I hope people don't also automate some authentic looking messages, the jind of thing that could plausibly be real and can't just be filtered out with a simple spam filter. That could really cause a lot of wasted time and confusion.
I want to point out that DOGE was a takeover of an existing department. Some of those people may be employees resisting as best they can instead of leaving their jobs.
Also, someone clearly got special treatment. It should be elon.r.musk to match the format of literally everyone else.
Some of those people may be employees resisting as best they can instead of leaving their jobs.
Personally, I doubt that. There was a joint resignation letter filed a bit ago by 21 employees simultaneously, and dozens of staff were fired beforehand directly at the hands of Elon and co. Any employees that weren't on board with DOGE's efforts probably left a while ago. There's only about the number of people on that list left in the entire organization, and anyone sticking it out with the goal of preventing damage would only be spotted immediately either not following directions, or cutting something they were never asked to cut.
He was wearing his Marine camouflage and carrying a lawfully owned 9mm Glock handgun on his right hip, as he does every day, he told The Intercept. Agents on the scene “thought I was undercover,” Saari said. “They kept asking what agency I was with.”
When Saari told them he was not with any agency, their demeanor shifted. Federal immigration agents soon aimed M4-style rifles at his head
(1) Its almost like its important to be able to clearly identify law enforcement.
(2) Seems like the opposite of de-escalation. The thing law enforcement is supposed to do.
What he said was that holman was at least willing to talk (which is a low bar). Walz made no assurances that I am aware of. I agree with your second sentence either way though.
In the past month, Homan told reporters, 158 people have been arrested for interfering with federal law enforcement, a crime for which penalties range from one to 20 years in prison. Of those cases, he claimed, 85 have been accepted for prosecution. The rest are still pending.
Over five a day...
And it seems a safe assumption they're all citizens, or else they'd have just been deported
We're a police state. Whenever you hear Republicans or neoliberal complain about anything in the justice system is because the system isn't draconian enough. Chuck and Jeffries are bought by the prison industrial complex.
Dude, we invented police. Literally. We are the original police state, which can be easily backed up by the fact that we have a higher percentage of incarcerated individuals than any other nation. And that has been true for a very long time.
I believe the original police was created in Britain in the late 1820's by Robert Peel. It was another 30 years for it to be copied in the US. As a UK citizen I can only apologise although much like your government you created something much much worse. Quite the achievement based on how bad our own police are, and government.
Nah even the ones they're "deporting" as I understand it most of them are being sent to the camps in the hopes that the cruel conditions with convince them to leave willingly and give up due process rights.
On some level they still think they can only get away with actually deporting so many with zero due process before they actually face consequences. So if looks like they're trying to be as cruel as possible in the hopes that they'll just waive those rights and allow themselves to be deported.
Primary elections are our weapons to fight against this, and our voices to prop and support real progressives with real populist agendas are the bullets.
Find your device's "lockdown" feature (disables fingerprint/face entry) and enable that in any potentially sketchy situation.
I don't know how to trigger it on iOS, but my Pixel has the "lockdown" mode option on the same window as "shutdown" and "reboot", which can be accessed at any time by briefly holding the power button.
On iOS, you can press the power button five times in a row or hold the power button and volume up button together. Either one of those disables biometric login.
Of course, you need to know that you need to do that and have the chance to do so.
This assumes you have the time to activate it. If someone comes up and snatches your phone before you have time to activate it, it's useless. Just don't use biometrics at all.
Wouldn't it be better to just turn the phone off? Seems like it's about the same amount of effort, and it won't have anything unencrypted in RAM any more.
explicitly authorized law enforcement personnel to obtain Natanson’s phone and both hold the device in front of her face and to forcibly use her fingers to unlock it.
Legitimate law enforcement does every day what would be assault by anyone else. This isn't wrong because it's touching people, it's wrong because the law enforcement agencies are illegitimate, so all uses of their power are illegitimate.
Ergo saying "it's aSsAuLt" is missing the point and hysterical, preaching to the choir. Who cares if it's technically assault when done by Joe Public? That's not why it's bad.
We should focus on criticising what is bad, not technicalities that only matter because of other bad things we could be talking about.
Ergo saying “it’s aSsAuLt” is missing the point and hysterical, preaching to the choir.
You're projecting a lot of tone and intent that doesn't exist in my comment, nor in my view of the issue, and you're doing it with a hefty dose of snark. That's unnecessary, unhelpful, and unkind.
In future, you might consider multiple ways that other people's comments could be interpreted, rather than leaping to assumptions that give you an excuse to criticise them and control the conversation.
if you want to avoid people "leaping to assumptions" - or "filling in the blanks" as I might call it, then you could avoid comments like
ergo... ;)
which is inviting exactly that.
I'm not making any assumptions about tone; my parody of tone was meant to emphasise the pedantic nature of the point, regardless of how you would have spoken it. No, that's not kind, but this is important. It's not kind to distract from the real issues.
They are "saying" they have changed their mind for PR reasons. These same fuckers supported extraordinary rendition, torture, and worse in the War on Terror and they are fascists too.
That's not how a functional democracy is supposed to work. That's not debating for compromise. That's the opposite of what our government was designed to prevent: rule of power over rule of the people.
Except now the people are too stupid to understand this, having grown up with Reality TV stars posing as politicians that only know how to use power to stay in office rather than policy.
Power works only when that fails. Using power to your advantage when you have it gets us our current gerontocracy. A bunch of skilless idiots in positions they don't deserve, making decisions to collapse our country just before becoming too dead to experience it themselves.
Power is not supposed to be held be a single person. Hence the distribution of it in our previous system of checks and balances. Now that those are broken, so is our ability to govern by the people instead of whoever has the most money / power.
Not when it's well regulated.
People become anti democratic. Not systems.
People with little experience, and skill, who are given enough money and a narcissistic upbringing, over time, always lead to centralized power. Literally every human culture and system of power w've created on the planet has fallen to this human design flaw. An easy life for the unskilled breeds insecurity through which nepo babies use their money to centralize power to feel skilled.
1700's France
Fall of Rome
Qing Dynasty
Now 2026 USA.
Our only failure is in trusting that any part of a system of government can be self regulated. That any position of power shouldn't be well distributed. Including the concentration of wealth.
Through the repeated attempts of humanity to organize over our entire existence with have literally brute forced our way into better and better systems. Now to the point where we understand the best solution for all of us, but lack the concentrated power and money enact it.
Once that changes, whatever system is developed next will likely be far superior to all of those before it.
Literally disproves. Even altruistic, benevolent people can't avoid it. You regulate and operate by who and what you know. There will always be people/groups/things you don't know. That no matter how hard you try you will run afoul of. And the larger the group you govern, the worse the disaster will be.
Do you understand the concept of power regulation I am talking about?
The point I am making is that minimizing the power any single person can hold in a structured government is very effective at preventing that role from being exploited. In short: anyone in a position of authority should never have power over themselves in it.
The distribution of checks and balances in the US was a good example of this dynamic in theory, but now a far more effective example are things like EU term limits, ranked choice voting, and multi party governments. The more limits like these that continue to be placed on positions of authority, the less those roles can be exploited by anyone. Regardless of their intent.
I'm fully aware of how even the most benevolent person can't help but be tempted by power. I'm also aware of how effective we have been in limiting the power most people have over themselves in modern western governments.
The strength of EU countries in quarantining the spread of Trumpism within their own systems is proof at how effective better regulations over positions of authority can be at stopping their exploitation. You can very easily compare and contrast the results of the well regulated democracies in the EU to the US to see just how effective regulations can be at preventing exploitation.
People cannot exploit power if their position grants them none. By law, positions of authority should grant them none over themselves. No more using that role for themselves, means no more exploitation.
Being skilled at lying does not make you skilled.
It makes you lie about how skilled you are.
These people are paper plates in front of a stack of bills. They'd collapse to a few stern slaps to the face, as they have faced nothing but praises their entire life.
They are jumping through hoops to silence decent because they are too low thinking to engage in fair debate. They literally lack the communication skills to make their beliefs seem reasonable to anyone else. The skills to subtly do anything. The skills to think ahead. And certainly the skills to compromise.
These people are a volume knob turned to 11 on a rusty speaker that no one's been allowed to touch for decades.
That's not skilled. That's stupid weakness propped up by money to seem smart and popular. Which, while effectively making US listeners stupider and weaker, doesn't make them skilled let alone smart.
The thought they're talented at anything other than being popular, is just a ruse they've made you believe because they're popular. It's literally their only skill. And 50% of it comes from social media manipulation. So it's not even a skill they've well developed.
What do you think storytelling and playwriting is? I assert again they are extremely skilled. Using their skills to the detriment of society is simply that.
They are neither storytellers nor playwrights. (Except Shapiro kinda was a failed one.) Both of those skills require a tremendous amount of effort to refine until they are worth something of value to others.
Billionaires just have deep pockets for social media ads, PR, Bot farms, and narrative control and ownership of all US media. That's not being good at storytelling. That's using money to hack popularity by hitting caps lock and skipping spelling mistakes on millions of poor quality "stories" saying the same thing until it's repeated enough our monkey brains adapt to it as normal. That doesn't make the story good. It makes it common at best.
Billionaires just have greed. And the immorally deep pockets to prove it. If they had skills, you could point to something of quality that they have made with those skills, preferably something that actually has value or a benefit to others instead of themselves.
What of Facebook, X, Microsoft, Planatir, NVIDIA, Google, or Apple is of Quality?
What of all the companies they've merged with, then mismanaged, and completely destroying the value of? That is not a skilled use of those resources, let alone a good use of entire workforces.
They just want more. And don't care what they break to get it. They do not have any skills to give.
They just take something of worth to many, and break it for the value they alone can most extract from it. That does not make them skilled. That just makes them someone who takes resources instead of learning a skill to earn them fairly. That used to be called a thief.
If they aren't that, then show me the fruits of their skills. Show me valuable, quality results they can produce. I'll tell you now it always involves hiring those who have the skills they lack.
Their one and only skill of any quality, imo, is their complete lack of hesitancy or empathy to exploit us at scale. At times it makes me question if their behaviour can even be considered human.
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