Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Too little, too late, ftfnyt. fuck all the way off.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Everybody saw this coming.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

We do not need to pander to people who do not like what we stand for.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

In after Baud. Damn.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

T R E 4 5 O N

The words do not have to be perfect.

So many bastards, so little time.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Welcome, Year of the Snake

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Welcome, Year of the Snake

by | 228 Comments

This post is in: ,

NBC, chasing the dream — “The Year of the Snake is all about shedding that bad energy”:

… Though the snake may get a bad rap across many Western cultures, the animal is actually a celebrated and revered sign across the Eastern hemisphere. And its year is expected to be one of positive transformation as people slither into new beginnings — if they’re willing to move on.

It’s all about “shedding toxicity in personality, in character traits,” said Jonathan H. X. Lee, an Asian and Asian American studies professor at San Francisco State University whose research focuses in part on Chinese folklore.

“It’s shedding the ego, letting go of the past, letting go of anger, letting go of love lost,” Lee said. “This is the year where that kind of growth — personal and macro, internal and external — is very much possible.”

Lee said that the snake is an auspicious sign for inner work, whether it’s releasing unrealistic expectations of loved ones or getting rid of bad habits…

Year of the snake🐍🌿✨

[image or embed]

— Valentino Lasso🌿 (@valentinolasso.bsky.social) January 1, 2025 at 10:04 PM

@davidjroth.bsky.social AMERICA'S BACK: Guy walked into Home Goods and demanded the Lunar New Year decorations table be removed immediately because the cartoon snakes were culturally offensive to Americans. He then railed against foreigners and said the snakes made his son cry (the boy never cried)

— Joe Flynn (@chinajoeflyn

n.bsky.social) January 26, 2025 at 8:56 PM

I'm very mad that people feel cool yelling shit about "too many foreigners!" with my wife around, but also we're talking about snake decorations like THIS. This scared your 8-year-old son? Keep that shit between yourselves, man.

[image or embed]

— Joe Flynn (@chinajoeflynn.bsky.social) January 26, 2025 at 9:30 PM


Chinese New Year is never complete until my in-law relatives in Beijing compliment me, over Zoom, for putting on weight since last year.

— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) January 28, 2025 at 9:06 PM

And literally the way it’s expressed is “Patrick’s a little fatter!”

— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) January 28, 2025 at 9:06 PM

This is supposed to be a really nice thing to say.

— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) January 28, 2025 at 9:09 PM

Speaking of which…

my sincere question is this..of what value is the press, like, at all

[image or embed]

— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) January 25, 2025 at 12:26 PM

Reader Interactions

228Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    More like four years of the asshole.

    .

    Yeah, Dems knew about Project 2025, but we need more than Dems to win.

  2. 2.

    Suzanne

    I have said it before and I will say it again (and again and again): some of these people have never bought a used car and it shows. God.

    I am in a hotel room, drinking coffee and watching CNN, which I never do at home. They’re discussing the buyouts “offered” to federal workers. I am curious how many people will take that offer and then get stiffed. Don’t believe anything until that cash hits your bank account!

  5. 5.

    Kay

    NYTimes digital headline “Trump has a simple message – he’s in charge” above a very flattering photograph that looks altered.

    Not a real newspaper.

  8. 8.

    Geminid

    This morning’s Politico Playbook tells me Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has called an emergency caucus meeting today at 1 p.m. This in response to Trump’s spending freeze.

    House Democrats will hash out a “three-pronged” appropriations, litigation and communications strategy. I’m guessing Jeffries will speak to the press afterwards and will likely take questions. That might be a good one to watch live.

  9. 9.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    “News analysis” – the whole front page is pro-GOP editorializing.

    Not a real newspaper.

    I wonder if they really altered the photo. He looks 20 years younger. Maybe he actually submits content now.

    My husband finally cancelled the NYT. He’s reading Bloomberg and watching a French station for international news.

  11. 11.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @Geminid: Like the saying goes, a lie can go around the world while the truth is getting its boots on.

    But as Terry Pratchett said, when the truth has its boots on, it’s ready to start kicking.

  13. 13.

    TBone

    GoLikeHellMachine on Bluesky:

    Ok I have a new plan for the next dem administration when it comes to the NYT, they should invite them to set up a permanent desk in the white house, but the next step of the plan involves a super soaker full of urine

  15. 15.

    TBone

    As a wood snake, I have decided to work on myself in more snark at every level of my life.

    “Life is too important to be taken seriously.”  – Anna May Wong (Wong Liu Tsong)

  16. 16.

    gene108

    Good morning everybody.

    My work is hybrid, part of week WFH and rest in office. Commuting to work feels like such a waste of time.

  18. 18.

    Suzanne

    @gene108: Commuting feels like a waste because it is a waste.

    As I feared when the pandemic broke out…. (royal) we failed to take advantage of a new way of living because of money, fear, and resentment.

  20. 20.

    gene108

    @Suzanne:

    we failed to take advantage of a new way of living because of money, fear, and resentment.

    I think some bosses also want to physically see employees are at their desks working. I bet Trump is that kind of boss.

  21. 21.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @gene108: But you need to go into work to have those Teams meetings because they are so much more productive than having Teams meetings at home.

  22. 22.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @gene108: The story I got is the commercial re-estate developers are pushing return to work because they are terrified corporations might realize with work from home they would need a lot less office space.

  24. 24.

    Geminid

    @Kay: Ankara-based Clash Report posted this a couple nights ago:

        Denmark will spend $2.05 billion to boost its military presence in the arctic, following renewed interest by U.S. President Donald Trump in controlling Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory.

    — from Reuters

  28. 28.

    Avalune

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: 100% this. They say it’s for better collaboration but then everyone still meets virtually anyway so that is nonsense. I maintain that managers just don’t know how to manage vs babysit and so we go in to be babysat. That said my manager would rather us be home when we need to be home so long as the work gets done but she is overruled by the babysitters and micromanagers.

  30. 30.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    I’ve lived thru many, many federal employee “buyout” schemes, they always accomplish nothing because they’re paltry, they make *no* economic sense to the employee who’s not already eligible for retirement and the only people that take them are people who were already eligible to retire.

  31. 31.

    Avalune

    @Kay: To be fair there is also some consideration for like the lunch spots near the office and all the suppliers of crap for the office – so not strictly the buildings / though definitely there is that.

  33. 33.

    Matt McIrvin

    Speaking personally, working 100% remote for an extended period is hard for me; it’s isolating and demotivating. But 1 or 2 days in the office a week is enough to keep me plugged in. I also know that workers vary a lot.

    The ability to work remotely is a huge advantage in flexibility (for instance, it snowed last night and they haven’t plowed my street–no, I’m not going on the road).

  35. 35.

    different-church-lady

    We TOTALLY knew Project 2025 was for real. We spent an entire campaign warning people it would be for real. You fooled the normies who wouldn’t listen to us.

  37. 37.

    Kay

    @Geminid:

    Greenland, Denmark and (sometimes) Norway have a shared political and cultural heritage that goes back a thousand years. They were negotiating treaties hundreds of years before the first white person landed in what is now the US. They’ll survive Donald Trump and belligerent, war mongering US media celebrities. The US may not, but Greenland and Denmark will.

  38. 38.

    Avalune

    @Matt McIrvin: This is how I feel. We have the flexibility for a number of jobs – why not use it? I’d be happy with two remote days a week and flexibility for special circumstances. We get one remote a week (and honestly we probably oughta be happy with that at this point). My boss is quite willing to sneaky permit us to stay home if we are contagious or car broke down or some such. I do know a handful of people who have had their remote days revoked for performance reasons.

  42. 42.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @gene108:

    I think some bosses also want to physically see employees are at their desks working. I bet Trump is that kind of boss.

    That’s part of it.  During going into The Plague Times and coming out of it, I was actually really surprised at the reactions of most pointy-haired, mid-level gubmint managers (the GS-15 level) in that most were pretty open about remote work long term.  Never thought I’d see that.

    The few that weren’t were some of the worst of those managers, hated by their staff (actually in those cases, staff was scared of them) and definitely fell into the category of what you describe.

    But, there’s a lot of pressure by big city mayors (most of whom fall into the Blue Dog/Yglesias type of ‘Democrat’, meaning shitty) to get companies to drag their workforce back into offices because of office space vacancy rates and the spillover effects that’s having on downtowns.

    We see it play out like that in spades in Denver and we’re like many others.

  47. 47.

    glory b

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: I’ll admit that it also has bad effects on downtown areas. Those office buildings now generate fewer tax dollars and cities may have to cut services to cope with the tax shortfall.

    Other downtown businesses, retail, restaurants, etc., suffer as well.

    I took advantage of my work from home days, but I realize that cities suffer because of it.

  48. 48.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @different-church-lady:

    We TOTALLY knew Project 2025 was for real. We spent an entire campaign warning people it would be for real.

    I overheard Gretchen Fucking KKKalrson on Anderson Cooper’s nightly show make the “astute” observation:

    “Those people that voted for Trump didn’t think he’d take away their grandparents ‘Meals on Wheels’ program.”

    The way she said it wasn’t in the face-eating leopards analogy way and given the source, made it sound like he’d eventually listen to his nice voters and change his mind.

    Of course the fact that a CNN show has a Faux “News” refugee on that’s toning down the rhetoric somewhat is another story we’re all too familiar with.

  49. 49.

    Kay

     

    @Geminid:

    A Danish acquaintance asked me if I “feel normal” meaning “do you feel normal amid the collapse of your country”

    I could see genuine curiosity about that. I used to wonder watching other countries fail – “do they just go to work, school, shopping anyway?”

    Yes. We do.

  51. 51.

    p.a.

    @Baud: Their also aligned with Dem city mayors worried about the tax base. So it’s politically complicated.

     

     

    le *sigh*. FSM forbid more potential residential space opens up in urban areas…

  53. 53.

    Suzanne

    @gene108: I experienced an interesting variation on the corporate push to return to office recently. My company is very supportive of remote work and most of us have a hybrid schedule. And the leadership have broadly differing opinions on it. One of the leaders was very straight-up about how he wanted people to RTO in order to have more non-work social conversations, more fun stuff, happy hours, etc. Not because of productivity or collaboration — in fact, he wants a higher degree of what I broadly consider “goofing off”.

    Which, of course, also serves ends. There’s been research done about people being less likely to quit if they like their colleagues and have friends at work. I also think that extroverts had a harder time with remote work and they want others around them.

  56. 56.

    rikyrah

    @Suzanne:

    I am an introvert.

    I am in an office where WFH is for special purposes. I am undergoing a treatment plan 2times a week for the next 12 weeks. I can WFH those 2 days. Outside of that, I am in the Office. Glad that I can save my PTO for actual Sick Days and not waste it.

  57. 57.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @different-church-lady: We knew when Biden took that action that we were about to leave the edge of the known political map and enter the territory marked “here be dragons”, and well, whadda ya know. Here be dragons, and here be us.

    And if Milley can be denied security protection, then so can Hesgeth, so can Rubio, so can every gauleiter and kapo in the Trump regime, and they’ll just have to trust that we’re not the sort of people who send lynch mobs after our enemies.

  59. 59.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Spanky: Yes, but which half? My place they had a layoff last year and a huge chunk of the management ended up quitting because of the work load that was dumped on them, so now they are in the process of hiring more managers than before.

  60. 60.

    LAC

    @Suzanne: our fed union advised us not to sign or reply to it.  I am nor sure it is even legally enforceable.  They are trying to intimdate us into quitting by nicely  threatening actions that will be challenged in court and run counter to the civil service protections regs in place.  It is not a buyout .

  61. 61.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @glory b: I’ll admit that it also has bad effects on downtown areas. Those office buildings now generate fewer tax dollars and cities may have to cut services to cope with the tax shortfall.

    If we’re thinking long-term instead of the immediate effect on tax receipts, those buildings could be repurposed. I understand a lot of people can’t afford places to live. The buildings would need to be restructured, but that sounds like good high-paying construction jobs for constituents.

  62. 62.

    JML

    @glory b: commercial real estate is in serious trouble right now. suburban malls are wastelands, strip malls are nowhere close to full, and landlords are stupidly still trying to raise rents on long-time tenants to make up for their losses on other properties and are seeing increasing numbers of legacy businesses simply choose to retire and close up shop. (best thing for strip malls in the last decade have been craft breweries taking over space)

    Downtowns are starting to see more and more discussions about how to turn hi-rise office space into residential space as a way of getting more people back into their urban cores and filling space, because you have a lot of companies who have downsized their spaces and there simply isn’t the demand for class A office space.

    Quite the complex urban planning issue.

  64. 64.

    different-church-lady

    We’re four years removed from the height of the pandemic and I am seeing absolutely no slowdown in new office building.

  65. 65.

    glory b

    @p.a.: It’s actually not feasible to turn office space into residences in many cases. In many cases, older buildings are better, because offices depended on sunlight more than electric lighting. Modern office space consists of lots of “cubicle farms,” which aren’t amenable to apartment conversion.

    Windows are needed for optimal living space and to comply with fire codes. The additional plumbing and wiring can be expensive.

    Also, downtown areas tend to be food deserts, but grocery stores don’t want to make the investment without having a customer base in place, the chicken and egg theory.

    My daughter lives in a converted downtown office building, so I found out a lot about the process, it’s pretty interesting.

  67. 67.

    Geminid

    @LAC: Senator Kaine warned federal employees against this alleged “buyout” and said Trump would “stiff” them if they took it.

  68. 68.

    Suzanne

    @LAC: Multiple news sources are reporting that it’s an offer of 8 months severance pay. Which only sounds like a good deal if one was going to quit or retire already. But not everyone’s getting the financial offer? Just another reason this is a terrible deal.

    Also…. I still would be gobsmacked if anyone thinks they’re actually going to get the money.

  69. 69.

    Kay

    wsj.com/politics/policy/tulsi-gabbard-science-of-identity-qi-group-ed51c890

    To defend and burnish Tulsi Gabbard’s image as her political star was rising, her congressional campaign hired a public-affairs firm in 2017 that tried to suppress coverage of an alleged pyramid scheme connected to her Hindu sect, according to interviews, emails and Federal Election Commission records.
    Gabbard, a former House member who is now President Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, was raised in the Science of Identity Foundation, a sect tied to a direct-marketing firm accused of running a pyramid scheme in several countries. Neither Gabbard, the sect nor the firm, QI Group, wanted the relationships scrutinized.

    Gabbard’s campaign paid Washington, D.C.,-based Potomac Square Group for the PR cleanup, trying to mask the connections. But the operation was directed by a Science of Identity follower—and longtime Gabbard adviser—who sits on the board of a QI subsidiary.
    The revelations shed further light on Gabbard’s ties to the religious group—publicly described by some former followers as a cult that demands total loyalty to its founder—and to the Hong Kong-based QI, which has been a target of criminal and civil cases alleging fraud and racketeering in at least seven countries.

    All her congressional staff were cult members too. Just wild.

  70. 70.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @NotMax:

    It made me laugh, because my RWNJ flat-earth-believer moon-landing-denier anti-vaxxer climate-change-skeptic brother actually is named R. MANN.

  71. 71.

    gene108

    @The Audacity of Krope:

    If we’re thinking long-term instead of the immediate effect on tax receipts, those buildings could be repurposed. I understand a lot of people can’t afford places to live. The buildings would need to be restructured

    Renovating or tearing down and rebuilding requires a lot of upfront money. Government will have to pony up money to get any developer to invest in affordable housing.

  72. 72.

    Kay

    Among the company’s enterprises is a multilevel marketing system. Customers can sign up to be distributors, buying gadgets, jewelry, beauty care and other products and then sell them for a share of the profits. Customers also are encouraged to recruit others to become distributors—earning money from their sales as well.

    It is always, always about the grift.

  74. 74.

    lowtechcyclist

    @p.a.:

    FSM forbid more potential residential space opens up in urban areas…

    As Suzanne, who deals with this stuff professionally, can tell you, converting office space to residential space is a challenge. (Think about where the plumbing is in an office building, for instance.) And newer office buildings that have a huge amount of space far away from windows and exterior walls, it might be cheaper to tear them down and start over than to try to convert them to apartments.

    So the reality is that even if a lot of urban office space eventually becomes urban residential space, it’s gonna take years for it to happen.  And during that transition, there will be fewer people in downtown areas.

  76. 76.

    Librettist

    Tenants have realized they can pocket the difference with WFH costs vs. leased space, and too bad for whomever holds the paper.

    Suburban office parks are getting demolished for light industrial build outs.

    Morning in, evening out, central business district commutes started declining a long time ago.

  77. 77.

    Matt McIrvin

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: I turned down the private industry version of one of those buyout schemes at a megacorp and ended up regretting hanging on instead of taking the money–I quit not that long after and I’d have definitely been richer if I’d taken the deal. But on the other hand, I left on my terms.

  78. 78.

    pluky

    When one comes from a culture that has had millennia of experience weathering famines, “you’ve gained weight!” is definitely a compliment.

    Gong hei fat choi, y’all!!!

  80. 80.

    glory b

    @Kay: Another brilliant Bernie Sanders hire.

    I still wonder why no news outlet questioned him hiring Paul Manafort’s partner, from a firm that represented Russian oligarchs, as his campaign manager.

  81. 81.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Regrets, I’ve had a few

    But then again, too few to mention

    I did what I had to do

    And saw it through without exemption

    I planned each charted course

    Each careful step along the byway

    And more, much more than this

    I did it my way

  82. 82.

    Suzanne

    @JML:

    Downtowns are starting to see more and more discussions about how to turn hi-rise office space into residential space as a way of getting more people back into their urban cores and filling space, because you have a lot of companies who have downsized their spaces and there simply isn’t the demand for class A office space.

    Short of massive incentives being offered to developers, this is not going to be a big movement in most of the country. Only some buildings convert well (mostly prewar buildings with rectangular floor plates that are not common in much of the country). Only some markets have demand for lots of apartments. And conversion is expensive, so it would be market-rate housing.

    There was a piece in the New Yorker shared by a jackal that was an interesting dive into this topic. One of the people interviewed was a developer in NYC who does this. NYC is probably the best place in the country for this kind of project, because they have more buildings of the right type, and they also have a constantly-rotating set of young workers who want apartments. But that’s very much not the case in most of the country.

  83. 83.

    Baud

    Reform Jews FTW

     

    👋14 Jewish groups, including the Union for Reform Judaism and the Central Conference of American Rabbis, announce they will stop actively posting on X, comparing the platform’s toxic speech to ‘Lashon Hara.’
    “The hateful posts on X are harmful to Jews and people of all faiths.”

    [image or embed]

    — Jacob Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh.bsky.social) Jan 27, 2025 at 4:07 PM

  84. 84.

    Suzanne

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: The way I read that was that anyone who took the offer would get paid and still retain benefits, but not have to actually work. But I could be wrong about that! What a shit deal.

  86. 86.

    glory b

    @Kay: On the othr hand, big cities will be devastaed by the hit to their tax base. Cities depend on downtown property tax dollars MUCH more than people realize.

  87. 87.

    Suzanne

    @The Audacity of Krope: There’s a lot to be done about housing costs. Largely comes down to increasing supply. But dense downtown housing has limited demand. We need more of pretty much every type of housing, in varying amounts, and demand will be different in different markets. This country doesn’t really do public housing, but we could also devote more resources to Section 8 and similar programs.

  88. 88.

    bluefoot

    It seems like there aren’t many Asian-Americans in this thread yet since we’re 80+ comments in and very few comments about New Year.  So I will represent: Happy New Year, everyone!  I hope the Year of the Snake allows all of us to shed at least some of the bad around and within us.  Take some time today to acknowledge and honor the people in your life.

  90. 90.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud:

    One thing social media has taught me is that if the response doesn’t occur within 15 minutes, it might as well not occur at all.

    It depends on the social medium.  I’ve been spending more time lately back at my old online home, which is a message board, because while there are a lot of political discussions there too, there are entire fora dedicated to other topics, and I can use some of that right now.

    But one of the positives of that format is that you can reply to something days later and you’ll get replies back.  It’s nice to have the time to be able to think about what you want to say before you say it.

  91. 91.

    TONYG

    “cartoon snakes were culturally offensive to Americans”.  A nation of poorly socialized five year old boys.  No wonder Trump was elected twice.

  93. 93.

    Soprano2

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I was talking about this with my friend Donna last night. She told me that she read it one way (that it was an offer to work until September 30th) but all the press was saying it was a buyout. She said it was ambiguous (as are most of the things this administration puts out).

    She also told me that her ex, who was a civilian employee at the Pentagon, retired on December 31st but their pension money hasn’t started yet. She’s supposed to get some of it, but none has come yet, and I think they’re a little worried about it.

  95. 95.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Suzanne: we could also devote more resources to Section 8 and similar programs.

    I remember Biden suggesting just that during his Presidential campaign. Whatever happened to that guy?

  98. 98.

    TONYG

    @Baud: The corporate media (CNN, New York Times, etc.) had at least four months (years really) to explain the ramifications of Project 2025 — and to explain why it is Trump’s plan — to the American public, using language and videos that even the dumbest people could understand.  They didn’t bother to do so, because they knew that the corporate owners would benefit from Project 2025.  Another failure of our “system”.

  99. 99.

    bluefoot

    @Baud: Thanks!  It’s an important holiday, though most people I know here in the US celebrate fairly quietly. Unusually, I don’t have dinner or travel plans for the New Year, but I was recovering from COVID.

  100. 100.

    Betty Cracker

    Fierce AI skeptic Ed Zitron is…unsympathetic to U.S. AI moguls’ panic over DeepSeek.*

    Oh I'm sorry, are you crying? Are you crying because your plagiarism machine that made stuff by copying everybody's stuff was used to train another machine that made stuff by copying stuff? Are you going to cry? Cowards, losers, pathetic

    [image or embed]

    — Ed Zitron (@edzitron.com) January 29, 2025 at 1:03 AM

    *I wanted to type DeepSix for some reason. Hmmm.

  101. 101.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: Clash Report posted a item last night concerning Lebanon:

       Hezbollah withdraws from a southern Lebanon underground base, transferring control to Lebanese Army.

    Al Arabiya and Israeli media claim this is the strategic “Imad 4” massive underground missile base featured in Hezbollah propaganda videos.

    This post was accompanied by a clips from said propaganda videos, one 3+ minutes long.

    Another item:

    BIG: Trump has told Israeli officials that he intends to withdraw thousands of U.S. troops stationed in Syria.  — source: KAN news

    This is bigger news in Ankara than in the U.S. where our military mission based in Northeast Syria doesn’t get much attention.

    The mission employs local militias to fight ISIS with the help of US air power. When it began under the Obama administration, ISIS had occupied much of eastern Syria. Now it’s down to smaller guerilla bands operating from more remote, sparsely populated areas.

    The US mission included 700 to 900 soldiers on the ground for much of this decade, but was boosted to 2,000 last December as the Assad regime collapsed. Now it looks like they’ll all come out, but the timetable for that is unclear.

  102. 102.

    Suzanne

    @Soprano2:

    She said it was ambiguous (as are most of the things this administration puts out).

    What a way to run a government. God.
    Lemonade stands are typically run better.
    Kay is right: they’re low-quality.

  107. 107.

    Suzanne

    On a brighter note, I read on Xhitter that, per the AP, Greyhound is going to stop allowing Border Patrol agents to conduct routine immigration checks on its buses.

    Apparently one driver told an ICE agent to “gargle my balls”.

    I didn’t think that the resistance would be funny, but I’m here for it.

  108. 108.

    p.a.

    Commented on a fbook post about local ICE raids and the responses are 🤪😂🤪 mostly having to do with soy intake😂😂😂😂😂😂. Just hilarious/pathetic.

  109. 109.

    martha

    @rikyrah: Good morning. I hope your treatments accomplish what they’re supposed to and you don’t feel too awful in the process.

  112. 112.

    TBone

    @Baud: the sun is up now!  Oh wait, think before we speak issat a new rule?  Brain not in gear before mouth in motion has kicked my ass many times.

    So I pause before “post comment.” Sometimes. Not today!

  114. 114.

    TBone

    @Suzanne: YAY I might use that at the vet hospital if any MAGA little old ladies start bragging about bloodsport with their dogs again, but I’ma add

    Thundertwat!

  117. 117.

    sentient ai from the future

    @JML:

    the landlord’s here to visit

    they’re blastin’ disco down below

    he says “i’m doublin’ the rent

    cause the building’s condemned

    you’re gonna help me buy city hall”

  119. 119.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: There are probably discrete applications where it adds a lot of value, but in my personal experience so far, AI has made EVERYTHING shittier. I’m particularly pissed off about how it has ruined Google as a search tool.

  121. 121.

    sentient ai from the future

    @Betty Cracker: you can set your browser to automatically add “&udm=14” at least to searches typed directly into the address bar, and that turns off “AI” results

  123. 123.

    Betty Cracker

    RFK Jr.’s confirmation hearing starts at 10 AM, according to TPM. I hope they take the hide off that creep and that he’s still smarting from his cousin Caroline’s epic takedown. His is the nomination it’s most important to derail, IMO. I know the Trump people would just replace him with another trash bag, maybe the current surgeon general of Florida, who is also a crackpot. But at least the Florida crackpot has a medical degree, and while he’s an asshole and a fascist, he’s not a known psycho nepo baby like RFK Jr.

  125. 125.

    EarthWindFire

    @p.a.: le *sigh*. FSM forbid more potential residential space opens up in urban areas…

    This. A not fraudulent real estate developer who wasn’t a vindictive moron might come up with plans to revitalize cities with their mayors and actually make it happen.

  126. 126.

    sentient ai from the future

    i dont know if reddit comment links work for embeds, or how to do an embed at all really, but:

    old.reddit.com/r/fednews/comments/1icj3wc/this_non_buyout_really_seems_to_have_backfired/m9ra6hw/

    apparently someone on xhitter noticed that the “buyout” letter for fed employees was substantially similar to the one fElon sent twitter employees when he bought the company.

    i’ve not followed up the claim, but it’s the top comment in the discussion about “buyout? fucking make me, motherfuckers”

  127. 127.

    BlueGuitarist

    @Kay:
    ftfnyt didn’t cover the bad news for Republicans out of Iowa
    special elections
    Ds flipped a state legislative seat open because R incumbent resigned to become Lt. Governor. Trump +21 seat, D won by 4. (Clinton County, eastern Iowa). D former teacher, principal emphasized public education in defeating R “health freedom advocate”
    Democrat/IBEW leader flipped Black Hawk County supervisor seat (Harris +1) 53%, R 23% (3 other candidates).
    If the Times wanted to be a real newspaper they’d cover the election news, covered here in David Anderson post last night.
    Midwest Democrats, public education and labor leaders, winning is not the news that fits the Times right wing agenda.

  128. 128.

    zhena gogolia

    I don’t really feel at home around here any more. I’m not sure what to do. I subscribed to TPM, but he’s so boring I can’t read it. So I’m losing all sources of news.

  129. 129.

    Nukular Biskits

    @Betty Cracker: II concur About how crappy AI has made everything.

    I am currently in San Diego on business travel and I needed my oldest son’s address But I couldn’t reach him on the phone. So I googled him by name and the road that he lives on and I got everything but his address

    Google is shit now

  131. 131.

    TBone

    @Nukular Biskits: I have suggested Duck Duck Go in the past, but they too now have an AI response to every fucking question posted first. Scrolling past it works but…

    WTF Dicks Ducks

  132. 132.

    sentient ai from the future

    @Betty Cracker:

    it’s mostly to get the “AI-generated results” out of your face so you dont have to scroll down as far, i have zero idea if the results are polluted by it.

    but if you use an anti-ai “search engine” like udm14.com you’re passing your searches to an entity that i have like zero knowledge about.

    you could also try duckduckgo which offers a fairly simple way to turn off their ai results.

  134. 134.

    RevRick

    @Suzanne: There are several huge problems with this “buyout “ offer.

    1). Congress hasn’t appropriated the funds;

    2). Trump doesn’t have the authority to make the offer;

    3). Could you trust the schmuck not to renege on the deal?
    Asking for the contractors he stiffed.

  135. 135.

    BlueGuitarist

    @zhena gogolia:

    Would the pie filter help?
    are all unhappy commenters unhappy in their own way?

    If I’d leaned to use pie filter the first comment on Iowa election victory thread last night would not have been unhappy commenter whingeing about election victory.

  136. 136.

    Geminid

    @TBone: This morning’s Politico Playbook identified one of those physician/Senators– Bill Cassidy (LA)– as a potential no vote on RFK Jr. Cassidy chairs the committee that will question Kennedy tomorrow.

    Cassidy has bucked Trump before, most notably when he voted to convict the former President at the end of his second Impeachment trial.

    I’ve seen reports that Cassidy is considering retiring from tbe Senate in order to run for Louisiana Governor.

  137. 137.

    TONYG

    @sentient ai from the future: “AI”.  I wonder how many ordinary people actually like this “AI” garbage.  To me, it’s like being forced to work with an “assistant” who is incompetent and dishonest, and who often has a hidden agenda.   (I’ve worked with people like that; people who have a negative effect on productivity.)  It seems like it’s the latest of the many pump-and-dump schemes from our tech bro overlords.

  138. 138.

    pika

    I have been reading but not commenting. I may have missed somebody sharing this excellent piece from Emptywheel that adds some context for who is able to push back because of legal standing. (I remember being frustrated 35 years ago when I tried to report housing discrimination that I had witnessed but that was not directed at me: I had no legal standing to make the report, according to the city official in Kansas that I spoke to.) Also some great information about organizations to donate to. Happy New Year.

  139. 139.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @different-church-lady:

    We TOTALLY knew Project 2025 was for real. We spent an entire campaign warning people it would be for real. You fooled the normies who wouldn’t listen to us.

    We fucked up when we thought normies cared about policies.

  141. 141.

    TONYG

    @zhena gogolia: You can watch Fox News!  (Just kidding.). I was recently traveling in eastern Tennessee.  The motel lobby had three TV sets with the volume turned up high, blaring Fox News Doublethink.

  142. 142.

    TONYG

    @zhena gogolia: You can watch Fox News!  (Just kidding.). I was recently traveling in eastern Tennessee.  The motel lobby had three TV sets with the volume turned up high, blaring Fox News Doublethink.  x

  143. 143.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @lowtechcyclist: And I will also note that every city manger hates residential buildings but wants as commercial as possible.  Thus we get these insane housing costs.  So the cities created their own problem.

    Around these parts the perfect city is Belmont, which is the grave yard for San Francisco. The dead don’t require utilities or police services.

  144. 144.

    RevRick

    @Spanky: I think managers are terrified at being revealed to be shitty managers. There’s a management consultant who tells the story of a barista who works at two hotels. The consultant asked him if he liked his job. He responded, “I love it here!” When asked why, the barista explained his manager regularly stopped by to ask how he was doing and if he needed anything. “How about your other job?” the consultant asked. The barista replied he just went in, did his job, and kept his head down, because the only time he interacted with management was when they came to criticize.

  149. 149.

    frosty

    @zhena gogolia: I subscribe to the Guardian but I can barely read it. The top headlines are all Trump Trump Trump. Not fawning praise, but still.

    I still read TPM but they’re (especially Morning Memo) all about the latest outrages. Again, hard to read.

    Balloon-Juice is still my main source of news. I’m sorry to hear you don’t feel like you belong. Your comments are thoughtful and sane. Oh, I see the problem now!

  150. 150.

    TONYG

    @Melancholy Jaques: To paraphrase George Carlin, half of the people have below-average intelligence.  I suspect that it has always been thus, though.  I remember when I was a teenager way back in 1973 trying to talk to a girl about the resignation of Spiro Agnew.  (Yeah, I know; real smooth pickup line.).  She had no idea who Agnew was and was only dimly aware of who Nixon was.

  152. 152.

    Matt McIrvin

    @TONYG: I always remember that when they polled people about the Kent State massacre right after it happened, a majority of respondents blamed the victims.

  153. 153.

    Josie

    @pika: ​
     Thanks for this. Good to know that planning has been taking place for some time and that this reaction is so well organized.

  154. 154.

    Layer8Problem

    @BlueGuitarist:  “If I’d learned to use pie filter the first comment on Iowa election victory thread last night would not have been unhappy commenter whingeing about election victory.”

    But if you pied that one where would you get those subtle, nuanced takes and that valuable messaging criticism?  //

  155. 155.

    Geminid

    @frosty: I’ve taken to looking at US politics through Middle East sites like Al Arabiya and Clash Report. They hit the high points and leave out most of the “Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing.”

    I still read US sources because there is so much good reporting still, especially on state and local media sites. I save a lot of time and heartburn, though by skipping any and all op-ed pieces.

  156. 156.

    Josie

    @zhena gogolia: ​
     I am subscribing to thee Guardian, despite a certain front pager’s disdain for them. I find them to be more even handed than other news organizations. I am also supporting ProPublica. They don’t do daily news but their in depth reporting on certain topics is very good.
    I hope you stick around here. The ones who are making you feel unwelcome are a very small minority. Don’t let them cause you to pull away. We need every sane voice.

  157. 157.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    Regarding the buy out, based on LAC’s comments, it sounds like it’s just noise at the moment.  Designed to scare employees.

    It would need to be authorized by Congress and I doubt given the House margins, that’ll happen.  If it does and some people stoopidly sign up for it (because no matter what it might appear to be, one thing it won’t be is beneficial to any employee not already eligible for retirement), contrary to what’s being said here by non-Fed people, you would get paid.

    These are ultimately created and funded by Congress.  They’re implemented by OPM but once everything is in place, everything in such a buyout will be carried out.

  159. 159.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Geminid:

    @zhena gogolia: Hang in there, ZG. This is the “Winter of Our Discontent.” It’ll get better around here before too long.

    Heh heh, whatever makes you say that?  Given the construct of “around here” at present, it’s not gonna “get better” unless many of us who push back on various narratives and policies go back to lurking.

  160. 160.

    TONYG

    @Melancholy Jaques: Upon further reflection …  Yeah, most people are dumb and/or too busy to pay attention to politics.  But … in my opinion pop culture is a pretty good reflection of the ideology of the “average person” … and one of themes of action movies/TV shows for decades has been the brave hero/heroine battling against the evil corporation.  (For example, in the “Alien” franchise the real villain is the Weyland-Yutani corporation.).  A media message that clearly pointed out how people are being screwed by the plutocrats could get some traction.  But the media is owned by corporations, so that will never happen.

  161. 161.

    No Nym

    @zhena gogolia: Same here. Been lurking (mostly) for 20 years. I have seen a lot of good commenters come and go for reasons we would probably agree on. I read TPM when it started and got tired of Josh’s endless “noodling” style of writing. I read ProPublica but find its scope too limited. I read a local independent outlet and support Blue Missouri, but again, limited. I scan the headlines at Associated Press and MSNBC but won’t click on anything with shitgibbon’s name in the title because I don’t want to give him oxygen. It is a real struggle to find actual news that is informative.

  164. 164.

    Ohio Mom

    @rikyrah: If you said what you are getting treatment for, I missed it. Whatever it is, I hope the treatment is amazingly effective and the side effects (there are always side effects) bearable and transient.

  165. 165.

    TONYG

    @Matt McIrvin: That is right!  The rot goes very deep.  I also remember when I was in middle school I 1969, when the news of the My Lai massacre from the previous year was coming out.  There were boys walking around with home-made “Free Calley” stickers on their shirts (probably encouraged to do so by their dads).  The logic, I suppose, was that Calley and his company of soldiers had been trained to kill gooks, and should not be punished for “doing their jobs”.  (As it turned out, the punishment was so trivial as to be meaningless.)

  166. 166.

    Ohio Mom

    @JML: Here in CincInnati, old office buildings are frequently turned into hotels. Do we really need that many extra and new hotel rooms? Are that many people visiting us and if so, why? Did they run out of interesting places to go?

  167. 167.

    Betty Cracker

    @BlueGuitarist:

    are all unhappy commenters unhappy in their own way?

    Yes. Yes, they are, and that is an astute observation by way of Tolstoy, which makes it extra fine. ;-)

    I really suck at ignoring provocations (in meat space and online), and for that reason I hesitate to weigh in — I feel like a Kardashian offering advice on how to be inconspicuous! But I’m convinced ignoring the bait is the best way to muddle through a shitty, divisive time among people who are otherwise allies or folks we need to work with to achieve shared objectives.

    First, you have to ask yourself if it’s worth the trouble because it really IS a bother. Maybe the space, job, club, family subset, etc., isn’t working for you anymore, in which case it’s time to move on.

    But if you decide it is worth it, you have to learn to ignore the bullshit and refuse to let other people’s drama and conflict become the entire experience. Because one of the ways in which unhappy people cope with their unhappiness is to abuse and bait and bully others in overt and subtle ways.

    People who figure out how to push your buttons are unsurprisingly good at…pushing your buttons, so it won’t be easy. Deny them the satisfaction of monopolizing your attention and degrading your experience. Or at least that’s what I tell myself. It mostly works but not always.

  168. 168.

    Gretchen

    @Suzanne: My daughter and her husband moved back here to her hometown a year ago. They were visiting, looking at local houses and realized they could just move here if they wanted since they both worked remote. I’d never seen anyone impulse-buy a house before, but pandemic- era remote work made it possible for us to be able to step in and help with their young family. SIL is very gregarious and misses the cameraderie.

  169. 169.

    Geminid

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: I feel like a lot of people haven’t gotten over the shock of November’s loss. One result has been a belief on the part of some that the Democratic Party’s electoral failure was rooted in a profound institutional failure.

    I think we saw this after Clinton’s loss in 2016. That touched off several years of heated contention over the direction of the Party. I’m seeing a lot of the same arguments I saw then reprised now.

    A lot of this conflict will get worked out next year by Democratic voters in Democratic primaries. In the meantime, it will be hashed out by all the amateur political strategists on this forum, of which I am one. It’s just harder on some people than others.

  170. 170.

    Kay

    @BlueGuitarist:

    I saw that last night.

    The NYTimes is not a real newspaper. If they spun off the puzzles, product reviews, recipes and rich people real estate and weddings no one would buy it. It’s a daily rich people “lifestyle” magazine (and wanna be rich people)

  171. 171.

    Layer8Problem

    @Betty Cracker:  “Maybe the space, job, club, family subset, etc., isn’t working for you anymore, in which case it’s time to move on.”

    Haven’t seen Omnes recently.  I hope he hasn’t moved on; I liked his takes.

  172. 172.

    TONYG

    @Matt McIrvin: One of the big (largely false) cliches about my Boomer generation was that “back in the day”, “we” were righteously defying authority on behalf of truth and justice and peace and love.  Maybe in some places; certainly not in the blue collar, non-college educated town where I grew up.  In 1968 the town was full of “George Wallace for President” bumper stickers (which my father despised) for Christ sake.  There were pop culture differences with the kids — we were smoking pot and listening to Led Zeppelin.  But politically most of the kids were either apathetic or just as right-wing as their parents.  I’m sure that many of them became Reagan/Bush/Trump voters later in life.

  173. 173.

    rikyrah

    @Avalune:

    I maintain that managers just don’t know how to manage vs babysit and so we go in to be babysat. That said my manager would rather us be home when we need to be home so long as the work gets done but she is overruled by the babysitters and micromanagers.

     

    I am not a micromanagers. I set a list of projects. I know who is working on what. If it’s done in the reasonable amount of time, then onto the next project. I just want it done.  I manage two different units. The thing is, one unit would get everything done, even if WFH. And, the other unit would get nothing done WFH, except for 2 people.

    During the beginning of the pandemic, the one unit WFH for 4 months, and the other unit got paid to stay at home, because WFH just didn’t work out. We did give the WFH group Comp Time, which quelled their resentment at the other group not working.

     

    So, we all gotta work in the office now.

  174. 174.

    rikyrah

    @different-church-lady:

    We TOTALLY knew Project 2025 was for real. We spent an entire campaign warning people it would be for real. You fooled the normies who wouldn’t listen to us.

     

    Not just normies..but the MSM who went along with the GOP lie. I remember Nora O’Donnell pulling that bullshyt during the campaign. Not sorry in the least that she lost her job.

  175. 175.

    Gretchen

    @Betty Cracker: I went to the podiatrist yesterday. I’d always thought he was a sensible guy. He explained to me that ICE is only going after terrible criminals. Do I contradict the guy who sticks needles in my foot?

  176. 176.

    Butter Emails!

    @p.a.:

    Yeah. I was going to say this. There are solutions to this issue that are better for the cities in the long term. At the same time, I understand that converting significant percentages of office space in downtown areas to residential space is a lot harder to manage than forcing people back to work simply due to the powerful interests in place.

  179. 179.

    George

    @Baud:

     I left the federal service at the end of December, as did other colleagues, and additional colleagues will be leaving in the coming months unrelated to the “buy out/resign” email that was released yesterday. We left, and are leaving, because the land management agency we worked for absolutely sucks: Inept mid-level and upper management, avoidable budget shortages that have destroyed the seasonal workforce and made in-person trainings and conferences a thing of the past, rampant harassment that is tolerated by management, etc. If I worked for a functioning federal agency, I would not have left.

  180. 180.

    rikyrah

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage:

    “Those people that voted for Trump didn’t think he’d take away their grandparents ‘Meals on Wheels’ program.

     

    They only thought that he’d take away THOSE OTHER PEOPLE’S GRANDPARENTS MEALS ON WHEELS PROGRAM.

    And, they were just fine with that.

  181. 181.

    TONYG

    @Kay: That’s right.  I’ve been reading the New York Times (on and off) since around 1969.  The ads have always been directed at rich people, but now the paper itself is largely a lifestyle rag for the rich.  It is no longer anything like the paper that printed the Pentagon Papers in 1971.

  182. 182.

    rikyrah

    @LAC:

    They are trying to intimdate us into quitting by nicely  threatening actions that will be challenged in court and run counter to the civil service protections regs in place.  It is not a buyout .

    It is SO not a buyout, and trusting the GOP…when you have a good government job…

     

    Phuck outta here.

  184. 184.

    Kay

    @TONYG:

    Isn’t it? I do like the rich people real estate section though. I think it would be fun to live in a high rise. But it’s not a newspaper.

  186. 186.

    TONYG

    @Gretchen: That reminds me of the old Robert Klein comedy routine — where he talks about the dentist who’s praising Nixon while drilling his teeth.

  190. 190.

    TONYG

    @rikyrah: I’m not sure whether that’s a generational difference or just bad managers.  My Millennial son has been working from home for five years as a project manager for a software company.  He literally has never met any of the people who report to him, but he says that there’s no problem because he’s dealing with the work, and that can be done remotely.  Someone twenty years older than him might not be as flexible, though.

  191. 191.

    TONYG

    @rikyrah: The only thing that might save us from “AI” is the fact that (so far at least) it is either vaporware or extremely incompetently designed software.  So far, I think, it is largely pump-and-dump bullshit from the tech bro grifters.  But, you’re right, if those morons ever get it to actually work then it would be very dangerous.

  192. 192.

    suzanne

    @Ohio Mom:

    Here in CincInnati, old office buildings are frequently turned into hotels. Do we really need that many extra and new hotel rooms?

    One of the things about buildings is that they’re mostly purpose-designed, and thus some building types convert more easily to other similar types. (I did a guest post about why we don’t convert empty office buildings or big-box stores to hospitals back at the beginning of the pandemic.) Also, buildings have gotten significantly more technologically advanced and complicated in the last 40 years or so.

    So office-to-hotel is usually a pretty easy conversion, from a technical perspective. Other conversions (especially to residential) are more difficult. It’s great when we can reuse cool old buildings.

  193. 193.

    Citizen Alan

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: This. My office and my boss’s office twenty feet apart. And we still regularly email each other when one of us has a question, but it’s not a big enough priority to actually interrupt the other person while he’s working. I genuinely don’t think there’s anything I do that requires me to be physically in the office.

  194. 194.

    Citizen Alan

    @Suzanne: One of the leaders was very straight-up about how he wanted people to RTO in order to have more non-work social conversations, more fun stuff, happy hours, etc. Not because of productivity or collaboration — in fact, he wants a higher degree of what I broadly consider “goofing off”.

    There was one day last week where we normally would have been able to telework but instead we had to come in because that was when the “office birthday party” was scheduled. Which for me, is that one day a month when I either stand around looking stupid well everyone else is eating cake, or else I break down and agree to be “sociable” and just accept that my blood sugar is going to spike for the rest of the day.

  196. 196.

    Miss Bianca

    @bluefoot: Happy New Year! That little snake video cracked me up. I could definitely stand to shed some old habits and come out with a sleek shiny new me this year! :)

  198. 198.

    George

    @Suzanne:

     If my first-line manager or second-line manager in the federal agency I worked for had made that same claim–RTO for social reasons–I would rightfully have thought he/she was a total liar. I’m sure other people have good managers, but after I had a couple harassers/liars in my chain of command, I learned that they pretty much all have each other’s backs, and they pretty much all lie in order to enact the company line.

  199. 199.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @George:

    Welcome to the Club Fed Retirement Club!  I retired in Dec 23 but if I’d stayed on, would have retired when you did but based solely on what happened on Election Day.

    Wow, your agency sounds awful.  I’ve always said that most mid-level gubmint managers got into their positions because they were the right kind of person, not because they were any good.  I can count on one hand the number of GS-15 level managers I worked with or for over 38+ years that were good.  The rest were mediocre on a good day, craptastic the rest of the time.

    That being said, my agency, warts and all, was nothing like what you’ve described in terms of budget mismanagement, harassment, etc.  OTOH, I have stories about how “back were covered” for many incompetent GS-15s.  In fact, one went to Federal prison for 10 years in a massive health insurance fraud case.  To this day, nobody in that management chain has ever commented on the case–we found out everything we know from news accounts.  Or the GS-15 who’d show porn to secretaries (back when we had them/called them that).  And on, and on.

  200. 200.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @Suzanne: there will be no cash to hit anyone’s bank account; it basically just allows telework through 30 September 2025 if you choose to submit your resignation. The Rudbeks (us and MIL) spent a lot of time looking at this last night. Mr. Rudbek still has some time to go before he’s eligible to retire, but his dad is in his 80s and still working as a Fed employee. We are trying to talk Dad Rudbek into retiring so he doesn’t have to drive into DC every day (at his age I worry he will get into a car accident on the interstate).

    I also was spending a lot of time on r/patentexaminer last night as well for information and discussion, as so much of the examiner corps teleworks full time and Patently-O is now a subscription service so it’s paywalled, and Gene Quinn at IP Watchdog is a Republican who attracts the 1/3 of the patent law profession that’s also Republican.

  201. 201.

    Soprano2

    @Citizen Alan: I’ve begun to feel this way about hubby’s doctor’s visits. We go there, they take his vitals, then the doctor talks to us about the results of the blood tests that were done. There’s rarely any other type of exam done. I’m going to start asking about making some of these visits virtual rather than in-person, because that would be easier for me and for hubby. It seems pointless to drive all the way across town to sit in an office while they talk about his latest test results and what they might want to change as a result of them.

  202. 202.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @glory b: the thing is that the cities have been letting office space go vacant for years or decades now without any penalty to the landlords. If I was dictator of the world, seven years vacancy on a building would result in the property being eminent domained and sold, as wasteful of the land and property. Get some life back into the city by having the property being occupied and in use.

  203. 203.

    JGreen

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: ​
      I know this thread is dead, but I just wanted to make a small correction. SF’s graveyard is Colma. Belmont is further south of SF (right next to San Mateo where I grew up) and it’s not big enough to be a graveyard for any place.

  205. 205.

    TONYG

    @rikyrah: Yup.  But, in fairness, a lot of these MAGA assholes don’t even care about their own grandparents or their own children.  Shit people.

  206. 206.

    TONYG

    @Citizen Alan: Yes.  That was often the case in my various I.T. jobs.  When technical information was being exchanged, it was important that file names or program names not be mis-heard, so written communication was better.  Written communication also had the advantage of leaving an audit trail that could be used later if a problem had to be analyzed.  So, there was little difference between communicating with someone who was 10 feet away or a thousand miles away.

  207. 207.

    TONYG

    @Citizen Alan: Yes.  2024 might be the last presidential election in the United States.  Hitler was elected in 1932, but there were no more German elections until the end of the post-war occupation of Germany.

  210. 210.

    TONYG

    @Kayla Rudbek: Back when I was a kid in the sixties and early seventies, white racists were more forthright and honest.  In those days that guy would have just shouted some ethnic slurs against Asians instead of pretending that his kid was frightened by a cartoon snake.  They don’t make bigots like they used to.

  211. 211.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @George: The estimated retirement rate at USPTO according to the Reddit discussion group is going to be around 34% (mostly split between the GS-14 primary examiners who do a lot of the production and training, and the new junior examiners with less than 2-5 years in experience who are the seed corn for having an examination corps 15-20 years from now)

  212. 212.

    Miss Bianca

    @JGreen: Colma! I visited someone in a cute little trailer park in Colma a number of years ago (across from the cemetery, as I recall), and I remember looking around thinking, “so THIS is where I’d be living if I ever moved to the Bay Area!” :)

  213. 213.

    Bill Arnold

    @Avalune:

    They say it’s for better collaboration but then everyone still meets virtually anyway so that is nonsense.

    Some years ago (2018 published) a proper experimental study was done, measuring inter-worker interactions before and after conversion of a couple of office spaces to open plan.
    Face to face interactions were reduced. Virtual interactions (web conferencing, email, etc) increased.
    (I was amused because the description of one of the spaces was a precise match to my then-current open plan office.)

    Open-plan offices drive down face-to-face interactions and increase use of email (Christian Jarrett, 2018/07/05,)

    In two intervention-based field studies of corporate headquarters transitioning to more open office spaces, we empirically examined—using digital data from advanced wearable devices and from electronic communication servers—the effect of open office architectures on employees’ face-to-face, email and instant messaging (IM) interaction patterns. Contrary to common belief, the volume of face-to-face interaction decreased significantly (approx. 70%) in both cases, with an associated increase in electronic interaction. In short, rather than prompting increasingly vibrant face-to-face collaboration, open architecture appeared to trigger a natural human response to socially withdraw from officemates and interact instead over email and IM.

    The impact of the ‘open’ workspace on human collaboration (paper, html, Ethan S. Bernstein and Stephen Turban, 02 July 2018)

  214. 214.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @zhena gogolia: have you tried blue sky? I’m finding news, and multiple feeds of interest, including one for balloon juice jackals. I’m slowly getting the hang of it. I wonder if you might like it.

  215. 215.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Bill Arnold:

    Ah yes, the bullshit that was the noted techbro-pushed “open office plan”.  Everything they said it would do, it did the exact opposite.  Basically, par for the course IRT everything techbros push only couched in grifting language to continue the con.

    The real reason behind it was to crush employee morale…in that regard, it’s highly effective.

  218. 218.

    Layer8Problem

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage:  “The real reason behind it was to crush employee morale…in that regard, it’s highly effective.”

    Really?  Correlation does not imply causality.  I figured our management’s “This is what Google does!” justification showed all the thought and intelligence that went into it.  “Never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity.”

  222. 222.

    suzanne

    @Bill Arnold: So I no longer work on corporate interiors (thank FSM)…. but the problems of the “open office” are known. The open office is much more spatially efficient and inexpensive to build (fewer air supplies, less ductwork, fewer walls and doors and lights). All that BS about collaboration…. is just trying to make people feel like they aren’t building terrible environments.

  223. 223.

    suzanne

    @Layer8Problem: The reason behind the open office is saving money. An 80 square foot private office takes more space and materials than a 36 square foot individual workstation. That’s it.

  228. 228.

    JGreen

    @Miss Bianca: I was going to ask you which cemetery you meant, but wherever the trailer park was, it was going to be across from one cemetery or another.

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