As the saying goes: listen not to what politicians say, but watch what they do.
By his own previous public proclamation anyone cooperating with the extremist AfD is to be expelled from his party. If he had decency he would now self-expel.
Hmm this section sounds familiar:
The persecution drove hundreds of directors, managers and workers – including the author – into exile and/or imprisonment. In their place, the government appointed political operators, lacking knowledge and experience in the oil sector, who provided unconditional support to Maduro’s policies but damaged the company’s operational capacities, bypassing all control or accountability mechanisms.
That’s essentially what Trump admin wants to do. Fire civil servants en masse, replace with loyalists (proficiency for the job is optional).Then if something is goes wrong, and it will, just blame it on DEI, Biden, wokeness or something.
Honestly, there’s nothing wrong with career bureaucrats // civil servants per se. ¿Do you want to swap out every geologist, accountant, teacher, interpreter, ranger, manager, safety inspector, lawyer, technician, secretary every 4 years? These people literally run the country and by extension allow society to continue. And they are part of the idea that power and expertise are spread amongst many people.
Is it fair to criticize individuals, agencies, institutions. Yes. Is there corruption, mismanagement, incompetence? All the time, happens for any sufficiently large enough organization.
But no need to spin this into some bonkers conspiracy theory.
I’ve updated my initial comment.
This guy literally wrote a book about what he dubs “the executive branch deep state” including a list of high profile names he wants to target.
It’s all out in the open. Confirmation hearings are supposed to weed out people like him.
Edit: the way I previously worded my comment it might have been construed as me stating Patel was rightfully going after these people. Instead I meant to indicate that they rightfully resisted/investigated Trump.
Used to have a ThinkPad decades back. Still remember Howard comfortable the typing was.
It’s crazy to think that while we now live in a globalized, interconnected society with billions of peoples yet Dunbar’s hasn’t changed from when we formed tribes and harmlets thousands of years ago.
A lot of the structures and institutions of modern society essentially center around somehow overcoming or side stepping Dunbar’s number: to reliably interact with strangers, ease tensions and achieve greater things (from credit scores to spelling dictionaries to standard sized clothing to electing representatives to online wikis to opening hours, calendars and time zones; the list goes on an on).
tacking on: https://european-alternatives.eu/
These are all digital services. Europe has strong data protection and privacy regulation. The US tech billionaires throwing in their lot with the Trump administration gives them plenty of leverage if push comes to shove.
One of her arguments against the allegation of her spewing Russian talking points was that she doesn’t follow Russian Propaganda.
Truthfulness aside, that argument is not the elegant dodge that she probably thinks it is. Because that speaks against her informedness. As someone applying for this job she should be interested or better yet well versed in what current Russian propaganda is, how it is disseminated, who the target audience is, how well it is working, and how it relates to the wider goals of the Russian regime.
Strangely enough Robert Kenney also made use of a similar defensive veil a couple of times. Well I’m not a medical expert, so I really couldn’t tell you. 🙄 Bro, why are you applying for this position then?
There’s so many parts and pieces that all failed to get to where we are today. Each time you reflect a moment and realize that we shouldn’t be be here in the first place:
The list is not exhaustive and goes on and on…
And in the background there’s all the systemic failures and problems that enabled this: terrible public education, ignoring a large chunk of the electorate for too long, citizens united, social media and outrage culture, rampant disinformation and propaganda disguised as news, the electoral college and de facto 2 party system, too few checks and balances being hard codified, obvious loop holes like presidential pardons, …
Petty sure historians will analyze this for generations. If we will still live in a world where historians are allowed to about their work freely.
¿Remember how much Trump administration bungled the COVID response? Imagine again, but this time with his guy in charge. I see dead people.
Fun fact: the monikers used for these children in the book are used in coloquial speech to describe children that misbehave or exhibit behavioral discrepencies:
The original book was written by a medical doctor dealing with children, go figure!
So reportedly this guy got caught in a right-wing echo chamber of conspiracy Youtubers. That’s why his coup came so out of nowhere:
It’s well known that the judiciary at the time was very lenient towards right wing extremists. His time in jail was rather cozy and gave him time to develop and write down more of his ideological underpinnings. And come up with a more comprehensive plan for taking over.
That’s why I find it very worrisome when people like Donald Trump get what amounts to a slap on the wrist for staging an insurrection. Not just that but they actually put him on the ballot again 😱. And this time the people propping him up in the background came up with an elaborate plan for claiming the election and then completely restructuring the executive authoritarian style (aka Project 2025).
Law terminology specifically can seem pretty archaic because there’s a high need for terms to be stable over time. In other fields and everyday speech terms can change over time. There’s contracts signed decades or even centuries ago that are still binding today. So it’s practical in a sense if the words within and those used to discuss legal dealings don’t change over time.
Eternity on Android passes with flying colors.
Off topic but:
[…] said Matthew Hindman, a professor at George Washington University who studies digital emails.
How do you study analog emails then? Print them out?
I’m the opposite of this picture. It’s like I have to relearn the game each time and fluid play takes a long time to return.
Funnily enough my muscle memory persists to some degree though. So for instance if a particularly tough enemy is charging me I might push a specific key without actually knowing what it does. Afterwards I have to reason and rediscover what I was trying to accomplish and bind that action to the key I pressed.
According to the study 37% of participants verify information before sharing it on social media.
There you have it folks.
Disinformation campaigns don’t need to be super convincing with the latest tech or elaborate fake outs, although it certainly helps. For the masses (ie election interference) it’s easy enough to to establish narratives, vibes by users simply sharing headlines to fake or manipulative reports. The people that bother to deep check and cross reference sources you typically couldn’t convince anyway. Sadly enough, most users never read beyond the head lines (75% this Facebook study estimates).
Think of your own feed: how many head lines // posts do you just scroll by w/out ever opening them? Even if you don’t share actively it still can influence the your perception of the world today and shape your mood.
Social media is eating away at the fundamentals of Democracy 🫠, change my mind!