Maeve

With the tragic events of 9/11 and the ensuing two-front ground war in the Middle East, Rumsfeld got an opportunity to enact his programme with minimal opposition. The results were clear eight years into the War on Terror, when the DOD had 95,461 private contractors working for them in Iraq compared to 95,900 US military personnel. The use of private contractors was by then so embedded that Barack Obama’s pledge on the campaign trail in 2008 to bring an end to the practice became just another broken promise among many. But while the privatisation of the war effort is a topic that has been explored extensively by a number of journalists, notably Jeremy Scahill, one aspect of the program has received little coverage — namely Rumsfeld’s plan for soldiers on the payroll of the DOD. This was a scheme that would prove catastrophic for the troops and the occupied populations living under them. Veiled in the language of business-style efficiency savings, Rumsfeld’s plan was intended to eviscerate the US military, which was to become merely an appendage to the massive private forces the US would soon employ.

Also, it was a 🐂 💩 war and so was the 9/11 commission.

Was thinking, “for now.”

Hard paywall

The living room ceiling has been ripped out after sewage water backed up and flooded the upstairs bathroom. With the drywall gone, you can spot loose nails and concerning gaps between the floor joists. Rainwater seeps through the cracks around the front door.

Insects crawl through the window frames — even though the windows were reinstalled because they weren’t installed properly in the first place. And most of your bathrooms are unusable, awaiting repairs the builder promised more than a year ago.

It feels like a nightmare — but it’s reality, according to Danielle Antonucci, who invited a Hunterbrook Media reporter to the home she and her husband bought just four years ago in Sarasota, Florida, built by the nation’s largest homebuilder, D.R. Horton ($DHI). In an email provided to Hunterbrook, Antonucci desperately pleaded with D.R. Horton to address the numerous defects rendering their home nearly uninhabitable: “I keep getting the response that this matter has been escalated to the Sarasota office,” she wrote. “It has been 21 months!”

…Both D.R. Horton and Lennar promise that their mission to build affordable homes will not come at the cost of quality — even as they have told investors they would cut costs to offset diminishing margins amid a tightening housing market.

RTA. I have extensive knowledge of how horrible at least one of these two companies are. “Byzantine warranty system” is extremely magnanimous.

europa your kind

Nazi dog whistles

Hope. 🫡

I guess we’ll see soon enough!

This seems a temporary issue. AI is heuristic, afaik. If the bubble burst doesn’t sink it, it will steadily improve until companies decide it’s more profitable to make it worse. This is, of course, presuming the goal isn’t to dumb down westerners even more.