Notices by Jonathan Kamens (jik@federate.social)

I don't know who needs to hear this, but if you want to reserve a room in a particular hotel, DO NOT search for the hotel name and call the number in one of the sponsored ads at the top of the search results.
More likely than not this is a reseller who will pretend you are talking directly to the hotel and charge you a LOT more than you would have paid the hotel directly.
Find the hotel website, confirm from the URL that you're on it, and call the number there.
1/2
#consumerProtection #scam

Let's talk about why Elon Musk wants high unemployment, despite conventional economic theory.
The theory says that businesses succeed when customers have the money to buy their products. Therefore, the theory says, it's good for unemployment to remain low, because when it is high there are too many people who can't afford to buy stuff, and businesses fail.
Makes sense, right?
No, not for Elon Musk, it doesn't.
Let's dive in. First, Tesla.
#economics #unemployment #politics #USPol
🧵1/8

Even if Musk weren't destroying Tesla's reputation by being a Nazi, high unemployment wouldn't be a big risk to its business, because its cars are a luxury good targeted at high-income consumers, a small segment of the population. Tesla will never sell enough cars to be a commodity item, so high unemployment won't greatly depress sales.
Also, much of Tesla's revenue is credits and rebates from green government programs. When your "customer" is the government, who cares about unemployment?
🧵2/8

Now, on to SpaceX. What I said above about when your customer is the government applies 1000% to SpaceX. As long as the government wants to keep sending things into space, they're going to keep paying SpaceX to carry their payloads. Unemployment could be at 10% or 20% or 30% and SpaceX would still be raking in cash from the U.S. government and others all over the world.
🧵3/8

I probably don't have to explain Twitter, but just for completeness… Musk didn't buy Twitter to make money off of it. He is never going to make money off of it, and that will remain true regardless of how high or low unemployment is. Twitter is a propaganda tool for helping Musk and his allies destroy American democracy.
🧵4/8

So, what does Musk _really_ want? He wants to be able to hire people for less money, so that he personally can keep more money, and he wants to be able to abuse his workers without fear of them going to work elsewhere. High unemployment drives down wages and makes it harder for workers to switch to better jobs. Musk _wants_ higher unemployment, for exactly these reasons. He wants everyday Americans to suffer and be locked into bad jobs paying poor wages.
🧵5/8

This is also, by the way, why Musk wants to destroy the American social safety net. He wants people to be _desperate_ to find work, so that they will take jobs with poor wages and terrible working conditions. He wants people to be subservient to him and people like him. He wants a country chock-full of people who have no choice but to be servants of the rich if they want to stay alive.
🧵6/8

Just blocked "mostr.pub". Pretty sure I will not miss the MAGA chuds on Nostr being able to see and reply to my posts.

In either #enshittification news… Recently filling out the tuition contract for my son for 12th grade, I discovered that #Blackbaud is now imposing a fee for direct debit payments. There was previously no fee.
There's no fee for mailing a paper check, which you can do for free through most banks nowadays.
It costs Blackbaud far more to process a paper check than a direct debit.
🧵1/3

There's already a separate administration fee paid by me to Blackbaud, and of course the school obviously pays Blackbaud for the service they're providing.
I asked the school about the new fee and they said they were not informed about it and cannot waive it.
Blackbaud has decided they're going to start charging for a convenience feature that used to be free, a feature whose cost to them has not increased.
This is classic enshittification.
🧵2/3

@heartofcoyote @ralfmaximus @joshuajfriedman.com Not sure the president can pardon someone from a judicial contempt finding

You've already lost a lot of money by waiting this long to pull your savings out of stocks, but in my opinion things haven't gotten nearly as bad as they're going to get, so you still have time to rescue some of your savings.

I'm sorry to keep harping on this (https://federate.social/@jik/114242995943001973), but if you're listening to "experts" telling you that the stock market always performs well over time and you shouldn't try to time the market, I really can't encourage you strongly enough to reconsider that, especially if you're within, say, 15 years of retirement.
It took 25 years for the U.S. stock market to recover from the great depression.
IMO that's where we're heading.
#politics #USPol #investing

I’m excited to share that today I started my new position as Director of Information Security at 4DMedical!

After my recent involuntary departure from USDS and the VA (Thanks, DOGE! /s), I was more certain than ever that I wanted my next role to be in a mission-driven organization making the world better in real ways for real people. I'm certain that 4DMedical fits the bill.

I'm excited to bring my skills and experience to bear leveling up 4DMedical's already solid infosec posture.

Interestingly, in my 30+ year career, I believe this is the first position LinkedIn has helped me secure. When my post there about being fired by DOGE went viral, my new manager at 4DMedical, Erik Anderson, saw it and reached out. When one door closes, another opens.
Apparently, what it takes to get a job via LinkedIn is for one of your posts to get 160k views. 😉
EDITED TO ADD: I was wrong, Erik saw my fedi post, not my LinkedIn post! See my reply.

Here is the "Currently clean on OPSEC!" T-shirt you didn't know you needed.
https://tomtomorrow.threadless.com/designs/currently-clean-on-opsec

The Democrats on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee are holding hearings about what's going on at VA. I was invited to testify at one of the hearings (will post more about this later) and was told, "If your friends and family want to watch live, this will be streaming on the SVAC Democrats Facebook and X/Twitter feeds."
That the Dems are streaming only on Facebook and Twitter is another illustration that they're not up to the moment we're in.
#politics #USPol
I sent them this:

There are too many boot-licking cowards in positions of leadership in this country.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/post/3llcdrajd632s
NPR CEO: "I regret those tweets. I would not tweet them again today. They represented a time where I was reflecting on something I believe that the president had said rather than who he is."
It is beyond me how these idiots cannot understand that appeasing bullies does not work and will not protect them.
#politics #USPol #NPR #KatherineMaher

Y'all know that within 24 hours the Trump administration is going to go after Jeffrey Goldberg for unauthorized access to classified information while at exactly the same time insisting that the Trump administration officials who shared it with him in a Signal chat didn't do anything wrong, right?
#politics #USPol

On the off chance that you don't know what I'm talking about, you need to read this entire article. Really, read the whole thing.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans/682151/?gift=fXb4ymsFcV2ntAzqIpmYvaCSBCGxAw0GA0n-mECa1x8&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share