M Berk

Private rights of action for me but not for thee

#privacy

Having a sudden flashback to Delta’s CEO dictating CDC policy during the pandemic.

thou misshapen Dick

Called. Got one senator’s voicemail and one instruction to call back during normal business hours.

Hey Alex Padilla, important stuff goes down during non-business hours and you need to be able to hear from your constituents, particularly when you’re voting on major things over a weekend.

1/ The US Government has quietly removed a memorial to Black soldiers who died in World War II from the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, South Limburg. The move follows a complaint from the right-wing Heritage Foundation to the American Battle Monuments Commission. ⬇️

Actually, the real problem in my humble opinion is that masks should be required in medical settings *year round* in *all* counties.

I mean... why should you be allowed to spread your germs to other people who are sick?

2G controls in Android

To help protect your privacy against Stingray interception of your cellphone communication

Turn off 2G

2G is an obsolete, non-encrypted mode that Stingrays exploits

This is easy to do on Android (search for "2G" in Settings)

It's inconvenient on iOS tho: the only way is to activate Lockdown Mode

Mamdani is going to implement Sriracha law. Everyone will have to slather hot sauce on their scrambled eggs

pre-writing a devastating obituary for your enemy is god-tier hating of a kind you don’t often see anymore. renaissance haterism. beautiful stuff.

Meet you out by the loading dock

one thing i find crazy-making is the idea that getting rid of the filibuster would make congress a purely majoritarian institution. bicameralism itself is counter-majoritarian! equal state representation is counter-majoritarian! the fact that senate elections are staggered is counter-majoritarian!

190. SNAP WTF? A very quick explainer on what (and why) Justice Jackson issued an "administrative stay" in the SNAP case late on Friday night, and on what's likely to happen next

Trying to figure out what #SCOTUS just did with #SNAP, and why Justice Jackson temporarily froze the district court's ruling?

Via "One First," me on what's going on—and why I think Jackson's move was savvy, notwithstanding the awful circumstances that forced it:

www.stevevladeck.com/p/190-snap-wtf

Please read this

I’ve had a “weird stretch” for 4 years that’s turning into something I like quite a bit. Hoping your find your path easily.

Let me know sometime what kind of situation you are looking for and I’ll keep my ears open.

Wishing you the best, and hoping you find this unexpected change to bring a hidden blessing. Let me know if I can help with job stuff.

BREAKING: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is illegally closing 13 campus buildings (including ~100 laboratories).

Report coming from GESTA, the Goddard employee union

I actually read about half of this and it’s such…sad sophistry. I thought I was done with this level of discourse when I left high school.

It speaks to me every time I read it. Such an important book.

So much for free market. Why is the government involved in negotiating prices of goods sold to anyone at all?

Grandiloquent Word of the Day logo - Sepia-toned graphic with a baroque Victorian typeface and an illustration of a man dancing atop a dinner table.

Pot-valiant [POT-val-yunt]
(adj.)
- Courageous as a result of being drunk.

Used in a sentence:
"No man so meek but that a full flagon maketh him fierce; for wyne is the smyth that forgeþ fooles’ valour, and many a pot-valiant knyght hath found his bed in a ditch ere dawn.”

I keep replaying 2 songs in order:

Sloop John B: the theme of which is “I done fucked up so hard, and am so miserable I want to disappear”

And

End of the Line (Traveling Wilburys): the theme of which is “you did your best, and it’s gonna be ok”

In case you wanted a window into my psyche

I was laid off from Teen Vogue today along with multiple other staffers, and today is my last day.

certainly more to come from me when the dust has settled more, but to my knowledge, after today, there will be no politics staffers at Teen Vogue.

Hey Santa Clara County voters.

Please please please be sure to vote for assessor anyone other than Rishi Kumar, the guy running on eliminating property taxes for seniors (which he can't in this role).

“…Reflecting on the accusation, Macy writes, “How could I not ❤️ the relatives who took care of my demented mother when I live 7 hours away, including my BIL John, who flings around the word ‘deplorable’ at me but also resets Mom’s TV every other day, or the sister who takes her to every Drs appt?”

A Writer Who Did What Hillbilly Elegy Wouldn’t In her new book, Beth Macy returns to her Donald Trump–voting hometown to find out how America got so divided.

“Macy doesn’t reserve her disappointment for those she disagrees with politically. One Christmas, her sister-in-law, a Yale-educated poet, grumbles about Macy’s siblings, all of whom voted for Trump. She tells Macy, “Your people don’t want my people to exist.…

www.theatlantic.com/books/2025/1...

I’m sure that those employees are being disciplined for such an egregious violation of company policy.

I legitimately hate how every website seems to think that what I want more than anything else in this world is yet another inbox to monitor and take responsibility for.

Toad splashes water all over his head. From "The Story" In *Frog and Toad Are Friends*

Then Toad poured a glass of water over his head.

Tell SF Supervisors Not to Gut Surveillance Ordinance A proposal to eliminate the attorney fee provision would gut public enforcement and leave the government to police itself.

San Francisco’s surveillance oversight is on the line.

Removing attorney fee protections means the city polices itself and history shows that doesn’t work.

takeaction.salsalabs...

#sf #ca #transparency #civilrights #surveillance #oversight