They have power, but it’s not actually legal. Congress has mandated funds for this array, the administration wants to cripple it beyond repair before any legal action can catch up.
This seems to be a case of administration impounding funds authorized by Congress for this purpose. As in they’re just spending what Congress told them to.
And unfortunately SCOTUS made it harder for private groups to sue over impounding. And seems to argue only the GAOs comptroller can sue under the impoundments control act (ICA). GAO is the part of Congress that investigates when executive branch isn’t enforcing the law / spending funds. But have themselves limited ability to enforce anything.
It’s another post watergate reform eroded by Trump II. The ICA was created to stop these sorts of impoundments that happens with Nixon and earlier.
Notably members of Congress are working to pause the dismantling
If you get a FAANG job you need to think like a professional athlete. Save most of what you make. Assume it’s not going to last.
Do NOT have an expectation that this is “normal” income. You’ll probably end up destroying your integrity or doing tons of BS work just to do anything to maintain that level of income.
Expect the norm to be a startup, non tech company, or some other non FAANG big tech corp.
Yes those are stable businesses, but we’re probably at peak social media. They need something new to be interesting in long term investment.
Zuck IMO doesn’t have the halo Musk has where there’s results mixed in with the BS. And Meta doesn’t seem to have a good track record of developing new products.
Is a rage bait machine currently at / near its peak of usage still an interesting investment in 2026?
I think it says more about Metas inability to create new products or make investments.
Look at their big growth areas. They acquired instagram and WhatsApp. Threads seems successful(?) but is an extension of instagram.
Mostly they’ve just gotten better at weaponizing rage bait. Which I’d argue, long term, will be a losing strategy.
If this were a healthy culture, with all the people working there, Zuck would have promoted far more interesting internal experiment to full blown products. That just doesn’t seem to happen there.
I am happy to pay OpenAI for a cheaper model a few generations behind. But they deprecate models aggressively. They push you to bigger and smarter models, when 95% of my work doesn’t need it.
I’d love it if model providers just let old models run and let us pay less, but the deprecation makes me want to look into local models.
Ok if I’m bored I’ll be talking about fun things to do with colleagues. If only for bragging rights, impressing friends, or hacker news upvotes. My time is limited so, I’d need to be careful about how I allocate that resource to projects.
That’s still an economy as it works to distribute limited resources (human time) at a bare minimum.
I’m in an interesting position because I’m fine, but my wife has struggled to find work. I personally have no problem finding work, she applies and applies and seems to get nowhere.
The main difference comes down to networking. Frustrating for me, because I see what’s she’s doing wrong, but can’t lecture her on a style that doesn’t come natural to her.
Basically I don’t ever apply for jobs, yet I find work. She applies through the normal path and never gets called for an interview.
What’s my magic trick? Nothing really slimy, or even pushy, but 100% focused on informal relationships instead of formal channels of work.
I just spend a lot of time connecting with colleagues, catching up with them, and just trying to be friends. I’m not trying to milk them for work. The lunch I have isn’t transactional. We literally barely talk about work.
But because we enjoy hanging out, we find ways to work together. We brainstorm about each others careers. We just both want to be helpful. Opportunities pop up naturally to collaborate and I’ve never wanted for work.
I don’t know how to teach that. It’s somewhat about my temperament. It’s a skill developed over decades.
Still I strongly recommend you practice it. Or at least just try to hang out and make friends with colleagues. The rest comes naturally.
Almost certainly the roles my wife is applying for are not actually open roles, they’re roles made with someone in mind. Or filled by someone better at the relational side than the technical skills.
Not caring is key. Like so much is out of your control you have to accept that most of the company’s decisions aren’t about you or factor you into account. Including your own performance reviews - you can get lucky and have a boss you gel with - or have a boss you don’t interact well with. Or your salary is a rounding error someone had to solve for.
It’s not clear that reorganizing US foreign aid agencies is in violation of statute. As I understand it statute allocate $X to US foreign aid. And instructs the State dept to organize this aid.
The EO to pause all payments was challenged in court and halted
A lot of bad crap has happened, and I disagree with what DOGE is doing, but it’s not a coup.
They have power, but it’s not actually legal. Congress has mandated funds for this array, the administration wants to cripple it beyond repair before any legal action can catch up.