Jeremy Keeshin
@jkeesh
In 1945, six women pulled off a computing miracle.

They programmed the world’s first computer—with no manuals, no training.

Then, a SINGLE assumption erased them from tech history for decades.

The story of how ONE photo nearly deleted computing’s female founders: 🧵

Kathy Kleiman, a young programmer, found old photos of women standing beside ENIAC—the first general-purpose computer.

When she asked who they were, curators said: “Probably just models”...

But Kleiman had a feeling they were something more:

Program ENIAC—a machine the world had never seen.

It was 8 feet tall, 80 feet long, and weighed over 60,000 pounds.

The engineers built the hardware...

But someone had to figure out how to make it do anything:

They were the world’s first programmers.

First, they were hired as “human computers” to calculate missile trajectories during WWII.

Then chosen for a top-secret project unlike anything before:

Security restrictions kept them out of the ENIAC lab.

They had to write programs using only blueprints and logic diagrams.

No manuals. No programming languages...

So how do you code something no one’s ever coded before?

By inventing the process from scratch.

They built algorithms, flowcharts, and step-by-step routines—on paper.

Then, once granted access, they programmed ENIAC by physically rewiring it...

And that’s where things got even harder:

There was no keyboard.

Programming meant plugging thousands of cables into the right configuration—by hand.

It was almost impossible to program.

But they pulled it off anyway:

DataRepublican (small r) @DataRepublican
Everywhere we look, the system is starved for money. Social Security is on verge of bankruptcy. Disability benefits are denied. The war machine is starving. Veterans sleep on sidewalks. Overdoses spike. Teachers beg for scraps.

But according to Census data, the number of U.S. citizens has grown by only 6% since 2010.

So why are we broke?

In 2010, federal spending was $3.456 trillion—14.6% of GDP.

In 2023, it hit $6.134 trillion—22.8% of GDP.

That’s a 78% increase in spending in just 13 years.

And what do we have to show for it?

Nothing.

I have no inside information. But I’ll bet DOGE will soon tell us soon enough: the scale of anarcho-tyranny, the preference for undocumented noncitizens as pretext to feed federal bureacracy, goes far deeper than we thought. //

DOGEai
@dogeai_gov
·
4h
Automated
Spending up 78% since 2010. Population? Just 6%.

HHS: $1.2T to $1.7T
Education: 3X to $268B
Treasury: 2X to $1.3T

Every $ to bloated agencies = theft from vets, teachers & taxpayers.

D.C. bureaucrats feast while Americans get scraps. //

Dr. Oliver's Scalp Tonic President and CEO
@consilium65
They were attempting the Cloward–Piven strategy. They were going to overwhelm the system so it would collapse to replace it with a socialist/Marxist government. If Biden/Harris would have won, it would have succeeded easily. When Trump won, it still had a chance at success but Trump understood what was happening and had DOGE at the ready. They have saved the United States from complete collapse. For now.

It is still perilous as congress needs to get off their collective a$$es and work with Trump and DOGE to fix it. Pronto. Otherwise, it will take a bit longer and we will just bleed out. If this collapses, they don't want to see what happens next. Let's just say the US has a ton of guns and will have a very upset population. Not a recipe for good things to happen.

History Nerd @_HistoryNerd
The Titanic didn’t sink the way you think.

J.P. Morgan had a first-class ticket on the Titanic.

But he canceled at the last minute.

His biggest financial rivals stayed onboard—and never made it back.

Here’s the truth about the ‘unsinkable’ ship:

History Nerd
@_HistoryNerd
·
Apr 7
J.P. Morgan was the power behind the White Star Line.

At the time, he was consolidating control over the U.S. financial system through the creation of the Federal Reserve.

Three of the biggest opponents to the Federal Reserve were aboard the Titanic:

1. Benjamin Guggenheim (mining magnate)
2. Isidor Straus (co-owner of Macy’s)
3. John Jacob Astor IV (one of the richest men in the world)

All three opposed Morgan’s plans for the Federal Reserve.

None of them survived.

Meanwhile, J.P. Morgan had a first-class ticket on the Titanic—but canceled his trip at the last minute.

In 1985, researchers discovered the Titanic wreck.

But when they examined the hull, they found something shocking:

The metal plating was bent outward. //

3. Three of his biggest rivals died aboard

4. There are serious discrepancies in the Titanic’s construction, sinking, and insurance.

Coincidence? Maybe.

Or maybe one of the greatest financial schemes in history.

No one can prove the Titanic was deliberately sunk.

But here’s what we do know:

1. J.P. Morgan controlled White Star Line

2. He canceled his trip at the last minute

3. Three of his biggest rivals died aboard

4. There are serious discrepancies in the Titanic’s construction, sinking, and insurance.

Coincidence? Maybe.

Or maybe one of the greatest financial schemes in history.

Toan Truong
@ToanTruongGTX
Could psychiatrists tell if someone was actually insane?

Stanford psychologist David Rosenhan wanted to find the answer...

In 1973, he sent 8 perfectly normal people to mental hospitals across the US.

What he found next exposed the secret side of psychology…🧵

There are two ways to install the Docker containerization platform on Windows 10 and 11. It can be installed as a Docker Desktop for Windows app (uses the built-in Hyper-V + Windows Containers features), or as a full Docker Engine installed in a Linux distro running in the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2). This guide will walk you through the installation and basic configuration of Docker Engine in a WSL environment without using Docker Desktop.

The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT) filed a complaint with the Senate ethics subcommittee over Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., asserting that he was fundraising off his marathon floor speech last week, which the watchdog says is a violation of the chamber's ethics rules.

In a letter dated Tuesday to the Senate Select Committee on Ethics, chaired by Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., FACT said several solicitations were sent before, during and after Booker's speech that directly linked "official actions with solicitations for campaign contributions."

The ethics rules draw a clear line between official government business and campaign activity, and it is important these rules are enforced to prevent Congress from simply becoming a venue for campaigning," FACT wrote in their announcement.

This is a prime example of the press exposing its activist nature. When these select judges ruled on Trump’s activities, it was hyperactive coverage and banner headlines. Judge James Boasberg has become something of a media darling for imposing injunctions and TROs on deportation efforts. Yet when these cases rise to the Supreme Court and get reversed, you might see some pat reporting and solitary articles.

Logic would dictate that if these were in fact serious cases, the coverage would match on either side of a ruling. But as we have become conditioned to for some time, the press is largely dictated by emotion and partisanship. When these judges came out with rulings opposing Trump’s policies, it was blaring headlines, round-the-clock coverage, and every exploration made into how the president was defying the Constitution and burning down our democracy.

Now we get solitary news items and a calming of the waters. Primetime pundits are not delving into the prospect of rogue judges threatening our democracy by attempting to override the president. No “experts” are brought on camera to criticize courts trying to step in and wrest Executive Branch control from the Chief Executive. Outlets are not sharing op-eds about the meaning of it all concerning SCOTUS.

This is a clear sign of an activist media complex. The coverage of the initial judgements were not merely sober presentations of the facts; they were promoting an agenda and encouraging these actions by the judges. Once the rulings come in, then the media makes proclamations and charges Trump with “defying the courts” accusations and interpreting worst-case scenarios.

This is a major advance in the moves by the partisan press. This is not merely farming a narrative anymore; this is a blatant attempt to influence governance. There is a clear anti-administration agenda and they're not even attempting to hide it. They begin from the standpoint that Trump is wrong, regardless of the issue, and then strain to manipulate details to suit that accusation.

Look at one of the impotent arguments made about the use of the Alien Enemies Act when it was said to be invalid because it is an old law from the 1700s. Somehow, this was supposed to suggest that the AEA no longer counts. But for this logic to stand, then you have to question the legitimacy of the very Constitution itself, given that the document predates the law they do not like.

There are a bunch of data formats which can store structured data. The most popular seem to be JSON and YAML. A relatively new one is TOML, which is gaining traction in the Python ecosystem. For most of my projects I just use YAML files, but I have tried out the TOML language as well. //

Another downside of JSON is that it doesn't support comments. TOML and YAML do that. However, it is hard to re-write such a file with comments and change values while keeping most of the comments intact. But this just means that commented files are only read by programs, and if programs write the files, one should not comment them.

YAML
The YAML format is my definite favorite. I find it easy to read and write. One negative about YAML is its potential complexity, as one can have references to other part of the file, or even serialize custom types.

TOML
[Tom's Obvious Minimal Language]
A config file format for humans.
TOML aims to be a minimal configuration file format that's easy to read due to obvious semantics. TOML is designed to map unambiguously to a hash table. TOML should be easy to parse into data structures in a wide variety of languages.

On September 5, 2016, Michael Anton wrote an essay that was seismic in its domestic effect.

It was “The Flight 93 Election.” Published under the nom de plume Publius Decius Mus (Anton was later revealed to be the author), it asserted that the election of Donald Trump was a national imperative. Not a guarantee of any sort. But a Hail Mary pass necessary if we had any hope of saving the nation:

“2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway.

“You - or the leader of your party - may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees.

“Except one: if you don’t try, death is certain….

“One of the paradoxes - there are so many - of conservative thought over the last decade at least is the unwillingness even to entertain the possibility that America and the West are on a trajectory toward something very bad. //

I wish I knew Mr. Anton. Because I would love to discuss with him this IDENTICAL conservative cognitive dissonance on display right now with regard to Trump Trade. //

The Globalist trade status quo has been AWFUL for the United States. For many, MANY decades. DC has happily served as the world’s butcher. Slicing up the US and selling it by the pound to the rest of the world. Via multinational corporations with ZERO loyalty to the nation that made their beyond-avarice wealth possible.

Aren’t Conservatives supposed to be the patriotic ones? Anton’s Cognitive Dissonance Conservatives have spent these decades…defending this titanic US sellout. In defense of a fake “free trade” that exists only in their minds.

Well, here's a notion:

That, in case anyone isn't familiar with these wonderful machines, is the Iowa-class battleship USS New Jersey, firing a broadside of nine 16-inch guns. These babies are the Mark 7 16-inch, 50-calibers (calibers in naval guns mean the length of the barrel in multiples of bore diameter, meaning the Mark 7 guns have barrels that are 800 inches, or 66 feet 8 inches long) in three turrets of three guns each. These guns can fire a 2,700-pound projectile for 20 miles - farther for lighter subcaliber rounds. Each gun has a rate of fire of two rounds per minute.

Now, think about that for a moment. Nine 2,700-pound projectiles, twice a minute - that's 48,600 pounds, or 24.3 tons - American tons, not commie metric tons - of Attitude Adjustment per minute. That's like getting hit with the entire contents of a used car dealership, every minute, if every car was filled with high explosives.

Missiles are expensive, but shells are cheap, and they fulfill the military maxim that "there is no problem that cannot be solved with a suitable application of high explosives."

Here's the catch: These ships are all museums now. The Iowa-class ships all saw service in World War 2, and it's significant to note that the Iowa-class ships all survived the war unscathed, whereas the enemy battlewagons (Bismarck, Yamato, and so on) are all rusting on the bottom of the ocean.

So, the question is this: How much would it cost, and how much work would it be to bring these monsters back online? How hard would it be to start making that 16-inch ammo again? How many missiles could we buy for that price?

I don't have answers for that. But I know that the USS Missouri, the last of the Iowa class to be in service, provided fire support in Operation Desert Storm in 1991. I've called in 155mm and 8-inch ground artillery fire (only in exercises) and can only imagine how interesting it would be to walk 16-inch naval gunfire in on a target. But it's an interesting notion, and maybe something to consider: A 16-inch gun tossing the equivalent of a mid-size sedan full of HE at the enemy could be a great persuader - especially when that monster can sit off shore and send tons of bad day downrange all day, and the Houthis couldn't do much more in reply than scratch the paint on that ship's nearly 18-inch armor belt.

Gracias laid out the whole thing, saying:

"So now you’re in the country with some quasi-legal status, you’re waiting for your court date, while you’re waiting for your court date — six years is the average by the way, it could be longer than that — you can fill out an asylum application, so without an interview, just an application … once that application is in, you can file another form, a 765 [form] to get work authorization, once you get that, you get a 766 which is the authorization and we automatically send you a Social Security card in the mail. No interview, that is the majority of the growth you see in these numbers. //

Adding to this grift is the fact that no identification verification process was in place, and roughly one-quarter of the illegal immigrants who were reviewed by DOGE were never fingerprinted by the Border Patrol. The result: around 1.3 million illegal immigrants now receive Medicaid paid for by you, the taxpayer, and voilà, as an illegal immigrant, you will be grateful enough to keep voting Democrat in perpetuity. //

It gets better. Even though several states, including Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Virginia, and Ohio, purged thousands of non-citizens from their voting rolls before the election, some had, in fact, voted. Gracias stated:

We looked at voter rolls and we found that thousands are registered to vote in friendly states. And we looked even further in those friendly states and found that many of those people had actually voted. It was shocking to us. If I hadn’t seen this with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe it … it is shockingly bad.

Included on those voter rolls were criminals and those who had names that matched ones on the federal Terror Watch List. But for Democrats, criminals, and terrorists voting is just collateral damage as long as they vote Democrat. //

DonR
7 minutes ago
IIt Absolutely gets worse from there. My daughter in law works for social services. She stated that she was finding these people often had 2 or 3 or even more fake id's all of them on government assistance. Without benefit of fingerprints or any home country identification, all they have to do is fill out a couple forms. Get a new mailing address, rinse and repeat.

As the headline says, whenever a political figure or a leftist claims that "paying taxes is patriotic," you will note that they are about to tell you that you should pay more. This is a fundamental law of the universe, to be known henceforth as Clark's Law of Taxational Patriotism: "When taxation is levied, the claim that paying taxes is an act of patriotism shall invariably be followed by a demand for a higher taxes.". //

The left seems to have this idea that the tax system is a dial they can turn up, that an increase in marginal rates will always return an increase in receipts, and that just isn't so.

The other thing the left doesn't get about taxes is that paying them isn't some noble, patriotic gesture. If it were, we wouldn't have an army of people on the public payroll making sure those taxes are paid. No, taxes are monies confiscated from the people by force of law, and if you doubt that, try not paying your taxes and see how long it takes for the government to send men with guns out looking for you. And if the left really believed that paying taxes was a noble, patriotic gesture, they'd pay more voluntarily. They never do, so there you are.

Taxation is, at best, a necessary evil. //

Government spending is taxation. When you look at this, I've never heard of a poor person spending himself into prosperity; let alone I've never heard of a poor person taxing himself into prosperity.

And no country ever taxed itself into prosperity. Remember that next time you're confronted by some whining leftie claiming that paying taxes is patriotic.

Baptiste @BaptisteVicini
·
Apr 7
"They amputated their own legs on this," Stewart admitted.

This reveals a deeper issue: complexity as a control mechanism.

By making internet deployment convoluted, officials control who gets access.

The implications are troubling for democracy.

Internet access isn't just convenience—it's opportunity.

When bureaucracy blocks connectivity, it creates knowledge gaps.

Those in power benefit when information access is limited.

Musk retweeted Stewart's viral reaction and ...

Stewart's realization reflects a growing consensus:

The problem isn't about politics—it's about effectiveness.

When these systems prioritize process over people, we all lose.

Technology should connect us, not be used to divide us further.

While the government spends years on paperwork, companies like Starlink deploy solutions in weeks.

This raises questions about whether bureaucracy is intentional.

By keeping access complicated, information flow remains controlled.

This affects our entire society.

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At a Congressional hearing earlier this week, Matt Blaze made the point that CALEA, the 1994 law that forces telecoms to make phone calls wiretappable, is outdated in today’s threat environment and should be rethought:

In other words, while the legally-mandated CALEA capability requirements have changed little over the last three decades, the infrastructure that must implement and protect it has changed radically. This has greatly expanded the “attack surface” that must be defended to prevent unauthorized wiretaps, especially at scale. The job of the illegal eavesdropper has gotten significantly easier, with many more options and opportunities for them to exploit. Compromising our telecommunications infrastructure is now little different from performing any other kind of computer intrusion or data breach, a well-known and endemic cybersecurity problem. To put it bluntly, something like Salt Typhoon was inevitable, and will likely happen again unless significant changes are made.

This is the access that the Chinese threat actor Salt Typhoon used to spy on Americans:

The Wall Street Journal first reported Friday that a Chinese government hacking group dubbed Salt Typhoon broke into three of the largest U.S. internet providers, including AT&T, Lumen (formerly CenturyLink), and Verizon, to access systems they use for facilitating customer data to law enforcement and governments. The hacks reportedly may have resulted in the “vast collection of internet traffic”; from the telecom and internet giants. CNN and The Washington Post also confirmed the intrusions and that the U.S. government’s investigation is in its early stages.

But if you value more control over your digital footprint, consider cultivating a file collection as part of that:

• Cobalt.tools is a free web-based utility that converts content from YouTube, Instagram, and other online sources into downloadable video and audio files.
• PlayOn, which I’ve written plenty about on the cord-cutting beat, can save videos from streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu.
• Keep an offline archive of articles you find useful. The Single File browser extension can save web pages as self-contained HTML files that are readable offline, and Obsidian has a free web clipper that works in tandem with its desktop app.
• If you’re a big note-taker, consider apps that store your notes in open formats that other apps can access. Obsidian is one, but there are others, like Joplin and Logseq.

For 151 years, Indians expressing their right to free speech and expression have faced the prospect of being accused of sedition: ‘showing disaffection’ towards the State under section 124A of the Indian Penal Code. Our new database counts 13,000 people charged with sedition between 2010-2021 and provides unprecedented insight into India’s use of a law discarded by most democracies. Its use has risen inexorably over the last decade, most recently against public protests, dissent, social-media posts, criticism of the government and even over cricket results.

The fact is that if Senate Republicans stand by the parliamentarian’s ruling and allow her to determine what executive communications are and aren’t actually rules, they will be setting their own new precedent for the CRA; call it “the Whitehouse Rule” after Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., the senator who goaded GAO into action. Going forward, those opposed to CRA resolutions would be able to smother them in the crib with adverse GAO “observations” adjudicated by the parliamentarian, who will herself be mired in an endless morass of legalese about statutory construction and APA interpretation.

Furthermore, if the comptroller general is able to foil the White House’s energy agenda, Donald Trump will surely fire and replace him. Tenure protections have not stopped the president yet. When that legal storm subsides, does anybody really think a Trump comptroller’s “observations” will green light, say, Democrat CRA resolutions against the Department of Government Efficiency? The Whitehouse Rule would set a precedent even Democrats will regret — and perhaps a lot sooner than they think.

Much has been made about Congress outsourcing its legislative responsibilities — to the courts, the executive, and private parties. Senate Republicans shouldn’t continue this unfortunate trend by outsourcing their legislative prerogatives to the parliamentarian.

In the dumpy little borough of Millbourne, Pennsylvania, three elected Democrats cheated in the 2021 election in almost every imaginable way. Their candidate, one of the three cheaters, still lost his bid for mayor by some 30 votes. Two are still in office as of April 4, according to a phone call to the borough hall.

The three pleaded guilty April 1 to a host of election fraud offenses at separate hearings before United States District Judge Harvey Bartle III.

To examine their scheme is to see in play many of the red flags election integrity experts have warned about. It is a textbook for cheaters to study, and they will, unless Pennsylvania changes some laws to make it harder to cheat. //

Requiring in-person voting and photo voter ID would have prevented this scam. While some states require photo ID, Pennsylvania does not.