#Josh Software

[robpegoraro]

Weekly output: Tech Talks podcast, SpaceX Starship, AI data privacy, Bluesky CEO Jay Graber, agentic AI, scaling AI, Trump scrubs NASA nomination

[siyelius]

PLEASE I need to see more examples of software malfunctions with Markus — he scavenged biocomponents from a literal junkyard there’s no way him nor most of Jericrew (North probably spared bc she’s been deviant not that long) facing repercussions of stuffing themselves with potential damaged or faulty parts that were just 13% more functional than their last.

Incompetent Markus playthrough, except instead of him actually being incompetent, Markus glitches out at the most inopportune times due to, you know, having been shot in the head. You can't tell me that Markus popped in two wet, old, dirty, semi-compatible bio-components into his head and he was good as new.

During the Cyberlife Warehouse raid he gets caught by the guards and North has to rescue him because he gets stuck in a preconstruction.

North tells him to lock the door during the Stratford Tower mission, and a full five seconds later he's forgotten what shes said and they get caught.

The Capitol Park mission where North bitches him out for standing there the whole fifteen minutes doing nothing, Markus is just like "15 minutes? Wdym we got here like 2 minutes ago???"

Have him being shot and almost killed have side-effects. Let North come to the realisation that 'oh, hes not actually incompetent, he's impaired". And then find ways to accommodate that.

[sohaibsmart]

Amazon Prime Day occasion begins, gross sales up 12% in first 7 hours: Report | Firm Information

Prime Day can function a bellwether for the vacation procuring season. 3 min learn Final Up to date : Jul 17 2024 | 12:10 AM IST Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime Day gross sales rose virtually 12 per cent within the first seven hours of the occasion in contrast with the identical interval final 12 months, based on Momentum Commerce, which manages 50 manufacturers in a wide range of product…

[clovermoters]

lando vs obs

💻 ln4 x streamer!reader

💻 lando has trouble with his recording software but have no fear! his streamer gf is here!

💻warnings : none! just fluff

💻authors note: my ass did NOT edit this very welland i wrote is so quick but here you are!!

you were sat on the couch in landos house watching some cheesy rom-com. your boyfriend was currently filming for a new quadrant video in his office and while you wait for him to finish you decided to get comfy. the video was Max and Lando against two members of the sidemen, Josh and Harry in the new F1 2024 game.

your face was stuffed with popcorn as the movie drowns out the screams coming from down the hall.

“babeee!! can you come help me quickly?” you hear lando shout. you paused the movie sitting up to fix your his hoodie as you make your way to see what he needs. “what’s up?” you ask pushing the door open.

“we just did a whole race and it didn’t record anything...” he replies. his eyes are moving across the screen infront of him with furrowed brows as he try’s to figure out this problem on his own. after a pause he sighs annoyed “can you please come take a look? i don’t understand OBS like you do..”.

You shuffle over to stand behind him and reach down to take the mouse from him. after a brief moment of checking his settings and wandering around landos OBS screen. “oh i see the problem! you haven’t set the game capture to F1 so it’s currently just recording your face.” you explain.

you hear max groan in the headset “so yeah you definitely didn’t record that race, did you?” lando pauses as he watched you navigate OBS to fix the issue and set the right game capture. it always amazed him how you understood all these softwares. “no…” he replies slowly.

hearing Maxs distress you give an idea to pass onto the editors “it’s alright, it should be working now and you can just use footage from the races spectator mode instead of his onboard for that race.” you offer. lando smiles “that’s a great idea, thank you baby!” he kisses your cheek.

you smile back and him giving a quick goodbye to the boys before making your way to the door “it helps having a streamer as a girlfriend doesn’t it!” you hear lando brag into his headset. shaking your head with a laugh you resume back to the couch and cuddle up to press play on the movie as the screaming continues to echo from landos office.

[henrykathman]

The Miraculous Horror of Stop Motion

From the same artform that brought you Coraline and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, comes three stories that evoke the existential fear of art.

Original Music by Molly Noise

Bibliography below

Atrocity Guide. “The Animators Who’ve Spent 40 Years on a Single Film.” YouTube, 9 Oct. 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=73hip3pz0Xs&pp=ygUMdGhlIG92ZXJjb2F0. Accessed 19 June 2024.

Brubaker, Charles. “The Japanese Studios of Rankin/Bass.” Cartoon Research, Jerry Beck, 14 Apr. 2014, cartoonresearch.com/index.php/the-japanese-studios-of-rankinbass/.

Bute, Paris. “Introduction to “a Rankin/Bass Retrospective from a New Perspective.”” Citizen Jane, Stephens College, 19 Nov. 2021, www.citizenjane.org/home/cwwicd2ucb2fvs64kgfaocfykjhaum. Accessed 19 June 2024.

Crome, Althea. “Coraline.” Althea Crome | Micro Knitter, 2012, www.altheacrome.com/coraline. Accessed 19 June 2024.

Harold Halibut. Directed by Onat Hekimoğlu, Slow Bros., 16 Apr. 2024.

Hekimoglu, Onat, and Gabriel Schmitz. “Unite Berlin 2018 - Harold Halibut and Making a Stop Motion Game.” Unity, YouTube, 6 Aug. 2018, youtu.be/9usssSQc0wQ. Accessed 6 May 2023.

Jon "Sikamikanico" Clarke. “The Making of Harold Halibut.” XboxEra, YouTube, 21 Mar. 2024, youtu.be/WMyxM9t3o7A. Accessed 19 June 2024.

LAIKA Studios. “Sweater and Gloves: Knitting Coraline by Hand.” YouTube, 11 July 2017, youtu.be/zUvkfcGR-7U. Accessed 19 June 2024.

Mad God Productions. “Phil Tippett’s “Mad God.”” Kickstarter, 17 May 2012, www.kickstarter.com/projects/madgod/phil-tippetts-mad-god/posts.

Olson, Mathew. “Report: Michel Ancel Accused of Abusive, Disruptive Practices on beyond Good & Evil 2.” VG247, 25 Sept. 2020, www.vg247.com/report-michel-ancel-accused-of-abusive-disruptive-practices-on-beyond-good-evil-2. Accessed 19 June 2024.

Ono, Kosei. “Tadahito Mochinaga: The Japanese Animator Who Lived in Two Worlds.” Animation World Network, AWN, Inc, 1 Dec. 1999, www.awn.com/animationworld/tadahito-mochinaga-japanese-animator-who-lived-two-worlds.

Orland, Kyle. “Claptrap Voice Actor Accuses Gearbox CEO of Assault, Underpayment.” Ars Technica, 7 May 2019, arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/05/claptrap-voice-actor-accuses-gearbox-ceo-of-assault-underpayment/. Accessed 19 June 2024.

Pilling, Jayne. A Reader In Animation Studies. Indiana University Press, 1998. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/book/40033.

Prehistoric Beast. Directed by Phil Tippett, Tippett Studios, 1984. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlaXIRTjNfo

Randles, Jonathan. “VFX Studio with Star Wars, Jurassic Park Credits Goes Bankrupt.” Bloomberg Law, 1 May 2024, news.bloomberglaw.com/bankruptcy-law/vfx-studio-with-star-wars-jurassic-park-credits-goes-bankrupt. Accessed 19 June 2024.

Shanley, Patrick. “Gearbox Software CEO Accused of Contempt in Latest Filing.” The Hollywood Reporter, 27 Aug. 2019, www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/gearbox-software-ceo-accused-contempt-latest-filing-1235064/. Accessed 19 June 2024.

The Making of “Jurassic Park.” Directed by John Schultz, Amblin Entertainment, 1995. https://youtu.be/8r01mk6F_Pk

The Making of Mad God. Directed by Maya Tippett, Shudder, 2021. https://youtu.be/sfUOHh0xmwc

The Tale of the Fox. Directed by Irene Starewicz and Ladislas Starevich, UFA GmbH, 10 Apr. 1941. https://youtu.be/Us_Pn6Q1dBQ

Wikipedia contributors. "List of films with longest production time." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 12 Jun. 2024. Web. 19 Jun. 2024.

Wikipedia contributors. "List of media notable for being in development hell." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 19 Jun. 2024. Web. 19 Jun. 2024.

Wikipedia contributors. "List of Rankin/Bass Productions films." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 9 Jun. 2024. Web. 19 Jun. 2024.

Wikipedia contributors. "Tadahito Mochinaga." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 28 Nov. 2023. Web. 19 Jun. 2024.

Wilson, Josh. “Phil Tippett: 24 Frames per Second < the Fabulist Words & Art.” The Fabulist Words & Art, 5 Nov. 2021, fabulistmagazine.com/24-frames-per-second-the-phil-tippett-interview/.

Worse than the Demon. Directed by Maya Tippett, Shudder, 2013. https://youtu.be/ghKqvDNRe4c

[eddiediazenjoyer]

god confessions buck is just so. he really said yeah it’s our anniversary and we both know this but i didn’t get you anything. can i take my best friend that we're both obsessed with to the game that YOU bought tickets for instead of you. my boyfriend. ????. you were a gay man engaged to a woman before you were out? okay so that probably makes you evil *gay josh explains homophobia* ohhhh okay so you were actually on the front lines fighting homophobia just like glee. isn’t it crazy how we both dated the same person??? yeah i idolize her to a point where she isn’t even really a person to me and is more of a figure representing my software update (aka personal growth if you’re normal). it’s so cool how you personally fought for gay marriage . maybe we could do that someday. don’t worry about how i couldn’t even say that i love you when i was talking to gay josh earlier. i don’t need to love you bc i can put you on a pedestal and see you as a living breathing symbol of my self growth instead. doesn’t that sound awesome?? wait why don’t you wanna move in with me 😖

[mostbelovedaewwrestlertournament]

Most Beloved AEW Wrestler Tournament 2: Week 16/Month 4 Statistics Dump

Well fellas here it is, the final statistics dump of the tournament (cause I couldn't figure out how to make sure everyone only had 1 round a day beyond 117 days so any stats I present from this point forward would be unfair and therefore pointless)

Total votes thus far: 612,393 (average of 47.85 votes per bracket, up from 45.37 last week!)

The Ties

Yes, I had to update my laptop's operating software so the hands are now different. It couldn't be helped

80 wrestlers have now been part of a tie, making up 51.28%

The Crushing Defeats

To celebrate Pride Month, I turned the crushing defeats into a new flag. This marks Willow's 7th unanimous win and Kamille's 7th unanimous loss (or 6.25% of their total brackets thus far)

25 wrestlers (16.03%) have had a unanimous win and 27 (17.31%) have had a unanimous loss. No one has had both.

The Top 20

Below are the results for Day 106-112 of the top 20

Top Teams

Hurt Syndicate's new ringer did them wonders this week

death riders - 6208.4 (Wheeler Yuta - 8223)

the opps - 5867.75 (Samoa Joe - 7111)

hounds of hell - 5683.666667 (Julia Hart - 6864)

the elite - 5471 (Matthew Jackson - 6057)

the paragon - 4883 (Kyle O'Reilly - 5754) +1

bbg - 4881 (Jay White - 7363) -1

the patriarchy - 4832 (Christian Cage - 5987)

the hurt syndicate - 4631.666667 (MJF - 7603) +5

don callis family - 4615.166667 (Konosuke Takeshita - 7159) -1

dark order - 3877.75 (Evil Uno - 5405) -1

private party - 3532 (Isiah Kassidy - 3978) -1

the vendetta - 3468 (Deonna Purrazzo - 3511) -1

spanish announce project - 3194 (Serpentico - 3503) -1

top flight - 3064.5 (Dante Martin - 3271)

ftr - 2825.5 (Cash Wheeler - 3181)

the kingdom - 2623 (Matt Taven - 3096)

la faccion ingobernable - 2548 (The Beast Mortos - 4552)

cru - 2384 (Lio Rush - 2634)

butcher & blade - 2332.5 (The Butcher - 2771)

shane taylor promotions - 2132.333333 (Lee Moriarty - 3787)

gates of agony - 1790.5 (Bishop Kaun - 1861)

premier athletes - 1260.333333 (Josh Woods - 1345)

the outcasts - 1014 (Saraya - 1014)

Stock Market

Kenny Omega - 1 - 1 ( = )

Orange Cassidy - 2 - 2 ( = )

Adam Page - 3 - 3 ( = )

Toni Storm - 4 - 4 ( = )

Swerve Strickland - 5 - 5 ( = )

Willow Nightingale - 6 - 6 ( = )

Wheeler Yuta - 7 - 7 ( = )

Kris Statlander - 8 - 8 ( = )

Eddie Kingston - 9 - 9 ( = )

MJF - 10 - 10 ( = )

Chuck Taylor - 11 - 11 ( = )

Jon Moxley - 12 - 12 ( = )

Jay White - 13 - 13 ( = )

Will Ospreay - 14 - 14 ( = )

Konosuke Takeshita - 15 - 15 ( = )

Samoa Joe - 16 - 16 ( = )

Julia Hart - 17 - 17 ( = )

Mariah May - 18 - 18 ( = )

Nyla Rose - 19 - 19 ( = )

Harley Cameron - 20 - 21 ( +1)

Matthew Jackson - 21 - 20 (-1)

Christian Cage - 22 - 22 ( = )

Kyle Fletcher - 23 - 23 ( = )

Kip Sabian - 24 - 25 ( +1)

Hook - 25 - 28 ( +3)

Athena - 26 - 27 ( +1)

Kyle O'Reilly - 27 - 24 (-3)

Queen Aminata - 28 - 26 (-2)

Claudio Castagnoli - 29 - 29 ( = )

Kazuchika Okada - 30 - 30 ( = )

Katsuyori Shibata - 31 - 35 ( +4) MOST SPOTS UP

Daniel Garcia - 32 - 32 ( = )

Jamie Hayter - 33 - 31 (-2)

Kota Ibushi - 34 - 34 ( = )

Brody King - 35 - 33 (-2)

Nicholas Jackson - 36 - 36 ( = )

Evil Uno - 37 - 38 ( +1)

PAC - 38 - 37 (-1)

Bryan Danielson - 39 - 39 ( = )

Hikaru Shida - 40 - 41 ( +1)

Anthony Bowens - 41 - 40 (-1)

Danhausen - 42 - 44 ( +2)

Powerhouse Hobbs - 43 - 42 (-1)

Mark Briscoe - 44 - 43 (-1)

Adam Cole - 45 - 45 ( = )

Mercedes Mone - 46 - 46 ( = )

Jack Perry - 47 - 48 ( +1)

Riho - 48 - 47 (-1)

Buddy Matthews - 49 - 49 ( = )

Abadon - 50 - 50 ( = )

Mark Davis - 50 - 51 ( +1)

Skye Blue - 52 - 53 ( +1)

Thunder Rosa - 53 - 54 ( +1)

Darby Allin - 54 - 56 ( +2)

The Beast Mortos - 55 - 52 (-3)

Penelope Ford - 56 - 55 (-1)

Emi Sakura - 57 - 60 ( +3)

Killswitch - 58 - 57 (-1)

Anna Jay - 59 - 62 ( +3)

Marina Shafir - 60 - 61 ( +1)

Ruby Soho - 61 - 58 (-3)

Komander - 61 - 63 ( +2)

Juice Robinson - 63 - 59 (-4) MOST SPOTS DOWN

Trent Beretta - 64 - 64 ( = )

Sting - 65 - 65 ( = )

Matt Menard - 66 - 66 ( = )

Bandido - 67 - 67 ( = )

Hologram - 68 - 68 ( = )

Nick Wayne - 69 - 69 ( = )

Austin Gunn - 70 - 70 ( = )

Isiah Kassidy - 71 - 71 ( = )

Roderick Strong - 72 - 73 ( +1)

Yuka Sakazaki - 73 - 72 (-1)

Malakai Black - 74 - 74 ( = )

John Silver - 75 - 75 ( = )

Lee Moriarty - 76 - 76 ( = )

Colten Gunn - 77 - 77 ( = )

Red Velvet - 78 - 78 ( = )

Cope - 79 - 79 ( = )

Mr Brodie Lee - 80 - 80 ( = )

Dustin Rhodes - 81 - 81 ( = )

Keith Lee - 82 - 82 ( = )

Ricochet - 83 - 86 ( +3)

Deonna Purrazzo - 84 - 85 ( +1)

Serpentico - 85 - 83 (-2)

Bryan Keith - 86 - 84 (-2)

Shelton Benjamin - 87 - 87 ( = )

Billy Gunn - 88 - 88 ( = )

Taya Valkyrie - 89 - 89 ( = )

Angelo Parker - 90 - 90 ( = )

Big Bill - 91 - 91 ( = )

Dante Martin - 92 - 92 ( = )

Lance Archer - 93 - 93 ( = )

Cash Wheeler - 94 - 94 ( = )

Max Caster - 95 - 97 ( +2)

Matt Taven - 96 - 95 (-1)

Marq Quen - 97 - 96 (-1)

Ricky Starks - 98 - 98 ( = )

AR Fox - 99 - 100 ( +1)

Angelico - 100 - 101 ( +1)

Leyla Hirsch - 101 - 99 (-2)

Darius Martin - 102 - 105 ( +3)

Bobby Lashley - 103 - 103 ( = )

Kiera Hogan - 104 - 106 ( +2)

Leila Grey - 105 - 102 (-3)

The Butcher - 106 - 104 (-2)

Alex Reynolds - 107 - 107 ( = )

Johnny TV - 108 - 109 ( +1)

Lio Rush - 109 - 108 (-1)

Rey Fenix - 110 - 110 ( = )

Wardlow - 111 - 111 ( = )

Brandon Cutler - 112 - 112 ( = )

Diamante - 113 - 114 ( +1)

Luther - 114 - 113 (-1)

Brian Cage - 115 - 115 ( = )

Dax Harwood - 116 - 117 ( +1)

Mercedes Martinez - 117 - 116 (-1)

Matt Sydal - 118 - 118 ( = )

Tay Melo - 119 - 119 ( = )

Mike Bennett - 120 - 120 ( = )

Action Andretti - 121 - 121 ( = )

Scorpio Sky - 122 - 122 ( = )

Dr Britt Baker DMD - 123 - 124 ( +1)

Lee Johnson - 124 - 123 (-1)

Colt Cabana - 125 - 125 ( = )

The Blade - 126 - 126 ( = )

Bishop Kaun - 127 - 127 ( = )

Jeff Jarrett - 128 - 130 ( +2)

Ortiz - 129 - 129 ( = )

Toa Liona - 130 - 128 (-2)

Peter Avalon - 130 - 131 ( +1)

Rush - 132 - 132 ( = )

Jay Lethal - 133 - 133 ( = )

Griff Garrison - 134 - 134 ( = )

Preston Vance - 135 - 136 ( +1)

Michael Nakazawa - 136 - 135 (-1)

Shawn Dean - 137 - 137 ( = )

Vincent - 138 - 138 ( = )

Dralistico - 139 - 140 ( +1)

Sammy Guevara - 140 - 139 (-1)

Dutch - 141 - 141 ( = )

Josh Woods - 142 - 143 ( +1)

Madison Rayne - 143 - 142 (-1)

Chris Jericho - 144 - 144 ( = )

Tony Nese - 145 - 144 (-1)

Satnam Singh - 146 - 147 ( +1)

Ariya Daivari - 147 - 146 (-1)

Paul Wight - 148 - 148 ( = )

Aaron Solo - 149 - 149 ( = )

Anthony Ogogo - 150 - 150 ( = )

Miro - 151 - 151 ( = )

Saraya - 152 - 152 ( = )

Rebel - 153 - 153 ( = )

Serena Deeb - 154 - 154 ( = )

Kamille - 155 - 155 ( = )

Nick Comoroto - 156 - 156 ( = )

Roster Differences

All the changes in the Official AEW Roster since the start of the tournament

LOST:

Malakai Black

Miro

Ricky Starks

Leyla Hirsch

Rey Fenix

Dutch

Vincent

GAINED:

Carlie Bravo

Josh Alexander

Kevin Knight

Mansoor

Mason Madden

Megan Bayne

Mike Bailey

Mina Shirakawa

Shane Taylor

Truth Magnum

Turbo Floyd

Only 149/167 roster names have been present for the entire duration of the tournament

And finally, the highlight of all of our weeks:

TAGS OF THE WEEK

@finndoesntwantthis for letting me make a promise on behalf of the round robin tournament format

@idyllic-idioms for foiling me

@sendhook for this retelling of the Pied Piper story

@powderflower for bringing kink discourse into this

@dykecassidy for going for booker of the year

@13-kuehe-und-ein-melkeimer for the pun

@himbos-hotline for properly cooking cute

@lesbian-with-a-chainsaw for doing what all southern Christians want and making the Bible set in Texas

@sarahcakes613 for talking about a fic I'd like someone to drop the link to

@throesofincreasingwonder for having the moral backbone of a chocolate eclair

@chainsawchuckiet for forgetting my Alamo

@sumeriandeathsquad for perfect use of a smiling emoticon

and finally this suspiciously censored blog who definitely isn't someone who'd have a very strong opinion on this matter

We're down to the home stretch, ladies and germs. Going forward, stat dumps will be by request only, so if there's a stat you want to see, send an ask and I'll drop it right away

This won't include tags of the week because obvs I'm not a monster and I love celebrating the people who engage with my tournament. Tags of the Week will continue as scheduled, every Saturday until the end of the tournament

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 4, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Feb 05, 2025

Shortly after 1:00 this morning, Vittoria Elliott, Dhruv Mehrotra, Leah Feiger, and Tim Marchman of Wired reported that, according to three of their sources, “[a] 25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Elon Musk companies [SpaceX and X], has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the US government.”

According to the reporters, Elez apparently has the privileges to write code on the programs at the Bureau of Fiscal Service that control more than 20% of the U.S. economy, including government payments of veterans’ benefits, Social Security benefits, and veterans’ pay. The admin privileges he has typically permit a user “to log in to servers through secure shell access, navigate the entire file system, change user permissions, and delete or modify critical files. That could allow someone to bypass the security measures of, and potentially cause irreversible changes to, the very systems they have access to.”

“If you would have asked me a week ago” if an outsider could’ve been given access to a government server, one federal IT worker told the Wired reporters, “I'd have told you that this kind of thing would never in a million years happen. But now, who the f*ck knows."

The reporters note that control of the Bureau of Fiscal Service computers could enable someone to cut off monies to specific agencies or even individuals. “Will DOGE cut funding to programs approved by Congress that Donald Trump decides he doesn’t like?” asked Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) yesterday. “What about cancer research? Food banks? School lunches? Veterans aid? Literacy programs? Small business loans?”

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo reported that his sources said that Elez and possibly others got full admin access to the Treasury computers on Friday, January 31, and that he—or they—have “already made extensive changes to the code base for the payment system.” They are leaning on existing staff in the agency for help, which those workers have provided reluctantly in hopes of keeping the entire system from crashing. Marshall reports those staffers are “freaking out.” The system is due to undergo a migration to another system this weekend; how the changes will interact with that long-planned migration is unclear.

The changes, Marshall’s sources tell him, “all seem to relate to creating new paths to block payments and possibly leave less visibility into what has been blocked.”

Both Wired and the New York Times reported yesterday that Musk’s team intends to cut government workers and to use artificial intelligence, or AI, to make budget cuts and to find waste and abuse in the federal government.

Today Jason Koebler, Joseph Cox, and Emanuel Maiberg of 404 Media reported that they had obtained the audio of a meeting held Monday by Thomas Shedd for government technology workers. Shedd is a former Musk employee at Tesla who is now leading the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS), the team that is recoding the government programs.

At the meeting, Shedd told government workers that “things are going to get intense” as his team creates “AI coding agents” to write software that would, for example, change the way logging into the government systems works. Currently, that software cannot access any information about individuals; as the reporters note, login.gov currently assures users that it “does not affect or have any information related to the specific agency you are trying to access.”

But Shedd said they were working through how to change that login “to further identify individuals and detect and prevent fraud.”

When a government employee pointed out that the Privacy Act makes it illegal for agencies to share personal information without consent, Shedd appeared unfazed by the idea they were trying something illegal. “The idea would be that folks would give consent to help with the login flow, but again, that's an example of something that we have a vision, that needs [to be] worked on, and needs clarified. And if we hit a roadblock, then we hit a roadblock. But we still should push forward and see what we can do.”

A government employee told Koebler, Cox, and Maiberg that using AI coding agents is a major security risk. “Government software is concerned with things like foreign adversaries attempting to insert backdoors into government code. With code generated by AI, it seems possible that security vulnerabilities could be introduced unintentionally. Or could be introduced intentionally via an AI-related exploit that creates obfuscated code that includes vulnerabilities that might expose the data of American citizens or of national security importance.”

A blizzard of lawsuits has greeted Musk’s campaign and other Trump administration efforts to undermine Congress. Today, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Representative Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), the minority leaders in their respective chambers, announced they were introducing legislation to stop Musk’s unlawful actions in the Treasury’s payment systems and to protect Americans, calling it “Stop the Steal,” a play on Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

This evening, Democratic lawmakers and hundreds of protesters rallied at the Treasury Department to take a stand against Musk’s hostile takeover of the U.S. Treasury payment system. “Nobody Elected Elon,” their signs read. “He has access to all our information, our Social Security numbers, the federal payment system,” Representative Maxwell Frost (D-FL) said. “What’s going to stop him from stealing taxpayer money?”

Tonight, the Washington Post noted that Musk’s actions “appear to violate federal law.” David Super of Georgetown Law School told journalists Jeff Stein, Dan Diamond, Faiz Siddiqui, Cat Zakrzewski, Hannah Natanson, and Jacqueline Alemany: “So many of these things are so wildly illegal that I think they’re playing a quantity game and assuming the system can’t react to all this illegality at once.”

Musk’s takeover of the U.S. government to override Congress and dictate what programs he considers worthwhile is a logical outcome of forty years of Republican rhetoric. After World War II, members of both political parties agreed that the government should regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, promote infrastructure, and protect civil rights. The idea was to use tax dollars to create national wealth. The government would hold the economic playing field level by protecting every American’s access to education, healthcare, transportation and communication, employment, and resources so that anyone could work hard and rise to prosperity.

Businessmen who opposed regulation and taxes tried to convince voters to abandon this system but had no luck. The liberal consensus—“liberal” because it used the government to protect individual freedom, and “consensus” because it enjoyed wide support—won the votes of members of both major political parties.

But those opposed to the liberal consensus gained traction after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision declared segregation in the public schools unconstitutional. Three years later, in 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, sent troops to help desegregate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Those trying to tear apart the liberal consensus used the crisis to warn voters that the programs in place to help all Americans build the nation as they rose to prosperity were really an attempt to redistribute cash from white taxpayers to undeserving racial minorities, especially Black Americans. Such programs were, opponents insisted, a form of socialism, or even communism.

That argument worked to undermine white support for the liberal consensus. Over the years, Republican voters increasingly abandoned the idea of using tax money to help Americans build wealth.

When majorities continued to support the liberal consensus, Republicans responded by suppressing the vote, rigging the system through gerrymandering, and flooding our political system with dark money and using right-wing media to push propaganda. Republicans came to believe that they were the only legitimate lawmakers in the nation; when Democrats won, the election must have been rigged. Even so, they were unable to destroy the post–World War II government completely because policies like the destruction of Social Security and Medicaid, or the elimination of the Department of Education, remained unpopular.

Now, MAGA Republicans in charge of the government have made it clear they intend to get rid of that government once and for all. Trump’s nominee to direct the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, was a key architect of Project 2025, which called for dramatically reducing the power of Congress and the United States civil service. Vought has referred to career civil servants as “villains” and called for ending funding for most government programs. “The stark reality in America is that we are in the late stages of a complete Marxist takeover of the country,” he said recently.

In the name of combatting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, the Trump administration is taking down websites of information paid for with tax dollars, slashing programs that advance health and science, ending investments in infrastructure, trying to end foreign aid, working to eliminate the Department of Education, and so on. Today the administration offered buyouts to all the people who work at the Central Intelligence Agency, saying that anyone who opposes Trump’s policies should leave. Today, Musk’s people entered the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which provides daily weather and wind predictions; cutting NOAA and privatizing its services is listed as a priority in Project 2025.

Stunningly, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced today that the U.S. has made a deal with El Salvador to send deportees of any nationality—including U.S. citizens, which would be wildly unconstitutional—for imprisonment in that nation’s 40,000-person Terrorism Confinement Center, for a fee that would pay for El Salvador’s prison system.

Tonight the Senate confirmed Trump loyalist Pam Bondi as attorney general. Bondi is an election denier who refuses to say that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. As Matt Cohen of Democracy Docket noted, a coalition of more than 300 civil rights groups urged senators to vote against her confirmation because of her opposition to LGBTQ rights, immigrants’ rights, and reproductive rights, and her record of anti-voting activities. The vote was along party lines except for Senator John Fetterman (D-PA), who crossed over to vote in favor.

Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency is the logical outcome of the mentality that the government should not enable Americans to create wealth but rather should put cash in the pockets of a few elites. Far from representing a majority, Musk is unelected, and he is slashing through the government programs he opposes. With full control of both chambers of Congress, Republicans could cut those parts themselves, but such cuts would be too unpopular ever to pass. So, instead, Musk is single-handedly slashing through the government Americans have built over the past 90 years.

Now, MAGA voters are about to discover that the wide-ranging cuts he claims to be making to end diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs skewer them as well as their neighbors. Attracting white voters with racism was always a tool to end the liberal consensus that worked for everyone, and if Musk’s cuts stand, the U.S. is about to learn that lesson the hard way.

In yet another bombshell, after meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump told reporters tonight that the U.S. “will take over the Gaza Strip,” and suggested sending troops to make that happen. “We’ll own it,” he said. “We’re going to take over that piece, develop it and create thousands and thousands of jobs, and it will be something the entire Middle East can be proud of.” It could become “the Riviera of the Middle East,” he said.

Reaction has been swift and incredulous. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, called the plan “deranged” and “nuts.” Another Foreign Relations Committee member, Senator Chris Coons (D-DE), said he was “speechless,” adding: “That’s insane.” While MAGA representative Nancy Mace (R-SC) posted in support, “Let’s turn Gaza into Mar-a-Lago,” Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) told NBC News reporters Frank Thorp V and Raquel Coronell Uribe that there were “a few kinks in that slinky,” a reference to a spring toy that fails if it gets bent.

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) suggested that Trump was trying to distract people from “the real story—the billionaires seizing government to steal from regular people.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[iwonderwh0]

I don't think androids store memories as videos or that they can even be extracted as ones. Almost, but not exactly.

Firstly, because their memories include other data such as their tactile information, their emotional state, probably 3d markers of their surrounding...a lot of different information. So, their memories are not in a video-format, but some kind of a mix of many things, that may not be as easily separated from each other. I don't think a software necessary to read those types of files are publicly available.

Even if they have some absolute massive storage, filming good-quality videos and storing them is just not an optimal way to use their resources. It's extremely wasteful. I think, instead, their memories consist of snapshots that are taken every once in a while (depending on how much is going on), that consist of compressed version of all their relevant inputs like mentioned above. Like, a snapshot of a LiDAR in a specific moment + heavily compressed photo with additional data about some details that'll later help to upscale it and interpolate from one snapshot into the next one, some audio samples of the voices and transcript of the conversation so that it'd take less storage to save. My main point is, their memories are probably stored in a format that not only doesn't actually contain original video material, but is a product of some extreme compression, and in this case reviewing memories is not like watching HD video footage, but rather an ai restoration of those snapshots. Perhaps it may be eventually converted into some sort of a video readable to human eye, but it would be more of an ai-generated video from specific snapshots with standardised prompts with some parts of the image/audio missing than a perfectly exact video recording.

When Connor extracts video we see that they are a bit glitchy. It may be attributed to some details getting lost during transmission from one android to another, but then we've also got flashbacks with android's own memories, that are just as "glitchy". Which kinda backs up a theory of it being a restoration of some sort of a compressed version rather than original video recording.

Then we've also got that scene where Josh records Markus where it is shown that when he starts to film, his eyes indicate the change that he is not just watching but recording now. Which means that is an option, but not the default. I find it a really nice detail. Like, androids can record videos, but then the people around them can see exactly when they do that, and "be at ease" when they don't. It may be purely a design choice, like that of the loading bar to signalise that something is in progress and not just frozen, or mandatory shutter sound effect on smartphones cameras in Japan.

So, yeah. Androids purpose is to correctly interpret their inputs and store relevant information about it in their long term memory, and not necessarily to record every present moment in a video-archive that will likely never be seen by a human and reviewed as a pure video footage again. If it happened to be needed to be seen — it'll be restored as a "video" file, but this video won't be an actual video recording unless android was specifically set to record mode.

[misfitwashere]

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

FEB 5

Shortly after 1:00 this morning, Vittoria Elliott, Dhruv Mehrotra, Leah Feiger, and Tim Marchman of Wired reported that, according to three of their sources, “[a] 25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Elon Musk companies [SpaceX and X], has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the US government.”

According to the reporters, Elez apparently has the privileges to write code on the programs at the Bureau of Fiscal Service that control more than 20% of the U.S. economy, including government payments of veterans’ benefits, Social Security benefits, and veterans’ pay. The admin privileges he has typically permit a user “to log in to servers through secure shell access, navigate the entire file system, change user permissions, and delete or modify critical files. That could allow someone to bypass the security measures of, and potentially cause irreversible changes to, the very systems they have access to.”

“If you would have asked me a week ago” if an outsider could’ve been given access to a government server, one federal IT worker told the Wiredreporters, “I'd have told you that this kind of thing would never in a million years happen. But now, who the f*ck knows."

The reporters note that control of the Bureau of Fiscal Service computers could enable someone to cut off monies to specific agencies or even individuals. “Will DOGE cut funding to programs approved by Congress that Donald Trump decides he doesn’t like?” asked Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) yesterday. “What about cancer research? Food banks? School lunches? Veterans aid? Literacy programs? Small business loans?”

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo reported that his sources said that Elez and possibly others got full admin access to the Treasury computers on Friday, January 31, and that he—or they—have “already made extensive changes to the code base for the payment system.” They are leaning on existing staff in the agency for help, which those workers have provided reluctantly in hopes of keeping the entire system from crashing. Marshall reports those staffers are “freaking out.” The system is due to undergo a migration to another system this weekend; how the changes will interact with that long-planned migration is unclear.

The changes, Marshall’s sources tell him, “all seem to relate to creating new paths to block payments and possibly leave less visibility into what has been blocked.”

Both Wired and the New York Times reported yesterday that Musk’s team intends to cut government workers and to use artificial intelligence, or AI, to make budget cuts and to find waste and abuse in the federal government.

Today Jason Koebler, Joseph Cox, and Emanuel Maiberg of 404 Mediareported that they had obtained the audio of a meeting held Monday by Thomas Shedd for government technology workers. Shedd is a former Musk employee at Tesla who is now leading the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS), the team that is recoding the government programs.

At the meeting, Shedd told government workers that “things are going to get intense” as his team creates “AI coding agents” to write software that would, for example, change the way logging into the government systems works. Currently, that software cannot access any information about individuals; as the reporters note, login.gov currently assures users that it “does not affect or have any information related to the specific agency you are trying to access.”

But Shedd said they were working through how to change that login “to further identify individuals and detect and prevent fraud.”

When a government employee pointed out that the Privacy Act makes it illegal for agencies to share personal information without consent, Shedd appeared unfazed by the idea they were trying something illegal. “The idea would be that folks would give consent to help with the login flow, but again, that's an example of something that we have a vision, that needs [to be] worked on, and needs clarified. And if we hit a roadblock, then we hit a roadblock. But we still should push forward and see what we can do.”

A government employee told Koebler, Cox, and Maiberg that using AI coding agents is a major security risk. “Government software is concerned with things like foreign adversaries attempting to insert backdoors into government code. With code generated by AI, it seems possible that security vulnerabilities could be introduced unintentionally. Or could be introduced intentionally via an AI-related exploit that creates obfuscated code that includes vulnerabilities that might expose the data of American citizens or of national security importance.”

A blizzard of lawsuits has greeted Musk’s campaign and other Trump administration efforts to undermine Congress. Today, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Representative Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), the minority leaders in their respective chambers, announced they were introducing legislation to stop Musk’s unlawful actions in the Treasury’s payment systems and to protect Americans, calling it “Stop the Steal,” a play on Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

This evening, Democratic lawmakers and hundreds of protesters rallied at the Treasury Department to take a stand against Musk’s hostile takeover of the U.S. Treasury payment system. “Nobody Elected Elon,” their signs read. “He has access to all our information, our Social Security numbers, the federal payment system,” Representative Maxwell Frost (D-FL) said. “What’s going to stop him from stealing taxpayer money?”

Tonight, the Washington Post noted that Musk’s actions “appear to violate federal law.” David Super of Georgetown Law School told journalists Jeff Stein, Dan Diamond, Faiz Siddiqui, Cat Zakrzewski, Hannah Natanson, and Jacqueline Alemany: “So many of these things are so wildly illegal that I think they’re playing a quantity game and assuming the system can’t react to all this illegality at once.”

Musk’s takeover of the U.S. government to override Congress and dictate what programs he considers worthwhile is a logical outcome of forty years of Republican rhetoric. After World War II, members of both political parties agreed that the government should regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, promote infrastructure, and protect civil rights. The idea was to use tax dollars to create national wealth. The government would hold the economic playing field level by protecting every American’s access to education, healthcare, transportation and communication, employment, and resources so that anyone could work hard and rise to prosperity.

Businessmen who opposed regulation and taxes tried to convince voters to abandon this system but had no luck. The liberal consensus—“liberal” because it used the government to protect individual freedom, and “consensus” because it enjoyed wide support—won the votes of members of both major political parties.

But those opposed to the liberal consensus gained traction after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision declared segregation in the public schools unconstitutional. Three years later, in 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, sent troops to help desegregate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Those trying to tear apart the liberal consensus used the crisis to warn voters that the programs in place to help all Americans build the nation as they rose to prosperity were really an attempt to redistribute cash from white taxpayers to undeserving racial minorities, especially Black Americans. Such programs were, opponents insisted, a form of socialism, or even communism.

That argument worked to undermine white support for the liberal consensus. Over the years, Republican voters increasingly abandoned the idea of using tax money to help Americans build wealth.

When majorities continued to support the liberal consensus, Republicans responded by suppressing the vote, rigging the system through gerrymandering, and flooding our political system with dark money and using right-wing media to push propaganda. Republicans came to believe that they were the only legitimate lawmakers in the nation; when Democrats won, the election must have been rigged. Even so, they were unable to destroy the post–World War II government completely because policies like the destruction of Social Security and Medicaid, or the elimination of the Department of Education, remained unpopular.

Now, MAGA Republicans in charge of the government have made it clear they intend to get rid of that government once and for all. Trump’s nominee to direct the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, was a key architect of Project 2025, which called for dramatically reducing the power of Congress and the United States civil service. Vought has referred to career civil servants as “villains” and called for ending funding for most government programs. “The stark reality in America is that we are in the late stages of a complete Marxist takeover of the country,” he said recently.

In the name of combatting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, the Trump administration is taking down websites of information paid for with tax dollars, slashing programs that advance health and science, ending investments in infrastructure, trying to end foreign aid, working to eliminate the Department of Education, and so on. Today the administration offered buyouts to all the people who work at the Central Intelligence Agency, saying that anyone who opposes Trump’s policies should leave. Today, Musk’s people entered the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which provides daily weather and wind predictions; cutting NOAA and privatizing its services is listed as a priority in Project 2025.

Stunningly, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced today that the U.S. has made a deal with El Salvador to send deportees of any nationality—including U.S. citizens, which would be wildly unconstitutional—for imprisonment in that nation’s 40,000-person Terrorism Confinement Center, for a fee that would pay for El Salvador’s prison system.

Tonight the Senate confirmed Trump loyalist Pam Bondi as attorney general. Bondi is an election denier who refuses to say that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. As Matt Cohen of Democracy Docket noted, a coalition of more than 300 civil rights groups urged senators to vote against her confirmation because of her opposition to LGBTQ rights, immigrants’ rights, and reproductive rights, and her record of anti-voting activities. The vote was along party lines except for Senator John Fetterman (D-PA), who crossed over to vote in favor.

Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency is the logical outcome of the mentality that the government should not enable Americans to create wealth but rather should put cash in the pockets of a few elites. Far from representing a majority, Musk is unelected, and he is slashing through the government programs he opposes. With full control of both chambers of Congress, Republicans could cut those parts themselves, but such cuts would be too unpopular ever to pass. So, instead, Musk is single-handedly slashing through the government Americans have built over the past 90 years.

Now, MAGA voters are about to discover that the wide-ranging cuts he claims to be making to end diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs skewer them as well as their neighbors. Attracting white voters with racism was always a tool to end the liberal consensus that worked for everyone, and if Musk’s cuts stand, the U.S. is about to learn that lesson the hard way.

In yet another bombshell, after meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump told reporters tonight that the U.S. “will take over the Gaza Strip,” and suggested sending troops to make that happen. “We’ll own it,” he said. “We’re going to take over that piece, develop it and create thousands and thousands of jobs, and it will be something the entire Middle East can be proud of.” It could become “the Riviera of the Middle East,” he said.

Reaction has been swift and incredulous. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, called the plan “deranged” and “nuts.” Another Foreign Relations Committee member, Senator Chris Coons (D-DE), said he was “speechless,” adding: “That’s insane.” While MAGA representative Nancy Mace (R-SC) posted in support, “Let’s turn Gaza into Mar-a-Lago,” Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) told NBC News reporters Frank Thorp V and Raquel Coronell Uribe that there were “a few kinks in that slinky,” a reference to a spring toy that fails if it gets bent.

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) suggested that Trump was trying to distract people from “the real story—the billionaires seizing government to steal from regular people.”

—

[stayaliveclique]

Incorrect Quotes #20

Tyler: Are you an F5 key? Because that ass is refreshing. Josh: Are you a software update? because not right now.

[thecurioustale]

My New Book Is Out! | Tokens of Zeal

My new book is out!

Buy it! Buy it now!

That's right: In secret, on January 2 of this year I began writing a book of essays. Some of you may know that I have an online journal, which I created in the summer of 2003 when I was just 21 years old and have kept up with ever since. For my new book I went back to the journal and read through it, entry by entry, drawing out excerpts of interest that became conversation pieces for 81 various and sundry essays reflecting on my past life and past thoughts.

The essays are short, often very short. They are less challenging than my usual writing, I would say. My purpose was not to advance my personal frontier of philosophy and intellectual thought in 2024, or to reach a niche audience of deep thinkers, but instead to reflect sincerely on some things I've seen along the way and muse upon how my thoughts have changed and stayed the same over twenty years.

I mention this to you because I am a bit worried that anyone who reads this book might think there's not much to me as an author, and might be dissuaded from reading my works of fiction when those books eventually come out, so I'll lampshade that by adding that I wrote this book in two-and-a-half months. Make of that what you will. I told myself I wouldn't self-sabotage the book by needlessly saying negative things about it, and I am proud of it, not only the fact that I finished it at all, let alone so quickly, but of the actual contents too.

This book is "Volume 1" in a hypothetical series, as it doesn't cover the entire twenty years of the journal but only the first four months, from August to November of 2003—at which point the essays had reached "book length" (lol). So really this book is a snapshot of my life in the latter half of 2003. At that time, I was fading out of college due to financial hardship and other issues, and did not realize that I would never (as yet) return.

I have been wanting for years to go back and reread my journal, and writing a book out of it was the perfect impetus to finally do it. I think a few things stand out about the Josh of 2023:

First, my principles have remained remarkably consistent, but my awareness and understanding of the world has grown drastically, and so those same principles have led me over time to some different policy views and worldviews on some things.

Second, I was a 21-year-old arrogant block of cheese, full of hormones and self-conviction, and that definitely shows up at times in ways that I simultaneously am not proud of and yet which I admire for their sheer gall. There is something very magnetic about the old me which doesn't exist anymore.

Third, following up on that point, it was pretty inspiring and encouraging to revisit the old me, with all that native optimism and drive. I don't express those qualities anymore because life has worn me down and also because I have come to recognize that humanity's problems are a lot more stubborn and irremediable than I thought. By glimpsing into the past, I couldn't help but be cheered on by the old Josh's proud, utopian sense of human inevitability. It lifted my own spirits in the here and now!

I made the mistake of announcing the book on Patreon right after I finished writing it, i.e. back in mid-March. Then I had to wring my hands every week about how post-production was taking longer than expected. Between the irritating realities of formatting a book in software not properly equipped to format a book (never write a book in Google Docs), the complexities of my detail-oriented manner and strong vision regarding the cover design (and engaging for the first time ever with modern generative AI, and having to learn those ropes), and sustaining illnesses and other life priorities and so on, it would take me another two months in all to finally reach today, where I can now publicly declare:

The book is done! It is for sale right now. It is called:

Tokens of Zeal: Words from a Vanished Age

(Caption: Book front cover of Tokens of Zeal: Words from a Vanished Age, by Joshua Calars.)

You can buy it through Amazon in either paperback or e-book format. (I recommend the paperback version for aesthetics as it is much truer to my design vision for the book's layout and appearance, but my profit margin is actually a dollar bigger with the e-book version, so really just go with whichever version you prefer.) It is available in the US as well as in basically all the other countries that Amazon has expanded its publishing service into. If you need help finding a link to a particular version, give me a ping and I will point you there (if there is a "there" to be pointed to). This is my second published book, following Prelude to After The Hero in 2015, and the first book to be published in print.

If you do read it, first of all thank you! It's an honor that you would take the time. Second of all, I would love any feedback you care to offer. That's not a platitude either; feedback is hard to come by and I really would be interested in anything you have to say, good or bad. You can e-mail me, DM, reblog this, drop an ask, or tag me in an independent post. Whatever you like! Feedback will help me greatly when I eventually get around to writing Volume 2. And feel free to leave a review on Amazon, whether good or bad (though hopefully you enjoy the book); I am told it pleases The Algorithm. But most of all, if you enjoy the book, tell someone about it! Your word-of-mouth is currently 100 percent of my advertising budget, lol.

That's all. I wrote a book; it took four-and-a-half-months; it's done now; and it's the first time I've ever gotten to hold a book that I wrote in my hands as a physical thing, and that's pretty neat.

[mariacallous]

Four days before Donald Trump’s inauguration, financial technology startup Ramp published a pitch for how to tackle wasteful government spending. In a 4,000-word blog post titled “The Efficiency Formula,” Ramp’s CEO and one of its investors echoed ideas similar to those promoted by Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk: Federal programs were overrun by fraud, and commonsense business techniques could provide a quick fix.

Ramp sells corporate credit cards and artificial intelligence software for businesses to analyze spending. And while the firm appears to have no existing federal contracts, the post implied the government should consider hiring it. Just as Ramp helped businesses manage their budgets, the company “could do the same for a variety of government agencies,” according to the blog and company social media posts.

It didn’t take long for Ramp to find a willing audience. Within Trump’s first three months in office, its executives scored at least four private meetings with the president’s appointees at the General Services Administration, which oversees major federal contracting. Some of the meetings were organized by the nation’s top procurement officer, Josh Gruenbaum, commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service.

GSA is eying Ramp to get a piece of the government’s $700 billion internal expense card program, known as SmartPay. In recent weeks, Trump appointees at GSA have been moving quickly to tap Ramp for a charge card pilot program worth up to $25 million, sources told ProPublica, even as Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency highlights the multitudes of contracts it has canceled across federal agencies.

[thatssonanii]

Prologue

A/N: Bare with me the holidays are a busy time for me so it'll most likely be week day uploads when I do start posting chapters! Enjoy! Comment, reblog & share! Updates depend on engagement! 🌻

Warnings: A bit of cursing, 18+, Minors DNI

Masterlist

The sound of kids talking and playing filled Shania's ears as she entered the three year old classroom. A few kids noticed her, running to give her hugs then went back to playing. She watched them for a moment then went to the connected boys restroom, peeking in. 

"Hey, Ms. Martina. You buzzed for me?"

Martina stood from her kneel in front of the middle stall. "Yeah. Jaden has a stomach thing and no clothes."

Shania walked in to check on the child, giving him a soft smile. "Not feeling good, buddy?"

His voice came out weak and sad. "No ma'am."

"I'll get somebody to bring you some ginger ale and extra clothes while I call mommy and daddy. Sound good?" Giving him another pout, she turned to Martina. "If you want when he's cleaned up, you can bring him to the office with me. Tell me the last name again."

"Fatu."

Leaving the classroom, Shania power walked through the daycare back to her office and to her desk. After going through her software, she found his profile and dialed the first number. 

"Good morning, Mrs. Fatu. This is Shania Taylor at Busy Bees. Jaden's not feeling well and he's had an accident so you're gonna have to come pick him up. Thank you. See you soon."

Shania left the same message three times with Jaden's mom, dad and uncle. She sighed softly realizing there was only one more number to call. Dialing the number, she put it on speaker so she could pull her curls away from her face. 

"Hello?"

The deep voice startled her a bit as she honestly wasn't expecting anyone to answer. 

"Helloooo," the voice sang out, "Somebody there?"

"Sorry, yes." She picked her phone up, moving it closer to her.  "Hey, I'm sorry to bother you. This is Shania Taylor from Busy Bees. Is this Joshua Fatu?"

"Uh, yeah, this Josh. Busy Bees?"

"Yes, Busy Bees. Your nephew, Jaden, is enrolled here."

"Oh shit, my bad," he said quickly, "I don't think I ever knew the name. He aight? He need something?"

She glanced at her office door when she heard a light knock, finding Martina standing in the doorway with Jaden in tow. She waved them in, pointing at the ottoman in front of her window. 

"He's actually not feeling well and had an accident. He didn't have any clothes but I keep extras here so that's taken care of. You are gonna have to get him though."

Josh went silent for a moment, Shania could hear rustling around in his background.

"I don't mind at all but did you call Jon or Trinity first?"

"Yes sir," she said softly as she rolled her chair over to Jaden. She covered him with her throw blanket. "I called them and the other uncle they had listed, no one answered."

"Aight, I'll try to call them. I'm on the way though, Ms. Taylor."

"Thank you, see you soon."

The small monitor on her desk chimed and real time video popped up fifteen minutes later. Easing up from her spot, Shania checked the monitor then went to the front door of the center. She pushed the door open for him, a small smile on her face. 

"Hey, Mr. Fatu." She watched him as he stepped inside. "Thank you for coming."

He looked around the foyer then at her, giving her a small nod. "Josh. Just Josh. I gotta get em from the class?"

"Nope, he's actually been in my office with me. Fell asleep not too long ago. He had me watching toy videos so the nap was a blessing in disguise for us both," she joked. "Since he is asleep, I can go ahead and get a copy of your license."

He frowned a little at that. "Why?"

"I make copies of everyone's licenses when they come to pick up one of my babies. State law. Keeps them safe. You can step into my office."

The two stood in silence while she made her copies. Josh grabbed Jaden's backpack, bag of soiled clothes and the small bottle of ginger ale beside him. He watched Shania move quickly around her office from the printer to the filling cabinet then to her desktop, lingering there for a few minutes. She wrote something down on her post it before peeling it off. Going to Josh, she held it out to him smiling. Slowly, he took it then looked at her. 

"What's this?"

"Your family's code to get into the door so you don't have to wait to be let in whenever you come get him."

"Thank you," he stuffed it into his pocket then carefully picked up his sleeping nephew, "I need to sign em out?"

"I'll take care of it. You just take care of my buddy. When you talk to his parents, let them know he can return when he's been symptom free for 24 hours."

"Gotcha. You the boss lady huh?" He joked adjusting Jaden in his arms. 

Her smile grew a little wider, her cheeks pushing her eyes into small slits. "I wouldn't say boss lady but I am the owner."

"Shit. Forreal?"

"Yes and we don't talk like that in Busy Bees, Josh." She chastised playfully.

He flashed her a quick smile, giving a peek of his gold fronts on his bottom teeth. "My bad, Ms. Taylor. Ima let them know though. Have a good day, don't work too hard."

Walking in front of him to the door, she propped the door open for him to exit. She watched him effortlessly unlock his truck, put Jaden's things in then Jaden into his seat. She called out to him before he could open the driver side. 

"What's up?"

"Call me Shania."

His fronts made another appearance. "Yes ma'am."

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jason Wilson at The Guardian:

A rightwing non-profit group that has published a “DEI Watch List” identifying federal employees allegedly “driving radical Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives” is bankrolled by wealthy family foundations and rightwing groups whose origins are often cloaked in a web of financial arrangements that obscure the original donors. One recent list created by the American Accountability Foundation (AAF) includes the names of mostly Black people with roles in government health alleged to have some ties to diversity initiatives. Another targets education department employees, and another calls out the “most subversive immigration bureaucrats”. The lists come amid turmoil in the US government as Donald Trump’s incoming administration, aided by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has sought to fire huge swathes of the federal government and purge it of DEI and other initiatives – such as tackling climate change – that Trump has dubbed “woke”. While the publication of the personal details of government workers – whom the website describes as “targets” – has reportedly “terrified” many in federal departments, the Guardian has discovered that some current and former employees of AAF have taken pains to conceal their affiliations with the group on LinkedIn and other public websites.

One of the donors to the AAF is the Heritage Foundation, the architects of Project 2025, which has been a driving ideological force behind Trump’s re-election and first weeks in government. Heidi Beirich, the chief strategy officer of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), said: “It’s not surprising to find a vile project such as this backed by Project 2025 entities and far-right donors who have it out for public employees.” Disclosure documents show that the AAF has been closely involved in training Republican staffers in collaboration with the affiliated Conservative Partnership Institute, in sessions that promise to train rightwing operatives in skills including “open source research” and “working with outside groups”.

[...]

‘Incubated’ by the Conservative Partnership Institute

The most crucial support for AAF, however, has come from the organization that birthed it: the CPI, which continues to have a profound influence on the Trump administration and the Republican party as a whole via its own activities and those of its flotilla of spin-off groups. AAF was founded in 2021 to “take a big handful of sand and throw it in the gears of the Biden administration”, as Tom Jones, the organization’s head, told Fox News at the time. [...]

Moulding Maga minds

The Guardian reported last year that CPI had been cementing ties between the far right and the GOP by means of training events for Hill staffers and their bosses in Congress. Many of these events were held at “Camp Rydin”, a sprawling 2,200-acre (890-hectare) property on Maryland’s eastern shore purchased after a $25m donation was made to CPI by its namesake, retired Houston software entrepreneur Mike Rydin, in the wake of January 6. Others were held at one of at least nine adjacent properties on Washington DC’s Pennsylvania Avenue purchased by CPI since 2022, in what reports described as a $41m “shopping spree” that has created a “Maga campus”. CPI literature describes the precinct as “Patriot’s Row”. Records obtained from US Senate and House ethics disclosures indicate that AAF has benefited from being front and center at many of these events. At a 29 May 2024 “Legislative Assistant Symposium” attended by staffers then working for senators including Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and JD Vance, AAF’s Jones was billed as speaking on “strategies for how Congress should approach oversight and accountability”, alongside speakers from CPI, AFL, Advancing American Freedom and anti-immigrant group NumbersUSA. A parallel event with the same line-up drew staffers for hard-right Maga representatives including Anna Paulina Luna – who recently introduced a bill that would see Trump’s face added to Mount Rushmore – and Paul Gosar, who in November invoked antisemitic conspiracy theories in a newsletter defending Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s pick to lead national intelligence. NumbersUSA was part of a network of groups “founded and funded” by John Tanton, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center called the “puppeteer of the nativism movement and a man with deep racist roots”. At an event held 15-17 February 2023, hosted by AAF and attended by staffers for Congress members including Luna, Ken Buck and Marjorie Taylor Greene, trainees were to learn skills including “how to effectively draft requests for information from agencies and witnesses”, “tools and techniques for conducting open source research into agencies, individuals, and organizations”, and conducting “mock interviews with reluctant / recalcitrant witnesses”.

[...]

Dirt machine

The dirt machine now targeted at government workers was honed on higher-profile targets during the Biden administration. Early on, AAF pointed its opposition-research machine at Biden nominees including Saule Omarova, nominated for comptroller of the currency; Sarah Bloom Raskin, nominated for vice-chair for supervision of the Federal Reserve Board, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, supreme court justice, whom the organization falsely claimed had been soft on sex offenders.

The Guardian reports on how a shadowy far-right group of donors are funding American Accountability Foundation’s watchlists, such as the “DEI watchlist.”

[posttexasstressdisorder]

GEICO Terminates Tesla Truck Owners’ Insurance Amid Safety Woes

REVOKED

GEICO notified some Tesla Cybertruck owners that it would not be renewing their policy before reversing course.

Josh Fiallo

Breaking News Reporter

Jackie Salo

Deputy Executive Editor

Updated Oct. 07, 2024 3:12PM EDT / Published Oct. 07, 2024 2:26PM EDT 

Rebecca Cook/Reuters

GEICO informed some Tesla Cybertruck owners that it would not be renewing insurance for the monstrous electric vehicles, claiming the oft-recalled trucks are not up to their standards.

The sudden change in policy was first detailed by Robert Stevenson, a Tesla Cybertruck owner, who tweeted, “@GEICO said they can no longer insure my Cybertruck.”

“It makes no sense, as there are other, riskier cars out there,” he wrote in the since-deleted message, which was reposted to Reddit. “Let me know if you recommend any insurer for the truck. I have eight cars with an amazing record. I will be canceling my entire Geico policy!! Bye-bye!”

Stevenson included a copy of the letter from the insurance company, which stated that the “type of vehicle doesn’t meet our underwriting guidelines.”

Tesla Recalls Cybertrucks Over Scary Accelerator FaultHIT THE BRAKESDan Ladden-Hall

The insurance company, however, later reversed course, insisting it would continue to provide personal auto coverage for owners of the electric truck.

“GEICO has coverage available nationwide for the Tesla Cybertruck,” a spokesperson told the Daily Beaston Monday.

Earlier this month, Tesla recalled more than 27,000 Cybertrucks due to defective software delaying the rear camera feed.

Though there were no injuries reported over the defective software, the debacle marked the Cybertruck’s fifth recall since CEO Elon Musk rolled out the vehicle in Nov. 2023.

Past recalls, which include two on the same day back in June, have been issued due to to defective wipers, loose trim, and jammed accelerator pedals.