tal @ tal @lemmy.today Posts 252Comments 6,640Joined 1 yr. ago
White House says Trump won’t cut Social Security, Medicare after Musk remarks
The White House on Tuesday asserted President Trump would not cut Social Security or Medicare after tech billionaire Elon Musk’s comments about the need to examine entitlement spending gained traction.
Musk, a top Trump adviser leading the effort to overhaul the federal workforce through the Department of Government Efficiency, appeared on Fox Business Network on Monday for a rare television interview, where he noted that most government spending is on entitlements.
“So, the waste and fraud in entitlement spending, which is all of the — which is most of the federal spending is entitlements. So, that’s, like, the big one to eliminate,” Musk told former Trump official Larry Kudlow, suggesting it could amount to more than $500 billion in annual savings.
Sounds like some legislators got upset calls.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Tsar,_bad_Boyars
A process that worked for Russia!
Elon Musk suggested cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in a Fox News interview
February 11, 4 weeks ago:
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-administration-collapse-james-carville-2035164
Trump Administration Will 'Collapse' in 30 Days, Says James Carville
Carville advised Democrats to "play opossum" for now.
"This whole thing is collapsing. It doesn't need Elizabeth Warren in somebody screaming to pacify some progressive advocacy groups in Washington," the former top adviser to President Bill Clinton said. "Hold your fire. It's going to be easy pickings here in six weeks, just lay back."
I would have said that Carville was wrong, but if they do start taking big whacks at entitlement programs, this might actually manage it.
If you want a preview of an uncaring and anti-consumer Valve, look no further than the company's efforts on Mac.
Valve never updated any of its earlier games to run in 64-bit mode, because the underlying Source engine was 32-bit across both Windows and Mac (with the exception of CS:GO). Apple dropped support for 32-bit applications in 2019, with the release of macOS 10.15, making all of those games inaccessible on newer Mac hardware.
I think that this one is on Apple, not Valve. Windows maintained 32-bit compatibility. Linux maintained 32-bit compatibility. Apple could have maintained 32-bit compatibility.
Steam for Mac no longer exists to sell Valve's own games, and it has visibly suffered as a result. Steam is still not updated to run natively on Apple Silicon-based Mac computers, nearly four years after Apple's transition away from Intel CPUs started. It's now a slow and clunky barrier to playing the games I own on my Mac computers—a far cry from the pro-consumer persona that Valve and Steam usually enjoy.
Ditto about this being on Apple --- there's no ARM-native Steam package for Linux, nor for Windows.
Valve isn't obligated to continue supporting all its games and software features on Mac, especially when Apple's reluctance to natively support Vulkan and other cross-platform technologies makes game development more complex. There's no excuse for Steam on Mac to be a far worse experience than on other platforms, though.
The stuff you are asking for is areas where Apple made changes that created problems for application software vendors that weren't created by Microsoft on Windows and weren't created by Linux distros, and where you're upset with Valve for not patching over platform issues. There's nothing specific to Steam about this.
EDIT: I do wonder, if there's enough interest, whether someone could make an x86 accelerator card for current Macs. Back in the day, I remember that Orange Micro made one for emulating Windows software. Not cheap, but you basically had a Mac with the guts of an x86 PC added, and you could run x86 software at full speed. I'd imagine that you could basically do the same...just for older Mac software. Today, computers are a lot cheaper than they were back then.
kagis
Here are some Mac users talking about those, with a full history of Mac x86 accelerator cards. It doesn't look like there's been any hardware vendor try to recently make one, though.
Probably need to be a USB device too, given the number of people on laptops these days.
EDIT2: Plus, be nice if it could run x86 Windows software natively as well.
His stock transactions should be public record while president.
I think that it may be.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act
The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act of 2012 (Pub. L. 112–105 (text) (PDF), S. 2038, 126 Stat. 291, enacted April 4, 2012) is an Act of Congress designed to combat insider trading. It was signed into law by President Barack Obama on April 4, 2012. The law prohibits the use of non-public information for private profit, including insider trading, by members of Congress and other government employees. It confirms changes to the Commodity Exchange Act, specifies reporting intervals for financial transactions.
The STOCK Act was modified on April 15, 2013, by S. 716. This amendment modifies the online disclosure portion of the STOCK Act, so that some officials, but not the President, Vice President, Congress, or anyone running for Congress, can no longer file online and their records are no longer easily accessible to the public. In Section (a)2, the amendment specifically does not alter the online access for trades by the President, the Vice President, Congress, or those running for Congress.[23]
That being said, my guess is that there are probably trivial ways to game the transparency portion of the bill. Like, if I own a business, and the business holds stock rather than myself directly, I'll bet that no disclosure is required. And I bet that if you have a spouse or kids doing transactions, no disclosure is required.
Could still get in trouble for insider trading if it could be proven that you were doing so.
kagis
From Trump's first term:
"If he continues to own his businesses and he uses insider information, or information he has as president, then arguably it's a violation of the STOCK Act," says Larry Noble, general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan advocacy group.
Trump has repeatedly said that he plans to turn over management of his businesses to his grown children once he is in the White House and play no role in operations himself.
"The STOCK Act says all executive branch employees are subject to the securities laws, Trump included," says New York University Law School professor Stephen Gillers.
The STOCK Act originally applied to the buying and selling of securities, such as stocks and bonds. But some legal experts say privately held companies such as the Trump Organization could also fall under its purview, especially if Trump transfers ownership to his children.
Because presidents are privy to an enormous amount of information that could affect stock prices, Trump would risk passing on inside information anytime he talks to his children, even if he doesn't intend to. That could open Trump, his children and businesses up to nearly constant allegations of insider trading.
Haven't been following the issue since then.
https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Nintendo_playing_cards
The variety of western playing cards they offered were massive, and included decks of various sizes, from poker size to bridge size to whist size, and even really tiny decks.
They also sold Kyoto Souvenir playing cards, a deck meant for foreign tourists in Japan which featured images of various landmarks around Kyoto, as well as Nude Cards, a deck marketed towards adult males which feature scantilly-clad and sometimes nude female models on the faces of the cards.
Huh.
I think that the surprise is that Nintendo is as old as it is.
Japan has some very old companies. IIRC the oldest company in the world was a construction company in Japan that went under a few years ago.
kagis
Kongo Gumi. Guess I was wrong -- they didn't actually go under. Still around, but now a subsidiary of another company.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kong%C5%8D_Gumi
Kongō Gumi Co., Ltd. (株式会社金剛組, Kabushiki Gaisha Kongō Gumi) is a Japanese construction company, purportedly founded in 578 A.D.,[3] making it the world's oldest documented company. The company mainly works on the design, construction, restoration, and repair of shrines, temples, castles, and cultural heritage buildings. While Kongō Gumi historically specialized in traditional architecture, increased competition from major construction companies due to the growing use of concrete in shrines and temples resulted in the company becoming a subsidiary of the Takamatsu Construction Group in January 2006.[4][5]
Here's a list of the ten oldest companies in the world. The top five are all Japanese:
https://www.worldatlas.com/industries/the-oldest-companies-still-operating-today.html
20 january 2023
This article appears to be over two years old.
An ambitious and interesting option for Europe could be Arabic as the lingua franca.
There's Maltese, which is an official EU language, albeit probably not the most useful for interchange with the Arab world as a whole.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_language
Maltese (Maltese: Malti, also L-Ilsien Malti or Lingwa Maltija) is a Semitic language derived from late medieval Sicilian Arabic with Romance superstrata. The only official Semitic and Afroasiatic language of the European Union and the only Semitic language to use the Latin alphabet, and the only Afroasiatic language other than Somali to use a Latin script, it is spoken by the Maltese people and is the national language of Malta.
The original Arabic base comprises around one-third of the Maltese vocabulary, especially words that denote basic ideas and the function words, but about half of the vocabulary is derived from standard Italian and Sicilian; and English words make up between 6% and 20% of the vocabulary. A 2016 study shows that, in terms of basic everyday language, speakers of Maltese are able to understand less than a third of what is said to them in Tunisian Arabic and Libyan Arabic, which are Maghrebi Arabic dialects related to Siculo-Arabic, whereas speakers of Tunisian Arabic and Libyan Arabic are able to understand about 40% of what is said to them in Maltese. This reported level of asymmetric intelligibility is considerably lower than the mutual intelligibility found between mainstream varieties of Arabic.
Maltese has always been written in the Latin script, the earliest surviving example dating from the late Middle Ages. It is the only standardised Semitic language written exclusively in the Latin script.
https://tapintoindustry.com/target-industries/food-manufacturing/
Agriculture [in Mississippi] is a major industry.
Mmmhmm. Looks like Mississippi has a cattle rancher industry association. One would imagine that that group isn't too keen on competition from meat from a lab.
We Represent Mississippi's Cattlemen
Mississippi Cattlemen's Association is focused on addressing local, state and federal issues that impact the long-term viability of cattle farming in Mississippi.
From the article:
Mississippi’s agriculture commissioner, Andy Gipson, has criticized the cultivated meat industry, and he supported a 2019 bill that prevented cultivated meat products being labeled as meat in the state. In 2024 he published a post on his website that commended the cultivated meat bans in Florida and Alabama. “I want my steak to come from farm-raised beef, not a petri-dish from a lab,” he wrote.
Sounds like Mr. Gipson isn't too keen on that lab-grown meat either. First is was just labeling, and now it's outright banning.
Let's look into Andy Gipson's biography!
https://www.mdac.ms.gov/agency-info/about-andy-gipson/
Andy Gipson serves as Mississippi’s eighth Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce.
Uh huh.
Gipson has owned and managed a cattle operation in Simpson County for more than 20 years and a tree farm since 2004. He is a member of the Mississippi Cattlemen’s Association and the Simpson County Development Foundation.
Well, now, there's a coincidence. He happens to be part of the industry and the industry advocacy association that he's regulating. Sure is a small world!
The question you’re struggling with is regarding people who aren’t already within the jurisdiction, or are applying for citizenship.
I don't think that the critical division here is over admissability versus deportability.
https://reason.com/2025/03/10/is-it-constitutional-to-deport-immigrants-for-political-speech/
Nadine Strossen, former president of the American Civil Liberties Union and senior fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, tells Reason that Trump's executive order "clearly is based on federal statutory authority, so one cannot make the argument that the president is exceeding his constitutional powers."
Still, the question remains whether the statute itself and the executive order enforcing it are constitutional. Strossen explains that "non-citizens with any immigration status at all, including unauthorized immigrants, have the same First Amendment rights that U.S. citizens have…insofar as they have the same protection against criminal penalties, criminal investigations, or civil law enforcement." However, it's unclear "whether non-citizens have the same First Amendment rights as citizens with respect to the deportation process."
The issue is that the criteria that the Executive Branch may use for deportation are not fully-defined in the Constitution or (yet) in case law.
No problem. I should add that immigration law is complicated as all hell, and sometimes very unintuitive, and the situation has changed over the years. And I'm not an immigration lawyer, so I'm just giving my best layman's understanding from what past case law and history I've read.
I'd also reiterate that it's not as if SCOTUS has said "the First Amendment doesn't protect the guy" against deportation for his speech. It just hasn't ruled that it does: there's been no ruling to define the scope of the Constitution on the matter that I'm aware of.
I'd also bet that there are a lot of wrinkles there. The rationale that the Executive Branch has used in the past to justify use of speech as a filter for permitting entry to the US is "national security". But I think --- without looking into the matter --- that it's likely difficult to characterize the guy as a threat to US national security. Israel's national security, maybe. But the US's? I think that that's a harder case to make. So...I'm not actually sure that even if SCOTUS takes a case and rules that you can use speech as a criteria for disallowing entry for non-citizens to the US on national security grounds, that it'd agree with the Executive Branch on this guy being deportable.
Some have said he’s a naturalized citizen
I'm sure that he's not. It's established case law that (a) US citizen cannot be denied entry to the US and (b) that a legitimately-granted citizenship cannot subsequently be constitutionally revoked by the government; revocation must be voluntary. Like, this wouldn't be an argument were it not.
kagis
https://time.com/7266683/mahmoud-khalil-columbia-green-card/
What To Know About Mahmoud Khalil, and Why His Green Card Was Revoked
Yeah. If you have a green card, you're on the path to citizenship...but you do not yet have citizenship.
EDIT: WRT my above statement:
SCOTUS ruling that involuntary removal of citizenship is unconstitutional: Afroyim v. Rusk.
Holding: Congress has no power under the Constitution to revoke a person's U.S. citizenship unless he voluntarily relinquishes it.
As a consequence of revised policies adopted in 1990 by the United States Department of State, it is now (in the words of one expert) "virtually impossible to lose American citizenship without formally and expressly renouncing it."[5]
His wife is a citizen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Khalil_(activist)
At the time of his arrest, Khalil’s wife, an American citizen...
However, SCOTUS has ruled that the right of a US citizen to enter the United States does not extend to a non-citizen spouse:
There's a germane Polandball cartoon from the beginning of Trump's last term:
January 20 2017
https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/3049545a-42a2-48f3-8920-53218d0a33fe.png
The Trump administration continues to claim he violated an executive order prohibiting anti-Semitism, though no evidence was provided. Protesters in NYC demand his release, calling the arrest unconstitutional.
His location remains unclear. The ACLU and immigrant rights groups argue the detention violates free speech, warning it sets a dangerous precedent.
It looks like this is probably an open question in the Constitution. The Supreme Court has, in the past, avoided ruling on the matter.
My understanding is that US border control has generally had pretty broad leeway in terms of disallowing people who are not US citizens into the US. There hasn't been a Supreme Court case that has stated that First Amendment protections mean that a non-citizens' speech can be used as grounds for entry or presence in the US.
https://www.freedomforum.org/non-citizens-protected-first-amendment/
Can the government selectively enforce immigration laws based on political views? (1999)
The federal government sought to deport eight people who were members of a U.S.-based Palestinian liberation group. They were legal U.S. residents but not full citizens. The group claimed they were being targeted with selective enforcement because of their political views and appealed to the Supreme Court (Reno v. American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee). When challenged, the government backed off the political grounds for deportation but proceeded on technical violations of immigration law. In his majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia addressed claims of First Amendment violations, saying, "An alien unlawfully in this country has no constitutional right to assert selective enforcement as a defense against his deportation."
The US Executive Branch effectively prohibits naturalization to Communists, despite the fact that there is First Amendment protection for an American citizen who wants to advocate for such. The way this works is that they ask someone if they've been part of a Communist Party. If so, they can prohibit naturalization. If the answer is "no" --- and not true --- then naturalization can later be revoked as having been obtained on fraudulent grounds.
https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-8-part-f-chapter-3
Chapter 3 - Immigrant Membership in Totalitarian Party
A. Purpose and Background
- Purpose
The inadmissibility ground for immigrant membership in or affiliation with the Communist or any other totalitarian party is part of a broader set of laws passed by Congress to address threats to the safety and security of the United States. Its original purpose was to protect the United States against un-American and subversive activities that were considered threats to national security.
In general, any immigrant who is or has been a member of or affiliated with the Communist or any other totalitarian party (or subdivision or affiliate), domestic or foreign, is inadmissible.[1] There are two exceptions to this ground of inadmissibility and a limited waiver available to certain aliens depending on the immigration benefit they are seeking.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yates_v._United_States
Yates v. United States, 354 U.S. 298 (1957), was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States[1] that held that the First Amendment protected radical and reactionary speech, unless it posed a "clear and present danger".
SCOTUS has ruled that the Executive Branch may not constitutionally prohibit a citizen who is a member of a Communist party from traveling abroad:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptheker_v._Secretary_of_State
Aptheker v. Secretary of State, 378 U.S. 500 (1964), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court on the right to travel and passport restrictions as they relate to Fifth Amendment due process rights and First Amendment free speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of association rights. It is the first case in which the US Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of personal restrictions on the right to travel abroad.
In Aptheker, the petitioner challenged Section 6 of the Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950, which made it a crime for any member of a Communist organization to attempt to use or obtain a passport.[1]
But the question of whether the First Amendment protection applies to speech used as a criteria for non-citizen entry to the US apparently hasn't really been resolved:
Finally, there is Kleindienst v. Mandel, the Supreme Court’s most recent examination of the First Amendment as it applies to the border. Decided in 1972, that case arose out of the government’s refusal to grant a visa to Ernest Mandel, a Belgian scholar who described himself as “a revolutionary Marxist” and who had been invited to speak at various prestigious academic events in the United States. Federal law at that time barred entry into the country of aliens who advocated or published “the doctrines of world communism or the establishment in the United States of a totalitarian dictatorship,” but the statute provided that the government could waive the bar. When the government refused to grant Mandel a waiver, various academics filed suit, challenging the statutory provision as violating the rights of the academics as American citizens to receive information under the First Amendment.
The Supreme Court rejected the challenge and in doing so emphasized Congress’ virtually plenary power over the entry of aliens into the country. Nonetheless, it refused the government’s invitation to hold that that authority trumped the First Amendment in all circumstances involving aliens. Rather, it ruled more narrowly, finding that the government’s refusal to grant Mandel a waiver was based on factors other than his political beliefs, which was sufficient to defeat the First Amendment challenge. Left for another day was resolution of the First Amendment’s reach to the border in disputes over the entry of non-citizens.
Thanksgiving was awkward for the Vance family.
Ah, fair enough.
Ehhh. I don't know.
So, a lot of fossil fuel built up the Carboniferous Period. Basically, you had woody plants develop. But it took a while for organisms to develop that could break down dead woody plants. So aside from massive fires --- which were a thing for a while --- there wasn't really a way to eliminate dead wood. A lot of it ultimately became coal.
But today, the world has those organisms. I don't think that it's really possible to reproduce that coal build-up again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous
The Carboniferous (/ˌkɑːrbəˈnɪfərəs/ KAR-bə-NIF-ər-əs)[6] is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic era that spans 60 million years, from the end of the Devonian Period 358.86 Ma (million years ago) to the beginning of the Permian Period, 298.9 Ma.
There is ongoing debate as to why this peak in the formation of Earth's coal deposits occurred during the Carboniferous. The first theory, known as the delayed fungal evolution hypothesis, is that a delay between the development of trees with the wood fibre lignin and the subsequent evolution of lignin-degrading fungi gave a period of time where vast amounts of lignin-based organic material could accumulate. Genetic analysis of basidiomycete fungi, which have enzymes capable of breaking down lignin, supports this theory by suggesting this fungi evolved in the Permian.[26][27] However, significant Mesozoic and Cenozoic coal deposits formed after lignin-digesting fungi had become well established, and fungal degradation of lignin may have already evolved by the end of the Devonian, even if the specific enzymes used by basidiomycetes had not.[25] The second theory is that the geographical setting and climate of the Carboniferous were unique in Earth's history: the co-occurrence of the position of the continents across the humid equatorial zone, high biological productivity, and the low-lying, water-logged and slowly subsiding sedimentary basins that allowed the thick accumulation of peat were sufficient to account for the peak in coal formation.[25]
According to the WP article, there's a competing theory, but even if that's the reason for coal accumulation, it still doesn't really apply to the world today.
They are so transparently stupid and vile at this point
Maybe they're just secretly radically pro-Canadian. Canada is one of the few countries that's expected to economically-benefit on the net from global warming.
For anyone else doing local image generation, on posting image "source" on this community
Israel said to request US send second THAAD missile defense battery ahead of Iran attack
Russia tells Israel to not even consider attacking Iranian nuclear facilities, TASS says
