Every headline like this should make clear that him imposing tariffs by fiat is illegal and unconstitutional.

I hate the fact that the media just reports that he’s doing it without ever citing Article 1, Section 8:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Every one of these tariff manipulations has been 100% illegal, because the supposed emergencies he’s using to excuse them are nonexistent.

I’m in a similar boat, except I’m waiting to find out if my multinational will be willing to move me. I’m the lead developer, admin, product owner, and architect for a very publicly-facing web presence for my company, so I’m hoping they’ll be willing to in order to keep me happy.

And if they won’t, I’m going to be applying for similar jobs abroad the moment I know.

It’s not just for me. My son is trans and my daughter is gay. I have to get them both out of here before the ovens start firing up.

If you get the impression that at this point I believe the U.S. is a lost cause, you’re correct. If we make it to the 2026 elections intact, the elections are valid, and Democrats sweep, I’ll be extremely surprised.

I really, really hope there’s a “next time” to do better in, but at the moment I’m not particularly confident there will be.

We’re pretty thoroughly fucked.

I… can’t dispute that.

“Hey Carl?”

“Yeah, Mikey?”

“Remember when we-”

“No, and I don’t want to.”

“Inostrancevias, Carl. We were inostrancevias. And you-”

“Goddamn it, Mikey, I told you I hate remembering this.”

“Haha! Yeah. You did. So, like, we were inostrancevias, it was like 260 million years ago, and you - haha! - you managed to choke to death!”

“Shut up.”

“On a rock! Because you thought it was a small animal! Haha!”

“…I hate you so much.”

“Ever wonder what that rock reincarnated as? Eh?”

“I’m leaving.”

Sorry, I’ll make up for it with this weird music video that wishes you a nice day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mkiGMtbrPM

Hope it helps.

Ouch. Guess I deserved that inevitable retaliation.

For fuck’s sake, it was created by an act of Congress. This should be a no-brainer. Either the president’s job is to execute on the law as determined by Congress, not to just overrule it by fiat, or we have a king.

Other ways to feel old:

• Smells Like Teen Spirit came out in 1991, just 22 years after the moon landing. As of now, it’s been 34 years since its release.
• Back to the Future came out in 1985, which is 40 years ago, and only 30 years from 1955.
• The Matrix is a 1999 film. It was old enough to drink… five years ago.
• Alex Warren, who is currently #2 on the Billboard Hot 100, hadn’t yet reached one year old on 9/11.
• The video game Doom came out in 1993. Pac-Man came out in 1980. 13 years between the games. But it’s been 32 years since Doom.

Should I go on?

Not all of them. Some tariffs are in place, others temporarily paused. It’s a very intentional mess.

What blows my mind is that the obvious market manipulation will continue to work. The market plunged today, but it will be back up again as soon as Trump announces another tariff pause.

It’s… Well, it’s 100% fraud.

I’m more than ten years old, so I can remember all the way back to the Before Times. 2015. President Obama.

Try to imagine the response from Republicans if Obama had hired people this fucking stupid. Try to imagine the clusterfuck that would have rightly ensued if his advisors had used an insecure and easily hacked messaging app to illegally circumvent the Presidential Records Act.

Now try to picture those same Republicans applying the same standards to Trump. Doesn’t work, does it? It’s like trying to imagine a square circle.

Because it’s not “both sides.” There are three sides, here. You’ve got Republicans, who are universally awful. Then you’ve got corporatist Democrats, who are also universally awful, although marginally less so. Finally, you have actual Democrats like AOC, who aren’t awful in the slightest.

The “both sides” people never differentiate between the second two groups. What we need is more of group #3 and less of groups #1 and #2, but pretending all we have is #1 and #2 is bullshit that doesn’t help anyone.

For LLMs, yes.

Thank you. As useful as LLMs can be under certain circumstances, they are not the only type of AI.

Here’s the thing: They’re actually a natural fit for it, because if anyone ought to understand the use cases, strengths, weaknesses, and implications of a technology, it would be a university that’s centered around research on technology.

So they looked carefully at this guy’s paper, realized he was making outrageous and unsupportable claims about what AI could do, failed to reproduce his results, and concluded he was full of shit. That’s what we really should be able to expect from MIT.

Imagine if a Biden lawyer has made that argument.

I love this for Xitter. Make it even worse, and fuck up the one piece of it that was sort of functional.

I use Opera on a Mac for all my Bing-based Edge-recommending needs.