Given the present state of Congress, how would a sensible grownup person fix the mess? Our election schedule doesn,t allow the luxury of time. Not even to mention that we typically like to waste whatever time we have.
Not sure I should weigh in on WOKE = prig after so many good comments, but why not, since I've been thinking about it today.
I think “prig" might be too tame a word. We might call the Puritans prigs with some retrospective justification, but in fact they also burned witches. European inquisitions, as well as rival ruling factions, all used fear, torture, death to gain particular religious and political ends. Big sins, little sins - it hardly mattered. If they wanted to get you, you were got.
Priggish behavior, to me (and yes I do still use the word) is prissy, precious, self-important, and essentially ludicrous; but when the consequence is inner peace, health, livelihood, or life itself, priggish doesn't cover it. “Aggressively performative moralism” and its “Enforcers” are dangerous bullies rather than merely priggish: they are destructive abusers of power.
I spent a few miserable years of at a small, Quaker women's college during the early-mid 60s. I was one of the few students not from the NE. They were not at all priggish - they were mean, intolerant, graceless, arrogant, and hateful. The President of the college remarked to a national audience that “only our failures marry."
This is only to say that this kind of narrowly intolerant mindset has been around forever, but contained in small pockets. The internet knocked down the walls, spread the “mind-virus” contagion as quickly as plague. Graham’s reference to the NYT would be funny were it not so sad: "On October 11, 2020 the New York Times announced that ‘The paper is in the midst of an evolution from the stodgy paper of record into a juicy collection of great narratives.' Meanwhile journalists, of a sort, had arisen to serve the right as well. And so journalism, which in the previous era had been one of the great centralizing forces, now became one of the great polarizing ones." Graham goes on to describe how "the rise of social media and the increasing polarization of journalism reinforced one another. In fact there arose a new variety of journalism involving a loop through social media .”
As Graham notes, prigs like rules. Our public school system, to take one example, has become a prime example of rules run amok, priggery writ mindlessly large and important. "Organizations without a powerful leader do everything based on 'best practices.' There's no higher authority; if some new 'best practice' achieves critical mass, they must adopt it…It is surprisingly easy for a small group of zealots to capture this type of organization by describing new improprieties" to censor and eradicate because they may cause some nameless "harm.” We are supposedly moving away from WOKE, but good luck getting it out of the school system, where kids are sitting ducks.
Graham's important insight perhaps applies to all bureaucracies, whether religious, educational, social, or political. Followers don't do well on their own, and bad leaders can cause untold misery.
Actually yes. It is for high blood pressure. That's what got me going on it with my nephrologist (kidney doctor). Alas, the jackass never tested for blood sugar!! Which is a known comorbidityn with obesity and high blood pressure. I was both. 270 at 6'2" and 160/90.
I found out about my type II from my primary. Then, after getting down to 225, my primary said my kidneys were fine! Yet the jaarse kidney doctor was billing insurance with bs coding.
I fired him. And stopped taking all my drugs. All.
Well, temps have gotten better, and most of the snow has melted except for the plow-created mounds in some parking lots, etc. But, later this evening we are expecting, rain, sleet, snow, freezing rain...weather advisory from 9 pm tonight till 10 am tomorrow morning...If it is scary there in the morning when I usually leave for work, I will wait till it is safer, they are recommending to not drive unless you have to. My boss is getting an MRI tomorrow and won't be here anyway.
My mom ( who is 86) had surgery to remove a tumor that had attached to her stomach wall, and is doing great...one tough lady there...
Cat News: Kitt does have high BP, which is actually good news as it means he doesn't have a kidney issue and it is treatable...He has to take this teeny/tiny 1/4 of a pill every day, by mouth. This is going to be a nightmare, we are probably going to have to wrap him in a towel and one of us will hold him, while the other tries to get the pill in and down his throat...and he will complain and struggle the whole time....Been there, and done that before, with other cats...lol...
That's correct. I looked up the proper dosage. Your kitty at 8 lbs is 3.7 kg. The dosage for felines <5kg is 0.625 mg. Which is the 2.5mg/4 you are giving kitty.
Well, that is good to know. He used to be 11 lbs, he lost the 3 lbs in 2023, but as he didn't seem to have anything wrong with him they thought it was just old age, but, now I think it may have been this too
Cats and pills? phhtttt!! Try getting a pill or other med down a thousand-pound horse if it doesn't want to take it...
Seriously though, have you tried a pill gun? Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. Depends on the pill and the gun and the shooter's marksmanship, so to speak.
So will Gaza become the 51st, 52nd, 53rd, or 54th state?
Until there is peace I think it is a bad idea to try to rebuild it. A waste of money.
I remember a 1970s movie called "Americathon". John Ritter starred as president Chad Roosevelt, doing an awesome Jerry Brown imitation. It was a parody, a comical dystopia. Meat Loaf fought a gladiator bout with a Camaro Z-28. But I remember there was a new country "The United Hebrab Republic". It was Israel plus some ME countries who decided their love of hot blondes was greater than their theological differences.
I remember thinking it was far-fetched, but then Israel and Egypt more or less had a peace agreement.
This is interesting. Israeli leaders, regardless of faction, seem to like the idea. Wars, like elections, have consequences. israel took Gaza from Egypt, then disengaged for reasons I still don't quite understand. What might have been a free Palestinian state devolved into terrorist chaos. Maybe Israel/Trump can clean up the big mess - or they can leave it in rubble for the tunnel rats to thrive. I don’t have a better idea - maybe you do.
If all that was required to achieve peace in the Middle East was to meet the goals of the current Israeli leadership, then this would indeed be an excellent idea.
Yep. Somehow being elected POTUS has made him King of the World.
I was fascinated by his musings as to who TikTok should be sold to. I was under the (apparently misguided) opinion that TikTok was owned by a corporate entity with its own shareholders.
Some may recall my saying from the River to the Sea, was not about Palestinians but the Israeli and especially Netenyahu desire to eradicate all living in Gaza.
So, looking at *today's* administration and it's cast and crew... oh, never mind.
Apparently just another re-write by amateurs with a lack of imagination and creativity. But heck... I thought that Hollywood writer's strike had been over for some time now.
I wonder if there's a connection between grift and prig? A prigrift?
I remember when "anti-racism" became a thing. The Kendi-man (I loved that song as a child) sold it for millions, becoming fab-wealthy. Our university declared it would be an anti-racist university. I don't wanna say it was dumb but at an academic senate meeting, the VP of finance started by saying we were facing serious financial challenges, followed by the new VP of Diversity, who announced a major growth in DEI officers. Pointing out the inconsistency was seen as racism. Now, we're quiet about it.
I suspect prigrifts see not just cultural value to it, but $$$ to be gleaned from the unsuspecting.
I put together this definition of Woke from various sources a few years ago...it seems to hold up.
Woke Definition
Wokeness refers to the invocation of unintuitive and morally burdensome political norms and ideas in a manner which suggests they are self-evident.
This idiom—or perhaps communicative register—replaces the obligation of persuading others to adopt our values with the satisfaction of signaling our allegiance and literacy to those who already agree. In some cases, this means we speak in an insular language that alienates those who haven’t stewed in the same activist cultural milieu. At other times, it means we express fealty to a novel or unintuitive norm, while suggesting that anyone who doesn’t already agree with it is a bad person.
Sounds a lot like teenage culture to me. I think it arises as a defense against the feeling of insecurity which naturally flows from the apparent expectation (by both society and the young people themselves) that young people already know everything they need to know, and so they try to fake it by making others feel insecure instead.
... Elez and possibly others got full admin access to the Treasury computers on Friday, January 31, and that he—or they—have “already made extensive changes to the code base for the payment system.” They are leaning on existing staff in the agency for help, which those workers have provided reluctantly in hopes of keeping the entire system from crashing.
Shortly after 1:00 this morning, Vittoria Elliott, Dhruv Mehrotra, Leah Feiger, and Tim Marchman of Wired reported that, according to three of their sources, “[a] 25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Elon Musk companies [SpaceX and X], has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the US government.”
According to the reporters, Elez apparently has the privileges to write code on the programs at the Bureau of Fiscal Service that control more than 20% of the U.S. economy, including government payments of veterans’ benefits, Social Security benefits, and veterans’ pay. The admin privileges he has typically permit a user “to log in to servers through secure shell access, navigate the entire file system, change user permissions, and delete or modify critical files. That could allow someone to bypass the security measures of, and potentially cause irreversible changes to, the very systems they have access to.”
“If you would have asked me a week ago” if an outsider could’ve been given access to a government server, one federal IT worker told the Wired reporters, “I'd have told you that this kind of thing would never in a million years happen. But now, who the f*ck knows."
The reporters note that control of the Bureau of Fiscal Service computers could enable someone to cut off monies to specific agencies or even individuals.
This scares me the most...as I decided to apply for SS , even though I am still working, and I am expecting a large check that will help me fix a bunch of stuff, and they might cut me off...sigh
I’m lightyears from being any sort of computer whiz, but it sounds to me like the combination of antiquated computer systems (that’s what we’ve heard since forever is the condition in most of government IT gear), freshly graduated 20-something comp sci kidz, and AI programs that don’t even know when they’re “hallucinating” won’t work well. To be as generous as possible.
I have seen several posters across the net asking if these kids know COBOL, which is supposedly what the federal government computers were coded to run on originally.
Today Jason Koebler, Joseph Cox, and Emanuel Maiberg reported that they had obtained the audio of a meeting held Monday by Thomas Shedd for government technology workers. Shedd is a former Musk employee at Tesla who is now leading the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS), the team that is recoding the government programs.
At the meeting, Shedd told government workers that “things are going to get intense” as his team creates “AI coding agents” to write software that would, for example, change the way logging into the government systems works. Currently, that software cannot access any information about individuals; as the reporters note, login.gov currently assures users that it “does not affect or have any information related to the specific agency you are trying to access.”
But Shedd said they were working through how to change that login “to further identify individuals and detect and prevent fraud.”
When a government employee pointed out that the Privacy Act makes it illegal for agencies to share personal information without consent, Shedd appeared unfazed by the idea they were trying something illegal. “The idea would be that folks would give consent to help with the login flow, but again, that's an example of something that we have a vision, that needs [to be] worked on, and needs clarified. And if we hit a roadblock, then we hit a roadblock. But we still should push forward and see what we can do.”
I am very pro-privacy rights..so it amazes me that people I know who used to be the same and complained loudly about it are now ok with it? though they probably think they will only violate the people they don't like's privacy
I am more of a libertarian-classical-liberal conservative, and we are big on privacy. It's like, a fundamental concept. And yes, I do see that right in the Bill of Rights. Seems like the chief objection of those who claim no such right exists, nor is reflected in the sampling of rights mentioned in the Bill of Rights, tends to be that it would cramp their style when it comes to telling me how to live--not that they'll put their claim that plainly.
Of course I am referring to a rational definition of privacy, not a cuckoo version like "you are violating my right to have an opinion if you don't allow me in your home so that I can lecture you about my opinion, and that right supersedes any claim of yours to privacy." Um, this more or less happened to me one time and it was a state Libertarian Party officer. I told him it wasn't happening and too bad if he didn't like that, it would be his problem, not mine. Oh, and there was the smoking-rights advocate that said I wasn't allowed to object to someone making me breathe their smoke, I am required to stay put and let them do it because otherwise it would violate their freedom.
Libertarianism is susceptible to hostile takeovers, major and minor, because it's been so stereotyped by other political camps that most people don't even know what it really is. So maybe since I've been arguing that "liberal" and "conservative" and "left" and "right" are now so drained of meaning that they are no longer useful in an argument, then I ought to add "libertarian" to the list of terms to be dropped for the sake of clarity.
I have always been confused about Libertarians because it seems there are many different kinds of them...lol...and I can't tell which things they agree on and which they don't...not a fan of the nihilist burn it all down group...lol
Your best bet is to find out if they call themselves a small-l libertarian which means they do not identify with the Libertarian Party or various well-known kooks who have made-up versions (some call this "folk libertarianism"). If a small-l type knows names like Hayek and Friedman, so much the better. The small letter means that they are oriented to the underlying principles and political philosophy, which align at least roughly with the Enlightenment ideas espoused by the founders of our constitutional system, and aren't just looking to enhance their personal status by jumping on some random bandwagon or scam.
We have arrived in Port Wentworth, GA, just north of Savannah. The drive here was uneventful.
The World’s Richest Men Take On the World’s Poorest Children
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/opinion/usaid-spending-trump-musk.html?unlocked_article_code=1.u04.MTqJ.JfBnGMILtSuD
The only change I'd make to this would be the title:
The World's Richest Children Take On the World's Poorest Ones
Because there are no grownups to be found anywhere in any of this.
Given the present state of Congress, how would a sensible grownup person fix the mess? Our election schedule doesn,t allow the luxury of time. Not even to mention that we typically like to waste whatever time we have.
Right.
Not sure I should weigh in on WOKE = prig after so many good comments, but why not, since I've been thinking about it today.
I think “prig" might be too tame a word. We might call the Puritans prigs with some retrospective justification, but in fact they also burned witches. European inquisitions, as well as rival ruling factions, all used fear, torture, death to gain particular religious and political ends. Big sins, little sins - it hardly mattered. If they wanted to get you, you were got.
Priggish behavior, to me (and yes I do still use the word) is prissy, precious, self-important, and essentially ludicrous; but when the consequence is inner peace, health, livelihood, or life itself, priggish doesn't cover it. “Aggressively performative moralism” and its “Enforcers” are dangerous bullies rather than merely priggish: they are destructive abusers of power.
I spent a few miserable years of at a small, Quaker women's college during the early-mid 60s. I was one of the few students not from the NE. They were not at all priggish - they were mean, intolerant, graceless, arrogant, and hateful. The President of the college remarked to a national audience that “only our failures marry."
This is only to say that this kind of narrowly intolerant mindset has been around forever, but contained in small pockets. The internet knocked down the walls, spread the “mind-virus” contagion as quickly as plague. Graham’s reference to the NYT would be funny were it not so sad: "On October 11, 2020 the New York Times announced that ‘The paper is in the midst of an evolution from the stodgy paper of record into a juicy collection of great narratives.' Meanwhile journalists, of a sort, had arisen to serve the right as well. And so journalism, which in the previous era had been one of the great centralizing forces, now became one of the great polarizing ones." Graham goes on to describe how "the rise of social media and the increasing polarization of journalism reinforced one another. In fact there arose a new variety of journalism involving a loop through social media .”
As Graham notes, prigs like rules. Our public school system, to take one example, has become a prime example of rules run amok, priggery writ mindlessly large and important. "Organizations without a powerful leader do everything based on 'best practices.' There's no higher authority; if some new 'best practice' achieves critical mass, they must adopt it…It is surprisingly easy for a small group of zealots to capture this type of organization by describing new improprieties" to censor and eradicate because they may cause some nameless "harm.” We are supposedly moving away from WOKE, but good luck getting it out of the school system, where kids are sitting ducks.
Graham's important insight perhaps applies to all bureaucracies, whether religious, educational, social, or political. Followers don't do well on their own, and bad leaders can cause untold misery.
We got the furniture out, except what Denise is going to pick up on Saturday.
Mercy. That went quickly. Hope you found some semblance of peace and the beginnings of closure.
We're feeling accomplishment. We furnished a whole apartment for a man who had just moved in.
I raise a glass in celebration of a task accomplished. Cheers!
Actually yes. It is for high blood pressure. That's what got me going on it with my nephrologist (kidney doctor). Alas, the jackass never tested for blood sugar!! Which is a known comorbidityn with obesity and high blood pressure. I was both. 270 at 6'2" and 160/90.
I found out about my type II from my primary. Then, after getting down to 225, my primary said my kidneys were fine! Yet the jaarse kidney doctor was billing insurance with bs coding.
I fired him. And stopped taking all my drugs. All.
My weight dropped from 225 and now I weigh 194 !!
Let me see about compounded Amlodopine, Angie
Thanks Doug
Thought police, speech police, cultural police, faith police, book police, bedroom police, body police...
I'm all in on morality, ethics and the need for law and order.
But it's hard for me not to say it just may be about time to defund the *police*...
Hi All!
Well, temps have gotten better, and most of the snow has melted except for the plow-created mounds in some parking lots, etc. But, later this evening we are expecting, rain, sleet, snow, freezing rain...weather advisory from 9 pm tonight till 10 am tomorrow morning...If it is scary there in the morning when I usually leave for work, I will wait till it is safer, they are recommending to not drive unless you have to. My boss is getting an MRI tomorrow and won't be here anyway.
My mom ( who is 86) had surgery to remove a tumor that had attached to her stomach wall, and is doing great...one tough lady there...
Cat News: Kitt does have high BP, which is actually good news as it means he doesn't have a kidney issue and it is treatable...He has to take this teeny/tiny 1/4 of a pill every day, by mouth. This is going to be a nightmare, we are probably going to have to wrap him in a towel and one of us will hold him, while the other tries to get the pill in and down his throat...and he will complain and struggle the whole time....Been there, and done that before, with other cats...lol...
Just fyi. Unlike humans, all dog and cat drugs are prescribed by weight. In mg drug/kg weight.
https://www.wedgewood.com/products/amlodipine/?sku=AMLBESSUS0477VC&form=oral+oil+suspension
Amlodipine oral suspension solution. There is also a skin topical transdermal.
https://www.wedgewood.com/products/amlodipine/?sku=AMLBES-GEL215VC&form=twist-a-dose+transdermal+gel
An oral paste
https://www.wedgewood.com/products/amlodipine/?sku=AMLBES-PST006VC&form=oral+paste
Not sure. Might require your vet to prescribe them.
Well, he is 8 lbs and the pills are 2.5 mg, but, I have to cut them into fourths.
That's correct. I looked up the proper dosage. Your kitty at 8 lbs is 3.7 kg. The dosage for felines <5kg is 0.625 mg. Which is the 2.5mg/4 you are giving kitty.
Well, that is good to know. He used to be 11 lbs, he lost the 3 lbs in 2023, but as he didn't seem to have anything wrong with him they thought it was just old age, but, now I think it may have been this too
Cats and pills? phhtttt!! Try getting a pill or other med down a thousand-pound horse if it doesn't want to take it...
Seriously though, have you tried a pill gun? Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. Depends on the pill and the gun and the shooter's marksmanship, so to speak.
Huh, didn't know there was such a thing
Lots of different ones available. This should give you a good idea of how they work... or how they're *supposed* to work anyway...
https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=pill+gun+for+cats+Petco&mid=078B631A3EA535AFA19E078B631A3EA535AFA19E&FORM=VIRE
Thanks, Mike
Good luck with the cat. We've had cats in the past, so I know you'll need it! :-)
Thanks, I do need it
You can contact Wedgewood pharmacies. They are huge in compounded animal medicine into gummies, maybe fluids.
https://www.wedgewood.com/who-we-serve/companion-pet-owners
hmmm... I was thinking gummies, or pills that look like treats...lol thanks
Pill pockets.
Huh, I didn't know about those either, thanks
You're welcome.
Gawd, you have my sympathies..pilling a cat is right up there with getting a root canal.
It's actually easier to give them a shot. Blessings on you for being a good cat mom.
Thanks, Mary...yeah it is miserable, I am not sure what the scientific reason is they can't make it a liquid, which would be way easier...lol
What is the name of the medicine?
I can do some research about it. Generally most drugs are precipitated and a powder formed. T
I lied...lol... It starts with an A
Amlodipine
I know Amlodipine. I took it for a while. It is a kidney drug.
I'll check around
Thanks, well I guess that makes sense...as it is the kidney thing they thought was a problem I was assuming it was BP medicine
I'll look when I go home and let you know, I know it starts with o, but, I don't remember the rest
So will Gaza become the 51st, 52nd, 53rd, or 54th state?
Until there is peace I think it is a bad idea to try to rebuild it. A waste of money.
I remember a 1970s movie called "Americathon". John Ritter starred as president Chad Roosevelt, doing an awesome Jerry Brown imitation. It was a parody, a comical dystopia. Meat Loaf fought a gladiator bout with a Camaro Z-28. But I remember there was a new country "The United Hebrab Republic". It was Israel plus some ME countries who decided their love of hot blondes was greater than their theological differences.
I remember thinking it was far-fetched, but then Israel and Egypt more or less had a peace agreement.
I've heard Gaz-A-Maga
Trump says he,s going turn it into high-end resort real estate. The big problem (other than Israel) is what to do with the Gazans meanwhile
And the little problem that Trump doesn't actually own any part of the region.
This is interesting. Israeli leaders, regardless of faction, seem to like the idea. Wars, like elections, have consequences. israel took Gaza from Egypt, then disengaged for reasons I still don't quite understand. What might have been a free Palestinian state devolved into terrorist chaos. Maybe Israel/Trump can clean up the big mess - or they can leave it in rubble for the tunnel rats to thrive. I don’t have a better idea - maybe you do.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/trumps-plan-to-relocate-gazans-stuns-the-region-but-it-faces-serious-obstacles/
If all that was required to achieve peace in the Middle East was to meet the goals of the current Israeli leadership, then this would indeed be an excellent idea.
All Israeli parties agree - that,s what,s surprising.
A 2-state “solution” is fantasy imo. Tried and failed. Not going to happen.
Haha - well he didn't actually say it was going to be Mar a Gaza. CC Writer is right - his default position is “I Am."
But he thinks he owns everything.
Yep. Somehow being elected POTUS has made him King of the World.
I was fascinated by his musings as to who TikTok should be sold to. I was under the (apparently misguided) opinion that TikTok was owned by a corporate entity with its own shareholders.
Some may recall my saying from the River to the Sea, was not about Palestinians but the Israeli and especially Netenyahu desire to eradicate all living in Gaza.
I may be proven right 🤢
"It was a parody, a comical dystopia."
So, looking at *today's* administration and it's cast and crew... oh, never mind.
Apparently just another re-write by amateurs with a lack of imagination and creativity. But heck... I thought that Hollywood writer's strike had been over for some time now.
I really think you're onto something with this.
Funny! John Ritter was excellent in his day.
I don't object so much to people aiming for moral purity, but to their being bossypants about it.
I wonder if there's a connection between grift and prig? A prigrift?
I remember when "anti-racism" became a thing. The Kendi-man (I loved that song as a child) sold it for millions, becoming fab-wealthy. Our university declared it would be an anti-racist university. I don't wanna say it was dumb but at an academic senate meeting, the VP of finance started by saying we were facing serious financial challenges, followed by the new VP of Diversity, who announced a major growth in DEI officers. Pointing out the inconsistency was seen as racism. Now, we're quiet about it.
I suspect prigrifts see not just cultural value to it, but $$$ to be gleaned from the unsuspecting.
But I could be wrong.
Oh, I think a lot of the televangelists might fall into the prigrift category, especially the ones with three of four private jets...
I put together this definition of Woke from various sources a few years ago...it seems to hold up.
Woke Definition
Wokeness refers to the invocation of unintuitive and morally burdensome political norms and ideas in a manner which suggests they are self-evident.
This idiom—or perhaps communicative register—replaces the obligation of persuading others to adopt our values with the satisfaction of signaling our allegiance and literacy to those who already agree. In some cases, this means we speak in an insular language that alienates those who haven’t stewed in the same activist cultural milieu. At other times, it means we express fealty to a novel or unintuitive norm, while suggesting that anyone who doesn’t already agree with it is a bad person.
Sounds a lot like teenage culture to me. I think it arises as a defense against the feeling of insecurity which naturally flows from the apparent expectation (by both society and the young people themselves) that young people already know everything they need to know, and so they try to fake it by making others feel insecure instead.
Seems to me that this definition fits the current administration nicely as well.
Bryan Potters Construction Physics has another data based article on the (Electric) grid interconnection queue.
https://open.substack.com/pub/constructionphysics/p/inside-the-interconnection-queue
There is an interesting datum in the footnotes.
I read this. Good stuff.
... Elez and possibly others got full admin access to the Treasury computers on Friday, January 31, and that he—or they—have “already made extensive changes to the code base for the payment system.” They are leaning on existing staff in the agency for help, which those workers have provided reluctantly in hopes of keeping the entire system from crashing.
I don’t trust Musk any farther than I can throw cement mixer. But whaddaya gonna do?
Sing about Trouble Awful Devil Evil
https://youtu.be/HoF9BqDMVjg?si=zz3uGEgJRdfKifok
Shortly after 1:00 this morning, Vittoria Elliott, Dhruv Mehrotra, Leah Feiger, and Tim Marchman of Wired reported that, according to three of their sources, “[a] 25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Elon Musk companies [SpaceX and X], has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the US government.”
According to the reporters, Elez apparently has the privileges to write code on the programs at the Bureau of Fiscal Service that control more than 20% of the U.S. economy, including government payments of veterans’ benefits, Social Security benefits, and veterans’ pay. The admin privileges he has typically permit a user “to log in to servers through secure shell access, navigate the entire file system, change user permissions, and delete or modify critical files. That could allow someone to bypass the security measures of, and potentially cause irreversible changes to, the very systems they have access to.”
“If you would have asked me a week ago” if an outsider could’ve been given access to a government server, one federal IT worker told the Wired reporters, “I'd have told you that this kind of thing would never in a million years happen. But now, who the f*ck knows."
The reporters note that control of the Bureau of Fiscal Service computers could enable someone to cut off monies to specific agencies or even individuals.
Thanks for sharing.
I have been trying to come up with ways ordinary people can stand in some sort of resistance to this stuff. I just don't know.
This scares me the most...as I decided to apply for SS , even though I am still working, and I am expecting a large check that will help me fix a bunch of stuff, and they might cut me off...sigh
I’m lightyears from being any sort of computer whiz, but it sounds to me like the combination of antiquated computer systems (that’s what we’ve heard since forever is the condition in most of government IT gear), freshly graduated 20-something comp sci kidz, and AI programs that don’t even know when they’re “hallucinating” won’t work well. To be as generous as possible.
As if the OPM hack weren’t bad enough…
I have seen several posters across the net asking if these kids know COBOL, which is supposedly what the federal government computers were coded to run on originally.
Adult supervision could fix a lot of things that have been going wrong.
Today Jason Koebler, Joseph Cox, and Emanuel Maiberg reported that they had obtained the audio of a meeting held Monday by Thomas Shedd for government technology workers. Shedd is a former Musk employee at Tesla who is now leading the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS), the team that is recoding the government programs.
At the meeting, Shedd told government workers that “things are going to get intense” as his team creates “AI coding agents” to write software that would, for example, change the way logging into the government systems works. Currently, that software cannot access any information about individuals; as the reporters note, login.gov currently assures users that it “does not affect or have any information related to the specific agency you are trying to access.”
But Shedd said they were working through how to change that login “to further identify individuals and detect and prevent fraud.”
When a government employee pointed out that the Privacy Act makes it illegal for agencies to share personal information without consent, Shedd appeared unfazed by the idea they were trying something illegal. “The idea would be that folks would give consent to help with the login flow, but again, that's an example of something that we have a vision, that needs [to be] worked on, and needs clarified. And if we hit a roadblock, then we hit a roadblock. But we still should push forward and see what we can do.”
I wouldn't give those people consent for anything
Remind me again...isn't the right to privacy a big conservative thing they approve of?
Yup
these are not the conservatives you are looking for...
Right.
ha ha..this made me laugh out loud..thanks
I am very pro-privacy rights..so it amazes me that people I know who used to be the same and complained loudly about it are now ok with it? though they probably think they will only violate the people they don't like's privacy
I am more of a libertarian-classical-liberal conservative, and we are big on privacy. It's like, a fundamental concept. And yes, I do see that right in the Bill of Rights. Seems like the chief objection of those who claim no such right exists, nor is reflected in the sampling of rights mentioned in the Bill of Rights, tends to be that it would cramp their style when it comes to telling me how to live--not that they'll put their claim that plainly.
Of course I am referring to a rational definition of privacy, not a cuckoo version like "you are violating my right to have an opinion if you don't allow me in your home so that I can lecture you about my opinion, and that right supersedes any claim of yours to privacy." Um, this more or less happened to me one time and it was a state Libertarian Party officer. I told him it wasn't happening and too bad if he didn't like that, it would be his problem, not mine. Oh, and there was the smoking-rights advocate that said I wasn't allowed to object to someone making me breathe their smoke, I am required to stay put and let them do it because otherwise it would violate their freedom.
Libertarianism is susceptible to hostile takeovers, major and minor, because it's been so stereotyped by other political camps that most people don't even know what it really is. So maybe since I've been arguing that "liberal" and "conservative" and "left" and "right" are now so drained of meaning that they are no longer useful in an argument, then I ought to add "libertarian" to the list of terms to be dropped for the sake of clarity.
I like privacy to but I wouldn't complain if govt systems worked for a change. The IRS is notorious.
I don't see where there has to be a tradeoff between respecting individual privacy and government systems working properly.
I have always been confused about Libertarians because it seems there are many different kinds of them...lol...and I can't tell which things they agree on and which they don't...not a fan of the nihilist burn it all down group...lol
Your best bet is to find out if they call themselves a small-l libertarian which means they do not identify with the Libertarian Party or various well-known kooks who have made-up versions (some call this "folk libertarianism"). If a small-l type knows names like Hayek and Friedman, so much the better. The small letter means that they are oriented to the underlying principles and political philosophy, which align at least roughly with the Enlightenment ideas espoused by the founders of our constitutional system, and aren't just looking to enhance their personal status by jumping on some random bandwagon or scam.
Suzanne has her own take. https://open.substack.com/pub/suzannevenker/p/what-does-it-mean-to-be-woke?r=3jz3i&utm_medium=ios