A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Friday issued a temporary restraining order blocking the U.S. Agency for International Development from placing thousands of employees on administrative leave and hurriedly evacuating workers stationed overseas. The order also reinstates all employees placed on leave earlier this week.

The American Foreign Service Association and the American Federation of Government Employees filed a lawsuit Thursday night aimed at halting the apparent effort to decimate the foreign aid agency and reposition it under the auspices of the State Department. Hundreds of stateside employees were locked out of both the agency headquarters and its computer systems at the start of the week, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been named the agency’s acting administrator.

AFSA and AFGE’s lawsuit alleges that the administration’s plans violate the constitutional separation of powers, the take care clause that tasks the president with faithfully executing federal law, and in multiple instances the Administrative Procedures Act.

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols halted all of the Trump administration's workforce actions—leave placements, evacuation of overseas personnel and the shutting off of employees' access to USAID's various computer systems—until February 14 at midnight, in order to allow a fuller discussion of the legal issues.

At a hearing Friday, Acting Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate confirmed that just days after placing around 500 employees on administrative leave, USAID planned to place another 2,200 workers on leave Friday night, moves that many believe to be a prelude to their termination. Karla Gilbride, who just last week was removed from her position as general counsel of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, said Friday’s planned leave notices, many of which were aimed at USAID workers stationed overseas, would cause a myriad of harms to the agency’s workforce.

“They will be locked out of all computer systems, all payment systems, email systems, as well as systems that inform them of security threats,” she said. “This would imperil their safety, the operations of USAID and their institutional partners, and it adds to the instability of these already unstable regions.”

Shumate argued that despite all of the employee groups’ emphasis on constitutional and statutory violations, the case still should be channeled either through the Merit Systems Protection Board or the Federal Labor Relations Authority.

But Nichols, a Trump appointee, seemed frustrated with the government’s refusal to contemplate pausing their actions so that more substantive legal arguments could take place.

“You may be right, and with briefs and 24 hours, you might even convince me of that,” he said. “But I’ve got eight hours, no briefs [from you], and the hypothetical possibility that 2,200 people will be put on administrative leave and claims of irreparable harm.”

Nichols said he would issue an order before midnight Friday blocking the new administrative leave notices from going out, as well as any agency efforts to evacuate employees currently stationed overseas. He added that he may include language instructing the agency to rescind the roughly 500 leave notices that went out earlier this week, but that he was not yet sure on that point.

This story has been updated at 11:03 p.m.

]]>

The US Department of Transportation has ordered states to kill their implementation plans related to the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program, according to a memo obtained by WIRED that was later made public. The decision appears to halt in its tracks a $5 billion program designed to fund state projects to install electric vehicle charging stations across the United States.

Officials at the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), which manages the program, ordered state transportation directors to “decertify” the plans that all 50 states have used to outline where and how they will build their charging stations, and with what companies they’ll contract to do so. States have followed those plans to build more than 30 charging stations across the US, with hundreds more on the way.

Surveys show prospective car buyers cite the country’s lagging electric vehicle charging infrastructure as a major reason they won’t buy electric. The NEVI program, established by 2021’s Infrastructure Law, was the government’s answer to those concerns. It attempts to build chargers along thousands of miles of federal highway, with a focus on places that might not otherwise be able to financially support a charger.

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The new injunction prohibits advertising and age verification restrictions in the SCOPE Act, which aims to make social media safer for teenagers.

The Department of Education (DOE) was sued Friday by a California student association demanding an "immediate stop" to Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) "unlawfully" digging through student loan data to potentially dismantle DOE.

"The scale of the intrusion into individuals’ privacy is enormous and unprecedented," the lawsuit said.

According to the University of California Student Association (UCSA)—which has over 230,000 undergraduate students as members—more than 42 million people in the US have federal student loans and face privacy risks, if DOGE's access to their information isn't blocked. Additionally, parents and spouses of loan borrowers share private financial information with the DOE that could also be at risk, the lawsuit alleged.

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by Justin Elliott and Robert Faturechi

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

After creating an uproar last week for demanding access to a sensitive system at the Treasury Department, officials affiliated with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency are expected to turn their attention to another restricted database next week, according to two people with knowledge of their plans.

The new target, the sources said, is a database that tracks the flow of money across the government, from the Treasury to specific agencies and then to the ultimate destination of the funds.

The data in the system, known as the Central Accounting Reporting System, or CARS, is considered sensitive. Many transactions flowing to the same place, for example, can suggest a new national security priority for the U.S. government. People who work with the system have in the past been briefed that the database may be of interest to foreign intelligence agencies, said a third source who has familiarity with the system.

Musk’s affiliates are expected to arrive at Treasury offices in Parkersburg, West Virginia, next week, according to two sources, prompting concern among the staff there. The offices house a large number of staffers who work for the previously obscure Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the part of the Treasury that manages accounting and payments systems.

A spokesperson for DOGE did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Neither did a Treasury spokesperson.

CARS is intended to standardize accounting across government agencies and account for how money is moved. It’s unclear what specifically the DOGE team’s interest in the system is. When government auditors have examined the system in the past, the Treasury has pushed for them to do it in secure environments or on the Fiscal Service’s laptops.

DOGE’s earlier actions at the Treasury have become a focus of congressional scrutiny and a federal court battle in recent days. Musk’s team initially tried to halt money going to the U.S. Agency for International Development from the Treasury’s payment system.

A veteran career official within the Treasury pushed back and then retired in the face of the demands. On Friday morning, The Washington Post reported that one of the DOGE-affiliated staffers involved in that standoff, Tom Krause, a Silicon Valley tech executive, would be replacing the career official who resigned, which would give him power over the Bureau of the Fiscal Service’s payment and accounting systems.

Federal workers unions took the matter to court, and a judge on Thursday temporarily limited Musk’s team to read-only access.

The Treasury has assured Congress that the DOGE-affiliated staffers have read-only privileges for the payment system, but Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has raised concerns that the agency may have misled lawmakers, citing reports from Wired that a DOGE staffer had “read-write” access for several days. “Treasury’s refusal to provide straight answers about DOGE’s actions, as well as its refusal to provide a briefing requested by several Senate committees only heightens my suspicions,” Wyden said in a statement on Friday.

One of the two Musk-affiliated officials probing the Treasury’s systems resigned Thursday after The Wall Street Journal discovered racist posts on a social media account linked to him.

The posts included “I was racist before it was cool” and “I would not mind at all if Gaza and Israel were both wiped off the face of the Earth.”

It’s not clear which personnel are scheduled to make the trip to West Virginia or if the resignation will affect those plans. By Friday morning, Musk was posting on X about bringing the staffer back, and Vice President JD Vance backed the idea, saying, “I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life.” In a press conference, Trump said he wasn’t familiar with the situation but backed Vance’s take.

Do you have any information about DOGE and the Trump administration’s moves at Treasury that we should know? Robert Faturechi can be reached by email at robert.faturechi@propublica.org and by Signal or WhatsApp at 213-271-7217. Justin Elliott can be reached by email at justin@propublica.org or by Signal or WhatsApp at 774-826-6240.

Alex Mierjeski contributed research.

Today's links

• "The Fagin figure leading Elon Musk’s merry band of pubescent sovereignty pickpockets": Maureen Tkacik on the monstrous corporate raider running DOGE.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2024
• Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

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"The Fagin figure leading Elon Musk’s merry band of pubescent sovereignty pickpockets" (permalink)

While we truly live in an age of ascendant monsters who have hijacked our country, our economy, and our imaginations, there is one consolation: the small cohort of brilliant, driven writers who have these monsters' number, and will share it with us. Writers like Maureen Tkacik:

https://prospect.org/topics/maureen-tkacik/

Journalists like Wired's Vittoria Elliott, Leah Feiger, and Tim Marchman are absolutely crushing it when it comes to Musk's DOGE coup:

https://www.wired.com/author/vittoria-elliott/

And Nathan Tankus is doing incredible work all on his own, just blasting out scoop after scoop:

https://www.crisesnotes.com/

But for me, it was Tkacik – as usual – in the pages of The American Prospect who pulled it all together in a way that finally made it make sense, transforming the blitzkreig Muskian chaos into a recognizable playbook. While most of the coverage of Musk's wrecking crew has focused on the broccoli-haired Gen Z brownshirts who are wilding through the server rooms at giant, critical government agencies, Tkacik homes in on their boss, Tom Krause, whom she memorably dubs "the Fagin figure leading Elon Musk’s merry band of pubescent sovereignty pickpockets" (I told you she was a great writer!):

https://prospect.org/power/2025-02-06-private-equity-hatchet-man-leading-lost-boys-of-doge/

Krause is a private equity looter. He's the guy who basically invented the playbook for PE takeovers of large tech companies, from Broadcom to Citrix to VMWare, converting their businesses from selling things to renting them out, loading them up with junk fees, slashing quality, jacking up prices over and over, and firing everyone who was good at their jobs. He is a master enshittifier, an enshittification ninja.

Krause has an unerring instinct for making people miserable while making money. He oversaw the merger of Citrix and VMWare, creating a ghastly company called The Cloud Software Group, which sold remote working tools. Despite this, one of his first official acts was to order all of his employees to stop working remotely. But then, after forcing his workers to drag their butts into work, move back across the country, etc, he reversed himself because he figured out he could sell off all of the company's office space for a tidy profit.

Krause canceled employee benefits, like thank you days for managers who pulled a lot of unpaid overtime, or bonuses for workers who upgraded their credentials. He also ended the company's practice of handing out swag as small gifts to workers, and then stiffed the company that made the swag, wontpaying a $437,574.97 invoice for all the tchotchkes the company had ordered. That's not the only supplier Krause stiffed: FinLync, a fintech company with a three-year contract with Krause's company, also had to sue to get paid.

Krause's isn't a canny operator who roots out waste: he's a guy who tears out all the wiring and then grudgingly restores the minimum needed to keep the machine running (no wonder Musk loves him, this is the Twitter playbook). As Tkacik reports, Krause fucked up the customer service and reliability systems that served Citrix's extremely large, corporate customers – the giant businesses that cut huge monthly checks to Citrix, whose CIOs received daily sales calls from his competitors.

Workers who serviced these customers, like disabled Air Force veteran David Morgan, who worked with big public agencies, were fired on one hour's notice, just before their stock options vested. The giant public agency customers he'd serviced later called him to complain that the only people they could get on the phone were subcontractors in Indian call centers who lacked the knowledge and authority to resolve their problems.

Last month, Citrix fired all of its customer support engineers. Citrix's military customers are being illegally routed to offshore customer support teams who are prohibited from working with the US military.

Citrix/VMWare isn't an exception. The carnage at these companies is indistinguishable from the wreck Krause made of Broadcom. In all these cases, Krause was parachuted in by private equity bosses, and he destroyed something useful to extract a giant, one-time profit, leaving behind a husk that no longer provides value to its customers or its employees.

This is the DOGE playbook. It's all about plunder: take something that was patiently, carefully built up over generations and burn it to the ground, warming yourself in the pyre, leaving nothing behind but ash. This is what private equity plunderers have been doing to the world's "advanced" economies since the Reagan years. They did it to airlines, family restaurants, funeral homes, dog groomers, toy stores, pharma, palliative care, dialysis, hospital beds, groceries, cars, and the internet.

Trump's a plunderer. He was elected by the plunderer class – like the crypto bros who want to run wild, transforming workers' carefully shepherded retirement savings into useless shitcoins, while the crypto bros run off with their perfectly cromulent "fiat" money. Musk is the apotheosis of this mindset, a guy who claims credit for other peoples' productive and useful businesses, replacing real engineering with financial engineering. Musk and Krause, they're like two peas in a pod.

That's why – according to anonymous DOGE employees cited by Tckacik – DOGE managers are hired for their capacity for cruelty: "The criteria for DOGE is how many you have fired, how much you enjoy firing people, and how little you care about the impact on peoples well being…No wonder Tom Krause was tapped for this. He’s their dream employee!"

The fact that Krause isn't well known outside of plunderer circles is absolutely a feature for him, not a bug. Scammers like Krause want to be admitted to polite society. This is why the Sacklers – the opioid crime family that kicked off the Oxy pandemic that's murdered more than 800,000 Americans so far – were so aggressive about keeping their association with their family business, Purdue Pharma, a secret. The Sacklers only wanted to be associated with the art galleries and museums they put their names over, and their lawyers threatened journalists for writing about their lives as billionaire drug pushers (I got one of those threats).

There's plenty of good reasons to be anonymous – if you're a whistleblower, say. But if you ever encounter a corporate executive who insists on anonymity, that's a wild danger sign. Take Pixsy, the scam "copyleft trolls" whose business depends on baiting people into making small errors when using images licensed under very early versions of the Creative Common licenses, and then threatening to sue them unless they pay hundreds or thousands of dollars:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/24/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-licenses-has-enabled-a-new-breed-of-superpredator/

Kain Jones, the CEO of Pixsy, tried to threaten me under the EU's GDPR for revealing the names of the scammer on his payroll who sent me a legal threat, and the executive who ran the scam for his business (I say he tried to threaten me because I helped lobby for the GDPR and I know for a fact that this isn't a GDPR violation):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/13/an-open-letter-to-pixsy-ceo-kain-jones-who-keeps-sending-me-legal-threats/

These people understand that they are in the business of ripping people off, causing them grave and wholly unjust financial injury. They value their secrecy because they are in the business of making strangers righteously furious, and they understand that one of these strangers might just show up in their lives someday to confront them about their transgressions.

This is why Unitedhealthcare freaked out so hard about Luigi Mangione's assassination of CEO Brian Thompson – that's not how the game is supposed to be played. The people who sit in on executive row, destroying your lives, are supposed to be wholly insulated from the consequences of their actions. You're not supposed to know who they are, you're not supposed to be able to find them – of course.

But even more importantly, you're not supposed to be angry at them. They pose as mere software agents in an immortal colony organism called a Limited Liability Corporation, bound by the iron law of shareholder supremacy to destroy your life while getting very, very rich. It's not supposed to be personal. That's why Unitedhealthcare is threatening to sue a doctor who was yanked out of surgery on a cancer patient to be berated by a UHC rep for ordering a hospital stay for her patient:

https://gizmodo.com/unitedhealthcare-is-mad-about-in-luigi-we-trust-comments-under-a-doctors-viral-post-2000560543

UHC is angry that this surgeon, Austin's Dr Elisabeth Potter, went Tiktok-viral with her true story of how how chaotic and depraved and uncaring UHC is. UHC execs fear that Mangione made it personal, that he obliterated the accountability sink of the corporation and put the blame squarely where it belongs – on the (mostly) men at the top who make this call.

This is a point Adam Conover made in his latest Factually podcast, where he interviewed Propublica's T Christian Miller and Patrick Rucker:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_5tDXRw8kg

Miller and Rucker published a blockbuster investigative report into Cigna's Evocore, a secret company that offers claims-denials as a service to America's biggest health insurers:

https://www.propublica.org/article/evicore-health-insurance-denials-cigna-unitedhealthcare-aetna-prior-authorizations

If you're the CEO of a health insurance company and you don't like how much you're paying out for MRIs or cancer treatment, you tell Evocore (which processes all your claim authorizations) and they turn a virtual dial that starts to reduce the number of MRIs your customers are allowed to have. This dial increases the likelihood that a claim or pre-authorization will be denied, which, in turn, makes doctors less willing to order them (even if they're medically necessary) and makes patients more likely to pay for them out of pocket.

Towards the end of the conversation, Miller and Rucker talk about how the rank-and-file people at an insurer don't get involved with the industry to murder people in order to enrich their shareholders. They genuinely want to help people. But executive row is different: those very wealthy people do believe their job is to kill people to save money, and get richer. Those people are personally to blame for the systemic problem. They are the ones who design and operate the system.

That's why naming the people who are personally responsible for these immoral, vicious acts is so important. That's why it's important that Wired and Propublica are unmasking the "pubescent sovereignty pickpockets" who are raiding the federal government under Krause's leadership:

https://projects.propublica.org/elon-musk-doge-tracker/

These people are committing grave crimes against the nation and its people. They should be known for this. It should follow them for the rest of their lives. It should be the lead in their obituaries. People who are introduced to them at parties should have a flash of recognition, hastily end the handshake, then turn on their heels and race to the bathroom to scrub their hands. For the rest of their lives.

Naming these people isn't enough to stop the plunder, but it helps. Yesterday, Marko Elez, the 25 year old avowed "eugenicist" who wanted to "normalize Indian hate" and could not be "[paid] to marry outside of my ethnicity," was shown the door. He's off the job. For the rest of his life, he will be the broccoli-haired brownshirt who got fired for his asinine, racist shitposting:

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/06/nx-s1-5289337/elon-musk-doge-treasury

After Krause's identity as the chief wrecker at DOGE was revealed, the brilliant Anna Merlan (author of Republic of Lies, the best book on conspiratorialism), wrote that "Now the whole country gets the experience of what it’s like when private equity buys the place you work":

https://bsky.app/profile/annamerlan.bsky.social/post/3lhepjkudcs2t

That's exactly it. We are witnessing a private equity-style plunder of the entire US government – of the USA itself. No one is better poised to write about this than Tkacik, because no one has private equity's number like Tkacik does:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

Ironically, all this came down just as Trump announced that he was going to finally get rid of private equity's scammiest trick, the "carried interest" loophole that lets PE bosses (and, to a lesser extent, hedge fund managers) avoid billions in personal taxes:

https://archive.is/yKhvD

"Carried interest" has nothing to do with the interest rate – it's a law that was designed for 16th century sea captains who had an "interest" in the cargo they "carried":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/29/writers-must-be-paid/#carried-interest

Trump campaigned on killing this loophole in 2017, but Congress stopped him, after a lobbying blitz by the looter industry. It's possible that he genuinely wants to get rid of the carried interest loophole – he's nothing if not idiosyncratic, as the residents of Greenland can attest:

https://prospect.org/world/2025-02-07-letter-between-friendly-nations/

Even if he succeeds, looters and the "investor class" will get a huge giveaway under Trump, in the form of more tax giveaways and the dismantling of labor and environmental regulation. But it's far more likely that he won't succeed. Rather – as Yves Smith writes for Naked Capitalism – he'll do what he did with the Canada and Mexico tariffs: make a tiny, unimportant change and then lie and say he had done something revolutionary:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/02/is-trump-serious-about-trying-to-close-the-private-equity-carried-interest-loophole.html

This has been a shitty month, and it's not gonna get better for a while. On my dark days, I worry that it won't get better during my lifetime. But at least we have people like Tkacik to chronicle it, explain it, put it in context. She's amazing, a whirlwind. The same day that her report on Krause dropped, the Prospect published another must-read piece by her, digging deep into Alex Jones's convoluted bankruptcy gambit:

https://prospect.org/justice/2025-02-06-crisis-actors-alex-jones-bankruptcy/

It lays bare the wild world of elite bankruptcy court, another critical conduit for protecting the immoral rich from their victims. The fact that Tkacik can explain both Krause and the elite bankruptcy system on the same day is beyond impressive.

We've got a lot of work ahead of ourselves. The people in charge of this system – whose names you must learn and never forget – aren't going to go easily. But at least we know who they are. We know what they're doing. We know how the scam works. It's not a flurry of incomprehensible actions – it's a playbook that killed Red Lobster, Toys R Us, and Sears. We don't have to follow that playbook.

---

Hey look at this (permalink)

• 10 things Chairman Andrew Ferguson could do today to help people with the cost of living https://twitter.com/BedoyaFTC/status/1887222389408215548?t=72YMDDbEwrxgwYbfDnaGQw

• The Business Community Is Extraordinarily Stupid https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/the-business-community-is-extraordinarily

• Stop Worshiping the American Tech Giants https://archive.ph/YqEem#selection-4600.1-4600.3

---

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Hacking the no-fly list is only bad if you like no-fly lists https://web.archive.org/web/20050210021849/http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/weblog/nb.cgi/view/vitanuova/2005/02/07/0

#20yrsago Toronto’s Bakka Books moving back to Queen St, March 1 https://web.archive.org/web/20050207210939/https://bakkaphoenixbooks.com/movingpage.html

#20yrsago EFF app helps sysadmins find sneaky logs before The Man does https://web.archive.org/web/20050213011718/http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2005_02.php

#20yrsago Canadian Internet pharmacies being strong-armed by US pharma http://www.michaelgeist.ca/resc/html_bkup/feb72005.html

#15yrsago Turd transplant leads to rapid weight-gain https://www.bbc.com/news/health-31168511

#10yrsago Anyone who makes you choose between privacy and security wants you to have neither https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/the-real-impact-of-surveillance/

#10yrsago The Seven-Year-Old Diet https://memex.craphound.com/2015/02/07/the-seven-year-old-diet/

#10yrsago Andy Offutt, insanely prolific porn pioneer https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/magazine/my-dad-the-pornographer.html

#10yrsago Samsung: watch what you say in front of our TVs, they’re sending your words to third parties https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2uuvdz/samsung_smarttv_privacy_policy_please_be_aware/

#1yrago The CHIPS Act treats the symptoms, but not the causes https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/07/farewell-mr-chips/#we-used-to-make-things

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Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Boskone (Boston), Feb 14
  https://schedule.boskone.org/62/

• Picks and Shovels with Ken Liu (Boston), Feb 14
  https://brooklinebooksmith.com/event/2025-02-14/cory-doctorow-ken-liu-picks-and-shovels

• Picks and Shovels with Yanis Varoufakis (Jacobin/virtual), Feb 15
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkIDep7Z4LM

• Picks and Shovels with Charlie Jane Anders (Menlo Park), Feb 17
  https://www.keplers.org/upcoming-events-internal/cory-doctorow

• Picks and Shovels with Wil Wheaton (Los Angeles), Feb 18
  https://www.dieselbookstore.com/event/Cory-Doctorow-Wil-Wheaton-Author-signing

• Picks and Shovels with Dan Savage (Seattle), Feb 19
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-with-dan-savage-picks-and-shovels-a-martin-hench-novel-tickets-1106741957989

• Picks and Shovels at Another Story (Toronto), Feb 23
  https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/picks-shovels-cory-doctorow-tickets-1219803217259

• Ursula Franklin Lecture (Toronto), Feb 24
  https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/2025-ursula-franklin-lecture-cory-doctorow-tickets-1218373831929

• Picks and Shovels with John Hodgman (NYC), Feb 26
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-john-hodgman-picks-and-shovels-tickets-1131132841779

• Picks and Shovels (Penn State), Feb 27
  https://www.bellisario.psu.edu/assets/uploads/CoryDoctorow-Poster.pdf

• Picks and Shovels at the Doylestown Bookshop (Doylestown, PA), Mar 1
  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-picks-and-shovels-a-martin-hench-novel-tickets-1146230880419

• Picks and Shovels at Red Emma's (Baltimore), Mar 2
  https://redemmas.org/events/cory-doctorow-presents-picks-and-shovels/

• Picks and Shovels with Matt Stoller (DC), Mar 4
  https://www.loyaltybookstores.com/picksnshovels

• Picks and Shovels with Lee Vinsel (Richmond, VA), Mar 5
  https://fountainbookstore.com/events/1795820250305

• With Great Power Came No Responsibility: How Enshittification Conquered the 21st Century and How We Can Overthrow It (Indiana University/virtual), Mar 7
  https://events.iu.edu/mediaiub/event/1783095-with-great-power-came-no-responsibility-how-enshitti

• Picks and Shovels at First Light Books (Austin), Mar 10
  https://thethirdplace.is/event/cory-doctorow-picks-shovels-1

• Picks and Shovels at Dark Delicacies (Burbank), Mar 13
  https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3257/Thu%2C_Mar_13th_6_pm%3A_Pick_%26_Shovel%3A_A_Martin_Hench_Novel_HB.html#/

• Cloudfest (Europa Park), Mar 17-20
  https://cloudfest.link/

• Picks and Shovels at Imagine! Belfast (Remote), Mar 24
  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cory-doctorow-in-conversation-with-alan-meban-tickets-1106421399189

• Picks and Shovels with Peter Sagal (Chicago), Apr 2
  https://exileinbookville.com/events/44853

• ABA Techshow (Chicago), Apr 3
  https://www.techshow.com/

• Picks and Shovels at Morgenstern (Bloomington), Apr 4
  https://morgensternbooks.com/event/2025-04-04/author-event-cory-doctorow

• Teardown 2025 (PDX), Jun 20-22
  https://www.crowdsupply.com/teardown/portland-2025

• DeepSouthCon63 (New Orleans), Oct 10-12, 2025
  http://www.contraflowscifi.org/

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Recent appearances (permalink)

• Elon Musk's Digital Coup and the Future of the Internet (System Crash)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEZPa-YzaUs

• A Weird Way to Win the Trade War with Trump (Canadaland)
  https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/1100-a-weird-way-to-win-the-trade-war-with-trump/

• Fear and Loathing in Silicon Valley (How To Academy)
  https://www.ivoox.com/en/novelist-and-activist-cory-doctorow-fear-and-audios-mp3_rf_138898836_1.html

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Latest books (permalink)

• The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.

• "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

• "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

• "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

• "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

• "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

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Upcoming books (permalink)

• Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025

• Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025

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Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

• Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay for Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Status: second pass edit underway (readaloud)

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

• Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2025

Latest podcast: Canada shouldn't retaliate with US tariffs https://craphound.com/overclocked/2025/02/02/canada-shouldnt-retaliate-with-us-tariffs/

---

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

---

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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

Students at the university created their own news organization — The Retrograde — after they reached an impasse with administrators regarding oversight and the firing of the campus newspaper’s editor-in-chief.

Fresh off five wins at the Grammys, rapper Kendrick Lamar will headline Super Bowl LIX’s halftime show this Sunday. Here is everything you need to know about the artist. 

Birthplace: Calabasas, CA

Genre: Grammy rap

Favorite Instrument: Mouth

Childhood Pen Pal: Aubrey Graham of Toronto 

Biggest Fear: Confrontation

Biggest Fan: Drake’s lawyer

Conservative Turn: 2027

Legacy: Teaching a new generation that poetry can be mean

The post Artist Profile: Kendrick Lamar appeared first on The Onion.

Senator Mitch McConnell fell twice and was escorted out of the Capitol in a wheelchair as a precautionary measure, one of multiple health issues the former majority leader has had in recent years. What do you think?

The post Mitch McConnell Leaves Capitol In Wheelchair After Fall appeared first on The Onion.

"NFL to remove ‘End Racism’ messaging in end zone ahead of Super Bowl. — New York Times

We at the NFL have been committed to racial justice ever since the George Floyd protests brought renewed criticism of our treatment of Colin Kaepernick. This is why we began proudly displaying the slogan “End Racism” in the end zones of games in 2021.

That said, for this year’s Super Bowl, we’ve decided to switch to broader, all-encompassing slogans like “Choose Love” and “It Takes All of Us.” We assure you this change has nothing to do with President Trump attending the big game; it is simply about acknowledging a more inclusive range of perspectives. Here’s a breakdown of why we chose the new slogans and a look at some of the other slogans we’ll be rolling out soon.

“Choose Love”
The beauty of this phrase is that it can mean many different things to different people. Choosing love could mean supporting the right for all people, regardless of sexual orientation, to choose who they love. Or, if you’re Kansas City Chiefs placekicker Harrison Butker, choosing love could mean supporting the idea that all women should choose to love having twelve kids and being subservient to their husbands.

“It Takes All of Us”
Much like “Choose Love,” this phrase could mean anything from “It Takes All of Us to Stop Elon Musk from Turning Our Country into a Fascist Broligarchy” to “It Takes All of Us to Stop the Steal, so Let’s Dress Up Like Camo Vikings and Storm the Capitol.”

“Better Together”
Peanut butter and jelly; Carrie and Aidan; semi-automatic firearms and bump stocks; well-funded public transit and walkable neighborhoods; Brooks & Dunn. “Better Together” works for pretty much anything, which makes it a perfect NFL slogan.

“Women”
Is this our way of advocating for women’s reproductive rights? Or a subtle show of support for banning trans women from women’s restrooms? We’ll never tell.

“People Exist”
This is an unobjectionable fact that even Marjorie Taylor Greene can’t refute.

“Call Your Mom”
Maybe this is a plea to let your MAGA mother back into your life. Or maybe it’s a reminder that, during this dark moment in American history, it’s important to stay close to the people that matter most. Either way, your mom probably wishes you would call more often.

“You Know What They Say About [Insert Region in Which Game Is Taking Place]: If You Don’t Like the Weather Here, Just Wait Five Minutes. It’ll Change”
This folksy expression is heralded as truth in every single part of the country, whether you believe in climate change or believe that the weather is controlled by a secret cabal of Democrats and Jewish billionaires.

“‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ by John Denver Is an Absolute Banger”
We have yet to find a single American who doesn’t love this song. And if John Denver were still alive, he’d be the NFL’s permanent halftime show performer.

“Emilia Pérez’s Karla Sofía Gascón Should Not Win the Oscar for Best Actress”
In a rare moment of pop culture unity, this is something conservatives and liberals both firmly believe, albeit for entirely different reasons.

“We Have No Idea Who Those Weird HeGetsUs.com Commercials Are for, Either”
You know exactly which commercials we’re talking about—the ones with black-and-white footage of civil unrest, where they intercut footage of Black Lives Matter protests with footage of the January 6 insurrection, as if to suggest they’re morally equivalent and equally bad. Which, we can only imagine, has got to piss off folks on the right just as much as folks on the left. Plus, the text overlaid over the footage seems to be promoting a sort of liberal “peace, love, and forgiveness” version of Jesus that definitely doesn’t appeal to evangelicals. And yet, the organization behind HeGetsUs.com is also staunchly anti-LGBT, so it’s not like their message is going to resonate with a young, secular audience either. So you have to wonder, who exactly are these commercials for? And also, isn’t it a little weird to have a somber ad sandwiched in between goofy ads for State Farm Insurance and avocados from Mexico? Is that really the most appropriate place for serious, pro-Jesus messaging? Like, what exactly are they trying to accomplish here? The whole thing makes no sense. So, we guess the point is, we’re just as confused as you are about those ads.

“Racism”
Drop the “End” part, and this once again becomes a palatable slogan. Because whether you want it to end or continue forever, we can all agree that racism is a thing, and either way, the NFL supports you.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
Just kidding, that's the last human being. The robot takes him out for walks once in a while.

Today's News:

According to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, about 65,000 federal workers have taken the resignation offer. The New York Times puts that number into context, given the size of the federal workforce.

In other words, the federal government is an enormous work force that already experiences sizable turnover every year. In addition to workers who leave the government to retire or simply to quit, about another 50,000 to 60,000 are terminated every year for disciplinary or performance reasons, or because their appointments or funds expired. A small number — around 3,400 — die each year while employed by the government. All these departures are typically replaced by about 240,000 hires each year.

While the resignation count might seem large, the denominator is a lot bigger.

Tags: government, New York Times, resignation

There are no concise handles in our English language to describe creative people. Considering the range of creative expression and tools Houston artist Candice D’Meza explores and utilizes in her practice, including theater, filmmaking, critical pedagogy, rituals, and activism, those oft-overused words in arts writing, “multidisciplinary” and “interdisciplinary,” are accurate. From Fatherland, a solo, autobiographical meditation on grief and the perils of ancestral veneration; to A Maroon’s Guide to Time and Space, an Afrofuturist vision of Harriet Tubman as a multidimensional time traveler, D’Meza’s theatrical work is highly experimental, firmly grounded in the actor’s technique, and deeply connected to ancient African and Diasporic African spiritual technologies, including Vodou, and the cosmologies of the Dogon and the Dagara people of Burkina Faso. The descriptive “serious play” is also applicable to D’Meza’s approach to art making. Like any great playwright, from Shakespeare to George C. Wolfe, she understands laughter is serious business, as serious as your life. 

On Friday, Feb 7, The Catastrophic Theatre presents the world premiere of Miss Laraj’s House of Dystopian Futures, conceived by D’Meza and co-directed by D’Meza and fellow hyphenated art maker T Lavois Thiebaud. The production is set in a post-apocalyptic world where civilization has been devasted by “a myriad of human-made cruelties.” Nature, in a variety of guises, including talking animals and trees, a storytelling rock, and other “anthropomorphic primordial entities,” come together to try and convince humans of their potential to create a better future. The tropes of children’s television are used for some grown-up talk about the future of the planet. 

D’Meza, an African American-Haitian Queer mother of three, sees a direct parallel between contempt and abuse of the Earth’s environment and the current assault on Queer communities. “I feel a bit Octavia Butler-ish,” says D’Meza. “I didn’t know this moment was coming so quickly. We premiere just as Trump has made this official declaration that it’s the United States policy that there are only two genders and pulled out of the Paris agreement.” 

Through its complex mix of traditional theater, dance, music and singing, lighting, and video, Miss Laraj’s House of Dystopian Futures posits that non-human relationships can inform and transform the ways we look at such issues as trans rights, gender inequality, and mutual aid. “Nature has a gender variety that is large and expansive, and varied eco-systems where multiple plants can thrive, come in and out of symbiosis, and still find their way to a new way of being,” says D’Meza. In this theatrical context, animals, plants, and elements such as earth and water are informed by African cosmologies, including the aforementioned grumpy, storytelling rock. “Art is considered a mineral practice,” says D’Meza, referring to the five elements of the Dagara people of Burkina Faso. “Because an artist is drawing up from their bones and DNA — an archived story that is coming from this larger archive of humanity.” 

The name, Miss Laraj, is a mash-up of beloved PBS host Mister Rogers of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and the bawdy, Black, transgender Miss Roj from George C. Wolfe’s play The Colored Museum (a role D’Meza played in her youth). As in much of her work, technology and ancient rituals intersect in surprising, sometimes humorous ways. D’Meza is one of two digital characters who appear as screen projections; and then there’s the “mushroom cam,” which transmits what’s happening to humans on terra firma from the perspective of mycelium — the roots that connect and enable plants to exchange water, carbon, nitrogen, and other minerals. The mushroom-cam’s projections are fed into old television sets dispersed throughout the space. James Templeton created the video for the production while the immersive set, which includes a thrust and pieces suspended above the seats, was designed by Afsaneh Aayani. 

For D’Meza, our collective resistance to the possibilities of and working toward a healthier, less violent, and more inclusive future has everything to do with a crisis of imagination. “The imagination has been colonized,” says D’Meza. “It has been ripped from us as something that is inefficient and childlike, and something we must part ways with in order to achieve adulthood and function in the world. But I find imagination is the only tool that helps us to wrap our head around what a new society could look like.” 

With this in mind, D’Meza uses the expansive palette of multidisciplinary theater to conjure a futurist vision that the audience can feel viscerally and physically. 

“Once the body experiences it, it’s hard not to remember,” says D’Meza. “I want to bring all of these communities that I love so much and am experiencing at multi-levels to a place where this is the world so that maybe we can start to imagine what the future could look like and build what can be.” 

 

Miss Laraj’s House of Dystopian Futures runs February 7 – March 1, 2024, at the Midtown Arts and Theater Center Houston (MATCH). Tickets can be purchased at matchouston.org, by calling the MATCH box office at 713-521-4533, or in person by visiting the MATCH box office at 3400 Main Street. Performances are Thursdays at 7:30 PM, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 PM, and Sundays at 2:30 PM, with a Special Monday Night performance to be announced. Tickets to all performances are Pay-What-You-Can.

The post Candice D’Meza and “Miss LaRaj’s House of Dystopian Futures” appeared first on Glasstire.

Howdy, folks, and welcome back to HHR. Today, we’re still in New Caney, taking a visit to what may be the cheapest place to get groceries in town. This is Grocery Warehouse, located at 17844 US-59, New Caney, TX 77357. Grocery Warehouse is what is commonly referred to as a salvage grocer. They sell items acquired from non-traditional sources at a discount, and yes, sometimes the items are close to or past their expiration/best-by date. ...

Andrew Taake received a six-year sentence for assaulting officers on Jan. 6. He was arrested Thursday on an outstanding charge of soliciting a minor.

The Greenville-based treatment center has closed after the death of an 11-year-old boy the day before Thanksgiving.

Okay, I need to be quiet because I’m just outside his office. You can probably hear him through the door right now. He’s selling sketchy supplemental health insurance plans to senior citizens by phone using his talking buttons. It’s insane.

Here, walk with me because he’s demanding a double Puppychino latte. He insists I make it at home because he hates the waste of nonreusable cups. “HOME (pause) MADE, (pause) HOME (pause) PUPPY (pause) AIR MILK (pause) MOM,” he ordered with his buttons.

You see, two years ago, I got a few of these voice buttons for him to press with his corn-chip-scented paws. He caught on really fast; he’s some kind of a genius dog, and it was adorable. It started with “WALK” and “TREAT,” and quickly, he was putting together short sentences like “LOVE FOOD NOW” and “WINNIE PLAY HIDING.” Our lives were definitely enhanced by this other, now audibly sentient presence, albeit with my recorded voice chirping back at us.

I don’t remember programming the button rack to use the phrases “PART B,” “CO-INSURANCE,” or “100 PERCENT OF OUT-OF-POCKET COST COVERAGE FOR JUST PENNIES A DAY.” If I’m being perfectly honest, it was just a year ago that he stopped confusing “LEASH” and “SHEESH,” but that’s probably my fault, because I thought it would be cute if he had an attitude.

Bear with me while I use this frothing wand. Between you and me, I don’t know if he’s working for someone else or just developed this business idea for himself, but I’m pretty sure what he is doing is illegal. He seems to be fleecing senior citizens by getting their bank info after convincing them he has an impressive supplemental Medicare plan. I’m not entirely sure of the scheme, because he won’t give me the password for his computer.

Three months ago, we were just cruising along with the button conversations; he kept buttoning to me, “LOVE YOU, MOM,” and I would button him back, “LOVE YOU, WINNIE,” and we were so full of love and happiness. I mean, he could tell me when he had to do his business! Now, granted, I usually knew even before we had buttons, because he would just stand by the door, but it was so cute when he would button-speak a message to me, “POTTY PARTY (pause) NOW (pause) PLEASE,” and therefore be talking to me with my own voice. I guess it was slightly creepy, but you get it.

Then, last week, I came home from work and found him in my office. He swung towards me like Alex P. Keaton, sitting boyishly in my ergonomic chair. All the talking buttons had been rearranged and put on my desk.

“What’s happening, buddy?” I asked. "Wanna go for a walk?” And I kid you not, he put one paw to his lips in a shushing motion and pointed at a list of names and phone numbers on the computer screen with his other paw. He had the phone on speaker, and I heard an older woman on the other end of the line asking, “Will my monthly premium go up?”

I watched as he tapped out on his buttons: “NO (pause) GO (pause) UP (pause). GO OUT.” This clearly impressed the woman, and she agreed to purchase the insurance. Winnie pumped his paw, briefly muted the call, and pressed the talking button that said “YES.” He took down her info with some deft taps into the keyboard using his manicured claws—I use this great new grooming tool called “Pokes No More” to trim down his nails, which comes with a peanut butter mask for his face. Then he buttoned, “BYE BYE,” ended the call, sauntered over to the corner of the room, and took a giant dump. Classic Winnie.

Listen, I gotta run this Puppychino back up to him before I head out to pick up his dry cleaning and get him a Sweetgreen salad, and I know his order will be just an assortment of meat with a lot of specific instructions about the mixing, but just suffice it to say, maybe don’t go down this road with teaching your dog how to speak with buttons. If you do, you’ll find yourself quoting Winnie (whose words are in my voice, so it sounds like it’s me): “SHEESH.”

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go…

1. I’m supposed to live with my boss and her husband for months

I have been working at my company for two years, and I get along well with my boss, who is a woman in her early thirties. Her husband also works for the same startup and we are all on a work trip together for a few months in a foreign country. The company is providing community housing (with private beds and bathrooms) for commuting workers that holds about 10 people, and a few two-bedroom condos.

Before we arrived, my boss, her husband, my coworker, and I were under the impression that we would be the four people filling the two condos — me and my coworker in one, my boss and her husband in the other. When my coworker arrived, she was taken to the community housing and given a room, and when we arrived, my boss and her husband were moved into one bedroom of an apartment and I was moved into the other bedroom of the same apartment. When I asked if my coworker and I were going to move into the other condo once it became available in a few days, I was told no.

I brought up the problem to my boss’ boss and said that I am concerned about living with my boss and her husband for the next three months, but for the short term it is not a problem. He said that it’s a valid concern, and that he would work on it and that I should suck it up for about a week.

About a week has passed, and my coworker who I originally was going to live with has expressed her preference for staying where she is because she is already settled in, and I was informed by my boss that I am to keep living with her and her husband for the foreseeable future. This is so my boss’ boss and another male coworker can live in the other apartment and my coworker can stay where she is.

I am quite uncomfortable with this situation and have expressed this to my boss, my boss’ boss, and the person in charge of housing, and I am not sure what to do next. I am excited about this job and really enjoy working with my team, but working 72 hours a week with my boss and her husband and then going home with them is just a bit too weird for me. Any advice?

How firmly have you told your boss’s boss and the person in charge of housing that this won’t work for you? This isn’t less-than-ideal housing for a couple of nights in an emergency; this is three months of your life outside of work, and they almost certainly have other solutions available if you make it clear that the current plan is a no-go for you. If, out of a desire to be flexible and not demanding or to seem like a team player, you’ve been anything less than than crystal clear that this is a no for you, it’s time now to get much more emphatic.

Talk to your boss’s boss again, state firmly that you’re not on board with this, and say you need to make arrangements to move, whether to the community housing where your coworker is or somewhere else. For example: “I was willing to do it for a week like you asked, but I’m not comfortable with this for longer than that. I’d like to move to the community housing where Jane is or, if that’s not possible, to a hotel or other solution.” If you get any pushback: “Given the length of the trip, it’s really not feasible and I wouldn’t have signed on for it under these conditions. I can take the lead on finding a place to move if that’s the fastest way to handle it.”

2. My bad coworker is finally leaving … should I stay?

I’ve had issues with my underperforming coworker, Sanford, as long as I’ve been with my small nonprofit. From missing agreed-upon deadlines 90% of the time, to saying misogynistic things to coworkers in meetings (he singles out our foreign-born female coworkers — never the males — to repeat things back to him, to make sure they understood it, despite them being fluent in English and just being one of the people listening in a group meeting), he has been a “missing stair” in our organization for years. Despite this, our CEO saw it fit to create a completely new director-level position for him, promoting him by two levels and firmly setting a ceiling on my career path within the organization, as his new role took parts of what I would do at that level.

Despite all the flexibility, raises, and promotions he’s received despite his skills and work ethic (or lack thereof), Sanford has landed another role outside of the organization and is leaving. Many of us are celebrating, but I’m left in a tricky situation. I’d also planned on leaving, in large part due to being tired of cleaning up after Sanford, but now my path for growth seems to have opened up.

Do I stick around and see if Sanford’s absence helps make my job easier and clears the way for my career growth, or do I continue to pursue other opportunities? I am in the final stages of interviewing at several other companies that would pay me substantially more than what I make in my current role.

Keep pursuing those other opportunities. Sanford is leaving because he got another job, not because your organization decided to deal with him (in fact, the opposite — they promoted him) so if you stay, you’re staying at an organization that not only accommodates Sanfords, but rewards and tries to retain them. They didn’t suddenly see the light and become a better place to work, and if another Sanford comes on the scene tomorrow, you’d have no reason to believe they’d do anything differently with the new one. Their handling of Sanford says something about who they are as an organization; you shouldn’t change your plans just because this one manifestation of those problems is gone.

3. New manager is changing things for the worse

I work in a grocery store bakery. My teammates and I all have things organized in a way that is best for our efficiency. This new assistant manager has rearranged things into a mess. I have allowed this to go on out of respect. It’s just not working. I have gone to my bakery manager as well as store management bout it. What do I do now? I have changed things around since no one has helped me. And she just changes it back. She has not been receptive to speaking about it. She struggles with a power struggle.

The thing about being in a power struggle with your manager is that the manager is nearly always going to win because of their power and authority relative to yours — or at least that’s the case if you’ve talked to levels of management above you and no one cares enough to intervene. You and your teammates can certainly try talking to your manager as a group and explaining why you want to switch things back — and that’s worth doing if you haven’t yet — but ultimately if you can’t convince her, you don’t have much recourse.

In that situation, your best bet is probably to roll with the changes for a while. If a month or two from now they’re still causing problems, raise it again at that point; sometimes when you’ve made a good-faith effort to roll with changes but can still point to problems, that’s an easier sell than when you resist them from the start.

4. Is it illegal to hire someone just to fire people?

I’m writing a novel and I have a character who is hired solely to make people redundant before moving on. I heard from someone recently that it is illegal to hire someone for the sole purpose of making people redundant/firing them, only to get rid of them after they’ve completed this job. Is that true?

You mean hiring someone specifically to conduct layoffs/firing but not keeping them on after that? Like George Clooney’s character in Up in the Air? It’s not illegal to do that. Typically, though, if a company brings in someone from the outside to do it, they’d go with a firm or contractor (also like Up in the Air), not hire a full employee to do it — but it wouldn’t be illegal to have them be an actual employee if for some reason they wanted to. (That said, your use of “make people redundant” makes me think you might be in the UK rather than the U.S., and I can only speak to U.S. laws.)

BALTIMORE—Mutely observing as the lewd query was entered into the prompt, a pioneering female archaeologist featured in a Google Doodle bore silent witness to local man Daniel Thornstein’s search for Zootopia porn, sources reported Friday. Harriet Boyd Hawes, an early 20th-century American archaeologist known for her groundbreaking work in Aegean antiquities, reportedly looked on wordlessly as Thornstein typed “judy hopps feet” and “judy hopps stinky feet” into the search bar below a digital illustration of a shovel and a dig site. Celebrated for her intellect, tenacity, and courage, Hawes, who is depicted in the doodle excavating Minoan artifacts on the island of Crete, remained stoic and unmoving when the phrase “chief bogo armpit fetish sweat” was employed to pull up both fan- and AI-generated pornography of animated Disney characters. At press time, the Google Doodle of the intrepid Professor Hawes reportedly maintained her unwavering stare as Thornstein scrolled through googled images of Nick Wilde, Finnick, and Yax triple-teaming Judy Hopps.

The post Pioneering Female Archaeologist In Google Doodle Bears Silent Witness To Man’s Search For ‘Zootopia’ Porn appeared first on The Onion.

WASHINGTON—Trying to figure out if he had a third brother he forgot about or if Don Jr. had just lost some weight, President Donald Trump was reportedly struggling Friday to remember how he was related to Elon Musk. “I know that if he’s this high up in my organization this Elon guy must be related to me somehow, but I don’t remember him being Fred or Robert’s kid, so maybe he was Marla’s brother or something,” said Trump, musing that he must at least be a cousin or nephew of some kind since he’s just as much of a “weirdo freak” as his other kids. “He’s ugly enough to be Eric’s son, that’s for sure, but I don’t know if he’s dumb enough. Maybe his family changed their name from Trump to Musk at Ellis Island. He’s got that weird way of talking like Melania, but I don’t think I’d let someone who doesn’t have the Trump blood rise that high. I assume he’s some kid from some affair I had, and in that case I should make sure he’s been written out of my will.” At press time, Trump was reportedly growing frustrated with Musk’s constant questions and wishing he could act more like his favorite son, Pete Hegseth.

The post Trump Struggling To Remember How He Related To Elon Musk appeared first on The Onion.

Newly unsealed emails allegedly provide the "most damning evidence" yet against Meta in a copyright case raised by book authors alleging that Meta illegally trained its AI models on pirated books.

Last month, Meta admitted to torrenting a controversial large dataset known as LibGen, which includes tens of millions of pirated books. But details around the torrenting were murky until yesterday, when Meta's unredacted emails were made public for the first time. The new evidence showed that Meta torrented "at least 81.7 terabytes of data across multiple shadow libraries through the site Anna’s Archive, including at least 35.7 terabytes of data from Z-Library and LibGen," the authors' court filing said. And "Meta also previously torrented 80.6 terabytes of data from LibGen."

"The magnitude of Meta’s unlawful torrenting scheme is astonishing," the authors' filing alleged, insisting that "vastly smaller acts of data piracy—just .008 percent of the amount of copyrighted works Meta pirated—have resulted in Judges referring the conduct to the US Attorneys’ office for criminal investigation."

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It’s understandably not going to get the same attention as the dismantling of numerous government agencies at the hands of rich unelected manbabies, but the Trump administration is also taking aim at all the promising parts of the 2021 infrastructure bill. Especially as it relates to broadband.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) contained a whopping $42.5 billion to expand broadband access. To make sure that money wasn’t wasted, it contained a number of provisions.

Like demanding ISPs try to provide at least one tier of service poor people could afford. Or provisions encouraging networks built with taxpayer money try to be open access, which, as we’ve discussed at length, help boost broadband competition and lower cost. As well as encouragement that taxpayer money be spent on the most future-proof technology (fiber) where applicable. Pretty common sense stuff.

The program is heavily managed by the states and the NTIA. But Trump’s new appointment to the NTIA, Arielle Roth, attended a Federalist Society event where she stated she’s going to scrap all of the must useful requirements for being “too liberal” and “too woke”:

“Roth, who is poised to lead the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, outlined her stance on the $42.5 billion Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment program in June, criticizing its emphasis on fiber deployments and what she described as a “woke social agenda” laden with additional regulatory burdens.”

“Requiring states to choose a statewide low-cost, low-income rate is just one of the ways that they’ve imposed extra legal requirements. There’s also climate change regulations, union mandates, wholesale access requirements… all kinds of left-wing priorities on the program that just divert resources away from the overall goal of closing broadband gaps. This is going to make the program less cost effective, and it’s going to undermine its goals.”

As with the DOGE stuff, authoritarians are having a good time stripping away stuff like this under the pretense that it’s “too woke,” or that by removing it they’re being more efficient. In reality they’re just stripping away this stuff due to corruption. They can’t just acknowledge they’re corrupt hacks, so the layers of performance are required to distract a lazy press and a broadly misinformed public.

The requirements to provide a cheaper tier to poor people have been aggressively opposed by giant telecom monopolies like AT&T (this “outrage” prompted a number of silly show hearings by the GOP). The provision that taxpayer money primarily be used for fiber upset Elon Musk, who wants to make sure his expensive, slower, less reliable Starlink service can hoover up a ton of subsidies.

Contrary to Republican whining, there’s a reason the NTIA didn’t want to throw billions of dollars at Starlink. If you’re going to spend taxpayer money on broadband, it makes sense to prioritize fiber and 5G wireless. Why? Starlink is capacity constrained, too expensive for many rural Americans, harms astronomical research, is destroying the ozone layer, and is run by a racist asshole.

I strongly suspect Republicans will throw as much of this money as possible at Starlink, ignore all the significant problems, then declare the U.S. broadband problem effectively “solved.”

A significant chunk of the $42.5 billion in infrastructure was likely poised to be funneled to the most innovative ISPs in broadband right now: cooperatives, municipally-owned broadband networks, and electrical utilities pushing into fiber. Instead, the NTIA under Roth will indisputably redirect that money to whichever big companies do the best job of kissing Trump’s ass.

Of course Trumpublicans voted against the infrastructure bill in the first place. And they’ve already begun taking credit for the benefits of the bill wherever possible among their constituents. But not before taking an axe to any parts of the bill that their biggest donors don’t like under the pretense of “eliminating waste” and “being efficient.”

It’s just corruption dressed up as efficiency, something press outlets covering this sort of thing still don’t illustrate particularly clearly to their readers.

News moves fast… While this post was getting finalized came news that Marko Elez has resigned after his racist tweets were found and publicized. Nevertheless, the point made herein still stands.

Amidst all the news today is news suggesting that Musk and his lackeys have had their access to the federal government’s payment systems limited. While it appears true that there are now some limits, it is too soon to celebrate before we know whether there are enough. The limits might only be on the data used by these systems, and not the code that powers these systems. And that difference is important.

The news from today relates to the negotiated restraining order a judge approved arising from the Alliance for Retired Americans v. Scott Bessett litigation. Per that order, access to the Treasury Department’s data has now been limited to just two DOGErs, Tom Krause and Marko Elez, and that that access is “read only”:

The Defendants will not provide access to any payment record or payment system of records maintained by or within the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, except that the Defendants may provide access to any of the following people:

o Mr. Tom Krause, a Special Government Employee in the Department of the Treasury, as needed for the performance of his duties, provided that such access to payment records will be “read only”;
o Mr. Marko Elez, a Special Government Employee in the Department of the Treasury, as needed for the performance of his duties, provided that such access to payment records will be “read only”;

This order comes after reporting from earlier this week that, despite promises from the Treasury Department that Krause had “read only” access, Elez appeared to have admin privileges and may have even pushed live code into the system. Nathan Tankus, who has been closely tracking the access issue also reported today that, from a practical standpoint, Elez’s access may have already been somewhat curtailed in response to public reporting.

On Saturday, they had given Marko read/write access and marked his access request as completed and closed. There was no mistake in their wording: they explicitly said they had given Marko  read/write access to SPS. On Wednesday, they reopened his access request and stated his permissions were now read only.

But reporting on what’s going on at Treasury in response to this court order keeps obscuring an important issue, and it’s leading people to breathe a sigh of relief that is potentially, and critically, not warranted. Indeed, there’s a way to read the court order that should be cause for alarm, not relief.

True, it is good that access to Americans’ social security numbers is limited to just two Muskers, and that their access is limited, although there is a lack of clarity for what these limitations mean. It may mean that they cannot change the data, and it may also mean that they cannot download or share it, but “read only” is not defined in the order, so it’s hard to be sure.

It is also not clear that it goes beyond payment records. Per the order access is limited to “any payment records,” which presumably includes Americans personal information. And access is also limited to “any payment system of records.” But “payment system of records” is a term desperate for definition, because it’s not at all clear that it applies to what it really needs to apply to.

What is really dangerous is for these renegades to have access to the software code that makes the payments out of Treasury. But this provision looks like it only prevents them from accessing the system that handles how Treasury handles the records about whom to pay. It does not look like this injunctive provision extends to anything that controls the payments themselves. It looks like any number of DOGErs (beyond just Krause and Elez) could still have access to those systems and the software Treasury uses to make payments (even if they don’t have direct access to the records of payments). There appears to be nothing in this order to limit any DOGEr’s access to not just see the software code but potentially also change the code, upload the code, and run the code.

If anything, the negotiated settlement suggests that DOGE very much still intends to do such things, given that Krause and (previously) Elez still needed access to records “for the performance of [their] duties.” What duties are these? How do they relate to actual payments? What are they still doing in these systems?

This lawsuit of course may not have been the right vehicle to limit their access to the software code, given that it was brought to address the separate problem of the the privacy harm resulting when any of them can see Americans’ personal information. But that’s not the only harm the nation faces if these guys still have control over the computers that handle whether and how America pays its bills. It is critically important that reporting recognize that this question has not been fully answered in a way that can give anyone confidence that our entire economy does not still rest in their unauthorized hands.

by Avi Asher-Schapiro, Christopher Bing, Annie Waldman, Brett Murphy, Andy Kroll, Justin Elliott, Kirsten Berg, Sebastian Rotella, Alex Mierjeski, Pratheek Rebala and Al Shaw

On President Donald Trump’s authority alone, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has been unleashed on federal agencies. Employees from Musk’s companies and those of his allies, as well as young staffers he’s recruited, are wresting authority from career workers and commandeering computer systems.

While some have been public about their involvement, others have attempted to keep their roles secret, scrubbing LinkedIn pages and other sources of data. With little information from the White House, ProPublica is attempting to document who is involved and what they are doing.

Musk’s team, known as the Department of Government Efficiency, has already thrown entire swaths of the federal government and its programs into disarray — programs that serve millions of Americans.

Musk himself has made no secret of his intentions, saying that DOGE is a “wood chipper for bureaucracy” and that he is “deleting” agencies.

A White House spokesperson wrote, “Those leading this mission with Elon Musk are doing so in full compliance with federal law, appropriate security clearances, and as employees of the relevant agencies, not as outside advisors or entities.” None of the people identified responded to requests for comment.

We are still reporting. Do you have information about any of the people listed below? Do you know of any other Musk associates who have entered the federal government? You can reach our tip line on Signal at 917-512-0201 . Please be as specific, detailed and clear as you can.

Jacob Altik, 32

Lawyer

Connected to: Executive Office of the President

Altik is a 2021 graduate of the University of Michigan Law School. He clerked for D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee known for critiquing the administrative state. For the last year and a half, he worked as a corporate litigation associate at Weil, where he co-authored a detailed legal analysis on administrative law jurisprudence at the Supreme Court. Last year, he was selected to begin a clerkship for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch in the 2025 term, which is set to begin this summer.

Anthony Armstrong, 57

Senior Adviser to the Director

Connected to: Office of Personnel Management

Musk link: Worked on Musk’s purchase of Twitter

Armstrong is a technology banker at Morgan Stanley who worked on Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter — since rebranded as X — in 2022. He has been given an influential role at OPM, which handles personnel issues across the federal government. Since Trump took office, OPM has spearheaded the new administration’s efforts to dramatically reduce the federal workforce and roll back telework and remote work policies.

Riccardo Biasini, 39

Senior Adviser to the Director

Connected to: Office of Personnel Management

Musk link: Former engineer at Tesla, executive at the Boring Company

Biasini is an engineer and former executive who has worked at two of Musk’s companies, the Boring Company and Tesla. He has also taken a high-ranking role at OPM. Biasini was listed as the contact person for the government-wide email system put in place by the Trump administration and used to send messages directly from OPM to millions of federal workers across the government, according to a recent court filing .

Brian Bjelde, 44

Senior Adviser

Connected to: Office of Personnel Management

Musk link: Vice president of people operations at SpaceX

Bjelde is a longtime SpaceX employee who’s spent more than 20 years at the company, according to his LinkedIn profile, where he’s had a variety of jobs, including as managing director of the “food services group.” He previously worked for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He’s been referred to in press reports as a “top DOGE Lieutenant,” working at OPM to slash head count. CNN previously revealed that Bjelde had informed OPM staff of a plan to cut 70% of the agency’s workforce. The New York Times reported that Bjelde helped Musk cut staff at Twitter following its takeover.

Akash Bobba, 21

Senior Adviser to the Director

Connected to: Office of Personnel Management

Bobba was named by Wired magazine as part of a team of six young engineers picked by Musk for his DOGE team. A recent graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, Bobba worked as an intern at Meta, the social media company, and at Palantir, the software and data analytics firm that is a major defense contractor. Bobba is listed in personnel records as an “expert” at OPM, where he has reportedly been able to access internal databases. He graduated from high school in 2021; in his graduation speech, featured in the Spotlight New Jersey newspaper, he told his fellow graduates that, in life, the “answers we deserve demand discomfort.”

James Burnham, 41

General Counsel

Connected to: Executive Office of the President

Burnham is a former litigation partner at Jones Day and a high-ranking Justice Department and White House official from the first Trump administration. The New York Times first reported his involvement with DOGE as a lawyer in January. His title at DOGE is listed internally as general counsel, according to records reviewed by ProPublica. Burnham previously served as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. On a website for one of his past companies, Burnham is described as having played a “central role” in the selection and confirmation processes for Gorsuch, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and then-Judge Amy Coney Barrett.

Nate Cavanaugh, 28

Connected to: General Services Administration

Cavanaugh is an entrepreneur who has founded companies focused on intellectual property management and small-business finance. He has been interviewing staffers at the GSA as part of the DOGE team, according to those who have spoken with him. GSA procures technology tools, real estate, and other services for federal government agencies. In published interviews, Cavanaugh has expressed an admiration for tech luminaries, including Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg, and has said he is “very interested in crypto.”

Edward Coristine, 19

Expert

Connected to: Office of Personnel Management

Musk link: Interned at Neuralink

Coristine is a recent undergraduate student at Northeastern University and part of the group of young DOGE staffers detailed to OPM, the government’s human resources office. Wired reported that Coristine interned at Neuralink, Musk’s brain-computer interface company. Friends of Coristine told Northeastern University’s independent student newspaper that Musk was one of Coristine’s idols and that while he finished the fall 2024 semester, he did not return to school for the spring term. According to CBS News, Coristine has been seeking access to the Small Business Administration’s internal records on behalf of DOGE.

Steve Davis, 45

Musk link: Longtime Musk lieutenant, CEO of the Boring Company

Davis has been a senior executive and close associate of Musk’s for over two decades, working with him at SpaceX, X and the Boring Company. He was one of the first people to be associated with the DOGE effort last year. The New York Times reported he was on early calls with Musk as they conceived of the DOGE effort and explored ways to cut federal programs. Bloomberg reported that Davis has helped recruit staffers for DOGE.

Marko Elez, 25

Connected to: Treasury Department

Musk link: Worked as an engineer at X and SpaceX

Elez works at the Treasury Department, a staffer at the office of the Secretary of Treasury confirmed in a call with a ProPublica reporter. Wired reported Feb. 4 that Elez, who graduated from Rutgers in 2021 and studied computer science, has gained access to the highly sensitive payment systems of the U.S. Treasury Department. According to Elez’s LinkedIn bio, which was recently deleted, he was most recently an engineer at X in New York for roughly a year and an engineer at SpaceX in the Los Angeles area for around three years before that. Elez reportedly resigned Feb. 6 after The Wall Street Journal reported that he has links to a social media account that posted racist comments online.

Luke Farritor, 23

Executive Engineer in the Office of the Secretary

Connected to: Department of Health and Human Services

Musk link: Former SpaceX intern

Farritor works as an executive engineer at the HHS, according to agency data. He studied computer science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and interned at SpaceX, working on its Starlink Wi-Fi team and Starship launchpad software, according to his Linkedin profile. In March 2024, he received a Thiel fellowship , a two-year program founded by billionaire tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel that awards a $100,000 startup grant to students who drop out of college.

Stephanie Holmes, 43

Human Resources

Holmes is running human resources at DOGE, according to government workers who have been in meetings with her. A former lawyer with Jones Day, a firm that frequently represents Trump, she was previously the chief people officer at Oklo, a nuclear energy company chaired by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. She also ran her own HR consulting firm, BrighterSideHR, which advised companies to pursue “non-woke” approaches to diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

Gautier “Cole” Killian, 24

Federal Detailee

Connected to: Environmental Protection Agency

Killian works at the EPA, according to agency data. His position is a federal detail, which typically allows government employees to transfer between agencies for temporary roles. He studied math and computer science at McGill University, where he conducted blockchain-related research. He recently worked as an engineer at Jump Trading, an algorithmic financial trading company, and is a member of the DOGE team, according to recent media reports .

Gavin Kliger, 25

Senior Adviser to the Director

Connected to: U.S. Agency for International Development, Office of Personnel Management

Kliger is a senior adviser at OPM, according to his LinkedIn profile. He spent nearly five years as a software engineer at Databricks, a cloud-based AI company. He is widely reported to be part of Musk’s DOGE team. On his personal Substack, he wrote an essay titled “Why I gave up a seven-figure salary to save America,” according to press reports, and described failed U.S. attorney general nominee Matt Gaetz, who withdrew from Congress amid allegations of sexual misconduct, as a “victim” of the deep state. On Feb. 3, workers at USAID received an email announcing that their Washington offices would be closed that day. Replies to the email were directed to Kliger at a USAID email address.

Keenan D. Kmiec, 45

Lawyer

Connected to: Executive Office of the President

Keenan Kmiec’s career veered from elite law to, more recently, crypto. After clerking for then-Judge Samuel Alito on a federal circuit court, he clerked on the Supreme Court for Chief Justice John Roberts in the 2006-2007 term, according to his LinkedIn. He did a stint at a corporate law firm and had his own firm focused on insider-trading litigation. In 2021, Kmiec began working for a Swiss foundation that promotes a blockchain called Tezos, according to his LinkedIn. He then served for nine months as CEO of a now-defunct startup called InterPop, which described itself as “forging the future of digital fandom with comic, game, and collectible NFTs minted responsibly on the Tezos blockchain.”

Tom Krause, 47

Expert

Connected to: Treasury Department

Krause is a part of DOGE’s efforts to gain access to sensitive federal payment systems as part of Musk’s larger effort to root out spending perceived as wasteful. According to the Treasury Department , Krause leads a team of people who have been granted “read-only” access to the code for the agency’s Fiscal Service payment system, which processes payments for major programs such as Social Security and Medicare. The department has clarified he is designated as a “special government employee.” The New York Times reported that Krause is affiliated with Musk’s DOGE team.

Katie Miller, 33

Spokesperson

In December, during the transition, Trump named Miller, who served in the first administration as a press secretary to Vice President Mike Pence, as one of the first members of DOGE. She is the wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. After reports that DOGE personnel accessed internal USAID data, Katie Miller defended the group, saying that “no classified material was accessed without proper security clearances.”

Justin Monroe, 36

Adviser

Connected to: FBI

Musk link: Senior director for security at SpaceX

Monroe is working as an adviser within the office of the director of the FBI, according to three people familiar with the matter. NBC News previously reported that an unnamed SpaceX employee has been placed in the FBI director’s office but said it could not confirm the individual’s identity. Monroe is a seasoned information security professional who previously served in the U.S. Navy as an information warfare officer .

Nikhil Rajpal, 30

Expert

Connected to: Office of Personnel Management

Musk link: Former Twitter employee

Rajpal is listed as an “expert” now working for OPM. An archived version of his personal website from 2018 lists his job title as an engineer at Twitter. Rajpal has extensive access to sensitive personnel data used by OPM, according to a source familiar with his role. Wired reported Feb. 5 that Rajpal also sought and was later granted access to data at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Wired magazine reported that he is part of the DOGE team.

Rachel Riley, 33

Senior Adviser in the Office of the Secretary

Connected to: Department of Health and Human Services

Riley works as a senior adviser at HHS, according to agency data. She previously worked for consultancy firm McKinsey & Company for about eight years, most recently as a partner leading teams advising the company’s state and federal government clients. She has been working closely with Brad Smith, a former health official in Trump’s first administration who ran DOGE during the transition period, according to media reports .

Michael Russo, 67

Chief Information Officer

Connected to: Social Security Administration

Musk link: Former chief technology officer of Starlink payment processor Shift4 Payments

Russo is a top-ranking technology official at the SSA, which disburses over $1.5 trillion in benefits annually. Russo spent over seven years as an executive and senior adviser with Shift4 Payments, a payment processing company that is both an investor in SpaceX and a payment processor for StarLink, according to his Linkedin . The CEO of Shift4 Payments, Jared Isaacman, has been nominated by Trump to lead NASA and is a friend of Musk’s who has purchased multiple spacewalks with Musk’s SpaceX company. Russo’s office will oversee the SSA’s over $2 billion IT budget.

Amanda Scales, 34

Chief of Staff

Connected to: Office of Personnel Management

Musk link: Previous employee of xAI

Scales’ name came to light in the first week of the Trump administration as federal employees received a memo putting them on notice that diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility initiatives in the federal government were now barred through an executive order — and to report efforts to conceal them. The message listed Scales as the point of contact for questions. Scales worked in the human resources department at xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company, prior to OPM. Before that, she worked in recruiting at ridesharing company Uber. She is reportedly an integral part of OPM’s sweeping efforts to restructure the federal workforce.

Thomas Shedd, 28

Federal Acquisition Service Deputy Commissioner and Director of Technology Transformation Services

Connected to: General Services Administration

Musk link: Software engineer at Tesla

Shedd’s work at Tesla focused on building software that operates vehicle and battery factories, according to a GSA press release . The office Shedd runs, known as TTS, helps federal agencies improve their tech practices. GSA leaders have told employees they plan to cut 50% of the budget. Shedd has told colleagues he plans to run TTS like a “startup software company,” according to Wired magazine , which will reportedly involve the use of artificial intelligence to analyze government contracts.

Brad Smith, 42

Smith was among the earliest names associated with DOGE outside of its founder. The New York Times reported he was helping lead the group. He served in a series of health-related policy roles during the first Trump administration, including being part of the board of Operation Warp Speed, the historic COVID-19 vaccine development program. According to The New York Times, which first reported Smith’s involvement in DOGE, he is a friend of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.

Christopher Stanley, 33

Musk link: Senior director for security engineering at X and principal engineer at SpaceX

Stanley is an experienced information security professional who has worked at multiple Musk-related companies. He is reportedly an aide to Musk at DOGE, according to The New York Times , and has a role at the White House. He was part of the initial transition team after Musk purchased Twitter in 2022, according to his LinkedIn profile . On inauguration day, Stanley assisted in the release of individuals associated with the Jan. 6 riots, he wrote on X.

Others Named in Musk’s Orbit

Beyond the figures ProPublica has confirmed, other media have reported on a few additional people close to Musk who work for DOGE or other federal agencies. ProPublica is working to confirm them as well:

Baris Akis , Nicole Hollander , Ethan Shaotran

We are still reporting. Do you have information about any of the people listed above? Do you know of any other Musk associates who have entered the federal government? You can reach our tip line on Signal at 917-512-0201 . Please be as specific, detailed and clear as you can.

Sometime during the next several weeks, the directors of federal agencies will receive a draft version of President Trump's budget request for the coming fiscal year, which begins on October 1. This "passback review" is a standard part of the federal budgeting process which ends in Congress writing a budget and the president signing it into law.

The budget request will be the first of President Trump's second term, and it will offer a clear window into the priorities of his new administration. Although widespread cuts are expected for much of the government's discretionary spending, the outlook for the National Science Foundation appears to be especially grim.

During an emotional all-hands meeting on Tuesday, the agency's assistant director for engineering, Susan Margulies, told agency employees to expect between a quarter and a half of its staff to be laid off within the coming months, E&E News reported.

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Serengeti, Disney – After many successful sequels and prequels, Disney has announced plans to finally make a film explaining the origin of the bug shown on screen for 2 seconds before Timon eats it. “We know fans have been demanding answers for years,” explained Barry Jenkins, the director and writer for the new film. “Some […]

The post Disney announces new Lion King prequel film about bug who gets eaten by Timon appeared first on The Beaverton.

Introduction- Many, if not most people were shocked at recent events. The rise to power of people who would have been unthinkable a few short years ago now seems to be accelerating. It’s normal to feel overwhelmed, but giving up is not an option. This is my attempt to list a few simple things we can all do to resist what seems so unstoppable. And save our sanity.

Source

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I was working on writing up a job ad today for temporary research assistants for a field biology project, and noticed trends in my ads and in others’. It’s common for early career employees applying to assistant or technician jobs to think that they want to do fieldwork and then quit in the middle of the season because it wasn’t what they expected. There are really fun parts like getting to travel to cool places, camp or backpack, work directly with plants and animals, and meet new people. However, employees are often underpaid (especially at the technician level), work long hours, and must front some transportation or per diem costs before getting reimbursed. They are far from their friends and family camping for long periods of time and without cell service in some cases. Often, these staff are expected to work through bad weather (if it’s safe), hike long distances, do manual labor all day, and deal with biting and stinging insects. This can be compounded if you’re assigned to work with one other person and it turns out that you don’t get along with them. It can be downright miserable!

The solution to this seems to be that we become very up-front about the working conditions in the job and write requirements like, “Must be comfortable carrying 30 pounds in high heat and humidity for 13 hours per day off trail on uneven terrain with biting flies and mosquitos while maintaining a positive attitude.” It doesn’t matter who you are, you’re going to have an off day here and there in those conditions — especially if you have been working and living with the same one or two people for three weeks. I think writing like that just comes off … wrong?

I am worried that, in an effort to be transparent, we make ourselves sound uninviting and expect that green staff will fail. I think it also emphasizes physical tolerance where emotional intelligence and maturity can make or break a field season. Do you have any advice for striking a balance when hiring for jobs that have inherent challenges?

P.S. I make it sound terrible but there are many of us who really love it!

The instinct to be very up-front about the working conditions is the right one! The more transparent and realistic you are, and the more you paint a picture of what the work is really like, the more you’ll attract candidates who will do well and the more likely the “wrong” candidates will self-select out.

When you’re hiring, truth in advertising about the less appealing parts of the job is a good thing. You want people to have a good understanding of what they’d be getting into. It’s true that you don’t want to cross over into “this job sucks! but you’ll need to keep a smile on your face!” … but you shouldn’t shy away from describing things as accurately as possible.

I would also think about what traits and experiences people who do well in the job tend to share, and talk about that as well — “if you’re the person on camping trips who’s always tracking the animal droppings you see and isn’t daunted if it rains, this may be you” or so forth. (These are undoubtedly terrible examples — non-camper here — but you’ll have better ones since you’re familiar with the work and the actual qualities that predict success.) Or, “We’ve found people who thrive in this role generally have ____ (“spent extended time outdoors in various weather conditions,” “a high degree of emotional intelligence and the ability to work in sometimes uncomfortably close quarters with a wide range of people,” or whatever is true).

With a job like this, where you get a lot of people who don’t fully understand what they’re signing on for, I might even consider including one or two short testimonials from people who have done the job successfully and liked it — just a short paragraph from a couple people on what the experience was like for them, what was tough, and why they liked it anyway (without any sugarcoating).

You could also run the draft of your ad by people who are doing the job currently or did it recently and ask for their feedback — do they think it’s a full and accurate representation? Are there other things they wish they knew before they got hired?

But it’s much better to err on the side of too much transparency than not enough.

The Sims, which has sold nearly 200 million copies, celebrates its 25th anniversary this February. In honor of the video game franchise, The Onion looks back at its key milestones. 

1977: Will Wright gets a great idea for a video game while watching a family burn to death in their home.

1989: SimCity, the game’s city-building precursor, debuts as a popular alternative to constructing a large metropolis in real life. 

2000: Mom doesn’t get it. 

2003: Console debut introduces The Sims to gamers not allowed to play Grand Theft Auto.

2011: The U.N. condemns Iran after evidence emerges proving they are developing their own version of The Sims. 

2015: Night of sleep lost creating a family that looks kind of like the Ninja Turtles.

2020: Yearning for pandemic escapism, millions turn to The Sims to recall what it’s like to walk in circles in a different-looking house.

2023: The Sims 4 reaches over 70 million active losers.

2025: New patch removes pesky “sentience” bug.

The post ‘The Sims’ Turns 25 appeared first on The Onion.