Waiting for a plumber and a build

I have a list of 6 or 7 short plumbing tasks that I hope will take less than an hour, which is 1/8th the time window the plumbing service provided for the plumber's arrival. We all know how that goes. And at my real job, I'm coordinating a bunch of processes for a biweekly release that, so far, is pretty boring—just how we like it.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world persists in not boring anyone:

• In a moment that should make all patriotic Americans vomit from embarrassment and which Paul Krugman called "the inanity of evil," exiled Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado presented the OAFPOTUS with her Nobel medal, which he promptly stuck in his mouth while making happy little squealy noises. No report yet on whether he actually peed his pants or just drooled onto them.
• The US has admitted it obtained a directed-energy weapon that could cause brain injuries similar to the so-called "Havana Syndrome," despite years of Pentagon denials that such a thing could exist.
• Local public transport officials have drawn up plans for a long-overdue regional transit police force. One hopes they will have the authority to stop people smoking, pissing, and shitting on CTA trains. It's a little thing, I know, but it's important to some of us.
• Bruce Schneier looks back on Aaron Swartz's JSTOR dump and subsequent suicide, arguing that private hoarding of taxpayer-funded knowledge abetted by pro-corporate public policies has gotten worse since then.
• Jeff Maurer nails it: "In Fairness, “Reconstitute ICE So That Internal Border Enforcement Can Be Done in a Professional Manner by an Agency That Has the Public’s Trust” Is a Bad Slogan."

Finally, a story on NPR this morning had me yelling at my radio. The Heritage Foundation, who in saner times brought us Romney-slash-Obamacare, now fret about "what happens to a nation when its citizens largely stop having children and eschew marriage," as a section of their latest report has it. The report argues that marriage is the foundation of society, and therefore the government should make marriage more attractive. Nowhere do they argue for things that could make having children more attractive, like free day care, free pre-school and pre-K, free lunches in primary schools, and free health care for kids under 10. Or, you know, immigration, which has been proven to increase the population of every country that has tried it.

It's almost as if Heritage is raising the alarm over declining birth rates but not being particularly honest about whose birthrate they mean. Not to mention, the policies they do propose also create incentives for women to leave the workforce and return to the idyllic lifestyle they led in the 1950s and 1960s.

Is it possible that the organization that brought us Project 2025 and all the wonderous things we've experienced over past year has some other agenda? Hmm.