Some men carrying what they describe as myrhh, frankincense and gold. Clearly from a foreign land. Probably narcoterrorists.

What’s that ICE reporting number again?

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/poll-trumps-maga-base-still-cracks-are-showing-ahead-2026-rcna248722

Blah, blah, blah.

The fundamental motivating force behind Trump’s two presidential victories are not going away for at least two more generations, and that’s only with people working on it.

https://sherrilyn.substack.com/p/is-it-too-late

«There are extraordinary scholars, activists and journalists getting to the heart of the matter and writing thoughtfully about complex issues. Be sure your information diet includes them. Rebecca Traister, Sarah Kendzior, Rashad Robinson, Rev. William Barber, LaTosha Brown, Joy-Ann Reid, Kim Crenshaw, Adam Serwer, the law professors on the Strict Scrutiny Podcast, Dr. Renita Weems, and many more.»

https://www.businessinsider.com/europe-tech-turns-guns-into-last-resort-drone-killers-2025-12

«Arbel is a tiny computerized system that can be integrated into light machine guns or assault rifles, giving a soldier a more accurate shot on the battlefield in scenarios that require quick reactions or against moving targets — such as small drones, Semion said.

When activated, the system lets a soldier hold down the trigger while Arbel automatically releases rounds at the moments they’re most likely to hit the target. It can bring down drones at roughly 450 meters in daylight and 200 meters at night.»

Science fiction is coming, fast.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/09/experts-authoritarian-regimes-trump

Turkey:

«“[Autocrats] declare themselves as beyond politics,” said Temelkuran. “[They say:] ‘Politics is corrupt. Parties are corrupt. We’re clean.’ They create a movement, not a party.

“When you despise politics, that means that you are probably going to do something to democracy itself,” she added.»

El Salvador:

«“You cannot make authoritarian leaders the center of your narrative,” said Ortiz. “You have to make the people the center of your narrative, and you have to be passionate about it.”

She said that means doing more to engage with citizens – and being prepared to be surprised by what they say. “A part of the cure for this is listening to people,” she said. “Don’t be so certain about what they want, what they need. You have to ask.”»

Whee!

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYOIGDA188S

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/grand-jury-declines-indict-ny-attorney-general-letitia-james-less-two-rcna247310

«A separate source familiar with the matter said there “should be no premature celebrations.”»

Reading an article in a magazine that wants to be taken seriously, or at least put a bunch of ads in front of you, and I ran into this:

I wrote my first “Hello world” in an awful thing called Java, but programming only began to feel intuitive when I learned JavaScript

Ok, I’m out.

Figures in dollars (2023).

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w34525/w34525.pdf

via this stupid website: https://heatmap.news/economy/climate-costs-insurance

Which I found on Mastodon and will probably never re-visit because they are such pills.

Anyway. Took a while to track this down, what with more important things like doing my job, dealing with life and generally wasting time, but…

| Category                           | More Conservative | Less Conservative |                       |                        |
|                                    |           Average |           Average | 90th Percentile Costs | 90th Percentile County |
|------------------------------------+-------------------+-------------------+-----------------------+------------------------|
| Insurance Costs                    |                78 |               356 |                   598 |                    764 |
| Indirect Insurance Costs           |                32 |               145 |                   244 |                    312 |
| Flood Costs                        |               142 |               142 |                    75 |                     -9 |
| Energy Costs: Quantity Increase    |                11 |                11 |                    32 |                      9 |
| Energy Costs: Price Increase       |                14 |                24 |                   135 |                     18 |
| Indirect Energy Costs              |                13 |                21 |                   119 |                     16 |
| Costs Borne by Governments         |                41 |                77 |                   103 |                     75 |
| Crop Losses                        |                 0 |                 0 |                     0 |                      0 |
| Mortality Costs: Temperature       |                 1 |                 1 |                     2 |                      1 |
| Mortality Costs: Wildfire PM2.5    |                64 |               103 |                   200 |                    118 |
| Mortality Costs: Natural Disasters |                10 |                21 |                    21 |                     21 |
|------------------------------------+-------------------+-------------------+-----------------------+------------------------|
| TOTAL                              |               406 |               901 |                       |                   1325 |

https://fedi.garden/

Ok, my (somewhat grumpy) thoughts:

WAY too much verbiage.

s/An easy and stress-free way of joining Mastodon and the Fediverse/How to sign up on Mastodon/

“Easy” implies it’s hard; “stress-free” implies it’s stressful. “Fediverse”… c’mon, you can be geekier, but it’ll take a little effort. Don’t provide solutions to problems; that implies the problems exist.

We’re after people who really don’t want to think, right? (https://bookshop.org/p/books/don-t-make-me-think-revisited-a-common-sense-approach-to-web-usability-steve-krug/ad7b7eb124318416?ean=9780321965516&next=t)

Drop “non-corporate”. No screeds, not even by quiet reference. (Maybe assume whoever’s referring somebody to the website has already given that pitch.)

Make an animation. People broadcasting messages and other people tuning in. Maybe like little radio waves. Then zoom out: that’s one server. Each server is its own radio station and other servers tune in. (Maybe just show two or three servers and draw lines between them.) Zoom out more: more servers and lines, maybe one connected by only one line, maybe two in a disconnected cluster with angry lines between them (say, red instead of blue). Maybe little lightning bolts radiating from the angry servers.

People love happy, silly (-ish) cartoons. No, I don’t know how to do it, but I bet I could figure it out. Something something SVG, I’m guessing. No, I’m not volunteering.

s/follows and followers/friends and contacts/

More unnecessary geekery.

On the full list of servers, I’d make (Server Type) the last button. Newcomers probably don’t care, and their nephew who’s guiding them through this can point them to that button if it’s important to them (the nephew, that is, probably not the newcomer). (Ok, that last part was probably unnecessarily sarcastic.)

Actually, the rest of this looks pretty good. I can tell you’ve put in a lot of effort removing everything that isn’t elephant.

Although… If somebody clicks “show me a good server” and signs up and then clicks “ok I signed up, now what?” without going much farther, you’ve done well. 🙂