https://www.phoronix.com/news/Hellwig-DMA-Helpers-Removed
Huh.
Phoronix: Christoph Hellwig Steps Down From One Of His Kernel Roles Following Rust Drama
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Author Archives: John Lusk
House Republicans adopt budget resolution for Trump agenda
«The House’s resolution lays out a $1.5 trillion floor for spending cuts across committees with a target of $2 trillion, puts a $4.5 trillion ceiling on the deficit impact of any GOP plan to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, and includes $300 billion in additional spending for the border and defense and a $4 trillion debt limit increase.»
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5164108-house-republicans-budget-resolution-trump-agenda/
(What is the current debt limit?
«The federal debt limit was reinstated on January 2, 2025, at $36.1 trillion. That total comprised $28.8 trillion in debt held by the public and $7.3 trillion in intergovernmental accounts. The statutory debt limit constrains nearly all federal debt, including both debt held by the public (mostly Treasury securities sold via auctions) and intragovernmental debt (mainly federal trust funds, such as those for Social Security, Medicare, and federal retirement systems).»
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN12045
(Pretty sure that “intergovernmental debt” is how we borrow money from Social Security, btw.)
Why can’t journalists include the base figure when things change? It’s not like we yutzes know this stuff of the top of our heads. Ok back to The Hill story:)
«The resolution directs the Energy and Commerce Committee — which has jurisdiction over Medicaid — to find at least $880 billion in cuts, a figure that some lawmakers said could not be reached without significant slashes to the social safety net program.
…
“Do a word search for yourself,” Johnson said Tuesday morning. “It doesn’t even mention Medicaid in the bill, so that’s an important point.”»
Uh huh. This is why people think politicians are liars. Everything is done by implication.
So, there’s law, and there’s regulations. The legislature passes laws and then individual government agencies implement the laws by making regulations. The *law* may not mention a thing, but at the level below the law, which the public doesn’t generally see because guess who doesn’t report on it, the thing most definitely gets “mentioned”.
(Sometimes, even then, the thing doesn’t get mentioned, but it happens anyway. This is how we implement racism now. It’s all pushed down to the state and county level. Or the thing is a blanket rule with exceptions for rural areas (the poor farmer! (who just happens to be white)), or exceptions for certain types of labor which just, purely by coincidence, happen to be mostly non-white (e.g., farm *labor* and domestic “help”).)
Science fiction lands different now
«Sending a ComfortUnit into this situation was morally irresponsible and a clear violation of contract.»
(77% through “Artificial Condition: The Murderbot Diaries” by Martha Wells.)
Everything hits different now. The quoted sentence was written in a world where “morally irresponsible” and “violation of contract” mean things, but here we are, in a time when 50.1% of the US electorate believe lol nothing matters.
test
test — trying to get the fediverse thingie working again. I may have just dumped all my followers unintentionally. 
More calls to Senators
https://5calls.org/issue/elon-doge-federal-workforce-mass-firing/
More calls to my Senators today, trying to get them to intervene in the mass firing that Musk and the Project 2025 people are engaging in.
At least Budd managed to get his voicemail inbox unclogged, so congrats to his staff for that.
DW (English): German election results explained in graphics
German election brings relief to European markets, debt brake in focus | Reuters
«The big question for markets is whether Germany can reform the “debt brake” that limits its structural budget deficit to just 0.35% of output.
Europe’s largest economy contracted for a second straight year in 2024, with critics blaming the debt brake for years of underinvestment.»
JWZ has opinions about plumbing
https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2025/02/23.html?utm_source=sp_ma
«As I keep saying, the job of running a nightclub is managing plumbing disasters. Everything else is a sideline.»
Good to know, in case I decide to chuck it all and open a bar.
Test #2
Another wee test post.
It might all be in the excerpt.
Which means I get to write the post twice. Sigh.
USDA Economic Research Service info on principal farm operator household finances
I.e., the “small family farm”.
Every time I post something about farms, somebody pops up with “my cousin runs a farm, and…”. Yes, there are a lot of racists. And, yes, #notAllFarmers, as Sarah Taber says at https://www.patreon.com/posts/why-do-farmers-122478451 (behind a paywall, but, c’mon, $2/month!). But. The “poor family farmer” that Willie Nelson and all the Band Aid people love so much doesn’t really exist any more. Even the “intermediate” folks with household income of only $62k are sitting on about three quarters of a million dollars in *non-farm* assets (i.e., other than the land and farm equipment).
I don’t want to paint with too broad a brush, but I’m guessing when someone comes up with a farmer who’s actually facing real difficulty and not just throwing a fit on Instagram, it’ll be the exception that proves the rule. And we shouldn’t be making policy based on exceptional cases. (Exceptional cases can be handled with exceptions to the policy, they don’t have to get left behind. And I’m not talking about exceptions for Trump’s people.)
Farm typology:
«The ERS farm typology groups relatively similar farms. The complete typology has eight groups, which are defined by the farm’s gross cash income, the primary occupation of the principal operator, and whether the farm is a family farm (see Updating the ERS Farm Typology, EIB-110, April 2013). The collapsed farm typology combines the seven farm typology groups into three groups:
Residence farms: Farms with less than $350,000 in gross cash farm income and where the principal operator is either retired from farming or has a primary occupation other than farming.
Intermediate farms: Farms with less than $350,000 in gross cash farm income and a principal operator whose primary occupation is farming.
Commercial farms: Farms with $350,000 or more gross cash farm income and nonfamily farms.»
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-household-well-being/glossary
Source: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/farm-household-income-and-characteristics
(This opens fine with LibreOffice. I added a little highlighting and changed column width a smidge. Heck, I’ll just attach the original file.
)
You can also find some older info here: https://web.archive.org/web/20210318081753/https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/farm-household-income-and-characteristics/ in case your friend and mine, Donald Trump (or, more likely, one of the Project 2025 people making fish soup while he plays with whatever distraction they’ve arranged for him today), has deleted this info from the ERS web site by the time you read these words.
Republicans haaaaaaaate the ERS. That’s why the last time Trump was in office (pause for incredulity), it got moved to Wichita or some such.
