ShittyBeatlesFCPres

https://www.doi.gov/ethics/special-government-employees

That’s a Department of Interior site but it’s true for every agency.

He’s not allowed to, legally. Special government employees are allowed to work 130 days a year. If he becomes a permanent employee, he has to disclose financial data and get drug tested and stuff. Trump may not care about that law either but it’s an easy out for both of them.

I would like my retirement savings to be in an S&P 499 where Tesla is excluded. I don’t want to manage my 401k every day but I have zero confidence in the stock and humanoid robots is not making me feel any better. I want robots shaped like the task they intend to accomplish. I don’t give a rat’s ass if my dishwasher is a cube. If anything, I’d prefer it not walk around and ask me questions.

Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/us/politics/wisconsin-supreme-court-crawford-schimel.html?unlocked_article_code=1.8k4.-Dt4.yJjPB0QbgpFy

Remember that time Elon Musk spent millions of dollars and lost? It was today and it was really funny. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/us/politics/wisconsin-supreme-court-crawford-schimel.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/us/politics/wisconsin-supreme-court-crawford-schimel.html

Update: Eat can eat 1,001 dicks.

I will accept passive aggression. A lot of people don’t bother with the passive.

I don’t know what our reputation is globally but I live in a tourist city (New Orleans). A lot of people don’t even bother with the passive part. Most “tier 1” conference cities are huge but we’re a relatively small city. We have a population of about 350,000 (compared to over 8 million in New York City) but enough hotel space and a conference center, stadium, whatever able to host a global event. The Super Bowl was just here and Taylor Swift had three shows. Those were known events but there will be weekends where you go downtown and meet 20 exterminators or something before you realize the exterminator convention is in town. (This actually happened to me. There are so many more exterminators than you could ever imagine.)

We host a lot of events and, as a result, even people who can’t afford travel meet people from everywhere. My high school friend is a bartender and he’ll have random hatred of places and professions because they’re obnoxious or don’t tip or whatever. To this day, he loves Hawaii residents because they had a football game here once and everyone was chill and nice.

Anyway, I say all that to say: Canadians are more than welcome to be passive aggressive here. South Louisiana in general is more aggressive than passive.

https://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/2007/10/08/edsbs-road-trip-baton-rouge

Once it’s all tallied, something like $100 million will be spent on a single state’s judicial election. That is insane. Ten million would have been insane just a decade ago.

I imagine that’s why things are close. A lot of voters are being bombarded with (mis)information. The people who are undecided probably have no idea what’s true or false.

My theory is that for-profit social media companies push conflict and controversy because it increases “engagement.” So, people are conditioned to be hostile and hiss like a cat at the first sign of disagreement (real or imagined). Lemmy, obviously, has different incentives.

It’s happening on Mastodon and BlueSky too. I try to respond with kindness and sincerity. (I don’t always succeed. I kind of suck at it, to be honest. But if we all even can halfass human decency, it’ll be better than most of the internet.)

I think long term, the changes in scientific research will be the big story. They made it so grants can only request something like 15% of facilities funding. Some universities can eat the cost of a lab but 95% can’t. So, it’s going to destroy any sort of research that’s mostly done in labs.

To give a hypothetical example, you could imagine a novel battery chemistry that really only needs a few humans to run the experiments but an expensive lab to just run the battery through 10,000 charge/discharge cycles to see if it degrades. That research probably won’t be done in the United States.

The executive order allows wavers so maybe it won’t be batteries — Elon Musk needs those — but a lot of basic science research will be done in Europe, Canada, China, etc. who are more than happy to accept brilliant scientists and fund their research. It’s basically pocket change in the context of a national budget and the payoffs are potentially huge.

For international readers or Americans unfamiliar, Wisconsin has a state Supreme Court vote. It’s probably 50/50 and is the important one. Florida has 2 special elections for vacated House of Representative seats in Congress. The districts both voted heavily for Trump so the Republican candidate should win.

So, in Florida, don’t necessarily expect the Democrats to win. But if it’s even close, Republicans will be filling some diapers. They should be winning these districts by 20 or 30 points. Winning with 53% or whatever would be a really bad result for Republicans.

We’re aware. People who get all their news from Fox or ignore politics in general probably aren’t but even my conservative family members are embarrassed about the threats to Canada and Greenland. Canadians are generally considered super nice and polite by Americans so pissing them off crossed a line. Even apolitical people probably know the U.S. National Anthem is being booed at sporting events.

There’s elections in several states today that will provide some data to know more. Louisiana had an election on Saturday and rejected 4 constitutional amendments supported by Republicans. None even got 40%. Louisiana is an oddball state so I’m not sure it’s a harbinger of today’s elections but if voters in Wisconsin and elsewhere vote like Louisiana, it’ll be very telling.