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.

I'll say again: we are oddly selective about the government services about which we will say, they operate at a loss. We say Amtrak and the post office "lose money" but we never say highways, the court system, the Pentagon, etc lose money

It's an actual game plan on the right. They use it for book bans as well. They start with something easy: no porn in libraries. That hooks in the low information folks. Then you slowly broaden the scope until you're yanking any YA that violates Christian nationalism.

A lot of people are answering "money" and I guess that's true but it's not direct, like a payoff from Big Horse. Why do *the worst possible reaction* specifically? Every time?

What exactly is this force that compels these people to do the most asinine thing possible at just the wrong moment?

It’s not “nationalism” in any American sense, loyal to the Constitution or values it embodies. It’s a white internationale intent on drawing a cordon blanc, you might say — and coldly willing to place democratic multiracial societies with long ties of loyalty to the U.S. outside of it.

The new National Security Strategy of the U.S. contains some pretty explicit white nationalism: “We want to support our allies in preserving the freedom and security of Europe, while restoring Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity.”

It's hard to pick from the rogues gallery of murderous ideas, but sometimes I feel the most dangerous thing about modern conservatism is its transparent desire to destroy the fabric of truth in daily life.

The richest "capitalists" today don't really invest in capital, the means of production. They invest in hype cycles. 🧵

This implies derek guy has a whole filing system of other people's stupid remarks organized by clothing retailer. Never cross this man.

Reject modernity, embrace tradition

On World AIDS Day I'd like to share this Wikipedia article I wrote about a time that the US government was actually pretty awesome about AIDS, back in 1988. With the Trump administration's refusal to acknowledge the day, it's astonishing to look at how far we've regressed since the 80s.

In September, I (and many other accessibility advocates) reviewed the America by Design website, finding sloppy AI-generated code and accessibility bugs. @notus.com wrote on it, and also spoke to many amazing folks from @alt18f.bsky.social and @ethanmarcotte.com www.notus.org/trump-white-...

Big Border is watching you

As your Nebraskan Anger Translator I want you to know "I don't think he would be foolish enough to make this decision" is a devastating thing for your high school principal to say to your parents