Executive order on H-1B nonimmigrant visa administration
whitehouse.gov
whitehouse.gov
Contract labor is not booked as headcount so its not just the cost its also how its budgeted and looks to shareholders.
Obviously our industry hasnt cared a whit about what its employees think since at least 2005 when they thought they were going to send all of it elsewhere.
the craziest thing is that this has to come from right-wight politicians. really gives you a sense of how much the left is f'd-up in 2026.
some people call that a conspiracy theory, but looking back (how the attention to workers rights basically vanished and got replaced with other topics, and how the capitalist world got so much richer) it explains a lot of things very well.
Unfortunately, as a 2nd order effect, I wonder if we'll see fewer layoffs and more outright firing to balance it out.
Sure they do. None of the Greenland stuff (or most of the Canada stuff) makes sense unless they believe in these things.
We assume that if they believed they would try to slow these things down, but they chose a different path, profiting off the accelerationism.
The claims of not believing are just fodder for the FOX News/OANN watchers and what they say publicly is not what they believe.
In much the same way that David Miscavige doesn't believe in Xenu, I'm pretty positive Donald Trump does believe in global warming, he just doesn't care... or rather only cares insomuch as it is a profit opportunity.
But similar to your angle, I’ve wondered if the climate change messaging is secretly targeted towards resource depletion. If USA switches off oil and oil runs out, who cares if others didn’t switch? But people have a hard time processing “going to run out in 50 years” as a crisis, so instead we get an apocalypse angle, I suppose because humans love the apocalypse (see: various religions).
I like to think of holidays and work / life balance as a measure of wealth. Rich people can take time away from work because they can afford it. If you need to work lots of hours and barely can have a few days off then you arent wealthy.
Let me ask again, if you need to work 2 - 3 jobs are you wealthy ?
If you can only take a weeks worth of holidays in a good year are you wealthy ?
It doesn't. The issue is likely more that you don't see or read widely enough.
Even here on HN you'll see mention of China and India's emissions and use of coal on a regular basis.
The US is a significant mention for two main reasons:-
* of all the human lofted additional CO2 of the past century plus (that sourced from formerly deep underground) the US is the single largest sole country contributor (although China is catching up (but may or may not equal the US)), ...
* the US is still a large per capita contributor today (ignoring tiny tiny outlier countries with small populations and near single export fossil fuel extraction countries) - it has an energy intensive economy.
My personal beef isn't so much with the US but specifically with US based fossil fuel and resource companies of the 1970s onwards (eg: Koch brothers) who were well aware of the problem with increasing the insulation factor of the atmosphere and doubled down anyway - spending large on "think tanks" to promote confusion via media, over sell the appeal of large cars, destroy any and all grass roots campaigns for public transport, etc. (CO2MaXXing ?).
The US has had influence across the planet post WWII, these campaigns just promoted a bad example for profit and deferred early and timely addressing of the issues.
They did, didn't they! Not in the bulk of scientific discussion though, just in media outlets, broadsheets, opinion columns, etc.
It does rather sound like somebody bought into the Koch / Heartland propaganda stream whole heartedly.
Hopefully commenters can bring up "the little ice age" et al. so we can all play denialist talking point bingo.
The big event that caused it to come into pop culture in the 70s was a landmark paper by James Hays, John Imbrie and Nicholas Shackleton, published in Science in 1976.
But you think its the Koch brothers. And anyone who actual knows history is playing denialist bingo.
You've won the hacker news Candace Owens conspiracy award for ignoring facts and doubling down on a silly conspiracy theory because it fits some narrative you want to promote today.
No.
> But you think its the Koch brothers
That's your strawman. What is known is the amount of effort put in by Koch and others to muddy the waters and belittle what became accepted internationally in the late 1960s.
> You've won the hacker news Candace Owens conspiracy award
Is that someone I should know of?
> for ignoring facts
What facts have I ignored?
> and doubling down on a silly conspiracy theory
What, that tobacco companies hired PR firms to make their poison look good, and fossil fuel companies hired more or less the exact same firms to upsell CO2 ?
That's on the record for anyone that cares to look.
> because it fits some narrative you want to promote today.
It's been the case for nigh on 50 years now - hardly a flash in pan here today gone tomorrow made up story.
Regarding USA contributing more in the past. Cleaner alternatives had not yet been invented at the time. We are supposed to make up for people of our country in the past, most of whom are not even distantly related to ourselves, using the only mass work saving technology that was available at the time? While people in other places use that same old technology today when they don’t have to? Haha yeah I’m not going to do that, and anyone who bites on that one should not be allowed anywhere near decision making at any level.
On per capita - atmosphere does not speak per capita. Atmosphere speaks in absolutes.
If this is the highest priority issue, which it must be for climate activists who buy the doom scenarios (I’m not saying they are wrong about that), climate activists should be urging we ban trade with nations who aren’t on such and such emissions reduction schedule, which is not to be exceeded by USA along strategically relevant dimensions (for example not to affect the economy negatively beyond how China et al are affected negatively), and to be verified by a UN inspection and analysis team à la nuclear weapons.
I have seen precisely zero climate activists advocate for this, and I’m sure you’re going to throw a laundry list of excuses at me (“well actually economic disentanglement is dangerous, we don’t want war, clearly you don’t understand this if you’re making this argument”, etc). The point isn’t to actually ban trade, the point is to apply sufficient pressure to the others to step down emissions while not harming any party relative to the others.
Previously I'd been looking for options to just hang out in countries in the form of digital nomad/working holiday, which the USA also doesn't currently really cover too well. At any rate somehow each type has sharp edges to it which I happen to personally not fit into.
My more recent understanding in the main is that actually most square pegs don't fit into round holes anyway when it comes to international travel, and there's quite a bit of official discretion at every level for people who are trying to do the right thing.
In the USA atm, ICE is sometimes effectively ending up working-to-rule to fill their quota, so a lot of the discretion is negated. The most famous example is when ICE came in and rolled up a spin-up team (B1, VWP) who Hyundai and LG had brought in to stand up a multi-billion-dollar factory investment, for US workers to come work there.
https://thehill.com/business/5603478-trump-organization-fore...
(Trump org requests record level foreign worker permits, 2025)
2. we are "amazed" on a nearly daily basis, better not to desensitize, that's what he wants, overton window and such
you don't get to police how people talk or feel about other people, duh