DOGE Catch-All
- Thread starter nycfan
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Other than being cool or funny.
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Rachel Maddow reported the other night that some 20 year old staffer, his wife and kid moved into a government office building. I assume that is all for him.
StrangePackage
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Why should we not be? Trans people are going to exist, they're going to want to transition, not all will want or be able to afford sex reassigned surgery, so why shouldn't we try to understand the long term health impacts of that?
I went to the site. It looks about as reliable as Project Veritas.
Duke Mu
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Oligarchs gonna Oligarch.
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Look at the banner in that screenshot. When Republicans can’t get their shit together to raise the debt limit, it will be “Democrats shutting down the government” despite Republicans holding the majority in both houses. They are already tuning up the guitar to play this song.
superrific
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Are you a biologist? A medical doctor? How would you know what to study? God, I'm so sick of this armchair science.
Here's a thought: a menstrual cycle is hormonal. Trans men have a different hormonal cycle than women, because of the hormones they are administered. So studying menstruation in XX who take male hormones helps us understand menstruation in general. I don't know if this is what they are studying, but it's certainly a plausible and good scientific reason for doing so.
So many great discoveries were found by people doing stuff others thought stupid. "Why are you trying to determine if light bends around the sun? Who cares? Surely we're not studying this." Good thing we didn't have you making decisions about what to study, because we wouldn't have relativity.
"Why are you studying the interactions between molds and bacteria? How stupid," said people pre-penicillin.
"Surely we're not spending money studying gila monster spit," said people before Wegovy.
"Why are you studying whether or not a single magnet moving back and forth on an infinite magnetic tape can compute algorithms," said people before computers.
If you're not a biologist, this should be your opinion about the propriety of biological research. It happens to be the same as mine. "Hmm, interesting. I wonder what they might get out of that study."
superrific
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The thing is, a lot of research doesn't produce anything useful. If we knew which research would be productive in advance, we wouldn't fund the useless research. And the way, of course, to determine that is [checks notes] research. Oh.
ColdBlueSteel
Distinguished Member
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$600,000 is what they’d have gotten.
I'd like something besides an assertion from a dubious site before offering an opinion.
superrific
Legend of ZZL
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God did not create you to be an ignoramus. That is a choice you make all by yourself. You can choose differently if you try.
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DOGE Has Deployed Its GSAi Custom Chatbot for 1,500 Federal Workers
Elon Musk’s DOGE team is automating tasks as it continues its purge of the federal workforce.
GSAi is meant to support “general” tasks, similar to commercial tools like ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude. It is tailored in a way that makes it safe for government use, a GSA worker tells WIRED. The DOGE team hopes to eventually use it to analyze contract and procurement data, WIRED previously reported.
“What is the larger strategy here? Is it giving everyone AI and then that legitimizes more layoffs?” asks a prominent AI expert who asked not to be named as they do not want to speak publicly on projects related to DOGE or the government. “That wouldn’t surprise me.”
superrific
Legend of ZZL
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FTR the cross product of two vectors is orthogonal to both. Not the inner product. This is neither here nor there. You are correct that wrapping stupid ideas up in bad analogies does not improve them.
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Maybe Musk and his hoodie entourage can help find a way to trim costs down at Golf-A-Lago
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DOGE Cites ‘DEI,’ LinkedIn Profiles It Doesn’t Like In Killing Off HUD Contracts
DOGE cites contractors’ DEI programs, not performance, to cancel work
DOGE Cites ‘DEI,’ LinkedIn Profiles It Doesn’t Like In Killing Off HUD Contracts
DOGE is moving to cancel all awards for some Housing and Urban...
talkingpointsmemo.com
“DOGE is moving to cancel all awards for some Housing and Urban Development contractors, citing “DEI”-related work and other factors that are separate from the substance of the contracts being cancelled.
An internal HUD email reviewed by TPM said that DOGE was moving to cancel “all awards” for eight contractors after a “DOGE review of their websites and LinkedIn profiles.”
It’s a stunning and candid admission of what DOGE is doing at HUD: taking contracts away from organizations not because of the quality or substance of their work, but because of unrelated political issues. In this case, the email cited President Trump’s anti-“DEI” executive order as a reason to end the contracts — not because the awards themselves were in violation of the order, but because the organizations presented themselves and their work in a way that ran afoul of the administration’s preferences.
… Kevin Martone, executive director of contractor Technical Assistance Collaborative, Inc., told TPM that HUD told him the awards were being cancelled because “operations and performance in connection with the subject awards is not in compliance with” the “DEI” executive order.
When TPM asked if the substance of the HUD awards to Technical Assistance Collaborative had any relation to DEI initiatives, Martone replied: “None whatsoever.”
HUD did not immediately return TPM’s request for comment. …”
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“…Many of the eight targeted contractors featured language around diversity initiatives on their websites and LinkedIn profiles. Some touted the same kind of standard DEI principles that exist across the corporate and non-profit worlds. It’s not clear if that’s the kind of anodyne commitment that DOGE took as a reason to end work with the contractors.DOGE Cites ‘DEI,’ LinkedIn Profiles It Doesn’t Like In Killing Off HUD Contracts
DOGE cites contractors’ DEI programs, not performance, to cancel work
DOGE Cites ‘DEI,’ LinkedIn Profiles It Doesn’t Like In Killing Off HUD Contracts
DOGE is moving to cancel all awards for some Housing and Urban...talkingpointsmemo.com
“DOGE is moving to cancel all awards for some Housing and Urban Development contractors, citing “DEI”-related work and other factors that are separate from the substance of the contracts being cancelled.
An internal HUD email reviewed by TPM said that DOGE was moving to cancel “all awards” for eight contractors after a “DOGE review of their websites and LinkedIn profiles.”
It’s a stunning and candid admission of what DOGE is doing at HUD: taking contracts away from organizations not because of the quality or substance of their work, but because of unrelated political issues. In this case, the email cited President Trump’s anti-“DEI” executive order as a reason to end the contracts — not because the awards themselves were in violation of the order, but because the organizations presented themselves and their work in a way that ran afoul of the administration’s preferences.
… Kevin Martone, executive director of contractor Technical Assistance Collaborative, Inc., told TPM that HUD told him the awards were being cancelled because “operations and performance in connection with the subject awards is not in compliance with” the “DEI” executive order.
When TPM asked if the substance of the HUD awards to Technical Assistance Collaborative had any relation to DEI initiatives, Martone replied: “None whatsoever.”
HUD did not immediately return TPM’s request for comment. …”
Martone told TPM that HUD had initially cut contracts for his organization that dealt more explicitly with DEI initiatives in the week after the Trump “DEI” executive order was issued. After that, he said, HUD officials told him that other contracts would proceed so long as DEI-related work stopped. But HUD’s move this week caught him completely off guard.
… In the message, the Office of Technical Assistance addressed employees by saying that the Trump administration had “cancelled all HUD funding,” including technical assistance awards for the eight contractors. The message ordered the contractors to “cease all substantive work” while giving them 90-120 days to wind down operations. …”
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“… The government currently monitors dozens of active volcanoes near population centers, including Mount Spurr near Anchorage, Alaska, and the most active volcano in the world, Kilauea, on the island of Hawaii. Hundreds of thousands of people live near these two volcanoes alone. Without the observatories in place, scientists would be unable to do the work that leads to early warnings for evacuations or for changes to air travel.
…
NOTUS confirmed that the General Services Administration sent notice of its plans to terminate the lease for the building that houses much of the Alaska observatory’s equipment and staff in Anchorage, and for a building in Hilo, Hawaii, that houses at least some staff and equipment. Both the Hawaii and Alaska observatories are run by the United States Geological Survey.
Agencies are also planning to fire the government experts who could help relocate some of these observatories or preserve the leases for the buildings.
… The Alaska building, one of several used by USGS on the Alaska Pacific University campus, has a lease termination set for August, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. The lease on the Hilo Iron Works building has already been paid for through May 2027, according to a letter reviewed by NOTUS from Hawaii Rep. Jill Tokuda to Doug Burgum, the secretary of the Department of the Interior. It’s unclear when staff and equipment would need to relocate or what money would be saved by terminating that lease.
“Without this facility, HVO may no longer be able to maintain a continuous presence on Hawaii Island to monitor ongoing volcanic activity, endangering the crucial scientific and technical expertise offered by HVO staff, who may be forced to relocate or quit,” Tokuda wrote in the letter. …”