There was a lawsuit from the AFGE (federal employees union) I think that they had to drop because it relied on the assumption that DOGE was a federal agency. When it was revealed that DOGE was just a renaming of the US Digital Service, that invalidated the premise of the lawsuit. Idk how the USDS had money lying around in its budget for a bunch of new and unqualified GS-15s to just be added to the payroll like government billets aren’t painstakingly difficult to establish, but that is another question, I suppose

Making them president, apparently

Yep, or any other etf or fund that tracks an ex US index, if folks don’t want to give their money/share votes to Vanguard. I’m unfortunately not well versed in brokerages outside the US, so no fund suggestions, but VXUS tracks the FTSE Global All Cap Ex US index, MSCI also has a World ex US index, it shouldn’t be too hard to find an ex US index tracking fund at a reputable brokerage of your choice

A lot of their direct competition is not in the S&P 500 because they are not American companies. Hyundai, Volkswagen, Toyota, Nissan, BYD, etc. American automakers let the EV market languish so long that they are only now becoming legitimate competitors in that space

Bathtub curve

Low income taxes. And our sales tax is typically lower than European VAT when the comparison is valid. But those generally go to the feds and the state, that do not fund municipal services, so municipalities have to collect the remainder they need through property taxes, typically on real estate and cars. And none of them fund healthcare, so we have to pay a company premiums for that. Basically the same for higher education. When you look at our total financial burden to receive the kind of services that are funded by taxes in other developed countries, we can be deceptively expensive, especially if you start thinking about the comparative quality of those services. But our income and capital gains tax rates are low, especially if you are very rich! I made myself sad

My city has a senior discount on property taxes, where seniors that have a net worth and income both below certain numbers pay reduced or as low as 0% of their regularly assessed property tax. I’m not sure how they verify net worth, but it seems like a good system to me as long as they have figured out a way to do that efficiently and effectively

Is sh.itjust.works not federated with lemmynsfw.com? Or maybe you use a Front page or Local feed. Here on world (no comment on the instance wars), lemmynsfw communities pretty regularly show up on my All feed. Seems like whatever they do with posts over there really makes the “Active” sorter happy, if you know what I mean

Degoogled and upamazon’d. Don’t expect a Foss-friendly environment, just a different flavor of enshittification. Also no source

It’s about whether US will do the same throw under the bus routine with Taiwan I think. China would love to know that the US won’t seriously contest an attempt to invade their neighbor across the strait

I’m not disputing your claim, but can you help me understand how paper straws are less usable/more hostile to people with disabilities? I’m struggling to see how the material choice would impact accessibility, but it seems like you have a pretty clear impact in mind

So many times depending on who you trace modern Brits to. Romans invaded the Celts. Saxons invaded the Romans. Normans invaded the Saxons. And that’s just England. Wales and Scotland could probably come up with another dozen plus examples between them

Sure, sure, so just rephrase the statement. Many workers believe working in the office justifies 25% additional compensation (80 to 100% of what they are paid today). That doesn’t mean workers shouldn’t be paid more, it’s just capturing the delta in compensation required to justify in person work

Unethical life pro tip, depending on whether respecting others’ religious traditions is part of your ethics: no mass I’ve ever been to has checked identity before giving out communion. If you’ve got an hour to burn for a free tasteless chip and a sip of wine and backwash, just walk in with mild confidence, mimic others, and mumble along with the prayers, and people will probably just assume you usually go to mass at another time or are traveling. There’s no Eucharist police that’s going to tackle you halfway down the aisle and throw you in an inquisition dungeon because your papers don’t check out

Instructions unclear, hid roadkill bear in Central Park

On first read, I assumed you were referring to literal tiger testicles

FYI, I’m pretty sure “at the behest of” means “as requested by”, but it looks like you meant something more like “to the detriment of” or “at the cost of”

This makes one of the “solutions” from the article: “A law was introduced at the end of 2023 that will eliminate the need for permits and environmental impact assessments for bridges that are being widened to add lanes as part of renovations.” look particularly shortsighted. Infrastructure is a maintenance debt that we are reckoning with, so we will make it easier to build specifically bigger infrastructure so that in 25 years we will have an even bigger problem to solve? Not to mention the concept of induced demand meaning that those lanes are going to increase the amount of vehicles using the bridge, which would be exactly the kind of thing that should get an environmental assessment, versus repurposing some lanes for sustainable transit or building a separate bridge for those modes

If you use the right color of light, then the doppler effect means that the atoms will only absorb (and be pushed by) light that they are headed towards. That means that the light will always act as a brake for the atoms and never an accelerator, so the fluid will cool. If you do this from all directions, the fluid will start to stay still in one place and get very close to absolute zero. Idk, I just read the Wikipedia article, but that is my best attempt at an ELI18

Radiation does not by definition make things it impacts radioactive, and most of the lingering effects that we associate with radiation have to do with radioactive particles that are left behind by the atmosphere. Since there is no particulate matter traveling between the sun and Mars (photons not withstanding), the surface of Mars would not be expected to acquire radioactive properties from an acute solar radiation event like this one. However, an entity on the surface of Mars would be exposed to radiation from the Sun, much more so than an entity on/near earth and it’s magnetosphere (Mars’ thin atmosphere and distance from the sun probably helps reduce that disparity relative to something in say low earth orbit, but I don’t think it fully equalizes or shifts the scales). I am not an astrophysicist, so there’s at least a 20% chance I got part of that wrong.