The mind spins

So people are rejecting Teslas because of the work Elmo is doing to destroy the government at the behest of Trump, but they figure Trump doing a commercial for Tesla will turn all that around?

"Wow. That's beautiful. … Everything's computer"

Drew Harwell (@drewharwell.com) 2025-03-11T20:05:26.558Z

The White House is now doing promotional events for the private businesses of aides and donors.

Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) 2025-03-11T19:32:05.634Z

Announcing a boutique label called Sub-Prime

Amazon has announced it will begin streaming 'The Apprentice' — the reality TV show famous for boosting the profile of President Trump — on its Prime Video service from Monday.

NBC News (@nbcnews.com) 2025-03-10T13:27:04Z

It's easier to understand why Donald Trump thinks hosting a TV show makes someone qualified to do *anything* else when you realize that Trump hosting "The Apprentice" was the only reason anyone thinks the failed businessman is competent to do anything else.

Mrs. Betty Bowers (@mrsbettybowers.bsky.social) 2025-03-09T01:34:29.529Z

‘To do’ list

Well, it’s that time in the election cycle where the usual suspects are complaining that identity politics lost the election and how Dems need to win our economic trust. I thought I’d make some suggestions:

Democrats want to win our economic trust? Here's a start:1) Raise the federal minimum wage to $172) Pass card check legislation3) Pass legislation forbidding Congress to buy stocks4) Raise ceiling on taxable income for Social Security5) Treat billionaires like an undesirable aberration

Susie Madrak Ω (@susiemadrak.bsky.social) 2025-03-04T18:19:13.759Z

DOGE Staffers at HUD Are From an AI Real Estate Firm and a Mobile Home Operator

Wired has been doing some tremendous work on DOGE.

Elon Musk’s men at HUD come from the real estate sector. They have access to vast stores of personal and financial data—and control over who can access which HUD system

On February 10, employees at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) received an email asking them to list every contract at the bureau and note whether or not it was “critical” to the agency, as well as whether it contained any DEI components. This email was signed by Scott Langmack, who identified himself as a senior advisor to the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Langmack, according to his LinkedIn, already has another job: He’s the chief operating officer of Kukun, a property technology company that is, according to its website, “on a long-term mission to aggregate the hardest to find data.”

As is the case with other DOGE operatives—Tom Krause, for example, is performing the duties of the fiscal assistant secretary at the Treasury while holding down a day job as a software CEO at a company with millions in contracts with the Treasury—this could potentially create a conflict of interest, especially given a specific aspect of his role: According to sources and government documents reviewed by WIRED, Langmack has application-level access to some of the most critical and sensitive systems inside HUD, one of which contains records mapping billions of dollars in expenditures.

Another DOGE operative WIRED has identified is Michael Mirski, who works for TCC Management, a Michigan-based company that owns and operates mobile home parks across the US, and graduated from the Wharton School in 2014. (In a story he wrote for the school’s website, he asserted that the most important thing he learned there was to “Develop the infrastructure to collect data.”) According to the documents, he has write privileges on—meaning he can input overall changes to—a system that controls who has access to HUD systems.