https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

After a fair amount of confusion and some academic arguments, DoD pushed hard to have this taken seriously.

"The Department of Defense (DoD) established the task force partly due to frustration over what DoD officials considered to be a sluggish and lackluster response by the CIA and Department of State.[39] Christopher C. Miller, who was acting defense secretary at the time, said in 2021 that "I knew CIA and Department of State were not taking this shit seriously and we wanted to shame them into it by establishing our task force."[39] Miller said that he began to consider the reports of mysterious symptoms to be a high priority in December 2020, after he conducted an interview with a person with major combat experience who detailed symptoms.[39]"

As late as 2022, CIA: "The study concluded that it was unlikely that a foreign power was responsible for the AHIs, and that the study had not yet found evidence of involvement by a state actor."

2023: Five of the seven agencies involved in generating the report concluded "the available intelligence consistently points against the involvement of US adversaries in causing the reported incidents" and that a foreign adversary's involvement was "very unlikely". One of the other agencies concluded that foreign involvement was "unlikely", and the seventh agency declined to make a finding.[127][130][129]

People seem to have trouble accepting that the universe doesn't function according to human preferences for decimalization, repetition, consistency.

Calendars, clocks are two points where we have tried to impose a rigor where there isn't one, meaning that any system is going to need kludges or compromises to function year after year.
The daylight savings time argument happens when people (reasonably, I think) question whether the costs outweigh the benefits, mainly because they haven't lived with the costs in their lives.

We can say "people before us had different needs" (or claim they were stupid, etc) the result being we can abandon the system they implemented. But of course that requires a Chesterton's Fence approach in the first place.

Nice of you to mention this, I didn't even know there was such a thing. Googling how to migrate from 'usual firefox' to ESR to genuinely refuse constant updates and meaningless chrome.
Fuck if it gets rid of the 'ai bar' I'll be giddy.
EDIT: hm, first google suggests its more challenging than I hoped.

Anyway, THANKS

Aside from the GENUINE announcements by Iran's leaders about their
- goals for nuclear weapons
- willingness to use nukes when they have them
- impending development of nuclear weapons
?

Yeah, sure, I guess this is entirely made up.
If Trump was using this to distract from Epstein, why did the US bomb iran some weeks ago, and then essentially shift forces OUT of the region to other theaters? Why not stay on-subject with Iran then?

The story as framed here is a lie, throwing Trump's name in there is pure political spin.
There are no computer 'problems'. In fact, this discussion resulted in fantastic news for importers.

This is a misrepresentation of the discussion that has been resulting since the Supremes struck down the IEEPA tariffs.

The ACE system is not really meant for processing refunds; customs refunds normally are a result of protests. The funds are transferred back to the importer ideally by ACH, and relatively recently (literally the start of Feb 2026) Customs has told importers that they have to enable that capability (by providing ACH info in ACE, so it works) but fewer than 25000 out of the 350000 or so importers have done so.

Our firm has done so, it's not hard, but the ACE system is definitely not simple to use. It always has been (like, in my experience, most government systems). ACE isn't really meant to be a user-dashboard, but more of a functional piece of internal-gov't software that now users have access to. Lots of functionality, shit UI, even shittier documentation.

Anyway, since the Supremes ruling said nothing about refunds, the determination there was passed back to the CIT (which is really the appropriate and knowledgeable venue for this). The open question was somewhat IF there were going to be refunds (we're talking about $175bn in a debt-govt), but more about how these would happen. Would each importer have to formally PROTEST each liquidated import for their refund? This would be the 'usual' way but is clearly unwieldy for the scale of this.

In their closed-door meeting with DHS/Customs Fri 6th, customs advised that ACE doesn't current have the functionality to automate the refund process but they could get it programmed in 45d.

Unlike the way this story is presented, for importers THIS IS FUCKING GREAT NEWS.
Automated refunds a) confirm we ARE getting refunds, b) mean we don't have to formally protest in our case 1600+ entries since the April tariffs. The CIT originally ruled that customs had to give us back our tariffs urgently, but as this is SUCH good news generally, they're expected to grant customs the 45d.

This isn't that the system is BROKEN, as reported.
This is about a system that wasn't ever designed to do a thing, can be amended to do a thing that will get my company back something like $10m AUTOMATICALLY and save us easily $200k in service fees for individualized protests not to say countless hours building the document trail for each protest.

This summary, in short, is tendentious-slanted bullshit. Slashdot in 2026 /shock

Source: I've been in int'l logistics for more than 35 years. I run a US logistics office for a EU multinational, we run 18 US warehouses, and have somewhere around 1000 import entries a year. We've had about 2000 entries since 1/1/25, according to my latest ACE report.

Many public spaces as well as aircraft already have general rules against disruptive behavior.

It's taken this long to infect airlines because for the longest time (and still, to some degree) they still enforced the rules: behave, or you're getting thrown off the plane.

Now, even the airlines seem afflicted by inaction. Whether it's a fear of the omnipresent lawsuit (particularly if the person being disciplined is a "victim class" you're pretty nearly guaranteed legal challenges) or people with the authority to do something are just growing tired of having to constantly exercise it and fight about the stupidest things.

The reality is that if people aren't largely self-disciplining, the vastly outnumbered authorities ultimately can't make them behave.

To this specific point (headphones) I almost entirely blame phone manufacturers for omitting headphone plugs. You used to be able to get by with $5 earbuds (hell they used to give you earbuds with the phone). Now I imagine, even though people drop $1000 for a phone, $100 for Bluetooth earbuds is still pricey.

I genuinely don't understand how this was the root assumption.

Everyone has to pay for their electricity - if I use 12,000 kwH, I pay for 12,000 kwH.
If a data center uses 12,000 mwH, why wouldn't they pay (roughly) 1000x what I pay?

Well put.

The cowardice of our only directly-democratically-elected members of government, and their deferment to an almost-imperial-level of Presidential authority has been the narrative basically throughout the entire postwar era.

Frankly, the last time Congress bothered to meaningfully & openly clash with the president was the McCarthy Hearings & Eisenhower (although you could reasonably argue Watergate, I'd submit that a) that's sort of a different thing, and b) congress was dragged into that kicking and screaming)

If there's one shining result of the Trump presidency, it might be that Congress wakes up to its constitutional duties and authority. Yes, that will result in a much-less-effective Federal government, much slower to respond, and less prone to the tides of populism. Some small-government types would see that as preferable....

Considering Ghislane's father Robert Maxwell nee Jan Abraham Ludvik (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maxwell) was widely believed to be either an agent for or active supporter of Israel and the Mossad....I'm going to rather confidently guess the Mossad knows EXACTLY what was happening, where, when, and with whom on Mr Epstein's island.

Thanks for that clear explanation. Do you have any example (your own, or others) of what threshold is the standard today? As you mention, a simple prompt isn't enough but it seems that drilling down into the semantics is critical here.

Again thanks

How very postmodern of you.

Then again, I'm going to venture a guess that your kind of people are those who denigrate law & order generally, and wonder why we even have borders, man.

Gross expansion of federal power over constitutionally-protected power of the states.

Obamacare ITSELF wasn't the problem; it wasn't even a terrible idea (as many democrats at the time pointed out, it was basically the same program Romney (a republican) had established in Massachusetts previously).

There would have been absolutely nothing wrong with 50 different states implementing exactly the same program. That would have been fine.

No, the problem was that there is NO CONSTITUTIONAL power of the federal government to dictate health care insurance. None. This was the GROSS overreach, if that's not too subtle a point for you to comprehend.

In fact, there's that pesky 10th Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people"

It hurtss uss when our echo chamber is broken open. It BURNS! It BURNS!

Personally, I see Trump as a symptom, no much cause.

In the same sense Bush II was the result of Clinton, and Obama was the result of Bush II, Trump I was the normal backlash against Obama's overreach. Think about what it means that Trump - a pretty poor president the FIRST time - was selected a SECOND time by a majority of Americans?
Biden's admin was seen as so grossly partisan, so sclerotic that every single demographic except white women swung rightward.

(Some of us might suggest that the vote was ultimately cultural, not political; an instinctive revulsion at the Left's very Gramsci-an post-covid victorylap/overreach into even redefining reality - what is a woman, indeed?)

The result is militant ossification on the left in turn. The centrists have no voice. I'm not sure there are many actual centrists left.

Corporate media is no longer an oppositional 4th estate; they've picked a side. (They're oppositional NOW because their side is out of power. That's contextual not fundamental.) I *much* prefer a media that tears apart everything a president does than the craven lickspittles running cover for the wealthy and powerful.

I saw an anti-ICE post the other day "Eisenhower deported 1.3 million illegal immigrants with only 750 agents"
Yes that's because in 1950, the statement "Illegals should be deported" would rank up there with "The sun rises in the East" and "Water is wet" as so obvious NOBODY would have disagreed.

Yet - many of the tactics Trump's floating today about countering the Supremes' ruling against his tariff were first employed by Mr Obama. His administration had one of the lowest Supreme Court win rates for a modern presidency (~50%) - the lowest since Zachary Taylor with a notably high number of 9-0 losses, totaling nearly 50 over his two terms.

(taps foot)

(taps foot)

(taps foot)

Me? I'm just standing around waiting for all the scolds who INSISTED nobody could ever call places shithole countries to come back out of the woodwork.

(Yeah, I guess I'll be waiting a while)