Like when the OMB memo came out and said "do not freeze or pause aid given to individual persons" and organizations replied "welllll, teeeechnically, that aid comes to our organization and then it goes to persons, so, I guess we'll just have to freeze and pause all that money, just like you said we should do, definitely what you said, just tryna comply here sor, goin agin'st orders mornmajobsworf sor"
Hey cool, we'll get eighteen months of everyone pretending that human spaceflight is gonna move to Starship, we'll spend a pile of money on engineering studies, and then it'll go back to SLS which was designed for in the first place.
"[T]he government asserted that the Air Force should not have Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Training anymore."
I'm old enough to remember people like, um, you, telling me that "look what you made me do, look at this awful thing that you made me do" wasn't a defense against intentionally doing something mean and stupid.
I mean, you're right that the directive did not specifically address how the Air Force was to honor the legacy of elite units like the 332nd Fighter Group, but it's also likely that the people writing the directive assumed that the Air Force would interpret it reasonably and say "we should create a separate method to remember these men" and not "WELP, GUESS WE GOTTA DELETE ANY MENTION OF BLACK PEOPLE WHATSOEVER, JUST FOLLOWIN' ORDERS HERE, HAIL TRUMP".
I'm not sure it's meaningful to compare sales numbers from opposite sides of 2010. Foxworthy's album came out in a time when you couldn't just go watch his entire routine for free on YouTube; if you wanted to hear it you had to buy it. These days I can listen to everything Kendric Lamar ever did, for free, as many times as I want, and without even as many ads as I'd get listening to the radio.
The issue is that a "neoliberal economics" argument assumes that all the labor involved is trading on the same terms, and (as Freddie points out) this is not the case for nondocumented immigration into the USA.
" at the same time, it’s going too far to remove references to the Tuskegee Airmen from Air Force Basic Training "
(nobody told them to do that, they just decided to do it on their own)
(and as soon as Hesgeth found out it had happened he ordered them to put it back)
I think that there was a general impression among defenses that going hard for Mahomes would draw a penalty, and for whatever reason the Eagles decided they weren't worried about that (and the refs decided not to call it).
I did note that most of the sacks were in a scrum, not the usual "Mahomes is running all over the place with four guys trying to stomp him". It's a lot less likely to get an unnecessary-roughness call in a situation like that.
He's got the same idea that I do -- which is that they should just be handing out Green Cards at the Tijuana border stop, meaning that all those people coming in to work can file wage-theft lawsuits, file OSHA complaints, sign up for welfare, call the cops when needed...a few years of that and suddenly we'll find that Americans aren't such bad hires after all. (Or, more likely, there'll be fewer jobs overall but a lot fancier machines to do the work.)
Paradoxically, what helped the Eagles offense was that they weren't doing fantastic at first; they were only playing well. The worst situation for the Eagles is when they get a big lead early, because then they figure it's all done and start fooling around, and when the other team catches up they're worn out and can't crank it back up.
The other part was that KC's defense focused on Barkley (and very effectively!) to the detriment of pass coverage, which the Eagles figured out.
Someone on Twitter pointed out that there's an entire Normie TV Universe that online people have absolutely no awareness of. As they said, "I love that the finale of succession, one of the few big tv events of the decade that felt inescapable online, could not even reach half of the average viewers of The Rookie, a nathan fillion cop show no one has heard of that has six full seasons"
I'm looking forward to a sequel to the Meta commercial featuring Chris Evans, Christopher Lloyd, and Christina Ricci. (Not because I plan to buy the things, I just hope they keep rolling the joke.)
Our watching-party had the attitude that it was a well-executed show that was very much not for us. (Based on a read of social media the people who it was for all seemed to dig it.)
I'd say I was happy that they managed to do a whole performance without saying the F-word on TV one single time but between my old ears and my unfamiliarity with the lyrics I mostly didn't know what he was saying. Other than "it was the right time and you picked the wrong guy", which we thought was a pretty good attitude to open the show.
If this is anything like other Illegal Actions By The Government it'll turn out to be "the law required that the disbursing organization file a form KX-3902B and have it fully approved before any funds were disbursed, and we've found a form was only provisionally approved at the time of review, which is clearly a violation of the law!"
The thing people seem to miss is that the government already runs like a business, if you look at union businesses where work gets paid by the hour and anything past eight hours is overtime.
What happens in most salary-only private-sector shops is that you work until the job is done, and you get paid Your Salary for that, regardless of how long it actually takes. And the management can tell themselves that Obviously Private Industry Is Better because half of the actual labor the work requires doesn't show up on anybody's balance sheet.
"following on from my previous example, there’s no law that says NGOforAfrica or the LGBTQ community in Sri Lanka gets X dollars toward the prevention of malaria."
The Foreign Assistance Act does in fact mention USAID directly, so refusing to provide it with the money allocated to it is in fact in contravention of the law.
What's going to happen with DOGE is what happened with Bush's Drug Czar, which is that the guy's going to come in hot and ready to solve the problem with a quick stroke of the pen, realize that the "problem" is nine-tenths created by the people the programs are meant to serve, pivot to making a huge splash about something that's a side issue (assault rifles / "woke" language) along with a few layups that get spun into Major Cases, and then finish the administration's term claiming the whole thing was a win.
On “The USAID Fight Is About Power, Not Spending”
Like when the OMB memo came out and said "do not freeze or pause aid given to individual persons" and organizations replied "welllll, teeeechnically, that aid comes to our organization and then it goes to persons, so, I guess we'll just have to freeze and pause all that money, just like you said we should do, definitely what you said, just tryna comply here sor, goin agin'st orders mornmajobsworf sor"
On “Off With Their (Over)heads: Trump Administration at War with Public Health”
Hey cool, we'll get eighteen months of everyone pretending that human spaceflight is gonna move to Starship, we'll spend a pile of money on engineering studies, and then it'll go back to SLS which was designed for in the first place.
On “The USAID Fight Is About Power, Not Spending”
"we're gonna fuck up on purpose and blame it on you"
stunning and brave, a strong statement of confidence in the moral validity of your position
"
"[T]he government asserted that the Air Force should not have Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Training anymore."
I'm old enough to remember people like, um, you, telling me that "look what you made me do, look at this awful thing that you made me do" wasn't a defense against intentionally doing something mean and stupid.
I mean, you're right that the directive did not specifically address how the Air Force was to honor the legacy of elite units like the 332nd Fighter Group, but it's also likely that the people writing the directive assumed that the Air Force would interpret it reasonably and say "we should create a separate method to remember these men" and not "WELP, GUESS WE GOTTA DELETE ANY MENTION OF BLACK PEOPLE WHATSOEVER, JUST FOLLOWIN' ORDERS HERE, HAIL TRUMP".
On “Kansas City wants to Score the first Threepeat against the Philadelphia Eagles in New Orleans”
I'm not sure it's meaningful to compare sales numbers from opposite sides of 2010. Foxworthy's album came out in a time when you couldn't just go watch his entire routine for free on YouTube; if you wanted to hear it you had to buy it. These days I can listen to everything Kendric Lamar ever did, for free, as many times as I want, and without even as many ads as I'd get listening to the radio.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/10/2025”
The issue is that a "neoliberal economics" argument assumes that all the labor involved is trading on the same terms, and (as Freddie points out) this is not the case for nondocumented immigration into the USA.
On “The USAID Fight Is About Power, Not Spending”
" at the same time, it’s going too far to remove references to the Tuskegee Airmen from Air Force Basic Training "
(nobody told them to do that, they just decided to do it on their own)
(and as soon as Hesgeth found out it had happened he ordered them to put it back)
On “Kansas City wants to Score the first Threepeat against the Philadelphia Eagles in New Orleans”
I think that there was a general impression among defenses that going hard for Mahomes would draw a penalty, and for whatever reason the Eagles decided they weren't worried about that (and the refs decided not to call it).
I did note that most of the sacks were in a scrum, not the usual "Mahomes is running all over the place with four guys trying to stomp him". It's a lot less likely to get an unnecessary-roughness call in a situation like that.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/10/2025”
He's got the same idea that I do -- which is that they should just be handing out Green Cards at the Tijuana border stop, meaning that all those people coming in to work can file wage-theft lawsuits, file OSHA complaints, sign up for welfare, call the cops when needed...a few years of that and suddenly we'll find that Americans aren't such bad hires after all. (Or, more likely, there'll be fewer jobs overall but a lot fancier machines to do the work.)
On “Kansas City wants to Score the first Threepeat against the Philadelphia Eagles in New Orleans”
Paradoxically, what helped the Eagles offense was that they weren't doing fantastic at first; they were only playing well. The worst situation for the Eagles is when they get a big lead early, because then they figure it's all done and start fooling around, and when the other team catches up they're worn out and can't crank it back up.
The other part was that KC's defense focused on Barkley (and very effectively!) to the detriment of pass coverage, which the Eagles figured out.
"
Someone on Twitter pointed out that there's an entire Normie TV Universe that online people have absolutely no awareness of. As they said, "I love that the finale of succession, one of the few big tv events of the decade that felt inescapable online, could not even reach half of the average viewers of The Rookie, a nathan fillion cop show no one has heard of that has six full seasons"
On “Saturday Morning Gaming: Thunder Road Vendetta!”
You could probably find a computerised version of it on BoardGameArena.
On “Kansas City wants to Score the first Threepeat against the Philadelphia Eagles in New Orleans”
I mean, it did certainly show that the Eagles defense had been doing something, because when they let up KC scored just fine.
On “Keynesian Beauty Contests, Schelling Points, and the Omnicause”
"_One lawsuit_?
Please, give me smelling salts. I don’t think I can handle the trauma that one lawsuit will bring."
The tip of a spear is pretty small but there's plenty of shaft behind it.
On “Kansas City wants to Score the first Threepeat against the Philadelphia Eagles in New Orleans”
I'm looking forward to a sequel to the Meta commercial featuring Chris Evans, Christopher Lloyd, and Christina Ricci. (Not because I plan to buy the things, I just hope they keep rolling the joke.)
"
That and "Groove Is In The Heart" by Deee-Lite.
"
Our watching-party had the attitude that it was a well-executed show that was very much not for us. (Based on a read of social media the people who it was for all seemed to dig it.)
I'd say I was happy that they managed to do a whole performance without saying the F-word on TV one single time but between my old ears and my unfamiliarity with the lyrics I mostly didn't know what he was saying. Other than "it was the right time and you picked the wrong guy", which we thought was a pretty good attitude to open the show.
"
It probably ticked off the people in KC who wondered where those guys had been all game who could easily complete a 40-yard bomb into double coverage.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/10/2025”
If this is anything like other Illegal Actions By The Government it'll turn out to be "the law required that the disbursing organization file a form KX-3902B and have it fully approved before any funds were disbursed, and we've found a form was only provisionally approved at the time of review, which is clearly a violation of the law!"
On “Kansas City wants to Score the first Threepeat against the Philadelphia Eagles in New Orleans”
That's gotta be up there in the list of Awful Announcing.
As someone on Twitter put it, "Time to see what Mahomes has got left--" (car-crash noises)
On “Keynesian Beauty Contests, Schelling Points, and the Omnicause”
The thing people seem to miss is that the government already runs like a business, if you look at union businesses where work gets paid by the hour and anything past eight hours is overtime.
What happens in most salary-only private-sector shops is that you work until the job is done, and you get paid Your Salary for that, regardless of how long it actually takes. And the management can tell themselves that Obviously Private Industry Is Better because half of the actual labor the work requires doesn't show up on anybody's balance sheet.
"
"following on from my previous example, there’s no law that says NGOforAfrica or the LGBTQ community in Sri Lanka gets X dollars toward the prevention of malaria."
The Foreign Assistance Act does in fact mention USAID directly, so refusing to provide it with the money allocated to it is in fact in contravention of the law.
"
What's going to happen with DOGE is what happened with Bush's Drug Czar, which is that the guy's going to come in hot and ready to solve the problem with a quick stroke of the pen, realize that the "problem" is nine-tenths created by the people the programs are meant to serve, pivot to making a huge splash about something that's a side issue (assault rifles / "woke" language) along with a few layups that get spun into Major Cases, and then finish the administration's term claiming the whole thing was a win.
On “Spaghetti on the Wall: Tariffs and Free Trade”
"When we talk about free trade, we’re typically talking about trade unfettered by tariff."
Why wouldn't government subsidies for production count as interference with free trade?
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/3/2025”
At least we won't have to pretend like Iran isn't inciting things (the way we did during the Iraq occupation.)
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.