Octopus Overlords

LawBeefaroni wrote: Fri Feb 07, 2025 2:17 pm

Skinypupy wrote: Fri Feb 07, 2025 1:38 pm Whelp, just got word that one of my two remaining large contracts just got DOGE’d. I’m now up to 72% of my contracted training programs for FY2025 being cancelled.

Sorry, man. You're on the right side of this but I'm sure that's small consolation.

Skinypupy wrote: Fri Feb 07, 2025 1:38 pm Gonna be interesting to see the unemployment numbers as private sector government contractors fall like flies with all these cuts.

Trust in the AI.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is pushing to rapidly develop “GSAi,” a custom generative AI chatbot for the US General Services Administration, according to two people familiar with the project. The plan is part of President Donald Trump’s AI-first agenda to modernize the federal government with advanced technology.

One goal of the initiative, which hasn’t been previously reported, is to boost the day-to-day productivity of the GSA’s roughly 12,000 employees, who are tasked with managing office buildings, contracts, and IT infrastructure across the federal government, according to the two people. Musk’s team also seemingly hopes to use the chatbot and other AI tools to analyze huge swaths of contract and procurement data, one of them says. Both people were granted anonymity because they aren’t authorized to speak publicly about the agency’s operations.

Skynet says hi...

I love how he pushes an agenda about how immigrants are coming to take over your jobs, then proceeds to allow AI to replace thousands, if not tens of thousands, of government workers.

Those immigrants? H-1B visas. /s

Skinypupy wrote: Fri Feb 07, 2025 1:38 pm Whelp, just got word that one of my two remaining large contracts just got DOGE’d. I’m now up to 72% of my contracted training programs for FY2025 being cancelled.

Gonna be interesting to see the unemployment numbers as private sector government contractors fall like flies with all these cuts.

That really sucks.

Well, it's Friday again. Things are about to shut down for the weekend.

Time for Trump to drop another bombshell?

Not until after the market closes. The insider trading must flow! Also, you really just killed my inner peace as I was just getting ready to relax for the day and I had totally spaced on late afternoon Fridays of the last few weeks.

Forewarned is foredrunk.

Skinypupy wrote:Whelp, just got word that one of my two remaining large contracts just got DOGE’d. I’m now up to 72% of my contracted training programs for FY2025 being cancelled.

Gonna be interesting to see the unemployment numbers as private sector government contractors fall like flies with all these cuts.

That sucks man. I tried to tell people - every single dollar of federal spending is someone’s paycheck (one way or another). Slashing government spending (while the private job market is slowing down) will be an absolute catastrophe. But people don’t want to hear it.

Also, you are never going to see anything other than straight propaganda from the Dept of Labor, once they worm their way in there.

Indeed. They're already scrubbing CDC data and information. I have no doubts they're going to do the same to obfuscate data and information in other departments - especially labor.

The counter argument I see every time one of my friends posts an anti-Trump message is, "But don't you care about the taxpayer dollars that were being wasted under Biden?"

The answer is - if caring about taxpayer dollars being wasted requires supporting a racist, criminal sex predator, then no - I honestly don't care. I'd rather Biden be sitting in the White House shoveling my cash into the fireplace than compromise my morals.

I'd want more details - what exactly are we wasting our tax dollars on under Biden? Be specific.

Far'ners and that there DEI.

RunningMn9 wrote: Fri Feb 07, 2025 5:27 pm Also, you are never going to see anything other than straight propaganda from the Dept of Labor, once they worm their way in there.

It was always so ridiculous to compare the reports of "100,000 jobs added this month. A spectacular achievement and a sign that Trump is strengthening the economy!" with the reports of "300,000 jobs added this month. Here's why that's a horrible thing for Joe Biden."

Skinypupy wrote: Fri Feb 07, 2025 5:59 pm

RunningMn9 wrote: Fri Feb 07, 2025 5:27 pm Also, you are never going to see anything other than straight propaganda from the Dept of Labor, once they worm their way in there.

It was always so ridiculous to compare the reports of "100,000 jobs added this month. A spectacular achievement and a sign that Trump is strengthening the economy!" with the reports of "300,000 jobs added this month. Here's why that's a horrible thing for Joe Biden."

times 17.3.84 bb speech malreported africa rectify

times 19.12.83 forecasts 3 yp 4th quarter 83 misprints verify current issue

times 14.2.84 miniplenty malquoted chocolate rectify

times 3.12.83 reporting bb dayorder doubleplusungood refs unpersons rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling

Nice 1984 reference.

Blackhawk wrote: Fri Feb 07, 2025 5:06 pm Forewarned is foredrunk.

And so the after hours begin

https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/5 ... ubenstein/

President Trump said Friday he would end the terms of multiple members of the Kennedy Center board and make himself chair of a new board, putting himself at the helm of the Washington, D.C., cultural institution.

“I have decided to immediately terminate multiple individuals from the Board of Trustees, including the Chairman, who do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture. We will soon announce a new Board, with an amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!” the president said on Truth Social.

Judge pauses Trump plan to put USAID staff on leave

A federal judge on Friday said he would temporarily pause the Trump administration’s plan to place thousands of workers at the U.S. Agency for International Development on administrative leave.

About 2,200 USAID employees were set to be placed on leave Friday night at 11:59 p.m. ET, as part of President Donald Trump’s efforts to shut down the independent government agency.

Five hundred USAID workers are already on administrative leave, a lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice said in court.

Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, delivered the ruling after hearing arguments from the Trump administration and two groups representing federal workers in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

Trump says he is revoking Biden's security clearances

The Republican said he was doing what Biden had done to him when he was president.

Biden "set this precedent in 2021, when he instructed the Intelligence Community (IC) to stop the 45th President of the United States (ME!) from accessing details on National Security, a courtesy provided to former Presidents".

He said Biden "could not be trusted with sensitive information", citing a justice department inquiry into the Democrat's storage of classified files, which said Biden had a poor memory.
...
After taking office in 2021, Biden barred Trump from receiving intelligence briefings traditionally given to former presidents, citing his "erratic behaviour".

LordMortis wrote: Fri Feb 07, 2025 8:11 pm

Blackhawk wrote: Fri Feb 07, 2025 5:06 pm Forewarned is foredrunk.

And so the after hours begin

https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/5 ... ubenstein/

President Trump said Friday he would end the terms of multiple members of the Kennedy Center board and make himself chair of a new board, putting himself at the helm of the Washington, D.C., cultural institution.

“I have decided to immediately terminate multiple individuals from the Board of Trustees, including the Chairman, who do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture. We will soon announce a new Board, with an amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!” the president said on Truth Social.

They're really trying for a Year Zero cultural reboot with everything calibrated to the level of Trump Steaks and Jon Voight.

And the main thing is that this is another narcissistic misstep. Trump is doing it because he has spent his whole life trying to win the respect of NYC and east-coast high society. They'll only hate him further for it, while his MAGA base has literally no idea what the Kennedy Center even is.

Assuming we make it, I don't think people are ready for the tacky and inappropriate year long celebration he's demanding for the 250th anniversary of America. We'll get to see how bad it's going to be on Memorial Day, but I'm already imagining it's going to involve gold lamé .

Spirit of '26.

I'm starting to see buzz that the next target is going to be gun control. I'd expect that to be gutted.

Smoove_B wrote: Fri Feb 07, 2025 9:55 pm Assuming we make it, I don't think people are ready for the tacky and inappropriate year long celebration he's demanding for the 250th anniversary of America. We'll get to see how bad it's going to be on Memorial Day, but I'm already imagining it's going to involve gold lamé .

Ooh boy. I'd forgotten that Trump will be presiding over the USA's semiquincentennial.

At least we'll get to watch him attempt to pronounce it.

Skinypupy wrote: Fri Feb 07, 2025 1:38 pm Whelp, just got word that one of my two remaining large contracts just got DOGE’d. I’m now up to 72% of my contracted training programs for FY2025 being cancelled.

Gonna be interesting to see the unemployment numbers as private sector government contractors fall like flies with all these cuts.

The obvious answer is to rebrand.
Here are some titles that I'm sure the current administration would endorsed and love.
White makes right
Being white means never being wrong

Increase profit by decreasing employee will

How i stopped worrying and came to love the coup

The benefits of a smaller government. The power of One

Tariffs..the real cure for cancer

How annexing our allies is good for me. The road to the 200th state.

New World Order. Acceptance is required.


Jope these help. I'm sure i could come up with more. Save time and use AI to write them. Don't proofread. If AI is advanced enough to run our government it's good enough for government training.

Holman wrote: Fri Feb 07, 2025 10:17 pm

Smoove_B wrote: Fri Feb 07, 2025 9:55 pm Assuming we make it, I don't think people are ready for the tacky and inappropriate year long celebration he's demanding for the 250th anniversary of America. We'll get to see how bad it's going to be on Memorial Day, but I'm already imagining it's going to involve gold lamé .

Ooh boy. I'd forgotten that Trump will be presiding over the USA's semiquincentennial.

At least we'll get to watch him attempt to pronounce it.

No, we won’t.

This is a horrible joke and I shouldn't have laughed. And I certainly don't condone violence in any way, shape or form. But when talking to a friend recently about Trump and his idiotic actions, he just wrote back "Nobody wants to impress Jodie Foster anymore...sigh".

I’m a career civil servant at the federal government’s Office of Personnel Management, and I’m sorry.

An insider's take.

Every question that gets raised is simply answered with another email or memo proclaiming the deferred resignation is legal, but also demanding we give up all our rights if we sign it. If we don’t resign, remote workers have been told they need to move to work in one of nine cities by March 3, and we haven’t been told if we get to pick from among the nine or if we will randomly be assigned to a city in which we don’t live or have any connections. My bosses, and my bosses’ bosses, don’t have answers to any of our questions. Nobody knows who is in charge, though the leadership level of our parking garage is suddenly filled with Teslas.

Punisher wrote: Fri Feb 07, 2025 11:45 pm

Skinypupy wrote: Fri Feb 07, 2025 1:38 pm Whelp, just got word that one of my two remaining large contracts just got DOGE’d. I’m now up to 72% of my contracted training programs for FY2025 being cancelled.

Gonna be interesting to see the unemployment numbers as private sector government contractors fall like flies with all these cuts.

The obvious answer is to rebrand.
Here are some titles that I'm sure the current administration would endorsed and love.
White makes right
Being white means never being wrong

Increase profit by decreasing employee will

How i stopped worrying and came to love the coup

The benefits of a smaller government. The power of One

Tariffs..the real cure for cancer

How annexing our allies is good for me. The road to the 200th state.

New World Order. Acceptance is required.


Jope these help. I'm sure i could come up with more. Save time and use AI to write them. Don't proofread. If AI is advanced enough to run our government it's good enough for government training.

I'm simultaneously hoping/dreading that it will be more like names of Friends episodes:

The one where I tried to threaten Muslim countries with tariffs
The one where I thought Palestinians would just let me take their land
The one where I gutted public health just when bird flu jumped to humans
The one where I cratered our economy by a tariff war with China
The one where everything got more expensive and I yanked out Medicare, Medicaid and Food Stamps

raydude wrote: Sat Feb 08, 2025 11:33 am The one where I thought Palestinians would just let me take their land

The one where Isreal didn't give me Gaza after I let them cleanse it for me.

This was really done well. Ezra Klien looks at overwhelming us with EOs and posits this GOP Administration is trying to crown a king with this dizzying activity while bypassing legislation. If you have thirteen minutes to listen while working on other things, it's worth the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8QLgLfqh6s

Great share.
Thank you.

A Republican response to the New Deal could save us from some of Trump's actions-

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/08/g-s1-470 ... ve-actions

Less than three weeks into the new administration, courts are already considering challenges to Trump's declaration that the federal government will only recognize two genders, the Department of Homeland Security's departure from a decades-old policy that encouraged Immigration and Customs Enforcement to avoid places of worship and the "Fork Directive" email offering federal employees the option to resign in exchange for full pay and benefits through September.

At the center of these challenges is the question of whether the president's actions are directing federal agencies to violate a key standard established nearly 80 years ago in a law known as the Administrative Procedure Act.

That's some good news for once. I hope he finds more and more obstacles in his way.

If you have the time and inclination Project 2025 as expressed through comics

https://stopproject2025comic.org/

How accurate is this poll?

53% approve of this shit show? 51% approve of Doge????

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-appr ... -2025-2-9/

The sample was weighted to be representative of adults nationwide according to gender, age, race, and education, based on the U.S. Census American Community Survey and Current Population Survey, as well as 2024 presidential vote.

Repeat

as well as 2024 presidential vote.

that said, it's still a shitshow and another symptom of we're gonna get what we deserve.

My last real-life friend came by today for some board gaming. Something political accidentally came up, and he spent five minutes defending Trump and DOGE.

I know a few very well off liberals who have gained a lot from trumps policies but actively campaigned for Kamala because they love America more. To their personal cost. One kept having his Harris signs ripped out and replaced with Trump signs. The other lost lifelong friends.

Now they are shrugging and saying this is what people voted for, I don’t care anymore. I’ll just do me.

Blackhawk wrote: Sun Feb 09, 2025 7:41 pm My last real-life friend came by today for some board gaming. Something political accidentally came up, and he spent five minutes defending Trump and DOGE.

I'm genuinely sorry to hear it. My professional mentor (and good friend) has also revealed himself to be a MAGA goblin and it's just about destroyed me. Someone I've known almost 30 years and I didn't see it coming at all. To the degree I am empathize, I do.

If you need someone to bring your blood pressure down and you have facebook

https://www.facebook.com/petebuttigieg

You are not powerless, and he is not unstoppable.
Look at, and learn from, the funding freeze and how quickly he was forced to surrender.

He's not prolific there buy he remains my voice of calm reason when I need a voice of calm reason.

This came literally on the day I was about turn FB off again.

They have openly said they’ll ignore the court orders. And that the judges making the orders need to be punished.

One wonders if the democrats leadership are really resisting or pretending to given both parties have been captured by the billionaires and the billionaires are now nearly all supporting trump.

All those Democrat celebrities and billionaires who so loudly backed Kamala rubbing shoulders with Trump at the Super Bowl today sure looked like they’ve charged sides. Felt very animal farm to me.

So far I’ve only really seen Bernie and the Squad speaking out. And we know that Pelosi had AOC sidelined to keep her quiet. Everything else feels Weimar America performative.

The mood has shifted . Imagine my surprise reading the Guardian website today and seeing anti trans articles and praise for Trumps policies in there.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -colleague

There is a cautionary tale from across the Atlantic, where Democrats’ stubborn and unpopular defence of men’s rights to self-identify into women’s sport has dropped the unlikeliest of moral victories into President Donald Trump’s lap, allowing a man accused of serious sexual assault to somehow position himself as a defender of women’s rights. Abandoning basic common sense for unpopular policies that put women at risk does not go well for the left.

waitingtoconnect wrote: Sun Feb 09, 2025 7:32 pm How accurate is this poll?

53% approve of this shit show? 51% approve of Doge????

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-appr ... -2025-2-9/

So far Musk's hammer has only come down on "other people." I mean, who cares about starving foreigners or whiny intellectuals, amiright? It will take some time for the consequences to hit home, and even longer for them to stick to MAGA. They will, though. Reality has a habit of catching up.