pakyr

That wasn't obvious to me, because in that case the answer to why this website wasn't created in previous years seems obvious - because USDS wasn't being demolished in previous years.

> The average taxpayer spends $150 and 9 hours a year on their taxes

Not in a meaningful way for most people

> Ask yourself: Could this website have been written anytime in the last 8 years?

No? It was authorized by the IRA, which was only passed in 2022.

> Given where we are now, the stat I gave, and that only a small number of people are mourning something important speak to my point?

I mean, I wouldn't expect regular users to mourn anything until tax season rolls around next year and people find the tool is missing; even still, I actually have seen a lot of people mad about this, not that it matters. And I still think 16% growth after months of reporting about it getting shut down isn't bad.

> we all see what we want to see

Yup, and what I see is that Intuit, Inc. gave to exactly one PAC, that donates exclusively to R candidates. Tesla employees also overwhelmingly donated to Kamala Harris[0]; does this mean Tesla and Elon were backing Kamala to win?

> If it hadn’t been Trump, Intuit would be working Joe Kamala.

They didn't donate to him in 2020, so I'm not sure why I should assume this.[1]

[0]https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/tesla-inc/summary?id=D00005...

[1]https://web.archive.org/web/20210110001759/https://bideninau...

I'm not sure how much control the USDS that developed DirectFile (or whatever was left of it) had over that given the reasons that article cites for the confusion

> The IRS deemphasized the program on its website, the report said, and the media coverage this filing season focused on the question of if the tool existed or would continue to in the future.

> Billionaire Elon Musk caused confusion in early February when he posted on X that the team powering Direct File was “deleted,” leading to headlines like “Elon Musk says he 'deleted' IRS Direct File. Can taxpayers still use the free service?” Direct File saw a drop in use after that.

To be honest, I'm impressed there was even a 16% traffic increase this year at all.

So (if we take your interpretation at face value) you could call it a 'presidential power grab', or maybe even an 'executive power grab' (if we stretch things and assume power is being transferred away from executive departments subject to greater oversight), but 'federal power grab' still doesn't make sense. No power is being grabbed from or by the federal government as an entity.

> this just looks like a federal power grab

A federal power grab from . . . the federal government?

DirectFile was a material product that had a 94% satisfaction rate.[0] Within the remit of this organization, if making filing taxes free and easy doesn't count as making people's lives better, then I'm not sure what does.

[0]https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2025/06/direct-fi...

Interesting, thanks for reinforcing the point. I would note the two columns 'From Individuals' (which includes all employees) vs. the 'From Organization' column. Worth noting that the R-affiliated GOPAC is the only listed recipient that actually recieved funds from the organization.

Of course, this page doesn't include the $1M inauguration donation, so it's still incomplete.

Nobody in the Eastern Bloc was trading with the US very much; I was thinking more about other countries. North Korea would have been relatively unfettered within the Eastern Bloc, for example, same as most communist nations.

Also, the director was kidnapped in 1978, so before those sanctions were tightened down in the 80s and well before any Eastern Bloc states could see any writing on the wall. I'd be curious how those restrictions compared to those the US had on most other communist nations.

At the time this movie was being made I don't think NK was any more sanctioned than any other Eastern Bloc country, and plenty of other Eastern Bloc countries had little issue scraping together enough cash to pay westerners to do stuff

How's this project doing after it lost its founder and biggest contributor (Andreas Kling)? I see the commit history is still reasonably active, so it's not dead at least . . .

Ladybird is no longer part of the SerenityOS project, and Jakt seems pretty dormant; my understanding is that Ladybird is moving to Swift as an eventual C++ replacement.

Just run VSCodium[0]. Unfortunately there's no Xcode equivalent, of course.

[0]https://vscodium.com/

This is common? Did the Biden admin halt all communications, grants, travel, etc.? NPR posts transcripts of their programs, do you have a link so I can see what they said?

The Trump admin repeatedly weakened regulations around atrazine imposed by the Obama admin[0][1], only for the Biden admin to reimpose them.[2][3] I suppose we're about to see them severely weakened again.

Edit: to the people talking about RFK Jr., he's not going to be running the EPA; anti-regulation crusader and laissez-faire fan Lee Zeldin will be.[4]

[0]https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/trumps...

[1]https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/trump-...

[2]https://www.eenews.net/articles/epa-tightens-limit-on-popula...

[3]https://www.sej.org/headlines/biden-proposes-raising-accepta...

[4]https://www.eenews.net/articles/meet-the-great-deregulator-t...

I dunno, but the article continues to be live, and I can't imagine Substack doesn't know how to scrub posts from their platform if they wanted to. We'll find out eventually I guess, so I'll continue to urge people to be cautious with this and wait a bit.

The Substack is still live[0]. Anyway, one of the images in his Twitter banner[1] is an X-ray of a spine with a bunch of screws in it. The Substack is also named after Breloom and has a picture at the bottom, and that's also in the Twitter banner but doesn't seem otherwise prominent in any of his social medias. Not very hard to figure out a spinal issue as a potential motive and guess at an interest based on the banner and cook up a quick viral post. I'm not saying it's definitely fake, just urging a bit of caution for the time being.

[0]https://breloomlegacy.substack.com/p/the-allopathic-complex-...

[1]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GeYOLH2WgAA16X7.jpg

Was this linked from any of his existing social medias? Do we have any way of knowing it's actually him? I'd be just a tad cautious at this stage, given that the Substack page says it was 'Launched an hour ago' as of writing. The article, sure, dead man's switch, but the Substack publication itself was only created after his arrest?

Edit: also worth noting that whatever this is, it's not the document he had with him when he was arrested, since that apparently contained[0] the following excerpt, while this doesn't

> “These parasites had it coming,” one line from the document reads, according to a police official who has seen it. Another reads, “I do apologize for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done.”

[0]https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/09/us/unitedhealthcare-ceo-brian...

X's mandatory self-reported figures in the EU show they lost about 6 million monthly active users in the first half of 2024. There doesn't seem to be similar data for the US and UK, but other metrics, like Similarweb, show declines in those places as well.[0]

[0]https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/x-formerly-twitter-los...

You think tech companies want the repair industry? You know about the right to repair movement, right?

> Without Citizens United politics would be even more restricted to a much smaller set of even wealthier people

Really? Because many countries have far stricter regulations on campaign financing than the US had pre-Citizens United, yet most of those have much more working class representation in their politics than the US.[0]

[0]https://www.noamlupu.com/Carnes_Lupu_ARPS.pdf

Well, one of the three fabs did. The newer two fabs, including the one with the most advanced processes, started in '22 and '24 respectively; that was thanks to the Biden Admin, per TSMC.[0][1]

[0]https://www.tsmc.com/static/abouttsmcaz/index.htm

[1]https://pr.tsmc.com/english/news/3122

I kinda doubt they're supposed to advertise support for macOS on there, even in VMWare.

> 95% of campaign contributions in favor of a campaign are not directly to a campaign.

Yes, they tend to go to super PACs, not government election offices.

> What was the outcome of the $450 million?

Election offices having more funding to do their jobs.

Does it? The article I linked says

> But election officials have said there is no indication of favoritism in how the money was distributed, according to previous AP reports. The board of the Center for Tech and Civic Life also includes Pam Anderson, a Republican and former elected clerk of a suburban Denver-area county. Republican election officials have also vouched for the program’s impartiality, including Brian Mead, a Republican election director in Licking County, Ohio.

But even if it was true that urban election offices received disproportionately more funding (obviously they received more in general since more people live there), that's still not the same as "putting $450m into Biden's campaign", which is what was claimed.

> after putting $450m into Biden's campaign in 2020

This is false; he donated to state and local election offices, not Biden's campaign.[0]

[0]https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-mark-zuckerberg-ele...

The arrest tells us that he said no to one country, it doesn't say much about all the others.

Ironic that you link to an article about the Gilens/Page study, which showed that it was in large part Congress that was unresponsive to popular opinion, not federal agencies like the SEC.

The Parker Solar Probe is super cool. It's the fastest ever macro man made object, and will go even faster during its closest pass next year. It's also the man made object that's experienced the highest rate of time dilation relative to Earth; during its most recent close pass it was losing around 1000 seconds (~17 minutes) per hundred years due to its speed and proximity to the sun.