Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally Posted by Adder

I do not understand why this is a surprise to so many people. We have been saying this about him for a decade.

He is mentally ill. Something is wrong with his medulla oblongata.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Did you just call me Coltrane?

He is mentally ill. Something is wrong with his medulla oblongata.

The "groceries is an old-fashioned word" thing is telling to me. He's just a series of catch phrases with zero substance behind them.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Adder

I do not understand why this is a surprise to so many people. We have been saying this about him for a decade.

People don't believe things they don't want to believe.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Adder

I do not understand why this is a surprise to so many people. We have been saying this about him for a decade.

If you believe the view that he is transactional and self-interested, the tariffs make no sense. They actually harm his own businesses and piss off the donor class.

The consensus on him for most of those ten years has been that he is self-interested and driven by desire for personal wealth.

It appears that was wrong, or he has changed. It appears now that he really thinks one can materially revive manufacturing here. This may be senility.

Trump has an ideological core of a sort. It seems to be a mix of McKinley, Hoover, and Teddy Roosevelt. It's Trump's Early 1900s, and we're just living in it.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

People don't believe things they don't want to believe.

Necessarily, this also means people believe what they want to believe. On both points, this is well done: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/o...g-tariffs.html

You might think a large swath of the world has critical thinking skills. If you're smart enough to acquire a graduate degree, you're exposed to people with them most of the time. But even among the "smart," one must notice, this skill is becoming less ubiquitous. It's been declining for years, for a number of reasons.

Imagine the deficit among the hoi polloi. It's horrifying.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Does anyone know anything about the law of contempt? Is there any reason that a federal judge could not impose a fine on a government official who is in contempt, and structure the fine so that it increases over time with noncompliance?

eta: ChatGPT thinks this possible, but I'm not sure whether to trust it with this kind of question.

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Does anyone know anything about the law of contempt? Is there any reason that a federal judge could not impose a fine on a government official who is in contempt, and structure the fine so that it increases over time with noncompliance?

eta: ChatGPT thinks this possible, but I'm not sure whether to trust it with this kind of question.

I think we're going to find out very soon.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Did you just call me Coltrane?

I think we're going to find out very soon.

The Executive can ignore a court order to, e.g., admit a reporter to a press pool, but if a court orders monetary sanctions, I wonder if those become self-executing in a way that causes problems for the individuals involved. E.g., a court hits an administration official with a $25K fine. The administration surely will not devote resources to collecting on that obligation, but if the court creates a financial obligation that is cognizable in the way that judgment or lien would be, it's not clear to me that the administration can do anything to make it go away, leaving to officials to worry about future governments that would collect the debts.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Did you just call me Coltrane?

He is mentally ill. Something is wrong with his medulla oblongata.

So your point is that his behavior is normal given his abnormalities?

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

So your point is that his behavior is normal given his abnormalities?

Yes. Completely normal.

Call me on my burner and we can discuss further.

[Hank Chinaski]

Does anybody know what type $$ he is freezing for the schools? Is it competitive research programs? I’m just surprised at the huge imbalance in what schools have been getting. My memory is that when I was hired at Commerce I was told the Gov can’t weigh school ranking in hiring, at least for Civil Service- I mean obviously the SCOTUS has to be from Harvard, or Yale, but otherwise.

It seems contrary to throw so much to elite school relative to “lesser.” And for Harvard to accept so much more seems the opposite of DEI.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

Does anybody know what type $$ he is freezing for the schools? Is it competitive research programs? I’m just surprised at the huge imbalance in what schools have been getting. My memory is that when I was hired at Commerce I was told the Gov can’t weigh school ranking in hiring, at least for Civil Service- I mean obviously the SCOTUS has to be from Harvard, or Yale, but otherwise.

It seems contrary to throw so much to elite school relative to “lesser.” And for Harvard to accept so much more seems the opposite of DEI.

I thought it was money for competitive research grants, mostly in the sciences. I'm not sure what imbalances you are seeing, but would assume that non-elite research universities are getting much more money than elite liberal arts colleges. For example, I'm sure the University of Alabama gets much more money than Wesleyan does. (But I also understand that GOP legislators are working behind the scenes to keep money flowing to state schools in red states, like the University of Alabama.)

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I thought it was money for competitive research grants, mostly in the sciences. I'm not sure what imbalances you are seeing, but would assume that non-elite research universities are getting much more money than elite liberal arts colleges. For example, I'm sure the University of Alabama gets much more money than Wesleyan does. (But I also understand that GOP legislators are working behind the scenes to keep money flowing to state schools in red states, like the University of Alabama.)

Wesleyan?

It’s hard to tell how much each school gets but Alabama, for all that GOP pushing, doesn’t seem near 1 Billion.

And all the press? How do we think the poor voters who were reliably D votes, but bailed in 2024, or worse voted for Trump, how do you think they feel when hearing the Government gives Harvard $2,000,000,000? Harvard gets 2 B?

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I thought it was money for competitive research grants, mostly in the sciences. I'm not sure what imbalances you are seeing, but would assume that non-elite research universities are getting much more money than elite liberal arts colleges. For example, I'm sure the University of Alabama gets much more money than Wesleyan does. (But I also understand that GOP legislators are working behind the scenes to keep money flowing to state schools in red states, like the University of Alabama.)

You are correct based on what I've read. Trump's withholding is, like his blunt DOGE job cuts, a chainsaw where a scalpel is needed.

Cutting hard science research grants is punishing the people at Harvard who are likely the least political, if political at all. It harms all of us who benefit from medical and scientific research to spite a small cadre of politically bizarre people.

A better approach would be to assess all the research that is being funded and pull the dollars for all the programs tied to politically problematic professors and student organizations. (I personally think that is also a bad policy, and probably unconstitutional, but for purposes of this thought exercise, I'm simply trying to find a compromise position that protects hard science research.) But this would take thinking, and analysis, and those don't comport with a "break things, make a mess, then try to get a 'good deal' navigating the carnage" approach Trump seems to be taking toward everything.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

You are correct based on what I've read. Trump's withholding is, like his blunt DOGE job cuts, a chainsaw where a scalpel is needed.

Cutting hard science research grants is punishing the people at Harvard who are likely the least political, if political at all. It harms all of us who benefit from medical and scientific research to spite a small cadre of politically bizarre people.

A better approach would be to assess all the research that is being funded and pull the dollars for all the programs tied to politically problematic professors and student organizations. (I personally think that is also a bad policy, and probably unconstitutional, but for purposes of this thought exercise, I'm simply trying to find a compromise position that protects hard science research.) But this would take thinking, and analysis, and those don't comport with a "break things, make a mess, then try to get a 'good deal' navigating the carnage" approach Trump seems to be taking toward everything.

So to cut gov spending, set up a department to evaluate research to determine what to cut?