#downsizing review

[the-masked-reviewer]

Downsizing (2017) Review

potential spoilers ahead...

This movie had the potential to have a really good story about so many things, for example, classism, environmentalism, overpopulation. It could have been an amazing apocalyptic story too, especially once they introduce apocalypse theory shortly after the halfway point. But instead they went and made it a nothing movie with a slight romance, which to me makes no sense and is just poor writing. The ending negates every chance this movie had at making any kind of statement or commentary on literally anything. It almost feels like despite having characters straight up mention global warming, overpopulation, even going as far as making class divide jokes they never realized they could actually say something. All the building blocks are there, they are just sitting in the dialogue unutilized. Even if the lack of social commentary was a deliberate choice they still could have had a much better movie by just sticking to an apocalypse story. Instead the apocalypse is only mentioned at the very end and the MC decides to just "live" life at the very last second, literally leaving the supposedly apocalypse safe bunker, to get with a girl who he's barely even had an actual conversation with because neither of them speak the same language and made no attempt to learn.

In all honesty, the movie doesn't suck that much (I wouldn't even wish it upon my worst enemy, but details) it is just extremely frustrating to waste over 2 hours on something that had the potential to be Something instead of being just nothing. The actual story, jokes, and concept aren't mind numbingly boring, they're just an ok experience that a wasted potential turned into a terrible experience.

[butterflies-and-bumble-bees]

...

[reviewvie]

A Quick Look

Downsizing (2017) IMDb

Directed by Alexander Payne Written by Alexander Payne & Jim Taylor

Does it deliver?

Despite the trailer matching the tone, there seemed to be a big disconnect between people's expectations for Downsizing and the film itself. Why? Because the "downsizing" really isn't that important to the story. It's just a device to tell a political satire about saving the world vs. saving individual people in it.

Downsizing is better than the reviews, but ultimately a little mediocre - and is that really better? It's 2025. Let's be done with stories about poor people of color experienced from Matt Damon's perspective.

[astrxlis-archive]

I HAVE 71 ARTICLES LEFT TO READ. SEVENTY-ONE. I CAN SEE THE END OF THE TUNNEL.

THERE IS NO LIGHT BUT ITS NO LONGER A TUNNEL.

JUST A REALLY LONG ROAD LEFT.

AND THEN IM FREE TO WRITE THINGS I *WANT* TO WRITE

[mariacallous]

Elon Musk’s minions—from trusted sidekicks to random college students and former Musk company interns—have taken over the General Services Administration, a critical government agency that manages federal offices and technology. Already, the team is attempting to use White House security credentials to gain unusual access to GSA tech, deploying a suite of new AI software, and recreating the office in X’s image, according to leaked documents obtained by WIRED.

Some of the same people who helped Musk take over Twitter more than two years ago are now registered as official GSA employees. Nicole Hollander, who slept in Twitter HQ as an unofficial member of Musk’s transition team, has high-level agency access and an official government email address, according to documents viewed by WIRED. Hollander’s husband, Steve Davis, also slept in the office. He has now taken on a leading role in Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Thomas Shedd, the recently installed director of the Technology Transformation Services within GSA, worked as a software engineer at Tesla for eight years. Edward Coristine, who previously interned at Neuralink, has been onboarded along with Ethan Shaotran, a Harvard senior who is developing his own OpenAI-backed scheduling assistant and participated in an xAI hackathon.

“I believe these people do not want to help the federal government provide services to the American people,” says a current GSA employee who asked not to be named, citing fears of retaliation. “They are acting like this is a takeover of a tech company.”

The team appears to be carrying out Musk’s agenda: slashing the federal government as quickly as possible. They’re currently targeting a 50 percent reduction in spending for every office managed by the GSA, according to documents obtained by WIRED.

There also appears to be an effort to use IT credentials from the Executive Office of the President to access GSA laptops and internal GSA infrastructure. Typically, access to agency systems requires workers to be employed at such agencies, sources say. While Musk's team could be trying to obtain better laptops and equipment from GSA, sources fear that the mandate laid out in the DOGE executive order would grant the body broad access to GSA systems and data. That includes sensitive procurement data, data internal to all the systems and services GSA offers, and internal monitoring software to surveil GSA employees as part of normal auditing and security processes.

The access could give Musk’s proxies the ability to remote into laptops, listen in on meetings, read emails, among many other things, a former Biden official told WIRED on Friday.

“Granting DOGE staff, many of whom aren't government employees, unfettered access to internal government systems and sensitive data poses a huge security risk to the federal government and to the American public,” the Biden official said. “Not only will DOGE be able to review procurement-sensitive information about major government contracts, it'll also be able to actively surveil government employees.”

The new GSA leadership team has prioritized downsizing the GSA’s real estate portfolio, canceling convenience contracts, and rolling out AI tools for use by the federal government, according to internal documents and interviews with sources familiar with the situation. At a GSA office in Washington, DC, earlier this week, there were three items written on a white board sitting in a large, vacant room. “Spending Cuts $585 m, Regulations Removed, 15, Square feet sold/terminated 203,000 sf,” it read, according to a photo viewed by WIRED. There’s no note of who wrote the message, but it appears to be a tracker of cuts made or proposed by the team.

“We notified the commercial real estate market that two GSA properties would soon be listed for sale, and we terminated three leases,” Stephen Ehikian, the newly appointed GSA acting administrator, said in an email to GSA staff on Tuesday, confirming the agency’s focus on lowering real estate costs. “This is our first step in right-sizing the real estate portfolio.”

The proposed changes extend even inside the physical spaces at the GSA offices. Hollander has requested multiple “resting rooms,” for use by the A-suite, a team of employees affiliated with the GSA administrator’s office.

On January 29, a working group of high-ranking GSA employees, including the deputy general counsel and the chief administrative services officer, met to discuss building a resting room prototype. The team mapped out how to get the necessary funding and waivers to build resting rooms in the office, according to an agenda viewed by WIRED.

After Musk bought Twitter, Hollander and Davis moved into the office with their newborn baby. Hollander helped oversee real estate and office design—including the installation of hotel rooms at Twitter HQ, according to a lawsuit later filed by Twitter executives. During the installation process, one of the executives emailed to say that the plans for the rooms were likely not code compliant. Hollander “visited him in person and emphatically instructed him to never put anything about the project in writing again,” the lawsuit alleged. Employees were allegedly instructed to call the hotel rooms “sleeping rooms” and to say they were just for taking naps.

Hollander has also requested access to Public Buildings Service applications; PBS owns and leases office space to government agencies. The timing of the access request lines up with Ehikian’s announcement about shrinking GSA’s real estate cost.

Musk’s lieutenants are also working to authorize the use of AI tools, including Google Gemini and Cursor (an AI coding assistant), for federal workers. On January 30, the group met with Google to discuss Telemetry, a software used to monitor the health and performance of applications, according to a document obtained by WIRED.

A-suite engineers, including Coristine and Shaotran, have requested access to a variety of GSA records, including nearly 10 years of accounting data, as well as detailed records on vendor payments, purchase orders, and revenue.

The GSA takeover mimics Musk’s strategy at other federal agencies like the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Earlier this month, Amanda Scales, who worked in talent at Musk’s xAI, was appointed as OPM chief of staff. Riccardo Biasini, former Tesla engineer and director of operations at the Boring company, is now a senior adviser to the director. Earlier this week, Musk cohorts at the US Office of Personnel Management emailed more than 2 million federal workers offering “deferred resignations,” allegedly promising employees their regular pay and benefits through September 30.

The email closely mirrored the “extremely hardcore” note Musk sent to Twitter staff in November 2022, shortly after buying the company.

Many federal workers thought the email was fake—as with Twitter, it seemed designed to force people to leave, slashing headcount costs without the headache of an official layoff.

Ehikian followed up with a note to staff stressing that the email was legitimate. “Yes, the OPM email is real and should be taken very seriously,” he said in an email obtained by WIRED. He added that employees should expect a “further consolidation of offices and centralization of functions.”

On Thursday night, GSA workers received a third email related to the resignation request called “Fork in the Road FAQs.” The email explained that employees who resign from their positions would not be required to work and could get a second job. “We encourage you to find a job in the private sector as soon as you would like to do so,” it read. “The way to greater American prosperity is encouraging people to move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector.”

The third question posed in the FAQ asked, “Will I really get my full pay and benefits during the entire period through September 30, even if I get a second job?”

“Yes,” the answer read. “You will also accrue further personal leave days, vacation days, etc. and be paid out for unused leave at your final resignation date.”

However, multiple GSA employees have told WIRED that they are refusing to resign, especially after the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) told its members on Tuesday that the offer could be void.

“There is not yet any evidence the administration can or will uphold its end of the bargain, that Congress will go along with this unilateral massive restructuring, or that appropriated funds can be used this way, among other issues that have been raised,” the union said in a notice.

There is also concern that, under Musk’s influence, the federal government might not pay for the duration of the deferred resignation period. Thousands of Twitter employees have sued Musk alleging that he failed to pay their agreed upon severance. Last year, one class action suit was dismissed in Musk’s favor.

In an internal video viewed by WIRED, Ehikian reiterated that GSA employees had the “opportunity to participate in a deferred resignation program,” per the email sent by OPM on January 28. Pressing his hands into the namaste gesture, Ehikian added, “If you choose to participate, I offer you my heartfelt gratitude for your service to this nation. If you choose to stay at the GSA, we’ll work together to implement the four pillars from the OPM memo.” He ended the video by saying thank you and pressing his hands into namaste again.

[fatalforesight]

I once read a review of Yellowjackets where the reviewer was saying that Yellowjackets is the kind of show that would be better enjoyed by book readers because of the slow pacing that is not fit for television storytelling and the kind of show that Yellowjackets is supposed to be and while I kinda agree with the guy (especially because I read the scripts and I remember being really entertained by them maybe even more than when I was watching the actual episodes) as a book reader I can also firmly say that our brains know what we're picking up in the moment and adjust accordingly and expects a different kind of entertainment with each media. If I pick up a book, my brain expects the entertainment I get from a book. If I pick a movie, my brain expects a movie. Same with a tv show. And while I love Yellowjackets the pacing really gets on my nerves and confuses me a lot of the times. It could be a book but it's not and my brain doesn't expect it to be. It expects a tv show. Does that make sense? Sorry for ranting in your inbox lol. Just, your recent post reminded me of that review and the thoughts and feelings I had while I read it and I totally agree with you the pacing from S2 and S3 is really dragged out and we still have two seasons left? This could have been a 3 (or 4) seasons show and it would've been amazing. You know how some people say that some tv shows need to go back to the 22 episodes format? I feel like with Yellowjackets it's the opposite. If the season doesn't need more than 8 episodes, don't give it more than 8 episodes. I love the show, I really do but sometimes it really needs to get to the point. You know?

I wanted to wait and respond to this until I could read it and really take it all in but I think I agree with what you’re saying. As someone who writes YJ material, it is def not made for another format. I think the needledrops, the dialogue, and a lot of the cinematography are what make the show so distinct, and those things don’t necessarily translate to written material. More under cut cause this got long lol

Season 1 of the show is just so tight and perfect. They got a lot of the ratios right between balancing the girlhood of the teen timeline with the supernatural and fear factor, and the adult timeline expands so well on the characters that survive and how the trauma affects them.

To me it truly feels like the writers lacked direction with the adult timeline, and by season 3 lacked direction in both timelines. I do understand that it’s easy to critique, but not easy to create. But I’m lost on how they’ve managed to drag the show out this season.

Yellowjackets is NOT a 22episode season imo. Ben’s death shouldn’t have been a five episode arc, and adding more episodes would not have made that worth it. People forget that the 22 episode season has nothing to do with pacing, and everything to do with money. You want a series on cable to run for most of the year, so people tune into your network (NBC, CW, Disney, etc)

Shows like Yellowjackets are EXPENSIVE to make. They’re not shot like a studio/lot show. These casts and crews are on location, there’s a great amount of travel involved, not to mention with having two separate casts with totally different on screen needs. The camera work, the makeup and costuming, and the transport of people and equipment is a massive undertaking. A 22 episode season would be exorbitant, and totally unnecessary because streaming services don’t need to run shows for 8 or 10 months out of the year.

And I think when you have a show like Yellowjackets that had such a perfect first season, saying it needs more episodes later on is not the fix I would advise. If I was a producer or showrunner, I’d absolutely be gunning for killing off more characters, therefore downsizing the ensemble in both timelines. I also think the show works best with suddenness, and it is not a show where any of the tragedy needs to be drawn out across multiple episodes. The 8 episode season works when every episode is about something new. But if your team has run out of plot ideas, then of course you hire Hilary Swank for clout and let a death arc take 5 episodes to play out. You would have thought they were killing Caesar.

[bogleech]

My Halloween season starts again already in only two weeks but will probably be downsized again. I guess I'm slowly letting it fade as I get "old." I love reviewing things but it begins to feel weird to keep doing it at the same pace when my site, by now, has an archive of me reviewing 90,000 things already. Will still make articles about any cool Halloween stuff I find, major horror games of the past year, and some sort of daily October review. Maybe some kind of new little fun thing? I dunno! Really just wanna be making games or animations honestly.

[valessacat]

I resonate so much with Corpo V, because I used to be a corpo myself--cubicles, performance reviews, KPIs, the whole nine yards. Got downsized or re-org'd out of a job one too many times, so I feel it in my gut when they come for V in Lizzie's Bar. Jackie standing up for her, giving her a shoulder to lean on, and a hand-up from the gutter... absolute choom.

I imagine one of the first things she does, once she's recovered from the initial shock of having her life completely upended, is get a punk haircut. She likes it so much, she's taking on extra gigs so she can fund her new tattoo and piercing habit.

Her first tattoo is something really safe, like a butterfly tramp-stamp, but it's not long before she's rocking a full sleeve. There's joy in decorating her body in ways she was never allowed to before. Now that her head's finally clear of corpo stims and hormones, she understands there was a rebel underneath the suit all along. She's primed and ready for her villain arc.

That's the headspace she's in when Johnny finds her. It doesn't take more than a few whispered words before the two of them are hanging out on overpasses, lobbing grenades at Arasaka armored vehicles.

[alarrytale]

Marte, but being totally fair, Louis’ team has actually done a good job considering where they started. They got his album to No. 1, helped him pull off a successful festival, and made a lot of things happen that he prioritized and people thought weren’t possible. They keep him in the media, and honestly, the only reason people are saying he should switch teams is because of the whole Zara thing and some fan complaints.

And honestly, the fan stuff seems ridiculous to me. Like, LTHQ literally said no to their ideas because they had already carried out other plans and didn’t have the budget. No one asked them to do all that, and on top of it, they were asking for special treatment.

Oh, LTHQ you're not very slick.

They got his album a number 1. Really, so LTHQ should get the credit for UK louies/larries bying ten physical copies? And not UAs and fans telling each other which record stores were out of CD's and vinyls and which still had some left to beat Bruce for number 1. It was not fans cheering each other on, sending their UK moots money to help get that number 1. It was all LTHQ.

They pulled off a successful festival? They did, but they could have pulled twice the amount of fans if they knew basic business, which they apparently don't. The festival has gotten less successful over the years as well, not more. And what other things have LTHQ made happen for him that people thought weren't possible? Making a great guy into a tool? Then yes, i agree.

They keep him in the media, no they do not. He hasn't been papped a single time or had a single article, concert review in a large tabloid, not until this horrible stunt. Louis being written about is a rare thing.

The only reason he should switch teams is because of ZMcD? And some minor fan complaints? Hello? Do you live under a rock. Speaking of rocks. Red Rocks? Horribly handled, Asia cancellation, Indonesia downsize, Greece venue change, not to mention cheating on wives/gf with fans and abusing their power and position, and drinking on the job. Creating a toxic environment? Making Joni quit over it? Do you want me to go on?

Killing fan intitiatives is number 1 on the do not do list. Pissing off fans is number 2. They always seems do be able to do both flawlessly.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Marina Dunbar at The Guardian:

Donald Trump handed Elon Musk even more control over the federal government by preparing an executive order requiring agencies to cooperate with Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), a team Trump has assembled, when told to cut their workforces and limit the hiring of replacements. The White House order, titled Implementing The President’s “Department of Government Efficiency” Workforce Optimization Initiative, said the goal is to “restore accountability to the American public” and that “this order commences a critical transformation of the Federal bureaucracy. By eliminating waste, bloat, and insularity, my Administration will empower American families, workers, taxpayers, and our system of Government itself.” The order notes that agency heads “will undertake plans for large-scale reductions in force and determine which agency components (or agencies themselves) may be eliminated or combined because their functions aren’t required by law”. It also said that agencies should “hire no more than one employee for every four employees that depart from federal service” and “shall not fill any vacancies for career appointments that the DOGE Team Lead assesses should not be filled, unless the Agency Head determines the positions should be filled”. Exceptions are planned for military personnel and agencies dealing in immigration, law enforcement and public safety. Trump and Musk are encouraging federal workers to resign in return for financial incentives, though a judge is currently reviewing the legality of the orders. Administration officials said more than 65,000 workers have opted to take the buyout option.

[...] The X owner reportedly said that there are some good people in the federal bureaucracy, but that they need to be held accountable, and referred to Doge as an “unelected” fourth branch. “The people voted for major government reform and that’s what the people are going to get,” he said. “That’s what democracy is all about.” Musk also described himself as an open book despite criticism towards his lack of transparency in reshaping the federal government. He joked that the scrutiny was like a “daily proctology exam”.

PINO Donald Trump signs an executive order to grant Elon Musk, the real “President”, even more power to destroy America requiring agencies to bend to the so-called DOGE.

See Also:

AP, via HuffPost: Trump Signs Executive Order To Continue Downsizing Federal Workforce

TNR: Trump Signs Order on DOGE as Elon Musk Stands Next to Him Watching

[kindheart525]

It was time for River to take some time off and regroup. The loss of her degree in such a fashion was simply too much of a shock for her to go on as normal. She needed time to emotionally recover, but this was different from the other breaks she had taken over the years.

All those other times, she had plans to return to the exact work she’d been doing all along once she was finished resting. Her body might have been idle, but her mind never was. But now she wasn’t entirely sure how she was going to proceed.

“Why ever would you throw that away?”

Yngvlid protested in her straightforward but caring way as she helped River sort through her supplies and older creations.

“It was never well-received. Surely you remember? Some reviews were downright scathing.”

River shuddered at the mere memory of it.

“But why get rid of it? Some ponies won’t be satisfied by anything you make. If you threw away everything that got a nasty review, then your shop would be totally empty.”

Stockholm was completely right, and under normal circumstances River would have agreed. Under normal circumstances, River could take the heat. But she didn’t quite realize that River wasn’t in that mood right now.

If anything, it was a reminder of just how much hostility she’d been subjected to over the years.

“Then it will go in the ‘maybe’ pile,” River set the controversial garment aside, not wanting to press it further.

But she was also a little bit annoyed, not particularly with her friends but with her uncertain situation. She was hardly ever uncertain, even at her lowest point. The last time she really felt anything like this was when she was a filly, before she came up with her business at all.

In true River fashion, though, she still had some convictions.

“You must understand, I am not quitting.”

She asserted.

“My craft, that is,” she added. “How could I? It would do me no good to suppress whatever creative vision comes my way. My mothers raised me much better than that.”

At this, she smiled a little, feeling a touch of confidence thinking of her family.

“So, surely this is a mere spring cleaning, as you say?” Yngvlid asked. “Not…more? If not your craft, is there something you are giving up?”

“That’s precisely the matter, I cannot be sure.”

River’s glimmer of confidence quickly replaced itself with that old uncertainty.

“Perhaps I will downsize. Decline the media attention, the interviews and speeches. The fashion shows. Close the shop and do private commission work.”

Stockholm gasped in horror at the thought of River closing her shop, her lifelong project which was practically her baby. Yngvlid was just as shocked, but approached it with more logic.

“Then how will you attract new clients? The very creatures who need these garments may never hear of you this way.”

“There’s word of mouth, I suppose—“

Ding ding! The front door bell to her mother’s boutique suddenly chimed.

“Oh, your moms aren’t home!” Stockholm exclaimed. “Boot, baby, could you see who it is?” But she clearly intended to check for herself as she left the room.

River turned back to Yngvlid. “I know it isn’t ideal. But I can’t imagine what else I could do.”

Suddenly, they heard Stockholm’s voice chirp out:

“Oh! Hi, Obsidian!”

River’s head suddenly jerked up as if she’d been caught in the beam of a flashlight.

A mare she had not seen in the flesh in months. And yet, despite her better judgment after their last conversation, somepony she thought of often, a memory she longed for.

Her ears twitched as she tried to listen to what she had to say, but the mare’s voice was unusually quiet.

“Well I’m not quite sure if she wants to see—er, if she wants more company right now. She’s awfully busy,” Stockholm answered more audibly. “I can ask!”

“Please, let her in,” River called out before she could do so, getting up to meet her guest herself and dismissing Stockholm from her role.

And there she was. Her oldest friend, Obsidian Stone. The young mare stood with her head bowed meekly, almost looking like she was holding in tears but not in her usual dramatic, whimpery way.

“Hello,” River started off. “Welcome.”

“Oh, Morgie—I mean, River, I—“ Obsidian reached out a hoof, her foreleg arched like she wanted to hug her, but then pulled it back. “I heard what happened. Auntie Rarity told Mama and she told the rest of us—it’s just awful! They took your degree!? I just can’t imagine how you’re feelin’ about now.”

This was the kind of reaction she’d been getting from most of her cousins and aunts, outrage and sympathy on her behalf. She appreciated it, she really did, having so many on her side.

“Thank you,” she said, but she was still a little distrustful. She expected Obsidian to come up with some kind of defense for the school and how River could have done things differently. It was what happened last time.

But one question lingered on her mind.

“You came all this way? From the Academy? Surely you’re missing nearly a full week of classes with such a trip.”

“Well…”

Obsidian fidgeted shyly.

“Some students may have gotten expelled for participatin’ in the protest.”

River was honestly shocked to hear this. Obsidian!? At a protest!? She wouldn’t have believed it in a million years. But despite their conflicts she also didn’t know Obsidian as someone to lie, not in all their years knowing each other.

And she knew how hard Obbi had worked and dreamed to get into that Academy, almost as much as her. How they’d both jumped for joy at each other’s acceptance letters. So she was overwhelmed with sympathy, especially knowing how badly her own loss had stung.

“Oh, dear! Expelled? That’s simply awful!”

She wrapped a concerned claw around Obbi’s back, but then removed it.

“Ahem, please, do come in.”

River didn’t intend this as a show of forgiveness, although she did long to have her best friend back in her life. But she was anxious to know more about this protest, especially from somepony who had been there. And find out why this pony was there.

“I’m simply appalled at how low the Academy has stooped,” she said, indignant but still hurting from the loss. “For it seems the protesters were making perfectly reasonable demands! Every critique that Miss Tourmaline made was positively true.”

Obsidian’s ears perked up at the mention of Tourmaline’s name. “How much did you watch?”

“I couldn’t bear to view the news segments,” River replied. “Or hardly the papers.”

The only reason she was so curious now was because she knew she didn’t have to hear what the administration was saying about her this way.

“But I did read one article. One which quoted Miss Tourmaline and an anonymous source, who credited myself and my business as a source of inspiration for the demonstration.”

Obsidian grinned sheepishly despite herself. “Well, I can see why she would be inspired. I mean, after that speech—“

“Oh, curse me! We shouldn’t keep the girls waiting any longer than we have.”

River interrupted her before she could let anything slip, motioning for Obbi to follow her to the back of the boutique. As they went further, Obbi noticed boxes scattered around, which was so unlike what anyone in this family would do. They were usually so neat, even with their hoards of jewels.

And then she saw River’s two other friends, Stockholm and Yngvlid, stacking some of them, and she felt the same pang of guilt she felt seeing them at River’s Alumni Weekend speech. Knowing that they had supported River so much more in her work.

“Miss Obsidian! Hello!”

Yngvlid came up to her and bumped heads with her the way yaks bump horns as a greeting, while Stockholm waved from across the room.

“Hi! Again!” She giggled.

Clearly they had no ill feeling towards her, so it was irrational for Obsidian to fear they would. Or to think that River would invite her into her home if she didn’t care for her as well…even if she hadn’t been the best friend lately.

Besides, River was dealing with a crisis right now. That was what mattered. She just needed friends to be there for her and it was no time to worry about who was the best one.

The crisis in question was worse than Obbi thought.

“Oh dear, you’re not throwing these away, are you?”

She looked down at the boxes that were clearly divided into separate piles, like what one does when they are trying to cut down.

“I have not decided,” River said, slightly annoyed at having to explain it again. “Not all of it, certainly. I simply need to reevaluate my priorities.”

“Reevaluate? Like a career change?” Obsidian was crestfallen as she looked between Yngvlid and Stockholm, who both looked a mix between disappointed and uncertain.

“It’s ‘cause they took your degree, isn’t it?” Then she became more angry, thinking of what the Academy had done. “Eau de Rose doesn’t know a lick of what they’re doing! You can’t let ‘em tell you you ain’t qualified! They can’t take your talent!”

“Quite frankly, that’s the least of my concern,” River assured her. “I’ll get my degree back without issue. My mothers have found an excellent lawyer who sees this for the horridly illegal publicity stunt it is. And,” she added, “such a suit will likely undo the expulsions of most, if not all, of the students present.”

Such an assurance would have made Obsidian feel better before, knowing that she could get admitted back into her dream school and continue on as normal. But now it didn’t feel good enough. Not after all that creatures like River and Tourmaline had been through, not after the Academy had shown its true colors to all of them. It just wouldn’t feel right to go back.

“I know I’m talented,” River continued. “You’re absolutely right, that will never cease to be. But every time I try to share it, some bloody shit like this is thrown at me!”

She held her head in her claws like the very thought of it gave her a headache.

“How can I go on like this if this is all that will happen? I simply need time. I need to clear my mind, and my closet. And you all are such dears for helping me so far.”

“But Morgie—“ Obsidian wanted to tell River all about how this was her dream. How she’d always wanted to show her ideas to the world and it had finally come true. She knew that perhaps better than anyone.

But did she? She certainly hadn’t done a very good job of showing it. Not until the protest, and that wasn’t really her doing anyway. A pep talk from somepony like her wouldn’t help. She already knew this herself so she decided to shut up before River could point it out to her.

“Has this one been sorted through?”

“No, you may go right ahead,” River answered without more than a brief glance. “I believe that one has mostly smaller items, like scraps. Much of it could go in the garbage pile.”

When Obbi opened it, she saw River was right. This box was filled with mostly scraps. Hardly any would be salvageable for a dress, but she had a specialty for accessories and knew that even a single loose sequin could become part of something beautiful.

And then, at the very bottom, she found something familiar.

A bracelet of blue velvet intertwined with silver and gold thread and studded with beads, and another of tinsel and pink yarn. Two items she thought she’d never see again.

“Whatcha find there?” Stockholm asked over her shoulder.

“This…” Obbi’s voice came out choked with emotion. “This was mine.”

“You all may take what’s yours, I surely have some of our belongings mixed up—“

River stopped and turned to look when she heard the emotion in Obbi’s voice.

“Are those…”

“Our old friendship bracelets.”

The dragony suddenly dropped what she was doing and turned around fully, walking over to Obbi cautiously like a dragon who had just discovered an abandoned horde.

“I haven’t seen these in so long.”

Yngvlid and Stockholm weren’t sure how River would react to this. They had heard bits and pieces about her fallout with Obsidian; not very much, but enough to know that the two of them could be going through a million different emotions right now.

“They’re gorgeous, and so intricate! You both truly have an eye for detail, whenever you made these,” Yngvlid led the way with some of her optimism. “River, yours fits you so well! To a tee, as they say here.”

“And yours goes with your bow, Obsidian!” Stockholm added. “You got each other’s vibe just right.”

“It was so long ago…We were only little girls, barely before my molt.”

River took hers and contemplated it, then looked over at Obbi’s.

“I knew you loved…love, still, shiny trinkets, and of course the color pink. It had to be personal as much as everything I create. It took all of my claw and horn work to get the pattern just so, with all the…”

The bracelet was stitched with hearts, a symbol of a closeness they had so long ago.

Obbi sniffled a little, consumed with sentimental nostalgia, though no tears fell just yet.

“And I knew you always had expensive taste. You like the finer things in life—and deserve ‘em too! So I worked real hard to find only the best materials. Like the kind of thread that glitters, and the kind of beads that look like pearls. And for the bracelet itself—“

She reached over and stroked the deep blue velvet, touching River’s claw in the process.

“Well, I couldn’t find any other way, but I cut a tassel off one of Auntie Rarity’s dresses for it.”

The young mare expected River to be upset at her for ruining a piece of fashion, and she feared she was as she initially responded.

“I can’t believe you did that.”

But as Obsidian looked up from her shameful downward gaze, River looked touched. Honored, even.

“Oh my, you rebel! I never knew you could do such a thing! Why, you told me it was scrap fabric!”

“Remember how your mum reacted?” Stockholm laughed. “There was a whole investigation! You and Boot got practically interrogated!”

“Mummy was about to turn full detective on us,” River chuckled too. “She only refrained after Mama convinced her to let it be. By Ardor, how did I not make the connection?”

Obbi also laughed along, more at ease about the tassel but still remorseful over something else.

“If I could go and do that then I don’t know why I would’ve thought you were wrong for speakin’ against the system. It’s a similar thing, I guess, breakin’ some rules for a lil’ creativity.”

“I still can’t believe you were present for the protest!” River added. “Even at the risk of your own career!”

At this information, the two creatures who weren’t present for the initial revelation had a million questions, about what she heard, who she talked to, any other insider scoop she had.

“Of course, River, ‘cause I love you.”

It had been too long since she had said those words to River, yet they rolled off her tongue like she still said them every day. As she reached out to hold River’s claw, she almost became emotional again, especially as they made contact and River didn’t pull away.

“Lots of creatures love you too. Tourmaline, for one, is real inspired by you. She’d not only love to meet you one day but she also wants to get into inclusive design like you. We were talkin’ and she said she wants to open a hat shop for mules and horned creatures too!”

“You are friends with this Tourmaline?” Yngvlid inquired excitedly. “If she opens this shop, do let me know! My cousin Yigrid would adore it, and many other yaks from my home.”

“I’d buy from her as well!” Stockholm concurred. “I know there’s a market for curly horns too.”

“Think of the options! Already there’s much more for longer coats,” Yngvlid beamed. “The first dress you made for me, River, I still adore it!”

“Ooh! I remember that!” Something suddenly caught Stockholm’s eye. “The one that looked like this, right?”

From the box, she pulled out a scrap of gold, glittery fabric.

“Oh, yes!” Yng took it from her.

“Of course I kept it all, for you kept begging for size adjustments as we grew up. I suppose it’s one of my finer creations if you couldn’t bear to outgrow it,” River teased good-naturedly.

“But of course,” Yng said playfully as if she refused to fall for the silliness, but then became earnest. “It was the first ever dress not from Yakyakistan that fit me. Everything else I wore before was far too tight, no fit for my coat! And they were far too plain.”

Yng stared off into the distance as if recalling a memory.

“I was far too plain.”

She continued, “I did everything I could to fit in when I first arrived, but I was no longer myself. I was lucky to have one friend, who may not have understood fully but did learn to stand up and tell the, er, neighsayers, as you call them? To bug off…“

Acknowledging Obbi, “…much like the ponies protesting at Eau de Rose…”

“But, along with Yigrid, you girls were some of the first who truly knew what it was like. The dress fit me perfectly and had the style I wanted to show to Equestria—sparking and bold, not plain or dull. I learned to love this part of my home before knowing you, but you helped me love it even more. I always loved that you were helping other creatures feel the same.”

Stockholm felt such a strong connection with Yngvlid’s story that she was inspired to add her own perspective.

“Like me, too! Plenty of ponies know me for all my history knowledge, but I was also just the ‘weird’ girl. If they did know about my job then maybe they thought I talked too much about it, and if they didn’t, they just thought I looked weird. And I know I’m smart, but I want to be pretty, too! I always felt like it came so much more easily to most ponies.”

River was still taking it all in, but she found another scrap in her box that brought up a memory.

“Well, this dress was certainly gorgeous on you.”

“YES!” Stockholm snatched it up quickly, but she was just so thrilled. “I remember this! I loved that fashion show so much! And everypony was there! I got so much applause even when my face was covered in pimples and I was kind of clumsy. I was beautiful and I felt beautiful because I was a part of all this.”

She leaned in towards River with a smirk, waving a finger like she was sure there would be a ring on it in the future.

“Boot definitely thought so too, so thank you for that.”

River couldn’t help but laugh at this, such an unexpected impact she’d made, but this wasn’t even the end of it.

“Do you remember all the fashion shows we watched, Morgie?” Obbi asked, holding her claws and looking her in the eye. “How bad we wanted to be models like those mares on the screen? How bad YOU wanted to be a model? And now here you are, makin’ that dream come true for many. Yngvlid, Stockholm, and so many more.”

Now River couldn’t even respond, she was so overcome with emotion but this time it was the positive kind, not the kind that broke her down but a feeling that built her up.

“Th…thank you girls. Thank all of you. I didn’t know…how much I needed to hear this.”

She took a moment to let herself feel it all as her friends gathered around to embrace her, each of them being an integral part of her career in some way.

“You’re right,” she said once she began to gain her composure. “You’re absolutely right. This is what it was all about. So no creature would have to feel like I did. Like we did.”

She looked specifically at Yng and Stock.

“I only wish I wasn’t the only one, that I could more easily shop from others instead of making everything for myself. It’s exhausting, dealing with that, and the press, and—“

She didn’t want to get into it all again.

“I’d like to be the one on the runway for once, wearing someone else’s design. I’d like more time, to do more with my life. Perhaps find love, start my own family…”

She looked around at the other three ladies.

“…and simply just be with my friends.”

She pondered a little.

“But I’m not sure I want to downsize. Not as much as I thought. I had truly forgotten how important this cause was, and I cannot give it up. But I cannot give up my other dreams either.”

“That’s what the point of the protest was, isn’t it?”

Obbi pondered.

“Gettin’ more inclusive education and diversity in fashion schools so there’d be more designers like you. Then you wouldn’t have to do it all. That was our goal this whole time and we won’t let Eau de Rose stop us.”

As Obbi went on with details of the protest, Stock’s face twisted in deep thought with what became a dawning realization.

“Say,” she began, “There was an ‘anonymous source’ mentioned in the papers, who clearly knew Tourmaline really well, and understood the goals of the protest clearly too. You’ve got an awful lot to say about both. Do you know this individual? Or are you Miss Anonymous?”

“Well…”

Obbi wasn’t too keen on revealing herself, since like she said many times before the real credit went to River. But she couldn’t hide in her expression that she did have a small but important part to play.

“Oh! Oh, it is you!” Yngvlid exclaimed.

“It was the bare minimum of what I could’ve done,” Obbi was adamant to explain. “What anypony could’ve done. A whole lot of us should be doin’ more, in fact. If anythin’, I was just sayin’ what River said this whole time, makin’ sure her message was heard. Like givin’ her a megaphone.”

But nevertheless, River was starting to tear up again hearing this.

“This…this is just what I needed. All I ever wanted, simply for you to be with me on this. After all the other ways you supported me, I needed this perhaps most of all.”

Now it was Obbi’s turn to start crying.

“Oh, Morgie, I was so awful to you, tellin’ you to tone it down! How could I have said such things while you were dealin’ with so much? When you were just tellin’ the truth? It took me way too long, far longer than you gals—“

She looked at Stockholm and Yngvlid.

“—but I figured out what I needed to do, and that was to help get your message out there. Because there’s so much to fix. And ‘cause you’re my best friend, Diamond, and I love you.”

Then in an act of thankfulness, relief, and joy, River placed her own friendship bracelet in Obbi’s hoof, and took Obbi’s in her own claws as she tied it around her hoof. Obbi quickly caught on and tied River’s bracelet on her right after.

“I love you too, Little Pink.”

Then the two friends embraced, and cried, their bridge rebuilt at long last and now stronger than ever. They were a team, just as much as the other two creatures who were letting the oldest and closest friends have their moment now but would soon join in.

Whatever was thrown their way, they could now face together as a united front. Nothing would be able to break them apart like before or crush the dreams they were working towards. The plan they would soon come up with would help them come true in a way that none of them, individually, could have imagined.

~~~~~~~~~~

Previous: Backfire

Next: Crocus

[rjzimmerman]

Until a final court ruling, this legal opinion from the Trump Department of Justice is just that: a legal opinion. But knowing trump, he will take that as a win and take the initial steps to dismantle national monuments.

Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:

The Department of Justice, in an opinion issued Tuesday, argues President Donald Trump has the power to review and eliminate national monuments to make way for development and resource extraction on public lands—walking back a previous opinion from the department that found only Congress can dismantle a national monument.

Since Trump took office, his administration has touted the idea of shrinking or eliminating national monuments his predecessors created. Tuesday’s opinion, which stems from a White House request after it attempted to eliminate two monuments earlier this year, has no influence on case law that has upheld the protection of national monuments, but it does offer insight into how the Trump administration is likely to justify dismantling protected areas in court.

Presidents have the power to create new national monuments using the Antiquities Act. Signed by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, the law was used to first protect the Grand Canyon and other areas before they became national parks, with more than 160 areas having been protected. The opinion comes just days after rallies were held across the country calling for the continued protection of national monuments.

Legal interpretations of the Antiquities Act have long been guided by a 1938 opinion issued by then-Attorney General Homer Cummings, which found only Congress could eliminate a national monument, not the president.

[Deputy Assistant Attorney General Lanora Pettit] criticized that opinion’s findings, saying that “for large parcels with multiple monuments, there is no principled distinction between determining that one object is not worth protecting or all of them—and, by operation of law, no reasoned distinction between reducing and eliminating the parcel.”

Mark Squillace, a professor of natural resources law at the University of Colorado Law School, said in an email that the 1938 opinion determined the Antiquities Act “did not specifically authorize future presidents to reverse the decisions of their predecessors.” The power to reverse a monument rests with Congress, he said, but Congress has never used it.

“We should not forget that these are public lands,” he said. “As such, protecting these shared public resources, including the cultural, biological and aesthetic resources, on our public lands should be the government’s management priority. In this sense, doubts about the president’s authority should be resolved in favor of protecting those resources, because once they are gone they are likely lost forever.”

[the1younevernoticed]

Federal worker email series continued (VA social work):

I am editing some things down. I will be sharing non-political facts and personal concerns as they relate to me on a personal level through my job. My opinions and beliefs do not represent the VA, the government, or any political party. These posts are to encourage transparency for all.

The Fork in the Road email.

I know most everyone has seen the email for federal workers titled The Fork in the Road. I’ll post the full email we received here:

1)

Return to Office: The substantial majority of federal employees who have been working remotely since Covid will be required to return to their physical offices five days a week. Going forward, we also expect our physical offices to undergo meaningful consolidation and divestitures, potentially resulting in physical office relocations for a number of federal workers.

2)

Performance culture: The federal workforce should be comprised of the best America has to offer. We will insist on excellence at every level — our performance standards will be updated to reward and promote those that exceed expectations and address in a fair and open way those who do not meet the high standards which the taxpayers of this country have a right to demand.

3)

More streamlined and flexible workforce: While a few agencies and even branches of the military are likely to see increases in the size of their workforce, the majority of federal agencies are likely to be downsized through restructurings, realignments, and reductions in force. These actions are likely to include the use of furloughs and the reclassification to at-will status for a substantial number of federal employees.

4)

Enhanced standards of conduct: The federal workforce should be comprised of employees who are reliable, loyal, trustworthy, and who strive for excellence in their daily work. Employees will be subject to enhanced standards of suitability and conduct as we move forward. Employees who engage in unlawful behavior or other misconduct will be prioritized for appropriate investigation and discipline, including termination.

Each of the pillars outlined above will be pursued in accordance with applicable law, consistent with your agency's policies, and to the extent permitted under relevant collective-bargaining agreements.

If you choose to remain in your current position, we thank you for your renewed focus on serving the American people to the best of your abilities and look forward to working together as part of an improved federal workforce. At this time, we cannot give you full assurance regarding the certainty of your position or agency but should your position be eliminated you will be treated with dignity and will be afforded the protections in place for such positions.

If you choose not to continue in your current role in the federal workforce, we thank you for your service to your country and you will be provided with a dignified, fair departure from the federal government utilizing a deferred resignation program. This program begins effective January 28 and is available to all federal employees until February 6. If you resign under this program, you will retain all pay and benefits regardless of your daily workload and will be exempted from all applicable in-person work requirements until September 30, 2025 (or earlier if you choose to accelerate your resignation for any reason). The details of this separation plan can be found below.

Whichever path you choose, we thank you for your service to The United States of America.

*********************************************************************

Upon review of the below deferred resignation letter, if you wish to resign:

1)

Select “Reply” to this email. You must reply from your government account. A reply from an account other than your government account will not be accepted.

2)

Type the word “Resign” into the body of this reply email. Hit “Send”.

THE LAST DAY TO ACCEPT THE DEFERRED RESIGNATION PROGRAM IS FEBRUARY 6, 2025.

Deferred resignation is available to all full-time federal employees except for military personnel of the armed forces, employees of the U.S. Postal Service, those in positions related to immigration enforcement and national security, and those in any other positions specifically excluded by your employing agency.

DEFERRED RESIGNATION LETTER

January 28, 2025

Please accept this letter as my formal resignation from employment with my employing agency, effective September 30, 2025. I understand that I have the right to accelerate, but not extend, my resignation date if I wish to take advantage of the deferred resignation program. I also understand that if I am (or become) eligible for early or normal retirement before my resignation date, that I retain the right to elect early or normal retirement (once eligible) at any point prior to my resignation date.

Given my impending resignation, I understand I will be exempt from any “Return to Office” requirements pursuant to recent directives and that I will maintain my current compensation and retain all existing benefits (including but not limited to retirement accruals) until my final resignation date.

I am certain of my decision to resign and my choice to resign is fully voluntary. I understand my employing agency will likely make adjustments in response to my resignation including moving, eliminating, consolidating, reassigning my position and tasks, reducing my official duties, and/or placing me on paid administrative leave until my resignation date.

I am committed to ensuring a smooth transition during my remaining time at my employing agency. Accordingly, I will assist my employing agency with completing reasonable and customary tasks and processes to facilitate my departure.

I understand that my acceptance of this offer will be sent to the Office of Personnel Management (“OPM”) which will then share it with my agency employer. I hereby consent to OPM receiving, reviewing, and forwarding my acceptance.

*********************************************************************

Upon submission of your resignation, you will receive a confirmation email acknowledging receipt of your email. Any replies to this email shall be for the exclusive use of accepting the deferred resignation letter. Any other replies to this email will not be reviewed, forwarded, or retained other than as required by applicable federal records laws.

Once your resignation is validly sent and received, the human resources department of your employing agency will contact you to complete additional documentation, if any.

OPM is authorized to send this email under Executive Order 9830 and 5 U.S.C. §§ 301, 1103, 1104, 2951, 3301, 6504, 8347, and 8461. OPM intends to use your response to assist in federal workforce reorganization efforts in conjunction with employing agencies. See 88 Fed. Reg. 56058; 80 Fed. Reg. 72455 (listing routine uses). Response to this email is voluntary. Although you must respond to take advantage of the deferred resignation offer, there is no penalty for nonresponse.

To see this from an official federal service is so damn jarring. And it gives us hints on how this will likely play out.

This new email was sent in waves directly to federal front line staff. We were informing our supervisors of the email before they ever received it. There were panicked messages in our online chats to see if this was real. Especially with the passage about our jobs not being guaranteed.

I admit, with the mental exhaustion they have put us through, and the promise to be paid through September, I was tempted at first read.

I fantasized about opening up a private practice with the money, and setting myself and my fiancé up to finally try and be debt free. It would be a hell of a boon. One desperately needed.

But I didn’t trust it. It was too vague.

So I did some more searching. And like many others I found the Twitter “Fork in the Road” email from when Elon took over Twitter a few years back.

We know from Elon’s previous “Fork” email plan that he did not keep promises

These employees had promised pay broken and in times such as these, with rising costs, most Americans can’t afford to miss a single paycheck.

There are no guarantees for federal employees to be treated any better.

There have been talks of pay caps, of employees being forced to work through September even if they choose this option, and worst of all, not being paid at all.

With those in the government reminding citizens that congress controls funding, and that there is no budget for this, we are all sitting with what feels like uncertainty manifested as a weight on our collective shoulders.

We have no way to know if we will lose coworkers to this. And it takes an average of 6+ months to onboard someone into federal service (yes literally. I took 6 months from my FJO “final job offer letter” to get into my position). And that doesn’t account for all the hiring freezes. And work never stops. We will just shoulder any works that comes in and try to make sure our patients are still getting helped.

Cheesy as it sounds, as I stated before, this is really weighing on the mental health of the staff around me. As well as myself. I can feel the fear and uncertainty in the air. All we can do is keep working. And it doesn’t feel right

Disclaimer: this post is for educational purposes and is in no way supporting any particular political party and is not meant to incite any political activity

[mariacallous]

It ended, of course, with a tweet. Late on Wednesday evening, Elon Musk announced the official end of his short, traumatic tenure as the head of a made-up agency called the Department of Government Efficiency. Musk’s post on X, the social-media network he owns and had sought to weaponize in service of a radical cost-costing assault on the federal government, was brief. After thanking Donald Trump for “the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending,” the world’s richest man, deflated but still defiant, added, “The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.”

The reviews of Musk’s rampage through Washington have been, deservedly, vicious: Who, during the past few crazy months, could have possibly failed to take note of his toxic combination of entitlement and ignorance, his vastly overstated claims, and his move-fast-and-break-things ethos that has resulted in wreckage that will take years to fully assess? Musk, the largest individual donor in a single election cycle in American history, seemed to truly believe what his critics feared—that his hundreds of millions of dollars spent on behalf of Trump and Republican causes had purchased him an outsized share of the Presidency itself. He sought to collect in unprecedented fashion, installing himself in the White House at Trump’s side, helicoptering around on Marine One with his young son in tow, speaking at Cabinet meetings though he held no formal Senate-confirmed seat at the table. He demanded sensitive government data on millions of Americans, empowered a former intern known online as Big Balls, and blew up the U.S.’s foreign-aid program. In February, he cavorted onstage at a conservative event with a chainsaw—no metaphorical subtlety there—and, when he fired thousands of workers and abolished entire agencies, he became the gleeful personification of the G.O.P.’s decades-long campaign to denigrate and downsize America’s federal government.

In a round of exit interviews this week, Musk has sounded all the predictable notes of a naïve billionaire businessman mugged by Washington’s political reality. He told the Washington Post that he found things were “much worse” than he’d realized inside the federal bureaucracy, and that it actually turned out to be an “uphill battle” to take that chainsaw to the government. In an interview on “CBS News Sunday Morning,” he started the messy work of separating himself from the President. “I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly,” Musk admitted, given that Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax cuts for the rich and spending cuts for the poor will add trillions of dollars to the budget deficit. Stating the obvious, which, these days, counts as an act of lèse-majesté among the Republican sycophants who surround Trump, Musk added that the measure “undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing.” (What a “lie,” Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, said, though it was not.) Trump himself, as is often the case, was embarrassingly direct about why he had sold out Musk. “We have to get a lot of votes, we can’t be cutting—we need to get a lot of support,” he told reporters in the White House on Wednesday when asked specifically about the comment from Musk. Revealingly, Trump never even mentioned Musk’s name.

Watching Trump casually brush off the sidekick who stuck to him like glue for most of the Administration’s first few months, I couldn’t help but think of Reince Priebus, the first-term White House chief of staff, who was dumped via tweet while deboarding Air Force One and left on the tarmac of Joint Base Andrews as Trump’s motorcade roared off without him. The truth is that Trump can hardly afford one of those messy divorces at which both he and Musk excel; he still needs Musk, who has talked of spending another hundred million dollars of his fortune to help pro-Trump groups before next year’s midterm elections. The oligarch may have left the building, but it’s not clear the President can afford to live without him.

I was in Madison Square Garden last October when Musk, during an election rally for Trump, claimed that he would slash an incredible two trillion dollars, at least, from the U.S. budget—a remarkable bit of bravado that got less attention than the rally’s headline-making racism and its Trump-as-Dear-Leader vibe. Later, Musk dialled his ambitions back to cutting a cool trillion dollars. Of course, that was never going to happen, either, as anyone who’d ever spent a minute in Washington could have told Musk, had he cared to listen.

For all of Musk’s breathless early claims of “revolution,” the final tally of his efforts appears to have been somewhere around a hundred and fifty billion dollars. And even that is unlikely to stand. Many of the savings that Musk bragged about on the DOGE website proved to be nonexistent; numerous agencies and departments he attacked are now suing to block the wave of firings and cuts that he set in motion. In the end, his reckless approach to cutting, with little or no thought to the consequences, may cost the government as much as a hundred and thirty-five billion dollars this fiscal year alone, according to recent estimates from the Partnership for Public Service. Turns out it’s not cheap to place tens of thousands of workers on paid leave and to rehire mistakenly fired employees, never mind dealing with the lost productivity of a traumatized and uncertain workforce. Who’d have thought?

Musk’s failure to follow through on his boasts, though, should not detract from a clear-eyed assessment of the extraordinary amount of damage he succeeded in wreaking. The wise men are laughing Musk out of town, and I get it. His “performative vandalism,” as Jonah Goldberg put it on CNN, was in some respects just a pernicious, highly dangerous new variant of a Washington perennial: the pol who makes promises he cannot keep. But it is hard to think of any other unelected official who has done so much harm to the U.S. government in such a short period of time. The fact that the deficit may get even bigger at the end of the day only worsens the injury.

A few hours before Musk’s announcement, I spoke with one of his many thousands of victims. Until a few weeks ago, Mary Boyle was a commissioner at the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the historically bipartisan agency that, for more than fifty years, has insured that America’s car seats and toaster ovens and baby strollers are safe. Boyle, one of three Democratic appointees on the commission, recounted how Musk’s men had effectively ended her office’s work in a matter of hours. First came the rumor, on the evening of Wednesday, May 7th: “DOGE is coming.” By 2 P.M. the next day, two young men had appeared at the agency’s offices, in Bethesda, Maryland. At 3:45 P.M., Boyle and the other commissioners received an e-mail from the commission’s acting Republican chairman, informing them that he planned to bring on the two DOGErs who, “at no expense to the Commission,” would help the agency “with the assessment and enhancement of internal processes and operational procedures.” The commissioners had until 6 P.M., he said, to let him know “whether I have your support.” It would be funny if it weren’t the kind of thing that should have remained inconceivable in a functioning democracy: Here are the guys who are going to put us out of business, and they come real cheap. Boyle sent her reply, a single-word e-mail: “No.” Not even an hour later, while pulled over at a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike, she received a response of sorts, from Trent Morse, the deputy head of the White House’s personnel office: “Mary, on behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position on the Consumer Product Safety Commission is terminated effectively immediately. Thank you for your service.”

It did not seem to matter that the Consumer Product Safety Commission had been set up by Congress, had its budget provided by Congress, and had its commissioners confirmed by Congress. The law itself governing the agency, first passed back in 1972, could not be more clear: there were only two reasons to fire a commissioner—“neglect of duty” or “malfeasance in office.” Boyle now finds herself as the lead plaintiff in a case she never expected to file: Boyle v. Trump. Although the attack on her agency was “brazen” and “baldly illegal,” Boyle told me that she knows it just might succeed. The day after she and her colleagues filed their lawsuit last week, the Supreme Court indicated that it might strike down the precedent dating back to the New Deal era that protects the commissioners of independent agencies from being fired by the President. In the meantime, you can forget about new rules to restrict potentially dangerous ion batteries in e-bikes and scooters that the Consumer Product Safety Commission was working on. Thanks, Elon.

Musk’s casualties are not only in Washington but all over the world, in refugee camps and scientific labs whose funding was abruptly cut off, in national parks you can’t get into this summer, and in communities across the country where polluters will no longer be prosecuted. All of this upheaval “is going to affect the functioning of the government in ways we can’t even anticipate,” Boyle told me. She is right. We have been warned. 

[axvoter]

Update on my Review VII (WA 2025): Stop Pedophiles! Save kiddies!

Perhaps the most entertaining review to write during this WA state electoral cycle was that of Stop Pedophiles! Save kiddies! [sic] and there is yet more to say about them. As with my first review, I will refer to them as SPPK for convenience.

First, I noted how utterly anonymous the SPPK’s candidates are, with most listed only by initial and last name. Some scouting around has enabled me to identify at least a couple of them. One appears to be Radomar Kobryn-Coletti, who in 2019 claimed to have no commitment to any political party even though he worked in a role churning out far-right memes for the Facebook page of Fraser Anning, one of our most bilious senators of recent years (in a crowded field!). Kobryn-Coletti is down in 11th, while up in 3rd is an A. Middleton: this is Andrew Middleton, who is active in far-right “freedom” circles.

Middleton appears to have not gone ahead with a projected independent candidature and joined the SPPK instead. He has an Andrew for WA Facebook page, which, among some extreme stuff including “vaccine injury” covid conspiracism, includes a link to an already-defunct Independents for WA page. You can still view it via the Wayback Machine: here’s one version promoting him in January; and an updated version promoting a bunch of people that appears to have gone offline mid-February after the deadline to nominate for the election passed. It seems he was going to co-ordinate far-right independents, including some now associated with Group M, and others who haven’t stood at all.

Neither Middleton nor Kobryn-Coletti suggest anything good will come from the SPPK—and the party’s how-to-vote cards (HTVs) confirm this. They have registered a bunch of HTVs with the WA Electoral Commission, most of them after I drafted my original review and queued it to post. The page with all HTVs is here; use the filter options to select “Legislative Council cards by party” and scroll down.

They’re very rough HTVs, some of the most basic and crude I have seen, and they coalesce around messages for tougher punishment of paedophiles and greater police funding. WA last year passed new legislation to toughen and extend police monitoring of known sex offenders in the community, but this evidently isn’t far enough for SPPK, who appear to oppose any sort of community release for people convicted of sex crimes against minors. They would mandate life sentences for murdering police officers, despite the fact that removing discretion from judges can lead to negative outcomes and undermines the independence of the judiciary. Some of the HTVs specify that the SPPK would fund a police task force to the tune of $5 million annually, plus another $1 million for victim support groups; they do not explain how they came to this total and what gaps or shortfalls they seek to address with it beyond “moar cops!”

Not all their HTVs are emotive “protect kiddies” calls to action. It seems they’re using HTVs as their one way of disseminating policy. You won’t be surprised to learn they’re transphobes who insist on a gender binary, for instance. Although they’re passionate about protecting “kiddies”, they don’t seem to be a fan of young adults and think of them as ungrateful layabouts: they want to compel all Western Australians aged 18–22 to either serve in the Army Reserve or the Department of Fire and Emergency Services so that they can “become Heroes not victims”. This is SPPK’s idea of a bushfire policy! Another HTV states a housing policy: scrapping stamp duty for anyone over 60, ostensibly so they can downsize and free up family homes in WA. I can’t see this having any unintended consequences or being exploited in the slightest! (hoo boy I can)

Predictably they hate “the Greenies” and “their mad energy policies”, they want to ban all wind farms, and they support continued mining and gas exploration. The best of their HTVs on this theme claims “Greenies and the Left hate the family 4WD”, which, look, guilty as charged: I loathe motonormativity (car brain), desire much greater modal choice, and endorse policies that deprioritise cars in favour of public and active transport for a whole host of reasons. Giant road beasts in urban areas are dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists, they cause much greater wear of road surfaces, and they barely even fit into parking spaces, so, yes, tax them into oblivion. Instead, the SPPK want to slash the state diesel tax and they seem to be afraid that not just catering to the whims of 4WD drivers will send us back to using goat carts.

Some HTVs, such as this one, have an odd emphasis on getting things done in the first 100 days after the election. This “first 100 days” malarkey (which from my understanding has been borrowed from US political discourse) seems to be growing in popularity in Australia and NZ as a way for parties to suggest they are serious and for new governments to show they have entered office purposefully and are Doin Thangs. What it often means in practice is rushed policy with inadequate expert oversight or community input.

My favourite, though? The fat cats HTV, which depicts a fat politician with two cat heads. It uses the Democrats’ old “keep the bastards honest” slogan and suggests SPPK will be “an angry dog in the game”. Personally, I’d rather cool heads in parliament, not angry dogs—or people who cynically drum up fear about crimes against children to advance a far-right agenda.

Edit, 7 March: see a second update here