Blog purpose

This BLOG is for LLNL present and past employees, friends of LLNL and anyone impacted by the privatization of the Lab to express their opinions and expose the waste, wrongdoing and any kind of injustice against employees and taxpayers by LLNS/DOE/NNSA. The opinions stated are personal opinions. Therefore, The BLOG author may or may not agree with them before making the decision to post them. Comments not conforming to BLOG rules are deleted. Blog author serves as a moderator. For new topics or suggestions, email jlscoob5@gmail.com

Blog rules

  • Stay on topic.
  • No profanity, threatening language, pornography.
  • NO NAME CALLING.
  • No political debate.
  • Posts and comments are posted several times a day.

Tuesday, January 1, 2030

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Monday, March 18, 2024

At NNSA, The squeaky wheel gets removed.

 For-profit NNSA contractors are in and have been, in a NNSA supported and financed “cash cow” no risk environment for over a decade plus.


Suppression of potential accidents, safety issues, and mismanagement = maximum fee. This M.O. is effectively risk free to the NNSA contractor, given the low threshold of NNSA reimbursement of contractor legal fees when pushback occurs. The NNSA contractors just “lawyer up” on the taxpayers dime. Easy peasy. Thank you NNSA.

The squeaky wheel doesn’t get the grease, it gets removed, in this cash cow NNSA sanctioned system.
It is a built in and funded anti-incentive for contract management and mission improvements.

Turning point

 I'm in the middle of watching the new Netflix documentary, "Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War". So far I've found it to be an excellent series. Highly recommended.


I'm a retired LLNL employee who joined the Lab in 1983 as a postdoc at the height of the "Second Cold War" and as Regan's "Star Wars" was taking off. Underground testing was still going on, and that program funded my postdoc (which had nothing to do with nuclear weapons, other than the fact that they shared certain experimental/measurement techniques).

Saturday, March 16, 2024

Four-day workweek

 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/bernie-sanders-pushes-bill-establish-four-day-workweek-rcna143354




The nation could follow LANLs lead and have a 4 day work week! At LANL we have the 9/80 but you work 9 hours a day and have every other Friday off. The issue is (1) Most Fridays the lab is only 25% full and no one works a 9 hour day. The lab fills up between 8-9, and people start to leave by 3pm. The parking lot are half empty by 5pm. I know some people come in at 7AM in certain groups but in my area if you come in 7AM it is utterly empty, with people getting in 8AM and latter. By 3pm you can get a parking lot pretty easily. (I know the manufacturing people have real schedules and put in the hours so I am not talking about you).

I understand if you can work from home but we get all these crazy things like, "turn in your time by 5pm on Wed, paper work must be turned for anything on Thur morning, in our area half the people are gone by 1pm every Thur and maybe 20% or less are there on a Friday so if you need anything done you better do it Wed, or Thur morning at the latest. This is every single week.

As near as I can the schedule is something like, every Friday off, every Thur afternoon off, every other Monday off. Heck even Thurs you are seeing drop. It is a weird place. I am not sure if this is a new thing since an old joke I heard was "How many people work at LANL? about half"

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Monday, March 11, 2024

China's AI project, a challenge to US

 https://www.newsweek.com/china-us-conflict-artificial-intelligence-espionage-struggle-ai-computer-science-1873990


China is building a vast, AI-based intelligence platform dubbed "Supermind" to track millions of scientists and researchers around the world so it can hoover up breakthrough technologies for industry and the military, according to a person with close knowledge of the project and public sources reviewed by Newsweek.

Sunday, March 3, 2024

The coming Chinese revolution

 Here's another video that hints at some of the issues facing modern China:


https://youtu.be/httM1osjGEk?si=SWbkxeHI1Rof5Txc

There are certainly a number of ongoing crises, however it is certainly possible that the bad outcomes in this video may be averted given that advancing technology may create more favorable circumstances.

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