Punkie

The US National Park service frowns on people tossing anything into the volcanos. But the deep, deep ocean has no enforceable jurisdiction.

I have endured a Phoenix, Arizona heat at just under 120° F and opening my motel door was like opening an oven to check on something you’re baking. Our rental car had to have the AC on for about 3 minutes before sitting in the seats wasn’t searingly painful. It took about 5 minute for the steering wheel to be comfortable enough to grip for more than a few seconds.

I would imagine that they see your country as small, unable to fight back, and “full of savages.” I am SO embarrassed at this administration, they live in some weird childish fantasy land like 1950s cartoons. These are people with huge paintings of cowboys in their offices, like “Custer’s Last Fight” by Cassilly Adams, showing Custer somehow fighting off Indians dressed as Zulus (a lot of 19th-century artists sometimes portrayed Plains Indians in “Custer’s Last Stand”-style paintings with elements borrowed from Zulu warriors due to ignorance, theatrical flair, or lack of good references). Deporting these people to your country, which is probably seen as “generically Africa” in some undefined manner, “put the savages back with their kind.”

These politicians are a stain on anything good and decent about Americans. Again, on behalf of America, I am deeply sorry this administration is so immature and reckless. Reminds me of this joke from Johnny Dangerously

“Don’t you think he looks tired?”

It’s pretty scary: I am seeing it in the IT sector as well. It’s not just knowledge; anyone can look up things, even Einstein did it. “I never memorize anything that I can look up,” he said once, about the why he never memorized cosine tables and such. But it’s basic logical flow of thought and problem solving. Like the skills behind the knowledge, that I see less and less of.

I have seen some rhetoric about this, like “a few bad apples,” but here’s the problem with this and a lot of enforcement jobs.

• Polite and decent people, on average, dislike confrontation. Thus, are not particularly attracted to these types of jobs.
• This leads to an uneven amount who are fine with confrontation or even like it. Some of these people are sociopaths and psychopaths.
• People who are psychopaths are actually very attracted to position where they have power over people.
• US Customs are not regulated under the same laws as police or military. They can do what they want, when they want, with little to no discretion.

Are all US customs agents bad? No, of course not. But unchecked power is dangerous for anything. I can’t tell you what percentage is or is not, because you can’t measure a negative. But I see this in military, police, hired guards, and politics.

Many years ago, they cavity searched an underage girl at my local airport (Dulles) as she returned with her family from a vacation in Jamaica. They separated her from her family, did not tell her family, and searched all her holes “for drugs.” They defended their actions by saying, “if we told people we didn’t cavity search babies, they’d hide drugs inside babies.” Essentially admitting, with no shame, they’d cavity search an infant. All in the name of “stopping drugs.” Oh and the girl? US citizen, but dark skinned. The mistake they made was her dad was a powerful attorney and went public.

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-106hhrg66023/html/CHRG-106hhrg66023.htm

https://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/circle/raceprofiling/stories.racial.profiling.html

And these are probably only the cases you’re hearing about.

Here’s the thing: Trump may has said he allowed it via executive order, and whatever. But you come after data I was sworn to protect? Come here with a judge-vetted legal warrant and court order. Oh, you’ll fire me? Then I did my job. I’ll be arrested for doing the right thing, not cowardly giving in “because they might yell at me.” Yeah, I did that once, and I got a big fat nothing out of it. I got out before the S&L crisis, but I saw it coming a mile away. I have no loyalty to some rando from South Africa. I have a loyalty and duty to my job and country and fellow citizens.

My hope, and it’s a thin hope, is that they really can’t fucking do anything with the data because they don’t understand it. Or lied they have it, and we let them believe this lie as part of the protection. They only have 200 copies of “WideWorldImporters Sample Database for SQL Server and Azure SQL Database” and think it’s real. Or whatever. Unlikely, but I gotta have hope somewhere. Part of this is because I know how PII is stored, and it’s not like one large file. It’s multiple systems with “just in time” joins and a horrible complex mess that’s a wonder it works at all. A bunch of 19 year olds and a rich liar are monkeys with baseball bats hitting a random laptop as a comparison. Millions are spent on contractors to work with it, and rarely does any single one person know how it ALL works. Just pieces of it. And some of it was in COBOL. What, one of those kids has a spare PDP/11 in their garage? But, maybe that’s thinking too hopefully.

Even if they suddenly stopped, it will take decades to undo the damage they have already done.

Side note: “the launch codes” are not like, two hex keys to launch nuclear missiles. It’s so much more complicated than that, that I used to fear in the 1980s that the Ruskies would bomb us flat before someone with the right laminated notebook was located. “What? The keys didn’t work? Didn’t anyone test if the keys fit? NO???” I’m not saying that’s an exact case, but an example of shit I have run into. I have to also hope for sheer incompetence saving us, like out of the movie Brazil or something. God damn, this is a bleak dystopia.

I had the same thing happen at a bank, my manager threatened to fire me if I didn’t hand over my login and password. After being trained to never give anyone, even your boss, the login and password. And why? Because she was doing illegal things under the teller’s logins. If she had gotten caught, I would be blamed. So I quit that job. And then the whole S&L scandal happened, and I was unsurprised. After that, I learned never to give anyone a login and password. I tell myself it’s a test. I’ll be fired for giving them the login and password. And if they fire me, well, get another job. I have skills to get another job these days.

And yeah, “well, your director will just give it to them.” That’s on my director. I will at least lose my damn job without a guilty conscience. I know I did my part for the right reasons.

This doesn’t anger me as much at the people just letting this happen at this point. Those of us who have taken the DISA training about PII and such are told never to share this info. But someone is allowing it. I mean, maybe if they have a gun to your head or jailed your family, maybe, but who the fuck is rolling over and just going “okay?” If these fuckers can do it, this data was never safe.

I have done a lot of personal study on this. There are “Christians” and there are “Team Christian.” Actual Christians usually practice what they preach, or try to. The “Team Christian” folks are like people who have a favorite football team: they wear the jerseys, watch the games, and claim the tribal aspect of “I am good, they are bad.” But know nothing of the philosophy or inner workings any more than the average football fan plays professional football, or runs the corporation end that manages the team.

Also, like most bullies, they love saying the opposite just to make you mad. “If Jesus were alive today, he would have shot all the immigrants with a machine gun,” so you go “NO HE WOULDN’T HAVE YOU EVEN READ A BIBLE YOU HYPOCRITE GRRRR!!!” and they laugh at how mad you got. Like a bully saying “nice hair!” because they know it will make you angry, and they’ll act all innocent.

Saw this coming from a mile away. I was wondering when this ax would drop. What a shame; I grew up to PBS/NPR.

So many people on the Internet say “Ugh, Starbucks is shit,” like they are proud about it. Truth is, a LOT of people drink at Starbucks. The one near my house had a drive through line so long, they redid part of the shopping center parking lot to accommodate it. It’s been renovated twice in ten years. Starbucks sells more than just “coffee that is shit,” they sell a service that few can compensate without having to set up something in your own house. Frankl;y, half of the stuff out of there is caffeinated milkshakes of varying consistency. Starbucks is a service that sells coffee, and that convenience is what draw so many people.

The average person doesn’t care about unions, good coffee, or any of that. They want to get a nummy candy treat packed with caffeine to drive to work. That’s it. It’s really just that simple. And until it gives people instant massive diarrhea or some other personally-affecting scandal, they will just keep doing it out of habit. habit is a strong motivator, especially when you’re fucking tired and just want to get to work that you hate anyway.