We should all know by now that, to the Trump admin, "finding fraud" means stealing personal data

The United States was the gold standard for science and technology for decades, and there was never any reason that had to end.

sometimes I like to give myself a brain owie the way you might eat a spicy pepper for fun by thinking “what if earth really does have the only life in the universe and the entire cosmos was meant to be our garden, but this is what we’re doing as a species to ourselves and our planet instead”

This is also my plan for 2026, unfollow me if you don't want patriotism content

2026, the year the world declares independence from America

It’s generally assumed that “Moby-Dick” has a canonical start date in December 1841, so there’s a good chance that Ishmael has entered the AME Zion church (then on South Second St, three blocks from the water) and the preacher he sees is Frederick Douglass. 🐋

We are losing a basic function of government

Writing hacker plots for Black Ice is a lot of speculating "will this exploit still exist in 2080?" I had used this one for the tutorial's prank war between 2 CEOs to hack a vending machine to taunt their employees. I figured a vending machine would still have this vuln but now, maybe more will...

Government is unlike anything else in society. It has unique potential to create immense value. Don’t cheap out or give up on government bc you’re hurting everyone if you do. Instead, pick *good* leaders with an appetite to invest in you and the future, bc government can when nobody else will.

Here's a tragedy of DOGE that most people will never know about, even though it has big consequences: no one is left to coordinate the transition to memory safe systems code. 🧵

Looking forward to the sudden closure of every gas station

I am supposed to be a 'words' guy, yet I find that I lack the words to fully express the sense of rage and betrayal that I feel, having been raised to believe in the beauty of the United States as an - imperfect - pluralistic republic, to see these quislings try to turn it into a boring ethnostate.

not to sound like an abstract performance art snob but isn’t the act of cancelling a compelling performance in itself

I think the general population is unaware that a whole lot of super talented people who serve the public are queer. Yes, even in the military and national guard. Pushing them out isn't just an injustice to them, but a huge loss to the American people.

My Christmas tradition: reposting this thread by @themountaingoats.bsky.social

The absolutely ridiculous part is that, despite common sense and common perception, the government was actually hugely efficient, and exceptionally efficient if you exclude the military

The math of DOGE was never remotely feasible and I personally think it's embarrassing we let musk pretend to be an engineer

Today is a good day to pick up Micah's book. If you don't already have these skills, let me tell you they are going to be very useful in the near future.

Oh, look, it's Shadowrun.

and as authoritarians become more desperate, the attempts to control the dissemination of information will get more desperate and far-reaching

With the 60 minutes leak, the many recent Epstein releases, etc., I think we are seeing the future of government accountability under authoritarianism: Leaks, hacks, data dumps, releases of big document caches. Journalists and the public will have to learn how to digest this stuff. 🧵

We need detailed plans on how to prosecute the lawbreakers in the current administration, and how candidates plan to implement those plans

Feels to me like the last quote here is more devastating and incriminating than even the birthday book and the photos and the rest.

"This one smells a lot like they realize that the DOGE brand is dead and they are trying to get as far away as they can. But I hope they have thought about where their power will come from."

For my 20+ years of translating/editing medical documents, the CDC website was the gold standard for terminology & citations. Recently I called their public info no. to report sections that had been taken down & the woman who answered the phone burst into tears. I can't imagine what it's like there.

I feel this pain any time I write "the government did" some fresh hell. None of it is coming from the caring, competent feds I worked with just a few months ago. It's coming from fascism, wearing their skinsuit.

RIP "American wars are not about oil" 1990-2025

An absolute bedrock institution for understanding how the planet works, just civilization-scaled vandalism by the most incurious morons on Earth

If you join "Making Government Cool Again" be aware that Wired will publish this illustration of you

I'm not checking the headlines but I assume they're like: "DOGE is rebranding after killing 600,000 people. Will the new 'Tech Force' be benevolent computer geniuses?"

"They were careless people…. They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made"

it’s so bad

how it started how it's going

federal hiring: not great

Yet another reason why real gov web devs DON'T do what Big Balls et al are doing. Why enlarge your attack surface?

I reiterate: any design thing by Trump (or Big Balls) is just ripping down something that previously worked and replacing it with something less accessible to Americans (and thus illegal under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act)

wow this movie really IS insanely transgender

I am so very tired of things happening that I am glad my father wasn’t alive to see.

Look, there’s a simple solution to private equity buying up and enshittifying the software that keeps us safe: a handful of municipal fire/rescue departments should team up, collaboratively build and share better software, and release it into the public domain. This is a common pattern!

Anytime the Trump admin says they are doing some design thing, here is what they are doing: removing accessibility. Designs that work for fewer Americans is their explicit goal.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an ordinary man, has defeated the great might of the US Government

Then let me be specific: by "feeding USAID into the wood chipper" Musk has killed approximately the same number of people as Belzec extermination camp

For me, it's my second favorite after "I liked Rage Against the Machine until they got political"

If you've been to a national park lately you know people come in wonder and reverence from all over the world. Wild that the guy who ran on "other countries are laughing at us" is clamping down on the best possible advertising for America.

Gotta admit "the font is DEI" is a stage of absurdity I could not have predicted

I'm re-watching Magnum P.I. and I can't believe how vastly superior the 1980s ideal of masculinity is, vs today's whining, lying misogynist edgelord ideal that we see in culture all the way up to the Presidency.

This is often an excuse to privatize a public good, so that some capitalist can profit from charging for that service. See private prisons. DeJoy at the USPS. Jacobs at NOAA. IMO, these folks are looking to divert federal fund into their and their friends' pockets.

government is not a business, nor should it ever be thought of as one. that a politician "is good at business" is a bullcrap argument for their candidacy. Terrible at business while claiming to be great? even worse.

And the USPS in "losing money" is in part because they're subsidizing last mile transport for Amazon and other corporations rather than charge enough for a profit for doing so.