Irene Triplett died 31st May 2020 at the age of 90. Her death was possibly the most significant event of her life: she was the last living dependent of a civil war veteran, 155 years after the war had ended. In a similar vein, there are still many widows and dependents of WWI veterans, even though the last ex-soldier died in 2011.
Things like this seem incredible, impossible even, but they happen all the time when you deal with big numbers. That’s why outliers appear.
Whatever the case, it means that if you start a war, the costs and consequences are going to be around for a lot longer than you might imagine. Government is a century-long project.
Moreover, all of this shows that the government keeps its promise. If you join up to fight in a war, the government says it will look after you and your family. It’s reassuring to see that the government takes this seriously.
Inevitably, this leads us to DOGE and their new project. They have turned their attention to the social security computer system. It serves tens of millions of people, contains tens of millions of lines of code – mainly COBOL, with some assembler – and has not been significantly updated since the 1980s.
DOGE plans to rewrite the entire codebase in a few months using AI and a team of script kiddies. No, stop. I’m not writing any more on this. I’ll just get angry.
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