Inside the US government’s brilliantly boring websites

 The secret, unwritten rules of the EU’s top jobs carve-up Politico

Member of Hungarian PM Viktor Orban’s police escort killed as car hits convoy leaving Euro 2024 match Independent

Inside the US government’s brilliantly boring websites

MIT Technology Review – You may not noticeit,but your experience on any US government website is a carefully crafted experience.

 “The United States has an official web design system and a custom typeface. This public design system aims to make government websites not only good-looking but accessible and functional for all. Before the internet, Americans may have interacted with the federal government by stepping into grand buildings adorned with impressive stone columns and gleaming marble floors. 

Today, the neoclassical architecture of those physical spaces has been (at least partially) replaced by the digital architecture of website design—HTML code, tables, forms, and buttons.  While people visiting a government website to apply for student loans, research veterans’ benefits, or enroll in Medicare might not notice these digital elements, they play a crucial role. If a website is buggy or doesn’t work on a phone, taxpayers may not be able to access the services they have paid for—which can create a negative impression of the government itself.   

There are about 26,000 federal websites in the US. Early on, each site had its own designs, fonts, and log-in systems, creating frustration for the public and wasting government resources. The troubled launch of Healthcare.gov in 2013 highlighted the need for a better way to build government digital services. In 2014, 

President Obama created two new teams to help improve government tech. Within the General Services Administration (GSA), a new team called 18F (named for its office at 1800 F Street in Washington, DC) was created to “collaborate with other agencies to fix technical problems, build products, and improve public service through technology.” The team was built to move at the speed of tech startups rather than lumbering bureaucratic agencies…”

Christopher Labos: Debunking Myths About What We Eat and Drink Eric Topol 

CBD use during pregnancy produces strange behavior in offspring New Atlas 

I live rent-free in NYC. Moving into a van has allowed me to save, avoid taking out loans, and live a life of adventure. Business Insider

Amazon Labor Union, Airplane Hub Workers Ally with Teamsters Organizing Workers NationwideNew York Times

Conservative-backed group creating list of federal workers it suspects could resist Trump plans

AP: “From his home office in small-town Kentucky, a seasoned political operative is quietly investigating scores of federal employees suspected of being hostile to the policies of Republican Donald Trump, a highly unusual and potentially chilling effort that dovetails with broader conservative preparations for a new White House. Tom Jones and his American Accountability Foundation are digging into the backgrounds, social media posts and commentary of key high-ranking government employees, starting with the Department of Homeland Security. They’re relying in part on tips from his network of conservative contacts, including workers. In a move that alarms some, they’re preparing to publish the findings online. With a $100,000 grant from the Heritage Foundation, the goal is to post 100 names of government workers to a website this summer to show a potential new administration who might be standing in the way of a second-term Trump agenda — and ripe for scrutiny, reclassifications, reassignments or firings…

Jones’ Project Sovereignty 2025 comes as Heritage’s Project 2025 lays the groundwork, with policies, proposals and personnel ready for a possible new White House…”

See also Democracy Americana – “The Origins of Trumpism and the Birth of the Present. Reflections on the pre-history of Trump’s rise, the peculiar nature of Trumpism, and the radical politics of white despair – based on John Ganz’s masterful When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and how America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s…

Lawsuit Claims Microsoft Tracked Sex Toy Shoppers With ‘Recording In Real Time’ Software404media

Thousands of Pablo Picasso’s Works Now Available in a New Digital Archive

Open Culture: ” If you want to immerse yourself in the world of Pablo Picasso, you might start at the Museo Picasso Málaga, located in the artist’s Spanish birthplace. But to understand how his work developed throughout his life, you’ll have to get out of Spain — which is just what Picasso did to accelerate that development in the first place. 

At the turn of the twentieth century, an ambitious young European painter had to go to Paris, the continent’s art capital. Picasso ended up spending much of his life there, making it the most suitable location for the Musée Picasso, home to the single largest collection of his artworks, from paintings and sculptures to drawings and engravings, as well as an even larger archive of photographs, papers, and correspondence. 

Now, you don’t actually have to make the trip to Paris to see these collections, or at least an increasingly large portion of their holdings. As Sarah Kuta reports at Smithsonian.com, thousands of Picasso’s artworks are “now accessible from anywhere with an internet connection, thanks to a new online archive created by the Picasso Museum. 

The museum has digitized thousands of Picasso’s artworks, essays, poems, interviews and other memorabilia, including items that have never been seen by the public before.” The project began last year, with the digitization of “around 19,000 photos”; if all goes according to plan, the museum will eventually make “an additional 200,000 documents” available online.”