Beth

RFK Jr. is in the pocket of big virus

We were going to have a vaccine for the common cold!!

This is terrible for science and for all the people who will needlessly die. But it is also violence against me, personally, and my long-suffering sinuses.

If it weren’t for fascism, I wouldn’t have to live through sniffly weeks of misery.

Being the most normal-looking dude you’ve ever seen in your life and also not being a dude 100% sums up why I gave up trying to understand the gender binary.

Conforming any which way would be work. I’d rather spend my energy fighting fascism.

A quote from Twitter that says: “nonbinary agender queer” and it’s the most normal looking dude you’ve ever seen in your life

People trying to make fun of me on X are hilarious. This isn’t even rude: it is just an accurate observation 🤣

Beth for Democracy | Bethany Andres-Beck for Congress Bethany Andres-Beck is a candidate for Congress running to represent Massachusetts' 6th District.

The votes, and also the funding.

When people are mad enough to donate to primary challenges, we see a lot more of them.

Part of why I’m running (bethfordemocracy.com) is to build the progressive infrastructure in my district that can channel frustrations into action.

I am! It’s pretty weird 😂

Beth for Democracy | Bethany Andres-Beck for Congress Bethany Andres-Beck is a candidate for Congress running to represent Massachusetts' 6th District.

Well, that’s why I, a trans Democrat, am now running to kick Moulton out of Congress: bethfordemocracy.com

Which, bonus, will replace a mushy “New Democrat” centrist still looking to compromise with someone who understands the danger of fascism and the need for a diversity of tactics to fight it.

Thank you for your solidarity! That is pretty much why I say it 💁

Mostly I build software that helps doctors be less frustrated. I take a lot of pride in writing that software well.

The rest of it, I don’t need people to understand. All those words just mean “it’s confusing enough I gave up” 🤷

So my impression so far is that the people using the tool think they are being clever, but actually everyone can tell & some are just too tired to have the fight.

If a function was genuinely trivial, Jetbrains tools could probably already generate it pre-LLMs.

But I’ve had to have several serious talks recently about “if you can’t explain the code, your coworkers can’t read the code” & “if you aren’t willing to tidy up after it, you shouldn’t use the tool.”

That has not yet been my experience.

Plenty use it as a search engine, sure, but so far it is still blatantly obvious when someone proposes code that was generated by an LLM without extensive refactoring.

It’s also why I’m primarying my Representative 🤷

Having to present our papers to a secret police force is mind-bogglingly un-American.

I think the problem is that the Dem leadership (& other senior centrists like Moulton) weren’t elected to address a crisis.

They ran for office to be polite to fascist & pass laws, and when neither of those tools work their toolbox is empty.

That’s right: it invites people of many different beliefs to come together in community.

It is a bit of an odd duck among religions, in that it has a religious commitment to pluralism & heresy. But its roots in Massachusetts run deep, back to the Unitarian Congregationalists of the 19th century.

Hmm. People often ask me why I would run.

I am inspired by my faith in the inherent dignity and worth of every person, and the capacity of any community to build a better world. Both of which are from my Unitarian-Universalism.

Would pretending I came up with the ideas on my own be better?

It is also the case that many trades, like mechanic, electrician, press operator & HVAC, now require computer skills they didn’t used to. There is more to learn.

We have also under-invested in national computational education, so it is very hit-and-miss if students have the fundamentals they need.

When voters said they wanted the government run like a business, I don’t think the business they meant was KMart

Revisiting the stats with that definition, it looks like the percentage of students earning a credit a trade-related course has remained remarkably stable over time.

Ah, so not even all construction jobs would qualify as a “trade” the way you are thinking of it.

That is basically the split between junior/engineer/senior: juniors are closely supervised & coached, engineers work with minimal supervision, seniors are responsible for their own work + the work of juniors.

It is how bootcamps work: they focus on the practical skills usually taught in internships

It doesn’t help that a bunch of places have 20-30 years of deferred maintenance, thanks to “cost control” fads.

We haven’t had work for as many workers as we need, because we’ve refused to fund necessary work.

I’m curious why you wouldn’t count IT or systems administration as trades. The skills largely aren’t taught in colleges, most teaching is done on the job by more-experienced colleagues & the jobs often don’t require college degrees.

Would you also exclude things like HVAC and vet tech?

I suspect there are different dynamics between dabblers and students focusing on the trades. There may be fewer opportunities for dabblers now, even though enrollment in vocational programs is up over the last 20 years.

Thanks!

I noticed:
A. in terms of the % of students completing a CTE program, we’re almost back to where we were in 1992
B. the decline is in “Business, finance, and marketing” programs. I’m curious if it’s because fewer people are employed as typists now, or if there’s something else going on.

Whereas now we see performative distain for college educations, and the argument that kids shouldn’t expect to have college be affordable because they should go into the trades instead.

Do you have a reference for high school programs shrinking? The only numbers I could find reflected modest growth in high school trade enrollment, though almost entirely among boys.

And not just formal barriers: bigotry is about both power & inflating wages.

I have the career I have in software in part because every time I encountered sexism I thought to myself, “They want to keep this lucrative profession for themselves, and they don’t want to have to be good at their job.”

If we win enough seats, and we primary the wishy-washy centrists who are unwilling to enforce laws because it might look partisan.

That is part of why I’m running: we need Democrats with the guts to use the tools available if we are going to keep our republic.

“Do you ignorantly trash trans people to pander to fascists?” is a test of basic political competence. It covers several important skills all politicians should have:

A. Don’t talk about things you don’t actually know about
B. Don’t play into your opponent’s hand
C. Don’t bully children