Eyeball Emoji

Is Mr. Miller still in the cuck chair?

MEET THE MILLERS: Inside the White House, frustration at Katie Miller is widespread. Miller, the wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and former DOGE spokesperson, is now working for Musk directly, Playbook has learned. But apparently, the arrangement isn’t altogether new. “What drove people here crazy was Katie Miller, and the fact that she was on Elon’s payroll the whole time she was an [special government employee] here,” one administration official tells Playbook. “And, like … who was she looking out for?” (Miller did not return Playbook’s text messages when asked for comment.)

What, exactly, is "Elon's payroll"? I mean, Elon personally, some business entity he controls, etc...

The Academy

One can't boycott every bad actor, but if I still had anything to do with academia, Columbia would be #1 and the University of Michigan #2 on the list.

The University of Michigan is using private, undercover investigators to surveil pro-Palestinian campus groups, including trailing them on and off campus, furtively recording them and eavesdropping on their conversations, the Guardian has learned.

The surveillance appears to largely be an intimidation tactic, five students who have been followed, recorded or eavesdropped on said. The undercover investigators have cursed at students, threatened them and in one case drove a car at a student who had to jump out of the way, according to student accounts and video footage shared with the Guardian.

Slop

Aside from this specific issue, people everywhere are asking LLMs to do things that even its most optimistic (but reasonably honest, which isn't most of them) boosters would tell you they aren't designed to do. They can't perform this task because it just can't! It is not surprising that it doesn't.

The code, using outdated and inexpensive AI models, produced results with glaring mistakes. For instance, it hallucinated the size of contracts, frequently misreading them and inflating their value. It concluded more than a thousand were each worth $34 million, when in fact some were for as little as $35,000.

The DOGE AI tool flagged more than 2,000 contracts for “munching.” It’s unclear how many have been or are on track to be canceled — the Trump administration’s decisions on VA contracts have largely been a black box. The VA uses contractors for many reasons, including to support hospitals, research and other services aimed at caring for ailing veterans.

Then the question is whether the people using it know this and don't care if they just believe that Spicy Clippy is God (the person here appears to be a dumbass).

Sahil Lavingia, the programmer enlisted by DOGE, which was then run by Elon Musk, acknowledged flaws in the code.

“I think that mistakes were made,” said Lavingia, who worked at DOGE for nearly two months. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made. I would never recommend someone run my code and do what it says. It’s like that ‘Office’ episode where Steve Carell drives into the lake because Google Maps says drive into the lake. Do not drive into the lake.”

Nobody should do what I told spicy clippy to tell them to do! lol dumbasses. Mistakes were made.

How Friedmanesque

The delusion of many self-important people is that most of the country agrees with "me" but somehow something (partisanship!) is preventing the will of the people from being enacted.

Two billionaires will never entertain the notion that to the extent that this is true  - not the supermajority consensus, but the blocking of the will of the people - it is largely because of, you know, the distorting effects of "their" money.

Morning

Every day.

Stonk

 I was busy this afternoon so I missed most of the fun. Still catching up!

The Girls Are Fighting

MILITARY SERVICE

People all across the political spectrum propose versions of this regularly, and the simplest answer is that the military does not want to babysit a bunch of people who have no interest in being there.

America's Worst Newspaper

That fucking newspaper.

I Don't Support What They're Doing, HOWEVER...

Conceding your opponents are right, basically, just going about it the wrong way, is smart Alpha Energy messaging.

“I was in the Pentagon. I was in the CIA before,” says Slotkin. “It's too hard to fire people who are not performing…The way DOGE is doing it is the dumbest, most astrategic way to do things. But I don’t disagree with the concept that we need to do different things.“ pic.twitter.com/7iW4prTmpV

— Alex Bronzini-Vender (@alexbronzini) June 4, 2025

Lunch

eat

It's Trade Talk Day, Again...

Neverending.

President Donald Trump said Thursday that trade officials from the U.S. and China will be meeting soon at a to-be-determined location.

Trump said the upcoming talks were agreed upon during his lengthy phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The “very good” call between the two leaders lasted approximately 90 minutes and focused “almost entirely” on trade, Trump said on Truth Social.

It “resulted in a very positive conclusion for both Countries,” Trump wrote.

Sure, Mr. Zero Sum.

We Got This

Longtime readers of this very fine blog should remember that my basic position, always, is "the Democrats kinda suck, but they're what we have to work with." Sometimes they suck quite a bit less! Sometimes a lot more!

If Chuck Schumer spending his time making a facebook grandpa video opposing any Iran deal doesn't convince you that we have a bit of a leadership problem, I suppose nothing will.

I Have More Alpha Energy Than The Average Blogger

Slotkin keeps boasting about her Alpha Energy. She is the Elon Musk of  Dem senators.

“We just sort of lost some alpha energy,” says Elissa Slotkin. She says she has “some more of that than the average Democrat.” pic.twitter.com/m95x1P3BvB

— Alex Bronzini-Vender (@alexbronzini) June 4, 2025

Morning

I hope you all replenished your Alpha Energy.

Happy Hour

To absent friends.

RIP Jeffraham Prestonian

Longtime community member JP passed away overnight. It's always quite upsetting when a regular passes.  In my mind he was here from the beginning of the blog. I'm sure that wasn't day one, precisely, but I don't remember the place without him.

Online communities are strange places, where you know lots of people both quite well and not at all.  I know many of you actually knew him well, not just in the "online" sense, and someone from the community submitted this for a remembrance, which seemed fitting to me:

Our dear friend, Jeff Preston, aka Jeffraham died in his sleep on the morning of June 4, 2025, just 17 days short of his 62nd birthday.

Jeffraham was the free spirited heart and soul of our blog. He took care of anyone who needed help, especially his beloved roomie, SIL. He never failed to make us laugh. He was passionate about guitars, scooters, music, and especially cats. He loved people; his time at Bananastan made this evident. He had a kind word and a smile for everyone.

He has been one of my very best friends for two decades now. Right now, there's a Jeffraham sized  hole in all of our hearts.

Safe journey, dear friend.

“Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.”

― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

I'll add one more thing. JP will live on forever in this blog, like a little ghost. I don't know why this happened, but at some point he got stuck in the machine.  

When you write/edit a post in blogger's CMS, you can hit the preview button to see how it will look on the site.  When I do this, the post appears with precisely one disqus comment. Every time.

We All Gotta Eat

There is a place in politics for talented mercenaries, but in DC too many of the people who get ahead are the ones who always have their eye on the next career move and who are much more concerned with the next, bigger paycheck.

Soulless grifters aren't going to save us.  Was Jean-Pierre good at her job?  Did she succeed at any aspect of her job - informing the press, informing the public, and, yes, making her boss look good?  

Welp

People get mad at The Left, but every iteration of above-it-all centrism is much more damaging to The Democrats, especially from someone like this.

Lunch

eat