Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, February 3, 2026
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34 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
Follow Steven on
Twitter and/or
BlueSky.
My letters to my congress critters are getting shorter and pettier:
@Scott:
You can download the forms as fillable PDF from the IRS website, works fine.
You can download any publication as a PDF also, I did for Pub 550 and Pub 17.
I just fill out the forms on my computer, print them out and snail mail them off, I have already mailed mine off.
This way, I have the return saved as a file on my hard drive, and I don’t need no stinking TurboTax.
@charontwo: I believe the point is to remind the Congressional slugs that Elon’s DOGE hackers did more harm than good when they “chain-sawed” the federal workforce in general, and the IRS employee rolls in particular.
@charontwo: That is what I’m doing but the point is that the Senators don’t get their job done (by Sep 30th) and there are downstream consequences.
Good news: Paris crybercrime police raided the headquarters of Xitter in France
Why:
This may or may not qualify as good news. During fueling tests and countdown rehearsal for Artemis 2, fuel leaks in the Senate Launch System were detected, along with issues in some valve in the crew capsules.
So, the Moon will have to wait until at least March to be flown by.
Between this, the ridiculous cost per SLS launch, the ongoing delays with Xtarship, the back and forth in NASA program funding, and the all encompassing power of Murphy’s Law, I don’t expect to see any Lunar landings before 2030, and even that strikes me as optimistic.
If NASA really, really, really intends to get there by 2028, the first thing it needs to do is find Dr. Emmet Brown and ask to borrow his DeLorean. The second is to go back to 2018 or so, and convince Congress to approve a much larger budget for NASA, say in the order of at least 3.5% of the national budget, for the next ten years at the least.
The second is absolutely impossible.
Trump is suing Harvard University for one billion dollars on the grounds that they’re anti-Semitic and “promote a radical left ideology.”
Armenia may set up a Ministry of Sex to ensure that there are “no unsatisfied women.” I am not kidding. See The Telegraph, The Daily Star, and The Daily Mail for confirmation.
@CSK: his war on the Pulitzer committee because they awarded prizes for coverage of the Mueller investigation goes on apace.
Lawyers for the defendants are now demanding an unredacted version of the full report.
Trump claims they damaged his ego, er, reputation by awarding these prizes, because they’re so prestigious.
It’s too bad malignant narcissism isn’t a fatal disease if left untreated.
The news is just chock-full of idiocies today. Cracker Barrel has issued a new dictate requiring its employees, when traveling for business or personal reasons, to eat all or most of their meals at a Cracker Barrel.
@CSK:
I’m reading that as eating at CB being required, when practical, for reimbursable business travel expense purposes. But it is another sign that the chain may be falling on tough times, revenue-wise.
@CSK:
But what if they’d rather eat somewhere good?
I concede the employer can demand they eat in-house on business travel, so long as their travel expenses are covered by the employer. Otherwise, f*ck off.
I’ve been on the job hunt for awhile without many interesting leads, but this morning I got an exciting offer from the government of Armenia to head up a new ministry. Don’t want to reveal too many details, but their offer repeatedly referenced my skills and experience being ‘right up their alley’ with the giggle emoji.
@Eusebio:
That’s true, but what about when a CB employee is on vacay? Must he or she dine only at CB? Or even doing personal business, like going to the doctor or dentist or running errands. If you get hungry, do you really have to hunt down a CB?
@Kathy:
How succinctly and elegantly you put it. I agree.
The cracker barrel policy was to recommend that employees eat at CB properties when travelling for business. I don’t know if they had at one point made it a requirement and then backed off when the media flagged it, but for now its just a strong recommendation.
My wife worked for CB for a bit 15 years ago, and at that time they also asked–but didn’t demand–that employees eat meals at CB properties when travelling. If I had to guess, the company is experiencing an ongoing shift to greater travel, greater in person visits, after the long tail of covid recovery, and are reminding employees of the existing policy.
A tough read in spots, but very much worth it. It ties in to Steven’s “voters don’t change” thesis.
Why MAGA keeps saying things that don’t make sense, and why it works
Yikes.
Jill Biden’s Ex-Husband Is Accused of Killing His Current Wife
The ex-husband of the former first lady Jill Biden was arrested and charged with murder in the death of his current wife, the police in New Castle County, Del., said on Tuesday.
The ex-husband, William Stevenson, 77, was arrested on Monday after a grand jury indictment charged him with first-degree murder in the death of his wife, Linda Stevenson, 64, on Dec. 28. Mr. Stevenson was married to Dr. Biden from 1970 until their divorce in 1975.
@CSK:
Thanks.
On more silly news, Adolf will merge his ISP company, XpaceS, with his data mining company, Xitter.
Why? In part to increase the valuation of one of them (seems unclear which one). But also, get this:
(Facepalm emoji)
Look at the size of data centers for LLMs. Putting one in orbit would cost a lot, quite aside from the matter of cooling them when they’ll spend anywhere from minutes to hours per orbit in direct sunlight.
If the oligarchs want to use space for their wasteful data centers, one thing they could do is place solar panels in orbit, and beam down the power to their thirsty, power-hungry LLMs. That way something useful might remain when the bubble pops.
If we ever get that far. the bubble might pop sooner, before Adolf can even launch even the first of his seven million data center satellites, or however many he’s planning on.
@Jen:
You beat me to it. I know nothing about Stevenson. Given his age, what do you want to bet his lawyer pleads not guilty on the grounds of dementia or diminished capacity?
@Kathy: The only other launch system that used LH2 in the quantities that SLS does was the Shuttle. Delays and scrubs due to hydrogen leaks were a regular feature of Shuttle launches. An alternate approach to the problem is what they did with the Delta Heavy. If you go look at one of those launches, there’s a modest hydrogen “fireball” around the lower part of the boosters at ignition when hydrogen from leaks burns off. The designers allowed for it: there were no nooks or crannies where hydrogen could accumulate and reach levels where it exploded rather than just burned. But the fireball’s not a good look for a crewed rocket.
LH2 is just a very difficult fuel to deal with. Too bad the US Senate baked it in to SLS when they required the project use left-over engines from the Shuttle.
@Kathy: Yeah, the “massive data centers in orbit” is a silly idea. Assume a modestly sized center that draws 100 MW of power. Work out the weight of that, in a framework sturdy enough to tolerate multiple gees and a lot of vibration at launch. Work out the size and weight of solar panels needed to generate 100 MW of power (not to mention an orbit that keeps them in sunshine all the time). Liquid cooling of the integrated circuits is mandatory. Work out the weight of the water that has to be circulated to do that job. And the water has to be cooled. Work out the size and weight of the radiating surface necessary to dump 100 MW worth of heat. I seem to recall reading that it would take at least hundreds of Starship launches to get all the stuff for one data center to orbit.
@Michael Cain:
And here’s video of a Delta Heavy burning off leaked fuel
@Michael Cain:
I assume they’ll break data centers into smaller pieces and launch them in constellations to the same orbit, connected via radio. Good luck station keeping, and refueling the thrusters every few years.
As for cooling, maybe they can use NaK instead of water. It’s a sodium-potassium alloy that’s liquid at room temperature, and has a high boiling point.
Maybe the oligarchs just have so much money they need to find more extravagant, costly ways to spend it.
@Kathy:
This statement is obviously bonkers. Maybe someone doesn’t know what obviously means. Someone who not only thinks it’s practical to colonize Mars by mid-century, but also a good idea.
@Michael Cain:
Not to mention the teensy problem of servicing the buggers if anything at all goes wrong.
iirc average datacentres require about 2 technicians on site, plus support teams on rapid availability for major failures, and periodic cycles of parts replacement/servicing.
Utterly nuts.
Must try suggesting this to our IT guys sometime, for the lulz.
@Eusebio:
Launching stuff to orbit is so expensive, even now with reusable boosters, that just about anything you can think of doing in orbit is far, far, far cheaper to do on the ground.
Only things that cannot be done at all, or not well enough, on the ground get launched into orbit and beyond. Like satellites to observe the weather, relay communications (even then, fiber optic cables are fierce competitors in some areas), spy on other countries, literally study space, etc.
So, for example, a constellation of satellites could harvest solar energy and make electricity to be beamed down (as microwaves) for use on the surface. But it would cost far less to build solar farms anywhere on Earth, along with batteries to store capacity for use at night or during cloudy days.
So, even the use I propose for orbital structures to power data centers is ridiculous and unnecessary*. Launching the whole thing is beyond ludicrous.
*Albeit less ridiculous than building illegal gas-powered plants, so Grok can do child pornography on demand.
I once read a NASA paper that proposed a interplanetary communications hub on darkside Luna. The thinking was that the mass of the moon would shield from all the Earthbound RF chatter, which would enhance signal reception from the rest of the solar system.
It seemed less crazy and more “well, it will be quite a while before we see that”. There are yes, obvious technical issues, but all are solvable with sufficient resources.
Of course, poverty and hunger are also solvable with sufficient resources. And providing health care. Which, of course, is maybe more of a concern than AI data centers.
@JohnSF:
You place 3, 4, 10 times the number of chips the task requires, and as some fail the reserves are activated. One day some maintenance team may get up there and clean up and upgrade the system.
@Jay L. Gischer:
The far side of the Moon would be the closest, ideal place for a huge radio telescope, as the bulk of the Moon would block all radio signals from Earth.
As to earthly problems, a lot, but not all, concerns inequality. Most of the rest is corruption.
@Kathy:
But thus send your costs throught the roof.
Besides, by all accounts its not the chips that are the worst of it, maintenace wise. It’s the cooling systems, power systems, comms links, etc.
Given a functioning Lunar “outpost” on the lines of mixup of Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station and Prudhoe Bay and Camp Century, but in a far more hostile environment, then Farside telescopes are gravy.
Personally, won’t be holding my breath.
imho its instructive to compare the economic trajectories of countries with democratic, or at minimus “social solidaristic” leaderships compared to those without them.
Spain was virtually a “third world” country in the late 1940’s/early 50’s.
Poland was economically about par to Iran in the late 1980s’s. Now closing fast on Japan.
Not to mention Romania and Bulgaria.
The EU has been a massive enabler of economic improvement for the general populace, primarily by establishing an (impefect) basis of lawfulness.
See also South Korea …
And conversely, the problems of Argentina.
Governance, and states with a reasonable basis of equity and concern for the general good, seem to have a lot to do with sustained prosperity.
A lesson the neo-feudalist tech-bro and “private wealth finance” idiots seems determined to forget, may Beelzebub curse their scrofulous souls
@Michael Cain:
iirc a major problem with hydrogen is that being about as small a molecule as you can get, anywhere it can leak, it will
And also it has an unfortunate affinity for chemical reactions that degrades many organic-chemistry based sealants. Plus, you have the effect of cryo-cooling on materials.
Rocket science is hard.
@JohnSF:
Back when the Shuttle first launched* and still seemed like a good idea, there was a lot of talk of amazing materials and drugs which could only be produced in zero g, and which would be possible now that here was a cheap, reliable, vehicle for lofting cargo into orbit (feel free to laugh).
None of that has happened, not on any significant scale, despite having the ISS operational for decades. Maybe this means no amazing materials and drugs need zero g, or none that can be economically produced. Maybe not even now that there exist cheaper, reliable launch vehicles**.
I never thought LLM data centers would be the first industry, if I may use the term loosely, that would move its facilities into space.
*I got up an unholy early hours at least twice to watch the live launch of Columbia, the first shuttle. Between delays, the commentators on TV had to fill the time somehow, so they talked a lot about what NASA put out to justify the shuttle program.
** I hate Adolf and wish he’d drop dead, but facts is facts.
@Kathy: I’m thrilled Elon is merging the companies. Now when women sue for his child-porn creation AI software, they’ll have much deeper pockets to target.
Addendum to the latter:
If we could mine and refine ores in space, say from asteroids or the Moon, that would very much be worth doing. Why? because it would help to reduce pollution from the nasty chemicals used to refine mineral ores, not to mention the tailings from such operations (ie all the material that’s not a useful metal or mineral in sufficient quantities to be worth separating). Mostly water pollution, but also ground and crop lands.
While the costs would be huge, or rather HUGE, it’s likely we could also get really large quantities of such minerals from asteroids or the Moon (also maybe the satellites of the giant planets, but that induces another huge cost in fuel given the deep gravity wells).
The main issue, other than the technologies and techniques for this endeavor do not currently exist, is that we’ve little notion of what mineral exist in what concentrations in the various asteroids.
So, it’s not something I expect to see in my lifetime.
Well, this is kind of a doozy. Notepad++ was compromised for at least six months by suspected Chinese-state hackers.
That is to say, when this app (Notepad++) reached out to the internet for updates, it ended up getting updates from the hackers, who had inserted their own “platform” into the update.
One assumes that it can watch someone typing in passwords and steal them, gaining access to networked files. Who has been affected?
I don’t use Notepad++, mainly because I do very little on Windows, sticking to Linux and MacOS.
But since it’s popular, I’ll note this:
For emphasis: 8.8.8 or higher. Installed manually from notepad-plus-plus.org
Mitch has been hospitalized with “flue-like” symptoms.
“Flu-like symptoms” are similar to symptoms of many infectious diseases, particularly respiratory and gastrointestinal ones (depending on which flu it is).
In any case, I hope his suffering ends soon.