NateNate60

New procedures and requirements — some implemented in the name of improving operations — are slowing down federal agencies.

Excerpt:

...layers of new red tape are plaguing federal staffers throughout the government under the second Trump administration, stymieing work and delaying simple transactions, according to interviews with more than three dozen federal workers across 19 agencies and records obtained by The Washington Post. Many of the new hurdles, federal workers said, stem from changes imposed by the U.S. DOGE Service, Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team, which burst into government promising to eradicate waste, fraud and abuse and trim staff and spending.

The team’s overarching goal was in its name: DOGE stands for Department of Government Efficiency, although it is not part of the Cabinet. But as Musk departed government on Friday, many federal workers said DOGE has in many ways had the opposite effect.

Full article without paywall (Gift article)

Gift article without paywall. Note: For the unfamiliar, "MAHA" stands for "Make America Healthy Again".

The report, led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was intended to address the reasons for the decline in Americans’ life expectancy.

Some of the citations that underpin the science in the White House’s sweeping “MAHA Report” appear to have been generated using artificial intelligence, resulting in numerous garbled scientific references and invented studies, AI experts said Thursday.

Of the 522 footnotes to scientific research in an initial version of the report sent to The Washington Post, at least 37 appear multiple times, according to a review of the report by The Washington Post. Other citations include the wrong author, and several studies cited by the extensive health report do not exist at all, a fact first reported by the online news outlet NOTUS on Thursday morning.

Gift article without paywall Note: For the unfamiliar, "MAHA" stands for "Make America Healthy Again".

The report, led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was intended to address the reasons for the decline in Americans’ life expectancy.

Some of the citations that underpin the science in the White House’s sweeping “MAHA Report” appear to have been generated using artificial intelligence, resulting in numerous garbled scientific references and invented studies, AI experts said Thursday.

Of the 522 footnotes to scientific research in an initial version of the report sent to The Washington Post, at least 37 appear multiple times, according to a review of the report by The Washington Post. Other citations include the wrong author, and several studies cited by the extensive health report do not exist at all, a fact first reported by the online news outlet NOTUS on Thursday morning.

(Washington Post gift article) As the president nears 100 days in office, the survey suggests his administration’s aggressive enforcement tactics are losing public support.

President Donald Trump’s approval ratings on immigration, relatively strong in the early weeks of his second term, have dipped into negative territory, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, a sign that his administration’s hard-line and, in some cases, legally dubious enforcement tactics are losing public support.

A majority of Americans, 53 percent, disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration, with 46 percent approving, a reversal from February when half of the public voiced approval of his approach. Negative views have ticked up across partisan groups over the past two months, with 90 percent of Democrats, 56 percent of independents and 11 percent of Republicans now disapproving of the way the president has managed one of his core policy issues.

Apparently the language was popular among early 20th century socialist movements because it was of an international character and therefore not associated with any nationality and its use by international socialist organisations wouldn't show favour to any particular country. It was banned in Nazi Germany and other fascist states because of its association with the left wing, with anti-nationalism, and because its creator was Jewish. It has mostly languished since then but still has around 2 million speakers with about 1,000 native speakers.

In the United States, I'd probably name Oregon City, the famous end of the Oregon Trail and the first city founded west of the Rocky Mountains during the pioneer era. Its population is only 37,000.

I'm talking about @rbreich@masto.ai.

The account says things that seem like they would be said by Reich but I'm not sure it's actually him behind the screen.

"Giving people more viable alternatives to driving means more people will choose not to drive, so there will be fewer cars on the road, reducing traffic for drivers."

Concise, easy to understand, and accurate. I have used it at least a dozen times and it is remarkable how well it works.

Also—

"A bus is about twice as long as a car so it only needs to have four to six passengers on board to be more efficient than two cars."

This image is from Google Maps and depicts Maritime Square on Tsing Yi, the island where my grandmother lives. I chose it because I think it is the embodiment of the new millennium Hong Kong urban development.

The entire development is built by the MTR Corporation, a Government-owned publicly traded company that is primarily known for running the Hong Kong metro system of the same name.

The primary attraction of this development is the eponymous Maritime Square Mall, a large five-storey indoor shopping arcade. It is attached to Tsing Yi Station, a metro station on the overground Tung Chung Line and there is a small bus interchange on the ground floor.

The mall has shops including a grocery store, around a dozen restaurants, a Marks & Spencer, bakeries, clothing retailers, electronics stores, a few banks, and some miscellaneous other stores. Notably NOT in the building is a school, otherwise, you might even be able to spend your whole life without leaving it.

There are several towers extending out of the main mall complex which contain hundreds of units of (unaffordable) housing. I think there is a botanical garden on the roof, too. The entrance to these towers is inside the mall, where there's just a lift lobby where you'd expect a shop to be. The lift lobby is closed to the public; a keycard or code is required to enter.

I think it's a similar concept to a 15-minute city, but more like a 15-minute building.

The Pentagon has provided Ukraine with thousands of Iranian-made weapons seized before they could reach Houthi militants in Yemen, U.S. officials said Tuesday. It’s the Biden administration’s latest infusion of emergency military support for Kyiv while a multibillion-dollar aid package remains stalled in the Republican-led House.

The weapons include 5,000 Kalashnikov rifles, machine guns, sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, along with a half-million rounds of ammunition. They were seized from four “stateless vessels” between 2021 and 2023 and made available for transfer to Ukraine through a Justice Department civil forfeiture program targeting Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East.

Officials said Iran intended to supply the weapons to the Houthis, who have staged a months-long assault on commercial and military vessels transiting off the Arabian Peninsula. Central Command said the cache is enough to supply rifles to an entire Ukrainian brigade, which vary in size but typically include a few thousand soldiers.