hotspur

Very true

Based on my research (watching Justified on FX) they’d sidle up to the executive, say a few pithy lines and draw down on and kill him when he goes for his gun or pen, walk away putting their Stetson back on, then get chewed out by their bosses.

So yeah this sounds like a useful and relatively cheap and simple way to get another good indicator. But I’m a little confused also, because I thought that for the most part, these funeral directors and facilities produce death certificates for each person that they handle, so I had assumed that this data was already being collected or was collectible.

For instance many of these processes are set up to avoid “fraud” so they’re almost automated once a death certificate exists—thinking for example social security maintaining a death list and getting automatically transmitted notices of death, etc.

Yeah honestly after the first couple I was like, crap I’ve been missing out. You can tell they’re legit because the website looks like forum websites I used to frequent in the early 00s (sounds like a dig, but I swear it’s not, the modern web is damn awful to read most of the time).

I have been finding myself suddenly saving techdirt articles for my reading list day after day, and I guess now I know why. Not to say I wasn’t interested before, but they’ve been providing analysis and commentary lately that has just hit different/ has been scratching a particular itch. Please, keep that train rolling.

Yeah this has been what I’m wondering lately. Clearly Thiel can’t be super in love with Elon since they ousted him from PayPal while he was on his honeymoon… but if he’s a useful idiot that can take the attnetion and heat, when everything implodes it’ll be on Musk and then Trump, and then Vance, who has been higher profile as VP than most, can try and worm his way in there and voila, Thiel has got what he wants. Vance is pretty off putting to most people though, which seems like bad judgement on his handlers part if they want a pseudo-legit govt CEO… but then the handlers are also super off putting in real life and clearly live in a alternate reality/bubble so maybe it’s not that far fetched.

American culture, partly because of bullshit mythos and partly because of religious like devotion to oligarchic capitalism, selects for low-empathy sociopaths and individual atomization/isolation. My favorite low end example is to observe my fellow citizens driving when I go to the suburbs: you are in their personal story, and you are in their way. City living doesn’t fix all that, but having to live in close proximity to neighbors and get used to compromise helps push a slightly more communal vibe.

But basically the entire culture is built around a get-yours-first mentality? And more recently an influencer-inflected sort of hyper-real understanding of one’s value and potential. We’re like a national exemplar for the dunning-Kruger effect, or like kids who cheat at online video games swaggering around proud of their “achievements”.

Seems like we’re in the finding out phase after fucking around though.

This makes me wonder: when someone like this goes on a ski vacation… does that mean that a bunch of his secrect service detail has to also ski / be able to ski competently?

Yeah that would make sense why I unintentionally oneself on it so often. I almost always hit back or close when I end up there (usually because I click on a link that is interesting to me without interrogating the URL very closely, bad opsec I know)

It’s… one of the worst sites I’ve ever come across. Everything about it is shit and suggests a lack of credibility, but I am constantly surprised by the number of times they have articles I initially wanted to read.

Yep, for sure. The tradeoff was supposed to be the higher protections that come with competitive service positions, but those protections are being ignored or illegally removed week by week, so yeah at this point anyone should be allowed to join the union.

But to be honest? Its looking more and more like the admin is going to break binding union agreements as well so maybe it’s all just fucked.

Many positions in federal service are banned from joining unions—most of the higher scale / subject matter expert and “white color” roles.

These were doctors and epidemiologists, and were also in a special 2 year program, so they wouldn’t have had the standard protections of competitive service, and might also have been excluded from union membership.

Worth noting that aside from some lawsuit exposure, fed unions are not allowed, by law, to strike. (Reagan terminated thousands of air traffic controllers when they struck and replaced them with scab labor as an example) And the current admin doesn’t seem to scared of laws or lawsuits at the moment. (Hopefully they’re wrong in that confidence, but who knows)

I would join a union in a heartbeat, but my position is barred from it.

Wow that article really carries a lot of water. Trimming fat and reigning in spending huh? How can any news outlet credibly claim this is about cost savings. The amount of wastage being caused by this chaos alone will likely make it a wash for the next two years. Not to mention the vastly larger sums of money the govt outlays in virtually every other area of govt.

I also wish they’d discuss how the employees are being laid off. As many keep mentioning, govt is not a business, and it does not operate line one. Was this DOE terminating probationary employees? Was this an RIF procedure? Because those have strict guidelines about selection and I doubt you’d end up having essential nuclear security workers included. Even if it were probationary employees, the OPM memo allows leeway at the agency level to preserve some amount of these essential positions/departments. Were all of those nuclear security workers part of a woke DEI initiative to increase minority visibility in the nuclear protection workplace?

Given the scale of fuckup here, I’m guessing DOGE just said fire these list of people based on who knows what and the agency leadership appointee-stooges just sent out the emails, oblivious of regulation and worker protections, or even their own best interest with respect to guarding nuclear stockpiles and radiological materials. Mostly because no person involved in that loop HAS A FUCKING CLUE WHAT THEY’RE DOING.

AFAIK you simply can’t just “lay off” competitive service / excepted federal workers. Of course, as we know, laws and regulations mean nothing to the current admin so that very likely wouldn’t stop them or their lackeys installed in leadership at the agencies.

If any of the laid off can afford it, I hope they ignore the recall. Sue the govt and hopefully it works out. No one should consider doing new business with the federal government. It’s clear that no contract will be honored and no promise kept, if it doesn’t suit the admin/admin minders’ aims.

Yeah it’s really been making my mind melt. The constant malicious lies that musk keeps tweeting for instance are treated as credible, when he clearly hasn’t a clue what he’s talking about, etc.

I still can’t figure out if there’s like an actual protocol for engaging things like RIF / downsizing where you have to show rationale and evidence… it blows my mind that any president could just decide to unilaterally shelve agencies, etc.

But I guess it’s kinda a moot point if there isn’t any enforcement of laws or if congress doesn’t have any interest in maintaining their power portfolio.

The article could be incorrect, but they state that OPM is directing all agencies to terminate their probationary employees. OPM is the source of all these agency directives that come from exec orders. The exec order is created and then OPM issues “guidance” to all the other agencies about what they are required to do per the order.

So no, this is not just OPM, it’s every agency that has not been exempted (based on the memo, which we haven’t seen yet). The RTO guidance and DEI removal guidance also came from OPM. There is some per-agency leeway provided (again we’ll have to see the memo) but my understanding is agencies generally have to comply with OPM direction unless it’s unlawful (this may or may not be, I don’t know).

Stuff moved so fast that I can’t keep track but…

I feel like groyper-racist-doge kid’s bad tweets were found, they reflexively fired him, Vance chided them for being into cancel culture, musk polled x and they’re gonna rehire him, all before the media even had time to spin up any original outrage.

Oh and at least with my hardware, the surface keyboard and trackpad worked out of the box, no problems. I’d pay special attention to any special wireless drivers you might need because if wireless doesn’t come up, you can’t hardwire the thing to get the driver. (USB could do it though I guess)

I’ve been in-process trying to flip a surface pro 6 into a Linux tablet for a while now. Can’t answer all your questions but can provide a few. First things first: https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface

That’s your hub for most of tue stuff you’ll need to do it. You can look up your hardware in their feature matrix and see what is supported.

Generally touch and stylus work. Things like camera are much more hit or miss.

In terms of distro… welp it’s always kinda impossible to make a “right choice”. Everything will have pros and cons. Originally uninstalled arch just to see if I could. And yes, it turns out you can. Problem is, I use Ubuntu on a couple of spare computers as servers and such and I’m more familiar with how that works, so I thought ok I’m having some trouble getting a couple things to work I’ll just put Ubuntu on here and then I don’t have to remember two different ways of using the OS (mind you I was using gnome in all cases, so really wasn’t a big deal to have to research a few arch specific things).

Problem is, Ubuntu fails to install. I’ve tried about 4 times and it always fails out, and I can’t figure out a way to access any install logs after the fact.

So I’m probably gonna put arch back in there because it worked, mostly.

You’ll have to be willing to tinker a bit and get used to some different ways of interacting. Overall touch was pretty ok and gnome in my case was pretty nice for navigation.

I was using an app called xournal++ for stylus/notetaking, and it seems very well featured for a Linux stylus application. That said, my pen stopped working a while ago, and I could not figure out how to fix it, which is why I was gonna try again with Ubuntu. (Xournal wasn’t to blame for the stylus problems, just couldn’t use it because stylus was useless)

I still think it’s a good learning experience, and probably a good way to resurrect an older piece of tech to usefulness. Personally I wanted to replicate stuff I do on my iPad, but be able to fully Adblock YouTube, etc. my iPad is way better for reading and handwriting, but otherwise is an obnoxious locked down operating system that I find more and more annoying. Basically it’s a great tablet but limited. Whereas like the windows version the surface is not a great tablet, but an acceptable hybrid.

Each agency can choose what components they deem essential for operation and exclude those staff, so yeah, there’s absolutely a large chunk of the CIA that has been barred from taking the offer.

OneNote is such a frustration for me. There are things about it I hate, and I’d certainly like to not have stuff in Microsoft’s hands, but I still can’t find an alternative that syncs well across all my platforms, has good stylus support and has the basic canvas freedom.

I’ve been trying to demo xournal++ on my old surface pro 6, but have been having a pretty hard time getting the stylus to stay working. People are doing great work on getting Linux dirivers and support for tablet stuff, but it still feels pretty in its infancy. My iPad, just works very well for touch and stylus use cases and will be hard to move on from.