WTF-Beta

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/16/nyregion/sarcone-albany-us-attorney.html

Spurned U.S. Attorney Clings to Job by Being Appointed His Own Assistant
District judges recently denied John Sarcone, who was interim U.S. attorney, the permanent position. The Justice Department then gave him a special appointment so he could continue in the role.

... John A. Sarcone III has been named “special attorney to the attorney general.” The appointment, the letter says, gives him the powers of a U.S. attorney, and is “indefinite.”

The move means that Mr. Sarcone is the acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York, according to a spokesman for the office, as well as its first assistant. It is unclear how Mr. Sarcone could occupy two positions at once.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/13/business/drones-us-military-manufacturing-lags.html

Nothing you don't already know or suspect:

• Present day warfare is tilting more and more towards using cheap, small drones (go for hundreds to tens of thousands a piece)
• China manufactures a ton of them cheap, small drones
• The USA is very good at manufacturing UAVs (go for millions to tens of millions a piece), but not the cheap, small drones.
• The estimated gap is that China's capacity to manufacture cheap, small drones is two orders of magnitude greater than the USA's.
• Even as we try to manufacture the cheap, small drones here, many components still have to be sourced from China.

The research paper:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.28.656706v1.full.pdf

The popular press reporting on it:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jul/08/record-us-bee-colony-dieoffs-climate-stress-pesticides-silent-spring-aoe

It's due a bee virus that's spread through the parasitic Varroa mites. Very infectious as the virus-carrying mites can jump from bee to bee.

Beekeepers have been using a chemical called "amitraz" to control the Varroa mites. But after many years of use, the mites have become resistant to amitraz, hence the widespread dying of bees.

It's not that liberal arts and universities should be reduced to tech schools.
Just that we may have way too much higher-ed capacity for liberal arts degree programs.
These eliminations of liberal art degree programs may actually be "right sizing" rather than "gutting" our liberal arts higher-ed capacity.

@Mik said in Best analysis I have seen on the big bill.:

@wtg I wish all bills would publish something like this. With AI it should be really easy for voters to stay informed.

I would much rather private citizens and journalists do this as private/non-governmental efforts using whatever tools of choice, so the power that writes the legislation don’t also get to pick-and-choose what to highlight or what to obscure in the summaries. Still comes back to freedom of the press, freedom of information, freedom of expression.

We don’t hear it now. The so-called Tea Partiers used to like the idea of “one issue, one bill.”

What new degree programs got added?
B.S./M.S. or B.Eng./M.Eng. in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning?

I would repaint the interior with antique white (or some light version of beige), simple ceiling white for the ceiling.

@Nina said in Impact of immigration policy:

I expect many Trump voters are rapidly entering the FAFO phase

I suspect many voted for Trump to sock it to the immigrants (and pwn the libs); some may qualify that to "illegal/undocumented" immigrants, but many are probably just as happy to get rid of all immigrants. Immigration handling is probably still the aspect of Trump's administration that gets the highest approval ratings.

Hardware upgrades forced by security considerations? Windows machines are not the only platform that has to deal with this. This is an issue with other operating systems too.

Doesn't matter what Linux distribution you use, at some point the organization that maintains that distribution stops issuing security patches for an old version, and corporate security put its foot down and says you have to upgrade.

Yes, ballooning deficit's impacts can be (1) spread across the populace and (2) delayed such that the they are not felt by select demographics until after the mid-term election.

@Mik said in 2026:

Scary Medicaid cuts won’t do it. The party continues down the same path that gave Trump a way back.

Trump can also avoid or delay "scary Medicaid cuts" for select demographics via executive orders or other administrative means. It's too simplistic to think that just because the new legislation says to cut Medicaid, that Medicaid will indeed be uniformly cut as legislated.

My condolences.

HuffPo also rounded up its own list flip-floppers, legislators who complained loudly and publicly about the bill then ended up voting for it anyway:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-tax-bill-flip-flop_n_6866c11ae4b0bde15485959a

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/07/03/trump-tax-bill-china-artificial-intelligence-energy/

China to win the AI arms race ... the argument goes that because the bill cuts clean/renewable energy subsidies, that will lead to the U.S. developing 344 Gigawatts of new electricity generation capacity over the next ten years, handicapping the American AI industry, ceding the win to China that is taking the "all of the above" approach to energy development and adding new electricity generation capacity like crazy.

There were billionaires asked to be taxed more before. I suppose we are seeing the up side now, that there are also Medicaid recipients wanting benefit cuts.

When you've got it, flaunt it!

Happy Independence Day!

It's their wedding. Their party. They paid for it. They get to wear as many diamond rings as they want. I wouldn't want anyone else to tell me how many diamond rings I get to wear to my own wedding.

@Bernard said in It passed in the Senate:

They betray themselves.

On that note:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/03/us/politics/republican-criticism-trump-policy-bill.html?unlocked_article_code=1.T08.PEVI.ql80hNTGogFG

The article rounds up the GOP legislators who publicly savaged the bill then voted for it anyway.