I think it helps going to the source material on this. Most of the administration’s moves have been pretty aligned with Project 2025, and it’s written in an accessible enough way:

Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated. When power is exercised, it should empower students and families, not government. In our pluralistic society, families and students should be free to choose from a diverse set of school options and learning environments that best fit their needs. Our postsecondary institutions should also reflect such diversity, with room for not only “traditional” liberal arts colleges and research universities but also faith-based institutions, career schools, military academies, and lifelong learning programs.

I don’t think it’s in the administration’s interest to make this seem like a prepared plan and part of an ultimately elitist philosophy, but if they actually explained it they would probably say that education should be subject to competition like other markets should be, with limited federal funding to states for excess expenditure, with the intention that education improves according to local (Christian) culture and parental involvement. The Department of Education currently tries to maintain federal standards for (more equitable) schooling, which is too general and prescriptive in this approach.

Probably not an ELI5 answer exactly, and I’m definitely not intending it as a supporting argument for this policy (it’s very elitist and inequitable), but just wanted to share that at least there is written material that outlines some of this.

I recently signed up for some utilities for my house and a form button wasn’t working. It was a pretty basic form, I turned off ad-block to see if some traffic was being blocked or some other network error.

Well that didn’t fix the button, but it did reveal a call every 2 seconds to the Facebook tracker service. Figures…

• Gateway: For some late payoff, hard sci-fi content, I like Frederik Pohl quite a lot. His stuff is between classic and contemporary, and balances technology with sophisticated plot and characters. I greatly enjoyed reading his Gateway series this year, could be one of my favorites.

• Mass Effect: I was pleasantly surprised with Mass Effect: Andromeda Annihilation. I moderately enjoyed the Mass Effect video game series, and thought this companion novel could tank, but it was actually a really fun read, with great characters and immersion. The plot is orthogonal to the main plot points of the video games, rather than extensions of them, which I thought gave it breathing room for novel ideas.

Hacker news still going strong, you get the drama stories here and there but the focus is on the technology