40-ish academic librarian who likes to write about his hobbies (video games, role-playing games, fantasy/science-fiction in popular culture), child-rearing/family moments, personal reflections, and academic librarianship/higher education.
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From the media that brought you "Millennials are killing [insert industry here]" articles for years and years and years, now we have....
"Hey, Gen Z, we're gonna relabel vacations into something else now and tell you how you really should be wary of taking vacation because it might impact your financial future."
This is a goddamn dystopia, we know this, right?
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Grumpy former English Teacher/Librarian Noises
For one-hundred years some of us whose religions oppose the death penalty have had to read Stephen Crane's "An Occurrence on Owl Creek Bridge", and yet for some reason no one has had a lawsuit reach the Supreme Court about that.
I wonder why...
"Let's discriminate AND make the already overburdened public school system do more work" disguised as religious liberty is one hell of a flex.
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One of the machines broke down at the hyperbole factory. The situation is frustrating, but ultimately manageable.
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Feminist fantasy is funny sometimes in how much it wants to shit on femininity for no goddamned reason. Like the whole “skirts are tools of the patriarchy made to cripple women into immobility, breeches are much better” thing.
(Let’s get it straight: Most societies over history have defaulted to skirts for everyone because you don’t have to take anything off to relieve yourself, you just have to squat down or lift your skirts and go. The main advantage of bifurcated garments is they make it easier to ride horses. But Western men wear pants so women wearing pants has become ~the universal symbol of gender equality~)
The book I’m reading literally just had its medievalesque heroine declare that peasant women wear breeches to work in the field because “You can’t swing a scythe in a skirt!”
Hm yes story checks out

peasant women definitely never did farm labour in skirts

skirts definitely mean you’re weak and fragile and can’t accomplish anything

skirts are definitely bad and will keep you from truly living life

no skirts for anyone, that’s definitely the moral of the story here
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i find it v cute when rpgs offer me, someone whose sole strategy is “attacking enemies,” status changing effects. “this lowers your enemy’s speed” you know what else would lower their speed? being dead, from my fists
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I simply cannot stand how current Star Trek treats Section 31 as some hypothetical moral quandary.
“What if we needed a secret extrajudicial organization to commit crimes to protect us?” We already had one, it was the Cold War CIA, and do you know what it did? It instigated holy wars. It installed dictators. It authorized kill squads to make goods just a little bit cheaper. You’re asking a question that has already been answered and the answer was “When you give people a lot of power, zero accountability, a mission statement of doing awful things for ‘the right reasons’, and a mentality that people are either sheep to be controlled or wolves to be slain, they do not protect anyone. They just kill and hurt and destroy, and even the people they claim to protect just suffer all the more for it.”.
Section 31 was created when CIA declassifications made clear what had been done in our name and with our money. That’s why in its native DS9, its primary purpose was to be rejected as a concept and defeated by our protagonists, why the Federation has to be saved from its rampant, thoughtless cruelty. Section 31 is not a sci fi concept. It is not a “what if?”. It is an allegory for a very real organization and ideology that has harmed billions of people, that will take decades to root out and further decades, possibly even centuries, to heal from. It is evil, it was modeled on evil, and the impulse to defend or lighten it is not a politically neutral one. It has no place in the Star Trek future, just as it’s real world equivalents have no place in our society, and anyone who says otherwise is deceiving you or themselves.
Portraying Section 31 as morally grey or worse, necessary, is a lie. It is repackaged military propaganda used to justify and whitewash its real world equivalents by creating a fantasy where such an organization is anything but evil, to make it easier to sell that same fantasy in real life. I can accept and even enjoy moral quandaries and flawed characters in Star Trek. I will not accept being lied to.
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Cub #2 clogged the toilet with like 90% more toilet paper than a normal human uses, and I spent the last 36 hours trying different tools, chemicals, and the internet to get it unclogged.
I can only compare the experience to one video game scene (EXTREME SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN’T BEAT MASS EFFEFT 3):
youtube
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The pills meme but it's things i wish i had
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Tired
Brain: C'mon body, you got extra sleep yesterday! Why are you so tired today? We're over that nasty respiratory bug and ready to go!
Body: Oh my dear bear, we thought 12 hours of sleep was going to be the exception, not the norm!
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people who don’t wear glasses will never understand the absolute humiliation of dropping your glasses under your bed or in a dark area and feeling around on all fours muttering “my glasses…. where are my glasses” like fucking Velma Dinkley and thinking to yourself BOY WOULD THIS BE A LOT EASIER IF I COUKD FUCKING SEE
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Okay all -- few quick thoughts about the Elon Muskifying of the government, especially the takeover of the Treasury and associated financial data for every single US citizen and organization, that we are learning about in detail today.
Don't panic. This sounds bad, because it is bad. It's really, really bad. It's outrageously fascist bad. But we've still gotta take a deep breath and get through it.
This is the kind of shock-and-awe exercise of untrammeled fascist power where they are absolutely counting on gleefully terrorizing, paralyzing, and stunning you into mounting no resistance, or just giving up and giving in. They are literally live-tweeting it in real time and boasting about all the access and influence they have right now. They want you to know about it and feel like you can't do anything, so you might as well let it happen.
We have to show them that's not true.
TIME TO MAKE SOME NOISE. Because it's Sunday night, I've gone ahead and contacted my state Attorney General and both senators by email (but come Monday morning, we should all be calling). Here is the email that I wrote to my AG:
Dear Mr. [AG],
As you will be aware, today (February 2, 2025) the Trump administration has granted wide-ranging access to sensitive US Treasury data, including the personal and private information of [state] citizens, to Elon Musk's so-called "Department of Government Efficiency." Musk is an unelected private citizen who has no legal right to access this data, and is engaging in extensive intimidation and coercion to fulfill his personal and harmful ideological agenda. The present and material harm that this causes to US citizens, [state] residents, and basic laws of government, privacy, and financial security is direct, unconscionable, and actionable. I strongly urge you, in your capacity as [state] Attorney General, to file direct suit against the Trump administration, Elon Musk, the "DOGE" office, and any identifiable individuals who have taken part in this action, in order to protect consumer data, citizen privacy, and basic faith and trust in government.
All the best,
[Qqueenofhades]
Short! To the point! Doesn't waste time, tells him what I want him to do, how Elmo's nonsense directly harms the residents of my state, and why he should take action to stop it! And frankly, given how on-the-ball blue-state AGs have been thus far, they're probably already working on it. You are very welcome to copy-and-paste this message and fill in your AG's last name and your state as appropriate. Super easy to do. Takes five minutes. Call tomorrow.
If you are in a red state, your voice is particularly important right now. The Trumpsters are counting on and are even emboldened by blue state pushback, but you really need to make it start coming from Republican strongholds. Congressional Republicans will only feel the slightest amount of unease about docilely enabling this BS when it starts threatening their own personal power. Hit them where it hurts.
Other lawsuits are coming. Marc Elias, Democratic lawyer extraordinaire, is well aware of this situation and has noted on Bluesky that more lawsuits are in the works. He often wins his cases. This does not mean that you shouldn't loudly make noise elsewhere, but please remember that this is one of those 24-hour periods where, as noted, they are counting on demoralizing you with a nonstop blizzard of bullshit. It does not say anything about how this will play out long-term or the opposition that can and will be mobilized to stop it.
Once again: courage. Take the small steps that you can do today. Then take a breath and get off social media for a little while. Try to take the long view. One step at a time, we will get through this.
Courage.
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A very useful thread on Bluesky:
(There is a lot more. Rather than give you all the images, I've copied the full text below.)
Meredith Rose @mrose.ink November 8, 2024
This is not going to be a repeat of 2016-2020. It will be better, it will be worse, but most of all it will be different. Here are things I want every single person to keep in mind as we head into round 2 of a Trump admin.
My credentials: I’m a queer female public interest attorney working on tech policy in DC. I’ve been doing this for a decade--longer than some, not as long as others. I had to navigate three different administrations, as well as Congress, regulatory agencies, courts, and the advocacy world.
FIRST: don’t let despair override your media literacy.
The left has grifters, just like every other movement. If you’re able and compelled to donate, give to orgs with established track records. Avoid giving to individuals, especially anyone who emerges overnight with a one-weird-trick “plan.”
The left is not immune to misinformation, and everyone—EVERYONE—falls for it sometimes, present company included. There is no shame in it. When (not if) it happens to you, you should acknowledge it; delete or retract the post to reduce the spread; and move on.
If a source consistently shares half-truths or outright misinformation, it is not trustworthy, no matter how much “their heart is in the right place.” Unfollow and move on.
Prediction, analysis, and reporting are three fundamentally different things. Learn to identify them for what they are. Reject attempts by amateur “analysts” to predict the future. They know as much as you do.
Real subject matter experts know and acknowledge their limits. They’re also (usually) hesitant to try and predict the future. The best frame their predictions in terms of a range of possible outcomes. Subject matter experts may also disagree with one another! It happens!
SECOND: What we know for sure about how the Trump, how he operates, and how that will impact the next four years.
Trump is a narcissist who avoids reading and doesn’t care about details. He cannot be persuaded by argument or logic; he’s moved mostly by flattery, and will agree with the last person who flattered him. He can and will upend his own administration’s work without warning, often by tweet.
As a result, most policy experts—even those "on his side"—dread him taking an interest in their field. Ask any Republican staffer who worked in Congress during the last administration, and most of them will confirm that their greatest fear was Trump tweeting about anything related to their work.
As such, people who are serious about their work will do everything to make it as invisible and boring-seeming as possible. This is the policy equivalent of defensive camouflage. Lots of “normie” work will continue in silence. (The lion’s share of tech policy ends up in this bucket.)
If you have a niche issue that you care about, now is a great time to donate to orgs that work on it. Lots of money will be funneled to big legacy orgs working on headline issues: ACLU, climate change orgs, etc. Consider sending your donations where they matter most: local, niche, established.
Trump runs his cabinet like the Apprentice. He thrives on chaos and making people compete for his approval. Not only does he not reward collaboration between his subordinates, he actively undermines it.
Moreover, everyone who works with him knows that they’re vulnerable to being thrown under the bus at a moment’s notice, for any reason (or for no reason at all). His cabinet is going to be scorpions in a bottle. They will not be able to coordinate, for good or ill.
One scorpion can still do a lot of horrific damage. But large scale inter-agency coordination is unlikely, particularly after the first few months, by which point he will likely (prediction warning!) have gone through a handful of cabinet secretaries already.
FINALLY: The view from inside civil society heading into 2025.
In 2016, Trump was a largely unknown quantity. The left and establishment right alike wasted a lot of time trying to read tea leaves and make sense of this guy, because he was completely outside the realm of what anyone had dealt with. That’s not happening now.
He did us a favor by broadcasting his plans in advance (aka Project 2025). Civil society has spent the last 2.5 years strategizing around it. We’re not starting off flat-footed.
The Biden admin did a good amount to future-proof its own achievements. Folks can speak to their own areas of expertise, but clean energy and CHIPS and Science Act (investing in domestic semiconductor production) have benefitted from huge sunk investments. That money’s not getting clawed back.
OVERALL TAKE-AWAYS:
It's going to suck. But civil society and the political left have some advantages we didn't have last time. We know him, we know his angles, and we know who he's bringing in--none of which we had in 2016.
We'll get through this. It will be grim, but we'll get through it.
John Cutting @johncutting.bsky.social
Thanks Meredith. I really valued your analysis over the past few years, and I think this is a reasonable, actionable framework to think about the upcoming storm
Meredith Rose @mrose.ink
I really cannot overstate how much time was (necessarily) wasted in 2017 trying to figure out this guy and his influences. The fact that he's not only a known quantity, but ran the most over-studied administration in this nation's recent history, makes this a very different game.
John Cutting @johncutting.bsky.social
I bet we can weaponize his narcissism. Let's say some ghoul starts making progress with a mass deportation effort, if we start calling that ghoul that "shadow president" en masse, Trump would fire him in right away and appoint Hulk Hogan or something
Meredith Rose @mrose.ink
This is exactly why I don't think Musk will last very long. Trump is very clear that he's the only one in the room allowed to have an ego or any kind of brand name.
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