I think just the size of the projects. My employer has had a team of ten-ish people working full time on porting a piece of our COBOL program (the full thing was deemed not possible to port to a single modern application, so it's getting split up) for about a year now. I was peripherally involved in four rounds of increasingly integrated testing environments. Go live was yesterday. They rolled it back three hours in.

It's hard for a company to invest multiple people's salaries for many years on reworking software that currently mostly works.

Both. People who are promoted to management because they are good individual contributors are often lacking in management skills (they turn from something they are good at to something they are bad at), and people who crave and hard pursue management positions rarely have management skills (always bad).

Your link goes to the end of the Graeber piece, I had to scroll way up to find the start. But wow, what a start.

I would like this book to be an arrow aimed at the heart of our civilization. There is something very wrong with what we have made ourselves. We have become a civilization based on work—not even “productive work” but work as an end and meaning in itself. We have come to believe that men and women who do not work harder than they wish at jobs they do not particularly enjoy are bad people unworthy of love, care, or assistance from their communities. It is as if we have collectively acquiesced to our own enslavement. The main political reaction to our awareness that half the time we are engaged in utterly meaningless or even counterproductive activities—usually under the orders of a person we dislike—is to rankle with resentment over the fact there might be others out there who are not in the same trap. As a result, hatred, resentment, and suspicion have become the glue that holds society together. This is a disastrous state of affairs. I wish it to end.

That a hundredish people did pay $1000 to go for several years in a row, and now in 2026 things have changed in a way that they won't pay this year, makes it more encouraging to me than if this were a fizzled startup attempt. Hopefully it's a sign the broader MAGA coalition is losing steam.

My (cis female) birth certificate erroneously was filled out with "male". Same error happened on the birth certificate of my mother (who is also cis female). It's never caused either of us any problems. Schools enrolled us as female, driver's licenses say female, etc.

When I was in college in the early 2000s, my dad's mother helped me get a copy of my birth certificate, and was horrified her beautiful granddaughter was listed as male. She called up the county clerk and raised Cain, and then informed me it had been corrected. I've never needed to get a fresh copy since then, so I don't know for sure, but it sounded like the word of an angry old lady was enough to get an update filed.

Growing meat cells in a lab and selling them as food is illegal in the states you reference.

What Beyond does in processing plant material into something that resembles some meat products is still legal everywhere.

The intent of the law was to have something to charge corporate fraudsters with if they destroyed the accounting records with proof of their fraud when served a warrant. Or illegal drug manufacturers destroying their chemlab. Ownership of the property doesn't come into it.

The envisioned cases were always domestic crime investigations where there was already enough evidence to get a warrant. The application at customs where they don't need a warrant is the novelty, and I really hope the government loses its case.

I mean, enough that manufacturing of homogenizers is a thing. https://improbable.com/2021/05/13/shakespeare-and-the-whole-mouse-homogenizer/?amp=1

The ad features the comforting headline: “Only the Polytron reduces an entire mouse to a soup-like homogenate in 30 seconds”

When fertile, women have significantly increased mucus volume in their vaginas.

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

Several hundred glands in the endocervix produce 20–60 mg of cervical mucus a day, increasing to 600 mg around the time of ovulation.

Unfortunately, that it's such a widespread characteristic means society can only maintain progressive institutions by figuring out a way to protect them from being considered "enemy other" by people like that. There are selfish reasons to support safety nets - treating infectious diseases in poor communities prevents transmission to wealthier communities, for example - but those reasons haven't been sold in a way to gain traction with today's conservatives.

If the job need is for someone to maintain Linux servers running services that have to interface with Windows servers for related services, someone unwilling to interface with Windows could be a bad fit. Might have been a good choice for both sides to not continue with the interview.

The increase in diagnosis has happened in less than one generation. Genetic drift from altered reproductive behavior would take multiple generations. The speed of the diagnosis shift rules out social changes to mate selection and childbearing rates.

But the Democrats want to tie government funding to responsible environmental practices like reducing nitrogen fertilizer runoff and manure leaks, and they might mandate slightly less inhumane conditions for animals in feed lots. The horror! /s

An appeals court blocked the rule, and Trump's FTC had argued in support of it. They haven't appealed the ruling, though. https://www.businessinsider.com/ftc-blocks-subscription-trap-click-to-cancel-ftc-rule-2025-7

Trump's FTC filed a brief in March supporting the negative option and click-to-cancel rule, writing that consumers "face unnecessary obstacles from sellers who force them to endure multiple phone calls, long hold times, and countless automated menus. Studies show that most Americans pay hundreds annually for unwanted subscriptions."

FTC's commissioner Mark Meador took a different tone last week when he wrote in a post on X following the 8th Circuit's ruling: "The FTC's click-to-cancel rule, which would have made it much easier for consumers to get rid of unwanted online subscriptions, isn't going into effect for one reason: the Biden FTC cut corners and didn't follow the law. Process matters."

This suggests that the FTC likely won't appeal the ruling...

Recent Democrat presidents have not gone after legal immigration the way the Trump administration has. And in recent years, the only proposed comprehensive immigration reform bills - to try to make the process less broken - have only had Democrat support.

You are correct the deportation numbers are similar, but the picture is bigger than just deportations.

Our noses have erectile tissue.

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

Conchae are lined by pseudostratified columnar, ciliated respiratory epithelium with a thick, vascular, and erectile glandular tissue layer.

It may not be abstractly good for cats to be allowed outdoors (my family growing up had a cat eaten by the neighbors dogs, a cat get hit by a car, multiple cats get serious injuries from fights with neighborhood cats, etc.) But having been in a household with a series of cats that only went out when they asked to be let out: they ask to be let out every day. It is completely inconsistent with my experience that a cat would "never want to go outside again".

Cats kill huge numbers of birds. Most small bird species have high reproduction rates, and crowding results in higher death rates from increased disease and parasite spread, competition for food, and all the good shelter from predators being taken. Higher death rates from one cause (say, cats) results in less death rates from crowding-related causes. I haven't seen any evidence that, in general, cat hunting ends up actually impacting bird populations.

Specific species of birds in certain locations have been harmed by cats: the Wikipedia page list several examples in Australia (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_predation_on_wildlife). So it's good to have local awareness if there's a particular vulnerable population. But in general, keeping cats inside is only for their own safety and won't impact bird population one way or another.

That article is sobering. Bolding is mine.

...analytics company Tourism Economics... updated outlook now estimates an 8.2% decline, led by about one quarter fewer Canadians visiting the US from January to July, compared to the same period in 2024.

The World Travel and Tourism Council, a global tourism advocacy organization, projected in May that the United States will lose $12.5 billion in international visitor spending in 2025, the only country out of 184 economies the council analyzed that will see a decline this year.

I do not like this development. Angry upvote.