melp

The Trump administration and Elon Musk’s DOGE have begun dismantling the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), beginning with stated plan is to cut half of the agency’s workforce.

Their biggest cuts appear to be in the Large Business and International division, which audits wealthy individuals and companies with more than $10 million in assets. These are essentially the workers that make sure billionaires and corporations pay their taxes.

Musk and Trump claim to be sage businessmen, but it would be hard to find a business owner in America that would dismantle their accounts receivable department when their wealthiest clients still owe them money.

So make no mistake: These cuts will cost taxpayers a lot more than they save.

Following months of testing, Plex has started to roll out its redesigned mobile app to Android and iOS devices, and it will arrive to everyone within the next week. The new app comes with an updated navigation system that should make it easier to access different parts of the app and find content to watch, along with a dedicated tab for centralized media libraries.

It also has a button in the top-right corner of the screen for your Watchlist and more artwork across detail pages for shows and movies, as well as cast and crew profiles. In a post on the Plex forum, the company outlines a ton of improvements it has made to the app since the preview, including faster load times and scrolling, the addition of a sleep timer, and picture-in-picture support.

Dear American Brothers and Sisters of the United States Postal Service,

I write to you from Rome, Italy, where we postal workers have already lived through the catastrophe that now looms over you in the United States: privatization.

I write not only in solidarity but in warning, so that you may learn from our painful experience and resist this assault with the full strength of an organized working class. The fate of the United States Postal Service (USPS) is not just an American issue—it is an international struggle against the same capitalist forces that have dismantled public services worldwide to enrich a handful of elites.

The Point: Thiel makes an investment Mathias Döpfner, CEO and part-owner of Axel Springer — the German media giant that owns Politico — has developed remarkably close ties to tech billionaire Peter Thiel. His son, Moritz Döpfner, previously served as chief of staff at Thiel Capital, the billionaire’s family office. Now, according to German media, the young Döpfner has started a new venture capital fund – with a $50 million investment from Thiel.

Google has announced a significant change to its Android operating system development process, moving all development work to internal branches. This shift means that the public will no longer have visibility into the development of upcoming Android versions until their official release.

Historically, Android's development was conducted in a more transparent manner, with significant portions of the process accessible through public channels. This openness allowed developers, manufacturers, and enthusiasts to monitor progress, contribute feedback, and prepare for upcoming changes.

We thought it would be instructive to look at the 17 states with Democratic governors and Democratic majorities in their state legislatures over the past two years, and study what they actually got done. We wanted to separate those states that took up the challenge of governing from those that were unwilling to use the power they have been bequeathed by the electorate.

The resulting ranking, which we’re calling the Blue State Power Index, is admittedly highly unscientific. We took into account the margin of Democratic support in the legislature: What a nearly all-Democratic legislature can do should be more than a closely divided one. We thought about what record these states already had in place: If states had already accomplished key elements of a progressive agenda, then they had less to potentially achieve. Given that most states must balance their budgets, we took into account their resources and tax bases: What a state with a poor population can manage to fund is necessarily more constrained than a state with a rich one—especially with Trump administration cuts and threats looming.

As Donald Trump capitulates to Putin on Ukraine, many are wondering what leverage Putin has over him and revisiting longstanding evidence that Trump has been groomed for decades as a KGB asset. Trump was, however, not the first candidate selected for this mission.

That dubious honor goes to Henry A. Wallace, agriculture secretary under Franklin Roosevelt during his first and second terms (1933-1940), and Vice President during his third term (1941-1945). Wallace, a crop scientist by training, became increasingly interested in religious mysticism and began a lengthy correspondence with Nicholas Roerich, a Russian emigré artist based in New York City. Roerich was a student of theosophy, the esoteric belief system created by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky decades prior; Roerich and his wife Helena expanded on Blavatsky's ideas to create Agni Yoga, which attracted devotees like Wallace.

Some good news ;P

Taken from the 50501 reddit...

US : Request your private data obtained by DOGEUS News (self.50501) submitted 8 hours ago * by Vivid_Midnight_1066

Representative Jamie Raskin is encouraging all U.S. citizens to join him this week in filing formal demands for access to their personal data obtained by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and Elon Musk.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has issued an injunction commanding DOGE to comply with citizen requests under the Freedom of Information Act. This law encompasses the Federal Privacy Act of 1974, which entitles any citizen to access personal information held in any U.S. government records system.

https://jamieraskin.com/doge-privacy-act-requests/

Please spread the word so we can inundate DOGE with requests for our personal data.

Edited to add a direct link to the form letter: https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/ak-raskin/images/Raskin_DOGE_Privacy_Request.pdf

Frozen Lake Saint Clair in the North American Great Lakes system and the briny Salinas Las Barrancas in Argentina have little in common—save for their heart-like shapes. From the perspective of Earth’s orbit, the opposites combine to send a lacustrine Valentine’s Day message.