U.S. Forms Own U.N. WASHINGTON, DC—Frustrated with the United Nations’ "consistent, blatant regard for the will of its 188 member nations," the U.S. announced Monday the formation of its own international governing body,...

Once again, the Onion's prescience is startling.

U.S. Forms Own U.N. — theonion.com/u-s-forms-ow...

ICE's budget is $28B/year.
131mm households in the US.

Your family pays $214 annually to a grown-up version of the most awful kid you went to high school with. You purchased him a gun and some flash bangs so he can scare people more effectively as he roams.

I wonder if something bad will happen.

Aaron and Aibek on a drawbridge in a castle in Alsace.

My colleague Dr. Aibek Musaev and I were wandering around Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg, a castle on a mountain in Alsace, this afternoon.

Me: How would you get millions of tons of stone cut and carried up here?

Aibek: Oh. Hmm. The TAs would do it, right?

New College has a student retention problem More than two years after the takeover by the governor, New College of Florida for the first time recognized it has a retention problem. At a special board meeting, the new provost presented to the tr...

Following the takeover of New College by MAGA extremists, the graduation rate has dropped to 40% and professors are concerned that the students need remedial courses not offered by the school: www.podomatic.com/podcasts/sar...

This is what happens when loyalty, not competence, gets you the job.

I love Bill Withers, but to me "Lovely Day" sounds like someone turned a leafblower on in the middle of the song: "Such a lovely daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa..."

Did anyone in the studio ask, "Bill, would you consider holding that note for just a beat or two so people don't, you know, contemplate self harm?"

Quick etiquette tip: if you are going on a long flight, don't wear perfume or cologne. Your fellow travelers didn't get to choose it and probably don't want to breathe your choice for several hours.

Kleptocracy, Inc. — with Anne Applebaum | Prof G Conversations YouTube video by The Prof G Pod – Scott Galloway

This discussion between Scott Galloway and Anne Applebaum is worth a listen: youtu.be/qyYqJolXE_E?...

He blocked me!

Protesting in Bryant Park.

The USD and English are heavily utilized around the world. As Trump's antics quicken their path to irrelevance, could fixes to English delay its replacement?

For example, we could fix spellings: "Tair the paper" and "A teer ran down his cheek." etc.

We still have some time to make English better.

All the LLMs seem to have been trained on my books, so I can prompt them with "Write ___ as Aaron Hillegass would."

The result is often a bit of a caricature of my style, but I can hear my voice in there.

"MacOS used to be so developer-friendly."

Said each time I explain to a user how to launch an app that wasn't downloaded from the App Store.

Murmured each time I do something like
CXXFLAGS="-I/opt/homebrew/include -L/opt/homebrew/lib" python3 -m pip install plyvel

One day soon: Linux full-time.

When I was the boss and people would say "Let's make a change because it would solve these problems", it took a lot of imagination to guess what problems the change would *create*. The goal was always "solve more problems than we create" never perfection.

On most of the bulletin boards in Georgia Tech's CS department

This chart shows how much of an outlier Trump is historically. Even Biden, who had the next highest disapproval when he took office, still had a plus-20 differential. news.gallup.com/poll/655955/...

We're finally dismantling the federal government! Sure hope it doesn't serve essential functions that I've taken for granted my whole life

So, for example, I could lease land to grow Christmas trees and take the loss for seven years. Then, when a reasonable man was in the oval office, I could harvest the trees and get my money back?

I just have to spread the charitable giving out among more households, right?

You have pointed out a significant flaw in my plan! Thank you. It looks like the limit for cash gifts is 60% of my adjusted gross income. Hmm.

During the next 4 years, I will pass the 59.5 year mark. This means that I will be able to withdraw money from my Roth IRA -- those withdrawals are not taxed.

Yes, donating your entire salary to charity is something only the very fortunate can do. But it feels awfully good.

Maybe you can still do something. Maybe donate a big piece of your salary to a worthy organization? And pay less taxes to this fascist government? Every bit helps.

If a lot of debt makes you nervous, you can do "tax harvesting". If you have an asset that has appreciated $100 and another that has lost $100 in value, you can sell them both and the loss offsets the capital gain. Zero taxes.

How Wealthy Households Use a “Buy, Borrow, Die” Strategy to Avoid Taxes on Their Growing Fortunes Capital gains are the profits generated from wealth such as stocks and real estate. Wealthy households can use the three-step “buy, borrow, die” strategy to get massive capital gains tax advantages.

How to borrow against your assets? Get a home equity loan or use a margin account to borrow against your stock holdings. Interactive Brokers charges 1.5% above the benchmark, so about 5.6% right now. If you die with the assets+debt, your heirs actually get a tax break: www.dcfpi.org/all/how-weal...

Christopher Rufo Has Trump’s Ear and Wants to End DEI for Good From his perch outside Seattle, the 40-year-old documentary filmmaker and writer has become one of the country’s most influential culture warriors, waging public fights against diversity, equity and i...

The WSJ interviewed me about Christopher Rufo. I gave them a dozens reasons why he is a danger to our nation. I got a single sentence in the story: www.wsj.com/us-news/educ...

When I downsized recently, I sold many boxes of books to a local used bookstore.

The other day I was browsing in that store and thought, "Wow, they have some really terrific and unusual books here!"

And then I realized: most were tomes that used to be mine.

I am a proud graduate of New College, and I was teaching there when Chris Rufo and the other MAGA extremists were made trustees. It breaks my heart to see what has become of my school.

I was just thinking about making the journey out to your borough to see you!