Notices by Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity@zirk.us), page 3

pretty soon the only allies we’ll have left are israel and rhodesia.

if tech treated tech like government, it would have mocked computing relentlessly for crashing so much and sent its own industry to the wood chipper. manual typewriters would be a token of a vigorous masculinity.

we are pioneering a new economic system: casino feudalism

@realcaseyrollins i’m sure the question is academic because you have better taste than that.

if you don’t want to be shunned for your cybertruck, just write FUCK ELON in maximal block letters on its rump hood and gigantic backside.

if March 4 was chosen as the date the tariffs take effect in order to let March 3 be the day of frantic negotiations to postpone them, does Trump/Vance outraging trading partners on Friday render it harder for them to deliver the pretend victories that Trump demands as pretext for postponement?

@realcaseyrollins @Chip_Unicorn "the government seeking to limit the feedback that they receive" is precisely the kind of "efficiency" i am criticizing.

(it's not a real efficiency, taking into account all of our interests, but it's an efficiency from the perspective of the organization that is supposed to actually read and react to feedback.)

@realcaseyrollins @Chip_Unicorn as i said, i don’t care whether it’s the current president who done it. it’s the kind of “efficiency” DOGE acolytes are proposing: replace people in expensive roles with less-manned systems. we know what that looks like. we used to have 24 hour human telephone customer service at every large company in the US. now we have limited hours and infuriating automated systems. from the inside, maybe that looks like less bureaucracy. 1/

@realcaseyrollins @Chip_Unicorn for users it’s everything we mean by “bureaucracy” when we use the word as a pejorative. /fin

@realcaseyrollins @Chip_Unicorn what’s your explanation?

@realcaseyrollins @Chip_Unicorn if you have a call line that’s only open from 11-3 when people might want to call any time (ie it’s not some live event naturally restricted to the time window, like a radio talk show), i presume it’s because the provider is trying to limit the expense of operating the line (not the literal telephone expense, but the expense of dealing with calls).

@realcaseyrollins @Chip_Unicorn no idea. whoever does it, it’s what a stupid version of efficiency looks like, replacing human, accessible systems with much cheaper, automated, less accessible systems. it’s efficient only from the perspective of the system provider, because it shifts costs and losses to users.

this is what "efficiency" looks like. https://im-in.space/@Chip_Unicorn/114077708550331811

on the left you have people annoyed they can't make rent and might die while they appeal their chemo denial. on the right you have people annoyed they'd get in trouble if they called someone "retard" and broadcast it to potentially millions of people. both sides have legitimate grievances.

people are mean to Elon Musk, but he has the same care for all of us as he has for his own children.

"When reporters called this out, the DOGE team made a fascinating choice. Instead of fixing their error, they actually removed the correct document from their website and replaced it with the old, incorrect one. They are now deliberately posting false information to support the narrative." @mmasnick https://www.techdirt.com/2025/02/19/its-easy-to-save-billions-in-taxpayer-funds-when-everything-is-made-up/

i find it a bit weird how little we hear from Kamala Harris or Joe Biden. Biden is old, i guess. but Harris could be at the rhetorical ramparts.

i think it would help. the quiet of the people we supposed our leaders is devastating.

thank you aoc, pritzker, bernie. more, more, more.

not long 'til blue states start making an official holiday of the ides of march.

moral of the Musk administration gonna be it’s hard to unscramble an egg.

if the US shirks on flu surveillance and annual flu vaccines, for the rest of the world, are there alternative providers?