Tuesday, January 1, 2030

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Sunday, May 3, 2026

Top AI companies propose the LANL employment model for our post work future


https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/30/opinion/ai-labor-work-force-silicon-valley.html


"Even their own berths may not be safe, implies their boss: “It may be feasible to pay human employees even long after they are no longer providing economic value in the traditional sense. Anthropic is currently considering a range of possible pathways for our own employees,” Mr. Amodei wrote.

While the American public ordinarily hesitates to support left-wing policies like a jobs guarantee or single-payer health care, A.I. seems to expand the political Overton window. “Right now, the argument is, ‘You’re all about to lose your jobs, and the choice is either you get nothing and starve, or we do something fair,’” Mr. Shor said. “People don’t want to be members of the permanent underclass.”

Not all policies are created equal, however. A universal basic income is unpopular, but a federal jobs guarantee has legs, Mr. Shor found. American voters don’t care about beating China, but they are excited about A.I. curing diseases. And, crucially, populism sells. In one of the top-performing political ads that Mr. Shor’s data firm tested, the nameless narrator declares: “We make the corporations and billionaires who profit from A.I. pay their fair share.” The ad concludes: “They work for the bots. We work for you.”"

Saturday, May 2, 2026

Reducing attrition at DOE physics design labs

 (There is an) effort to reduce attrition at Bechtel managed DOE physics design labs.

At LANL management has implemented a new policy of external hiring only until the end of October. Prior to this was you needed to be in your position for a year before you could apply for another job. Got to get those employment numbers up at TA-55

Tuesday, April 28, 2026

Saturday, April 25, 2026

How a fringe conspiracy theory about missing scientists got the FBI’s attention

 

Comments on SUGGEST NEW TOPICS HERE : LLNL - The True Story -

Anonymous
WSJ: How a Fringe Conspiracy Theory About Missing Scientists Got the FBI’s Attention

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/how-a-fringe-conspiracy-theory-about-missing-scientists-got-the-fbis-attention-d61de97c

Private investigator Thomas McNally sees no link between the disappearance of Melissa Casias and some 10 other missing or deceased scientists. The internet disagrees.

Casias’s family hired McNally to hunt for clues after the New Mexico administrative assistant vanished last June. In the past couple of weeks, he’s found himself working to dispel conspiracy theories. Her disappearance has nothing to do with UFOs, he says. Nor was the Los Alamos lab worker—responsible for purchasing office supplies—caught in a government assassination plot because of a top-secret life, McNally adds.

Speculation linking her disappearance and the losses of several scientists has for months churned through fringe online communities. Now, President Trump and the House Oversight Committee are paying attention. Earlier this week, the FBI said it was spearheading an effort to look for connections, working with the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense, as well as state and local officials.

“I hope it’s random,” Trump told a reporter last week. “But some of them were very important people and we’re going to look at it.”

The questions center on deaths or disappearances from 2022 through this February. They include an independent researcher, a long-retired Air Force general, and Casias, the administrative assistant. Some were connected to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Two had ties to Los Alamos National Laboratory, which has long featured in UFO conspiracy theories.

Fringe narratives percolate constantly. But few rise to national attention—or prompt federal inquiry.

“Your average conspiracy theory, someone comes up with it and it dies on the vine,” said Joseph Uscinski, a professor at the University of Miami who studies them. “What makes this unique is you have government agents, with guns, investigating this.”

The narrative evolved over months of internet speculation. Many of the deaths and disappearances were first covered individually, sometimes with a conspiratorial bent.

Right-wing media personality Tim Pool dedicated a 2025 podcast episode to the killing of MIT physicist Nuno Loureiro outside Boston, which Pool argued could have been motivated by Loureiro’s research into clean energy. Authorities said the shooter was Loureiro’s former classmate, who also allegedly opened fire in a Brown University classroom days earlier.

A few creators, including the popular conservative writer and influencer Jessica Reed Kraus, suggested a possible connection between Loureiro’s death and the February 2026 killing of Caltech astronomer Carl Grillmair. Kraus’s post went viral, quickly becoming one of her most shared, she says.

“When I put it on IG, it went crazy,” she said in an interview. “And it just kept going.”

Their messaging amplified speculation that was already swirling online about possible connections among prior deaths, including Loureiro’s and Novartis researcher Jason Thomas’s, both in December 2025.

The February disappearance of a 68-year-old retired Air Force general, William “Neil” McCasland, kicked the theorizing into high gear, particularly once a local FBI field office joined the search early last month.

“What is happening to our space scientists?!” one popular UFO account wrote on X, attaching a photo collage of Loureiro, Grillmair and McCasland.


Thursday, April 23, 2026

trump invokes Cold War-era law

 The US is ramping up energy production as the Iran war intensifies. trump has invoked emergency powers to boost oil, gas and grid infrastructure under a Cold War-era law.

Is he going over his head?

https://www.wionews.com/world/trump-invokes-cold-war-era-law-white-house-orders-private-firms-to-prioritise-defense-fuel-needs-1776753500405

Sunday, April 19, 2026

Trump's energy secretary

Our DOE secretary seems is so sycophantic, I wonder how DOE workers feel about him.

At the 16'55" mark of this video is a clip of his interview with Fox News.

You be the judge.

 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sGFY8fVEjLY

LLNS Contract discussion

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