I wrote that the amount wasn't enough to slow down H1b hiring. That presumes it's also not enough to stop it as well.

The point being that if the administration actually wants the fee to be effective at slowing down H1b hiring, they need to make it much higher.

No, if we're not going to eliminate the program, we should lean into the government money grab. Today, we give away these positions in a lottery. Instead, we should auction them off to the highest bidder. Let the free market run up the price of this limited good. Let companies compete for it.

The $103,265 fee is a slap on the wrist. It's not high enough to actually be effective at slowing down employers from using the program.

https://www.cs.wisc.edu/2025/0...

And DARPA has a whole program for it:

https://www.darpa.mil/research...

This is the attitude that causes people to die. Americans deal with hotter temperatures every summer. Texas gets over 40 C in the summer every day. Install AC and be done with the problem. No one needs to die from overheating!

European windows don't work well for portable ACs. One, they don't usually come with screens which are typical in the US to keep bugs out. Two, they open from a hinge on the side. So, you basically need a way to cover the whole window space if you open it at all.

Last time I checked, we don't live in 1850. Slavery is a distant memory. It was outlawed 160 years ago. Jim Crow and redlining have been illegal for over half a century. Any systemic racism going on today revolves around DEI, which damn near all corporate America follows.

I already told you I'm a progressive Dem. I'm not going to defend Trump and his administration's bullshit. The Dems were around long before DEI. Not all of us agree with that philosophy. Plenty of us disagree. Equality should never have been replaced with equity.

Today, the only systemic abuse of power that's done by organizations across the economy are ones using DEI to promote minorities over straight, white men.

And no, you're making the assumption that I'm a right-winger. I've been a solid blue Dem for over 20 years. I hate Trump and the Republicans far more than DEI. That said, I can't stand the woke far-left either. I'm hardly the lone Democrat who can't stand the woke leftists.

No, ensuring "people aren't hired over others just because they're white men" is called equality. That's the opposite of equity, which attempts to provide equal outcomes instead of equal opportunity. In practice, equity is implemented through preferential treatment of minorities over white people in areas such as hiring and promotion, especially over straight, white men. (BTW, that preferential hiring is illegal, but employers following DEI practices still do it.)

Sorry, no. DEI is systematic racism that blindly promotes minorities at the expense of white people, especially straight, white men.

If there's any fault in the death of Arday, it belongs with the people who promoted him unquestioningly despite his self-promotional claims that were increasingly ridiculous and factually dubious.

I say that as a progressive Democrat based in the US who long believed in MLK's dream that people "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." DEI reverses that and judges people on the color of their skin, promoting minorities ahead of anyone else. DEI propelled Arday to such academic heights were he completely didn't belong due to his lack of academic merit.

The woke pushed DEI. That's a separate and distinct group from liberals and progressives, who never fully bought the DEI claims.

Humidity is currently 91% in Yangsan.

I will not write it, Sam-I-Am,
I will not offer colored ham!

City Council member of a non-listed Twin Cities suburb I know:

FBI is involved. Most water systems use one of two control/alert systems that are old and make them easy targets.

All they did was shut down components of the systems e.g., wells/sewer lift stations. Most cities were able to cycle manually to get back up and running. There was not messages warning or ransom of which I am aware.

They could have done a lot more damage if they wanted to, rather than just shutting things down.

I live in Plymouth; there was no city communications about this nor did I see any issues. So, I assume there were no physical disruptions to service.