glinden.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

When the Russian-made oligarch took over Georgia, the first thing he did was let out thousands of “political prisoners” and mobilize them into mobs to attack his opponents Old playbook They believe control of the ability to use violence — as state or informal orgs — is their only way to have power

submitted 1 hour ago • 1 comment

Opinion | Government workers need to be more productive on the job. They can start by writing weekly emails detailing their progress to a drug-addled edgelord who will receive them while playing Diablo 4 with teenagers.

submitted 2 hours ago • 30 comments

Accidents down 55% and injuries down 51% since nyc congestion pricing (!!!) www.nydailynews.com/2025/02/22/c...

submitted 18 hours ago • 39 comments

I'm 100% certain that DOGE will cost the government (in terms of lost revenues, lost fees, uncollected fines, lawsuits, fixing the damages, etc) more than it will ever save. It is going to go down in history as one of the most wasteful government endeavors ever.

submitted 6 hours ago • 24 comments

Plan To Be More Positive Off To Shitty Fucking Start theonion.com/plan-to...

submitted 6 hours ago • 23 comments

People really need to let go of the idea that a social media website is the public square, with a free marketplace of ideas. That's already a stretch for a politically impartial website, it's nonsensical for a site with a heavily biased algorithm.

submitted 6 hours ago • 11 comments

I need to emphasize: this is comically ineffective You can't "overwhelm the algorithms" when the algorithms can be tweaked in realtime by malevolent actors who want the misinformation See, e.g., ExTwitter

submitted 7 hours ago • 86 comments

“The pushback in recent days has come not only in highly competitive districts but also in deeply Republican ones, suggesting a broader problem for the party.” www.nytimes.com/2025/02/23/u...

submitted 7 hours ago • 22 comments

Terminal case of techbro disease. They literally cannot comprehend that a shit-ton of people work for the government doing things that don't involve e-mail at al whatsoever.

submitted 8 hours ago • 44 comments

Okay this article is completely insane. OpenAI is going to make more than its entire subscription revenue from 2024 (they spent $9bn to lose $5bn in 2024 btw) - $3 billion - selling “agents”? OpenAI doesn’t have a functional agent product! It doesn’t exist! What the hell is going on?

submitted 14 hours ago • 57 comments

Germans have been subjected to covert Russian propaganda as well as overt American propaganda - jointly in support of the far-right www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/w...

submitted 1 day ago • 84 comments

What Just Happened: Musk-OPM Send Email to Federal Employees Asking for Five Accomplishments Analysis by Professor Nicholas Bednar (@nicholasbednar.bsky.social) Bottom line up front: The threat of termination by implied resignation is legally invalid.

submitted 20 hours ago • 53 comments

It is very, very important that Admin Scholars are very, very clear right now these e-mails are wildly unlawful. Russ Vought and Elon Musk trying to terrify and harass government employees, and they need to know that these e-mails are the very definition of arbitrary and capricious action.

submitted 22 hours ago • 1 comment

I heard you like nostalgia? smbc-comics.com/comic/fads

submitted 8 hours ago • 32 comments

The resignation of a federal employee must be voluntary. I highly doubt failure to respond to this email---sent on a Saturday---would be understood by any court to be a voluntary resignation.

submitted 1 day ago • 273 comments

I wouldn’t think “moved to root out diversity initiatives” is a useful phrase for journalism at all, but using it as a euphemism for a purge of high ranking black officers is downright Orwellian.

submitted 1 day ago • 151 comments

For every $1 the IRS spends auditing the top 1%, it can collect $13. For every $1 the IRS spends auditing the top 0.1%, it can collect $26. Laying off 7,000 IRS employees (during tax season) isn't about efficiency. It's about making it easier for the rich to evade taxes.

submitted 3 days ago • 248 comments

CEOs do not run companies to maximize shareholder value, they run them to maximize their pay open.substack.com/pub/deanbake...

submitted 1 day ago • 5 comments

In the beforetimes a lot of this was just media spectacle, and the strategy of not becoming the lightning rod for the right was at least somewhat viable. That's not what's going on anymore, and institutions have not adjusted.

submitted 1 day ago • 5 comments

Here’s what is going on. When you start firing the military’s top lawyers, that means you are getting ready to order the military to do unlawful things. Trump replaces those JAGs with men who will justify any future unlawful and unethical actions that he wants the military to do.

submitted 1 day ago • 82 comments

“.. ‘We did not elect him,’ a man shouted. “.. more constituents shouted questions about Musk’s access to taxpayer data and yelled ‘don’t lie to us.’” #WI06

submitted 1 day ago • 17 comments

Very much like the Iraq War, somehow "I thought Elon Musk was a genius until a couple years ago" is now considered the more respectable and serious opinion than "I knew he was a fraud for a decade and was never fooled by him."

submitted 1 day ago • 189 comments

This is very, very bad. Am working on a write-up, but let’s just say that firing military leaders for blatantly political reasons is wildly inappropriate; firing all the too lawyers is ominous; firing them all at the same time is a terrifying five-alarm fire

submitted 1 day ago • 114 comments

Nice internet you got here. It'd be a shame if something happened to it.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

So. It has officially happened. I have been officially let go from my position at CDC. I wasn’t a probationary employee. I had stellar performance reviews every year. I’ll be ok. But please understand that many worked HARD to get into these positions and were doing great public health work.

submitted 2 days ago • 1868 comments

Usually when states go to court alleging federal coercion in violation of the 10th Amendment there is not a literal video of the President doing it.

submitted 2 days ago • 129 comments

"The crowd again started shouting 'tax Elon,' 'tax the wealthy,” “tax the rich' and 'tax the billionaires.'" The county went 68% for Trump www.lagrandeobserver.com/news/local/r...

submitted 1 day ago • 247 comments

Stocks slump with the S&P 500 wiping out almost all of its gains since Trump took office last month, after a widely watched measure of how consumers feel about the economy showed mounting fears over stubborn inflation. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/21/b...

submitted 2 days ago • 56 comments

Anecdotal European stuff: I have spoken to a few Italians about the US “situation” lately and all are pretty much asking themselves the same question: where are the American opposition leaders? Where are Obama, Harris, Biden? Their absence is as horrifying as the acts of the current administration.

submitted 2 days ago • 28 comments

"farmers are apoplectic. In Ohio, they’re stressed about USAID contracts and USDA cost-sharing investments. They held up their end. The government made promises. Now their family farms and livelihoods are on the line. Billions of dollars are at stake. It’s all being held hostage by Musk and Trump."

submitted 2 days ago • 104 comments

Trump slump

submitted 2 days ago • 35 comments

Bonus panel here: smbc-comics.com/comic/news-2

submitted 2 days ago • 2 comments

The very conservative NY Post takes Trump to task on Ukraine nypost.com/2025/02/20/o...

submitted 2 days ago • 16 comments

US consumer sentiment plunges over tariff and inflation fears:

submitted 2 days ago • 69 comments

Cover of NY Post(!) today

submitted 2 days ago • 7 comments

There’s not a word in this story about the corrupt nature of this dismissal. Not a concern voiced, not a question raised, not even an acknowledgment that he’s the president’s biggest donor and he’s acting as an unelected, unconfirmed tyro wielding unchecked power over spending and the civil service.

submitted 2 days ago • 114 comments

“With a perfect view into government and government-adjacent activity, I suspect we’d find hundreds of lifetimes worth of imprisonable crime, just over the past month.”

submitted 2 days ago • 6 comments

Image for those who don't want to click through, a 10% drop month-to-month: www.sca.isr.umich.edu

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

It doesn't look like consumers are feeling the DOGE-MAGA love. www.sca.isr.umich.edu

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submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments