@Bernard What a cool project. Mr wtg and I watch The Repair Shop and love it when they take apart musical instruments, music boxes, and clocks, fix/clean them, and get them up and running again!
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Posts
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The last real place on the internet -
Mass resignations in US Attorney's office in MinnesotaA majority of the leadership team at the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office resigned on Jan. 13 over the direction of the Justice Department under the Trump administration.
The departures of several prosecutors stemmed from directives from top federal officials to staff members after the killing of Renee Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, according to sources familiar with the decision. That included blocking the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) from the investigation into the shooting and a request from the Justice Department to investigate Good’s widow for possible federal charges. A source also said the resignations resulted from a general frustration that a surge of immigration enforcement in Minnesota ordered by the Trump administration has “eclipsed” fraud investigations by the office.
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What could possibly go wrong?Hegseth said Grok will go live inside the Defense Department later this month and announced that he would "make all appropriate data" from the military's IT systems available for "AI exploitation." He also said data from intelligence databases would be fed into AI systems.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-grok-ai-pentagon-growing-backlash/
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Fed Chair Powell’s statement@Mik said in Fed Chair Powell’s statement:
That makes no sense whatsoever. It absolutely had to come from the oval office.
Apparently my joke missed the mark. I was just using the Sgt Schulz gif for the Trump "denials". Comedy has never been my strong suit.
Unless you weren't referring to Stg Schulz (which I assumed you were because it was included in the quoted post), but rather only to Trump's denial.
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Fed Chair Powell’s statementA perturbed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told President Trump late Sunday that the federal investigation into the Federal Reserve chair "made a mess" and could be bad for financial markets, two sources familiar with the call told Axios.
Why it matters: Bessent's worries about the financial fallout were somewhat realized Monday, when the dollar dropped as bond yields and the price of gold rose amid worries about political interference in the Fed.
"The secretary isn't happy, and he let the president know," one source familiar with Bessent's call to Trump told Axios.
Sunday night, Trump appeared to distance himself from the investigation of Fed chair Jerome Powell for allegedly misrepresenting the costs of renovations to the Federal Reserve's headquarters in D.C.
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro's office in D.C. launched the probe without giving a heads-up to Treasury, top White House officials or the main Justice Department, sources told Axios.https://www.axios.com/2026/01/12/bessent-trump-investigation-powell-federal-reserve
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Ein Volk, Ein Reich -
Trying something newMy Ukrainian student's situation continues to be uncertain. She and her family are worried that their temporary protection status could disappear at any time. I asked her if Canada was an option and she said it wasn't because they had closed the program that was accepting Ukrainian refugees.
Saw this article today. I can see why Canada isn't an option:
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Recipes 2026I bought a bag of King Arthur Measure-for-Measure flour at Costco a while back. It's been languishing on our basement pantry shelf and I decided I needed to try it out. I had some ripe bananas, so I went for this recipe for gluten free whole grain banana muffins.
https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/gluten-free-whole-grain-banana-muffins-recipe
They are delicious! Can't tell them apart from their wheat flour cousins.
Just ignore the xantham and cellulose gum....
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IgniteTech CEO on AII didn't take it as a criticism.
I agree the headline is click bait-ish, but for me that's pretty much a given these days and I just plow through and read the article to get the real meaning and to see if there is anything of (factual) value.
I've given up the fight for well-written journalism.
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IgniteTech CEO on AII didn't find it misleading. He did fire 80 percent of his staff - that's the headline. In the body of the article they say that he replaced those folks, and then added some.
I could see if you thought the article was about one of those companies who fired people and replaced them with AI, that it could be confusing.
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Fed Chair Powell’s statementWhite House says Trump did not instruct DoJ to investigate Powell
Speaking to reporters outside the White House today, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the Donald Trump did not instruct the justice department to investigate Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell.“The president has every right to criticize the Fed chair. He has a first amendment right, just like all of you do,” Leavitt said. “And one thing’s for sure, the president has made it quite clear, Jerome Powell is bad at his job. As for whether or not Jerome Powell if a criminal, that’s an answer for the Department of Justice.”
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A chance to make tech good again?Trump may be the beginning of the end for ‘enshittification’ – this is our chance to make tech good again
The US president is weaponising tech, but his tariffs and Brexit provide a surprising opportunity to gain back digital control of our lives
It’s been 25 years since I started working for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an American nonprofit dedicated to preserving and promoting human rights on the internet. I’ve found myself in dozens of countries working with activists, politicians and civil servants to untangle the complex technical questions raised by the internet, and every one of our discussions ended in the same place. “OK,” they’d say, “you’ve definitely laid out the best way to regulate tech, but we can’t do it.”
Why not? Because – inevitably – the US trade rep had beaten me to every one of those countries and made it eye-wateringly clear that if they regulated tech in a way that favoured their own people, industries and national interests, the US would bury them in tariffs.
But deterrents are a funny thing. If someone demands that you follow their orders or they’ll burn your house down, so you do, and they burn your house down anyway … well, you’re a bit of a fool if you keep on doing what they tell you, aren’t you?
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IgniteTech CEO on AIThis CEO laid off nearly 80% of his staff because they refused to adopt AI fast enough. 2 years later, he says he’d do it again
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ceo-laid-off-nearly-80-185033733.html
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I bought myself a Christmas present@Steve-Miller said in I bought myself a Christmas present:
A box of Jiffy cornbread mix costs very little and is very easy to mix up. Turns out decent as well.
I second this recommendation!
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Fed Chair Powell’s statementThe Pauline conversions are taking way longer than I'd like, but I welcome these defectors with open arms. We need them.
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Fed Chair Powell’s statementJerome calls it like it is.
Video and transcript:
https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/powell20260111a.htm
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Vote by mail, stayin' aliveThe Trump administration cannot dictate how Washington and Oregon conduct their elections, a federal judge in Seattle has ruled.
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Next up, Cuba?Presidente Little Marco…
While the Trump administration has not stated clear plans for Cuba, the US president has previously said that a military intervention was unnecessary because the country was "ready to fall".
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicated last week that Cuba's leaders should be worried, saying that he would be "concerned" if he were in the Cuban government and that "they're in a lot of trouble".
On Sunday, Trump also re-posted on social media a message suggesting that Rubio - a Cuban-American former Florida senator and the son of Cuban exiles - could become president of Cuba.
Trump shared that post with the comment: "Sounds good to me!" -
So who want the O-1 visas now? -
America and the world orderFareed Zakaria's op ed this week strikes a similar note.
WaPo gift link.
Archived version, no login to WaPo:
