From Ian Welsh's Week End Wrap:
[A useful comment from Reddit, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 02-19-2025]
The critical importance of domain knowledge can never be overstated when it comes to data scientific research. You’ll never get good (and truthful) results if you don’t have a deep understanding of the intricacies of the specific data sets under investigation. And, those of us who’ve done this for a while know that pretty much every data set (especially those that live in databases whose ages are measured in decades) tend to have boatloads of “interesting” aspects that make straightforward analysis challenging at best.“The critical importance of domain knowledge can never be overstated when it comes to data scientific research.”I’m an auditor, and domain knowledge is what makes an audit an audit. Without it, the “audit” is just a waste of time and money.
Not a waste of time and money when the intent was never to conserve time and money. Incompetence and malice can often be hard to distinguish from one another, but you would be foolish to discount malice in this instance.Richest man in the world gets access to the complete records of the US Treasury, of which he himself has numerous contracts (and therefore crystal clear conflicts of interest), preferentially targets areas that disproportionately affect non-billionaires and non-millionaires, targets regulatory agencies that keep billionaires like him in check, and has within just a few weeks been caught in blatant lies about what he’s found. Eg. $50 million for condoms in Gaza and $59 million by FEMA for luxury hotels for illegal immigrants.
It’s not ignorance; it’s malice. Recognize their goals are not aligned with most of us. They’re not interested in truth. It’s always just been about the power. THAT is why it’s never a problem when they’re caught lying or doing something seemingly incompetent.
Engineers of good conscience often can’t even imagine the desire to throw a wrench into the gears of a working machine. It’s a massive blind spot, and the country voted for it. Now the leopards are eating our faces, and we’re acting surprised.
Twice this week Trump vowed to end Social Security for “millions”—believe him.
Dean Obeidallah, Feb 20, 2025
Trump and Musk are intentionally lying to make people believe that nearly 20 million dead people are receiving Social Security. Why? So they can justify cutting in the area of 25% of the program. The problem is too many people dismiss this as bluster. You do so at you and your family’s peril because I can 100% guarantee Trump and Musk are coming for Social Security.
That’s not just my opinion. But also that of Social Security Works—a non-partisan organization dedicated to protecting Social Security and Medicare. They noted in response to Trump’s lies this week: “Trump is intentionally undermining confidence in our Social Security system.” They added, Trump is “laying the groundwork to ILLEGALLY DENY EARNED BENEFITS to anyone he wants to punish or deems unworthy.”
Trump won’t need Congress to act in order to toss thousands if not millions of people off the Social Security rolls. He will just claim—through his hand picked head of the Social Security Administration—that there is fraud and they are simply cleaning up the system.
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