THANK YOU. This has been on my mind since DOGE was first brought up.

It’s a needle in a haystack, but that’s a really valuable needle. It might actually be worth it.

Thank you. I’m wishing the same for myself and my fellow not-pants-on-head-crazy people in this madhouse.

Yours,

• Your downstairs, and trapped in a failed meth-lab of a country, neighbor

Here’s my resignation.

Either it’s your fault, it’s going to be your fault, or you’re cleaning this up. Bottom line: there’s a damn-near lethal amount of incompetence in the building and it’s time to part ways.

Same. I’ve got a real bad feeling about this.

Good point.

Now that you mention it, eggs fit the right conditions for this kind of scheme. They’re experiencing an abnormal spike in value, are highly perishable (somewhat inelastic demand), and probably are stored under low security since they were (recently) cheap. Just the right commodity for arbitrage before everyone involved wises up or things normalize.

WASHINGTON, Feb 4 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said the U.S. would take over the war-ravaged Gaza Strip and develop it economically

The scope of this statement is a shock, but the motivation that led to it, isn’t. That said, I hate everything about this.

I’m not the first to bring this up, but it bears repeating. This is colonialism, plain and simple. That, in turn, is an outcome of unchecked capitalism. Practiced ideologically (i.e. as the guiding light in one’s life), it holds up “exploitation at all costs” as a virtue. Second to that is “give your competition no quarter.” Combined, that explains the current state of affairs.

We all may be used to thinking of colonialism as some thing that ended on one more more independence days in the last 300 years or so. In reality, the engines of commerce and industry that made that happen kept right on running. Since nation-state-sized real-estate deals like this don’t come along very often anymore, these animals are quick to react and pounce before someone else figures out how to exploit the situation.

As an aside: the attitudes and values that enabled things like the US westward expansion, slavery, classism, eradication of indigenous peoples, environmental destruction in the pursuit of minerals, pollution and litter from energy extraction, etc., are still alive and well in the population. Being this kind of evil is insanely profitable under the right conditions, which confers an outsized advantage to reproduction and social influence. Which is to say that it’s not the ideology of capitalism that propels these values to stay with us, but rather the other way around. It’s as though those colonists with exploitation in their hearts are still very much with us, and that’s something to keep an eye on.

I dumped that into ChatGPT to figure out what that would mean:

“Gold-progressing”: If “oro-” means gold, then “orogressive” could describe something advancing toward wealth, golden standards, or prosperity.

“Mountain-moving” or “Mountain-progressing”: If we go with the geological meaning, “orogressive” could mean progressing through or overcoming mountains—maybe symbolizing overcoming big challenges.

“Speech-advancing”: If “oro-” is tied to oral communication, “orogressive” might mean someone who is progressive in speech, rhetoric, or persuasion.

Honestly, all of those are ironically far more aspirational than “progressive”. I give it 4/5 stars for your newly-minted neologism.

Not sure where you’re from, but we have some problems that stand in the way of coordinating any kind of resistance. At least, not proactively.

In short: we have no living memory of domestic war, famine, epidemic, or wholesale financial hardship lasting longer than a few years. We’ve had tastes of those things, but they always effect people disproportionately, usually along class lines. So being proactive by taking up arms, or preparing for economic catastrophe, is literally unthinkable for most.

Meanwhile, the usual kind of political corruption that we’re accustomed to just came to an end, and is changing shape before our very eyes. Nobody knows what to do with that, yet.

you might be surprised how quickly the 90-million non-voters come around.

Good. I’d rather know what the score is with the actual, entire, electorate than left to yet another situation where a huge number of people just stood by.

A valid concern.

I strongly recommend looking at what the Polish did. We can have multiple movements all trying to influence outcomes. They don’t even need their own candidates, they just have to endorse ones that party elsewhere or have a chance of being picked up by a major coalition (e.g. Sanders, AOC). Over time, that movement gains traction and notoriety, further influencing elections.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Initiative

This does make me wonder: do municipalities with a large number of roundabouts have stats for how these things foil drunk drivers? I feel like there’s a serious possibility of reducing fatalities if we just replace the center of these circles with ponds and/or sand traps.

It’s that. It’s been a hot minute, but (IIRC) for me it was the less-than-great UI/UX that really adds up to a high friction experience. Especially when compared with software like Slack or Discord.

Honestly, what I find frustrating with Teams is that both MSN Messenger and Skype were right there. It’s not even an issue of copyright or trademark as MS owns both. Even just lazily re-branding Skype would have been head-and-shoulders above what we have now.

How? Asynchronous communication is better for a lot of people. And now that we have really good choices for that, it’s hard to ignore.

A phone call demands that you drop everything in that moment and pay close attention to the person on the other end. If they ramble, deviate, breathe heavily, have a lot of background noise, etc, you’re stuck with that experience for the duration. Also, recording without consent is illegal in a lot of places, so you have to be able to write things down in order to refer back to the conversation if it contains any important information.

In contrast, everything else is self-documenting, can be read through multiple times, and can be handled when there is time to focus on that task. As a bonus: most people can read and understand text faster than they can listen. So it’s just more efficient.

What troubles me the most is that sounds like a very deeply abused person. It’s a kind of person that has problems introspecting and managing their emotions. Is that what we’re really up against? Is it all just mental illness?

Way ahead of you: they can’t even see my car from the house. This way, it’s possible to vanish long before anyone figures it out.

That’s nothing. Check out the Amazon Sidewalk protocol for some real nightmare fuel.

I’m inclined to agree. The idea that a cabinet-to-be is able to make headlines during a lame duck session is… well, I don’t think it’s normal, but I may be misremembering.

Nothing earth shattering today (Dec 13) but a few noteworthy things on AP: https://apnews.com/hub/congress

Protip: fill each day with novelty.

When we’re young, everything is new. Our minds are on constant overdrive taking everything in, followed by more each and every day. As adults, we’re simply not challenged at the same clip and wind up throwing out all these dull and repeated experiences - so fix it! Keep reading, keep learning, keep exploring, and never stop asking questions.