“Australia got its anticircumvention law through the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement, which obliges Australia to enact anticircumvention law.”

The alternative was tariffs. Well, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we’ve got tariffs now! … what about repealing anticircumvention law?" –Cory Doctorow https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition

Well, you need to understand, Palantir needs a library for their facial recognition software. What if those young people refused to take advantage of the smartphone biometrics? Don’t they know it is for their security??? /s

Our state legislatures really don’t care about babies after they are born.

FMLA is for any kind of family leave (children, parents, even your own medical issues) but there are requirements on how long you are employed at a particular place and how many employees they have there. For most small businesses – they do not qualify. Larger institutions/job places do.

You are told after a certain amount of time, if you do not return to work full time, you are laid off/fired and lose your health insurance. By law, they have to offer COBRA health insurance coverage to you but that is like 3X the cost of your insurance while employed. At that point, you apply for state funded health insurance (Medicaid) and are still given a work requirement… 80 hrs a month now unless you can prove disability and it takes at least 2 years to qualify for SSD (Social Security Disability). There are some carve outs… like if you have really bad cancer, there is a Medicaid spend down for treatment, or if you are in kidney failure and need regular hemodialysis.

That is complicated. First, women who have given birth are eligible for Disability Pay for the first 6 -8 weeks. This is a fraction of their pay and generally does not actually arrive until a month or two later. Some states have paid maternity leave, providing certain conditions. NY state, where I live, provides for paid maternity leave on top of the temporary disability for up to 67% of pay… there is a cap on the income. For 2026, the NYSAWW is $1,833.63, which means the maximum weekly benefit is $1,228.53-- but this is at scale for the employee’s regular pay. This is $51.21 more than the maximum weekly benefit for 2025. There, however, are many states that do not offer anything other than the temporary disability. Some workplaces/employers offer some paid maternity leave as an employee benefit. Many do not but if you work for an employer that has over a certain number of employees, you may be able to get family leave (FMLA) which is generally unpaid but provides job security in name… but At-Will Employment states are free to just fire anyone under specious reasons. States that have banned abortion or severely restricted it offer the least amount of maternity leave benefits, ironically.

Melania is the worst first lady we ever had in the US. She is at base, the most uninteresting person. She is supposed to be on “the Five” tomorrow. I hope they ask her uncomfortable questions but I bet it will mostly be softball bullshit questions. She sucks and is unintelligent, just greedy and an Epstein operative/prop, as it is how she met the Orange Asshole. I hope she remains stuck with him because those who marry for money should be required to earn it.