Posts tagged “government”

• Take a minute today to read this tribute to Dan Jezek and the story of his website, bricklink, the world’s largest online LEGO marketplace.
• A Guide to Using Signal for Government Workers – via kottke, who is doing a great job reporting on the ongoing coup
• In less than eight years the NCAA went from banning North Carolina from hosting championships due to its bathroom bill to [kowtowing to a cartoonishly evil conman]. – via @bubbaprog.lol
• The universe could undergo a ‘catastrophic change’ that could alter absolutely everything, quantum machine shows.
• Hopefully reading this will help convince you to dump Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Twitter. The Technological Poison Pill: How the ATProtocol Baked into Bluesky Encourages Competition, Resists Evil Billionaires, Lock-In & Enshittification – via Jodi Ettenberg
• The President’s plan to dismantle the Department of Education could prove more costly for red states than blue.
• Incompetence and desperation are a bad combination. The important thing to remember is that [the “DOGE” attempt to get employees to resign] isn’t about economic efficiency, despite what the billionaire at the helm may say. It’s about efficiently breaking morale within the federal government to make it easier to dismantle from the inside.
• Related: “DOGE” staffer steps down after racist posts emerge
• “NOAA workers ordered to stop all communications with foreign nationals. Workers covering things like air transportation safety, drought, monitor coral reef destruction, and guarding railway shipping carriers against dangerous weather affected.” – via @timmarchman.bsky.social
• “Twenty years ago, when Jeremiah Trotter, Sr won an NFC championship with the Eagles, baby Trotter Jr. was on the field, in his father’s arms. Now he’s playing for the Eagles in this year’s Super Bowl.” – via @npr.org

• Reps. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) and Gwen Moore (D-Wisc.) barged into the office of House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday and challenged him about the “DOGE” team gaining access to a sensitive payment system at the Department of the Treasury.
• Workers at NASA were told to ‘Drop Everything’ to scrub any mentions of indigenous people and women from its websites.
• Federal Judge Blocks Executive Order Intended to End Birthright Citizenship
• “It’s sad that Wile E. Coyote will always be remembered for his failures and not his amazingly realistic tunnel paintings.” – via @sean_with_an_ean_damnit
• This is the sort of thing that makes my blood boil. Federal law mandates wholesome lunches, but much of it gets trashed because there isn’t time to eat it. – via Jodi Ettenberg
• The “DOGE” Government Data Heist Is the Entire Ballgame is a chilling plea written by a federal employee.
• The US Treasury Claimed “DOGE” Technologist Didn’t Have ‘Write Access’ When He Actually Did: Sources tell WIRED that the ability of Marko Elez to alter code controlling trillions in federal spending was rescinded days after US Treasury and White House officials said it didn’t exist.
• All of this, of course, depends on a functioning justice system. (Things Are Going to Keep Getting Worse Until They Get Better, Part 339.)
• CDC Posts, Then Deletes, Data on Bird Flu Spread Between Cats and People
• Conservative “Christian nationalist” Russell Vought, former vice president of Heritage Action for America and one of the architects behind Project 2025, believes there is nothing left to conserve. He desires revolution — and to burn down the system. And the Senate just confirmed him to be the head of OMB. (I would link you directly to the official White House website for OMB, but… it’s been deleted.)
• This tutorial on installing a newsletter replacement for Jetpack looks promising.
• “Just gonna slide this information in here. The Eagles refused to go to the White House after their Super Bowl victory in 2018. Do with that what you will.” – via @brandi-rene.swifties.social
• Oh, and Taylor Swift is expected to attend the Super Bowl on Sunday night. Obviously, she won’t be sitting in the same suite as POTUS.

• Tarnschriften (“hidden writings”) were pocket-sized anti-fascist essays, news updates, and how-tos – hidden inside the covers of mundane, everyday materials – which were circulated in Germany after Hitler’s rise to power.
• California has become a vivid example of a global phenomenon known as “hydroclimate whiplash,” which involves sudden and dramatic swings between extreme wet and dry conditions. – via Jodi Ettenberg
• Health and climate information is already disappearing from federal websites.
• The estate of Superman creator Joseph Schuster is suing Warner Bros. Discovery and DC Comics, claiming they lack the rights to release the upcoming summer movie in a handful of key territories.
• “We’ve seen this happen with brittle governments all over the world for the past century – it’s not a novel situation – and Republicans have decided that now is the moment to strike our teetering democracy. (More)
• Four Easy Ways to Make Sure No One Can Read Your Text Messages, just in case you are (justifiably) a little paranoid that you might get in trouble someday for talking about those two chuckleheads
• Related: This Military Packing Technique Can Save Space in Your Bug-Out Bag (You do have a bug-out bag, right?)
• 13 Xcode Shortcuts to Boost Your Productivity
• Saquon Barkley is a superhero for the Eagles. His origin story is straight out of a comic book, too.

• I loved reading this story about an 11-yo who pulled one of the most valuable baseball cards in history. The best quote from the article? “My brain pooped.”
• Hackers are hijacking WordPress sites to push malware on unsuspecting visitors. This is another good reason to make sure your plugins are core files are routinely updated.
• This short article about the psychology of scene transitions in film is really interesting. (Watch the video, too!)
• One of the more concerning consequences of the current administration is that when the most powerful nation in history is ruled by feckless ignorant toads, those who lust for power elsewhere are emboldened:
  • Paramilitary group attacks an open market in Sudan, killing 54 people and wounding scores
  • Congo says 773 dead in week-long fighting as military tries to repel Rwanda-backed rebels
• Last night I realized I can watch Dinosaurs: The Final Day with David Attenborough on BBC through AppleTV. I had to pay for it, but I think that’s pretty reasonable. I was pleasantly surprised to see Steve Brusatte make an appearance. I read his book, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World a year or two ago and loved it. It’s really mind-blowing how much more we know about dinosaurs than we did when I was fascinated with them in elementary school. Scientists might even have finally discovered where dinosaurs first evolved! (The documentary is titled Dinosaur Apocalypse on AppleTV for some reason. I guess that sounds much more dramatic.)
• More Bird Flu Bad News: Infectious disease expert warns wind-blown avian feces may be route of transmission.
• Google searches for “adult tennis lessons” were up 245 percent shortly after the premiere of the Zendaya love-triangle sports-flick Challengers. – via The Athletic
• After reading a few of her Bluesky posts, I decided to subscribe to the tech newsletter rendezvous with cassidoo.
• Just in case you were under the misguided impression that the current administration cares about, y’know, people:
  • The head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been fired.
  • On Monday the Senate confirmed fossil fuel executive Chris Wright to serve as Secretary of Energy.
• A Coup in Plain Sight: An Explainer as the Crisis Solidifies

• Italy has embraced a novel approach to integrate olive oil into its tourism industry through oleotourism, an initiative that invites visitors to engage with the olive oil production process, offering experiences that range from guided tours of olive groves and mills to tasting sessions and educational workshops.
• “In the final analysis, the progress of our civilization will be retarded if any large body of citizens falls behind. Without the help of thousands of others, any one of us would die, naked and starved.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
• Scottie Scheffler, 2024 PGA Tour Player of the Year, missed the first two tournaments of the season because he needed surgery to repair his hand after slicing it while attempting to make homemade ravioli on Christmas Day.
• A growing number of US government websites have gone offline as of Saturday, including several related to USAID and others focused on youth programs, Africa, and more.
• A newly discovered asteroid has a tiny chance of smacking Earth in 2032. It’s very unlikely, thankfully, but what should be truly concerning is that nobody was even aware of it until two days after it made its last closest pass to us.
• A dire prediction: “[W]hen NIH and other health agencies emerge from the current freeze they will have been emasculated and politicized, prohibited from releasing information and research whose implications the Trump administration doesn’t like, banned from making policy recommendations that are inconvenient for Trump or at odds with the prejudices of the MAGA base.” – via Jodi Ettenberg
• When I was a kid, most of my possessions were very inexpensive, but tremendously meaningful. A baseball hat or an action figure or a comic book only cost a few dollars, but meant the world to me. My kids have tremendously expensive possessions that are very meaningless. An iPhone or iPad or AirPods cost hundreds or thousands of dollars but have essentially zero sentimental value. I’m sure this says something important about capitalism, but I don’t have time to think about it at the moment.
• Chris Coyier wrote a little about the pros and cons of maintaining your own website that’s worth a read. (And he mentions POSSE, which is something I love.)
• Here’s a cool statistical analysis done to determine whether NFL referees unfairly favor the Kansas City Chiefs. (Spoiler: Yup.)

• You can now play the classic 1982 Atari 2600 game Pitfall! in your browser.
• I’ve been using FontAwesome in web projects since late 2012 and they are still the best.
• Scaling Our Rate Limits to Prepare for a Billion Active Certificates – Let’s Encrypt protects a vast portion of the Web by providing TLS certificates to over 550 million websites. They currently issue over 340,000 certificates per hour.
• The parents of a 22-yo Wisconsin man who died after an asthma attack have filed a lawsuit against Walgreens and UnitedHealth Group after they said the price for his medication suddenly rose from $66 to $539.
• Just dropping this here for no particular reason: Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook, Revised Edition
• Aides to [the man] charged with running the U.S. government human resources agency have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees.
• “The impotence [of the left] is as staggering as the abdication is sickening. But the current message from elected Democrats is loud and clear: You’re on your own. And the message from the … administration is even clearer: You’re next.” – via Marisa Kabas
• Apparently federal employees are using Milton’s red stapler from Office Space as a symbol of resistance, which is awesome on so many levels.
• An outbreak of tuberculosis in the Kansas City area has grown into one of the largest ever recorded in the United States, with dozens of active cases of the infectious disease reported, according to health officials. (Be alarmed.)
• Newly-appointed U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy signed a memorandum which directs the NHTSA to immediately initiate, “a rulemaking to rescind or replace all existing CAFE standards.” I just can’t get over the fact that this guy got his start on MTV’s Real World: Boston.

Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearing is doing a great job exposing the blatant, virulent racism and sexism (and, in Ted Cruz’ case, stupidity) of today’s GOP and I hope voters remember at the ballot box.