Our Government Is Experiencing a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly. And it will be very bad indeed.

So I’ve been reading Marc Dunkelman’s “Why Nothing Works,” as part of work I’m doing to write a bit of a (somewhat sympathetic) critique-from-the-left of the “Abundance” bandwagon.

Federal research cuts would rock Michigan economy, halt clinical trials, those affected say. Great Recession II inbound.

How to Make Trump Unpopular Again.

We Should All Be Paying Attention To What’s Happening to the National Archives. More looting and destruction.

Broken Legs and Ankles Heal Better If You Walk on Them within Weeks.

AI Killed The Tech Interview. Now What?

How Elon Musk and His DOGE Goons Are Following the Private Equity Playbook.

Think the military lowered its standards for women? Think again.

The Incompetence of DOGE Is a Feature, Not a Bug.

A dozen wolves collared in California as officials seek to track the growing population.

Democrats belatedly wake up to start battling Trump and Musk.

The Man Madison Warned Us Against.

Why Democrats Won’t Throw a Real Punch. Because they are weak losers.

This New Airbus Jet Is Bad News for Boeing.

How Dirty Money From Fentanyl Sales Is Flowing Through China.

Alice Hamilton Waged a One-Woman Campaign to Get the Lead Out of Everything.

Why the Number Line Freaks Me Out.

Resilient algae darken glacier surface and may speed up Greenland ice melt, study finds.

American Investors and Workers: Please remember that Trump sending our country into a depression is a feature… not a bug. True.

The DOGE Brain Drain Has Begun. It’s not just jobs cut and agencies gutted. It’s the talent that will be lost for generations to come.

Japan, South Korea, and Poland need nuclear weapons immediately. Alas I agree. Germany too, as scary as that is.

Trump’s true enemy isn’t China or Russia but liberal democracy.

If it is worth keeping, save it in Markdown.

On David Lynch’s Revenge of the Jedi.

The Sony FX-300 Jackal: A Holy Grail technological marvel of the late 70s.

Why can’t we remember our lives as babies or toddlers?

Trump administration fires thousands for ‘performance’ without evidence, in messy rush.

Terror on repeat. A rare look at the devastation caused by AR-15 shootings. Worth reading again.

What’s a spy novelist to do in the age of Trump? John le Carré had it easy during the Cold War. But how do we write espionage thrillers now?

Dedekind cuts.

Vance’s real warning to Europe. Europeans need to reduce their dangerous dependence on an adversarial America.

The Futility of the NLRB.

Ukraine is fighting because Russia is trying to wipe it off the map, and Ukraine is doing everything humanly possible to survive as a free, independent nation.

“A calculator app? Anyone could make that.”

I spent two years following Barrows and some of those she calls her “clients” to better understand what it takes to unstick someone who’s been stuck on the streets — or in a park – for a long time.

Physicists uncover evidence of two arrows of time emerging from the quantum realm.

Extreme supersonic winds measured on a planet outside our solar system.

New real estate rules threatened to upend homebuying for Americans. Here’s what experts say has changed.

Despite receiving only limited, carefully rationed, and delayed aid from the West, Ukraine has inflicted a series of heavy defeats on Russia. Russian winning sure looks a lot like losing.

Billionaire Dipshit And His Strike Team Of Greasy Beavises Are Stripping The Wires From The Federal Government.

NASA Just Fired up Its Quiet Supersonic Jet—and It Looks Like Pure Speed.

We are perilously close to the worse case scenario on Trump and Ukraine. Horseshoe theory; Ian Welsh on Trump are on the same side (Putin’s).

More than 80% of new California properties are in high fire-risk areas.

HOA fees are becoming more common — and costly.

Planned U.S.-Russia Talks Over Ukraine Throw Europe Into Crisis.

The Hottest Job in a World at War: Gun-for-Hire.

We Asked 12 Young Men Across America How They Feel About Trump, Masculinity, and Money.

Who will defend Europe?

It is important that those of us who see, and who have seen for decades, all of these government expenditures as insane and as vehicles for corruption comprehend that the other side sees them as absolutely vital actions for what the US government should do.

Intel has become a political pawn — but it may not need Trump or a deal with TSMC.

PPI Inflation Accelerates to +3.5% yoy, Worst in 2 Years, Driven by Services amid Massive Up-Revision of Services Inflation.

Microsoft Study Finds Relying on AI Kills Your Critical Thinking Skills.

Friendly neighborhood Dangerous Professional advice.

Trump and Musk Are Destroying the Basics of a Healthy Democracy.

We’re Headed Toward a Landlord-Friendly Era. Expect Higher Rent Prices.

America Opens the Door to Its Adversaries.

Thinking is something done by biological beings with hands and stomachs and fragile flesh. Our rationality is deep-rooted in our interactive relationship to the vast ecologies that sustain us.

Pituffik Space Base.

Landlords Have a New Hardball Tactic: Tanking Your Credit Score. Time to go full Luigi on these motherfuckers.

America’s First Broken Arrow Incident Happened 75 Years Ago.

Yes, the Price of Eggs Matters.

Suddenly, and not accidentally, people who work for the American federal government are having the same experience as people who find themselves living under foreign occupation. Anne gets it.

The Erasing of American Science.

We Live Like Royalty and Don’t Know It. Introducing “How the System Works,” a series on the hidden mechanisms that support modern life. Should be taught in school.

DOGE’s Federal Job Cuts Threaten Republican Districts Too.

An American Retiree Was Lost Off the Coast of Venezuela. Then Things Went Really Bad.

The birth of naturalism.

This City’s Sewer System Is Full of Alligators, but It’s Not New York. In Florida, alligators live and go anywhere there is water. This is not surprising.

Trump’s Ideas Are Terrible. That’s Not an Accident.

Army Helicopter Might Have Missed Critical Instruction Before Midair Crash.

If You Ever Stacked Cups In Gym Class, Blame My Dad.

Rapid warfare tech helps U.S. Army build on lessons learned in Ukraine’s war with Russia.

In many aspects of the modern world (economic, political, environmental, technological, etc.), we are arguably transitioning from a predictable regime of effective dynamics to a more uncertain regime without such effective dynamics.

It Took Trump Only Twenty-four Days to Sell Out Ukraine.

Elon Musk’s A.I.-Fuelled War on Human Agency. Musk seeks not only to dismantle the federal government but to install his own technological vision of the future at its heart—techno-fascism by chatbot.

Yosemite National Park is in trouble.

YouTube turns 20 years old today. Argh.

‘No one wants to pay $25 for breakfast’: US restaurants are cracking under inflation. “Transitory.”

Olson’s Seven Rules for Dealing with Autocrats – Part I.

DOGE as a National Cyberattack.

Who’s Watching What on TV? Who’s to Say?

Here’s the hidden truth of education: You don’t know what you’re preparing for.

“The country is less safe”: CDC disease detective program gutted.

Honda and Nissan have ended their merger plans.

The boomer housing crisis is pacing to get even worse: ‘We’ve never had a population pyramid that looks like this.’

Consumer prices rise 0.5% in January, higher than expected as annual rate rises to 3%. “Transitory.”

Powell predicts a time when mortgages will be impossible to get in parts of US. Correct.

What is as yet only dimly understood, in particular by people who continue to hope that the legal system may provide some succour from the ongoing demolition of state agencies, is that the gutting of EPA, CFPB, USAID, etc. is creating “facts on the ground” that even eventual possible legal victories will not be able to reverse.

Largest celestial object of its kind discovered in the distant universe.

Germany says its warships were sabotaged as concerns mount that Russia is waging a hybrid war. We are already at war with Russia and China. We should act like it.

Out With The Consultants. Democrats have long outsourced political judgment to professional-services providers (pollsters, strategists, lawyers)—but what do they know about defeating a coup.

Defying the courts. The end of the rule of law in the United States is nigh.

On the Recurrence of Neoreactionaries.

This Ad-Tech Company Is Powering Surveillance of US Military Personnel.

My core frustration isn’t just how shitty things have gotten, but how said shittiness has become so profitable for so many companies. Most people being dumbasses == shittiness is very profitable.

Scholz should look to his Cold War predecessor.

If it moves, it’s probably alive: Searching for life on other planets.

People don’t know how things work, but worse, they have no intuition for why things work the way they do, even once it’s explained to them. Society is too complex for about 80% of people to make any real sense of.

A Chinese state-owned military contractor that built 80% of the ship-to-shore cranes at U.S. ports. A yearlong congressional investigation found that everything these cranes do can be monitored by the Chinese government. Some ZPMC cranes can even be controlled remotely, and in a worst-case scenario, shut down entirely, according to the investigative report. Jesus Fucking Christ.

How Progressives Froze the American Dream.

Seafloor detector picks up record neutrino while under construction.

Tally of bones, artifacts reveals 2000 years of population swings among Indigenous Americans.

How America traded systematic improvement for quick wins—and lost both.

Trump’s Conflicting Business Policies Sow Economic Uncertainty. What a mess.

IT Unemployment Rises to 5.7% as AI Hits Tech Jobs.

After Trump killed a report on nature, researchers push ahead with release. Good.

Flood The Zone With Truth.

Your employer might be spying on you. Here’s how workers can check. If my employer were spying on me, it’d be me who set it up. So it doesn’t apply to me. But it might be useful for others.

Why economists got free trade with China so wrong.

Moved from Europe with American wife – work culture shock.

Russians Erect Mesh Net ‘Tunnel’ Over A Mile Long To Counter Ukrainian FPV Drones. What a mesh.

US spy planes hunt for intel on Mexican drug cartels as surveillance flights surge near border.

Trump Already Has Blood on His Hands. The president is taking a chainsaw to our public health infrastructure—and people will die as a result.

Let’s Get Real.

Shutting Down CFPB Is Not Like Shutting Down USAID.

‘Be Cruel’: Inside Russia’s Torture System for Ukrainian POWs.

A young computer scientist and two colleagues show that searches within data structures called hash tables can be much faster than previously deemed possible.

Surnames from nicknames nobody has any more.

Apple software update “bug” enables Apple Intelligence.

Major apparel brands have cut corners in recent years to limit price hikes on shoppers, embracing lower-quality fabric and finishes to protect their margins.

Mapping Antarctica’s hidden ice-free lands: a blueprint for conservation.

Frupidity: The Silent Killer of Productivity and Innovation. Frupidity is loved by MBAs and accountants, so it’s never going away.

How Noether’s Theorem Revolutionized Physics. Understanding Noether’s Theorem is the key to comprehending why so much happens in QM. QM emerges from symmetry and symmetry breaking.

It seems few people know what an “indirect cost” is or why it has to be 40-60%. There are better ways to do this (as the existing one is pretty terrible), but what Musk is doing is clueless clownery.

Senators Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Boost U.S. Transformer Production. Probably should not make Megatron.

I almost cried for an old man today.

The Exhausting Fight for Climate Action.

The Man in the Midnight-Blue Six-Ply Italian-Milled Wool Suit.

Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.

We Need Corny Star Trek Now More Than Ever.

Sprinting Toward 2030’s “I Own Nothing” Reality.

Trump’s desire for Greenland sets feelings on fire in the Arctic.

The prioritized projects of the last Administration were easily dismantled. And the precarious structure of the administrative state is now even more on the brink.

Are young people really ‘marshmellows’ who refuse to put work first? Yes. And it’s great.

What’s Happening Inside the NIH and NSF. The war against reason and science is joined, and our side is barely fighting.

America desperately needs more air traffic controllers.

Google drops pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance.

Oppose, Oppose, Oppose — and Do It Loudly.

Trump’s Secret Weapon Has Always Been Status Anxiety.

Two Grand Canyon-size valleys on the far side of the moon formed within 10 minutes, scientists say. Dang ol’ aliens.

Army Black Hawk Helicopter Flew Too High Before D.C. Jet Crash: NTSB.

$58 billion Honda-Nissan merger is in deep trouble.

As Internet enshittification marches on, here are some of the worst offenders.

Europe has the worst imaginable idea to counter SpaceX’s launch dominance.

Biden administration slowed Ukraine arms shipments until his term was nearly done. Fucking moronic.

New Unreported Submarine In China Leaves West Guessing.

Navy HELIOS Laser Aboard USS Preble Zaps Drone In Latest Test.

Bosses are done caring how you feel.

Compelling Mass Civil Servant Resignations Will Create Chaos. Which is the point.

CVS Is Turning Locked Shelves Into an Excuse to Make You Download Its App. Nope.

Greenland’s glaciers are falling apart faster than expected.

Beware the Dead Sea Effect at Companies.

I’m a Federal Worker. Elon Musk’s Government Data Heist Is the Entire Ballgame.

Job openings decline sharply in December to 7.6 million, below forecast.

Trump administration finalizing plans to shutter Education Department.

Trump Preparing to Fire FBI Agents Who Treated a Violent Attack on Congress as a Crime. Anyone think Trump will actually leave office in 2029?