rational_lib

I can totally believe that someone who's never worked in the private sector has such a fanciful view of how layoffs work. My first job out of college was in the government. My views of what constituted "waste" were hilarious, like we got a flashlight (because we occasionally would go outside at night) and it was definitely a pricier flashlight, with some features we didn't really need. I told my friends at home, "Gosh, the government is so wasteful, look at this overpriced flashlight I got". Of course they made me turn it in when I left, but still.

Then when I got into the private sector I realized private sector waste is a whole different animal. Obviously there's the insane CEO pay packages, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Definitely I've seen some multi-million-dollar projects that never should have happened and were just the result of our slick salespeople. When I left one job in a layoff I had no way of returning a $3000 laptop because the person I'd return it to was laid off too. It ended up being a nice gift for an amoral friend. Of course layoffs themselves are crazy wasteful, you have tons of hard-earned knowledge walking out the door. They're almost always random and driven by a desire to temporarily boost the stock price as clueless shareholders are left holding the bag when the company collapses a few years later.

Point is government waste exists, but it's like a leaky faucet that drips a little. In the private sector, it's like a faucet that's constantly running on full blast because everyone is incentivized to maximize the rate of flow.

Well Trump can say whatever he wants, whether he actually can do what he says is another matter. In this case for example, congestion pricing has simply continued as before because Trump doesn't have power to change the laws of New York. When it comes to killing people, government employees are subject to the same rules as everyone else about unlawful killing, even if they were ordered by the president. Of course Trump can pardon his assassins for federal crimes, but states can still prosecute them and if nothing else the victims can still use deadly force to defend themselves without being guilty of a crime.

So legally speaking, Trump isn't so much a king as just some fat, old, possibly mentally-challenged man who can't be punished for things.

But in the technical sense, we're all kings and can do whatever we want. We've just agreed as a society that if people do certain things we all unite to help put them in a cage or whatever.

Trumpism has significant control over large parts of the media from which millions of Americans get their information. Fox and Musk’s platform X, among others, are not normal media outlets. Their basic function is not to cover the “news” but to spread rightwing extremist ideology.

Trumpism is utilizing the concept of the “big lie” in a way that has never, in this country, been seen. Day after day, blatantly dishonest statements and conspiracy theories are propagated – and repeated over and over and over again.

What is the solution to this? Because from where I sit, it looks like the strategy of plutocrats buying media and using it to push dishonest narratives in their favor is extremely successful and does indeed make what Bernie's asking for unachievable. And I don't see anywhere in the article a way to solve that problem.

I don't doubt the left can win on Lemmy. But the second Lemmy gets any actual power, watch out for the buyout.

Getting sick of all this observational humor.

modern Democrats are not an opposition party, ever. The news media is complicit as well.

The US political system is thoroughly broken but it's not changed much leading up to the Trump era, it's really the news media that made Trump happen right now.

It started in the 80s with cable news and continues today with toxic podcasts and social media. People are like your annoying ex-girlfriend - they don't want to be told the truth, they just want to be validated. Billionaires and con artists (and billionaire con artists) have figured out how to use newer forms of media to exploit that tendency and I think it's still getting worse. Eventually like all predators they'll overconsume their prey but there's a lot of suckers in the world for them to run through first.

To me I'm not really sure what his reply even means. I think it's some attempt at a joke (because of course the government uses SQL), but I figure the joke can be broken down into two potential jokes that fail for different, embarrassing reasons:

Interpretation 1: The government is so advanced it doesn't use SQL - This interpretation is unlikely given that Elon is trying to portray the government as in need of reform. But it would make more sense if coming from a NoSQL type who thinks SQL needs to be removed from everywhere. NoSQL Guy is someone many software devs are familiar with who takes the sometimes-good idea of avoiding SQL and takes it way too far. Elon being NoSQL Guy would be dumb, but not as dumb as the more likely interpretation #2.

Interpretation 2: The government is so backward it doesn't use SQL - I think this is the more likely interpretation as it would be consistent with Elon's ideology, but it really falls flat because SQL is far from being cutting-edge. There has kind of been a trend of moving away from SQL (with considerable controversy) over the last 10 years or so and it's really surprising that Elon seems completely unaware of that.

He started doing this on exactly December 4

It's referring to that after-hours part.

It would be highly immoral to do any actual vandalism because that would give them sympathy and therefore would further the goals of Elon and others who want their bootlickers to be seen as some sort of rebels against wokeness.

But mocking them by writing dust or adding your own bumper stickers without doing any serious permanent damage is at least defensible.

There are definitely far left groups, primarily in Europe, that ally with Russia. All groups on the fringes have proven useful for spreading pro-Russian propaganda. In the US, Trump's pro-Russian sympathies and general stupifaction of the GOP has led to the GOP becoming an ally to the Kremlin. But prior to that, both parties were anti-Russia with Republicans being moreso.

The most successful tactic of the right has been judging the left for their politics - "woke" etc. This works because it's "othering" - makes the left part of the out group that people don't want to be a part of. The left needs to be similarly unabashed, even though othering is kind of against the whole point of being on the left.

But it needs to be more fun and less serious than this post. Why is there no "screaming maga" meme? Surely there's plenty of those images, and more.

What's annoying is the US cable/social media incessantly jumps right to the Trump/Musk framing of things.

The US AID shutdown has led to food aid stuck at ports as populations that rely on it starve.

A report on Monday from Paul Martin, the USAid inspector general, found that close to half a billion dollars’ worth of food was rotting because of confusion surrounding Mr Trump’s freeze last month.

How many americans have heard about the consequences of Trump's actions? 1%? How many have heard about Elon's vague and baseless claims that US AID is a big fraud? It seems every Republican I know has heard that.