Notices by Jonathan Kamens (jik@federate.social), page 2

I am sick to death of the articles the media keeps running talking about how everyone needs to reach across the aisle and find common ground with people whom they disagree with.
Fuck that noise.
I don't have common ground with anyone who still supports Trump's GOP.
They're either too stupid to understand what the GOP is selling or they want it.
The leopards will eventually eat their faces too, and they will deserve it, but in the meantime the rest of us are screwed too.
#politics #USPol

@fossilesque What, after all, is the purpose of a $3.1 billion endowment, if it isn't to ensure that the compensation of senior university administrators can increase substantially every year?
What, you thought that the purpose of the endowment was to support educating students? Ha! Don't be ridiculous.
(The president of BU makes over $2 million in annual compensation.)

"The biggest challenge of our lifetime will be figuring out how to combat the American willingness to embrace flagrant misinformation and bigotry."
#RoxaneGay in the Times. Free link (doesn't give the Times any clicks):
https://archive.ph/2mdDE
#politics #USPol

I just emailed my state senator:

"If California can pass a state law which essentially forces cities and towns to criminalize homelessness, then can Massachusetts pass a state law _preventing_ cities and towns from criminalizing homelessness?

If so, then please do something about that, because this <https://whdh.com/news/brockton-city-council-approves-encampment-crackdown/> is unacceptable."

#Massachusetts recently changed its guaranteed shelter law to no longer guarantee shelter.
Now, individual communities are following up on that by criminalizing not having a place to live: https://whdh.com/news/brockton-city-council-approves-encampment-crackdown/
This starts out as a NIMBY problem, until more and more cities and towns do it, at which point homeless people literally have nowhere to go except a prison or a cemetery.
#housingIsAHumanRight #homelessness #capitalism #politics #USPol #MAPoli

@phaedral Hi!
Please do me the courtesy of assuming that when I say the unsubscribe link in the email from Intuit didn't work, I actually mean that the unsubscribe link in the email from Intuit didn't work, not that I was too stupid to find the "correct" unsubscribe link to click in the email.
Thanks.

How is #Intuit so bad at everything except, seemingly, income-tax software?
They spammed me today at an email address which to my knowledge has never had an Intuit account associated with it. When I click the unsubscribe link it brings me to their login page. But I can't log in with that email address—no account!—so I can't unsubscribe.
This is both stupid and illegal; working unsubscribe links are a requirement of the CAN-SPAM act.
I sent them a #privacy complaint. We'll see what happens.
#spam

For the record: #Intuit replied to my #spam complaint and told me I could go to https://data-privacy.app.intuit.com/preferences to unsubscribe from their spam.
I've done that; we'll see if it works.
Needless to say, they completely ignored the portion of my complaint where I pointed out that the unsubscribe link in their spam didn't work and that that's a violation of federal law. 🤷
#privacy

If the Democratic party expects to ever win another national election this is what they need to be doing now, today, not in a year or two or three:
1) Get lists of registered voters who did not vote this year.
2) Knock on their doors.
3) "I'll give you ten bucks to answer five minutes of questions about the last election."
4) "Why didn't you vote in the last election?"
5) "What would have convinced you to vote?"
6) Campaign for the next n years on whatever they tell you.
#politics #USPol

And I mean ACTUALLY LISTEN TO THEM.
If they say both parties are supporting Israeli genocide, then the Democratic party needs to start opposing the fucking genocide.
If they say "the economy sucks for me, mate, doesn't matter what the stock market and unemployment rate say," then the Democratic party needs to campaign on the economy sucking for their voters and what they'll do to fix that.
LISTEN TO THE FUCKING VOTERS, not the rich donors. smdh

Some time in the past few days, #Google, which of course is well-known for always adequately testing their software before they ship it </s>, broke phone calling in their #MessagesForWeb web app. I've tested it on four different computers, two different browsers, two different operating systems, and two different Linux versions. In all cases, I can't hear audio coming from the other end of the call. I use this functionality nearly every day so I know it broke recently. *sigh*

For the record, as of today, making phone calls through #Google #MessagesForWeb is working again.

Speaking as someone who has visibility both into the Executive Office of the President and the Department of Veterans Affairs, let me say this: maybe in private, to their close friends and coworkers, people at these agencies are expressing concern about what's coming. However, in public, most people are acting like they have No Fucking Clue how much damage the 2nd Trump administration is going to do to the government and how quickly.
1/2
#politics #USPol

Example: a coworker calmly stating that he has "no anxiety at all" about the United States Digital Service continuing to exist under Trump.
This is, in my opinion, a gross error and misunderstanding of the risk landscape.

Most Americans still fundamentally misunderstand how weak the guardrails and norms are and how fast and easy it's going to be for Trump and his minions to finish demolishing them.

And of course this is even more true of people who actually work in government, because their identities are all tied up in the belief that government is good and works.
Yes, government can be good and can work. That is not the kind of government Trump is going to be building.

This week my department at the VA, many of whose employees work remotely, will be meeting in person, as we do several times per year.
I won't be there, because they refuse to take any #COVID precautions. I got COVID for the first time earlier this year from the last in-person group meeting, and I'm not going to risk that again.
I angsted over whether this will hurt my career. My boss insists it won't. I'm not sure I believe him, but I believe him enough to stay home.
#CovidIsNotOver

It appears to me that Bluesky looks and functions pretty much exactly like old Twitter, except for some hand-wavy bullshit about decentralization which is unlikely to ever actually amount to anything and, I think, the ability of people other than the owners to do moderation, presumably so the owners can eventually wash their hands of responsibility for moderating properly.
Am I understanding this correctly?
And we're supposed to believe that Bluesky won't end up like Twitter? Mmm Hmm.
#Bluesky

I'm working the polls in #Boston today. I got here at 6, the polls opened at 7, and I haven't had any free time to post about it until now. Our tabulator has been going continuously since 7, and the line to check out at the tabulator has been as long as a half hour. It's very slow because each voter has to feed two ballot pages into the tabulator.
#pollWorkerLife #voting #election2024

I'm no hero for participating in this trial. Hanging out in a comfortable room for a week, eating perfectly adequate food, playing on my laptop and phone, and doing my job, all while getting paid extra for it, really isn't a huge burden.
The real hero is my wife! She has a job, AND she's taking care of our two kids at home and our three cats one of whom is sick, AND she's listening to me complain on the phone every day about my difficult uncle and his difficult health problems.
#PanCholLiveToot