16 Comments
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belfryo's avatar

"but I do miss when everyone in a community, regardless of background, received their news from the same reliable source."

This this this

The Cronkite effect. Everyone on the same page literally and figuratively. And everyone KNOWS it. I can assume that the guy sitting next to me on the train knows what I know, individual opinions aside.

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Andrew L. Erdman's avatar

"Elon Musk is a horrible human-shaped entity, which explains why he’s so bad at managing normal humans." LOL. Yeah, this guy must be horking-up some seriously girthy lines of industrial-grade ketamine. Classic out-of-control addict. Bless his heart.

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Sherry's avatar

And, pray tell, when would he have had time to read millions of emails?

“Maybe Musk is just bonkers or he thinks Trump voters are all idiots.”

How about another theory? He’s clinically insane.

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BrandoG's avatar

The fear I’m hearing is that they’d just feed the emails into an AI program and fire anyone who included key words (e.g., “diversity”).

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Eva Porter's avatar

I work from home since 2020, have worked for this company since 1985

You KNOW when people aren’t doing their jobs. Unless the federal government has a ton of jobs where you have no deliverables, projects, deadlines, widgets, phone calls, tasks, their managers know who’s working and who isn’t. If I don’t do any work all day, someone will figure it out

I worked in an office for 35 years. You had the regular call in sick on Monday. You had the cheating at their numbers. You knew who didn’t return phone calls (cuz you got the calls). Being in office didn’t make people better employees

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BrandoG's avatar

Yep—plus people work more hours when they telework because it’s just easier to stay on a task when you don’t feel like you need to leave at a given time. Everywhere I’ve worked it’s the frontline managers who LIKE telework because it’s a perk that also helps the business, saves money, and retains employees. It’s the idiots who don’t know what’s happening below who assume people goof off at home when no one is watching them who oppose telework. A very good tell on whether you’re a good manager or a worthless dipshit who cannot justify your own job is whether you’re a good oppose telework.

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Sherry's avatar

Since I don’t have a commute there are no late trains or traffic jams to keep me from getting to my desk on time. My commute to the kitchen for lunch is brief and rarely do I go out which would mean I’d for sure take my allotted hour for lunch and, I turn off my computer typically later than 5 PM. I clock over 9 hours on a typical day. We have TEAMS but it’s only on my computer so if you call and I pick up that means that I am at my desk. I rarely miss a call. IT can track me through the work computer. The company saves on real estate because of this as well. Remote working is truly beneficial to the company. The policy to make people come in only shows the one or two people who do not regularly work hard.

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BrandoG's avatar

Yep—it’s a no brainer to allow it for jobs where it’s feasible to telework. And basically every frontline manager agrees. If someone is goofing off, they’re found out as soon as they’re missing deliverables, and they can just as easily goof off at the office.

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SethTriggs's avatar

Of course it ain't legal. But look at how Murc's Law works here. Do you see all the deference given to this whole "DOGE" thing? IT'S NOT EVEN A DEPARTMENT.

Yet legacy media and just...almost everyone outside of lefty indies responds to this like it's a department established by statute. Even DHS was constituted correctly by Dumbya.

Can you imagine if Democrats did something like this? There'd be stochastic terrorists attacking offices all over the country. A million rightwing media/podcast networks would be wailing in unison.

What a way to run a railroad.

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BrandoG's avatar

Media is garbage, in general and in this case. And Dem pushback hasn’t been great.

Institutions have given in to dictatorship so easily it really boggles the mind—even a congressman who supports the substance of DOGE should be defending the legislature’s institutional power, yet nope—just total acquiescence like the 1933 Reichstag. And soon we will see what happens when the government just ignores court orders.

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SethTriggs's avatar

I mean why shouldn't they do this though? The first instinct of people is to look for what Democrats did wrong. I see no disincentive for Republicans to do things like this (especially since they were warned about) because their voters can think strategically and can easily take any false flag they're given and run with it.

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BrandoG's avatar

I think it shows that they care more about being in the winning team than they care about their own influence or power—ironically GOP legislators would have more leverage with a president Harris. But they’d rather defer to Trump and hope they cash in.

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SethTriggs's avatar

Well, why not? It's easy and besides one can be nihilistic like that knowing that there's no consequences from the electorate for doing that.

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BrandoG's avatar

I have a good friend who is a lawyer at a federal agency and his General Counsel (a Trump appointee) told everyone to not respond to the email because (1) DOGE has no authority to make this request (2) to answer it would implicate attorney client privilege and (3) there are national security concerns with sending such info to DOGE as none of the recipients were vetted. The GC also said he sympathizes with the employees receiving this email because he spends 70 hours a week on work and a big chunk of it is dealing with DOGE requests. I suspect there’s a lot of intraparty turmoil over this.

I’ll also note that if you cared about government employee efficiency the obvious move it to allow full telework for every position where it’s feasible. The savings in office space, plumbing and electricity, security, etc, not to mention how this enhances recruitment (you can literally hire anyone anywhere that has secure internet) makes it a no brainer. So DOGE insisting on in-person work gives away the game. This was never about savings, just destruction of services with a side order of corruption.

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BrandoG's avatar

Incidentally this friend has a lot of great perspective on how things are going with this transition—this is the third one they’ve been through and needless to say it’s a total omnishambles and is wasting a lot of money dealing with nonsense.

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Linda1961 is woke and proud's avatar

If Anthony Fremont sent Illegal Elon to the cornfield, it would be the one good thing that Anthony ever did.

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