This weekend, Dan Frosch, Patrick Thomas, and Andrea Peterson of the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is ending its annual report on household food security. Those reports began in the 1990s to help state and local officials distribute food assistance. Last year’s report found that 18 million U.S. households experienced food insecurity during 2023. In a statement, the Department of Agriculture said: “These redundant, costly, politicized and extraneous studies do nothing more than fearmonger.”
Not sure there’s a better sign that this administration doesn’t care at all about people struggling than this. Cut the reporting, cut the assistance, and no one is the wiser—except, you know, the people going hungry. You can’t fix what you don’t measure, and this administration has no interest in doing either.
That Johnson eventually chose the Bears sent a clear signal: This is the job he wanted above all others, one that would allow him to prove himself against his old team and division rivals and establish himself as a top head coach in the league.
Anyone willingly choosing to coach the Bears is giving you a clear sign that something is not right between the ears… I lump myself in that category as someone who was excited for the season and expected things to improve from last year.
Someone seriously needs to scoop him up and let him do this kind of stuff again once he's loose from CBS. Hopefully Paramount doesn't own all of the IP related to The Colbert Report...
I'm putting a feeler out there to see if anyone is interested in joining TIV as a fellow linkblogger and helping me turn this into a collective of like-minded linkblogging individuals.
Background
The way I've viewed the site is basically a way to talk about what's going on in the world via links, as well as sharing cool things I stumble upon.
I've long had this idea that The Independent Variable would eventually become a more collaborative linkblog à la Boing Boing—or maybe having the occasional guest editor/curator à la Kottke.
Now that we're on Ghost, and MagicPages allows unlimited Staff, the capabilities are all there, so there's no reason not to give it the ol' college try.
Details
Ideally, 3 or 4 people would join up.
There’d be no post quota or limits, but the loose guideline would be averaging anywhere between three posts a day to one a week—in practice, it should be guided by the links that you find worthy of sharing and commenting on. Nor is there a length of time you'd be required to stick around if you get busy elsewhere or are no longer interested in it.
The only requirement is that every link should come with commentary. Commentary can riff on the link, give your thoughts on the topic, detail downstream effects, explain why it’s important, or why we should care—basically anything you want to say about the topic.
Starting with a quote from the link is encouraged but not required.
Disclaimer
TIV is pro-Ukraine, believes Israel is committing genocide in Palestine, pro-LGBTQIA+, pro-choice, etc., etc., basically a socialist democrat; I personally donated to Elizabeth Warren's campaign in 2020. While we don't have to have the same opinion on everything, your words will live amongst those opinions. My motto is "be kind, stay sane," so hateful and discriminatory words won't fly.
Apply
If any of this sounds even a little bit intriguing, go ahead and apply, and we can discuss further to see if it's a good fit.
“With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people,” he added. “It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.”
In honor of the “bastion of free speech” and the debater who was so skilled he only ever debated with college students, we are going to… ensure no one can ever speak a negative word about Trump, Kirk, or any of their allies ever again. Thanks, Stephen Miller!
Two days ago, Slack reached out to us and said that if we don’t agree to pay an extra $50k this week and $200k a year, they’ll deactivate our Slack workspace and delete all of our message history.
What a class act they run over at Slack and Salesforce. A week’s notice to go from $5k a year to $200k a year for a non-profit when it probably costs Slack pennies on the dollar to host their data.
codex.humdrum.me
One more terminal app for good measure! Been working on this one for awhile now and it's already my main driver for writing anything. It's designed to be a standalone text editor, but you can also set a vault, daily note convention, and
codex.humdrum.me
A terminal dashboard for live sports — Plain Text Sports meets Golazo, as a Bubble Tea TUI.
Been working on this one for a bit, but it's basically ready for primetime now. I took inspiration from Plain Text Sports and the Golazo TUI and built out
dirtylittlezine.com via library.dirtylittlezine.com
Make a printable 8-page folded zine from a single sheet of paper. Free browser-based editor with photo layout, captions, and 300 DPI JPG/PDF export.
Awesome little tool to help you make single-page zines. More zines please!!! Rick also made a
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