sol1056

[sol1056]

In the UX field, we call it findability. Just like in the alphabet, findability comes usability, because you can't use what you can't find.

So this was inspired by a discussion I had with a friend yesterday.

It started with me mentioning offhand that once upon a time, I had considered arguing with my university that they should publicly post their class schedules because technically, anyone is allowed to sit in on a class, but that's practically blocked off from the community by virtue of them not having access to when and where the courses are happening.

He immediately pulled up a public-facing version of the course scheduling system that I never knew existed and said something like "If people really wanted that information, they could find it."

Information accessibility is a big deal to me, so then I started to explain that "not knowing what you don't know" and the vast amount of info people have to sift through are real barriers to people obtaining information and also that "This doesn't exist," and "I can't find it," look exactly the same, so if people can't find something, they will eventually give up because of diminishing returns on the effort of looking for something that may not exist.

But he just kept saying different versions of "Well if people REALLY wanted it, they'd go find it," which really surprised me because he's liberal, very intelligent and very into philosophy, but he couldn't seem to see the logical end result of a philosophy about information access that basically comes down to "pull yourself up by the bootstraps (and if you can't, you didn't deserve to succeed)."

So he went on this rant about how the general public should simply know almost all information is out there and put in the effort to find it (without any outreach or effort to engage the public on this), and I said,

"You will be perpetually angry at how unmotivated and badly informed the public is with your current attitude. And it will never improve without people who do not have your attitude. This is the reality you are doomed to because of this perspective. It's neither good nor bad. I'm not faulting you for it, but no matter what you have to say to justify your perspective, this will always be the result."

Because any "BUT THE WORLD WOULD BE BETTER IF PEOPLE WOULD JUST ____" philosophy is USELESS if you expect "people" (i.e. the public at large) to spontaneously start or stop doing something without some kind of outside effort - an outreach campaign, an educational movement, an incentive, etc.

If you're falling into those kind of thought patterns, it's not going to be productive for you or society because you're always going to be mad, and you're never going to do anything to change the things that make you mad because you're too caught up in your own feelings of indignance and frustration.

[sol1056]

As a queer elder myself I tried with the younger queers but they’d rather listen to their cishet youtube/tiktok commentary channels that insist I’m sort of predator pedophile who makes Bad Representation by telling my own life stories that are gnc in a “heteronormative” way so I am so good, actually, thanks. They can figure themselves out. Hope capitulating to cishet preferences and calling all queers over 30 pedophiles for liking the wrong kind of fiction works out for you guys.

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[sol1056]

I'm still waiting for someone to twig on the use of 'dollop'.

Does anyone actually have a dollop of cream in their tea?

I ask because it seems to occur reasonably frequently in fics but I've never come across it outside of that.

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My tea is like 60% milk, so no.

[sol1056]

USA people! Buy NOTHING Feb 28 2025. Not anything. 24 hours. No spending. Buy the day before or after but nothing. NOTHING. February 28 2025. Not gas. Not milk. Not something on a gaming app. Not a penny spent. (Only option in a crisis is local small mom and pop. Nothing. Else.) Promise me. Commit. 1 day. 1 day to scare the shit out of them that they don't get to follow the bullshit executive orders. They don't get to be cowards. If they do, it costs. It costs.

Then, if you can join me for Phase 2. March 7 2025 thtough March 14 2025? No Amazon. None. 1 week. No orders. Not a single item. Not one ebook. Nothing. 1 week. Just 1.

If you live outside the USA boycott US products on February 28 2025 and stand in solidarity with us and also join us for the week of no Amazon.

Are you with me?

Spread the word.

[sol1056]

The person I reblogged this from deserves to be happy

I tried to scroll past this. I really did

[sol1056]

[sol1056]

Listen, if a Bad President can come in and take away our rights and we're dependent on a Good President replacing them in four years to give us back our rights, then we do not have any rights.

If politicians can take or distribute them, then they're not "inalienable" and they're not "rights."

We don't have inalienable rights we have conditional privileges, divvied out according to the whims of whoever currently holds the reins.

And if we want to have actual rights, then we must build a system in which no one has the power to take them away to begin with.

[sol1056]

"When Vanity Fair’s Molly Jong-Fast pointed out, correctly, that Musk and DOGE’s directive to cut billions in biomedical funding would end up slashing cancer research funding, he replied, 'I’m not. Wtf are you talking about?' In other words, Musk quite literally has no idea what he’s actually cutting as he mindlessly downsizes the federal government.

The only reason Musk is in a position to do this kind of damage is because he’s a billionaire, and because he threw the president nearly $290 million in the months before voting — the same kind of blatant campaign finance bribery that’s been endemic to both parties for decades, and exactly the kind of Washington corruption that Trump claimed to be cleaning up, only now on steroids.

Beyond the hypocrisy, it’s as clear a demonstration as you can get of the way that the country’s extreme and growing wealth inequality corrodes its democracy: while the vast majority of Americans sit frustrated at how unresponsive Washington is to their needs, the richest man in the world can simply buy his way into government and do whatever he wants with it, no matter what the rest of us think or how it affects us.

But the Musk situation is just one particularly extreme case of a pattern in the four-week-old Trump administration, which has handed over the US government to a record cohort of thirteen billionaires, as well as corporate profiteers more broadly, sometimes running departments that directly impact their business interests. This is also more of Washington business as usual from Trump, whose only deviation from past presidents like Bill Clinton and George W. Bush on this front so far is in how much more brazen and aggressive he’s been in doing it."

- Branko Marcetic, from "If This Isn’t Corruption, Nothing Is." Jacobin, 10 February 2025.

[sol1056]

[sol1056]

so this group of traitors (I mean, call it what it is) has already said plainly what they want: everyone traumatized by what they're doing. they want us miserable.

thing is, there's maybe 100 of them actively doing crap.

and there's about 346 million of us.

and there being not as many of them, that we should have no problem knowing exactly which of people walking past on the street or getting into that cab is an identified nazi.

plus, unlike hollywood claims, there is no centralized repository with pictures of every single citizen. that means no quick and easy way to connect a random person's image to a specific entry in the federal database(s). especially when it's chilly outside and that random person is like the other 200 random people around them, all of them wearing hats, scarves, gloves, and possibly sunglasses -- and not a single one can be tied to a car's license plates because they all walked, biked, bused, or took the metro.

so, hey, if you're considering going for a walk in DC during the day or evening when one of these traitors is out? I recommend getting yourself (and a dozen or so more for friends) some old Radio Shack bulk tape erasers. (protip: keep your phone on the other side of your body). adapt each to battery use and fire up when you're in bumping distance (unlike regular magnets, these are turned on/off). plus, if anyone hassles you, those things are great for self-defense, too.

it might feel like we're outnumbered, but actually, it's the complete opposite. you gotta keep remembering that.

even if we discount the 77 million who voted for trump (many of whom hate the manbaby muskrat, too), there's still 269 million who didn't. you're not alone at all. you just haven't had a chance to meet all of them yet.

These men just stole the personal information of everyone in America AND control the Treasury. Link to article.

Akash Bobba

Edward Coristine

Luke Farritor

Gautier Cole Killian

Gavin Kliger

Ethan Shaotran

Spread their names!

[sol1056]

I'm not suggesting anything, I'm just wondering how well someone could type if all their fingers were broken.

Sand in the gears can take many forms. I'm just sayin'.

“A 25-year-old DOGE operative named Marko Elez in fact has admin privileges on these critical systems, which directly control and pay out roughly 95% of payments made by the U.S. government, including Social Security checks, tax refunds and virtually all contract payments. I can independently confirm these details based on conversations going back to the weekend. I can further report that Elez not only has full access to these systems, he has already made extensive changes to the code base for these critical payment system.”

—

Musk Cronies Dive Into Treasury Dept Payments Code Base

This is DEFCON 1.

[sol1056]

El Salvador offers to accept US violent criminals of any ethnicity

Well…this has gotten to Super jail levels of Fascism and we are speeding straight to Judge Dredd type shit.

[sol1056]

"im tired of living through major historical events" is now "dear lord please let me witness a high profile political assassination in the next 1-2 years. amen"

[sol1056]

Resisting tyranny takes a lot of forms.

[sol1056]

there will probably be blood. sorry.

the US is currently free-falling into hell.

we already have quislings and cowards. there will be more.

we have nazi collaborators. traitors who think enough boot-licking will save them from being next on the list. it won't.

we have nazi sympathizers, which is just another way to say nazi.

we have a loose resistance of federal workers who, despite their increasingly vulnerable positions, are fighting anyway.

if we don't push back now, then when the dust settles, we will not have a dictatorship starring the orange maggot. oh, no. it will be a certain man-child at the helm. all that's left is situating his sycophants firmly in key military roles.

see, the orange maggot is ultimately an idiot who follows the adulation and insists any downsides either don't exist or are someone else's fault. and thanks to the man-child's grooming, the maggot is handing over all the keys to the kingdom, one by one.

the man-child is now in the treasury, with few barriers stopping him from stripping it bare. meanwhile he's probably already selling our national secrets for pennies on the dollar to china, and I doubt it'll be long before he's selling private citizens' personal data to the dark web. at this rate, I won't be surprised if the orange maggot is disappeared in a month or two.

we wait too long, the man-baby will be entrenched enough that any citizen who dares refuse risks also being disappeared. along with their families, neighborhoods, cities, hell, anyone else the man-baby thinks belongs in the blast zone.

once, the nazis had to go door to door. now they can just check a database.

so that senator you're encouraging to stand up and yell on your behalf? they're in the direct line of fire, just like all other honest and decent federal employees. you think your elected officials aren't also terrified? they need all your support they can get. keep writing them. keep reminding them they've got thousands of equally-terrified constituents right behind them.

as for the traitors, we need to find ways to make them as miserable as possible to be themselves. make them wish privately they were someone else. keep them constantly exhausted. take that "we want everyone traumatized" energy and send it right back at the people creating that trauma.

there may still be blood, but dog willing and we act fast enough, it'll be theirs, not ours.

[sol1056]

That honestly felt to me like a completely contrived conflict for the sake of, idk, spending as much time on 1st sister as on 3rd sister, maybe? It didn't really make sense to me, from what I'd gathered of her character.

There was just no call for her to throw it away, and in such a fashion that even if he'd jumped that split-second, the fan would still be ruined beyond repair. So she sets a task on the same level as "weave gold from hay" or "wind a rope from sand" and then has the audacity to snip over whether he'd faked 'solving' it by allegedly getting her a new one.

I've mostly liked 1st til now, but I could not see any gain for her by testing him, especially in ways he can't win. Yes, he was a jerk, but she wasn't helping (no one enjoys a bait-and-switch), can we call it even already. But no, she gets upset at the idea of divorce, then turns around and wants a divorce (and does everything to find excuses to fail him and push him to that point), won't communicate, and then gets pissy when someone else sets their sights on him?

By halfway thru ep16 it was all I could do not to scream at the character to like him or not like him, stay or go, just pick one already. And stick with it!

Why is Shouhua being such a UGH in ep 14? And by that I mean BE MEAN TO THE HUSBAND WHATEVER BUT THAT FAN IS RARE AND EXPENSIVE WHO THE HELL THROWS IT OUT AAAAAAAA THE MONEY AAAAAA

I would never be equipped to be any of these dudes because if a woman was all "you have to go through all these challenges and put up with me being a b to you to earn the chance to woo me" I'd be all "thanks, let's divorce, hope you find someone who suits you better."

I have never in my entire life have been able to like anyone who didn't like me first and showed it (and no, I did not make them jump through hoops if they showed the liking, I either gave them a chance or right away said thanks but no thanks) so this is so alien to me. Why would you want to be with someone who doesn't want you as badly as you want them? (That also goes to all the various nutty secondaries in every drama.)

[sol1056]

“We still know much less than we should about who’s actually running this show. There’s mounting evidence that even more than we know is being directed by Elon Musk and his private-sector employees, who are now fanned out across the government. He appears to have taken control of the federal payment system which allows his operatives to stop checks to any private individual in the country and/or examine all their personal financial information. According to The New York Times, Musk has tasked engineers with figuring out how to cut off the flow of funds from the Treasury to programs and priorities he believes conflict with the brief he received from Donald Trump. He has also taken control of some portion of the federal agency computer systems, allowing his operatives to lock federal workers out of key computer systems. We need a lot more reporting on just how he is exerting this power, specifically under what authority and who the people are he’s installed at these government agencies. Some have simply been appointed to new roles the old-fashioned way. But the best information we have about how “DOGE” is working suggests many are employees from his private companies operating with no legal authority at all.”

—

Who Can Stop Elon’s ‘Team’ Wilding Its Way Through the Federal Government?

No legal authority at all.

No legal authority at all.

AOC is the _only_ Democrat I have seen or heard talking about this. Where the fuck is leadership? Where are the lawsuits?

He has NO LEGAL AUTHORITY AT ALL to do what he is doing.