There's a difference between asking an overseas consultant "what buttons do I push to un-jam the purple gizmo?" and between "Enter these new users for me."

Let's hope Voyager lasts until November. The duct-tape is falling off the chicken-wire.

Pluto is the largest of thousands of frozen, rocky bodies called trans-Neptunian objects

Rumor is DOGE scans spotted "trans" in the document and thus cancelled the program for being "woke".

Maybe your stack and shop style was bloated and poorly factored. These kinds of shops are where AI does best because bots have piles of repetitious bloat to learn from and ape.

Sometimes I wake up and start doing new science. But usually I just roll over and go back to sleep.

a catchy name for an anti-AI OS. ("Peopix" didn't sound right.) There's a lot of anti-AI angst floating around. And Europe may be more open to it, being copyright issues with training sets are not (yet) clear enough there.

The guideline in question is "Gotta kick up to the big guy". If you don't pay your "taxes", you're gonna have a bad day. And, no, I'm not talking about the IRS.

I wish it were that simple.

First, note that there isn't one emoluments clause, there are two. And they're quite different.

The Foreign Emoluments clause prohibits any officer of the government, which would include the president, though that's not specifically stated, from accepting a "present" from any foreign government. The problem with this is that it's not clear how it's supposed to be enforced with respect to the president. Traditionally, presidents have treated gifts as gifts to the country, and when they wanted to make an exception they asked Congress to authorize it. Mostly. George Washington famously kept a painting the French gave him. Trump, er, took a different approach, simply ignoring the Foreign Emoluments clause, which the Constitution says isn't allowed... but then what? Congress never passed any law defining how exactly the clause was supposed to apply to the president (there are laws about not accepting gifts for pretty much everyone else in the executive branch)... so, how it might work is undefined.

During Trump's first term, a bunch of Congressional Democrats sued Trump for violating the Foreign Emoluments clause, and their suit was dismissed for lack of standing. Courts ruled that individual legislators (much less individual Americans) lack standing to sue over it, only Congress as a body has standing, and Congress as a body hasn't been interested in acting. There were also some suits by DC hospitality businesses claiming economic injury because foreign visitors chose Trump's properties to curry favor. The district court said they didn't have standing but that was reversed on appeal.. but never decided because it was mooted when he left office. The DC and Maryland governments sued and courts went back and forth on their standing, but that was never decided either, then mooted when he left.

So... at present there is no enforcement mechanism unless Congress creates one, or unless the courts decide that someone (and it's not clear who that might be) has standing. And we also have no idea what the remedies might be.

The Domestic Emoluments clause is more precise, but very narrow. It says Congress can't change the president's salary during their term, and that the president can't be paid by the federal government (other than his salary) nor any state government. That says nothing about Wall Street bros buying insider info, people paying for pardons, hodlers buying crypto to get a sit-down... none of that.

Most Presidents have avoided investment portfolio changes so as to not stir suspicion. Don doesn't give a shit how it looks.

Not exactly a yawn. More like a shake of the head at more evidence that all politicians are on the take, perhaps with a wry grin that "their guy" is smarter and better at it and so makes a lot more money.

I mostly don't talk politics with my family because they're Trump supporters and it creates friction, and accomplishes nothing. This morning, though, when I saw this news, I started typing a post on the family chat to ask if they're really okay with it. By the time I got to the end, I realized I knew exactly what their response would be "Nancy Pelosi does it, too, Trump just does it better", so I deleted my post, unsent.

That reply is wrong in degree, of course, but, sadly, it's not wrong in kind. We've long tolerated insider trading by Congress, and a revolving door between regulators and the companies they regulate. The Supreme Court has allowed its justices to take veiled bribes, and even ruled that government officials can accept bribes as long as the payoff comes after the action. Prior to Trump, presidents and their staffs stayed out of this mud, but if others can do it, why not the president?

The root of the problem is voter acceptance of corruption. Too many Americans just assume that all politicians are corrupt and there's nothing you can do. They're wrong on both points -- and in fact the US previously did have massive public corruption and then mostly shut it off, but Americans don't know their own history -- but until voters care enough to get Congress to act, this is the new normal.

True! I posted memes about that contradiction but was censored for "condoning violence" by the way. If Don sabotages the mid-term elections, you may see more "activity". I'm not making suggestions, only predictions. Got that Patel?

If that were the only impact, it wouldn't matter.

But the fact is that Trump regularly posts official public policy announcements that move markets, so getting the bullshit early can make you money.

It should be, but the Emoluments Clause has never been enforced and "Emoluments" isn't even clearly defined, legally speaking. It's pretty much a dead letter.

The only practical backstop here is impeachment and conviction, but the Republicans in Congress aren't going to allow that, not until and unless their voters begin to care.

The AC who replied is technically wrong: The immunity ruling only applies to official acts, and Trump's participation in TMG is not official. However, Trump would probably claim that he had nothing to do with this decision and the immunity ruling also effectively prevents investigation of any personal crimes that were committed because it blocks investigation of anything that touches on official acts. So as long as Trump made the call ordering it from the from the Oval Office, it's unlikely that any evidence could be obtained. If someone in the know at TMG testified against him, that would work, but it's very unlikely anyone with a conscience has direct knowledge.

17 more years? I can't wait to see people in their 70's through 90's adventuring through the universe. Are stargates handicap-accessible?

Seriously though dude this is actually interesting science news vastly more important than some cheesy show.

Well, yes. For many years, presidential candidates, both Democratic and Republican, referred to the United States as "the indispensible nation". And my reaction was always, "Doesn't that mean the US is a single point of failure for civilization?"

We are currently performing an experiment which addresses this question: can the US enjoy the benefits of soft power without the cost? That's the whole point of obeying *norms*. No individual force is going to punish you if you are treacherous, mercurial, foul-mouthed, disrespectful and generally unpredictable. Everyone will punish you.

I think an inevitable cost of this experiment will be that the world will decide that the US can't be a single point of failure for global democracy any longer. In many ways, that's something that will be good for us. But it's also going to cost us in painful ways. When the world decides to move away from the dollar as the international reserve currency, you will see both inflation and higher interest rates on everything from credit cards to mortgages, to business loans that will offset the export advantages. We will need *more* business investment to shift the economy to producing low value goods again, so the transition will be rocky.