What’s in the latest 870-page spending bill passed by Congress?

by philg

I think that I found the full text of the One Big Beautiful Bill recently passed by Congress, but I can’t figure out what is in it. Has anyone here dived into this Tolstoy-scale document? I assume that whatever we read about this in the media is a lie. For example, we’ve been told that the bill cuts taxes so I assume that tax rates will either be the same or maybe increased, at least via inflation (every year with inflation means more fictitious capital gains taxes are owed and also more taxpayers ensnared by the Obamacare NIIT). We’ve been told that the bill cuts Medicaid so I assume that Medicaid spending will increase and that the eligibility expansion during Coronpanic will be maintained at least for another year or two (at which time the expansion can be extended by another act of Congress; I refuse to believe that an expanded welfare state can ever be shrunk because Americans who get accustomed to free stuff are going to be forever dependent on that free stuff).

One area where I’m confused relates to the Medicaid fight. The states that want to put everyone on Medicaid, e.g., California, are richer than average. These same states have a majority of their population agreeing with the idea that inequality is bad. Why wouldn’t they therefore be delighted to use state funds to keep everyone and his/her/zir/their brother on Medicaid? Even more confusing, California says that it is “cruel” for Trump and the Republicans to “cut” Medicaid (meaning that spending actually increases but not as much as hoped/dreamed?) while also cutting Medicaid spending at the state level. Medicaid cuts bad when Republicans do it (X, June 27, 2025):

Medicaid cuts good when California Democrats do it (nytimes, same exact day):

Health care is a human right, but only if federal taxpayers are covering it? It is not a right if Californians have to fund it with their own money?

Another recent fun news item from California, in which Democrats eliminate environmental protections established by Ronald Reagan (nytimes):

As governor, Ronald Reagan, a Republican, signed the environmental act into law in 1970 at a time when his party was much more aligned with environmental protections than it is today. It reflected a consensus among the state’s leaders over the need to protect a vast array of wildlife and natural resources — forests, mountains and coastline — from being spoiled by rising smog, polluted waterways, congestion and suburban sprawl.

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New York Times says that “slut” is not an English word

by philg

Happy International Whores’ Day, a month late, to those who celebrate. Vaguely related… let’s look at #Truth from the New York Times vs. what the stuffy academics at the Oxford English Dictionary have to say about the word “slut”:

From Orwell’s 1984:

“You haven’t a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston,” he said almost sadly. “Even when you write it you’re still thinking in Oldspeak. I’ve read some of those pieces that you write in the Times occasionally. They’re good enough, but they’re translations. In your heart you’d prefer to stick to Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning. You don’t grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?”

Winston did know that, of course. He smiled, sympathetically he hoped, not trusting himself to speak. Syme bit off another fragment of the dark-coloured bread, chewed it briefly, and went on:

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we’re not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is INGSOC and INGSOC is Newspeak,” he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. “Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?”

Circling back to International Whores’ Day, it seems that Sean “Diddy” Combs has been found guilty of “transporting people for prostitution”. This is exactly the activity to which Snoop Dogg, one of our official heroes, has freely admitted (example in which he describes a bus that went from state to state). If Combs is sentenced to prison while Snoop Dogg is the official ambassador for the LA Olympics how can we square that with any concept of justice?

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Will California’s high-speed rail line be vulnerable to drone-based jihad?

by philg

Assuming that they can get their hands on $100 billion (or maybe $200 billion, or maybe $300 billion) in federal tax dollars, Californians will eventually have a high-speed rail line (the groundbreaking ceremony was 10.5 years ago). In light of recent drone attacks within Russia and Iran, the question for today is whether the fancy new train will be a sitting duck for jihadis. From the Wall Street Journal:

From the BBC:

Maybe anti-drone defense systems could be built around U.S. airports and an airplane should be safe from low-tech attack at 30,000′, but how would a 500-mile rail line conceivably be secured? California has already experienced jihad from Syed Rizwan Farook, born to immigrants from Pakistan, and Tashfeen Malik, a legal immigrant from Pakistan (they killed 14 of their neighbors/coworkers with guns and had hoped to kill more, but their pipe bombs failed to explode). By the time the high-speed rail is finally ready presumably the knowledge of how to build suicide drones will be far more widespread. A drone can fly from a few miles away, park itself on the ground between the rails a few minutes before the train is due, and detonate when its camera sees the train rolling over it, thus derailing the train. All of this can be fully automated with no need for radio communication back to an operator. The tracks don’t move so the lat/long of the landing spot can be preprogrammed. Nothing drives over these tracks except high-speed trains and, therefore, the “detect a train” logic need not be sophisticated.

(Of course, I continue to be mystified as to how Californians can simultaneously say (a) they hate inequality, and (b) they want all of this federal money rather than seeing it spent in poorer-than-average states. Why don’t they want federal money spent in ways that reduce inequality?)

Maybe the answer will be a grid of sensor-equipped poles arranged along the entire route? They can use radar and optical cameras to look for aerial drones and also drones that crawl over the ground. But given that a drone can pop up from a shipping crate just a minute before a train is due and land 30 seconds before a train is due to pass, how can surveillance alone be effective? Californians didn’t object to a year or two of lockdown and school closure in exchange for a perceived higher level of security from Covid so maybe they would also accept a security corridor for a few miles on either side of the track in which humans are forbidden to enter. On the other hand, a clever jihadi could perhaps make a drone that looks like an animal of some kind.

Note that the same question can be asked about a lot of U.S. infrastructure. We have open borders by design, including to people who say that they hate the United States (an application for asylum is based on a fear of being harmed in some other country, not on any kind of affection for or loyalty to the U.S.). What stops a foreign power from sending a few hundred soldiers over as asylum-seekers and having them quietly build attack drones? The foreign power could guarantee that their asylum application will be accepted by publishing a list of the soldiers’ names and saying “All of the people on this list are sentenced to death due to their political opinions.” Anyone under a definitive sentence of death for a political point of view meets U.S. asylum criteria, right? “Membership in a particular social group” is also a slam-dunk and “LGBTI” is considered a “group” so the foreign power could make sure that its army gets into the U.S. by publishing a list of soldiers’ names and saying “All of the men on this list were discovered at a gay bathhouse and, therefore, are sentenced to death if apprehended.” From a USCIS training document:

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Drug dealers and the police agree that the C8 Corvette is awesome

by philg

Happy National Corvette Day to those who celebrate.

Here’s a heart-warming example of Americans with different perspectives coming together and finding common ground (Road & Track):

“Florida Highway Patrol Adds C8 Chevy Corvette to Patrol Car Fleet”

The C8 Corvette was seized from a drug dealer, and now will be used for community outreach — as well as enforcing traffic laws.

(Photo from the FHP’s Facebook post.)

In the same spirit, let me post some rainbow images that I hope everyone can celebrate for the end of Pride (until Omnisexual Visibility Day on July 6). These are from yesterday at Shoshone Falls in Idaho:

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Being LGBTQ+ is a sign of mental health and also it is possible to plan a career in providing mental health services to the LGBTQ+

by philg

We’re coming to the end of Pride Month and there won’t be any additional 2SLGBTQQIA+ celebrations until July 6 when we celebrate Omnisexual Visibility Day (i.e., nearly a full week without a Pride-oriented holiday). Here’s a conundrum from X:

In one of the replies, the taxpayer-funded school notes “Damien will be returning to Brooklyn College this fall for a master’s in mental health counseling, aiming to become a therapist specializing in affirming, trauma-informed care for LGBTQ+ clients.” In other words, we are informed that (1) identifying as LGBTQ+ is not a sign of mental illness, and (2) it is possible to rely on a lifetime income stream from the poor mental health of people who identify as LGBTQ+.

Some images in case the above tweets are memory-holed:

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Why are car insurance liability minimums so low?

by philg

Happy National Insurance Awareness Day to those who celebrate. (And Happy Pride to everyone else.)

From a friend in the Boston suburbs:

My kids got hit by a Haitian immigrant. The car is totaled. I am talking to his insurance company and they tell me, yeah so he is only insured up to $10,000 (damage to third parties).

(His teenagers were driving a minivan and weren’t hurt, fortunately. The migrant hit them from behind so his car would have needed to go through two empty rows of seats before reaching the children in the front seats.)

It turns out that the noble enricher was overinsured by Maskachusetts standards:

State governments love to regulate. They have a structure in place for requiring car insurance. Why are these limits set ridiculously low? It would be almost impossible to crash into someone else’s car and do less than $5,000 in damage. Things are complicated to some extent by the “no-fault” idea, but wouldn’t it make more sense to have minimum insurance set at the average cost of a car, e.g., if a driver hits a parked car and there is no doubt whose fault it is, or at the average cost of repairing a house after a car hits it?

How much damage was done by the Haitian whose presence in the U.S. makes all of us better off?

Progressive said they would pay $11k for the totaled [2012] Sienna and said they would arrange for me to come and sign papers. They called back and said that MA law requires that they run a check on me before issuing me any checks to make sure I don’t have any outstanding child support. It would then be deducted from my settlement

Even hitting a 13-year-old car did damage more than 2X the minimum! Separately, note that the tragic car destruction could have been a welcome payday for a family court entrepreneur. Finally, note the astounding value of a 13-year-old minivan!

Related:

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How does the fancy bunker buster bomb work?

by philg

People are debating how much damage was done to the underground nuclear weapons facilities built and run by the noble Iranians (an analysis by the unfortunately named “ISIS”). Supposedly, the energy of an underground explosion weakens via an r^3 formula (i.e., falls off as the cube of the distance from the explosion), thus making it critical to place the explosion next to the entirely peaceful underground bunker that is the aggressor’s target. (By contrast, an explosion in air falls off as r^2 and an underwater explosion, e.g., from a depth charge, falls off even more gradually.) Putting the bomb into the desired latitude/longitude position is straightforward, but what control does an attacker have over the depth of explosion?

Despite my skepticism that precision weapons can achieve a decisive victory (as long as the Iranians have a functioning oil and gas industry they will, in my opinion, have the resources they need to develop whatever weapons they want to develop), I asked Prof. Dr. ChatGPT, PhD in Bomb Design: “What technical mechanisms does the GBU-57A/B MOP bomb have to ensure that it detonates at the proper depth to destroy an underground bunker?”

Answer (including an image generated by ChatGPT, which you can tell because “measurement” isn’t spelled correctly):

The GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) uses a combination of inertial sensing, hardened fuzing, and time-delay logic to ensure detonation at the proper depth. While detailed specifications are classified, here are the known or inferred technical mechanisms it likely uses:

1. Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) / Accelerometers

  • The bomb contains an IMU that tracks the weapon’s deceleration as it penetrates the ground.
  • By analyzing deceleration patterns, the system can estimate penetration depth and determine when the warhead has reached the intended depth or structural resistance (e.g., reinforced concrete).

2. Hard Target Smart Fuzing (HTSF)

  • MOP likely employs multi-event, programmable fuzes, capable of:
    • Delaying detonation for a set duration after impact
    • Using deceleration signatures to detect when it strikes different material layers (e.g., soil, rock, concrete)
    • Triggering detonation based on penetration depth estimates or when further penetration slows/stops

3. Time-Delay Fuze Programming

  • Before release, operators can program a preset time-delay for detonation based on intelligence about bunker depth.
  • This is used in combination with sensor data to refine detonation timing.

4. Structural Stress Sensors

  • Embedded strain gauges or piezoelectric sensors can detect physical resistance changes as the bomb passes through materials.
  • These help distinguish when the warhead has entered the actual bunker structure versus overlying rock or soil.

5. Robust Casing and Kinetic Penetration

  • Although not a sensor, the MOP’s hardened steel casing and over 30,000-pound weight give it the ability to reach over 60 meters (200 feet) into concrete or earth before detonation—making precise depth control essential and achievable only with advanced fuzing.

Summary

The MOP uses sensor-based inertial tracking, programmable fuzes, delay logic, and material sensing to control detonation at the correct depth. It does not rely on GPS during penetration, as signal loss is inevitable underground. Instead, it fuses inertial and physical resistance data to achieve its goal: destroying deeply buried, hardened targets like WMD bunkers.

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The righteous at Nature highlight the inferior math achievement of a subset of humanity

by philg

Nature officially endorsed Kamala Harris for President and thus fully established their righteous bona fides. Here’s a recent tweet from the same folks:

They’re highlighting the inferior achievement/ability of a subset of humans. When did that become okay?

A no-paywall version of the article: https://archive.is/dY45U

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