David Chico Pham writes on technology, sourdough, and current events.

The excellent reporting in this Wired piece is so god damn killer, its gotten me mad -- it's so incredibly good in telling what the chaos means and how to understand it. The end game here is for Musk to plunder the government so completely that to rebuild it, he'll say AI must take over all of it to restore it. That AI of course would be his xAI. Like many things Musk has personally built, Boring Company, Telsa's Cybertruck, or SpaceX last two rockets, it's going to be shit.

On March 7, DOGE got one of the things it seemed to want most from GSA: a chatbot that could automate work previously done by federal employees. The tool rolled out to some 1,500 employees at GSA, with an agency wide launch planned a week later. An internal memo about the tool touted the “endless” tasks it could help with: “draft emails, create talking points, summarize text, write code.” The memo hinted at the dangers of deploying chatbots at the federal level, warning workers not to “type or paste” internal or personally identifiable information as inputs.

People who used it weren’t impressed. “It’s about as good as an intern,” one GSA employee told WIRED. “Generic and guessable answers.” This version of GSAi almost certainly couldn’t interact with the EDS discovery layer first proposed by engineers. More likely it was just the first step in an iterative approach. As one official said in the February meeting about the project, the first goal could be to “deliver this sort of janky, doesn’t-work-all-the-time chatbot” to pave the way for a “turbo-charged” version down the line.

That turbo-charged AI bog is never going to come to be. The so-called "Department of Government Efficiency" Musk installed is really a criminal organization with Musk as a paper thug. They think of themselves as pirates of the 1980's Apple days. But they're simply a bunch of criminals with laptops doing utterly brazenly corrupt and illegal things. Notably when the Coup was underway, they used their new hijacked comms via GSA seizure to lock out employees:

As would happen at agencies across the government, the GSA seizure took place in the shadows—a matter not of announcements but of calendar invitations from unknown people, of unfamiliar names appearing in internal directories. The sixth and seventh floors, which had offices and suites used by the administrator, the “A-suite,” were restricted and largely locked down. No longer could employees simply badge in through the turnstile. Now they had to pass through metal detectors and have their belongings x-rayed

And the Republicans! They are so busy trying to find ways to eliminate Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for the tax cuts they promised to their wealthy friends and favorite big companies. It's no surprise they are all kind of shocked how angry their constituents are. As it turns out, a lot federal workers and offices and jobs are in Republican districts and states.

Yet, I must highlight, they are letting an insider threat thrive inside the very government they swore to run. None of them seem to care what is happening. They are responsible for ushering in the end of American democracy.

Lastly, what's maddening is Senator Schumer decided to throw his hands up and allow the Republicans to cede power to the Musk and Trump through giving the Republicans votes on the Continuing Resolution.

Go read the great piece at Wired. It so good.

This shit is so hot.

I am reading Chris Hayes book, The Sirens' Call, and there is a passage that encapsulates a feeling I have being a fan to someone:

The Star and the Fan. The Star seeks recognition from the Fan, bu the fan is a stranger, who cannot be known by the Star. Because the Star cannot recognize the Fan, the Fan's recognition of the Star doesn't satisfy the core existential desire. There is no way to bridge the inherent asymmetry of. the relationship, short of actual friendship and correspondence, but that, of course, cannot be undertaken at the same scale. And so the Star seeks recognition and gets, instead, attention

At the very heart of celebrity's relationship to a fan is this lopsided, one way street: the fan knows a lot about the celebrity but the celebrity doesn't know much about the fan. This need to be recognized, to be understood, and to be seen is deep. It's why ultimately the relationship can be characterized as artificial, unsatisfying, shallow, and ephemeral.

I'm personally deeply uncomfortable with meeting any of the people I admire. I am keenly aware of the power asymmetry. Whenever I meet a new person, I try really hard to get to know a person at their core. I can't stand shallow small talk. I get bored very quickly and move on.

What is a fan's small interaction with a famous person but a version of shallow small talk.

That's an old one. Old and true. And sturdy. One of the best navigational tools ever built. Can't be jammed or intercepted. Something breaks, you can fix it yourself. Hard to learn. Yes, but once you've mastered it, you're free. We've grown reliant on Imperial tech, and we've made ourselves vulnerable. There's a growing list of things we've known and forgotten, things they've pushed us to forget. Things like freedom.

They have herded us like cattle on the way to slaughter. To pacify any loud scared ones, they pull something over our eyes, their slot machine. Traced and dazzled, they whispered wonders and lies. While we forget what freedom was like, they plunder our Republic.

It's so confusing, isn't it? So much going wrong, so much to say, and all of it happening so quickly. The pace of repression outstrips our ability to understand it. And that is the real trick of the Imperial thought machine. It's easier to hide behind 40 atrocities than a single incident. But they have a fight on their hands, don't they? Our elemental rights are such a simple thing to hold, they will have to shake the galaxy hard to loosen our grip.

They aim to exhaust us. We must endure, together.

What do you need? A uniform, some dirty hands and an Imperial tool kit. They’re so proud of themselves, they don’t even care. They’re so fat and satisfied, they can’t imagine it.
...
"The arrogance is remarkable isn't it, they don't even think about us." "These days will end, Cassian Andor. The way they laugh. The way they push through a crowd." "The sound of that voice telling you to stop, to go, to move. Telling you to die. Rings in the ear doesn't it?"

Replicated under Fair Use from Star Wars: Andor by Andor, Season 01, Episode 03.

Mr. Musk is he is just some guy, with no authority to do what is doing. He's hijacked the Federal Government, breached sensitive systems including the Treasury's Direct Payment System. Let me put it this way: a foreigner who's loyalty is not to the Republic, infiltrated and plundered the people's money and laws. It looks to me an inside job as half of Congress are silent to the very thing they swore to protect. And his arrogance, fat and satisfied, is only matched by the depth of his loneliness and hatred. Aren't we tired of his hubris.

We must hit him where it hurts: telsa, spacex, and twitter. Maybe Diablo/Path of Exile 2, to which is an average player. Governor Newsom should send state inspectors to Telsa. Governor DeSantis of Florida should think about his ambitions to be president requires a republic to exist. Go find waste and fraud at spacex. Senator Cruz, the biggest troll in the Senate, is smarter than Musk. He should put Maximum Effort in securing his 2028 presidential ambitions too. Go fuck in the Senate with investigations on starlinks. Has Musk been working with the Russians? the Chinese? Cruz should make a big fuss about it.

Also:

Amaya Edwards reports on a net on storm drains helps solves for plastic pollution:

The nets collect the rubbish that comes out of the drainage pipe, so the water is clean when it goes into the rivers and streams. The nets get changed periodically and the rubbish is taken to the local waste removal area for sorting. Anything that can be recycled gets put in the recycling.