onfocus

Even on a long enough timeline, there is no world in which the techno-optimist utopia comes to be in the United States under protectionist, isolationist policies. The Trump administration has also set to work dismantling the academic, scientific, research, and immigration infrastructures that have allowed business and innovation to thrive in the US, and the soft-power structures that have made it easy for tech companies to enter and dominate markets all over the world.

Yes, they are destroying all of things that allowed the techbros to come to power. But maybe this administration is them pulling up the ladder behind them now that they have power? They don't want competition from anything new. (They've read The Innovator's Dilemma.)

Nobody in the world – not one single human being anywhere – knows how to make a mouse. It’s orders of magnitude too complex for a solitary mind. Like a thousand other everyday objects, it is a staggering achievement of modern society, the product of a thousand thousand simple ideas working together.

This post from 2012 illustrates why bunker mentality for a country won't work in the modern world. If we want a modern technological society, we need to be interconnected with people across the globe.

The immediate political challenge for Trump is that, regardless of the prospects of his policies boosting U.S. manufacturing over the long term, in the short term they are likely to inflict pain on two major constituents of the G.O.P. coalition: working-class maga voters and Republicans in business.

Right!? You would think this is the case in a normal world. I guess we’ll see how strong the cult thinking is.

The administration argued that it cannot bring back Abrego Garcia because he’s in Salvadoran custody and knocked down concerns that he’s likely to be tortured or killed at CECOT.

If this isn’t pure evil I don’t know what is. In the future, please vote for people who won’t send people to foreign countries specifically to deny them due process and then refuse to act when they made a mistake. If these people are guilty, bring evidence and let them have their day in court. That’s the American way.

Crawford defeated Brad Schimel, who received financial support from Elon Musk and an endorsement from President Donald Trump. Her victory means that the nonpartisan court's 4-3 liberal majority will remain in place.

Good to know there are some things Musk can't buy.

The Trump administration has laid off the entire staff of a $4.1 billion program that helps millions of low-income households pay for heat during the winter, unnerving state officials who are now wondering whether they will still receive millions of dollars in expected federal payments.

Just your regular reminder that Republicans want suffering and they are making it happen. This money will go to Musk types instead so they can upgrade the pool on their backup yacht.

Waltz, who invited Goldberg into the Signal chat, said yesterday that he was investigating “how the heck he got into this room.”

We’re all looking for the guy who did this.

There's almost no precedent for the heads of Defense, State, Intelligence and National Security to be sharing such sensitive military intelligence in a forum that was known to be unsecured.

Bad boys don't play by the rules. Operational security is for sheeple.

This all goes to the fundamental point Trump has never been able to accept: that the US government is the property of the American people and it persists over time with individual officeholders merely temporary occupants charged with administering an entity they don’t own or possess.

If there's no record, there's no crime.

How much poop is in our water? The Supreme Court says “not enough.”

I really enjoy the 5-4 Podcast about Supreme Court decisions and this latest episode is a great example. Maybe "enjoy" is the wrong word. I guess I appreciate some gallows humor with my legal analysis.

Reference to due process first appeared in a statutory rendition of clause 39 in 1354 thus: "No man of what state or condition he be, shall be put out of his lands or tenements nor taken, nor disinherited, nor put to death, without he be brought to answer by due process of law."

People have been working to curb our worst human impulses for a long time. Let’s learn from history and keep that going instead of continually rediscovering why people have been working on it.

"The American people are saying loud and clear, we will not accept an oligarchic form of society," Sanders said, according to Colorado Public Radio. "We will not accept the richest guy in the world running all over Washington, making cuts to the Social Security Administration, cuts to the Veterans Administration, almost destroying the Department of Education—all so that they could give over a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the wealthiest 1%."

34,000 people for an off-season rally is pretty surprising. Seeing pictures from this event is a relief, highly recommended.