This Is Our Snow Day as an Adult.

I was not personally effected by the outage of  Microsoft cloud based apps yesterday.

In fact, I was unaware of this until I scanned the headlines.

My current employer uses the local version of the software.

Given my skepticism of both the cloud and Microsoft, I am not surprised by any of this.

What did surprise me is the level of glee evinced by some of the people who were unable to their jobs as a result:  (About 14 seconds into the video)

To the youth and the young adults that have not started working yet and you're not understanding why everyone is rejoicing over the fact that Outlook and Teams is down. 

This is our snow day as an adult.

(emphasis mine)

People really hate working on Microslop products these days.

Microsoft is slowly recovering from its daylong outage after much of the company’s systems were hit by a cascading software issue.

The problems, which started Thursday, were initially flagged as affecting the company’s services in the U.S. and the Americas, but quickly spread around the world, as engineers struggled to recover downed servers.

What began as an Outlook email and Teams video conferencing outage soon developed into a full-blown meltdown affecting the company’s cloud services for both consumer and business email, files, and documents. The outage also knocked out the company’s Copilot AI tools and Defender security screening software, and prevented system administrators from accessing their internal Intune dashboards and features. Some users reportedly experienced issues with accessing their cloud-based Windows computers. 

The Balloon Has Gone Up in the Race for Senate Leader

Chris Van Hollen has announced that he will be challenging Chuck Schumer for the role of Senate Majority Leader.

Count me on the side of Van Hollen.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (Maryland) is trying to become the first Democrat to oust his party’s leader in Senate history — and he’s facing a tough climb.

Van Hollen got a standing ovation Friday when he addressed a Democratic gathering in Denver, declaring that he wanted to go “toe to toe with the president to take on the fights that are too important to lose.”

But nearly 24 hours after Van Hollen announced that he would challenge Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York) to be Senate majority leader in the next Congress, just four senators committed publicly to backing him.

Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan), who said this week that she could not support Schumer, said Friday that she is glad Van Hollen was running but did not commit to supporting him in the Dec. 1 election.

Van Hollen has acknowledged he is the underdog in the race against Schumer, who has led Senate Democrats for a decade and helped the party regain control of the chamber in the midterm elections.

Let's call out the last paragraph for the canard that it is.  Schumer attempted to stand up Janet Mills as Susan Collins' opponent this year, cut off Florida Senate candidate Angie Nixon completely, etc. 

He is, and has never been, up to the task of Senate Majority Leader.

Hell, his performance as Senate Minority Leader was pretty pathetic as well.

Jail Him Right Now

I am not talking about a member of the Trump administration, I'm not talking about any sort of an elected official, I'm not even talking about an American.

I am talking about Chabad Rabbi Gedalya Axelrod, who is calling for the assassination of Israeli politicians who attempt to form a coalition with the Israeli Arab parties.

This is not hyperbole.  This is precisely the sort of rhetoric that led directly to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.

This is a crime under Israeli law, and it should be treated as the terrorist threat that it is.

The Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement on Thursday sought to distance itself from one of its prominent rabbis in Israel after he issued a halakhic ruling invoking a religious doctrine that permits using lethal force against Jewish party leaders who cooperate with Arab parties.

Responding to the letter, a group of former heads of Israel's security services and military – including former chiefs of the Mossad and the Shin Bet security service – urged the police to investigate Rabbi Gedalya Axelrod for incitement to murder.

A former head of the rabbinical court in Haifa, Axelrod issued a letter earlier this week stipulating that Jewish party leaders who support forming a government backed by Arab parties are subject to din rodef – literally, "the law of the pursuer." Under Jewish religious law, a rodef is someone who poses a threat to another person's life and may be stopped by any means necessary. 

The rodef label was infamously used to justify the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin 31 years ago. In the lead-up to his murder, extremist rabbis suggested it could apply to Rabin because his pursuit of the Oslo Accords, which involved returning territories conquered by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War to create a Palestinian state, endangered Jewish lives.

In invoking the din rodef, Axelrod is not just saying that violence can be used to prevent a political outcome that he disagrees with, he is arguing that the use of lethal violence is mandated.

Lock him up. 

Funny, Innit?

Less than 2 weeks after the Democratic Party Blue Wave Kalshi has severed ties with Donald Trump, Jr.

The term used in the headline was, "Yeeted," a use of the term that I wholeheartedly approve, despite my status as a confirmed old fart.

Donald Trump Jr. has left his role as an advisor to the prediction market Kalshi, the company confirmed to Bloomberg.

The timing of the personnel change is striking given that Trump first joined Kalshi as an advisor shortly before the November 2024 election. Now, his departure comes as tech leaders and their companies move to distance themselves from right-wing politics and the second Trump Administration ahead of Democrats taking back Congressional power in 2027 — with a broad mandate from voters to crack down on government corruption.

Trump Jr.’s investment firm, 1789 Capital, is invested in Kalshi and its rival Polymarket. He’s held advisor roles with both companies, and as Bloomberg notes, he received hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity from Kalshi in exchange for his work. (Kalshi has said that Trump Jr.’s said work has involved giving advice about its “marketing strategy.”)

………

A Kalshi spokesperson told Bloomberg that the decision to part ways was due to Trump Jr.’s investment in its rival, which wasn’t at all a secret that would suddenly be an issue post-midterm.

“We have mutually agreed to end Don’s advisory role after his firm’s significant investment in a competitor this past summer,” said the company. “We are grateful for his contributions in helping us market Kalshi to more customers.”

Yeah, right.  Donald, Jr. was hired because they believed that he coule invoke the power of the state to his advantage, not for any marketing insights.

Chicago Public Schools to Google, "Drop Dead!"

Google has been telling public schools that if they opt out of their Gemini AI, then they will not have the access to search.

Chicago Public Schools are taking door number 2.

Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has warned that it could abandon Google Search rather than force students to use the company's unwanted AI features.

A CPS spokesperson told local reporters that the district was "actively exploring all options to independently suppress" the AI Overviews appearing at the top of Google searches.

They added that if CPS cannot give students access to Google Search without its AI feature, it will "look to other search solutions."

The response follows Google's insistence that schools will have to accept its AI services to retain student access to search.

Seeing as how Google search has become complete pants over the past few years, even Microsoft Bing is now a reasonable alternative. 

Snark of the Day

BitCoin is the Dunning-Krugerand

u/Apprehensive_Fan1887 on Reddit.

For those of you who do not get this portmanteau, This is both a reference to the Dunning-Kruger effect, which states that incompetent people lack the skills to know that they are incompetent, and the Krugerrand is a gold coin sold by South Africa.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

The FAA has grounded all flights in the United States. (Update: The grounding ended this evening)

The cause is at this point unknown, it appears to be a cascade of failures that shut down various radio communications and ATC radars.

In what is likely not a coincidence, this all happened the same day that the FAA rolled out its AP powered  Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories (SMART) system, which is intended to provide predictive rerouting around things like weather and congestion.

While correlation is not causation, this whole thing reminds me of a quote about the George W.Bush Administration:

But it does inspire in me the desire for a competition; can anyone, particularly the rather more Bush-friendly recent arrivals to the board, give me one single example of something with the following three characteristics:

1. It is a policy initiative of the current Bush administration
2. It was significant enough in scale that I'd have heard of it (at a pinch, that I should have heard of it)
3. It wasn't in some important way completely f#$@ed up during the execution.

Those 3 points apply to the Trump administration in spades.

This was not a random failure.  It was likely triggered by incompetence, corruption, or delusion.  (Or maybe all of them) 

Are Sharks Smarter Than Nikola Tesla?

Because it appears that their guts have a fluidic check valve that is more effective than the Tesla valve invented by the Serbian-American scientist.

Scientists at the University of Washington have re-created the distinctive spiral shapes of shark intestines in 3D-printed pipes in order to study the unique fluid flow inside the spirals. Their prototypes kept fluids flowing in one preferred direction with no need for flaps to control that flow and performed significantly better than so-called “Tesla valves,” particularly when made of soft polymers, according to a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

As we’ve reported previously, in 1920, Serbian-born inventor Nikola Tesla designed and patented what he called a “valvular conduit”: a pipe whose internal design ensures that fluid will flow in one preferred direction, with no need for moving parts, making it ideal for microfluidics applications, among other uses. The key to Tesla’s ingenious valve design is a set of interconnected, asymmetric, tear-shaped loops.

In his patent application, Tesla described this series of 11 flow-control segments as being made of “enlargements, recessions, projections, baffles, or buckets which, while offering virtually no resistance to the passage of fluid in one direction, other than surface friction, constitute an almost impassable barrier to its flow in the opposite direction.” And because it achieves this with no moving parts, a Tesla valve is much more resistant to the wear and tear of frequent operation.

………

The Tesla valve also provides a useful model for how food moves through the digestive system of many species of shark. In 2020, Japanese researchers reconstructed micrographs of histological sections from a species of catshark into a three-dimensional model, offering a tantalizing glimpse of the anatomy of a scroll-type spiral intestine. The following year, scientists took CT scans of shark intestines and concluded that the intestines are naturally occurring Tesla valves.

That’s where the work of UW postdoc Ido Levin and his co-authors comes in. They had questions about the 2021 research in particular. “Flow asymmetry in a pipe with no moving flaps has tremendous technological potential, but the mechanism was puzzling,” said Levin. “It was not clear which parts of the shark’s intestinal structure contributed to the asymmetry and which served only to increase the surface area for nutrient uptake.”

Levin et al. 3D-printed several pipes with an internal helical structure mimicking that of shark intestines, varying certain geometrical parameters like the number of turns or the pitch angle of the helix. It was admittedly an idealized structure, so the team was delighted when the first batch, made from rigid materials, produced the hoped-for flow asymmetry. After further fine-tuning of the parameters, the rigid printed pipes produced flow asymmetries that matched or exceeded Tesla valves.

………

But the researchers weren’t done yet. “[Prior work] showed that if you connect these intestines in the same direction as a digestive tract, you get a faster flow of fluid than if you connect them the other way around. We thought this was very interesting from a physics perspective,” said Levin last year while presenting preliminary results at the 67th Annual Biophysical Society Meeting. “One of the theorems in physics actually states that if you take a pipe, and you flow fluid very slowly through it, you have the same flow if you invert it. So we were very surprised to see experiments that contradict the theory. But then you remember that the intestines are not made out of steel—they’re made of something soft, so while fluid flows through the pipe, it deforms it.”

That gave Levin et al. the idea to try making their pipes out of soft deformable polymers—the softest commercially available ones that could also be used for 3D printing. That batch of pipes performed seven times better on flow asymmetry than any prior measurements of Tesla valves. And since actual shark intestines are about 100 times softer than the polymers they used, the team thinks they can achieve even better performance, perhaps with hydrogels when they become more widely available as 3D printing continues to evolve. The biggest challenge, per the authors, is finding soft materials that can withstand high deformations.

Finally, because the pipes are three-dimensional, they can accommodate larger fluid volumes, opening up applications in larger commercial devices. “Chemists were already motivated to develop polymers that are simultaneously soft, strong and printable,” said co-author Alshakim Nelson, whose expertise lies in developing new types of polymers. “The potential use of these polymers to control flow in applications ranging from engineering to medicine strengthens that motivation.”

Of course, sharks are not smarter than Nikola Tesla, this is just what evolution does for all of us.

Cool tech though. 

But We Don't Want the Irish

Why yes, I am quoting the Mel Brooks film Blazing Saddles, because one can juxtapose the genius absurdity of that film with the evil absurdity of the Ron DeSantis regime in Florida.

Case in point, the Florida legislature passed and Desantis' signed a law that forbids localities from hosting, "Certain programming and activities designed or implemented with reference to ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity."

This law Delray Beach to cancel its St. Patrick's Day parade, because Irish is an ethnicity, and hence the parade is "Woke" under Florida law.

A Florida mayor is working to salvage his city’s St Patrick’s Day parade after it was canceled to comply with a new Republican law banning municipalities from hosting events deemed to promote diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

The state’s hard right governor Ron DeSantis signed the law in April that takes effect on 1 January, prompting the city of Delray Beach, near Fort Lauderdale, to announce it was scrapping next year’s popular Irish celebration that regularly attracts tens of thousands of visitors, and also its Pride event.

Restrictions imposed by the new state law, the city said in a statement, “include certain programming and activities designed or implemented with reference to ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity”.

Delray officials determined they were “legally prohibited from organizing, funding, or promoting these events in 2027”.

The decision to axe the St Patrick’s and Pride events angered residents and local business owners who faced missing out on what are traditionally among their most lucrative weekends of the year.

The Florida Republican Party is a bunch of, "Rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, sh%$-kickers and Methodists."

So Now We Gotta Talk About Huang's Wong

If just because the fact that Jensen Huang was forced out as CEO of Nvidia because of his affair and dodgy business dealings with what appears to be a Chinese spy.

If this disrupts the circular financing that is keeping the artificial intelligence Ponzi merry-go-round going to any significant degree, it will crash AI, and crash the economy. 

We live in the worst timeline ever.

On Tuesday, facing a mounting scandal about his affair with a suspected Chinese spy, Jensen Huang surprised his staff by summoning them to a planning session for his annual keynote presentation in Washington.

………

But in private, facing the loss of his job and an ignominious exit from the company he co-founded 33 years ago, Huang had become a morose figure. He openly mused to colleagues that his relationship with his wife could now be more important than staying on as CEO, some of the people said.The next day Huang was out. He resigned after a hurriedly convened board meeting that went late into the evening in Santa Clara, following reports of a second affair, this time with a subordinate. Allegations of another relationship with an employee followed soon after.

It also appears that the graphics and AI chip manufacturer was violating export control rules as well. 

………

Exports of the company’s world-leading AI chips to Chinese buyers are tightly controlled. Huang has pushed for those rules to be relaxed, arguing that controls were counter-productive and lobbying to be able to restart sales in the huge Chinese market.

Chris Miller, professor at Tufts University, said Huang angered a lot of people in Washington with his position on China. And Miller said Nvidia appears to have operated under “the belief that selling to a company that was primarily providing compute to Alibaba wasn’t a problem”.

It set the company up for a scandal that has now plunged the chipmaker at the centre of the AI boom into crisis, reverberating through global markets as investors struggled to gauge the level of impact on Huang’s web of investments and circular financing deals that some estimate could top a trillion dollars.

There is a brighter side to all of this, and not just the fact that the oft challenged to exceed reality writers at The Onion have something that can let them coast for a couple of days.

One of the more many loathsome members of the Trump administration may be caught up in this clusterf%$# as well.

The fallout has reached Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, as lawmakers on Wednesday demanded answers as to how his department allowed Nvidia’s chip sales to a company linked to an alleged Chinese spy.

Just a reminder, Lutnick hung out with Jeffrey Epstein and lied about it, 

He also illegally leaked confidential tax data to retaliate against political opponents.

That Lutnick may lose his job over this is icing on the cake.

Not a Surprise

It appears that Trump officials at the Department of the Interior are frantically shredding documents related to the ballroom and other building programs. 

Gee, who could have predicted that? 

House Democrats are demanding that the Interior Department retain documents related to President Donald Trump’s construction projects around Washington after whistleblowers warned that key paperwork has already been destroyed before Democrats take power, congressional sources tell CNN.

The warnings come as the Trump administration is signaling it will accelerate plans for moving ahead with the projects — a key part of what the president sees as his legacy — to lay as much groundwork as possible before the Democrats take over Congress in January.

On Tuesday, the top Democrat in the House Natural Resources committee, which has oversight of the agency that has helped fast-track many of Trump’s projects, plans to issue letters to the Interior Department as well as other federal agencies and private companies, requesting that they “preserve all records and data responsive to oversight” the congressional panel oversees.

………

Multiple credible whistleblowers have approached Huffman’s committee in recent weeks to voice concern that the Interior Department is getting rid of records in anticipation of forthcoming scrutiny, the sources told CNN. The agency oversees much of the national parkland Trump wants to use for his projects.

………

Among the other recipients of the preservation letters are the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management, which are part of Interior.

Letters are also being sent to the Agriculture Department and companies like Lockheed Martin and John Deere that are known to have donated to Trump’s projects. CNN has asked them for comment. Whistleblowers did not say these entities had destroyed documents.

However, all letter recipients must reply to certify their compliance, which requires efforts to “preserve existing records collections and productions,” as well as “Identify and recover any deleted information” and “suspend any destruction and deletion practices.”

We are going to need a special jail just to accommodate all of the miscreants from this administration in 2029. 

Why Yes, Hakeem Jeffries is Incompetent

The vote in the House to bury with the impeachment of Pete Hegseth won (211 to 204) yesterday because 11 Democrats could not be bothered show up for the vote.

There are 2 Dems whom I will give the benefit of the doubt, Lou Correa, (D-CA) who was under doctor's orders not to travel as he recuperates from a heart attack, and Steven Horsford, (D-NV) who had a personal emergency.  (I'd like details on the latter though)

As to the other 9, 8 of them were delayed because they were at a fundraising event for a political PAC, and Nancy Pelosi was in California getting (I'm not making this up) a lifetime achievement award.

If those 9 of them had shown up, the impeachment would have proceeded.

Remember this in the 2028 primaries. 

If there is one ability central to the role of Speaker of the House, it is the ability to count votes.

Hakeem Jefferies cannot count votes. 

House Democrats are facing a furious backlash after eleven members did not show up to block the Republican move to kill the Pete Hegseth impeachment vote.

Several complained they were stuck in traffic after attending an event celebrating Democratic Party women.

They were attending a a fundraising appetizer event run by the Elect Democratic Women PAC. 

They were too busy doing a fundraiser to show up for the f%$#ing Vote. 

The Daily Beast contacted all eleven missing members to collect their excuses.

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie’s effort to impeach the defense secretary was blocked on Tuesday evening when GOP members united on a procedural motion.

The vote came down 211 to 204, with 18 members not voting. Massie was the only Republican to vote to proceed to impeachment.

Democrats had been riding high after their blue tsunami in the midterms delivered a sharp rebuke to Donald Trump and his administration, but they’re now facing intense criticism over the botched first major impeachment attempt.

The eleven Democrats who did not vote were Reps. Julia Brownley, Lou Correa, Laura Gillen, Steven Horsford, Jonathan Jackson, Brittany Pettersen, Haley Stevens, Melanie Stansbury, Marilyn Strickland, Frederica Wilson, and Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi.

………

Unlike the members who were stuck in traffic or faced other delays, Pelosi returned to San Francisco before the vote to attend the Swords to Plowshares’ 30th Annual Veterans Day Celebration honoring local veterans, where she was set to receive the Lifetime Advocate for Veterans Award as she retires at the end of her term. 

Being at a fundraiser is no excuse, neither is ditching the vote to get a meaningless trophy. For a vote like this, you show up early, and the Speaker should have been riding their asses about getting there on time hours before the scheduled vote.

I am so sick of incompetent Democrats, particularly among the party leadership.  

House Republicans Vote to Make Sexual Abuse Protector Their Leader

Yeah, the House Minority Leader will be Jim Jordan, who has been credibly alleged with turning a blind eye to widespread abuse from a sports doctor while he was coaching at Ohio State University.

I'm beginning to think that ties to sexual abuse are a requirement for leadership positions in the Republican party.

What Bernie Said

The distinguished gentleman from Vermont has announced that he will not support Chuck Schumer for Majority Leader of the Senate.

Heck, I wouldn't support Chuck "Strongly Worded Letter" Schumer as leader of Cub Scout troop 153. 

Opposition to Senator Chuck Schumer’s return as party leader burst into the open on Capitol Hill on Tuesday as Senator Bernie Sanders said he would not support him and other Democrats questioned whether he should remain at the top after their huge wins last week.

“If this campaign was about anything, it was about change, and the need for the Democratic Party, in my view, to move in a new and bold direction,” Mr. Sanders, a progressive Vermont Independent who aligns with Democrats, said at a news conference following a private party meeting. “I will not be supporting Chuck to be re-elected as the Democratic leader.”

Despite Mr. Schumer serving as the architect of an extraordinary Democratic victory that could end up gaining the party as many as nine seats and the Senate majority, he has run into resistance from progressive groups.

"Architect of an extraordinary Democratic victory?"  are you f%$#ing kidding me?

This is the guy who went all in on Janet Mills and Haley Stevens.

That the US Senate was retaken happened in spite of Schumer, not because of him. 

Giving him credit for the election results is like giving Jim Carrey's "Fire Marshall Bill" credit for your house not burning down.

Good to See Newspapers to Run Headlines Like This

Unfortunately, the paper running the headline, "Stephen Miller, reactionary ideologue and white supremacist, promoted head of Trump administration," is Le Monde English, not a US newspaper.

If a newspaper cannot be bothered to describe Stephen Miller (יִמַּח שְׁמו) for what he is, I cannot be bothered to subscribe or not block your f%$#ing advertisements.'

A majority of Americans punished Donald Trump during the midterms for his strategic choices and authoritarian exercise of power. In response, the American president chose to double down and promote his most extreme and most loyal adviser on Friday, November 6: Stephen Miller. The White House's reactionary ideologue will replace Susie Wiles as chief of staff.

"Stephen has been with me from the beginning," Trump told the press. "He gets it; very good politically. He’ll do a great job. Great manager." However, the president did not give any real explanation. "Sometimes you change," he simply said. The change in question is a headlong rush, a retreat into the inner circle of loyalists without qualms, ready to do anything for their leader. It shows just how much Trump sees the final two years of his term as the fortification of a bunker against the attacks of a Democratic-controlled Congress and the continuation of a unilateral presidency, without consultation.

At least one person was pleased with the appointment: Steve Bannon, who served as Trump's special adviser during his first term and has been an indefatigable promoter of national populism. Speaking to Le Monde, he said that Trump's decision was a "f%$# you to the Republican establishment and to democratic socialists." He described Miller as an uncompromising MAGA ideologue.

(%$# mine) 

H/t Mike the Mad Biologist.

As Much as it Pains Me to Speak Approvingly of a Republican

Reporter: “Pete Hegseth says you want to see him in prison.” Rep. Thomas Massie: “ There’s no way that I would go to visit him”

— They murdered Renée Good (@Youtalkingtume) November 9, 2026

Thomas Massie (R-KY) just won this whole election cycle.

Hello, police?  I'd like to report a murder.

Yes:  Any shred of remaining dignity of Pete Hegseth. 

What?  I need to go to a judge?  Why?

Because there is a dispute as to whether Hegseth ever had any dignity?

Oh, now I get it. 

Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

Elon Musk's AI, Grok, is is calling out the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ for palling around with Nazis.

Well duh, you don't need to be super-intelligent to know that.

A week after a humiliating midterms, Elon Musk is back to his old habits: flirting with Nazism.

Perhaps Musk really didn’t intend to perform back-to-back salutes that suspiciously looked a lot like a Sieg Hiel at a Trump inauguration party nearly two years ago, but you have to admit that he has quite the track record when it comes to espousing white supremacist conspiracy theories and interacting with people who wouldn’t hesitate to describe themselves as outright Nazis.

This time, his racist run-in was even called out by his own chatbot, Grok. On Sunday night, Musk responded to a supremacist meme posted by an account called @VladTheInflator railing against “white guilt” by downplaying the Atlantic slave trade in a way reminiscent of Holocaust denialism, while also perpetrating racist myths about slavery in Africa. Musk tagged Grok to ask if the meme’s claims were true, which the AI assessed to be “mostly accurate.”

This questionable interaction didn’t get overlooked by other users on the site, though, one of whom turned Grok back on its creator by asking the “maximum truth-seeking” AI to confirm if Musk was replying to a Nazi account.

“Yes,” Grok responded, seemingly atoning for all the times it called itself “MechaHitler.” “VladTheInflator has posted that being called a Nazi ‘feels like a compliment,’ that ‘Nazis are sounding better by the day,’ and that ‘Everything Hitler said about Zionists was true,’ plus explicit racial hierarchy claims.”

Grok explained in a helpful followup that Musk and the Nazi account go back. “Elon has replied to and retweeted VladTheInflator multiple times before this,” it said.

It’s not just that one account, either. Musk has an extensive history with promoting racist talking points and endorsing those posted by other far right figures, including a debunked conspiracy theory about “white genocide” in his homeland of South Africa.

 I did Nazi that coming.

Headline of the Day

Maybe Telling Americans They're Useless Eaters Who Must Perish for the Glorious AI Revolution Was a Bad Idea: Midterm Thoughts

Faine Greenwood, on the thumping that the AI tech bros took on election night.

To quote George Bernard Shaw, Playwright ans Great Wit, "One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't."

These guys were never geniuses.  They were guys who parlayed white privilege, luck, and a great crime (to paraphrase Honore de Balzac) into fortunes.

If they had a mind when they started, their decades as pampered princelings have destroyed that. 

Americans really, really, really hate data centers.

Lest you harbored any residual doubt about this, the midterm elections just proved it. Take a gander at these apocalyptic numbers for data center advocates, as compiled by Redbud Consulting:

Or consider NBC's exit poll data, which currently shows that solid majorities 1. think that AI will do more to hurt society than to help it (57%), and 2. oppose the construction of data centers in their community (76%):

Bye, Felecia Lauren

Following days of  an increasing vote gap between Eileen Laubacher and Lauren Boebert, CNN has declared the election for the Democrat.

About the only people who will mourn this are the writers for the Daily Show, for whom the Colorado moonbat was an endless source of material.

Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (R-Windsor) may continue to rage against the dying of the light that is her political career, but the end is near here.

As CNN reports:

Retired Rear Adm. Eileen Laubacher, a Democrat, will flip Colorado’s 4th District, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, ending conservative firebrand Rep. Lauren Boebert’s tenure in Congress.

Boebert’s loss comes after she elected to run in a more conservative district last cycle in an effort to preserve her political future. But Laubacher, who served more than three decades in the Navy, capitalized on the national headwinds against the GOP and focused her campaign on affordability issues.

Good Riddance

In what is hopefully a trend marking the end of the reactionary podcast ecosystem, professional bigot Laura Loomer (יִמַּח שְׁמו) is pausing her podcast.

It could also be that the poster-child for failed plastic surgery is a victim of her own personal corruption. 

Right-wing influencer Laura Loomer announced she is taking a “brief hiatus” from her Loomer Unleashed podcast just hours after a Trump administration adviser exposed her for being paid to post some of her manic, hateful content.

It all started on Thursday, when Alex Bruesewitz, who is behind much of Trump’s digital media strategy, took aim at conservative social media influencers following the GOP’s massive midterm election loss. 

“Believe it or not attacking Democrats over their relationships with a streamer (Hasan Piker) wasn’t an effective hit,” Bruesewitz posted, not mentioning Loomer by name. “GOP candidates probably shouldn’t take messaging advice from fringe right-wing ‘influencers’ moving forward.”

Loomer took the bait.

“But they should take their advice and meetings with @TuckerCarlson instead?… It’s completely reasonable for people to be appalled with Democrat candidates campaigning with a guy who said America deserved 9/11. Hasan Piker regularly makes comments in support of jihadi groups,” she wrote. “What wasn’t helpful was your friend Tucker Carlson essentially endorsing Abdul El-Sayed over Mike Rogers and using his show to tell people to not support Rogers just a few weeks out from an election. But we all know you will never condemn your buddy Tucker.”

………

Loomer took offense to that, claiming that she was not an influencer and criticizing Bruesewitz for his association with Omeed Malik, a conservative venture capitalist and major Republican donor.

“I’m a journalist and an opposition researcher Alex. What are you? What is it that you do for Omeed Malik exactly? He’s a Muslim right? Half Iranian and half Pakistani if I’m not mistaken,” Loomer fired back. “Is that why you have such an issue with the things I say about Islam?”

“Okay lol. But is it common for journalists to get paid for their opinions and tweets?”

“You say ‘Okay lol.’ Not sure why you are laughing. I recall last year your company X strategies reached out to me asking me for help. Do you deny that? What is so funny? I guess I don’t get the joke,” Loomer said, admitting that she was indeed paid to tweet. “You loved sharing my journalistic reports during the 2023/2024 DeSantis-Trump primary too. What changed?”

“No I don’t deny that. I’ve paid you for tweets before. I haven’t for at least a year though,” Bruesewitz wrote back. “I also know you still get paid by others for tweets so I do think it’s fair to refer to you as an ‘influencer.’ What percentage of your tweets are paid for?”

………

Hours later, Loomer announced a “one to two month show hiatus.”

Sauce for the Gander

Amid concerns about timecard fraud in his local police department, the mayor started tracking officers.

The entire police department resigned in response. 

Police love Flock stalker cameras when they use them on the general public, but not when its used on them.

If there’s one thing the rising surveillance dragnet has exposed throughout North America, it’s that cops really don’t like to taste their own medicine. In fact, the experience drove police employed by the town of Milner, Georgia to resign in tandem in late October, after their boss admitted to tracking the police chief’s work truck during an investigation.

According to local channel WSB-TV Atlanta, Milner Mayor Craig Timmons called a last-minute city council meeting to distribute copies of an investigation report containing allegations that the police chief was committing some sort of payroll fraud. Basically, Timmons alleged that police chief Lamar Bunn was not working the hours indicated on his time sheets.

In addition to tracking his truck, Timmons told local reporters he’d set up a surveillance camera pointed at the chief’s office.

………

To retaliate against the mayor and signal their support for Bunn, the entire department tendered its resignation on the spot, something Milner told WSB-TV he did not anticipate. The police chief denied the allegations, saying that it’s “very common” for Milner officers to work off-hours as well as outside the city. 

Yeah, working at the cop bar or your mistress' apartment is, "Very common." 

Regardless of the validity of the investigation, the mass-resignation exposes the hypocrisy of Georgia police, who have access to perhaps the largest public-private surveillance operation in US history. As the home of controversial surveillance company Flock Safety, the state of Georgia has nearly 10,000 automatic license plate readers in operation, which are increasingly used by police departments throughout the country to surveil civilian movement without probable cause. 

Indeed. 

The Problem is the Business Model

Houston, we have a problem

The National Library of Medicine has stopped indexing articles from Scientific Reports after excessive fraud in its articles.

Call me a pinko, but the problem here is as a result of the aggressively for=-profit academic publishing industry. 

If you are being paid thousands of dollars for each article published, there is no incentive to aggressively pursue fraud, because that is lost sales.

The National Library of Medicine has stopped indexing articles from Scientific Reports in MEDLINE because the journal’s inclusion in the world’s largest biomedical library is under review, Retraction Watch has learned. 

“Following its significant growth in recent years, Scientific Reports is currently being reviewed by the US National Library of Medicine (NLM),” the journal’s chief editor Rafal Marszalek wrote in an Oct. 20 email we have seen. “We have been informed that during this period, indexing of newly published content in MEDLINE and archiving in PubMed Central (PMC) are paused, and will not appear in PubMed.”

Marszalek did not say why NLM is reviewing Scientific Reports, which is the largest journal in PubMed in terms of articles indexed. But according to MEDLINE’s policies page, NLM re-evaluates journals if “there are significant changes to a journal,” noting the library monitors journals “for changes in publication practices, such as annual publication volume or primary article content types.”

………

The anomaly was discovered by Tom Lahey, a self-described “independent, self-funded researcher with an interest in public health and research.” Lahey maintains a set of tools based on PubMed data, including a page showing journals ranked by total articles in PubMed. Scientific Reports has had the most articles indexed in PubMed each year since 2019, by Lahey’s count. He is familiar with the typical delays in data processing, but when he noticed lower-than-usual numbers for Scientific Reports for two months in a row, he opened a support ticket with NLM to inquire why. The PubMed team suggested he contact the publisher, which he did. Marszalek replied to him on October 20 revealing NLM was reviewing the journal.  

The insertion of the for-profit operators into academic publishing has been an unmitigated disaster.  (more details in the video)

Headline of the Day

Trumpism Is Failing Because It Is Very, Very Stupid

—The New Republic, on the election results.

I think that there is an element of whistling past the grave yard here, when one says, that MAGA is destined to fail because it is too stupid, one is way too optimistic.

The 2026 midterms are over, which means that the 2028 presidential election is now underway. President Donald Trump occasionally jokes that he would run for a third term despite the Constitution’s two-term limit. The reality is that Republicans will need to find a new front-runner over the next two years.

This will be a fraught moment for their coalition. Trump’s approval ratings are in the low 30s. The Iran war remains insoluble. Trump cannot achieve victory through conventional strength of arms. He lacks the credibility and temperament to reach a permanent agreement with Tehran. The Iranian government, for its part, seems content to watch high oil prices choke the life out of the American economy.

There will be a temptation for Republicans to propose doing Trumpism the right way, to achieve their goals without the errors that beset Trump’s second term. This is a fool’s errand. Trump’s mistakes were not a deviation from Trumpism; they were Trumpism. His political movement is, at its core, based on a rejection of knowledge and expertise. As a result, it is inherently self-destructive.

The question is not whether this will eventually fail, the question is whether it will fail before irreparable harm is caused.

Update on Nichémat

They are fine.

They spent about 4 hours in the ER being observed, and are still a bit out of it today, but at no time were they at risk of something serious.

No Blog For You!

My eldest is on the ER with an anaphylactic reaction to corn.

They are sensitive enough to the cereal that the smell of popcorn triggered the anaphylaxis. 

They should be fine, but I am cooling my heels in the waiting room waiting for them to be released.

Posted via mobile.

Speech and Debate Clause Anyone?

In response to investigations proposed by the incoming Democrats in Congress of the various Trump construction projects, including his ballroom, the Trump administration is threatening to prosecute Congressman who look into his dodgy building projects.

While the Trump might have some success, particularly under this Supreme Court, quashing a Congressional inquiry, it is literally unconstitutional to prosecute members of Congress, as this activity falls firmly under the Constitution's immunity for Congressional speech and debate.

It's a lame punk-ass move by a lame punk-ass DoJ.

The Trump regime is escalating its attacks on congressional Democrats preparing for sweeping oversight hearings. That tells us a lot about what’s keeping Trump and his cronies up at night.

On Saturday, Donald Trump ordered the Justice Department to investigate congressional Democrats over their recent promises to investigate him. On Sunday, Attorney General Todd Blanche went on CNN and declined to rule out prosecution. Asked whether the Democrats’ statements amounted to a crime, he said, “It depends on what’s said,” indicating there “could be” one.

By Monday, the regime had put its warning in writing. In a three-page letter to Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), the incoming chair of the House Oversight Committee, White House counsel Will Scharf warned that Democrats’ plans “may cross the line into blatant criminality.”

Just one teeny problem. The passage raising criminality cites no criminal precedent. The two Supreme Court decisions Scharf relies on, Watkins v. United States and Trump v. Mazars, aren’t criminal cases at all. They set limits on congressional subpoenas; they didn’t make issuing or threatening them illegal.

And for you constitutional nerds, Scharf never addresses that pesky Speech or Debate Clause, the constitutional provision that actually shields lawmakers from prosecution by the executive branch for their legislative acts.

Garcia's response has been to tell Trump and his minions to go Cheney themselves. 

 

Musk Ends Production of the Edsel Swasticar

So much winning.

After what is arguably a worse product introduction that Ford's nororious Edsel, the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ is throwing the towel in on his miserable excuse for a pickup truck.

Musk created a car with the style sense of a Trabant, the reliability of a Chevy Vega, the allure of the AMC Pacer, and the practicality of the Landmaster from the movie Damnation Alley.

Musk seems to think that the future for his care company is fully autonomous taxicabs, which, even if Tesla did not have the worst self-driving technology out there, (no radar, no lidar) would be insane.

I expect to see a shortage of Cybertruck spare parts within 3 years. 

Being Replaced by Something More Bizarrely Inexplicable

In this case, it is the replacement of Susie Wiles by Stephen Miller (יִמַּח שְׁמו) as Trump's Chief of Staff.

Well, I can say with certitude that Trump has selected the worst possible person to manage the White House.

We Are All Paraguay

A digital bank with close ties to the Paraguayan President just collapsed taking the bulk of the savings of about half of the Latin American nation's with it.

The President, Santiago Peña, who aggressively pushed the bank for years, has resigned, though the legislature rejected this, and the lower house voted to impeach him.

Gee, a dodgy bank run by a bunch of tech bros implodes and leaves the rest of us holding the bag.

Why does this sound familiar?

Paraguay’s rightwing president, Santiago Peña, resigned on Thursday after a political and financial crisis collapsed the South American country’s banking system in recent days.

At the centre of the crisis is Ueno Bank, which in just a few years under Peña went from an obscure digital bank to one of the country’s largest lenders, claiming to have about 60% of Paraguay’s adult population as customers.

Last Monday, the central bank ordered Ueno into resolution over insolvency, freezing the deposits of 3 million customers, leaving hundreds of thousands of families without access to money for food and basic daily expenses. Bank executives were arrested, and people took to the streets in massive protests.

In power since August 2023 and with a term running until 2028, the 47-year-old economist was already facing impeachment proceedings that had broad support.

………

Ueno Bank began as a finance company in the 1970s and, in 2021, was bought by Grupo Vázquez, one of Paraguay’s largest business and industrial conglomerates. At the end of 2023, it received authorisation from the central bank, already under Peña’s administration, to operate as a digital bank.

The bank rapidly expanded its operations, attracting customers with generous cash-back offers on groceries and sponsoring Paraguay’s national football team. On Wednesday, the players released a letter “demanding” a “forceful response” from the government and the justice system.

The bank came to manage between $800m and $850m in deposits from state and pension entities, including retirement funds, prompting criticism over conflicts of interest because of Peña’s previous shareholding ties to Ueno Holding.

Just to refresh your memory, Elon Musk wants to make Ecch (formerly Twitter) a bank just like Ueno.

(Update, November 6)

Peña has been convicted in an impeachment trial by the Paraguayan Senate and arrested by the police.

The significance of the Impeachment result is that it means that he loses any sort of legislative immunity.

We Don't Just Hate Comcast

We also hate T-Mobile. (And the rest of the telcos/mobile providers)

T-Mobile has agreed to improve the home internet service it provides to low-income New Yorkers after the New York Attorney General’s office found it drastically capped speeds for participants in a state-mandated affordable service program, and made the plans difficult to find.

The Affordable Broadband Act mandates home internet providers offer high-speed broadband plans at reduced costs to qualifying households. The service can cost no more than $15 per month for download speeds of 25 Mbps, or $20 per month for speeds of at least 200 Mbps. It’s open to households that receive government benefits including Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits and Home Energy Assistance Program benefits.

Just 15 households statewide were enrolled in T-Mobile’s Affordable Broadband Act plans, a spokesperson for Attorney General Letitia James said. Her office said the company coded its website so that information about the plans wouldn't appear in search engine results, despite the law's requirement that internet service providers make an effort to promote their affordable broadband plans.

James said customers in the program saw their speeds reduced more than 97%, to just 650 kilobits per second, after using 50 gigabytes of data in a month — a limit her office estimated a typical user would hit after four days of service.

Having essential services run by contemptible greed-heads is not working out well.

We Are F%$#ed

Have you ever heard of an El Niño atmospheric river?

Well, you are about to. 

The weather is dry for the moment, but signs across the atmosphere are painting a clear picture for when the first atmospheric river will bring rain to California.

As El Niño begins to lock into the atmosphere, it will continue to set up patterns like the one we will see next week, with lower pressure just offshore and a lingering dome of high pressure across the central United States.

Patterns like this that hold in place for a week or more are exceptional at squeezing out oceanic moisture in the form of atmospheric rivers – strings of the jet stream that become saturated with relentless rain. And the first of the season for Central California is taking shape for next week.

………

The next seven or so days look quite dry. A stable atmosphere overhead will make for a wonderful week of high temperatures in the upper 60s and low 70s across most of the Golden State.

The trouble comes when this stability moves east. With low pressure already spinning away in the Gulf of Alaska, any stable atmosphere that moves east will pull that Gulf of Alaska low south, where it will quickly be saturated with extra moisture from El Niño and form an atmospheric river.
 A clear signal for lower pressure across the atmosphere west of California is expected late next week, setting up likely rain events for the western United States. The Sacramento Bee

It is too early to say which day these long-lasting rains could ring out over California, but the probable window is approximately Nov. 11-16, with rain likely only lasting for a day or two.

Atmospheric river rains can be substantial, especially with extra fuel to work with thanks to El Niño. Many areas could quickly see a month's worth of rain in just a few days.

We are in for a world of hurt. 

Good News Everyone!

I invented a device that makes you read this in your head using my voice!

Following Tuesday's elections, we now have a very real possibility that the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact will be passed, rendering the Electoral College irrelevant.

The NVPIC is a proposed agreement that states would allocate electoral votes int he Presidential election according to the national popular vote totals.

If the states entering the agreement have a total of more than 269 electoral votes, then the winner will always be the candidate who gets the most votes.

Tuesday’s wave election swept Democrats into power in Congress. But the most seismic result for American politics and democracy may come out of the battleground states where Democrats just won trifecta control by taking both state houses and the governor’s mansion: Come January, Democratic legislators will have the votes to elect the next president by the popular vote.

State lawmakers could circumvent the Electoral College by enacting what’s known as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Under the current system, each state gets a set number of electors, and the candidate who wins enough states to accumulate at least 270 electoral votes becomes president. This system allows the winner of the popular vote to lose, as Al Gore did in 2000 and Hillary Clinton again in 2016. But the NPVIC would bypass the Electoral College, with each state that enacts the compact awarding its electors to the winner of the national popular vote. The compact would only take effect once states representing a majority of electoral votes sign on, ensuring that the winner of the national popular vote becomes president.

In April, Virginia became the 18th state to join the compact, bringing the total number of electoral votes pledged under the proposal to 222. On Tuesday, Democrats took trifecta control of state governments in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Nevada. That’s 61 electoral votes. Add in Alaska, where late-arriving votes are still being counted, and that’s 64. With Virginia on board, only 48 more votes are needed for the compact to reach 270 votes and take effect. The emerging math means there is a real chance that the next president is selected based on the national popular vote.

On the Always Deplorable and Frequently Entertaining Brandon Herrera

He will not be going to the US Congress in January, as he lost by 7 points in Tuesday's blue wave.

Katy Padilla Stout won the race for Texas’ 23rd Congressional District on Tuesday against Republican YouTuber Brandon Herrera, flipping the seat formerly held by Republican Tony Gonzales.

The Associated Press called the race for Padilla Stout, a San Antonio attorney and former teacher. The 23rd Congressional District, which includes a significant portion of the Texas-Mexico border, covers most of West Texas between El Paso and San Antonio, including the Big Bend region.

………

It was one of several victories in a historic night for Texas Democrats. Two Democratic representatives, Vicente Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar, held seats that were redistricted to favor Republicans. By late Tuesday night, Republicans had conceded three of the five seats their new congressional map was designed to flip.

The 23rd Congressional District, left largely untouched by the mid-decade redistricting efforts, voted for President Donald Trump by a 15-point margin in 2024.

Padilla Stout’s victory is the first time a Democrat has won the West Texas seat since 2012, when former Rep. Pete Gallego won the seat back from Republicans before subsequently losing his reelection bid.

………

Herrera sparked controversy throughout the campaign as Padilla Stout and others highlighted derogatory comments he has made on his YouTube channel and social media about women and jokes about the Holocaust.

Gonzales resigned from the seat in March amid scandal over an affair he had with a staffer who later died by suicide. Days before his resignation, Gonzales had been forced into a runoff in the Republican primary by Herrera, a staunch gun rights activist, by less than 1,000 votes.

Let's go Brandon, I guess.

I Approve

A group calling themselves the Capytistas has announced that they will be releasing the addresses of American oligarchs and their enablers.

Not generally a big fan of doxxing, but in this case, I will make an exception. 

An underground activist group says it plans to start openly doxing billionaires as part of a phased campaign against what it calls the American oligarchy—beginning this month with a release that maps the homes of Elon Musk, his brother Kimbal, and Tesla’s board, alongside investors and suppliers that keep the corporation afloat.

Two of its members, interviewed by WIRED on the condition of anonymity, say they spent the past year constructing dossiers on billionaires—and one trillionaire—and the people they consider their top lieutenants, using nearly every method available to a private investigator, and some that are not.

The pair say the group is international and includes grassroots activists, researchers, journalists, and artists, including some who received top honors in print, television, and digital media in their former careers. For security, many work in “silos” and do not know each other’s names. Through its connections, the group says it has raised more than $1.2 million from “a heartening number of wealthy class traitors” who share in the view that concentrations of extreme wealth and political power pose an “existential threat.”

In a press release Monday, the group says it intends to publish in coming releases more than 150 home addresses, most of them previously unreported. It also promises more than 3,500 records on people with a combined wealth of about $1.4 trillion, plus reporting on what the group alleges are “criminal exploits and security lapses.”

That last bit, revealing how oligarch bend and brek the law to their advantage is called, "Journalism."

………

Pressed on whether its strategy amounted to doxing, the Capytistas members agree that it does, saying they have no qualms with describing their efforts that way. The group has even taken as its creed an adapted quote from the late folk singer and labor organizer Utah Phillips: “Democracy is not dying, it’s being killed,” they say, “and those who are killing it have names and addresses.”

Most of the Capytistas’ work involves digging up property records, court filings, and the LLCs and trusts that wealthy people use to buy real estate. The activists say they turn occasionally, but far less often, to physical surveillance, human infiltration, and advertising intelligence, the location and profile data bought and sold through online ad markets.

To remain profitable, one of the Capytistas argued, the businesses billionaires operate need to continuously collect people’s personal information, often nonconsensually, even as their owners and executives enjoy relatively private lives—entire fortunes built around “doxmaxxing.”

A copy of the Musk dossier seen by WIRED sorts its subjects into tiers and contains 32 home addresses tied to Musk and his executives. Musk is the “primary target.” Tesla’s board members and top executives—among them board chair Robyn Denholm and Kimbal Musk—are “secondary targets.” Each profile pairs a critical biography, drawn from court rulings, labor board decisions, and securities filings, with a home address. Investors such as Vanguard and BlackRock and nearly 40 suppliers are considered “tertiary targets,” listed only by corporate office, factory, or mine.

………

The Capytistas say doxing gives them one thing above all: a sense among those targeted that someone is watching. Some, they hope, will simply fold under the sheer weight of that attention. For the rest, the group wants the public to make its displeasure well known, hoping for protests outside homes and on golf courses—confrontations with those who buy their way into government in the very places they go to escape all the outrage.

Privacy is the one thing that the group believes billionaires, and now trillionaires, value that activists can take away. “The Capytistas intend to level the playing field,” it says, “by giving oligarchs a taste of the invasions of privacy they commit, and monetize, every day.”

The Capytistas argue that by giving people the knowledge to protest the evil doers, they are actually making them safer, because the alternative is Luigi Mangione style violent vigilantism. 

As for me, I think, "Why not both?" 

Moar Election Updates

TIL that Johnson composed the music for 67 episodes of Dragonball Z.

[image or embed]

— Lindsay Beyerstein (@beyerstein.bsky.social) November 4, 2026 at 10:00 PM

This is actually true


Yeah, the Democrats swept statewide office in Texas

First, we need to note that Lauren Boebert is going down in Colorado's 4th Congressional district. (Cue Stephen Tyler of Aerosmith thinking, "Hah, hah, hah.")

Regarding the US Senate, the Democrats have at least 54 seats, with 2 races, Alaska and Mississippi (!) still too close to call.

In Texas, in addition to the Dems sweeping the statewide offices, the Texas House of Representatives now has a Democratic majority.

Also, the new Texas AG won't be pursuing out of state abortion and abortion medication providers.  Elections have consequences.

State legislatures have flipped to Democrats in Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and possibly Arizona.

Also, at least 5 governors flipped. 

I'm bummed that Prop 40 (the billionaire tax) appears to be going down to defeat in California. 

America's Finest News Source

Chuck Schumer Delivers Victory Speech To Previously Enthusiastic Crowd

—The Onion

Chef's kiss. This is perfect.

Quick Election Update

I'm going to sleep, but it appears almost certain that the Democrats will take control of the House and Senate.

In Texas, it appears that Greg Abbot has been turfed out as Governor of Texas, and Ken "The Most Corrupt Motherf%$#er in Texas" Paxton has lost to James Talerico, and the Democrats have won pretty much all of the state wide elections there.

And Kansas. Hoo boy!  First Democratic Senator from Kansas since the Roosevelt administration. 

Also it looks like Susan "I'm very concerned" Collins has lost in Maine, Abdul El-Sayed has won in Michigan, and Dems flipped 2 Senate seats in the Carolinas, 

W00t! 

Of Course It Didn't Save Money

It appears that Mike Huckabee's efforts to merge smaller school districts and shut down schools to save money actually cost more money.

I'm not sure if McKinsey was involved with this, but it's certainly a McKinsey result. 

When Mike Huckabee was the Arkansas governor in 2004, he wanted government to be more efficient. He signed a law to shut down tiny school districts with fewer than 350 students.

Over the next decade, 85 school districts merged with others, triggering the closure of 105 schools, most of them high schools.

Families and teachers protested. Some students had bus rides so long that they couldn’t participate in sports and other after-school activities. A 2022 study found that the mergers had accelerated depopulation in rural communities and depressed property values; that same year another study found almost no academic gains.

At least there was one potential payoff: saving taxpayers money.

What economic sense does it make to maintain a superintendent and a district office to serve just a couple hundred students? Consolidating tiny districts seemed like an obvious way to eliminate administrative overhead.

But a surprising new analysis by researchers at the University of Arkansas finds that the savings never materialized. Reductions in administrative overhead were offset by rising costs for transportation and instructional staff.

The study, presented Sept. 26 at the annual conference of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness in Baltimore, followed the finances of Arkansas school districts for two decades. It found no overall cost savings from consolidation — not immediately after districts merged and not more than a decade later.

………

So where did the savings go?

Administrative costs did fall. The researchers estimate that consolidation reduced administrative spending by as much as $138 per student, on average, according to their preliminary, unpublished calculations. Some instructional costs, including spending on education technology and textbooks, also declined, by as much as $92 per student.

But those savings were eaten up by higher costs elsewhere.

Transportation costs rose $24 per student initially and continued climbing over the years, growing to an additional $63 per student annually. Instructional staff costs — including teachers and aides, as well as math and reading coaches — rose by as much as $179 per student. Pupil-support costs, including guidance counselors and social workers, rose by as much as $61 per student.

The basic problem is that merging two districts doesn’t eliminate the need to educate the same number of children. And larger districts may create new layers of management or add more support staff, such as instructional coaches, counselors and aides.

Also money spent on consultants, I'm sure.

Interesting Historical Data Point

During WWII, and for a few years after, sugar supply was tightly restricted in the UK.  It turns out that the people who grew up under this regime achieved significant health benefits.

Obviously, correlation is not causation, but this definitely bears more research. 

They were born into a Britain still recovering from the hardships of war. Though the air-raid sirens had fallen silent, many everyday foods remained rationed, including sugar. Adults were restricted to about 3 tablespoons (40g) a day to stretch between cups of tea, baking and desserts; children were limited to less than a tablespoon. Babies and very young children were expected to have little or no added sugar.

Then, in 1953, the brakes came off. Separate restrictions on sweets and chocolate were lifted in February, followed by sugar in September. By the second half of 1954, average sugar consumption had almost doubled.

The lifting of postwar sugar rationing inadvertently created a natural experiment, whose consequences scientists are only beginning to unpick. A flurry of recent studies suggests that spending the first 1,000 days of life under sugar rationing may have left traces on people’s health more than seven decades later.

“What makes the end of sugar rationing particularly interesting is the nature of the exposure,” said Dr Jiazhen Zheng at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Guangzhou, China, who worked on several of the recent studies. “In September 1953, sugar availability changed quite abruptly at the population level, largely because of policy rather than individual choice. In a sense, history created an experiment that we could never deliberately run over a human lifetime.”

The first of this recent wave of sugar rationing studies was published in the journal Science two years ago. Dr Tadeja Gračner at the University of Southern California and her colleagues used data from the UK Biobank to compare the health of people born shortly before and after sugar rationing ended in the UK. Some had been exposed to this low sugar environment only during their time in the womb; others remained exposed for months or years, while those conceived once rationing ended were not exposed at all.

Gračner found that the longer people had spent under rationing, the lower their risk of developing type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure in mid- to later life: those exposed throughout their first 1,000 days had a 35% lower risk of type 2 diabetes and a 20% lower risk of high blood pressure than those who had never experienced rationing.

This might explain Keith Richards' longevity. 

BB Rating?

Anthropic is expected to receive junk bond status following its IPO.

I believe that the term here is, "Dead Man Walking," not $2,000,000,000.00 initial public offering.

Anthropic expected to receive high ‘junk’ rating from credit agencies following IPO, FT report says

Anthropic is expected to receive a high “junk” rating from credit rating agencies following its initial public offering, according to a report from the Financial Times.

The FT says the investment giant Blackstone, the anchor investor in a recent $63 billion deal to finance Anthropic’s chips, told investors in the deal that it expects the AI lab to receive a “high” junk rating after its IPO. Previously, the FT notes, Blackstone had said the opposite: that the Claude maker would receive an investment-grade rating (indicating low risk for lenders) before 2027 rolls around.

Now Blackstone expects double B range rating, the top tier of speculative “junk” grade, according to the reporting.

Is it too early to call a Lehman moment?