That's not how that works.

Acting like they're really breaking some big story on Pentagon waste in the Hegseth era, The New Republic emotes:

Some of the frivolous September purchases made under Secretary Pete Hegseth’s stewardship include a $98,329 Steinway & Sons grand piano for the Air Force chief of staff’s home, $5.3 million for Apple devices such as the new iPad, and an astronomical amount of shellfish, including $2 million for Alaskan king crab and $6.9 million worth of lobster tail. (Lobster tail is apparently a favorite of Hegseth’s Pentagon—the department spent more than $7.4 million total on the luxury item in March, May, June, and October.)

In other pricey food purchases, the government decided to drop $15.1 million for ribeye steak (again, just in September), $124,000 for ice cream machines, and $139,224 on 272 orders of doughnuts.

They make this sound like it's for lavish orgies at the homes of generals or whatever, but look...

Grand pianos are expensive. That one goes with the Air Force Chief of Staff's house. It's not like General Wilsbach gets to take it with him when he leaves. Also, it's probably replacing a previous, worn-out piano.

As far as the lobster, crab, and ribeyes, the donuts and ice cream machines? That's for the DFACs. Surf & turf is a treat we give to the people we ask to risk getting all blowed up for their country. At least let 'em have a nice meal on Fridays.

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Meme Dump!

Tab Clearing...

• When you go to war, you need a why.


• Military officials question fortifications at site where U.S. troops were killed in Iranian strike


• The first phone call was 150 years ago. Where did we go wrong?

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War News...

• Norwegian police still searching for suspect in bomb detonation at US embassy in Oslo.


• Synagogue in Belgium bombed, and three in Toronto shot up.


• Iranian missiles attacking Israel increasingly using cluster munitions.

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Memes for Monday!

Top. Men.

Info is coming out around the lawsuit regarding the DOGE cuts to National Endowment for the Humanities grants and... wow. 

Federal grants that had been approved after a full application and review process were terminated by some random inexperienced DOGE bros based on whether ChatGPT could explain—in under 120 characters—that they were “related to DEI.”

That’s what the newly released proposed amended complaint from the Authors Guild against the US government reveals about how DOGE actually decided which National Endowment for the Humanities grants to kill.

Apparently this posse of barely post-pubertal broccoli-haired incels were just feeding grant text into an LLM and asking "Chat, is this DEI?" 

Which, I guess, made sense since this merry band of Einsteins seems unclear on what "DEI" even is. I could only take a minute or two of this guy talking in circles in his deposition video trying to avoid admitting he has no idea what he's talking about.

This is how Indianapolis lost a federal grant to restore urban trees. See, if the trees in your city are, like, mostly elms or ash and Dutch elm disease or ash borers come through, that would be bad. So biodiversity in your city's trees is good... but whoops! The word "biodiversity" contains the word "diversity", and Chat-GPT says that's a no-no.

Or say you're at Duke University and you have a federal grant to study, oh, something involving disease transmission or transgenic genetic material... well, all the LLM sees is "trans" and bye bye disease research! 

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Memelight Savings Time!

Meme Dump!

Friday Memes!

Piercing the Veil

Way back in the mists of time, in the autumn of 2005 when this blog was still in diapers, there was a minor kerfuffle about the virtues and vices of blogging anonymously.

Since the sort of people who start blogs do so because they tend to have opinions on frickin' everything, it was no surprise that lots of people had opinions on the topic.

It's popped up here and there since then in various online spaces where I participate, like forums and certain corners of social media.

I'm pretty ambivalent on the topic. I don't blog anonymously because for me there's hardly any point in it. I've gone by my government name all over the web since the days of dialup but I respect that other people may not want to and, to rifle through Thomas Jefferson's desk drawers for an appropriate aphorism, it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. You want to blog anonymously, knock yourself out.

But I do think it's chilling that one thing LLMs seem to be good at is sussing out anonymous posters and tying them to their wallet name via language use analysis.

Anonymity ain't what it used to be.

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Meme Dump!

War News...

• IRIS Dena, an Iranian frigate, has been torpedoed and sunk by US submarine off the coast of Sri Lanka.


• White House arranges evacuation of some social media influencers from Qatar.


• The Royal Navy is dispatching the HMS Dragon, a Type 45 destroyer, to assist in the defense of Cyprus from drone and missile attack.

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Hump Day Memes!