They got permission to make the voice, but they originally framed it as more of a joke to make me talk about peepees and c*m.

I told them I'm here to offer actual support, which they sort of believe.

Federal employee retirements are processed using paper, by hand, in an old limestone mine in Pennsylvania. 700+ mine workers operate 230 feet underground to process ~10,000 applications per month, which are stored in manila envelopes and cardboard boxes. The retirement process… pic.twitter.com/dXCTgpAWLs

— Department of Government Efficiency (@DOGE) February 11, 2025

BREAKING: RFK CONFIRMED! Mitch McConnell is the only Republican to vote no so far on RFK Jr.

Coverage with @IanCarrollShow @HarrisonHSmith

Watch Live:https://t.co/sEnU2dNJxU pic.twitter.com/hD6bIyiNSe

— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) February 13, 2025

First, it is simply false to say that treasury payments do not have a "payment categorization code". It is notable, by the way, that he uses this completely invented phrase rather than the actual phrase "Treasury Account Symbol" (TAS). Indeed, it's impossible to find another use of this phrase using an internet search engine in any context, let alone the Treasury context. The far more limited "deficiency" pointed out by the Government Accountability Office report Krause referenced is that information about individual government transactions were recorded in multiple different account entries separately by some government agencies and thus individual transactions could not be readily traced through to all the accounting ledgers they effected.

No chud, the government doesn't need to note where it's spending your money and it was definitely working on a system to fix that by 2028 possibly

On to Musk's next claim: the need for "rationales". The idea of putting a "rationale" for each and every individual payment (or payment file) makes little sense in the context of how the system works. Think of this in your own life: do you fill out a little form that provides your "rationale" for purchasing an item every time you swipe your credit card? If you were required to do so, you would react very negatively for the same reason you should react very negatively here: if you had to put a rationale then someone could reject your spending requests on the basis of providing the "wrong" rationale.

Imagine the right wing uproar when the possibility emerged of restricting purchases of meat through such a "rationale for transaction" system. This should be seen as no different. The "Treasury Account Symbol" (TAS) provides the only rationale that should matter which is that congress appropriated the spending. Of course, if you want to abrogate congressional spending then that is obviously not sufficient and, in fact, counterproductive.

No chud, the government doesn't need to note why it's spending your money

Imagine if the government were buying some groceries and the government's credit card was rejected at the checkout, chud, that would be terrible. What if the government imposed fascist restrictions on you, chud, how would you feel?

This all goes back to Musk's tendency to think that there is, can be or should be a "button" that determines all of this and its corrupt, inefficient bureaucrats preventing this from happening. He simply doesn't understand how complex these systems are or why they are the way they are. Take the Treasury Offset Program (TOP) for instance. It is a Bureau of the Fiscal Service system for collecting delinquent federal or state debts. One former Bureau of the Fiscal Service employee explained to me that there are rules that determine:

Actually, chud, the bureaucratic tumour is a good thing and hasn't metastasized enough

To include my own editorial comment for a moment, this is why it's so alarming to see him talk about updating this list "weekly, or even daily". This strongly suggests to me that he is talking about arbitrarily and rapidly expanding the list of people and entities on lists such as the Office of Foreign Assets Controls (OFAC) list without any due process to block them from government payments. As I discussed the Wednesday before last, the apparatuses for capriciously destroying the financial life of disfavored entities and people has been constructed over multiple decades with active Democratic participation and support. Now they are in the hands of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Thus, again, Musk's comments hide a desire for unchecked power over others under a false narrative about governmental "inefficiency".

My sources are also very skeptical that any career Treasury employee told Elon Musk that half of the expenditures that constituted "entitlements payments to individuals with no SSN" were "unequivocal and obvious fraud". It's hard to say more without knowing the context. This is the difficult thing with government by the pronouncement of Elon Musk. He can say stuff without any corroboration much faster than anyone else can check facts or correct falsehoods.

There's no fraud chud, my sources are 'skeptical'

In the meantime, it is exhausting how much effort is required to deconstruct one Elon Musk tweet. He can lie about very complex and technical systems much faster than he can be answered, but nevertheless it's important to periodically critically assess what the richest man in the world is saying as he continually tries to justify chopping the government up and selling it for parts like this is a private equity takeover.

Actually Musk is just lying, chud

Aftermath video - https://old.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/1irtmtc/video_aftermath_of_the_delta_airlines_crash_at/

High in the rugged mountains of Central Asia, where the wind howled through rocky crevices and the air was thin and cold, a solitary manul named Tsuruoka prowled the steppes. His thick, grayish fur rippled in the breeze, and his piercing yellow eyes scanned the terrain for movement. Tsuruoka was a skilled hunter, patient and precise, but lately, he had felt a restlessness he couldn't quite explain.

One crisp morning, as the sun cast long shadows across the barren landscape, Tsuruoka caught a scent on the wind—something unfamiliar yet intriguing. It was faint, but it stirred something deep within him. He followed the trail, his padded feet moving silently over the rocky ground, until he reached a narrow gorge. There, perched on a ledge overlooking the valley, was another manul.

She was smaller than Tsuruoka, with a coat that shimmered silver in the sunlight. Her wide, round eyes were fixed on the horizon, and her tufted ears twitched at the sound of his approach. Tsuruoka froze, unsure of how to proceed. Manuls were solitary by nature, and encounters between them were rare.

But then she turned her head, and their eyes met. For a moment, neither moved. Then, with a soft chuff, she leaped down from the ledge and approached him cautiously. Tsuruoka's heart raced as she drew closer, her scent filling his senses. She was unlike anything he had ever encountered—graceful, confident, and utterly captivating.

Her name was Nana, and she had traveled far to find a new territory. As they sat together on the ledge, watching the sun dip below the horizon, Tsuruoka felt a connection he had never known before. Nana's presence was calming yet exhilarating, and he found himself drawn to her in ways he couldn't explain.

Over the following weeks, Tsuruoka and Nana explored the mountains together. They hunted side by side, their movements perfectly synchronized, and shared the warmth of their dens during the frigid nights. Tsuruoka taught Nana the secrets of the land—the best places to find pikas, the hidden crevices where the wind couldn't reach—and Nana, in turn, brought a new energy to Tsuruoka's solitary life.

One evening, as they sat atop a high ridge, the stars stretching endlessly above them, Tsuruoka nuzzled Nana's cheek. She responded with a soft purr, leaning into him. In that moment, surrounded by the vast, untamed wilderness, they knew they had found something rare and precious—a bond that transcended their solitary instincts.

From that day on, Tsuruoka and Nana were inseparable. Together, they navigated the challenges of their harsh environment, their love a beacon of warmth in the cold, unforgiving landscape. And though the world around them was wild and untamed, they had found a sanctuary in each other.

pic.twitter.com/vMWPVQpUvE

— 🇬🇧 𝙔𝙊𝙊𝙆𝘼𝙔 𝘼𝙀𝙎𝙏𝙃𝙀𝙏𝙄𝘾𝙎 🇬🇧 (@MythoYookay) February 17, 2025

Fr fr Ong

for the lazy:

• it's measles

• a few score of confirmed cases

• a few hundred likely cases

• the mention one patient "traveled from another country" so it's gonna be mostly coming from Mexico

• the vaccine doesn't prevent getting measles or spreading it, it only prevents symptomatic illness

• vitamin A causes it to be a very mild disease in almost every case

• RFK vaccinated his own children and is pro-vaccine

• RFK also barely took office, so obviously

• This outbreak is the fault of RFK and (naturally) orangemanbad

I forgot I pinned my kernel to 5.19 because it was the last one fully supported (including rocm) by the amd-pro drivers for my GPU

Thankfully amd is so terrible with software that the vulkan backend in llama.cpp is actually faster! So I just installed the open source drivers and updated

My point is buy Nvidia

!pirates I wasted 80 dollars of my time to avoid buying a 60 dollar game (where steam would've told me what was wrong)

!peakpoors I've wasted 50+ hours of my life to save 200 dollars. This is why I'm one of you.

Beaver W pic.twitter.com/qO8kvgQujW

— Dudes Posting Their W’s (@DudespostingWs) February 6, 2025

feel like that moment has well and truly passed, everyone I know has increased their meat consumption and takes collagen peptides now