#DATABASE

[futurebird]

Do not help them to build any more of this machine.

If you work with a database and are asked to alter the table structure to comply in advance for citizenship or gender categorizations it's really important to NOT do it.

"The governor is concerned about all this stuff they want us to update our record keeping so we store both gender AND biological sex."

"We need fields to store the country of origin of people's parents."

If you don't have the power to rebuff this yourself, ask for help. At minimum ask for help online anonymously.

Depending on your job you probably have in the past made compromises. Maybe to keep your job. Maybe to survive. This is a bright line. If you are asked to be the one to update the table don't let it be your fingers typing those changes.

If you can't just say "No I won't do that." Stall, run away, feign incompetence. Just don't let it happen.

I suspect this might be where the rubber hits the road first for us around here.

Nothing has changed. You do not have to do it. It is not even ordained.

I know someone who rebuffed such a request. Boss was apologetic "it's what the higher ups want, oh *I* think it's a lot of nonsense, but I don't want us to be out of step ... blah blah"

It was proposed to them in sheepish way. They said it would be a lot of work, not add anything of value, and most important they would not do it. It didn't come up again.

Fascism can be the work of zealots, but there are also many sheepish middle management helping hands who "don't even believe in this really"

There is a lively discussion of this on mastodon. (Mastodon is a very active social network where many people who left twitter have gone over the past few years to escape many problems of big centralized socail media. I like it a lot.) Posting a response to this post over there could be a way to get lots of help and ideas from tech people all over the world with similar values. If you do need help. Please say something.

Also, if you respond to this post I can pass what you say along if that would help too. People will respond and give you ideas to NOT do this should you be asked.

[gwydionmisha]

Do. Not. Want.

[jokingluna]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Josh Marcus at The Independent:

The Trump administration is reportedly leaning on an Elon Musk-allied tech company to build wide-ranging data tools pooling government information on millions of Americans and immigrants alike. The campaign has raised alarms from critics that the company could be furthering Musk’s DOGE effort to vacuum up and potentially weaponize – or sell – mass amounts of sensitive personal data, particularly against vulnerable groups like immigrants and political dissidents. In March, the president signed an executive order dedicated to “stopping waste, fraud, and abuse by eliminating information silos,” a euphemism for pooling vast stores of data on Americans under the federal government.

To carry out the data effort, the administration has deepened the federal government’s longstanding partnership with Palantir, a tech firm specializing in building big data applications, which was co-founded by Silicon Valley investor, GOP donor, and JD Vance mentor Peter Thiel. Since Trump took office, the administration has reportedly spent more than $113 million with Palantir through new and existing contracts, while the company is slated to begin work on a new $795 million deal with the Defense Department. Palantir is reportedly working with the administration in the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Internal Revenue Service, according to The New York Times. Within these agencies, the firm is reportedly building tools to track the movement of migrants in real time and streamline all tax data. The company is also reportedly in talks about deploying its technology at the Social Security Administration and the Department of Education, both of which have been targets of DOGE, and which store sensitive information about Americans’ identities and finances. [...] The Trump administration has reportedly pursued a variety of efforts to use big data to support its priorities, including social media surveillance of immigrants to detect alleged pro-terror views, and American activists who disagree with Donald Trump’s views..

This is very disturbing: The Trump Regime is partnering up with Peter Thiel-founded Palantir to gather data on millions of Americans that could be used to target immigrants and dissidents of the 47 Regime.

See Also:

TNR: Trump Taps Palantir to Create Master Database on Every American

For Such A Time As This (Andra Watkins): Palantir, Project 2025, and State-Sanctioned Moral Values

[nixcraft]

Them: Why not use Google Sheets or MS Excel as a Database? Me: You are right. Go ahead and use it. Have a nice day. PS - You reach that stage in life where you just don't have any will or power left to fight stupidity. You know what? Forget the fight. It's about keeping my peace. There, I said it.

[political-us]

[jerseyvalley]

Spreadsheet with tutorials/resources

Hello! I would like to introduce new spreadsheet, where you can find many tutorials. I'll gather them in one place, so you don't have to search a bunch of websites. It's now just a WIP. I'll slowly add more and more tutorials, resources that I'll find. Thanks to all amazing creators who decided to share these tutorials with us. I hope it's okay to collect them in one document! If you have a problem with that, let me know, then I'm going to delete your tutorial from the document! I hope you'll enjoy! ـــــــــــــــــﮩ٨ـ❤️️

Also, don't mind me for adding a tab with my sims/edits/works. I wanted to create something aesthetic...

𓆩💗𓆪 <-- link

[permanent-beta-bag-of-water]

A Cyberchase version of XKCD's Bobby Tables comic

[alternazine]

«ACCESS has been GRANTED to: INTERN DATABASE «Displaying IDENTIFICATIONS now.» "…Bzzzt… …Bzzzt… BEEP! Good day and welcome, dear agents. […] You'll need an ID to make your way around […] Good luck." 53 OUT OF ■■. C o n t i n u e (⏵) / R e t u r n (⏴) « Art by @melon-official @korryd @researchistic @ASnazzyGuy @semisentientseafood and @Voids-Colourful-Creations . Graphics and video by @rebiisea. All rights reserved. » « Information Hub: https://alternazine.carrd.co »

[tswiftupdatess]

More Taylor Swift songs have recently been re-registered on GEMA database.

''Didn't They'' ''Don't Hate Me For Loving You'' ''Honey Baby'' ''You'll Always Find Your Way Back Home''

[jokingluna]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Walter Einenkel at Daily Kos:

Advocacy groups are outraged over Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s war on Americans with autism. They say Kennedy uses the disorder as a political tool and pushes damaging stereotypes that spread misinformation. “The U.S. Secretary of Health, RFK Jr., made false comments about autism, like people with autism are broken, that autism is caused by vaccines, and that people with autism will never have jobs or families,” said Teddy, a fourth grader from New Jersey whose statement at a school board meeting went viral earlier this month. “I have autism and I’m not broken,” Teddy said. “And I hope that nobody in Princeton Public Schools believes RFK Jr.'s lies.” The New Jersey schoolkid and autism awareness groups felt the need to speak out after Kennedy’s vile comments last month about U.S. autism rates, where he repeated his false claim that autism is an epidemic that “destroys families.” Kennedy also mischaracterized autism as a “preventable disease” and falsely asserted that 25% of autistic people are non-functioning—ridiculous notions that experts say are inaccurate.  “His comments were incorrect, but more to the point, they were eugenic,” Colin Killick, executive director of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, told the Boston Globe. “Talking about autistic people as themselves being destroyed but also having destroyed their families is a horrific argument.” [...]

Kennedy’s characterization of autism as a preventable tragedy also appears connected to his notorious anti-vaccine crusade. In a recent interview with Dr. Phil McGraw, he repeated the vigorously debunked claim of a link between autism and vaccines. “Many of the parents have reported that their kid, that their child, developed autism immediately after [childhood vaccinations],” Kennedy told the psychologist-turned-TV star. Kennedy has used his position as America’s chief public health official to launch what he claims is a scientific study into the cause of autism, to be led by an anti-vaccine activist with heinous ideas about treatments for the condition that include experimenting with chemical castration drugs. [...] Kennedy has also announced plans to create an autism database, using the private medical information of millions of Americans, promising Trump in a surreal Cabinet meeting in April that he’d be able to identify the cause of autism by September.  Kennedy announced on May 7 that he intends to direct the National Institutes of Health to use Medicare and Medicaid insurance claims related to autism diagnoses to build his database. 

RFK Jr.’s cruel plans for an autism registry reeks of eugenics and ableism.

[nixcraft]

Wait what... ? this is dangerous knowledge.

[wemlygust]

Download Wikipedia Maybe?

If you are concerned about media preservation due to current events in the U.S. Direct link to latest SQL and XML downloads. Ctrl + F to find the file you want on that page. Choose a "multistream" version, because this way you can use an offline wikipedia reader to open and read individual articles without having to decompress the entire database (which would require WAY more storage space). The wikipedia how-to page linked at the top of this post recommends this file: pages-articles-multistream.xml.bz2 (this is about 19GB when compressed, but expands to 86 GB ish when decompressed) Which includes the current versions of all English Wikipedia articles, but not their talk pages, not user pages, and not past revisions of the articles or their edit histories. You'll need to choose a different file if you want the talk pages or etc (I like to have the talk pages for tiny or controversial articles, myself), but I haven't managed to find a multistream version with the talk pages yet. This file is a (I think) non-multistream version with talk pages: "pages-meta-current.xml.bz2"