Oh, this is interesting.
IGNORE THE COURTS! WE’LL DO WHATEVER WE WANT! THE VOTERS HAVE **CHOSEN**!!!
Oh, wait, except if they rule in our favor. Then please follow the courts’ rulings.
Now I wanna know the history of the Administrative Procedure Act. That can go in the 2nd volume of my two-volume set on decisions.
https://reason.com/volokh/2025/02/11/the-danger-of-trump-disobeying-court-orders/
I haven’t read this post because reason.com, but I get the feeling they’re taking another step toward “leopards ate my face but it’s ok because it’s what electorate voted for.”
Here’s my little cri de couer.
Reviewing a PR by a co-worker for a (Azure) CI/CD pipeline I created. He knows only languages that start with the letter “C” and SQL, so no PowerShell, no bash, no python. He doesn’t understand the pipeline technology and how this particular pipeline works, and he’s following the “spend as little time as possible (preferably none) coming to an understanding, just hack on the code” methodology of software development. He got this work item because I ran out of time in a sprint, like, three sprints ago. His changes won’t work, so I reject the PR. He has an Outlook rule that routes config system (Azure DevOps) emails to a folder he never looks at. Back and forth, back and forth, sprint after sprint, in slow motion. At least it’s leading me to improve documentation, and somebody besides me will understand the system (maybe).
Now I’m looking at his latest PR, composing my proposal on how he should structure the code so it’ll work and realizing he needs a bigger refactor than it looks. And I’m (temporarily) totally defeated.
Let’s look at Mastodon for a bit.
Oh. My entire country is both on fire and sinking fast. It’s getting to the point that work is a break from social media.
Back to work.
Oh, this half-composed PR comment.
Stares off into space.
Maybe LinkedIn? Been a while since I’ve been there, maybe I got a job offer! (Ha.)
Oh, look, a former colleague just started a (richly-deserved) job as a principal member of technical staff at Oracle. Big loss to the old company we both used to work at, but if they wanted to hold on to him….
But the rest… ech, now I need a shower.
Back to work. PR reply finished and sent. On to the next thing (more pipeline work, more corporate nonsense; at least I get to learn about templates and parameters and variables, in their many, many forms).
Sigh. Maybe I’ll dash off a quick blog post and get my complaints off my chest.
Early retirement looks better to me day after day. Unless someone wants to hire a generally intelligent, experienced developer who doesn’t have enough buzzwords in his resume (but is adaptable, a team player (usually), and a value-add).
And, yes, it’s totally unfair that early retirement is an option for me.
Actually, it wouldn’t even be retirement. It would be “scouting out my encore” or “just writing whatever software I want to write.”
It’s not even a CRI de couer, it’s more of a quiet whine de couer.
«They want you to think “Oh no, they’re going to get away with whatever they want, no point in continuing to fight them.” And they really want you to go around saying that the fight is hopeless, because that demotivates everyone else on our side who wants to keep fighting.»
I wonder if we’ll see the Congress’s Sergeant at Arms taking some sort of actual enforcement action (for Congressional subpeonas).
«Sen. Susan Collins of Maine — state motto: Alabama, but colder and with moose»
https://www.wonkette.com/p/sen-katie-britt-yeah-cut-those-federal
Forgot to add “tick-ridden” to that moose part. And tick-ridden because why? It’s a mystery. Definitely not climate change, though.
Ok, followup, to be fair:
«Oh, the state of Maine is a party to that lawsuit, so the state government is currently doing significantly more to save biomedical research than Susan Collins.»
And more than the state of Alabama.
Today’s #5calls call (via https://5calls.org):
Onward!
«USAID Inspector General somehow managed to put together a report on the damage the chaos is having. Among other things, it finds that the cuts have incapacitated any means of vetting disbursements to keep them out of the hands of terrorists.»
https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/02/11/donald-trump-incorrect-shell-game-of-appropriated-spending/
I confess I just skimmed this post, but this did jump out at me.
This type of thing is just going to become more common and we won’t find out about for years, when people have finally sorted through the wreckage and done the forensics. Expect articles in the future (like… years from now) about how we accidentally funded this unpleasant thing or enabled that unpleasant thing. The exact thing the far right is currently (or rather, up until very recently) accusing the government of.
https://5calls.org/issue/consumer-financial-protection-bureau-cfpb-vought/
You can, too.
Left voice mail. Tip: keep it short. I ran on a bit (covered both CFPB and the SAVE Act) and got cut off. Hopefully it registered anyway.
So, I’m reading this book, and
«“People are going to die when we do this.”
“People will die if we don’t. Oh, Sheridan—you’ve come so far, done so much good work for the cause. Please don’t quail now, at the final hurdle.”
“I won’t ‘quail,’” he said, resenting her tone.
“You trust me, don’t you? Absolutely, unquestioningly?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know that we are doing the right thing, the decent thing, the only human thing. When the time of transition is complete, the citizenry will thank us from the bottom of their hearts. And the time will be soon, Sheridan. Now that all but these last few trifling obstacles have been removed…”»
Aurora Rising Alastair Reynolds https://bookshop.org/p/books/aurora-rising-alastair-reynolds/1c76a81c9461d910?ean=9780316462570&next=t&digital=t
This is part of a conversation between the antagonist (at least, I *think* she’s the antagonist, but it’s early) and one of her henchmen. The dastardly plot is being exposed to the reader.
I’m supposed to hate the Bad Guy, and be secure in my knowledge that of *course* the people won’t welcome a dictatorship, but… We’ve just voted into power a gang that is destroying our government with the active endorsement of [Googles to see if “majority”means”over 50%”] a plurality of those who voted, and…
This Bad Guy is landing very differently than she would have a year ago, and I’m wondering if maybe the citizenry *would* thank her from the bottom of their hearts.
If the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, I think there are a LOT of people that don’t want to pay that price, that “eternal vigilance” is just too much work.
And that’s not a great feeling.
The only thing that gives me hope, oddly (and why should it be odd, John?), is the people of South Korea immediately throwing off an attempt to establish authoritarianism. (Well, and maybe the demonstrations in Germany against the far right, but we’ll see what happens at election time.)
But it’s definitely affecting my reading of this book.
Here, Read This 