My Default Setting is Internal Panic @a-guy-or-something - Tumblr Blog

New York City's new mayor is unplugging a disastrous government chatbot that encouraged small business owners to break the law.

And the funniest part?

fabiansociety

this framing really winds me up. no knock on mamdani, but a lot of these key changes are the result of a tremendous amount of unsung work by the DWCP and other agencies and lawmakers. he’s not flipping switches that other politicians have refused to touch, he’s arriving at the moment those switches are ready to flip.

there’s just something off about giving all the credit to a charismatic socialist and ignoring the collective work that made these things actually possible, y’know?

boltstuck

This is exactly what bothers me. Changes like this take hundreds of people and thousands of hours of work to pull off. Everyone wants to sneer at the idea that important things take time, effort, and money to implement, and use Mamdani as evidence that everyone who claims it can't be done in 5 minutes with some elbow grease is a scam artist and a liar, but it's flat out not true.

In Mamdani's own speech, he says:

"Under President Biden, the FTC took sweeping action to go after junk fees and they delivered change. Under Chair Leader Khan, they instituted a junk fees rule that they estimated would save Americans 53 million hours a year that they would otherwise spend searching for the true price that they would have to pay, or $11 billion in time savings over a decade. We are going to deliver similar action on behalf of the 8.5 million New Yorkers who call our city home."

Lawmakers and agencies have been working to eliminate junk fees since at LEAST 2023, when Gavin Newsom signed a bill banning junk fees in California. Biden then took up the work with the FTC, targeting hidden fees on live event tickets. Biden went on to work with the CFPB to remove junk fees on banks and credit cards. The CFPB is continuing this work, which you can learn more about over here.

Even with the Chatbot thing -- Mamdani didn't just turn it off. He (and especially his crew) worked up a report to show where funds were being wasted in city government, and then did a presentation on it where he pointed to the specific failure of the Chatbot. He still had to go through a process to prove why he was taking action, it just so happened that this was comparatively quick fix, on account of being one single program running on one single government website.

a-guy-or-something

I mean, yeah, it's the result of a bunch of people's effort, but Mamdani is still the one actually at the helm and providing leadership to the people accomplishing these goals. I don't think we should cheapen the fact that he's doing good things and has proven himself a very effective leader so far.

beardedmrbean

beemojis

target audience

beemojis

it occurs to me that i am also the target audience

bookishjules

i'm gonna say something that might upset some people but i also feel like i'm in a unique position to say it so..

i was raised in a pretty conservative christian household in rural america. and when it came time for me to register to vote in 2015, i did so as a republican. i voted in the primaries in 2016 very much in the hopes that trump would not become the republican candidate. but then he did. and when november came, i was torn. i didn't feel like my candidate represented the republican party as i had come to understand it growing up, but for the financial policies i had been taught to value and for the sake of pushing the government red after eight years of obama, i voted for trump.

and i regretted it almost immediately. (and i have never once voted red since)

the regret was a gut feeling. but it was also a result of how much i saw and learned in the aftermath of that election that i was blind to beforehand. stuff that i didn't even know i didn't know kind of thing. i was at a college in the south and involved in a church there and had a decent mix of voices around me, but where i learned the most? was here. on tumblr.

here's the thing. if i hadn't had access to the voices on here revealing aspects of life and politics i was previously unaware of? if i hadn't been presented with articles and statistics that my right-leaning family wouldn't have entertained? idk if i would have come to my senses as early as i did. and if, in fact, people knew what my vote had been and blocked me for it? if there had been posts going around telling me to go fuck myself and unfollow them.. it probably would have built back up the walls against liberal policies that i had been slowly tearing down since becoming more cognizant of the social and political sphere.

now i'm not saying anyone has a responsibility to teach anyone anything, or even to entertain interactions. i know that we're angry and hurt and we need to prioritize our safety and sanity. but. i do think, especially with how echochamber-y certain online spaces have become, that even just allowing the space for bridges to be built could prove invaluable moving forward.

again, i'm not saying that you need to remain friends or even keep up any relationship with people who voted for trump. and i'm not saying you don't have every right to block maga fanatics. what i'm saying is that there could very well be people (young people esp who may not fully understand the implications of their choice or why the left may hold more merit than they were brought up to believe) who are willing to listen and learn if given the opportunity. and leaving them to rot with the worst of them won't do anything but bolster the right and continue eroding the ever-widening canyon between us. a bleak prospect when you consider that we will have another election in four years and that the right will only become more extreme in that time.

ftr.. please feel free to ignore me if you need to. like i said, your safety and sanity takes precedent. it's just been such a common trend i've seen on both instagram and here and i can't help but think about how closing the door could mean trapping the people who have the potential to grow from the choice they made on election day with that vote and the people who have the potential to drag them further down.

a-guy-or-something

You're completely right. A lot of Trump voters, especially younger ones, are still early on enough down the pipeline of indoctrination that it's possible to convince them to listen to reason. But if you immediately shut them down and call them racists or fascists or just, generally bad people, you are completely burning down that bridge of communication. People don't listen to their enemies. So try to be friendly, if you can.

One of the best ways to make Trump supporters realize they may not know what they're talking about is to quote things that were said at the rallies or debates, on both sides. If they question whether what you're saying was actually said, they've outed themselves for getting their information from biased sources. Once you've made them realize they're not getting the full picture, THEN, they will be willing to listen. It doesn't work all the time. But it's the most consistent way I've learned to get them to open up.

tlirsgender

Ok new game. What's the thing you're a fan of that you're the most pretentious about. NOT the most pretentious thing you're a fan of, I mean the thing that makes *you* act like one of those "oh yeah? Name five of their albums" people. There is a difference

tlirsgender

Bad news: everyone who has said some variation of "umm actually I don't do that 🙏 I'm a good person" is more annoying than the rest of us confessing to our nerd crimes. Yes you do. I guarantee it you do. You're saying Um, Actually right now

a-guy-or-something

Probably Dragonball. I don't really bother to follow it anymore. But I can still get kind of autistic about it (I say as a person with autism) if someone presses me on my childhood hyperfixation. For example, and I tend to insist that while GT was flawed, it had some of the best story threads and thematic pay-offs the series has ever seen. AND I hate like 80% of the content from Dragonball Super

I do love the new Super Broly movie and most of the Universe 6 stuff. Ironically I defend Caulifla, Kale, and Cabba to my dying breath. Love those three. Hit is also insanely cool. Beerus and Whis are flawed additions to the story, but I do like their characters, and think they add a more good than bad.

Pretty much everything else in Dragonball Super? Hate it.

hellyeahheroes

Ever since losing to Ronald Reagan, every time when Democrats lost to Republicans, they saw it as a proof their party is not in touch with "silent majority", and decided to amend it by pushing further to the right and appeal to all these people who voted for Republicans. Every Republican victory since the 80's pushed overton window to the right.

And yet, every fucking election out-of-touch leftists come out of the woodworks yapping on how if we give Dems what they want, they will lose any invective to go towards the left because "you already gave them your vote".

Every. Time.

If your "theory" keeps falling to have real-life application, the solution should be adjusting the theory, not trying to repeat it by getting a nazi elected because "surely, THIS TIME it will work". You're as divorced from reality as the economists.

Something something the definition of insanity

-Admin

a-guy-or-something

Spreading misinformation and contempt in the far left to convince you not to endorse the democratic party is literally a republican propaganda tactic. They know they'll never win your vote, but if they can convince you the Dems aren't even worth endorsing anyways, they still run unopposed.

Unfortunately, right now, a bigger priority than sending a message to the Dems that they need to be better, is to send a message to the REPUBLICANS that they need to be better. They need to be shown that this insane, fascist bullshit, will never, ever, ever fucking win. Ever. Once they return to sanity, THEN we can begin pushing the Democrats further left. With a sane Republican party, the Democrats won't be able to take your vote for granted anymore, and will need to focus on appealing to their base again, instead of centrists. So for now, just try and focus on making sure America doesn't turn into nazi Germany 2.0, please. Evil thrives when good people do nothing.

daloy-politsey

I respect your opinion a lot so I mean this as a genuine question that I want to learn from, not just trying to be an asshole - but in what way is not voting at all and letting Trump win better than using your vote as leverage to pressure Kamala into making better choices?

Literally just a couple days ago Trump threatened to invoke the Alien Enemies act of 1798 - the same act used to put hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans in concentration camps in WW2 - against "illegal aliens", which by now we know he means "literally any brown person regardless of legal immigration status". Im terrified for my Latino & Haitain family and loved ones, and I'm terrified of Trumps response to "blame the Jews" if he loses this election - G-d forbid what he would do to us IN office. We can't fight for Palestine, Sudan, Congo, etc if we're IN concentration camps.

There is no magical world where neither candidate gets voted and the election is canceled, or a 3rd party wins, and we have a revolution - we don't have enough leverage for that. If Kamala loses, that INHERENTLY means Trump will win. How is that alone not terrifying ???

Well, first of all it is very valid that you are scared. However, voting for Kamala means you are saying she (and the rest of the Democrats) can take your vote for granted. Obviously Muslim voters in Michigan aren’t going to make Jill Stein (who I am not voting for btw) President, but it might signal to the Democratic Party that the country is changing and they must change too or they risk becoming extinct.

Anyways, what’s more important than voting are things like helping out your community, organizing your workplace, and fighting fascists. Liberals (and I’m not accusing you of being a liberal just to be clear) like to think that they can just show up to the polls on Election Day and do nothing else the rest of the year and that’s what gets us into this mess.

a-guy-or-something

PLEASE vote. For the love of God. We are talking Nazi Germany internment camps stuff. I don't like that we only have 1 real option to avoid LITERALLY BECOMING NAZI GERMANY 2.0. But at this point it is literally "Vote for someone who's mid or only mildly bad. Or stand aside and let millions of people be imprisoned and deported without due process. Oh also, you can be a criminal for spreading "misinformation" about the government now"

This is not hyperbole. This is not a worst case scenario. This is the kind of shit Trump and his partners are actively saying they will 100% do, immediately, at the starting line of day 1 in office.

Convincing people not to vote for Kamala because she's still not good enough is literally still part of the right wing, republican propaganda. Even if they can't win your vote, they still benefit from convincing you NOT to vote for the other person.

Right now, we have to keep our focus on convincing the REPUBLICANS that this fascist bs will not win, ever. Then after some back to back failed elections, after the Republicans lose all their power, THEN we can begin looking for people outside of the democratic nominees to vote for.

No, it is not ideal. I don't like that shitty lobbying deals and the occasional war crime is being performed by democrats either. But the alternative is just too much. Because if America starts running internment camps and shit here, other countries will follow suite before long. Chaos in the middle east will be replaced with horrific, brutal efficiency and control. And our actual votes will never matter ever again, since they have no qualms about lying and fudging the numbers to make sure they stay in power.

V O T E. Please. Before it's too late.

demilypyro

The opposite of a mansion murder mystery where everyone present is a bounty hunter who really wants to take credit for the murder and the detective has to find out who really did it

demilypyro

redphienix

Assistant: "What about the gunpowder found at the scene?"

Detective: "I thought about that as well! But as you can see from the bullet wound, it was clearly done posthumously."

Assistant: "Remarkable find! But why would someone shoot a corpse?"

*Bounty hunter 'Gun shootman' tossing his hat on the ground and stomping it as he rips up the contract he hoped to cash in on fulfilling*

statboosts

Femme fatale: his ink bottle was knocked over detective. I dont know if that means anything but its all i could find. *coquettishly turns and shows off ink stains on dress*

Detective: The victim was murdered in the lounge actually so i don't think there should have been any ink there at all

Femme fatale: *takes off heels and throws them through the glass window*

haberdashing

In the end it’s revealed that the “victim” died of natural causes

imaginatorofthings

Putting someone's tags here because YEEESSSSSS

pookam

I TRIED TO CONVERT A NON-FUNCTIONING VIDEO IN VEGAS AND IT FUCKED UP

ferronnuff

what the wasp in the corner of my room sees in its final moments

transmutationisms

spam emails are horrifying on an entirely different level once you actually begin to grapple with the material reality of ‘cyberspace’. how many servers were involved in dumping this message into my trash folder, where are they located, how much water goes into cooling them every day? where did the metals come from to build these facilities, who maintains them, how much labour and suffering and exploitation is required to bombard me with 50 messages a day i don’t even look at for products i will never buy? not just useless or a nuisance, but actively harming the earth & its people, and for what. zero social value, zero human communication, just capital trying to metastasise

a-guy-or-something

This is an issue for paper junkmail too... I always thought this kind of spam mail, trying to offer you pointless coupons and shit you never asked for, should literally be illegal. It's a waste of resources at best, and at worst, is tricking poor ignorant people into ruining their lives by falling for these scam companies predatory schemes.

fallow-grove

yknow what would be a fucked up phone feature

ahno-nimus

No, I don't. Please, proceed.

fallow-grove

if whenever you plugged it in you had to manually enable charging mode and there was no built in way to automate it

ahno-nimus

That would be fucked up.

fallow-grove

yknow what would be more fucked up

ahno-nimus

Football field full of viruses.

ahno-nimus

Abraham Lincoln teeth sculpture.

ahno-nimus

Really big vampire.

ahno-nimus

Inside-out Sweden.

fallow-grove

if they added automatic charging mode but paywalled it

ahno-nimus

Yeah that's pretty fucked up.

pastacrylic

mr-president

but this is what the world needs, isn’t it??

jeansvoid

Cuties

a-guy-or-something

I'm sorry, this made me laugh because my first instinct was thinking Hunter had tiny little doodle legs.

crazy-brazilian

coat

"babe, can you let the dog out? It's presenting optical illusions again!"

rozentias-deactivated20240103

absolute greatest trans male character in media is sechs from battle angel alita: last order. insane cyborg who goes on a quest to prove he’s a warrior after rejecting his original female form, proceeds to slaughter a bunch of bad guys with sheer strength alone and save a ton of people by accident. also he’s just super ridiculous and endearing.