A total shit shower, one might say.

The email with the subject “Important Weather Alert” read, “The next 4 years has a 99% chance of shit showers. Our president is a retard and his VP is a f—. We’re cooked. Please reply.”
— Trump Change Causes Flood of Crude Spam Emails to Federal Workers

This is hilarious and incredibly stupid. I hope all the people impacted are of the disposition to delight in chaos, rather than be harmed by it.

My wife shared a thread from Reddit with me where a lot of federal workers who were feeling demotivated and like they may want to bail are now saying they will absolutely not leave, and will resist.

It’s one thing to proceed methodically and slowly and to strangle the workers off in ways that can’t be overcome. It’s entirely another to try to trick them into quitting and rug pull them.

In their shoes, I would be going full bureaucrat mode. To the extent legally possible, every HR, or HR-like email gets printed or stored somewhere that isn’t on a server that it can be remotely deleted from. Every meeting recorded. Every document preserved to the fullest extent that the law/FOIA/retention policies require. Heck, they should probably try to preemptively have a shortlist of employment lawyers, or even have a consult with one to make sure they’re being proactive for what may come.
I mean, if they like the job and want to fight for it/want to slow down these insidious changes.

Sigh. Yeah.

I wanted to be silly and make a joke about justice blue balls. I even had typed up “Justice deferred is justice boner denied.” - which is a pretty good line, but fuck this is soul crushing. Too soul crushing for boner jokes, even.

Pulled so the court case goes away. They don’t want official rulings on the limits of presidential power. Not a reason to celebrate.

The White House confirmed that OMB pulled the memo Wednesday in a two sentence notice sent to agencies and departments, but said that Trump’s underlying executive orders targeting federal spending in areas like diversity, equity and inclusion and climate change, remained in place.

From my perspective, the universe – including myself – ceases to exist.

From the perspective of the universe: entropy.

Whatever happens, I just hope it’s graceful and as painless for others as possible.

They’re saying that protecting their shareholders means not telling the state AG’s to fuck off, and approaching the stupidity as if it’s a serious threat to their business from these despotic chucklefucks.

Stupid or not, the AG’s wield power that can harm Costco, and by extension, their shareholders.

Edit: Completing the thought - Which is to say. They should politely and legally tell them to fuck off.

Since it’s not expressly forbidden in the rules, and the referee is friends with the republicans, (and also someone who has money riding on the outcome has promised to pay them), the democrats have no choice but to shrug and say the next game is going to be the most important one yet, while seating a player that has no clue how to play

Much in line with other commenters statements about socioeconomic factors, I submit this hyper-local diss: “Crimedotte”

But the titanium-colored bags are so much less bulky!

I’ve never been a UMH customer, but about 7 months after the breach happened (November), I got a letter from the company handling customer complaints for Change Healthcare, telling me an unbeknown amount of my medical and or financial information was leaked to unknown parties via some unknown method. If I had questions, I could call the company handling customer complaints.
When I called to ask how Change came to be in possession of my medical data, that they then lost, and subsequently failed to inform me of the situation within my state’s statutory notification window for having your data hacked, the representative told me they didn’t know, and would not be able to find out what company had entrusted them with my data.

The council has spoken.

They may go forth, unburdened.

By the authority conferred to me through the “ownership” of approximately 25cm^2 of Scottish highland from a well-intentioned holiday present, I’m invoking my right as a Lord to grant you a pass on that one.
It would take me a few minutes, too

Sure, some may say it’s absurd, but masturbation inspector is a good paying, high quality American job that cannot be exported overseas, and not a job I’d trust to AI.

That state senator is a visionary!

What if you have anxiety?

The President in particular is very much a figurehead — he wields no real power whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the government, but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it.
– The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

Oh, and as evidenced by the government losing control of the backdoors they implanted into telco companies, this data will be hacked. And having all of it in one place will make it a big target.

So it’s not just the U.S. government that will know about your business, but so will the U.S.’s foreign rivals.
Great fucking strategy. Let’s make sure all our health data is accessible, not improve the health system, and just hope that none of the people whose information you can freely and easily buy online due to lax privacy laws have expensive medical bills and a sensitive job.

Way improve national security. Dumbasses.

What an unexpectedly deep bit of research this threw me into.

In 2005 a company called Fortress Credit loaned the Trump Organization $130 million dollars for the construction of trump tower that it later ‘forgave.’ Fortress Credit is owned by Fortress Investment Group, which is owned by SoftBank. Additionally, SoftBank tried to engage with Trump in 2017 under a similar scheme, where they offered to invest in the U.S.’ IT infrastructure as part of some deal they were cooking up with Trump.
Incidentally, in 2019, New Fortress Energy, also part of the constellation of companies, was granted a peculiar permit to transport LNG over rail lines within populated areas - something that is generally not done due to the danger involved.
So that’s just, you know, the corruption cherry on top of this shit cake.

So now, we have SoftBank, OpenAI, and Oracle - companies whose CEO’s ‘bent the knee’ announcing a half a trillion dollar investment into an all knowing AI medical black box that the government (and its corporate sponsors) intend to use to track all your medical information.
Yes. Centralized government tracking of your periods, ladies. If this system ever works, the government will know if you’ve ever told a medical professional that you use illicit drugs, even drugs that may be legal at the state level, but illegal federally. The government will know if you’re on antidepressants - something that JFK Jr. wants to send people to re-education/labor camps for being on. They will know if you’ve ever told a doctor that you’re not CIS or straight.

And we know that SoftBank can’t afford to invest that much. They took out a $4 billion loan 2 years ago, and then asked for another 1.1 billion shortly after. Even Elon Musk is saying they don’t have the money.
So they’re going to invest some money in something, get very overpriced government contracts for the operation of it, and use a fraction of the overages from that to ‘invest’ further until their obligation is fulfilled or forgiven – in much the same way that telcos fleeced the government to build out broadband and never did.

It’s a bad deal for all of us, and the very best outcome for anyone is that it will never work.
Because if it does work, we will lose our medical privacy, and we lose control of any data we’ve ever shared with medical professionals - one of the few areas in U.S. citizen’s lives where there are privacy laws to keep them safe.

Those darned conservatives and their liberal agenda!

Yeah… I have a bad habit of blurring my references and hoping folks get it.
It’s like a pop culture blender in there (my brain) and I have no idea what’s gonna come out sometimes.

I’m not calling it a conspiracy of human making. I’m just implying we’re all in the bad place.

Edit: Just in case someone thinks I’m serious - I’m not, but this shit is ridiculous.