My NB friends and those on ssdi are having it rough. I had to tell a recruiter I'd spoken to about reenlistment that I didn't think it was a good time to put my whole fate in the hands of the "let's invade Greenland" president.
I'm mostly staying supportive of my close friends and family only. What I am waiting for is my son to come and tell me of one of his friends who needs help. What can we do for them? What do they need? How much can we help? I'm worrying now for how many others I can help beyond my immediate circle.
Tell your grp chats that this is the phase where they are creating chaos to distract & cause panic preventing organization & effective resistance. Do not be distracted or panicked, be focused. We should be in the streets, in mass, everywhere, every Saturday. This is our Arab Spring.
The part that gets me is that most people around me are going about their days like everything is normal. How are we all living in the same reality right now.
I find this staggering to believe myself but I’m coming to understand that very few people in early days of political upheavals acknowledge it because they’re just not tuned into it like we more politically aware are. They don’t want to hear it. They may never want to until it directly hits them.
I’m very sorry for what you’re forced to go through by the rogues in our government that your family serves. Stay in touch with those of us who can listen to and support you. I’m on here on and off throughout the day if you want to vent. I’m ok with that. 💙
Rather than being too zoomed into the problem and chaos that’s being stirred - let’s zoom out and look at this from a different angle 😭 there’s gotta be a way out of this nightmare reality right ?
And ignore the bots, trolls and agitators, or block. There is such great potential here and those that might be concerned about the direction things are going can exchange news and views.
Remember that scene in Monsters Inc., when Boo bops Randall and helps defeat him, and isn't scared of him anymore? And now Randall is out of a job because he can't make her scream?
I'm not sure what you're referring to. Personally, Sure, it's hard tracing down a logic bug in the baseband board of an IFR COM-120a Communications Service Monitor... but we've (my friend Jim and I) have fixed HP Cesium Beam Atomic Clocks together before, for chris's sake.
Trump put a pause on all federal assistance programs, which could likely include Medicaid, SNAP, EBT, WIC, section 8 housing, daycare subsidies, school breakfast and lunch, TANF, Head Start, and a host of other programs. The pause starts today at 5pm.
If everyone's probability of looking at the news is 5% a day, then by the time you hit a group chat of 14 there's over 50% chance someone looked at the news every day.
It's like the birthday paradox of fascist updates.
The saddest thing about the enshittification of most popular social and news platforms is that it's become extremely difficult to gage your peers' true feelings about current events. We're all playing it close to the vest and keeping our opinions to ourselves now. But it all feels so silent.
TBH I’m not really in many group chats anymore. Many removed me over the last year or so when I would not stop saying to please please read project 2025 and prepare and help get people to the voting booth. Many “didn’t want to do politics” because it was “so stressful to think about”
He has frozen federal Grant monies for all programs like snap, Medicaid, head start, daycare, disaster relief etc immediately u til the states all give in to his demands.
Frozen now, but Trump signed an EO to halt all government funding for non-individual grant and loan requests, (unless you are an individual receiving resources from an organization that receives funding...)
Funnily enough, all medicaid portals went down today with the announcement
If this pause does apply to SNAP, EBT, housing subsidies, etc., people are going to riot. The memo wasn't 100% clear on what WILL be impacted, but the only named exemptions were Social Security and Medicaid, so it is likely that many social services will be impacted.
I'm willing to bet a vast majority of people in this country either don't know this happened, or do know it happened but don't understand what it could mean. It doesn't go into effect until 5pm tonight. It will be interesting to see how massive the impact is and what the results will be.
I mean, don't get me wrong. I hope people start fighting back against the people who are doing this. But my guess is that regular people will just start fighting each other and the administration will take chaos to bring more militarization to our streets.
They also said that federal assistance to individuals would not be affected, including Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, student loans and scholarships.
People need to! I don’t know about “riot” and what’s associated but they’re need to be some mobilization! And fast! People should be boycotting everything that could be associated with the oligarchy!
Got removed from the only group chat I was part of back in November when I realized my "friends" cared more about their wallets than my potential wellbeing. Lol
My friends and I are fresh freshman. As in winter quarter JUST started. If they take away FASFA before spring quarter starts, some of my friends won’t be able to return. It’s simply so unfair. They’ve worked so hard.
This! I often fear we’ll never be able to create enough unity to put up a real fight. The Founders disagreed on many things, but they succeeded because they saved most of the infighting until AFTER they won the war.
We are absolutely all trying to survive and should forgive each other for any snippiness that happens towards each other in the process, bc it happens. But we can’t forget we are on the same team.
I want to remind everyone that What's App is owned by Meta. The MeetUp App isn't, and it has the ability to organize and communicate without Zuckerburg looking over your shoulder.
Encrypted calls provided both ends use signal for the call. It’s an awesome product and, as another posted, its nonprofit. Even asks for donations rarely. Also required you to input a 6 digit code on occasion to further verify your identity. Highly recommend.
Just wanted to throw out there that in the cybersecurity world it was common knowledge as early as 2017 that the NSA had the keys to Signal. It’s been a while so it’s possible they changed their encryption, but I wouldn’t consider it safe. No communication in the US should be assumed to be.
I agree 100%, but as I read your comment, all I could think was how sad it is that we have to say things like this about this country. 2008-2016 were such hopeful years. Alas.
But my Spanish language group chats on WhatsApp are too cute. The morning “Buenos Días” with some bible verse and holy image affirmations for everyone, I can’t leave lol and I’m not even Christian lol
Wish I could get everyone on board on a mass exodus from Zuckbook to Meetup. The only reason I'm still on that wretched platform is events and hobby groups.
Trump put a pause on all federal assistance programs, which could likely include Medicaid, SNAP, EBT, WIC, section 8 housing, daycare subsidies, school breakfast and lunch, TANF, Head Start, and a host of other programs. The pause starts today at 5pm.
I submitted a 57 page f31 grant (diabetes research) while pregnant and had to make some adjustments two weeks postpartum to be considered for funding. All of that was now for.. ✨funzies✨
So rough. We spent all 3 hours of my social work class talking about everything going on. It was so healing for all of us. Definitely need to check in and be there for each other right now!
My advice: Turn that emotional grief and stress into something productive.
My friends and I are all devastated by what's happening but we realized just stewing in it wasn't productive. So instead we're getting involved and working together to counter the bad news
Try to take some solace in knowing that you are actually not alone. You are in good company. Millions rely on Medicaid (my disabled adult son is one), and he can not just abolish it. This is "shock and awe" scare tactics, and even his supporters will turn against him.
so what are you saying or doing to inform your audience. last thing you posted was about your new show launching. really?you're privileged to have the platform you do, and what are you really doing with it? tone deaf.
I haven't joined any group chats as I haven't figured out how it works. Maybe I shouldn't? But, I kinda want to see what's being said. Maybe I shouldn't? Or should I?
I second this. Also, help out any pals who are still on insecure messenger clients, get set up with something more secure like Signal or Session. Everyone should have a more secure place to vent their frustrations. 🙂
Choose something to work on and get out there. People are going to need help and support. Find a group and volunteer. Start a mutual aid group with your friends. This is the way.
I think about my former group chat often and hope they're doing well. I left them when I dropped Facebook. I think it had been a time coming and frankly I think they still mean more to me than I've meant to them in a long time. If they wanted me there, I gave them opportunity to stay in touch.
Be brave. Organize, strategize, mobilize. Speak out. Boycott greed. Build up your community. Plant a garden to grow food if you can. Make good trouble!
Watching from outside, it's just insane to me how *one* elected official has this much power over the country. In my country the president is nothing more than the leader of foreign politics, everything domestic is done by the coalition government and their ministers.
Presidential power has grown over the years but Trump is also just blatantly passing illegal executive orders. He has a lot of cronies who will just do it until it's challenged in court, but our courts are slow and many are packed with more cronies. In short, we're not doing so well, fam.
I appreciate the sentiment, but 'can' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. This is how dictators take power, slowly eroding away the guardrails. There's no guarantee a substantive rebuttal will occur before it's too late. It may already be far too late. Hindsight will tell.
True, it shouldn't be left at that. I know mobilizing the American people for anything at scale is near impossible, but people ought to start protesting this any way they can until it really is too late.
We are trying. We are picking away at anything we can and we are throwing support behind anyone with more resisting 'power' than we have as individuals. My country is too important to me to go down without a fight
My grad school friend group chat is currently about a law enforcement situation at our school but I'm sure we'll be freaking out about funding for our PhDs once that is done
When the Russia-Ukraine war started, there was a lot of wondering as to why the people of Russia don't resist or protest. Russians may be angry about the war, but too scared to riot.
With Trump and his new army, I guess America has the same issue as Russians. When will the people have enough?
As a Finn, I'm not one to talk.
Our current government has done it's best to take us down.
Cutting help from those who need it the most. Cutting from culture and education. Cutting from mental health services.
We used to be the "happiest country" in the world, with the best education. Used to.
Stats claim we are still the happiest country, but I'm not expecting it to last. Happy people is certainly not what I see around me. We Finns don't show anyone how unhappy we are, but if we really are the happiest, I'm sorry for the rest of you.
thank you for sharing. that's truly disheartening and I'm sorry to see Finns are now struggling in so many ways. it's like watching a lighthouse go dark -- losing a beacon of hope and guidance. I hope Finland can get through this and see positive changes in the future
The increased unemployment, reduced job possibilities, increased child poverty, increased stress levels.. They all cause mental issues in the future. And when the government makes cuts on mental health, there's less help to be had. And cuts on culture makes it harder to get "distracted".
The current government took power midway through 2023. Within the last year the amount of unemployed people has risen by 29k and job openings have dropped 70%.
17k more kids have dropped below the poverty line, because of the cuts implemented by the government.
It's been a long con that's been happening. We're all tired from being overworked, underpaid. Working 2-3 jobs for some. Healthcare has been stripped away. Education has been shit and declining with each passing day.A lot of people are exhausted, scared and have given up. There are some still -
Fighting but I feel like it's still not doing anything. No one on the democratic side has really spoken up besides maybe a handful like AOC. A lot of them are old, rich and out of touch. They voted in a 70 year old white dude over AOC for the democratic house committee. Like wtf? It's all so tiring.
In Canada we can organize to reduce barriers/stop recent changes to immigration intake (i.e. fight the pause on family reunification) and also demand an end the safe third country agreement. Call your MP.
I meant to be the first to marry a Canadian 🇨🇦 😔 I'll scope out Canada and see if it's chill and give everyone an update 😔 what can I say? I'm just a humble guy. No need to thank me ✋️😔 ill check it out first.
Everyone is down.. and I feel like a therapist. So here's what I'm telling people..
Shit like renaming stuff, Google bending over, the raids.. is all designed to wear us down. Fuck that..
Just know he's going to tank the economy, gdp is going to take a bigly hit, and he's got less than 2 years..
Also, fight like Hell. Do anything that makes you feel like you are helping. I just sent google feedback on their stupid idea about renaming the Gulf of Mexico, and then dropped Maps for MapQuest. Score one for me :)
Some people were thinking ahead to 2028, sending a message to the Democratic party about what kind of candidate they want next.
While they likely agree that Trump is the worst option, the pain of a Trump administration is considered bearable if it gets a better outcome next time.
I agree with your assessment. Still enrages me. There are many ways to “send a message” from within a democratic society. Instead, they spitefully sealed our fate. Wonder how their rationale is working for them presently? Especially knowing they are reviled by millions on both sides of the fence. 🤔
Understandable but so horrifically flawed logic. Tell that to the even fewer Palestinians who will be left when Israel decides the ceasefire is no longer fun and “finishes the job” at dumpfs behest.
One of our Prime Minister’s once said “Only the impotent are pure”, and I think this applies perfectly to the issue faced by a lot of American liberals these days.
It’s a myth that never dies. Voting against Gore was meant to bring in an environmental revolution, voting against Hillary was supposed to bring in universal healthcare.
Privilege is a drug. Imagine thinking it acceptable to subject others without the same means to "acceptable pain" to make a point. As Trump cuts Meals On Wheels, shuts down Medicaid access to states, tries ditching 2 million federal workers, opens drilling, he sent 2000 lb bombs to Israel for Gaza.
I can’t imagine ostensibly taking that tack in the name of Palestinians, completely ignoring that Trump not only will be worse for Palestine, but could actually usher in a genocide HERE.
They’re cutting off their nose to spite their face, all while claiming Harris would have been just as bad (haha)
One would think that the people who are willing to inflict a Trump presidency on people also don’t view him as an existential threat to American democracy.
Personally I think he will be a shit president, but I don’t think he will stay president beyond 2028.
I recommend Signal for messaging - you can turn some enhanced data security settings on. I've shut off the "learn" feature on my phone keyboard off and deleted messenger (it's horrendous for data privacy)
You are a lovely person, but I have to watch Lola Young videos in perpetuity, because of you. I'm not angry, and there are worse fates that await us, but please stop moralising and just do a thing.
Keep screaming. And if you haven’t, volunteer with your local Dems office, sign up and attend a Zoom meet with Indivisible. If you can, donate to a nonprofit legal (ACLU, NAACP), and support independent journalists. #Join #RemainEngaged #BuildCommunity #DoNotConcedeEarly
The first thing I saw (not in a group) this am
was What the F? I was hoping BlueS would be a little less vulgar. Tired of that word. Thanks for listening.
dig deep, why is this triggering me? Zoom out of it (use of language) and explore the concept that its just a word, use of language and maybe you can soften your reaction bc its holding too much power over your mental health. We all are going thru some sort of reevaluation for our sanity
I put a notice up in my neighbourhood to start a book club and also an angry letter writing club. If you cant find one, start one. Its really helped me.
Angry letter writing club 😂 That's great! I'll have to find something online because I'm mostly bedridden and can't leave my home which is why I feel alone even though I have my husband thankfully. Thank you 💙
I and a group of other angry ppl are going to become a thorn in our city councils side. But, you can write fan letters too and bonus it can be done on Zoom. You aren't alone, its just finding those ppl that takes a bit of effort. Much hugs xx
Haven't crossed that threshold yet. Trying to manage both FB and BSKY threads at the same time. Haven't waded into the BSKY chats yet. The misinformation, disinformation and straight up hate is tedious to navigate no matter where you go it seems.
Good Morrow, sir! I have a question. Do you or your bro have books on the banned liars? My friend and I are collecting them and you guys were mentioned.
"They also said [the memo specifies] that federal assistance to individuals would not be affected, including Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, student loans and scholarships."
My advice as always, organize.
Be a part of something, make a difference.
My suggestion is to look below and find your chapter, if this org isn't for you, that's cool, find one that is and join it.
Reject loneliness and isolation, embrace solidarity and action.
And I'm over here wondering who @hankgreen.bsky.social is. LOL. We're all in this together. Some of us are just closer to being unemployed, un-housed, and without food than others. I'm trying my best to believe in the good we can all harness within each other to stop the spiral before we get there.
you're no more privileged to be in a groupchat w/ him than he would be with you. the idolization of rich people does no one good, especially when he's done nothing to speak up against whats happening in the world today. i just dont see how you would be "privileged" to be in a gc w/ him tbh.
Oh wow ok. I wasn’t being that serious, but go off queen.
It’s a dark time, and the thought of talking to a person whose career is dedicated to science education (like myself) sounds comforting. People say “it’s a privilege to speak with you” etc. as a formality all the time.
Comments
I have no idea.
DNC can do whatever it wants. Well remake it from the ground up.
News is being fragmented and not trusted. You have to work to get information.
Rather than being too zoomed into the problem and chaos that’s being stirred - let’s zoom out and look at this from a different angle 😭 there’s gotta be a way out of this nightmare reality right ?
But I think it's time to impeach 45. Again.
...best I can do right now.
Here’s a picture of my puppy. Hopefully he helps you feel at least a smidge better!
Here's a corgi puppy.
...no
Be like Boo.
We'll get through this.
#MogNet
It's like the birthday paradox of fascist updates.
Trump inc. still have to follow the law. AI is the most powerful legal machine and always will be. Use NotebookLM.
Use the rules the system made against Trump.
Tie them up with the thing they suck, bureaucracy. You have amazing laws, use them!
Like I always say,
What's good for the goose is always good for the gander.
Oh, Sheila.
Read the room and the intent behind OP's message.
A bit old to be playing Mean Girls, in any case. Yeah?
Funnily enough, all medicaid portals went down today with the announcement
He's knowingly breaking the law to see if he can get away with it
The original creator of Signal is a privacy advocate. It’s the safest app out there. They are also a non-profit.
NYT you need to add "item descriptor" to your category examples if you're going there.
Do they need feeding and love?
First time owner, just found out!
Let us be sentient blanket piles.
My friends and I are all devastated by what's happening but we realized just stewing in it wasn't productive. So instead we're getting involved and working together to counter the bad news
Now the bad news is motivating.
"Ok, how can we work against this?"
"We need to raise awareness"
"I'm writing my congressman"
"I'm organizing a protest"
"once we get congress back, what laws will we need to stop this in the future?"
etc
"Just following orders" doesn't wash.
So anyways, how're you holding up Hank?
With Trump and his new army, I guess America has the same issue as Russians. When will the people have enough?
Our current government has done it's best to take us down.
Cutting help from those who need it the most. Cutting from culture and education. Cutting from mental health services.
We used to be the "happiest country" in the world, with the best education. Used to.
Our current goverment said they'll fix our economy and unemployment. Sound familiar?
These are just the results of quick searches.
Math: 2006 we were #2, 2022 #20
Science: 2006 #1, 2022 #9
Reading: 2006 #2, 2022 #14
Stress levels are also on the rise, throughout the population.
By 2021 suicides had reduced, but were still 20% higher than other Nordic countries.
17k more kids have dropped below the poverty line, because of the cuts implemented by the government.
Shit like renaming stuff, Google bending over, the raids.. is all designed to wear us down. Fuck that..
Just know he's going to tank the economy, gdp is going to take a bigly hit, and he's got less than 2 years..
While they likely agree that Trump is the worst option, the pain of a Trump administration is considered bearable if it gets a better outcome next time.
They’re cutting off their nose to spite their face, all while claiming Harris would have been just as bad (haha)
Personally I think he will be a shit president, but I don’t think he will stay president beyond 2028.
was What the F? I was hoping BlueS would be a little less vulgar. Tired of that word. Thanks for listening.
some of us are not from US you know
And you take care of yourself!
https://andrewjfieldhouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/The_Return_to_Government_R_D_revised_manuscript.pdf
Note: if you're not familiar, total factor productivity (TFP) is basically stuff out divided by stuff we put in.
Better yet, boycott Facebook, Instagram, and X/Twitter.
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-pause-federal-grants-aid-f9948b9996c0ca971f0065fac85737ce
Be a part of something, make a difference.
My suggestion is to look below and find your chapter, if this org isn't for you, that's cool, find one that is and join it.
Reject loneliness and isolation, embrace solidarity and action.
https://www.dsausa.org/
It’s a dark time, and the thought of talking to a person whose career is dedicated to science education (like myself) sounds comforting. People say “it’s a privilege to speak with you” etc. as a formality all the time.