volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@Bez_Lightyear The difference is that everybody agreed people were taking a knee over Floyd.

So many conservatives don't agree that they were Nazi salutes, and they make fun of the left for being so obsessed that they would project their obsessions like that.

@OldAintDead I don't think this attitude is going to be the successful strategy they want it to be.

With so many high profile federal tech problems seemingly every year, this messaging comes across as cocky and out of touch, and I think it's going to turn off a whole lot of people in the general public whose support they probably really want.

@F2erron honestly, if this funding delay, which has been relatively brief so far, leaves medical studies in jeopardy, those were not well managed operations.

I don't know if the Times reporters are aware, but this kind of thing happens through all administrations. Funding gets delayed, there are paperwork issues, there are budget issues, sometimes you're not sure how things are going to be worked out, but that's just how government has always operated.

Yeah it's frustrating, but it's not the crisis that a lot of these reporters are running around screaming about. Why weren't they screaming when there were much larger delays in the past? They weren't interested then.

This comes across as hysteria.

@Guillotine_Jones this is a pretty hilarious bit of grandiosity considering the high profile failures in those exact areas that we've seen over the years.

That so many of these people failed at exactly the things they're talking about here is a huge part of how we ended up in this mess in the first place.

@flaki Well it's all about balancing the value of each solution against costs, particularly the costs of effort and time.

Each person will have a different personal, subjective preference for where they'll put that balance, and for a whole lot of people the cloud option is simply good enough compared to the costs of other options, particularly learning curves.

@juergen_hubert

Keep in mind that in the US the actual elections are run in a very distributed fashion with the different precincts having a whole lot of authority over their own operations.

Communities tend to basically pick their own people to run their elections, so stories about long lines being voter suppression aren't so clear without some centralized management that would be able to organize that.

It generally seems like some communities simply choose for themselves to put in charge managers who kind of suck. People choosing incompetent administrators for themselves is hardly anything rare especially in the state and local levels.

It might be that we would be better off putting all of our eggs in one basket that could be professionally managed, but that would actually open the door to the corrupt motivations like voter suppression.

@spujb Well that's a bit hysterical.

Funding issues like this are pretty common. I know of one that happened a couple of times just last year, not to mention over the course of the past couple of administrations, and that's just the ones I know about personally.

No, it's not the end of science in America, and if science had been so fully captured by government, that would be pretty bad for science in the first place.

No, that's not how that works. And people talking in terms like this are not going to be convincing to folks who actually know how government works, how science and research works.

@Amgine but the point is to say it!

You can't just ignore that it's illegal. We have to engage and point out how goddamn stupid it is. How unworkable, inappropriate, stupid, ignorant, backwards, stupid stupid stupid it is.

By declining to engage for fear of normalizing just lets it fester without pushback. And we have seen that kind of thing happen over and over and over again.

Yeah, it's damn stupid. But it needs to be engaged with so we can point out that it is damn stupid. Otherwise, a whole bunch more ignorant people start getting behind the damn stupid proposal because they don't know any better. Because people aren't pointing out what they don't know, because they fear normalization, and that's exactly why that strategy backfires.

Over and over again.

@EricaHargreave @CBCNews@x-activitypub-bridge.deno.dev @cbcnews@flipboard.com

@toussaint to be fair, first yes it is stupid, but you're missing the factor that is behind it.

Trump supporters stupidly think that imposing tariffs mean that more jobs will be created in the US instead. They think they will get jobs out of this, but right, that's not how this will really work.

But I can see what they're thinking.

@EricaHargreave

Normalizing it? No. That strategy basically echoes the Streisand effect. It's not about normalizing, but about engaging to point out how abnormal the proposal is.

If you let the idea faster it doesn't go away, it grows in strength, as we see every single day today.

We are now experiencing SO many problems that arose out of proposals that people didn't engage with for fear of "normalizing" which just let them gain more followers instead so that they actually did become normal.

No, this whole concept of letting the conversation go out of fear of normalization is EXACTLY counterproductive. It gives those ideas room to become normal.

And again, this isn't theory, this is exactly what we see everyday today as bad ideas have become significant and adopted.

@CBCNews@x-activitypub-bridge.deno.dev @cbcnews@flipboard.com

@EricaHargreave sounds like you haven't watched it. Maybe you would appreciate what it actually presents.

Sounds like you're prejudging the book by the cover.

@CBCNews@x-activitypub-bridge.deno.dev @cbcnews@flipboard.com

@www.youtube.com.channel.uc1e-js8l0j1ei70d9vefrpq he didn't, though.

Those federal employees don't answer to Elon Musk.

@causeburn

Honestly, I think often enough it's more of a symptom of a problem, more of a effect than a cause.

I think it comes up when an organization is outgrowing its ability to manage itself. It's taking on too many projects, its management structure can no longer direct employees with confidence, can't direct resources with confidence, generally just an organization that is crumbling under its own weight so it has to add even more resource consuming feedback channels just to try to hold it together.

Scumbag or not, once management starts asking employees what they did in the last week, it's a sign that things are already pretty off the rails organization wise, as management has lost a grip on where its resources are going.

And that exact same lesson applies to the US federal government.

@DrALJONES The problem is, this sort of thing is exactly why so many of the public has lost patience with them.

They're playing into the current strategy.

@Dreamer9177 The thing is, that has been an accurate description of our government for quite a while.

It's just that, more and more people are noticing.

Hopefully with greater awareness we can someday fix the problems.

@europesays Oh no, they're not asleep at the wheel. They're actively involved.

Remember, Democrats voted with the hardline Republicans last year and scored political points from it. They're not asleep, they're helping to drive in bad directions because we apparently applaud them for it.

@resistancewins@earthstream.social

No you're getting that story wrong. For example, it's not that SCOTUS let Dellinger stay, but rather in its order the court spelled out that it was going through its normal process of allowing the lower court temporary order to remain as the case was progressing because that's just how the legal process works.

Trump did fire these people. The people that were absolutely fired are contesting the firings in court. If they weren't fired they wouldn't have anything to contest.

It's really important to get this story right if we care about how this is going down.

These are very real firings. Without real firings there would be no real court cases.

Anyone saying otherwise is spinning a story that doesn't mesh with how the government actually functions.

@causeburn you don't know that companies do run that way? I've certainly been employed by multiple companies that ran that way.

Anyway, US citizens did act. That's how we are in this situation in the first place.

Over the years people lost so much faith in the the federal government that they elected Trump as a vote for change. It didn't have to be this way, but the politicians in DC really messed up, so here we are.

@skoombidoombis The two are not exclusive, though. Yes, you can save money by cutting services to citizens. Even if you're doing the second doesn't mean you're not doing the first.

Yes, the Pentagon is not escaping this process.

And in the end, firing staff likely will be part of the solution as firing people that weren't really contributing to serving citizens leaves more resources, which are scarce, to serve those citizens.

I figure we all know people, or have come across people, who have jobs that they're not really working out in, where they're not really serving the people they're supposed to be serving.