DOGE Catch-All

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nycfan said:
"...What is happening is shocking, in a way. But if anyone is not surprised, it’s tech reporters who saw, over the past decade, what these people were becoming. Musk’s behavior is emblematic of tech’s most heinous figures, who now feel emboldened to enter the analog world with the same lack of care and arrogance with which they built their sloppy platforms. They denigrate media, science, activism, and culture, and spend their time bellyaching about the “woke-mind virus” and diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Those programs, despite their occasional annoyances, were directionally correct. As I often point out, the opposite of woke is asleep; the opposite of DEI is homogeneity, inequity, and exclusion. That’s just the way an increasing number of techies want it and, with Trump and Musk at the wheel, the goal toward which they are now reengineering our country.

Before the stakes got even higher, there was a warning about what was happening as AI expanded. With trillions of dollars there for the taking, investments are being made by the same small coterie of companies and people that now controls the entire federal government. So are the important decisions about safety and more, which should be made by an independent and fair government and its citizens.

...Where is the hope, then? One glimmer came to me this past year in an interview I did with the historian Yuval Noah Harari, in which he pointed out that science and illumination were not the immediate beneficiaries of the invention of the Gutenberg printing press, in about 1440, though some tie those developments together. In fact, even a century later, Copernicus’s groundbreaking On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres sold only 500 copies. What was a best seller right after the press was in heavy use was a book by an obscure writer named Heinrich Kramer titled “The Hammer of Witches,” a demented treatise on satanic women who stole men’s penises and hid them in a nest in a tree, I kid you not. When we spoke, Harari noted that the popularity of the book spurred witch hunts, in which tens of thousands of people—mostly women—were killed.

“The thing is the printing press did not cause the scientific revolution. No,” Harari told me. “You have about 200 years from the time that Gutenberg brings print technology to Europe in the middle of the 15th century until the flowering of the scientific revolution.”

He went on: “How did, in the end, we get to the scientific revolution? It wasn’t the technology of the printing press; it was the creation of institutions that were dedicated to sifting through this kind of ocean of information, and all these stories and developing mechanisms to evaluate reliable information and to be trusted by the population.”

That is, indeed, the possible exit from the mess we now find ourselves in—swimming in oceans of information with an ever-decreasing number of facts to keep us afloat.

Except, unlike the expansion that tech gave to the enlightened before, the institutions of today, such as media, science, and education, are being slowly destroyed by technology.

And there seems to be no way out of this world, especially as egomaniacal entrepreneurs like Musk and others fork over small pieces of their vast fortunes to buy up everything from global media to, yes, a president of the United States.

And there they are, thus, everywhere we look, running everything, a fate that Paul Virilio predicted in a 1994 interview with the now-defunct technology journal CTHEORY, when he worried that “virtuality will destroy reality.” That is precisely what is happening 30 years later, although it is much worse than I think we are prepared to acknowledge, even now as Musk presides over Oval Office press conferences and White House Cabinet meetings as Trump’s enforcer and sees himself as a kind of global superhero. ..."
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Well that’s some cheery shit.
 

DOGE Takeover Backfires Over ‘Impatient’ Goon’s Embarrassing Tech Flub​


www.thedailybeast.com

DOGE Takeover Backfires Over Goon’s Embarrassing Tech Flub

A Trump official failed to fire an agency’s board because the person couldn’t figure out how to use email.
www.thedailybeast.com www.thedailybeast.com

“… Elon Musk’s group tried to fire the board in charge of the U.S. African Development Foundation and seize control of the agency, but they couldn’t figure out how to successfully send an email, the legal document filed Tuesday by the agency’s current president says.

Four out of the five emails that President Donald Trump’s legal team claimed were sent to terminate the agency’s leadership were never delivered.

… The filing says that one email was sent to a Gmail address, but the board member in question doesn’t have a Gmail account. Two others were sent to inactive USADF addresses. And most egregiously, the termination notice for John Agwunobi both spelled his name wrong and was sent to an address that incorrectly used a .org rather than a .gov ending.

… “Perhaps the incorrect email addresses were shots in the dark,” the document reads. “Perhaps they were attempts to deduce naming conventions from other email addresses at the agency or at a business. Perhaps it was assumed that someone with a distinctive name, like Carol Moseley Braun, would have that full name at Gmail. And perhaps a misspelled name and incorrect domain were simply the result of moving fast.”

It says that when DOGE staffers requested personal contact information for the board members, a USADF official said they would look into whether they were allowed to share the addresses.

“But the DOGE employees were too impatient and instead tried to find information about the Board members online,” the filing says. “They never followed up to ask the employee if she had been given permission to share the information (which she had).” …”
 


“… DOGE’s website showed that it ended a rental agreement for a 1,000 square-foot Philadelphia apartment where the Secret Service was residing. The apartment was one of 700 other leases that DOGE has attempted to cancel as part of its crusade to downsize the federal government.

The unit, however, was around the corner from Biden’s 43-year-old daughter Ashley, who is set to be protected until July—and was the apparent resting place for her protection detail.

… Trump also issued a similar order when he left office in 2021, extending protection for his four adult children and three Cabinet officials for six months.

… The Secret Service said Monday that they were not aware of any changes to the lease. They added that the apartment was critical for agents protecting Ashley and Jill Biden.

… The apparent lease cancellation is just one part of DOGE’s quest to downsize the federal government. The panel, ostensibly helmed by Musk, claims that it cut $500 million worth of leases in recent weeks. The apartment in Philadelphia cost taxpayers around $36,000 per year. …”
 
nycfan said:
"...What is happening is shocking, in a way. But if anyone is not surprised, it’s tech reporters who saw, over the past decade, what these people were becoming. Musk’s behavior is emblematic of tech’s most heinous figures, who now feel emboldened to enter the analog world with the same lack of care and arrogance with which they built their sloppy platforms. They denigrate media, science, activism, and culture, and spend their time bellyaching about the “woke-mind virus” and diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Those programs, despite their occasional annoyances, were directionally correct. As I often point out, the opposite of woke is asleep; the opposite of DEI is homogeneity, inequity, and exclusion. That’s just the way an increasing number of techies want it and, with Trump and Musk at the wheel, the goal toward which they are now reengineering our country.

Before the stakes got even higher, there was a warning about what was happening as AI expanded. With trillions of dollars there for the taking, investments are being made by the same small coterie of companies and people that now controls the entire federal government. So are the important decisions about safety and more, which should be made by an independent and fair government and its citizens.

...Where is the hope, then? One glimmer came to me this past year in an interview I did with the historian Yuval Noah Harari, in which he pointed out that science and illumination were not the immediate beneficiaries of the invention of the Gutenberg printing press, in about 1440, though some tie those developments together. In fact, even a century later, Copernicus’s groundbreaking On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres sold only 500 copies. What was a best seller right after the press was in heavy use was a book by an obscure writer named Heinrich Kramer titled “The Hammer of Witches,” a demented treatise on satanic women who stole men’s penises and hid them in a nest in a tree, I kid you not. When we spoke, Harari noted that the popularity of the book spurred witch hunts, in which tens of thousands of people—mostly women—were killed.

“The thing is the printing press did not cause the scientific revolution. No,” Harari told me. “You have about 200 years from the time that Gutenberg brings print technology to Europe in the middle of the 15th century until the flowering of the scientific revolution.”

He went on: “How did, in the end, we get to the scientific revolution? It wasn’t the technology of the printing press; it was the creation of institutions that were dedicated to sifting through this kind of ocean of information, and all these stories and developing mechanisms to evaluate reliable information and to be trusted by the population.”

That is, indeed, the possible exit from the mess we now find ourselves in—swimming in oceans of information with an ever-decreasing number of facts to keep us afloat.

Except, unlike the expansion that tech gave to the enlightened before, the institutions of today, such as media, science, and education, are being slowly destroyed by technology.

And there seems to be no way out of this world, especially as egomaniacal entrepreneurs like Musk and others fork over small pieces of their vast fortunes to buy up everything from global media to, yes, a president of the United States.

And there they are, thus, everywhere we look, running everything, a fate that Paul Virilio predicted in a 1994 interview with the now-defunct technology journal CTHEORY, when he worried that “virtuality will destroy reality.” That is precisely what is happening 30 years later, although it is much worse than I think we are prepared to acknowledge, even now as Musk presides over Oval Office press conferences and White House Cabinet meetings as Trump’s enforcer and sees himself as a kind of global superhero. ..."
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Interesting point, but he's wrong about the relationship between the printing press and the scientific revolution.

It wasn't that the printing press *caused* the scientific revolution, it was the sine qua non for it, and not because it allowed for the mass production of books, but because it allowed the text in books to be continually updated and improved, rather than be degraded by the errors of manuscript copying.

AI and the internet will be the sine qua non for whatever this world looks like in 200 years, and institutions will re-invent themselves to integrate those new technologies. I'm doing it right now at the most basic level with my course assessments...out with tests, quizzes, and papers, in with assignments that *require* students to use AI. Brave new world. A bunch of stuff is getting thrown overboard, and tbh some of that crap should have been jettisoned a long time ago.
 
TarSpiel said:
I'm doing it right now at the most basic level with my course assessments...out with tests, quizzes, and papers, in with assignments that *require* students to use AI. Brave new world. A bunch of stuff is getting thrown overboard, and tbh some of that crap should have been jettisoned a long time ago.
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As high school educator, I would love to pick your brain about this at some point, as our school is absolutely beginning to go this route. I know that this probably isn’t the best place to have that conversation, but it is absolutely one worth having.
 


We just cannot wait to move my mother in with us if they destroy or muck around with SS to interrupt the monthly payments to seniors. She's prided herself on being independent but unfortunately made some bad investment choices along the way and she depends 100% on her SS for sustenance month to month. We help out where we can, but it's not about that - it's about her having a feeling of being independent.

One might be inclined to think, "he'd never mess with SS - it'd be way too destructive, particularly to his own base" but as we've all tried to tell you for 10+ years now, he doesn't GAF about you or anything you stand for, except that together with Fox News/RWM, he's gotten you to hate "the left" (aka, anyone not already in the cult).

Thanks again to all of you MAGA / Trump supporting / Trump-adjacent / Trump-sympathetic fucks - and to the I-helped-elect-him-by-sitting-it-out bosiding turds - for voting these lying extremist shitstains into office :rolleyes:
 
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korgguy1971 said:


We just cannot wait to move my mother in with us if they destroy or muck around with SS to interrupt the monthly payments to seniors. She's prided herself on being independent but unfortunately made some bad investment choices along the way and she depends 100% on her SS for sustenance month to month. We help out where we can, but it's not about that - it's about her having a feeling of being independent.

One might be inclined to think, "he'd never mess with SS - it'd be way too destructive, particularly to his own base" but as we've all tried to tell you for 10+ years now, he doesn't GAF about you or anything you stand for, except that together with Fox News/RWM, he's gotten you to hate "the left" (aka, anyone not already in the cult).

Thanks again to all of you MAGA / Trump supporting / Trump-adjacent / Trump-sympathetic fucks - and to the I-helped-elect-him-by-sitting-it-out bosiding turds - for voting these lying extremist shitstains into office :rolleyes:
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DOGE could do a lot of things. A sufficiently creative mind could probably come up with a scenario where DOGE starts WWIII and causes the end of the planet as we know it or causes the death of my dogs!
 
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Carolina Fever said:
Judge orders Trump to reinstate probationary workers let go in mass firings across multiple agencies

Link:
www.wral.com

Judge orders Trump to reinstate probationary workers let go in mass firings across multiple agencies

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to reinstate thousands of probationary workers let go in mass firings across multiple agencies.
www.wral.com www.wral.com
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This is not going to go all that well, unfortunately. He ordered them to be reinstated, knowing that the agencies are going to fire them again. He's just making them follow the correct procedures for doing so. I suppose they might fire different workers, but the judge acknowledged that the executive has the power to implement Reductions In Force -- and specifically warned the union lawyer to be prepared for RIF-related layoffs.
 
superrific said:
This is not going to go all that well, unfortunately. He ordered them to be reinstated, knowing that the agencies are going to fire them again. He's just making them follow the correct procedures for doing so. I suppose they might fire different workers, but the judge acknowledged that the executive has the power to implement Reductions In Force -- and specifically warned the union lawyer to be prepared for RIF-related layoffs.
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Just eliminate the probationary period. That will make things more interesting.
 
ZenMode said:
The part about cutting electricity, cell phones, etc has only appeared on X and threads.net....whatever that is.

No reason to believe it's accurate at this point.
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So now you suddenly want to question the stuff you read on X?

You are one transparently dumb fuck, Taco.
 
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