. 6 squarely at the feet of Trump. In private, he said things like: “If this isn’t impeachable, I don’t know what is” and indicated he expected bipartisan support for a vote to convict Trump.
Donald Trump never faced any consequences for January 6th wasn’t incompetence. It was inconvenience. Everyone in Congress knew what happened on that day - no one was willing to confront the the truth and the fallout.
Let us not forgot all of government officials who sided with the insurrectionists.
Tim Craig reporting for The Washington Post:
Fifty percent of voters from families with an income of less than $50,000 a year cast their ballots for Trump, according to the data, compared with 48 percent for Vice President Kamala Harris. Four years ago, President Joe Biden carried those voters by 11 percentage points; Hillary Clinton won them by 12 points in 2016 and former president Barack Obama by 22 points in 2012.
Now, low-income Americans who voted for Trump say they are counting on him to keep their benefits intact even while his Cabinet picks and Republican lawmakers call on him to reduce federal spending.
I am trying to empathize with these Trump voters. I really am. But when you hear delusional wishful ignorant rationalization like this it makes it very difficult.
Steve Tillia, 59, receives $1,600 a month in Social Security disability payments and $300 in food stamps to support himself and his son. Tillia, who said he is unable to work after suffering from mini strokes, still drives around New Castle with a Trump flag anchored on the bumper of his SUV.
Tillia said he’s confident that Trump and GOP leaders will reduce spending by “cutting the fat” out of government — and not slashing benefits.
“It’s not cutting government programs, it’s cutting the amount of people needed to run a program,” he said. “They are cutting staff, which could actually increase the amount of the programs that we get.”
[…]
But as Kathy Davis sat in the “smokers patio” at the Riverside Apartments, she said she is as confident as ever that Trump’s presidency will benefit her.
Davis, a retired artist, subsists on a monthly $1,300 Social Security payment and $75 in food stamps. She rents her studio apartment for $385 per month. Asked whether she worries that Trump’s agenda could hurt the poor, Davis said the incoming president is “too smart for that.”
“You can’t wipe out half of the population” of New Castle, Davis said. “We are old and tired and just want to be taken care of, and Trump has too much common sense, so I don’t think he is going to do anything to hurt us.”
The administration these people voted in, along with the plutocrats that are now basically running the government (Elon Musk, Viveck Ramaswami and his billionaire cabinate) have vowed to cut $2.5 trillion in government spending. This isn’t going to happen unless you cut Social Security, Medicare, food stamps and housing assistance. I mean Trump actually said “I don’t care about you. I just want your vote” at one of his rallies.
You did this to yourselves. Your vote has consequences. So does your ignorance. They will get exactly what they voted for. I really don’t have any empathy left for these people.
You all f*cked around and now you are going to find out.
Nine time Emmy award winning TV celebrity that wants to privatize Medicare for personal financial gain. Why aren’t we surprised he is up for nomination by the Trump administration?
Stop referring to him as a Doctor. He is a TV personality. This guy should just start a YouTube channel on Crudités and stay out of the government.
Stephen Burgen reporting on Balkonkraftwerk, a German word meaning “balcony power plant”, in the The Guardian:
They are easy to install, and knock chunks off electricity bills. It may not be Romeo and Juliet, but Spain’s balcony scene is heating up as the country embraces what has hitherto been a mainly German love affair with DIY plug-in solar panels.
Panels have already been installed on about 1.5m German balconies, where they are so popular the term Balkonkraftwerk (balcony power plant) has been coined.
Manufacturers say that installing a couple of 300-watt panels will give a saving of up to 30% on a typical household’s electricity bill. With an outlay of €400-800 and with no installation cost, the panels could pay for themselves within six years.
Yet again - the US is behind the latest solar tech.
Mike Allen reporting in Axios:
Kara Swisher, the popular podcaster and pioneering tech journalist, is trying to round up a group of rich people to fund a bid for the Washington Post, she told us.
One big problem: Jeff Bezos, the owner, has shown no interest in selling.
Why it matters: Swisher — who started in the Post mailroom, and became an early tech reporter at the paper (and later one of the first at The Wall Street Journal) — believes the Amazon founder will eventually want to sell, since the paper has become a managerial nightmare.
Like many, Swisher thinks Bezos should sell since he has other financial and personal interests — like space tech — that are more important to him, and can conflict with his Post ownership.
“The Post can do better,” she told us. “It’s so maddening to see what’s happening. … Why not me? Why not any of us?”
Bezos needs to sell. Washington Post is not Bezos top priority. It’s obvious the Washington Post under Bezos has struggled to be an independant publication. We see it with The Washington Post under Bezos, when he kiboshed the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris so as not to antagonize Donald Trump.
Malcom Nance at his Special Intellignce substack on forming the New American Resistance:
It is time to organize a New Model American Resistance movement that is aggressive, and persistent. We need a recognizable resistance that will represent the disenfranchised, frustrated, and unmotivated voter base that just got its legs kicked out from under them.
But let’s get something straight. The job of my new model of resistance is not to run massive protests and mobilize millions to hit the streets so Antifa can cause riots and Trump will suspend the laws to crush us. We must harness the rules of psychological warfare and strike Trump in a way to cause personal psychic injury. Our tactics must be deep enough to escape notice till the moment they happen and then have news media driving impact.
[…]
The Resistance must organize into a unified machine but through simultaneous individual acts of defiance. Why? Your life as an American with rights may be in mortal danger. Some of us will end up in physical danger. Your way of life has already changed with compliant media and politicians genuflecting to Trump weeks before he is in power. The only way out of this hole is to focus on carrying out single, unitary actions that achieve singular objectives simultaneously.
I call it FAFO – Focused Actions with Focused Objectives.
The very definition of being liberal or progressive meant thinking for one’s self, and acting in one’s interest based on a wide variety of social and personal beliefs. It’s admirable that we have such a big tent, but every one of those self-interested behaviors lets the right-wing unity of message steamroller us.
Let us commit to three simple acts that will allow us to solidify our resistance to the incoming regime and give ourselves some focused points of solidarity until we flesh out a real opposition. Best of all, everyone can participate, simply by not going along with Trump’s horrifying unreality.
The Stanford Review editor-in-chief Julia Steinberg’s interview with university president Jonathan Levin:
Stanford Review: The first two categories are the buckets of questions that I have. So I’ll move on to my first question about Stanford’s educational and political climate at the present moment. In one of my classes, I was randomly assigned a partner to work on a presentation together. He told me that he had not read a book, cover to cover since the third grade, let alone at Stanford. In June, he will graduate with a degree from Stanford. How is this possible?
President Levin: Have you read a book at Stanford?
Stanford Review: I actually have. I’ve read fifty. I’ve counted. Probably at sixty now.
President Levin: I can’t speak to the particular student you worked with and exactly the way he or she has approached things. I think it’s a missed opportunity if you go through Stanford without doing a lot of reading, because at least in many fields, that’s the way to learn. Now, some fields, it’s true at Stanford, you learn in different ways that aren’t necessarily from books, but you know, I certainly would hope that any student who came to Stanford would spend a lot of time reading and thinking and reflecting. So I think it’s a missed opportunity if that’s not how you choose to spend a good fraction of your time here.
Stanford Review: I agree. Several freshmen I have talked to have bemoaned their mandatory COLLEGE classes that are contract graded, meaning that students will receive an A if their work is turned in on time regardless of quality. One frosh even told me that all of her first quarter classes are contract graded. How does this set students up for success at Stanford and beyond?
President Levin: So the COLLEGE curriculum, that’s part of the design—and of course, it’s a new course. So many aspects of COLLEGE are an experiment. We’re learning. The faculty who teach it are learning about the best design for that class, what the syllabus should look like, what’s the best way to manage discussion, what’s the teaching model, what’s the grading model. And that’s something that the Faculty Senate discussed maybe 18 months ago or last year, the grading model, and at the time, they presented some evidence suggesting that it seemed to have been a positive experience. Sounds like you may have a view that’s different and when that program comes up for review and to be looked at, it’ll be interesting to hear that perspective on it as well. The way I think of the COLLEGE curriculum is it’s in the best tradition of something at Stanford, which is, you put something out, you try it, you see how it works, you iterate, you improve it, you keep improving it, and hopefully, over time, it’s going to become fantastic. And that that may well be one of the aspects of it that should be debated and discussed.
[…]
Stanford Review: What is the most important problem in the world right now?
President Levin: There’s no answer to that question. There are too many important problems to give you a single answer.
Stanford Review: That is an application question that we have to answer to apply here.
More proof that the so called Ivy League and ‘exclusive’ schools are a branding exercise - any resemblance of academic rigor has long been dispensed with.