Bob Lied

The very definition of a rhetorical question.

Hi team, First off, I just want to say how humbled and excited I am to be stepping into this role. As many of you know, I've been working closely with leadership for some time now, in a more strategic capacity, behind the scenes. So in many ways this is a natural next step in my journey here. I want to acknowledge that this has been a difficult transition period for all of us. But I truly believe that adversity is where we find our greatest synergies. Going forward, my door is always open. I may be a bit hard to reach this week as I'm dealing with a minor foot thing, but my assistant will flag anything urgent. In terms of my vision: I plan to build on the incredible foundation that's already in place. We have a fantastic team, great core values, and I'm fully committed to delivering on our key KPIs, "Death to America, Death to Israel", while also exploring some exciting new verticals. Re: the ongoing conflict. We're treating this as a learning opportunity. Yes, the Americans and Israelis have disrupted some of our operations, but frankly this has given us a real chance to reset, reprioritize, and come back stronger. We'll be scheduling a debrief once bandwidth allows. To our external stakeholders who have reached out (Russia, China, the Houthis), thank you for the warm onboarding messages. Let's find time to connect soon. And to Mr. Trump: with respect, the appointment process was handled internally and does not require sign-off from outside parties. I'd gently redirect you to our constitution. Excited for this next chapter. Let's crush it! Best, Mojtaba *(P.S. Please note the new org chart will be circulated once we've assessed which positions were... impacted by recent restructuring.)*

Iranian regime releases first statement from new supreme leader.

A CITY ON MARS Earth is not well. The promise of starting life anew somewhere far, far away—no climate change, no war, no Twitter—beckons, and settling the stars finally seems within our grasp. Or is it? Critica...

acityonmars.com is an excellent book on why it’s a challenging and maybe stupid idea. Not least of the problems is the international conflict it could set off.

They didn’t pull it far enough because the euphemism he’s looking for is “incursion.”

usually if you ask experts why an empire fell they’ll say it’s nuanced and multifaceted, so i think it’s kind of cool that with America future historians will get to just say like “oh they took the idiot train to moronsville”

Well, he’d probably poison his dog and his wife, not sure about the rest.

“It is unknowable how long that conflict [Iraq] will last. It could last six days, six weeks, I doubt six months” — Donald Rumsfeld

He’s gonna regret that “yours truly” at the war crimes trial.

“Hit familiar notes?” Is that the way you would have described the Nuremberg rallies? He was xenophobic, homophobic, and racist. He was disingenuous, insulting, and callow.

I’ve always wondered what people found attractive in the taste of beer. Beer is the liquid that oozes out of rotting plant matter. To me, it’s always tasted exactly like what it is: one step away from dragging a ladle through ditch water.

Next week will be too late. Our government is being run like a reality TV show, and the maximum ratings will come by starting the attack on Monday, right between the Olympics closing ceremony on Sunday and the state of the union speech on
Tuesday.

You're not hearing us. We didn't say "rein in", we said "abolish." You said it yourself: "DHS and this administration cannot be trusted". They have forfeited their legitimacy.

They're Coming for Our Daughters The conservative plan to shrink girls’ futures

The Heritage Foundation has released a 250-year roadmap to “save America.”

The document is a how-to guide for subjugating girls & young women: a detailed plan to push them out of college, funnel them into early marriage and motherhood, and then trap them there.
jessica.substack.com/p/theyre-com...

This is so nakedly corrupt that students studying history 20 years from now will have to read it twice to believe that it's not parody.

I don't know. It kind of feels like "you must comply with orders that the masked police give you" is, like, the opposite of freedom?

525,600 minutes. How do you measure a year? Well, if you're the department of defense, you spend a trillion dollars at the rate of $2M per minute. If you're a fascist dictator, you scream, "Not enough! Make it $3M!" What would $3,000,000 do for your community? Well fuck you, you can't have it.

"Christmas Tree Farm" - Day 12 part 1 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/12
I did the simplest thing that might work (Agile Manifesto for the win) and it matched the answer, but this is not a solution by any stretch of the imagination.

I just completed "Reactor" - Day 11 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/11
Graph algorithm day.
Part 1 textbook depth-first search. Piece of cake.
Part 2 So much debugging.

"Factory" - Day 10 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/10
Part 1: Here, have some confidence.
Part 2: How much linear algebra do you remember?

I just failed to complete part 2 of "Movie Theater" - Day 9 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/8. We are now in one-star territory as the event winds down.

I just completed "Playground" - Day 8 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/8
Priority queue day. Found the module I needed on #perl CPAN.

I just completed "Laboratories" - Day 7 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/7

Finding all paths looked like a scary exponential problem (and it could be -- part 2 answer was 14 digits long), but the key insight was to think about increments instead of the grid or tree.

Later in the day a much better solution hit me. All that fiddling around to extract fixed-width fields wasn’t necessary. Going right to left was a bigger hint than I realized at first.

I just completed "Trash Compactor" - Day 6 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/6
Spaces don't matter in part 1 and they very much matter in part 2. Find the columns and it's array bookkeeping after that -- something #Perl is good at.

Oooh, what shall we call them? Maybe something like "Peoples' Cars", but in an exotic foreign language? German maybe? What if we get Porsche to help design them? And it will take labor, of course. Maybe people who are awaiting deportation could be concentrated to work for minimal wages (or free!).

I just completed "Cafeteria" - Day 5 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/5

I made myself crazy for two hours in part 1 with edge errors while merging ranges, but it paid off in part 2. I used #perl class objects, because Perl can do that too.

I have 2015 on my backlog, too.

I just completed "Printing Department" - Day 4 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/4
This one was easy because I built a #perl module for moving around a grid last year, with methods to peek around. I expect the shortened schedule will kick up the intensity tomorrow.

Perl makes it easy to chop and dice lists, and magically shape-shifts between numbers and strings. I just completed "Lobby" - Day 3 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/3 #perl github.com/boblied/aoc-...

A Perl deep cut -- the unpack function has a moment to shine. I just completed "Gift Shop" - Day 2 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2025/day/2