Jump to content

bolverk

Certifiably Surly
  • Posts

    15024
  • Joined

  • Days Won

    8

Everything posted by bolverk

  1. Maybe they went to the same place all those billions of missing Bering Sea snow crabs went.
  2. Try again, and you might end up straining your collaborator muscle. Media reports tied Marko Elez, 25, who previously worked for Musk's SpaceX company, to a now-deleted social media account that posted the incendiary comments. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c93q625y04wo Among the posts at issue from the X account tied to Elez is one from last June that reads, “Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool,” according to the Journal, which reviewed archived posts. "You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity," the account wrote in a September post. And in another post the same month, according to the Journal, the account wrote, “Normalize Indian hate,” in reference to another post on the large population of people from India in Silicon Valley. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/02/07/jd-vance-doge-marko-elez-resignation-racist/78333485007/ No opinion on the other one, the data thief?
  3. Someone posted his essay on the topic a few days ago. It could've been missed, or some people aren't readers.
  4. Here's one of the other little shits with his finger in the pie. Fired after caught leaking company secrets...that's definitely not the face of a psychopath. https://archive.is/bP4bU (Let me know if link doesn't work, and I'll post full plain text.) Original Bloomberg link
  5. Some perspective to get a baseline handle on things. How Many Federal Worker Resignations Would Be a Lot? Sixty-five thousand have submitted resignations as part of Elon Musk’s “fork in the road” offer. But 150,000 voluntarily leave every year anyway. When the federal Office of Personnel Management first proposed a “deferred resignation” package to induce federal workers to quit last week, Elon Musk circulated an estimate that the offer could lure 5 to 10 percent of the government’s work force to leave. That estimate so far looks like an overshoot. By midday Friday, with the original Thursday deadline to accept the offer now paused by a federal judge, more than 65,000 workers had planned to resign, said McLaurine Pinover, a spokesperson for O.P.M. That number — which could still rise further amid legal uncertainty — represents less than 3 percent of all 2.3 million federal workers, excluding the military and Postal Service. For perspective, about 150,000 federal workers, or 7 percent, voluntarily leave the government every year. The scale of resignations submitted as of Friday — offered in exchange for seven months of pay and benefits — would be the equivalent of five months’ worth of departures, many of which might have happened this year anyway. In other words, the federal government is an enormous work force that already experiences sizable turnover every year. In addition to workers who leave the government to retire or simply to quit, about another 50,000 to 60,000 are terminated every year for disciplinary or performance reasons, or because their appointments or funds expired. A small number — around 3,400 — die each year while employed by the government. All these departures are typically replaced by about 240,000 hires each year. President Trump and Mr. Musk are also aiming to reduce the work force by squeezing this second group — new employees — through a hiring freeze for large portions of federal workers. In terms of reducing total head count, the hiring freeze could matter more than encouraging resignations. Now the resignations that have been submitted may not even go through. On Thursday afternoon, a federal judge in Massachusetts froze the plan in response to a lawsuit by several employee unions who challenged the government’s legal authority to make such an offer. A hearing is scheduled for Monday. With the resignation plan and its legal status now uncertain, the federal government was moving swiftly this week to prepare for additional cuts, sending staff reduction targets to health and science agencies and more. Recently hired federal employees also typically work on a probationary basis for the first year (or longer at some agencies) and are easier to fire during that time. The Trump administration appears to be preparing to reduce the work force by targeting these workers. Several agencies have already been asked to share lists of such vulnerable employees. But even with involuntary layoffs, achieving Mr. Musk’s goal of major budgetary savings through staff reductions cannot easily be achieved without reductions in workers who provide popular public services. Average pay for federal workers is about $106,000, meaning the annual savings from salary alone, just to use 65,000 workers as a benchmark, could amount to around $6.9 billion per year (Mr. Musk has said the broader goal of his Department of Government Efficiency is to cut government spending by $4 billion a day). The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the government spent roughly $271 billion compensating federal civilian employees in 2022, with more than half of that going to the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Homeland Security. Among agencies where cuts may prove politically perilous, Veterans Affairs is the largest employer in the government. The V.A. runs a network of hospitals and health clinics around the country for military veterans. The department has already exempted hundreds of thousands of these health care workers from the government-wide hiring freeze announced by President Trump on his first day in office. Mr. Trump has also exempted several other categories of workers shown above, including in the Department of Homeland Security, which carries out immigration enforcement, and in the Department of Defense. The I.R.S. this week also told some employees trying to resign now that they could not take leave under the deferred resignation until after May 15, an apparent acknowledgment that mass departures now could disrupt tax filing season for millions of Americans.
  6. I might be misremembering, but I think her speaking engagement was spoken of as a "talk with friends of Lumen" something or other. So, it might not have been a public event. Edit: It may have been her "coming out" as a future leader of the company when, before that, she wasn't a known public figure.
  7. "I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you. So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, "no. get out." And the dude next to me says, "hey i'm not doing anything, i'm a paying customer." and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, "out. now." and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, "you didn't see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them." And i was like, oh ok and he continues. "you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it's always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don't want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too. And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it's too late because they're entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down. And i was like, 'oh damn.' and he said "yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people." And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven't forgotten that at all." https://bsky.app/profile/iamragesparkle.bsky.social/post/3lbidcyttps2b
  8. Talk about a blast from the past. I'd completely forgotten that PSA.
  9. It's no wonder that a guy like GRU, who apparently highly admires Herr Musk, would also get his news from a German disinformation outlet that's quite tolerant of neo-Nazis, Holocaust denial, and anti-semitism.
  10. That sounds very much like something I had in early December, which was the first time I'd gotten sick in a couple of years. So far as I know, I never ran a fever and never really felt very bad elsewhere (just not 100%), but I don't think the glands underneath my jawline had ever swollen that large, my throat had ever been that soar (this part was really brief), or my voice more hoarse. It wasn't that terrible the whole time, but I think it lasted about a week and a half, all told. I don't know what it was, but it eventually went away.
  11. As far as I've heard, the measles outbreak is in Gaines County (Seminole area), not Lubbock, which is the nearest "big city". One thing to know about this county is that during the 1990s and 2000s, a huge number of Mennonites relocated to the county from Chihuahua, MX, with many of them regularly traveling back and forth between their local community and the one in Mexico. Many of their kids don't go to public schools and, like the adults, go unvaccinated. For example, the Covid vaccination rate for the county's total population was 22%, one of the lowest rates for a county in the entire US. Lubbock County was 49%, which is still far lower than Travis at 71% (Bexar 72%, Harris 65%, Dallas 61%, Tarrant 57%). News on the outbreak in Gaines Co.: https://www.kcbd.com/2025/02/06/lubbock-public-health-confirms-measles-outbreak-gaines-county-increased-risk-unvaccinated-individuals/
  12. If you have anyone in your life that you think might be persuaded as to what's going on and they're just not quite there yet in recognizing what the threat is, this puts it all together. Share this with them.
  13. Wordle 1,329 2/6 🟩⬛🟩🟩⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Connections Puzzle #607 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟪🟪🟪🟪 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🙂 Daily Quordle 1110 4️⃣8️⃣ 5️⃣9️⃣ m-w.com/games/quordle/ ⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜ 🟨⬜🟩⬜⬜ ⬜🟨⬜⬜🟨 ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩 ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜🟨⬜🟨⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩 ⬜⬜🟩🟩⬜ 🟩⬜🟨⬜🟨 ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜ ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩⬜🟩🟩 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩⬜🟩🟩 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
  14. "I knew there was no ceiling but holy fucking shit!"
  15. Logo on the cap checks out. Comments convey frustration at US SENATORS following the orders of a rent-a-cop. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_Canopy
  16. Global Temperatures Shattered Records in January Earth’s prolonged streak of abnormal heat continued into 2025 despite the arrival of La Niña ocean conditions, which typically bring cooler temperatures. Even as much of the United States shivered under frigid conditions last month, the planet as a whole had its warmest January on record, scientists said on Thursday. The warmth came as something of a surprise to climate researchers. It occurred during La Niña conditions in the Pacific Ocean, which tend to lower the globe’s average temperature, at least temporarily. Earth’s surface has now been so warm for so much of the past two years that scientists are examining whether something else in the planet’s chemistry might have changed, something that is boosting temperatures beyond what carbon emissions alone can explain. Those emissions, the byproduct of burning coal, gas and oil, remain the main driver of global warming, which reached record levels in both 2023 and 2024. It’s because of La Niña that scientists expected this year to be slightly cooler than the past two years, both of which experienced the opposite pattern, El Niño. The waters of the eastern tropical Pacific oscillate between El Niño and La Niña conditions, influencing weather worldwide by changing the balance between heat in the ocean and heat in the air. But a host of other factors figure into global temperatures as well. At the moment, chances aren’t high that 2025 will end up being the hottest year on the books, Russell Vose, a climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told reporters recently. But this time last year, researchers were saying much the same thing about 2024, Dr. Vose said. They were wrong. “So it’s a tough game, forecasting global temperature,” Dr. Vose said. According to Copernicus, the European Union climate monitoring agency, last month was much balmier than usual in northern Canada, Alaska and Siberia, as well as parts of Australia and Antarctica. Abnormally high temperatures above the Hudson Bay and the Labrador Sea helped shrink Arctic sea ice to a record low for January, Copernicus said. As scientists try to explain the unending streak of worldwide warmth, one thing they’ve focused on is reductions in air pollution. In a report this week, James Hansen, the famed former NASA scientist, argued that cutting pollution had already played a big role in causing global warming to accelerate. The reason is a little counterintuitive: For decades, humans have not only been emitting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases when they burn fossil fuels. They’ve also been spewing tiny sulfate particles into the air. These particles spur the formation of more and brighter clouds, which help shield Earth from the sun. But as regulators have curbed sulfate pollution to protect people’s lungs, this cooling effect has diminished, exposing the planet to more of the full force of greenhouse warming. Three decades ago, Dr. Hansen was among the first scientists to draw broad attention to climate change. Speaking to reporters this week, he argued that the United Nations was ill-prepared to address accelerated warming. The U.N.’s approach to meeting its climate goals still counts on societies to slash their carbon emissions in the coming decades, he said. Those goals now look “impossible” to achieve, Dr. Hansen said, “unless some miracle occurs that we don’t understand.”
  17. Trump administration to keep only 294 USAID staff out of over 10,000 globally, sources say
  18. Trump administration disbands task force targeting Russian oligarchs
  19. @Elvis And this:
  20. @Elvis And, of course, there's also this.
  21. I suspect he's not talking about simple partisan policy differences and debating those out, but instead, it's likely more about how Elon's site boosts Nazis and racist content. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-antisemitic-comments-x-post-actual-truth/ https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/x-twitter-elon-musk-nazi-extremist-white-nationalist-accounts-rcna145020 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/elon-musk-german-afd-alice-weidel-anti-immigrant-party-live-event-x-rcna186950
  22. Against Civil Rights, for eugenics, against miscegenation. STOP CALLING THEM RACIST NAZIS!!!
  23. 18-year-old Venezuelan kid, entered legally with asylum through the CBP app. Arrested at home in Cedar Park and is currently in detention in Taylor, awaiting deportation. https://www.kut.org/2025-02-06/ice-has-detained-a-cedar-park-teen-with-no-criminal-record-its-happening-to-migrants-nationwide
  24. Reagan did grant amnesty to almost 3 million illegal immigrants.
×
×
  • Create New...