Thursday, February 13, 2025

Saving the Vaccine Schedule

To mark the day the cowardly Republicans in the U.S. Senate approved RFK Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services, here is the CDC's recommended timing of vaccines for children by age 6:

(Click to enlarge.)

Keep it handy since it will probably be hard to find through any official source, if it isn't already.

I wonder where that QR code goes these days.


Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Infrastructure, We Love You

Many of us live in the age of human luxury, relative to any of our ancestors. The millionaires aboard the Titanic would have envied most aspects of how a middle class American lives today: our diet, warmth in the winter and coolness in the summer, range of clothing options, health care (despite its many issues)...

I've known this for quite some time, though I can't remember how I came to realize it. Much of our comfort is due to the infrastructure we've built up over generations: some government-run, some public utilities, some privately owned. As John Oliver showed in one of his best pieces almost 10 years ago, infrastructure is not sexy, but it's very necessary. Deb Chachra's book How Infrastructure Works — which awaits me on my to-be-read pile — is another great look at the subject.

Charles Mann, author of 1491, 1493, and The Wizard and the Prophet, just published a short essay called We Live Like Royalty and Don't Know It along the same lines. "Every American stands at the end of a continuing, decades-long effort to build and maintain the systems that support our lives," he says.

It's a fraught time to publish such a piece, given the current Musk/Trump demolition derby, which will undermine significant parts of the under-recognized infrastructure Mann refers to. But it's good to know what you're losing, even if you lose it. And motivation to keep it, if it can be kept.


Tuesday, February 11, 2025

Refusing the Gulf of Obeisance

Yes, we all should know by now, Don't obey in advance. Too many people, businesses, and organizations are failing to follow that directive, however.

Google Maps is one of them, in its decision to relabel the Gulf of Mexico (for U.S. viewers) as the Gulf of America or whatever the heck ridiculous thing Trump decided it should be called.

And now there's news that the Associated Press, which refuses to call the Gulf of Mexico anything but its internationally recognized name, was informed by the White House that its reporter would be barred from an executive order signing because of the naming divergence.

Here's the AP's statement on the subject.

This follows earlier decisions by the Trump administration to replace reporters from legitimate news sources at Pentagon briefings with people from right-wing puppets (Breitbart, OANN, Newsmax, among others). 

Here's one person's version of what we can expect in the future for the name of the gulf:

By Dennis Detwiller.


Monday, February 10, 2025

Warming Stripes

Do you know about warming stripes? This is the image that's usually shown:

It's a visual representation of the increase in global average temperature. And here's the image mapped onto a German bus:

I thought the stripes were pretty well-known, especially among people who are aware of the climate crisis and are doing any kind of climate activism. But lately I've talked to a few different people at climate-related events who didn't know what the stripes mean, or had never even seen them.

So I'm doing my part here to further awareness. 

Ed Hawkins at the University of Reading created the stripes, and then he create a website (linked above) that has versions based on data for various locations around the world. Each stripe represents a year, starting on the left side (as early as 1850, depending on location) and so far ending on the right in 2024. 

The colors represent the annual variation from 0 to 0.9 degrees Celsius above (red) or below (blue) the 1961–2010 average temperature in each year. (In other words... the colors are already weighted toward the higher average baseline of the recent past.)

Hawkins' site doesn't have data for Minneapolis/Saint Paul. The closest city was Milwaukee, so here's that:

Check out your own location, or look at other places around the world. It's enlightening.


Sunday, February 9, 2025

Where Federal Employees Work

From Pew Research Center, as of March 2024:

Click to enlarge for better viewing.

So it's easy to see that more than half of federal employees are in the VA (doctors, nurses, support staff) or the military. Note: These numbers shown for the various branches of the military are the civilian employees, not the active duty members of the Army, Navy, and so on.

Homeland Security (a department that's only existed as such since 9/11, and which I would argue could use some downsizing) is the next largest.

After that, Agriculture — one third of which is made up Forest Service employees — is one of the larger remaining departments. 

This chart does not include the U.S. Postal Service, which is an independent federal agency employing an additional 600,000 people. 

The chart comes from this page on the Pew Research Center site, where there is lots of other great information, such as where employees are located and salary ranges. 

Federal employment, excluding the Postal Service, "accounts for 1.5% of total civilian employment, a share that – except for a temporary bump in mid-2020 for the decennial census – has been largely constant for more than a decade." 

The Postal Service's employment numbers have declined by half since their high at the end of the 1990s. I don't  know about you, but I felt better served by the Postal Service back then.



Saturday, February 8, 2025

Living in the Clampdown

Yesterday was International Clash Day, which began in 2013 when a radio host at Washington-based station KEXP played their music all day on February 7. Band member Joe Strummer once said the Clash was “…anti-fascist, we’re anti-violence, we’re anti-racist, and we’re pro-creative. We’re against ignorance.”

When I saw mention of the day come through my BlueSky feed yesterday, it included a link to a video of the song "Clampdown" (lyrics here), and a local response from Chris Steller, who noted:

FACT: The Clash debuted "Clampdown" in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Sept. 12, 1979. Photo taken from the front row that day by Mike Reiter:

Thanks to all of these people for improving my knowledge of the Clash in this moment.


Friday, February 7, 2025

Do College Students Use the Books in the Library?

It's the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions right now.

Yesterday was a semifinal game. The three players were all men under 30. Two had been multi-day winners in their original appearances, one for many days. The third had come through the Champions Wildcard process, but had shown his mettle with runaway wins over the other players in several games. They're three smart guys who know a lot of stuff.

The two multi-day winners are both currently in school, one an undergraduate and the other in grad school. The Champions Wildcard player is a journalist, but I assume he went to at least undergraduate college. But as I said, they're all clearly under 30.

All that is preface to my astonishment at a question that none of them could answer. It was in a category about library abbreviations, and was the easiest question ($200).

It was worded something like this: There are two organization systems used in libraries. One is the Dewey Decimal System. The other, with initials L.C., is called this.

And there stood three young men — all current or past college students — who must have never been oriented to how college libraries are organized, because none of them knew that the obvious answer was Library of Congress.


Thursday, February 6, 2025

Space Alphabet

I recently started following Present & Correct on BlueSky. They share images of retro ephemera, which brighten your day in the midst of [all this]. 

One of their recent posts was about the cartoon modern children's book Space Alphabet from 1964. It turns out they posted all the pages on their website. The book was written by Irene Zacks and illustrated by Peter Plasencia.

Here are my favorite pages:

There's very little information online about Plasencia. I found this, which says he was born in 1926 in New York, includes the schools where he studied, and lists a few of the books he illustrated. It features some of the Space Alphabet illustrations, and a few from another book called Jules Verne: The Man Who Invented the Future.

Irene Zacks doesn't appear to have written other books, since all the references to her are related to Space Alphabet.


Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Thanks, Jason Kottke, Because I Can't

As readers of this blog probably surmise, I filter my news intake through BlueSky. The ongoing Musk coup is overwhelming.

Jason Kottke has done us all a service by posting the best of the best. I can't just link to his site to accomplish my goal (though I recommend visiting it daily), since it's a timeline that will continue to scroll, so here are the most recent posts he made (which are mostly links to other sites):

This Changes Everything (Jamelle Bouie's most recent column in the New York Times, with gift link).

FAIR calls out the shoddy coverage of the 2025 coup in the NY Times and Wash Post

I’m a Federal Worker. Elon Musk’s Government Data Heist Is the Entire Ballgame

Mike Masnick: Some Conservatives Admit We’re in a Constitutional Crisis

Personal Discretion Over the Treasury’s Payments System Means the End of Democracy

Why It Matters That Musk Has Taken Control of Key Government Operations

The Verge interviewed federal employees about the chaos they’re seeing.

‘Fuck That’: Federal Workers Say They’re Scared But ‘Digging In’ Amid Trump’s Chaos

The 2025 Coup (Derogatory) by Heather Cox Richardson

Trump & Musk have discussed placing “spies” in gov’t offices to root out anti-MAGA sentiment

More on Musk’s alarming unconstitutional seizure of the Treasury Department payments system (Talking Points Memo)

VERY VERY BAD: Under the direction of Elon Musk, a 25-year-old engineer has seized admin privileges to the code for Treasury Department systems (Wired)

As the linked FAIR article says, the most mainstream press are not covering or are under-covering all of this. The network nightly news — still watched by millions of the most normie people — has been AWOL. The New York Times, which spent months raving about Clinton's email server, can't seem to find Musk's rampant incursions worth the front page or any superlatives. 

More independent media (like Wired magazine and Talking Points Memo) have separately confirmed that Musk's minions are rewriting code, while the Times takes the White House press secretary's reassurance that they only have "read-only" access. 

__

Follow up from Jason Kottke explaining that he intends to keep focusing on the ongoing coup for the forseeable future. Thank you, Jason!

 


Tuesday, February 4, 2025

Too Much

The torrent of news is too much. Right at the moment I feel like this image I saw shared by a friend on Facebook:

That's it for tonight. I may not have a lot more in the next few days, given some things that are going on here.

We'll see.


Monday, February 3, 2025

Update on the QLaser Guy

I wrote several posts in the 2010s about a scam product called QLaser (2013) and its promoter, former dentist Larry Lytle (2016). He was finally convicted of fraud in 2018 and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

I recently received an update about Lytle from a reader.

He has been given compassionate release from prison due to terminal illness. It appears he has no financial means or insurance.

The writer said he still owes more than $16 million in restitution, which (obviously) is unlikely to be repaid.


Sunday, February 2, 2025

Contracts? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Contracts

I don't know how widely known the financial side of Trump and Musk's coup has become. They roll something out, then seem to roll it back, but not really, and meanwhile some other aspect is being enacted by incompetently written executive order.

Last Friday and over the weekend, Musk and his henchmen took control of the payment systems at the Treasury Department, which were previously accessible only to a very small number of highly vetted career employees. Muskites also took over the servers at the Office of Personnel Management.

I saw many posts and threads about this, but two stood out to me.

One was from Jesse Jenkins late Friday, assistant professor at Princeton and a highly regarded voice in clean energy engineering:

Everyone seems to be framing Trump's freeze on federal grants as a Constitutional fight over powers of the purse and whether presidents can disregard Congressional appropriations. It is that. But also at stake is the fundamental validity of government contracts!

Trump isn't just trying to impound appropriated but unobligated funding. He's frozen dispersement of billions of dollars of CONTRACTUALLY OBLIGATED funds. Whatever you think about the validity of impounding unobligated funds, this is quite clearly a direct and widespread violation of contract law.

While the courts forced Trump's OMB to revoke its across-the-board freeze on ALL federal assistance (grants, loans etc), the White House continues to forbid dispersement of obligated funds for various programs they just don't like, including clean energy, anything that smells of DEI, foreign aid etc.

It should be obvious, but let's be clear: if a new president can arbitrarily nullify existing federal contracts, they aren't real "contracts" at all and they aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

If President Trump is permitted to carry through with this behavior, without clear censure by the courts, it would fundamentally damage, if not outright destroy, the government's ability to do much of anything!

Want to hire someone to build a highway? Feed a military base? Conduct cancer research? Develop a new fighter jet? Forget about it! Why would they trust you to pay up if a president can just cancel your contract or refuse to pay up at any time for no other reason than they just don't like it?

I really hope the reality of this sinks in and that the press and others start to narrate what is happening here. Trump and Vought are destroying trust in an essential function of the government: the ability to credibly enter contracts to achieve any and all public purposes. That's really bad.

The other was overnight last night by Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo:

Several conversations today with people in the key executive departments. And while the particulars are hard to pin down my impression is that the Musk takeover stuff is considerably worse than is being presented in the press. By this I don’t necessarily things they've *done* yet but the level they already have over key computer systems, payment systems, etc.

The stuff about the Treasury payments systems and control over certain computer networks has been reported. It’s more putting together the big picture about how different pieces fit together.

There also seems to be a significant amount of downloading government data onto private servers, totally outside any cybersecurity regime. Additionally it’s unclear to the people inside whether the people doing these things actually work for the US government… who they are, whether they’re even American citizens. They all seem to be Thiel and Musk protégés. And I’ve had multiple references to their refusing to identify themselves by anything but first name. The rationale given is that they could be doxed.

One additional point and to be clear this latter stuff isn’t from my reporting just pieced together from other reports and what Musk is saying himself. They’re into the treasury payment system and claiming they’ve already found like $4B in “savings” a day.

It’s important to know what this means. This is simple his DOGE team reviewing the US federal budget, law of the land and deciding which parts aren’t necessary. It sounds like they’re saying they will unilaterally cut these funds with control over the check writing at Treasury.

They’re not saying that last part explicitly but that’s certainly the logic of what they’re saying. (Go look at his tweets over the last two days). So a group of Musk protégés seem to be overruling the US federal budget. Impoundment by the president is illegal. It’s hard to think through the levels of illegality having a group of people who don’t even seem to be US government employees doing it.

Which takes us back to Jesse Jenkins' point about contracts.

And then there's one final topper, made today from journalist Radley Balko:

Just a reminder that Musk couldn’t get a top level security clearance. And he was under investigation for violating the terms of the clearance he did have. Now he has your Social Security number, your tax returns, and is unilaterally deciding who the government does and does not pay.