Advertise here with Carbon Ads

This site is made possible by member support. 💞

Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.

When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!

kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.

🍔  💀  📸  😭  🕳️  🤠  🎬  🥔

The trailer for season six of The Handmaid’s Tale. Oh, no reason.

Reply · 1

The trailer for season six of The Handmaid's Tale. Oh, no reason.
1 comment      Latest:

Josh Marshall: "This new EO signed today appears to create DOGE as a shadow government across the entire federal government." And: "I...
2 comments      Latest:

Security expert Bruce Schneier & digital ethicist Davi Ottenheimer: "The U.S. government has experienced what may be the most...
1 comment      Latest:

Is Social Media Doing You Dirty? Apply the CUE Test.
19 comments      Latest:

One of the attributes of the modern condition is an inability to be bored. "In one study, nearly half of participants left alone for 15...
5 comments      Latest:

A Programming Note
170 comments      Latest:

Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl Halftime Show. Kendrick said, "The revolution 'bout to be televised. You picked the right time but the wrong...
9 comments      Latest:

Some Wild Ice Skating
13 comments      Latest:

This is a great thread on how an ordinary person stepped up to help her community during a crisis (her kids' school burned down in the...
1 comment      Latest:

Federal software contractor Dan Hon (who's worked with HHS, Head Start, Medicaid/Medicare, DOD) has a great & informative thread about...
2 comments      Latest:

"The Oligarchs Who Came to Regret Supporting Hitler"
1 comment      Latest:

Doechii's Tiny Desk Concert
1 comment      Latest:


What can I do to fight this coup? “We will succeed because millions of people do a couple things well, not because one person does a million things.”


Do Not Obey In Advance

Speaking of Timothy Snyder, Literary Hub published the first chapter (the one on not obeying in advance) of his 2017 book On Tyranny. It begins:

Do not obey in advance.

Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.

Anticipatory obedience is a political tragedy. Perhaps rulers did not initially know that citizens were willing to compromise this value or that principle. Perhaps a new regime did not at first have the direct means of influencing citizens one way or another. After the German elections of 1932, which permitted Adolf Hitler to form a government, or the Czechoslovak elections of 1946, where communists were victorious, the next crucial step was anticipatory obedience. Because enough people in both cases voluntarily extended their services to the new leaders, Nazis and communists alike realized that they could move quickly toward a full regime change. The first heedless acts of conformity could not then be reversed.

It’s also worth reading the original list posted by Snyder in November 2016 that became the basis of On Tyranny: Fighting Authoritarianism: 20 Lessons from the 20th Century.

10. Practice corporeal politics. Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.

11. Make eye contact and small talk. This is not just polite. It is a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down unnecessary social barriers, and come to understand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life.

12. Take responsibility for the face of the world. Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.

13. Hinder the one-party state. The parties that took over states were once something else. They exploited a historical moment to make political life impossible for their rivals. Vote in local and state elections while you can.


You’re Allowed to Feel like Garbage. “If you are a remotely informed left-leaning person in America right now, why wouldn’t you be experiencing depression and anxiety?”


Trump’s Obsession With Immigration Is Really an Obsession With Segregation. His policies are a continuation of the 1790 Naturalization Act (only landowning white men were citizens), the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act, etc.


Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba “is a practical and imaginative resource for activists and organizers building power in an era of destabilization and catastrophe”.

Reply · 0

“We Are Hurtling Towards Having a Russian-Type Regime”

Writing from Ukraine on his way to the front in the country’s war with Russia, Timothy Snyder muses about the differences in life & freedom on the Ukrainian & Russian sides of the war’s front line.

Yet, on this, the Ukrainian side of the line, people lead completely different lives than under Russian occupation or in Russia. Ukrainians say what they want, including about the war and about politics. Journalists cover the war and write about politics. There is fear, although less than you might think; but it is fear of bombs and missiles and violence from Russia, not of denunciations or oppression or of one’s own government. I have the strange feeling, this week in Kyiv, that Ukrainians are living freer lives now than Americans. At a book store where I was talking to a Ukrainian philosopher about freedom, a young woman put her hand on my arm and said “sorry about the U.S.”

Snyder then goes on to wonder if the United States is now headed towards a similar line:

I have in mind something deeper: the transformation of our public and private lives. As in Russia, we have let local newspapers and local media die. As in Russia, their place was taken by a few commercial operations. As in Russia, the media are owned by oligarchs, who then become close to government or submit to it (not all of the media in America, of course, are submitting, but far too many are). As in Russia, our daily lives are flooded by such a rushing river of contradictory lies that we have trouble knowing where we are, let alone what we should do. As in Russia, a president supported by oligarchs and their media power is trying to humiliate the other branches of government. The executive is seeking to marginalize the legislature — forever — by ruling without passing laws. The executive is seeking to marginalize the judiciary — forever — by ignoring court rulings. Those things, of course, have already happened in Russia.

This passage made my stomach drop:

As I close my tablet and go to sleep, I am safer than every single one of you reading this in the United States, and indeed safer than I would be in the United States. My train will stop in five hours. But America will keep hurtling.

It’s a great, provocative piece; read the whole thing.


Jamelle Bouie: Trump’s War on DEI Is Really a War on Civil Rights. “His attack on DEI isn’t about increasing merit or fighting wrongful discrimination; it is about reimposing hierarchies of race & gender (among other categories) onto American society.”


Tressie McMillan Cottom’s latest is not easily summarized, but is well-worth a read: Look Past Elon Musk’s Chaos. There’s Something More Sinister at Work.


The Trump administration barred an AP reporter from an event because the AP won’t refer to the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America”. Something something free speech something something protects but does not bind, etc. etc. lolololsob


Security expert Bruce Schneier & digital ethicist Davi Ottenheimer: “The U.S. government has experienced what may be the most consequential security breach in its history.” And: “This is beyond politics — this is a matter of national security.”

Reply · 1

Josh Marshall: “This new EO signed today appears to create DOGE as a shadow government across the entire federal government.” And: “I genuinely don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that Elon Musk is functionally in charge of the US government.”

Reply · 2

Law professors are a staid bunch. But: “We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis right now. There have been so many unconstitutional and illegal actions in the first 18 days of the Trump presidency. We never have seen anything like this.”


Pitching a Big Tent in an Emergency

On her newly launched site, Meditations in an Emergency, Rebecca Solnit talks about the importance of coming together with “people who are not exactly like each of us individually” in times of crisis.

In this emergency, I think it likely that we are going to need to pitch a very big tent and invite everyone in who doesn’t want to live in a dictatorship, who wants the rule of law, the checks and balances, the Constitution to still be in effect, everyone’s human and civil rights protected, who wants to protect the vulnerable.

I also appreciated her speaking up about a dynamic I’ve witnessed on social media a lot:

I want to take an unscenic detour to talk about what I’ve noticed on social media lately, and doing so is a reminder that being on social media is forever derided and dismissed, but it’s where a lot of us connect with each other, gather (reliable or corrupt) information, connect, and express ourselves. I’ve often found it useful as a sort of laboratory for opinion. And what I’ve seen lately — and really all along — is a focus on morality and taste rather than strategy and possibility.

She continued:

It was a snarky week on social media. Someone I otherwise respect re-posted a guy proposing that all Tesla vehicles should be vandalized (though obviously many people bought them well before this crisis, even before Musk went so far into right-wing rage, racism, and conspiracy theory, and many bought them out of concern for the climate). People lashed out at those who didn’t vote for Harris, and apparently some people were sneering at those impacted in a measles outbreak in Texas, though this meant kids suffering the consequences for their parents’ anti-vaccination ideology. Going after each other is not going after the Trump Administration; fighting each other produces division when we need unity or at least a broad coalition. I’m not arguing here for having nothing but lofty thoughts; I have plenty of not very nice thoughts, but I try to save them for conversations in private and statements about actual enemies.

In these comments, people weren’t looking for strategy or possibility or the building of coalitions and the reaching out to new potential allies. They were looking for people to scorn.

Like Solnit, I just don’t find it helpful to wage rhetorical war on potential allies — although it may be understandable, give how scared and helpless people feel.


A federal judge has ordered the HHS, CDC, and FDA to restore their websites and datasets to how they were on Jan 30th by 11:59pm tonight. Resistance is not futile, but we’ll see how much Trump wants to push/piss off the judiciary.


The Trump administration is defying federal court orders and maintaining the funding freeze on issuing grant funding at the National Institutes of Health.


I loved Russell Shorto’s The Island at the Center of the World so I am looking forward to reading his upcoming Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America.

Reply · 0

Civil Servants Are Not America’s Enemies. “Washington created the modern civil service to make the government efficient in the first place, ending a patronage system wracked with graft and incompetence.”


Unsurprising: a recent study of 32M tweets from politicians from 27 countries shows that “far-right populists [are] much more likely than the left to spread fake news” and “amplifying misinformation is now part of radical right strategy”.


Is Social Media Doing You Dirty? Apply the CUE Test.

In a recent episode of the Uncanny Valley podcast about quitting social media, Lauren Goode talked about a framework she applies to see if the time she’s spending on social media is serving her well. From the transcript:

I have been toying with this idea of a framework for a while as I’ve thought about social media and how to manage it and how I actually really would love to get off social media. I came up with this acronym, CUE: community, utility and education. Bear with me here. The C, community, is what you just described, Mike.

Here is what Mike described:

I really feel like the community aspect is the thing that makes it healthy. When I know that I can open an app and find all of my people, that makes me happy and it makes me want to open the app. I think probably the best illustration of that is the experience that we’ve all had where you’re live tweeting something, right? You’re watching a television show, or you’re watching some event happening and you have your phone in your hand and you are posting and you’re replying to other people’s posts, and you’re faving things and you’re reposting re-xing, re-skeeting things, and it adds to the experience. It enhances the experience. It makes it feel like you’re hanging out with your friends while you’re doing this thing together, even if you’re all alone. To me, that’s a good, healthy thing that social media can provide.

Ok, back to CUE:

Utility, it could be something like messaging, which is also a part of community too, but it could be something kind of simple like you’re messaging to get an address or you’re checking the weather, that’s a utility, right? Then there’s education. You’re actually using the apps to learn something real and true and valid that you would not have learned otherwise. I think once you get into the, “I’m not using this as a utility or for education, it’s not serving me in any way, it’s not a tool, it’s not building community, it’s fraying community, and I’m just doom scrolling,” then you’re outside of the CUE. You need to log off.

I like this framework, but I feel like there’s something missing. Another E for entertainment? It’s OK to log on to Instagram to watch skateboard tricks and capybara soaking in citrus-infused baths and people finally succeeding in throwing a CD into a thin slot from across the room. But when it stops being entertaining and starts to feel compulsive, like gambling or pressing a button to get a treat, then it’s time to stop.

Whether it’s CUE or CUEE, the important part is thinking about your social media use, how it makes you feel (both in the moment and afterwards), what needs or desires it’s filling in your life, and what it might be taking away from you (or taking you away from). And then, hopefully, taking steps so that social media sparks joy instead of inciting dread or dispensing numbness.

Personally, I’ve scaled way back on my Instagram usage in the past month (focusing mainly on the community aspect when I do use it) and have stopped using Facebook & Threads. I’ve been using Bluesky a ton for work…it’s been essential in tracking what’s going on and who’s doing the best reporting and contextualization on the coup.

What’s your relationship to social media like these days?

Reply · 19

Democracy is Crumbling. Is Anybody Doing Anything? Sherrilyn Ifill has a list of what people are doing to counter the coup and more importantly, what you can do. I’m working on this one: “Make sure you have and can share good information”.


Five Former Treasury Secretaries: Our Democracy Is Under Siege. “[We’re writing] this piece because we are alarmed about the risks of arbitrary & capricious political control of federal payments, which would be unlawful & corrosive to our democracy.”


Voting for the Mayor Who Promised to Blow Up the City Doesn’t Mean I Approve of the Mayor Blowing Up the City. “I just wanted him to fix the old bowling alley like he promised in passing once.”


How People & Institutions in Budding Autocracies Obey in Advance

In a piece called The Chilling Consequences of Going Along With Trump, Russian exile M. Gessen outlines the five different types of arguments used by people & institutions when they engage in “anticipatory obedience” (aka, obeying in advance). For example:

The second argument is the higher-purpose argument, which is a close cousin of collective hostage-taking. In 2012, during the winter when more than 150,000 Russians protested against rigged elections and Putin’s intention to assume the presidency for a third term, a popular actress, Chulpan Khamatova, broke ranks with the liberal intelligentsia and came out in support of Putin. Khamatova had co-founded an organization that helped children with cancer. She faced some criticism but said, “If it meant that another hospital was built, I would do the same thing again.” Her dignity was, after all, a small price to pay for saving children’s lives.

I suspect that some American hospital administrators who are discontinuing trans care for young people are using similar logic: To serve their patients, they must protect their federal funding — even if this means that they stop serving another group of patients.


One of the attributes of the modern condition is an inability to be bored. “In one study, nearly half of participants left alone for 15 minutes with no stimulation chose to have an electric shock.” !!!

Reply · 5

From Greg Storey, a list of “ways to take in information without getting pulled under”. Including the Control Test: “Is this within my control? If yes, what’s my next step? If no, how do I adjust to move forward anyway?”

Reply · 0

“The private companies in control of social-media networks possess an unprecedented ability to manipulate and control the populace, to keep them in a kind of algorithmic cage divorced from reality.”


It’s a Coup, But It’s Not Just Musk’s Coup

This piece at The Verge from Elizabeth Lopatto is a great recap of Elon Musk’s coordinated attack on the infrastructure of the US federal government. I particularly appreciate the dozens of links throughout the piece that provide context for the text, a demonstration of the powerful utility of hypertext.

But I do have a criticism and I think it’s an important one: this is not solely Elon Musk’s coup. Here’s the lede:

Almost 250 years after the Declaration of Independence, America has gotten herself a new king. His name is Elon Musk.

“Wait a minute,” you may be saying. “What about President Donald Trump?” Trump ran, much like Silvio Berlusconi before him, primarily to avoid prosecutions. He has never liked being president and he has already gotten what he wants. He’s not the power center. Musk is.

Consequently I will not be bothering with whatever statements Katie Miller of DOGE and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt are putting out. We all have eyes; we can see what is going on. Musk has taken over the civilian government. This is a billionaire pulling a heist on the entire nation.

The Verge is not alone in asserting this — Carole Cadwalladr’s latest piece is almost entirely about Musk’s actions. While I agree that Musk is the sharp end of the spear and what he’s doing (and has already done) is of unprecedentedly massive concern, this single villain view of the coup is incomplete, for two main reasons:

  1. The executive branch is fully participating in the coup. Musk is acting on behalf of Trump and with his public approval. This cover matters, even if Trump isn’t actively directing what Musk is doing (he surely isn’t), even if Trump doesn’t actually know what exactly Musk is up to and why (he probably doesn’t), and whether Musk’s and Trump’s agendas overlap (only partially).

    Additionally, through his executive orders, Trump is also attempting to seize governmental power that doesn’t reside in the office of the president. The data & systems that Musk now has access to will be useful to Trump in executing these power seizures. The chaos Musk is creating will also be useful in distracting from Trump’s own authoritarian objectives.

  2. In standing by and allowing Trump & Musk to seize power that is not constitutionally theirs, the Republican-controlled Congress is fully participating in the coup. Most of the power being grabbed here is that of Congress…and they are just letting it happen.

Let me put it this way: let’s say this afternoon Elon Musk is somehow stopped, fired, thrown out of the country, divested of all his companies. The coup would continue. Perhaps not as vigorously as before, but it would continue because the executive branch and Congress are fully on board. It’s important that we don’t lose sight of this larger picture.


This is a great thread on how an ordinary person stepped up to help her community during a crisis (her kids’ school burned down in the recent LA fires).

Reply · 1

The Power of Chaos

The events of the last few weeks reminded me of this succinct summary of Timothy Ryback’s book, Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power fron Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker:

Ryback details, week by week, day by day, and sometimes hour by hour, how a country with a functional, if flawed, democratic machinery handed absolute power over to someone who could never claim a majority in an actual election and whom the entire conservative political class regarded as a chaotic clown with a violent following. Ryback shows how major players thought they could find some ulterior advantage in managing him. Each was sure that, after the passing of a brief storm cloud, so obviously overloaded that it had to expend itself, they would emerge in possession of power. The corporate bosses thought that, if you looked past the strutting and the performative antisemitism, you had someone who would protect your money. Communist ideologues thought that, if you peered deeply enough into the strutting and the performative antisemitism, you could spy the pattern of a popular revolution. The decent right thought that he was too obviously deranged to remain in power long, and the decent left, tempered by earlier fights against different enemies, thought that, if they forcibly stuck to the rule of law, then the law would somehow by itself entrap a lawless leader. In a now familiar paradox, the rational forces stuck to magical thinking, while the irrational ones were more logical, parsing the brute equations of power. And so the storm never passed. In a way, it still has not.


Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl Halftime Show. Kendrick said, “The revolution ‘bout to be televised. You picked the right time but the wrong guy.” — with the wrong guy sitting in the audience.

Reply · 9

Judith Butler: “Once you decide that a single vulnerable minority can be sacrificed, you’re operating within a fascist logic, because that means there might be a second one you’re willing to sacrifice, and a third, a fourth, and then what happens?”


Some Wild Ice Skating

When Fairlee, Vermont’s Lake Morey freezes over in the winter, a 4-5 mile loop is cleared by a local resort for wild ice skating. I was able to get out on the ice with my family for a couple hours on Friday; it was great fun, and I’m looking forward to going again soon.

a frozen path on a snowy lake

lake ice with cracks and marks from ice skates

a man on a frozen path on a snowy lake

lake ice with cracks and a spiral pattern

I hope you got out this weekend and did something outside or active or new or comforting…we’re going to need to replenish our reserves in the coming weeks and months.

Reply · 13

Extinction Burst Explains MAGA Voters’ Racist Anger

This fantastic two-minute video, from a guy named Rich, neatly explains why the anger and frustration of Trump’s supporters has been growing over time — why the pushback on things like diversity, equity, inclusion, trans rights, and LGBTQ+ issues seems to be increasing and the hate grows more overt. It has to do with an idea called an extinction burst.

Here’s a transcript of the video:

The Trump spike in racism, sexism, and hate — it’s the emotional foundation for the entire Make America Great Again movement, that nostalgia for when life in America was simpler and paler. But as soon as we began addressing it — boom! extinction burst.

This term is why I love science so much. You can take an idea from one field, like psychology for example, and apply it to another field, like political science, and the principles still apply.

Extinction burst is actually really simple. It’s when you have a behavior and a reward, and you withdraw the reward in order to change the behavior. When you do that, usually to change an undesirable behavior, the behavior itself increases in frequency and intensity for a short period of time until ultimately the subject changes the behavior and then that behavior goes extinct.

This is like you’re at the store and you’re swiping your credit card, and it doesn’t work, and so then you swipe your credit card like 15 more times until you’re so angry you’re freaking out, and you’re about to scream an F-bomb in the middle of Toys R Us. And then you say, “I’ll just pay with cash”. Swiping is the behavior and the payment is the reward. So when the swiping doesn’t work and you don’t get the reward you need, you get madder and madder and you try it more and more until you change the behavior, which then results in the extinction of the original behavior.

Now, extinction burst at the national level is much slower, but in this case we actually know very clearly what triggered it: it was Obama’s election in 2008. Sarah Palin, the Tea Party Movement, the birther movement, and ultimately MAGA. It is a 10-year tsunami of rage in the face of inevitable extinction.

This is why Republicans are still so angry. They know they know Trump winning can’t stop it, and they know Trump in office can’t stop it — they can feel the inevitable extinction of their own terrible beliefs.

At this point, the only thing that’ll stop it is if we let up. If you stop interfering with that undesirable behavior, it will go back to normal. So no, you’re not crazy; yes, you are doing the right thing; and yes, if you persevere, the extinction burst will end.

Note that this isn’t an explanation of where the Tea Party & MAGA movements came from; many people have written about how MAGA can be understood as a reaction to Obama’s election — subsequent events like Black Lives Matter, the Me Too movement, the election of a Black woman as vice-president, the legalization of gay marriage, etc. have kept the indignities coming.

Rather, the extinction burst concept explains why the reaction seems to be getting more extreme, from QAnon to an increased number of book bans to anti-trans laws to anti-abortion laws to Elon Musk doing Nazi salutes in public to openly expressed racism by many Republican politicians to January 6th to the 2025 Coup. We are seeing behavior that 15-20 years ago would have been almost unthinkable — now it’s daily. They are swiping the card and getting madder and madder.

You can read more about extinction bursts, including some examples of extinction bursts in children:

Tantrums: A child who has learned that tantrums result in attention from their parents may initially escalate their tantrum behavior when their tantrums are no longer reinforced. This escalation is an extinction burst, as the child is attempting to regain the attention they once received.

Protesting: When a person has been reinforced by being excused from a task or activity, they may initially increase their protest behaviors, such as whining or arguing, when the reinforcement is no longer provided. This increase in protest behavior is an extinction burst.

Persistence: In some cases, individuals may persistently engage in a behavior that previously led to reinforcement, even if the reinforcement is no longer present. For example, a child who used to receive a treat for asking repeatedly may continue to ask repeatedly, hoping for the treat, even when the treat is no longer given. This persistence is an extinction burst.

And in adults:

Cell Phone Addiction: If an individual is accustomed to receiving instant gratification through social media notifications on their cell phone, they may experience an extinction burst when they attempt to reduce their screen time. They may initially intensify their checking behavior, hoping to regain the previous level of reinforcement.

Gambling: In the context of gambling, an individual who has previously experienced wins and rewards may exhibit an extinction burst if they suddenly stop winning. They may increase their gambling behavior, hoping to recreate the past reinforcement.

Smoking Cessation: When someone tries to quit smoking, they may experience an extinction burst in the form of increased cravings and even heightened smoking behavior. This burst occurs because the expected reinforcement (nicotine) is no longer being received, leading to an initial escalation in smoking behavior.

(via @karenattiah.bsky.social)

Reply · 1

According to Wired’s reporting, a US Treasury Threat Intelligence Analysis has called the incursion by “DOGE” staff “the single greatest insider threat risk the Bureau of the Fiscal Service has ever faced”. And it recommends suspending their access.


Doechii’s Tiny Desk Concert

Hi, friends. It’s Friday and I don’t know about you, but I think we need to unwind a little bit with this Tiny Desk Concert from Doechii. Aaron posted this back in December but it’s popped up in my feed and inbox a few times in the past few days — must be that shiny new best rap album Grammy — so I thought I’d pop it in here again.

Backed by a full band, horns and two background singers, Doechii’s performance was a masterclass in creativity. Sporting vintage academia looks, complete with matching cornrows and beads, Doechii delivers a freshly rearranged medley of cuts from ALLIGATOR BITES NEVER HEAL, tailored specifically for Tiny Desk. While hip-hop remained at the core, she truly gave us everything: a jazz arrangement of “BOOM BAP,” heavy rock vibes on “CATFISH” and a Southern praise break outro on “NISSAN ALTIMA.”

She closed her set with “Black Girl Memoir” from her debut album, Oh The Places You’ll Go. Before performing, she shared, “I wrote this song specifically for Black women. As a dark-skinned woman, there’s a very unique experience I’m trying to internalize … This is dedicated to all the beautiful Black women in the room.” While her star has been steadily on the rise since her debut, 2024 is shaping up to be the year Doechii cements herself as a household name.

Reply · 1

Some Actions That Are Not Protesting or Voting, including donating to a food program, volunteering your skills to local groups, joining or starting a union, and helping with disaster relief.


David Kurtz argues that we should refer to Trump’s mass removal of federal employees as purges, not as “firings” or “layoffs”. “Business terms provide a totally wrong conceptual framework for the purges underway.”


“The Government’s Computing Experts Say They Are Terrified”

Charlie Warzel and Ian Bogost from The Atlantic talked to four experienced federal-government IT professionals who have all “built, modified, or maintained the kind of technological infrastructure” that Elon Musk’s team of young hackers are attacking. They are beyond concerned about the potential consequences.

Based on what has been reported, DOGE representatives have obtained or requested access to certain systems at the U.S. Treasury, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of Personnel Management, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with eyes toward others, including the Federal Aviation Administration. “This is the largest data breach and the largest IT security breach in our country’s history—at least that’s publicly known,” one contractor who has worked on classified information-security systems at numerous government agencies told us this week. “You can’t un-ring this bell. Once these DOGE guys have access to these data systems, they can ostensibly do with it what they want.”

What exactly they want is unclear. And much remains unknown about what, exactly, is happening here. The contractor emphasized that nobody yet knows which information DOGE has access to, or what it plans to do with it. Spokespeople for the White House, and Musk himself, did not respond to emailed requests for comment. Some reports have revealed the scope of DOGE’s incursions at individual agencies; still, it has been difficult to see the broader context of DOGE’s ambition.

The four experts laid out the implications of giving untrained individuals access to the technological infrastructure that controls the country. Their message is unambiguous: These are not systems you tamper with lightly. Musk and his crew could act deliberately to extract sensitive data, alter fundamental aspects of how these systems operate, or provide further access to unvetted actors. Or they may act with carelessness or incompetence, breaking the systems altogether. Given the scope of what these systems do, key government services might stop working properly, citizens could be harmed, and the damage might be difficult or impossible to undo. As one administrator for a federal agency with deep knowledge about the government’s IT operations told us, “I don’t think the public quite understands the level of danger.”

For example:

Many systems and databases in a given agency feed into others, but access to them is restricted. Employees, contractors, civil-service government workers, and political appointees have strict controls on what they can access and limited visibility into the system as a whole. This is by design, as even the most mundane government databases can contain highly sensitive personal information. A security-clearance database such as those used by the Department of Justice or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, one contractor told us, could include information about a person’s mental-health or sexual history, as well as disclosures about any information that a foreign government could use to blackmail them.

Reply · 2

Trump tried to illegally fire US Federal Election Commission Chair Ellen Weintraub. She refused to leave: “There’s a legal way to replace FEC commissioners — this isn’t it.” She pledges to continue to “stir up some good trouble”.


A kid named Big Balls (with some shady stuff in his past) hacked into gov’t computer systems for Elon Musk, but “there’s little chance that he could have passed a background check for privileged access to government systems” (that he now has access to).

Reply · 2

Wired is reporting that the Treasury Secretary and the White House press secretary lied about “DOGE” staffer Marko Elez (who recently resigned, for being a racist (after being hired for same)) having write-access to the Treasury’s payment system code.


Outrage Fatigue Is Real. These Tips May Help. “Repeated exposure to outrage-inducing news or events can lead to emotional exhaustion. An expert who studies online outrage says there are ways to cope.”


You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism. “When it comes to addressing the problems we face, no amount of posting or passive info consumption is going to substitute the hard, unsexy work of organizing.”


“In 2022, one of Peter Thiel’s favorite thinkers envisioned a second Trump Administration in which the federal government would be run by a “CEO” who was not Trump and laid out a playbook for how it might work. Elon Musk is following it.


The world has probably passed ‘peak air pollution’. “Global air pollution is now falling, and we can save many lives by accelerating this decline.”

Reply · 1

State Attorneys General to Sue Over Musk’s Access to Government Systems. “The president does not have the power to give away our private information to anyone he chooses, and he cannot cut federal payments approved by Congress.”


Mister Rogers on How to Talk to Kids About Distressing News Events

Mr Rogers Trolley

In 2002, Fred Rogers wrote a parenting book as a resource for caregivers of children aged two to six. One of the topics he covered was how to talk to children about tragic events in the news. Rogers begins by noting that even young children can pick up on when adults are feeling distressed:

In times of community or world-wide crisis, it’s easy to assume that young children don’t know what’s going on. But one thing’s for sure — children are very sensitive to how their parents feel. They’re keenly aware of the expressions on their parents’ faces and the tone of their voices. Children can sense when their parents are really worried, whether they’re watching the news or talking about it with others. No matter what children know about a “crisis,” it’s especially scary for children to realize that their parents are scared.

In times of crisis, kids need to feel safe:

In times of crisis, children want to know, “Who will take care of me?” They’re dependent on adults for their survival and security. They’re naturally self-centered. They need to hear very clearly that their parents are doing all they can to take care of them and to keep them safe. They also need to hear that people in the government and other grownups they don’t even know are working hard to keep them safe, too.

Parents need to step away from the news in order to be present for their kids and for their own well-being. The 2025 equivalent of limiting TV viewing would be “put down the phone”:

It’s easy to allow ourselves to get drawn into watching televised news of a crisis for hours and hours; however, exposing ourselves to so many tragedies can make us feel hopeless, insecure, and even depressed. We help our children and ourselves if we’re able to limit our own television viewing. Our children need us to spend time with them – away from the frightening images on the screen.

We need to let kids know that whatever they’re feeling is natural:

If we don’t let children know it’s okay to feel sad and scared, they may think something is wrong with them when they do feel that way. They certainly don’t need to hear all the details of what’s making us sad or scared, but if we can help them accept their own feelings as natural and normal, their feelings will be much more manageable for them.

Angry feelings are part of being human, especially when we feel powerless. One of the most important messages we can give our children is, “It’s okay to be angry, but it’s not okay to hurt ourselves or others.” Besides giving children the right to their anger, we can help them find constructive things to do with their feelings. This way, we’ll be giving them useful tools that will serve them all their life, and help them to become the worlds’ future peacemakers — the world’s future “helpers.”

And of course, we can urge kids to look for the helpers:

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” To this day, especially in times of “disaster,” I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers — so many caring people in this world.

Update: On the first anniversary of 9/11, Fred Rogers recorded this brief message about tragic events in the news. Here’s the video followed by a full transcript:

Hello, I’m Fred Rogers. Some parents wonder how to handle world news with their young children. Well, we at Family Communications have discovered that when children bring up something frightening, it’s helpful right away to ask them what they know about it. We often find that their fantasies are very different from the actual truth. What children probably need to hear most from us adults is that they can talk with us about anything and that we will do all we can to keep them safe in any scary time. I’m always glad to be your neighbor.

This was one of Rogers’ last recordings before he died in early 2003.

Reply · 2

A list of all the lawsuits related to Trump administration executive orders. “More than thirty lawsuits have been filed and we are trying our best to keep this page updated in real-time.”

Reply · 1

The Musk staffer who broke into the Treasury Dept system has quit after the discovery of racist Twitter posts (gift link): advocating repealing the Civil Rights Act, “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity”, and “Normalize Indian hate”.

Reply · 2