Tim Bray nails it:
I’m not sure the profession I joined last century would attract me today.
Why? This is @GordWait on Mastodon:
“At our office, we are noticing a huge drop in Comp Sci co-op applications. The next generation is convinced there’s no future in programming thanks to AI hype.”
For many years I’ve collected model buses, aircraft, and trains, mostly from the UK. The process was always pretty simple: the vendor would discount the price because VAT wasn’t applicable, add a shipping cost, and send the item on its way. It usually arrived within two weeks. Shipping was obviously more expensive than within the US, but still quite low.
All that changed when Trump eliminated “de minimis” exemptions from duties. The main effect was that the whole process became much more complicated, customers found themselves having to pay unexpected duties, and when they refused (or couldn’t) the shippers had to figure out what to do with the undeliverable items. Some carriers simply refused to participate.
Not knowing how this would play out, I held off ordering anything from the UK. And then last November a British model bus retailer announced an attractive new product, and I decided to try to order it and see how it went. So I contacted them, and they told me that the British Post Office had become impossible to work with, so all overseas orders were being handled by an Irish company. So this is how the process played out, including all communications and costs. (Hopefully this will be useful.)
Jan 16: I placed my order with the Irish reseller. The price quoted was €66.95 ($79.48) with shipping €22.00 ($26.12), for a total of €88.95 ($105.60). My credit card was charged the same day.
Jan.18: I received a refund for €7.46 ($8.86) corresponding to the VAT, together with a note that the package would be posted the next day.
Jan.26: I received an email from An Post (the Irish postal service) notifying me that they’d received the package, and that I would have to pay Duties and Taxes before it would be shipped to the US. I paid online through EVRI, and my credit card was billed $24.67.
Feb.4: An Post emailed me that the package had been received at their International Hub, had been processed, and was now on the way to the USA.
Feb.13: An Post notified me that “Your parcel has arrived in the USA and will now be processed for delivery.” However they didn’t tell me which carrier would handle delivery, nor did they provide a local tracking number.
Feb.14: The package was delivered. It looks as though local delivery was handled by SpeedX.
So the total time from order to delivery was four weeks. Converting everything to USD, the price with shipping was $105.60, minus $8.86 for VAT, or $96.74 . Duty was $24.67, bringing the total cost to $121.41. Put another way, I bought a $79.48 model bus and paid $41.93 for shipping and duties. The overall time was longer but reasonable, although there were several odd gaps in tracking.
It’s a great little model, and I’m glad to have it in my collection. However I may wait until my next trip to the UK before I buy any more….
Perhaps OpenAI should attach the following disclaimer to every piece of output generated by ChatGPT:
“The following information may be wholly or partially incorrect. If you choose to share or publish it, and it turns out that the information is false, defamatory, illegal, fraudulent, copyrighted, or otherwise actionable, you are personally responsible for all of the consequences. OpenAI disclaims any responsibility for anything.”
This observation was prompted by a story in The Guardian.
This is obviously not suspicious in any way….
The Cyber Safety Review Board — a Department of Homeland Security investigatory body stood up under a Biden-era cybersecurity executive order to probe major cybersecurity incidents — has been cleared of non-government members as part of a DHS-wide push to cut costs under the Trump administration, according to three people familiar with the matter.
And what was the CSRB looking into?
The terminations will likely delay an ongoing CSRB investigation into the Salt Typhoon hacks, which involved a wide-ranging Chinese infiltration into a number of telecom providers in the U.S. and around the world. The hackers also targeted the communications of a number of high-profile political individuals, including people tied to President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
Yup. Not suspicious at all. Pass the popcorn.
This is how normalization works.
People are quickly discovering what they once professed to find unacceptable might not be so bad. And it will be felt as a relief. No longer will they have to echo bien-pensant hypocrisies, they can engage in frank, honest assertions of their self-interest.
And:
“Plutot Trump que le Wokisme” seems to be the slogan of the center-right that once whinged about the Constitution and our sacred norms.
From https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/welcome-to-vichy-america . Read the whole thing.
This is a test post to verify that Autoblue is working correctly.
My Congressional rep, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D), attended today’s Inauguration and posted happy selfies on her FB page. I would have understood if she had turned up wearing dark colored clothing, with a black arm band to mark the mourning for President Carter, and spoken of our debt to Martin Luther King for whom today is a national holiday. If she had approached it as a civic duty on behalf of her constituents, but one undertaken with regret.
But she didn’t.
#primary2026
“The great majority of Americans are suspended between these opposing attitudes. They are uneasy with injustice but unwilling yet to pay a significant price to eradicate it.”
This:
“The rich rabble is marked by the ‘corruptness’ which manifests in the fact that the rabble ‘takes everything for granted for itself’ because he denies the right to any of the ethical, legal, or statist institutions…[it assumes] an economically determined state of nature, in which it can also assume the economic right of the fittest.” It also believes in conspiracy, because it experiences itself politically as a conspirator, as part of a self-interested group only working for its own ends.
(Frank Ruda, quoted by John Ganz. )