pdoconnell.com - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

New from me: DOGE is already causing chaos in Antarctica. Daily life at US-run Antarctic stations has been disrupted, and scientists don’t know if their research will be able to continue, how US stations will be sustained, or what all of this might mean for the continent’s delicate geopolitics.

submitted 1 day ago • 14 comments

The Medicaid programs of 27 states don’t have the word “Medicaid” in their name, perhaps out of politeness. Much as my students in Arizona would occasionally discover to their surprise that they were Protestants, quite a few people might soon find out—once it goes away—that they’re on Medicaid.

submitted 11 hours ago • 15 comments

The U.S. government has put up a submission form for reporting schools who teach kids about “DEI.” It accepts file uploads. Internet, you know what to do enddei.ed.gov

submitted 12 hours ago • 310 comments

You know what I'd do for the State of the Union Response? Take two quick-thinking, young voices in the party -- AOC and Frost? -- and just have them do 10-12 minutes of reaction in Pardon the Interruption format, complete with the screen graphics. Two minutes per topic, six topics, big finish, done.

submitted 15 hours ago • 25 comments

There is something to absolutely honestly-acquired apex-tier Dumb Guy Politics because there’s not the same impulse to rationalize away the expectations so we get, as here, honest surprise and anger

submitted 15 hours ago • 4 comments

A series about how a citizen wakes up to the horrors of fascism and becomes a freedom fighter. An animation series would be entrusted to many studios to make different shorts. A game series about a Jedi during the rise of the Empire. Need to wait 7 years between each spectacular "event" film.

submitted 15 hours ago • 11 comments

donald trump saw the Qanon conspiracy theories and thought they were aspirational ideas

submitted 21 hours ago • 22 comments

Overnight, the Dep't of Defense, implementing Trump's anti-transgender military executive order, issued a policy banning all trans people who are living as themselves from joining or continuing to serve in the military. What's more, “separation actions” are to begin within the next two months.

submitted 21 hours ago • 21 comments

"Cuts have no apparent regard for civil society or opportunity costs or long-term strategic thinking. Their targets are Elon Musk’s and Project 2025’s targets. They have found no fraud, just democracy at work. They’re apparently eager to see what happens when it no longer does." Brian Barrett:

submitted 22 hours ago • 63 comments

WhiteHouse/OMB out this afternoon with guidence on RIFs, this is the more formal and legal (when not violating the constitution) way of doing large scale government layoffs. Big new stage of the process. chcoc.gov/sites/defaul...

submitted 1 day ago • 12 comments

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

submitted 2 days ago • 406 comments

Luke Farritor is not “letting them die”, he is actively breaking the law and withholding life saving meds from the most vulnerable. He is actively killing people on Musk’s orders. This is a death squad. We won’t forget his face or his crimes. #vlakplas #doge #warcrimes

submitted 2 days ago • 91 comments

Remember the kid who we were supposed to be impressed by because he used ML for scrolls? Well, he manually decided to let people die from HIV/AIDS.

submitted 2 days ago • 19 comments

World’s richest man starves hundreds of thousands of poor children, while being a deadbeat dad to his own. newrepublic.com/article/1919...

submitted 2 days ago • 10 comments

🚨🚨ALERT🚨🚨: If you want Democrats to hold the line on Musk's illegal funding/firing spree, RIGHT NOW is time to make your voice heard. This update below is about just that. Not clear how hard a line they're taking. GOPS are abt to shutdown the govt. Their leadership wants Dem help outmaneuver...

submitted 3 days ago • 101 comments

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

NEW memo from OPM acting director Chuck Ezell saying that fed employees should respond to the 5 bullets email by the 11:59pm deadline tonight unless they had an excused absence today. Absolute madness. Full text:

submitted 3 days ago • 305 comments

This is a real statement put out by the real (interim) U.S. Attorney for D.C. It’s almost impressive just how much it gets so wrong in so few words.

submitted 3 days ago • 174 comments

no lies detected

submitted 7 days ago • 7 comments

📬🚨 HUGE NEWS 📬🚨 Trump plans to fire the USPS governing board, merge the Postal Service into the Commerce Department. It would disrupt 55 years of non-political mail service, and threatens to upend trillions of dollars of ecommerce and the 250 year-old US mail system.

submitted 7 days ago • 195 comments

🚨The Trump admin is moving to terminate Temporary Protected Status for half a million Haitians in the United States, seemingly illegally moving up the expiration date from next February to August of this year. In a single day, 500,000 people could lose work authorization and deportation protections.

submitted 7 days ago • 23 comments

I am saying this with one hundred percent sincerity: "Dolly Parton is upset with you" is a strong enough mark of shame to completely kneecap this entire movement and if the dems actually had a finger on the pulse of the country they'd be booking this beautiful person for speaking tours

submitted 7 days ago • 21 comments

I … cannot deal with this one tonight, but y’all should see it. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

submitted 8 days ago • 105 comments

There needs to be both an institutional & a collective effort to visualize this. Eg, this piece says that the people lowering drug costs have been fired. So make that a visual that says, "your prices, and the government's, are likely to go up by this $$ or this scale." Get ahead of accountability.

submitted 9 days ago • 8 comments

I hope America is as lucky as the delta jet - everyone survives but the right wing explodes

submitted 9 days ago • 1063 comments

I’m not sure the rest of the country fully grasps the panic and anger building in DC, MD, and VA. The entire economy of this area is about to collapse. Paychecks are stopping. Careers are ruined. Taxes are about to plummet. Yet no one seems able to stop this madness.

submitted 10 days ago • 360 comments

You had better take a shot, and then read this. www.linkedin.com/posts/charle...

submitted 10 days ago • 16 comments

I already had low expectations for American civil society, but I have to admit being surprised by the sheer number of people and institutions who seem to have decided to sit out the next 4 years in the hopes that fascism blows over. They're going to regret not having done more when it was easier.

submitted 11 days ago • 31 comments

we are in this position because too many Americans refuse to believe things can get worse and accordingly view politics entirely as a source of entertainment/memes rather than the very backbone of civilized society

submitted 11 days ago • 18 comments

never ask a distributed systems engineer what time it is

submitted 12 days ago • 31 comments

the single most un-american and anti-constitutional statement ever uttered by an american president

submitted 12 days ago • 5656 comments

This clusterfuck gets even dumber.

submitted 12 days ago • 38 comments

This is a $45,408,138 grant, set to run from 2019 to 2030, to study methods for helping students with disabilities achieve their post-high school goals. It was just arbitrarily cancelled. This is too expensive but SpaceX funtime isn't and god forbid we tax billionaires. ies.ed.gov/use-work/eva...

submitted 12 days ago • 23 comments

More than 130 CISA employees have been laid off as part of a larger government purge, DHS spokesperson tells me.

submitted 13 days ago • 8 comments

Y'all gotta get comfortable talking about pornography and defending its right to exist and for people to look at it, even if you don't (but especially if you DO).

submitted 13 days ago • 27 comments

I had to check this wasn't some sort of deepfake. This monster can get stuffed. Getting far worse than even I thought it would be. Solidarity with our Canadian friends and allies.

submitted 13 days ago • 73 comments

CDC source: “We just had word that all our fellows and post doc staff are laid off effective immediately. The famous Epidemic Intelligence Service, aka the Disease Detectives, is no more. That’s 1260 staff. They are calling this ‘Phase 1’.”

submitted 13 days ago • 599 comments

This story from CBS is written as uncritically as anything I've read in authoritarian state media.

submitted 13 days ago • 5 comments

The mere remote possibility of this was enough to sink Hillary in the media

submitted 13 days ago • 28 comments

Every web page ordered restored by the court that features anything related to gender now contains this notice.

submitted 13 days ago • 238 comments

I want you to imagine how Trumpists and the Right would have shit themselves if the Biden administration had excluded any news outlets that kept referring to Fort Bragg. They have no values or standards.

submitted 13 days ago • 36 comments

“I’m disillusioned and tired. Send me to a country that will accept me since my country doesn’t” "I’m not going to grovel my country for the privilege of living in it, a privilege I thought I earned in blood."

submitted 13 days ago • 9 comments

I am begging the Democratic Party to create a media spectacle. Myself & dozens of other political communication experts will coach you for free.

submitted 14 days ago • 1 comment

I'm hearing now that every technologist CFPB hired to investigate Big Tech was fired this evening. That's somewhere between 70-100 people. wired.com/story/dozens-of-cfpb-workers-terminated-in-after-hours-firing-blitz/

submitted 14 days ago • 487 comments

Remember, labor unions were the negotiated compromise to blowing up factories with dynamite

submitted 14 days ago • 28 comments

Everyone is rightly looking at the big stuff but there’s seemingly small - but not really - stuff falling through the cracks. Today, the Office of Personnel Management directed federal agencies to lay off all probationary employees. That’s future civil servants, crippling government to come.

submitted 14 days ago • 38 comments