10 days to go

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c86yjnw4x49o

Second carrier's not arriving in-theater until tomorrow at the earliest, and the latest report I saw on its position made it look more like Monday or so.

They might go without it, but if they're waiting on the Ford, they'll be cutting it close to fit the opening strike into this weekend.

Votes? That’s pre-9/11 stuff. We already bombed Iran and launched missile strikes and a special forces raid to capture the head of state of Venezuela without Congress voting on it, within the last few months. They don’t appear to be planning an actual invasion (moving troops in-theater takes time and is impossible to hide) and Congress lets presidents bomb anyone they like without restraint, these days.

There have been no decisions about refunds. The court avoided addressing that.

That topic will surely go back to the courts, kicking and screaming

Personally think it should not get refunded. There’s no sane way to get it back to its source. And no one group should be making profit from it. Best if it stays with the government like a federal forfeiture so in theory we all benefit from it as citizens , maybe it goes against the national debt or lessens our deficit next year.

Not a bad idea, but how do we prevent this from creating incentives to engineer similar situations in the future?

Presumably such future attempts would be stopped immediately given this ruling.

So illegal actions shouldn't have consequences for anyone?

That's a good way to deter such acts in the future

That’s a separate issue from where the already paid tariffs should go

No, it isn't. Because there is no deterrent against future illegal actions in the future, if there won't be reimbursements.

Trump will just declare illegal tariffs again, until the Scotus strikes it down and then repeat

>"maybe it goes against the national debt or lessens our deficit next year."

And help to prosecute those who broke the law and raised illegal tax /s

Government is a poor spender, we should not be handing them more money

We all participate in this system through, most of “us” passively. Use the normal means to enact the change you want to see

> Oddly the countries that don’t do this have far better outcomes

Go on

For example, smoking tobacco in Japan… wait a minute

If anything, this is evidence that coding elegance has value.

The unexpected part here being that AI brings specks of elegance to a terrible, inelegant codebase.

> Signal can have a stigma "I don't do anything illegal, so why should I bother ..."

Aside: I see similar attitudes when I mention I use VPN all of the time

It's quite common if you work in a team of engineers, or in a large company with many engineers.

Having consistent machine and OS and app configurations enables better (lower cost, higher reliability) scripting and tooling solutions in things like repos and infrastructure.

Not unlike consistency in language and compiler choices.

Tangentially, I did this once years ago.

I had consumed a large amount of spicy food the day prior, and it pulled the fire alarm right in the middle of a phone screen. I foolishly thought I could silently and secretly handle both tasks at once.

These were the days before background noise filters. The poor candidate obviously heard unpleasant things but neither of us acknowledged it directly.

He accepted the job though. But this still bothers me decades later. Never again!

My favorite (or perhaps most regrettable) example of this is Albert Einstein.

Obviously brilliant, but a real piece of shit when it came to women and fatherhood.

Still, I can appreciate his scientific work nonetheless.

You're right. But there's a generational aspect to this too.

Younger generations won't touch Facebook. It's seen as a platform for "old" people. So Facebook is on a modest decline. (Enter Instagram and Tiktok and all that to fill the void...)

Younger western generations perhaps. 3 billion people use Facebook still.

This is a myth. Unless people in their 20s are now considered old.

> Remind me, which Ferengi Rule of Acquisition is this?

You made my morning with this quip.