Charlie Kirk was an inflammatory liar. He said some hateful things and made a lot of money doing so. His hateful rhetoric brought about more hatred in our country.

Yet he did not deserve to die. Nobody should be murdered, period. Not by criminals, not by the state, not by anyone. Murder is wrong.

The bigger consequence though is yet to come. Charlie's death also killed truth. The MAGA party has been given an even louder megaphone now, and even less obligation to be truthful when using it. While it was nearly impossible to defeat people like him with truth before, now we have no chance. Some people are comparing this to 9/11 and they aren't wrong. After 9/11 the GOP took all control of the federal government and nearly succeeded in making it a crime to be a democrat. Now the GOP is dead and buried and nobody is stopping the MAGA party from anything they want to do. Every branch of the federal government is now subservient to the White House, and unwilling - or unable - to stop the POTUS from following through on his very worst ideas.

The state of the POTUS's health is of no consequence. He has established a chain of command. If he doesn't make it to the end of his term someone - not Vance - will step in and claim emergency powers to keep the movement going on for the indefinite future. Terms limits are gone, the 22nd amendment doesn't matter. We're more than a year away from federal elections, and that's too far away. Too much damage will be done by then.

The American Experiment was a great diea. Unfortunately it didn't last.

Murder is wrong.

However we have a president who doesn't care what other people think about right and wrong. He treats the 10 commandments like a to-do list, the 7 deadly sins like achievements - to say nothing of his wanton disregard for the constitution.

Would Trump intentionally allow one of his own to die to take the attention away from his current problems?

I wouldn't suspect Trump would actually call out a hit on someone, but I wouldn't see it above him to make it a little easier for someone to be killed to reduce the stress. Kirk was an ideal pick for this, as he was young but not super valuable to MAGA (or at least easily replaceable). Trump himself can then easily come out and blame it on whomever he wants as well, which will help whip up his base even more.

And of course if this becomes a pivotal moment towards a civil war, all the better for Trump - it becomes another reason to never, ever, relinquish power to anyone.

A couple weeks ago we had a front page story here Microsoft's many outlooks are confusing users . That article has had a whopping Sixty-Four comments so far. I posited that while Windows Outlook is awful, that iOS outlook is even worse. But maybe I overlooked something? Is there another current outlook release that is actually worse than either?

Outlook for Windows is, of course, awful. We can ignore the well known security issues that are very much integral to the application and the reason why it gets updated roughly once a week. My biggest gripe - as a non-voluntary user of Outlook - is over the "auto-trash" feature. Roughly once a week I'll be typing an email and something will pop up from Outlook while I'm typing for which the default action is apparently "trash the email I'm currently writing and never allow me to see it again". Drafts in Windows Outlook are beyond useless, unless you type at a rate that would make Mavis Beacon steam with rage.

Outlook for iOS though is arguably worse. The single best part of it is that it gets updated at least once a week by Microsoft. Yet because updates don't come out at the right time of the day, and they get automatically rejected if I don't consent to them within 2-3 minutes after they are announced (and at that, only if I am not actively in outlook when they are announced), I always end up having to install them later manually. The high frequency of updates though tells me that the biggest frustration of Outlook for iOS is viewed as "a feature, not a bug". Namely, I'm referring to the fact that the default action behind "reply" in Outlook for iOS is "reply all" - even though it doesn't tell you that. My employer has over 10,000 employees around the world; we rarely have a week go by where at least one person didn't accidentally hit reply all on a group email solely because they were replying from their company iPhone.

So is there a worse current release of Outlook?

And don't tell me to move to another email client; believe me I would if I could. My employer dictates that everyone use Outlook on our company (Windows 11, of course) laptops and our company iPhones.

First, I'll say I never sent anything to 23 and me myself. I considered it more than once but never did it.

Second, we've all seen news updates telling users to delete their data from 23 and me as soon as possible. That's reasonable advice but I suspect it's too late to make a difference as the lights are already being turned off.

So who will buy their data? The data has great value to a one industry more than others; the technology though unfortunately has very little. The data will be purchased by the health insurance cartel. We should be terrified of this outcome. This will lead to a whole new kind of "pre-existing condition" exclusion brought upon consumers by the cartel. Don't pretend that the ACA prevents this in any meaningful way. Your insurance company is about to know a whole lot more about you - even if you never sent a sample to the company - and your insurance is about to get yet more expensive.

Don't pretend he wouldn't. Look at what he's done in less than two months, without a single bill having made it to his desk. He is building the argument for congress being "obsolete". His fans are rabidly endorsing everything he does, while simultaneously enthusiastically attacking everyone who dares to question him. His lawyers are working to build cases against everything that could question his power, to be heard in front of judges who openly adore him. The supermajority in the SCOTUS guarantees that he will win any case his lawyers can get there, while other lawyers working for him are building cases for him to be able to replace judges at will - or just add more if he needs them.

This in indeed how democracy dies. It's been a good 200+ years, but it's all winding down now. Perhaps not a surprise that fascism comes in a package delivered by someone whose grandfather wanted to hide their German-ishness.

Last night, Trump addressed congress. A little over a month into his new term, he brought some axes to grind. I'll refer to The Associated Press (AP) transcript of the speech , which I won't quote in full but will use bits of.

First, one number worth bringing up. The number is 13. 13 is the number of times Trump mentioned Biden by name in this speech. He also used the phrase "previous administration" twice, so really he referred to Biden directly at least 15 times. That's a rather staggering amount of calling out for a public speech.

He also called out Jimmy Carter once, in another classic misstatement regarding the Panama Canal. He called out Reagan once, to claim that he can do something that Reagan could not. Notably he never called out anyone named Bush. Nor did he ever call out his previous VP, and only once did he name his current VP (that only at the beginning).

Another number worth bringing up is the occurrence of the word "media", which occurred only once this time. In spite of his well known hatred towards traditional media, he only tried to dunk on them once (by inaccurately lumping them in with Biden). The one time he called them out he did so trying to suggest that they - and the legislative process itself - are obsolete.

There is plenty more to unpack, but none of this is normal. We are witnessing democracy dying to thunderous applause.

I raised this issue back on January 4th, before the inauguration (and even before the final certification of the 2024 election results). Now, will the democrats ever manage to control the narrative again? Will their new party chair from MN be able to change that situation in their favor? Only time will tell.

So far we see the democrats marching out one of their oldest Senators whenever they want to say something in response to Trump's maniacal actions. Chuck Schumer is a good guy, and certainly knowledgeable and qualified, but he does not do anything to get people excited (in spite of his peculiar use of the term "aroused") over an issue. He'll be quickly mocked and then marched back to his office, and nothing important will happen. For some reasons the democrats are unwilling or unable to learn from that lesson.

Now that doesn't mean that the chair and the voice of the party need to be as abrasive as the person they are countering. One can be kind and successful, but that is a difficult needle to thread in the current environment where the mic goes to the loudest - not the most insightful or informed - voice.

We aren't far from seeing an executive action signed that outlaws the democratic party in some form or another. Will the democrats have any spine to act against it? We can't count on the SCOTUS to do so.

There were more than a few cases of this happening in the Fuhrer's first administration, but that's a previous reality. We'll see how many we find in this administration (assuming of course it ever ends).

The case I have in mind is with the presidential pardons that Trump issued to the January 6 insurrectionists. How is this him having it both ways? Just think to the MAGA party responses we kept hearing in endless refrain to the insurrection.

Namely, the MAGA party kept telling us these people were not Trump supporters, but rather undercover FBI agents (because of course why wouldn't they attack other law enforcement officers?), or actors hired by Soros, or various other provocateurs who were not in any way aligned with Trump.

Yet now Trump has released them all from their federal sentences. Many are quick to praise him. Some are quick to get themselves right back into trouble.

But if these were not supporters of his - and even moreso if they were non-MAGA people who were just trying to make him look bad - then why is he releasing them? By the MAGA defense these people wouldn't have supported him, and would only pose a risk to him after they are released.

This last week I was shocked to hear something from Trump that actually matched my own beliefs. Then I was far less shocked to hear him walk it back and take the opposite stance shortly after.

Of course this seems to be part of his "populist" approach, taking as many sides on as many issues as possible. This gives (almost) everyone something that they can agree with at some point in time, and if he's lucky they'll forget about the times they disagree with him.

Which leaves me to wonder, is there a good log anywhere that tracks how often he takes multiple sides on the same issue? Not that it would do much for those who are dead-set on supporting him to the end of the earth, but it could be useful for discussions with more reasonable folks.

Yesterday's very public assassination brought an end to the life of someone who was paid millions annually to run a company that made billions by deciding when people live and when they die. His direct salary was 2.5 times what the President of the United States is directly paid annually.

Obviously, murder is wrong. It doesn't matter how immoral the actions of an executive are, killing them is wrong.

It is worth noting that this is not going to undo the problem we have in this country with for-profit health insurance. If anything we're going to see executive compensation at those companies only increase, and the companies will start hiring professional security for those executives. And because they own congress, we're going to see new laws passed that make those executives more powerful, and more revered.

Here's a little adventure into nothing useful. A comment option that used to be popular is "No Foes and No Friend's Foes". There aren't enough users left to make that terribly useful.

However, I have intentionally friended some of my freaks (people who foe'd me). Being as that makes me a foe of a friend, wouldn't that disqualify me from posting in the comments here?

Since posting comments on youtube is pointless, I might as well post a pointless comment here instead.

Has anyone considered that perhaps the Jaguar commercial that has so many American conservatives losing their minds was designed to do exactly that? American conservatives were never fond of the brand anyways, they viewed British cars as being of poor quality. If you know that a segment isn't interested, maybe something like this - which is forcing them to talk about your brand - is exactly what you need in order to bring in attention prior to a big launch.

Notice that the ad did not directly pick on anyone. It didn't say that anything specific was "right" or "wrong", it just had random models doing random things. It looked like it could have been selling elevators, or sledgehammers, or rocks, or weird fashion, or makeup, or hair products. But then when it turned out to be a car commercial (notably without showing any cars) it got people talking.

Conservatives are calling this the death cry of Jaguar. It could well end up their renaissance. They didn't insult the people who weren't interested in their products, but they got those people talking about them anyways.

I am likely not the only person here who started in programing with BASIC. I posted this to the front page, but as it does not praise our Dear Leader or trash anyone who dares to oppose him, it likely won't make it to the front page. Indeed some tech news does not have a political bend, just as some news doesn't either.

I can't say I know much about this guy but BASIC certainly had an impact on me. I wrote far more in Perl than I ever did in BASIC but what I learned in BASIC helped me with everything else I ever wrote. I hope he found his life fulfilling; it certainly helped bring joy - and employment - to many others around the world.

20 might no longer go to 10 for him, but hopefully his future iterations will be productive.

Don't be mistaken. Trump has called for Gaetz to be the next Attorney General, and nobody from the GOP will resist that appointment. Collins will pretend to consider resisting it, but we know her game plan. The democrats won't be allowed to participate in the discussion.

And this isn't the worst. This is Trump applying a test to the MAGA party. They will "pass" the test and the next batch of cabinet appointments will be even worse.

The next part will be the more frightening. The dust will settle on cabinet appointments and whatnot. Trump will be inaugurated again according to schedule. We'll likely see more white power "unite the right" style rallies around the same tie. None of this is the worst though.

The next big movement we're likely to see is the MAGA party attack on the 22nd amendment. Yes there are prescribed actions required to repeal a constitutional amendment. However we have a power wielding party that doesn't care about such things. What they do care about is keeping power as long as possible. They will find a way to keep Trump - and his appointed next-generation successors - in power beyond the current limits. We might not see this change come directly from congress - it might come from the DoJ or even originate in the courts without the DoJ instead - but we'll see it soon.

Trump will keep telling the tale of how much he won so "bigly" this year. But there is a number that doesn't get much attention that tells a slightly different story.

In 2020, Biden received 81.2 million votes, Trump 74.2 million.

In 2024, Trump received 74.8 million votes, Harris 71.2 million.

The US population between 2020 and 2024 increased by a rather modest 3 million people (according to the US Census).

In other words Trump only picked up another 600,000 votes across the country while Harris pulled in (almost exactly) 10 million fewer votes than her predecessor. Hence Trump did not become more popular; rather his opponent became less popular.