Travel warning: four days until Trump’s shut-down costs TSA screeners their first paycheck

ralfmaximus:

mostlysignssomeportents:

In four days, federal employees will suffer their first missed paycheck since Trump’s border wall shutdown; it’s hard to say who will be worst hit: the employees who are furloughed will never see that money (but who may have been able to pick up some other work while they were off the job to cover their bills); or the “essential” federal employees who’ve had to show up for work every day without pay, but who will, someday, get a paycheck to cover their forced labor.

In the latter group are 51,739 TSA “officers” (TSA screeners aren’t cops, but they’ve adopted the “officer” honorific in a bid to secure flyers’ obedience while they confiscate their apple-pie filling). Since the shut-down began, TSA officials have insisted that screeners were not staging “sick outs” (for example, to avoid daycare expenses by staying home with their kids) and that the extra waiting time that passengers were suffering through (53 minutes in Laguardia!) was the result of heavier than usual travel.

But after Friday, TSA screeners will have to decide whether they want to stay on the job without pay, and it’s a sure bet that lots of them will stay home, and there’s not much the TSA can do about it. A TSA walkout would cripple the nation’s businesses and strike directly at higher-income Americans (that is, the people who supported Trump as he used racist wall promises to secure the votes needed for a two-trillion-dollar tax giveaway to the wealthy).

What happens next is anyone’s guess. Trump’s probably right that giving in on the wall will lose him any chance of re-election as discouraged racists stay home from the polls (as they had done historically, until Trump gave them something to vote for), and deliver victory to Democrats who have a small but meaningful chance of taxing the shit out of looters and oligarchs. But the patience of looters and oligarchs – with the exception of a few long-term thinkers like Charles Koch – is in notoriously short supply. If Trump loses the racists, he won’t be able to help the billionaires. But if he loses the billionaires, he won’t be able to afford to court the racists.

https://boingboing.net/2019/01/08/racists-vs-billionaires.html

TSA employees cannot continue to work without pay. Nobody can. That’s not politics, that’s simple fact. Even the most die-hard TSA enforcer has to eat and pay their bills.

Which means at some point in the near future the TSA will be unable to perform airport screenings and will declare a shutdown. After that, things can only go two ways:

1. Airports simply stop TSA screenings and waive passengers onto flights as if it was pre-9/11 America.

OR

2. Airports are totally shut down, citing security concerns.

#1 would demonstrate how airport screenings are security theater and utterly worthless, designed to keep us afraid. Airports operated perfectly for 50 years without forcing passengers to take off their shoes or surrender pocket knives & shampoo. Bypassing the scary body scanners & invasive blue gloves because we can’t pay the TSA would remind Americans this is all bullshit.

#2 would be an economic disaster. Average citizens would riot. Americans who commute via air would be forced into unemployment, and the airline industry itself would teeter on the edge of ruin. The brief airport shutdown of 2001 literally drove some regional airlines out of business. The ripple effect would impact hundreds of service industries including catering, hotels, car rental companies… the economic impact would be apocalyptic.

So which will it be?

Prepare for increasing weirdness if this shutdown isn’t resolved very soon.

gothiccharmschool:

winneganfake:

runcibility:

ms-demeanor:

chrisevans-sexualfrustrations:

Steve?

Okay but he’s right and he should say it.

“Smart” and “Cloud” also mean data gathering. I need to have a tangent, so pardon me while I run with this…

Here’s the thing: I’m a nerd. I want to be able to automate things in our home and to have usable data. So I want smart electrical plugs that allow me to have rules and show me what’s hooving up a ton of energy. That’s useful to me, but that’s not the bargain that tech companies are willing to strike with me, because they want to be able to gather data and sell it.

What’s annoying as hell is that every currently supported thing that does this wants to be a cloud-based application that requires me to install an app on my phone.

I. Do. Not. Want. This. 

I want my plugs on a network so I can flip open a browser on my laptop or phone or tablet and access them that way. I do not want them on or touching the goddamned internet. I do not want an information-gathering-and-data-leaking-phone-app.

The one thing that I’ve found that semi-reliably does this is no longer supported by the manufacturer. Every other goddamned option requires me to have it be app-controlled and I can’t control the data gathering from the manufacturer.

In this case, I am DEFINITELY an old-coot yelling at THE cloud.

Honestly, same. This is one of the few things that I’m glad to be too poor to afford the cool toys on. 

Same here. I don’t want my household appliances connected to the cloud. I don’t need my thermostat, fridge, or TV connected to the internet. I absolutely do not something like an Alexa. 

“Smart” and “Cloud” also mean data gathering.“

I work(ed) in tech. I have a decent understanding of what sort of data can be harvested through those things. I’m not ready to go off-grid and become a witch that lives in the woods, but there are days when it’s a tempting idea.

studyblr:

your life can look so different, so much better, in just a few months. keep going.

postmarxed:

Did not realize until today that Cyntoia Brown had already been in prison for 15 years I thought this whole thing was recent and they had tried this 16 year old girl as an adult and sent her to prison last year or some shit she’s fucking 30 now she’s been imprisoned half her life I’m glad she’s getting out in August but I had no idea how much she had already lost

pseudo-euphoria:

pseudo-euphoria:

** Oliver’s transition fund **

Oliver wants me to amp up the donation requests so I got him to let me take a nice photo. He’s 11, a potterhead (Slytherin) loves The Hunger Games, Minecraft, Terraria, She-ra, and wicca.

He’s stressing about the cost of appointments because he’s really keen for puberty blockers so I’m hoping to raise $1000 by the end of February. That would get us two psychiatrist appointments or a psychiatrist and a couple of clinical psychologist appointments (depending on how the psych decides to go about assessing him for gender dysphoria) including the Medicare rebate with a little left over for boys clothes.

His counselor wants us to get this process going ASAP because having lost my dad (who was also like a father to Oliver) we’re afraid his dysphoria could trigger something awful, not to mention the extra financial pressure we’re under.

We’re at $130 now which is amazing, thank you so much to everyone who has reblogged and especially everyone who has donated. If we could reach our goal and get the ball rolling it would be a huge weight off all our shoulders, especially his

The PayPal is ace8ball@gmail.com

Any left over money after transition expenses will be used for the orthodontic treatment he needs (my mother is trying to cover this but both my kids need it so we all need to pull together to pay for it)

Still sitting at $363/$1000. If I could put aside $350 for his first psych appointment and use $100 or even $50 to get him something he can use in place of a binder we’d be off to an amazing start (the ones I’ve seen are $75-$80). I know there are people in more dire straits so please don’t feel bad if you don’t want to or can’t contribute. At the same time being able to buy a compression bra this week would make him so happy and I’m really hoping I can do that (I don’t want to go under $350 in case something happens and if jeopardizes the psych appointment)

❤️If we could get to half our goal, $500, before we’re due to see the GP again later in the month it would be an incredible help. Reblogs are also very appreciated! Thank you ❤️

terusmob:

terusmob:

literally all of online “stan twitter” language is just aave that’s been popularized and generalized by nonblacks to the point where black people are the ones who look out of pocket for using words we came up with because funny internet persona #23904378 wants to use “deadass” and “finna” in every other sentence

can white people please reblog this because all i see in my notes are people of color and y’all need to own up to the fact that you overuse aave as well (looking @ u white gays)

celestewolfs:

January 21st is the next scheduled Article 13 negotiation, KEEP FIGHTING FOR YOUR FREEDOM, WE HAVE TIME TO WIN THE BATTLE

keep spreading awareness, keep on making content and standing up for the free web

shieldmaiden19:

robogal328:

haletheheretic:

haletheheretic:

soloveitchik:

haletheheretic:

soloveitchik:

It’s my opinion that like if a white supremacist/Nazi is going to be reformed. They need to do so willingly. The only times I’ve heard of successful rehabilitation of fascists is when they made the conscious decision to no longer be one anymore and seek atonement. People who try to like hug and change fascists that don’t want to change are fucking morons

Correct. I was crypto-facist for a few years, and the people trying to hug me didnt change me because at that point I wouldnt have listened. It was only when I started to see the movement for what it was that I was finally able to listen.

I’m not derailing your addition but I’m horrified you’re only 18. When did you become a fasc?

Yeah trust me it *is* horrifying. I’m ashamed of who I was and I think my only atonement is to talk about how damn easy it is to become one when you’re young.

This is gonna be a long post.

For a little bit of background, I am a mixed race person, half brown and half white. I was raised in a Muslim family and am still closeted around them.

I started to have issues with Islam at around 12 or so, when I first started to get the idea that I might be gay. Now I never would have admitted that was my reason. If you had asked me I probably would have said “logic” or something. Because of that I went hard into atheism and atheist circles.

Now people hate to admit this but ex-Muslim spaces are predominantly right wing. Ex-Muslims often see the left as “too tolerant” towards a religion that hurt them. This was the only community I had though, and I read through everything. I was 13.

The other thing that people hate to admit is that, especially when you’re young, being mixed race is so damn hard. If I acted “too white”, following my mother’s German/Austrian traditions, I was accused of hiding my true nature. But if I acted “too brown” I was just another camel jockey. So I hid my “Indian” customs from others and tried passing as white. Especially online.

So I’m not saying this is all youtube’s fault or anything. I was raised to believe that the brown half of my family was lesser and stupid. And with my hatred of Islam, I believed it doubly.

Then came Anita Sarkeesian. I was watching pewdiepie and from there my recommendations were all set. If I’m remembering the pipeline it was pewdiepie - Philip Defranco - Chris Ray Gun (sp?) - Thunderfoot - Sargon - etc. But I was pretty much acquainted with all of the right wing youtube of the day.

Funnily enough, I found her through Thunderfoot. That got me into antifeminism, and more specifically, GamerGate.

I was primarily on the subreddits KIA (Kotaku In Action) and TIA (Tumblr In Action). Both made fun of the SJWs. I kid you not, I would gleefully wait for “Sanity Sunday”, where the people would talk about how feminism is disgusting, cultural appropriation is fake, the wage gap isnt real, etc. I would scroll through this tag for hours.

I got most of my youtube recommendations from those subreddits. This led me from GamerGate to more fascist lines of thinking, such as watching videos about why BLM is a terrorist organization, why all muslims were evil rapists, and why I was fundamentally right to reject my Indian heritage and follow my “correct” heritage.

From here I delved into “race realism”, and I believed it all. I had to. This was the only community I had felt safe in. One of the fash guys even offered to shack me up at his house if my parents kicked me out for being atheist. I was 15.

To say that again, I was 15 and believed that white was right, blue lives matter, “we wuz kangs”, etc. I never would have called myself a fascist or a Nazi. How could I? I used my brown skin as a token, so that people could point to me and say: “See, we aren’t misogynistic and racist! We have this brown girl right here.” But I believed in all the things the Nazis did. I’m not going to pretend I didn’t. I will never pretend I didn’t.

But then something happened. I admitted to myself, and to a few others, that I was gay. And suddenly, the homophobia that I had molded myself in, it didn’t fit right. I happened to, by accident, click on the reddit thread of GamerGhazi, the opposition to GamerGate. And after a long bout of introspection I found out that they were accepting of gay people, that the things I had been experiencing were common, that maybe, just maybe, we didn’t need a white ethnostate.

I don’t want to be dramatic but that accidental click saved my life.

From there it was a road of recovery. I deleted all my old accounts, made new ones, and started to read leftist theory. I found better friends, cut out old people. So now, just about two years later, I’m healing.

I think that’s everything. I probably got some times and dates wrong because I’ve been trying to move on from it. But if you need more info or anything like that, please let me know.

Life After Hate

Founded by former violent extremists, mostly from the far-right, we are committed to compassion, education and countering violent extremism.

Life After Hate

Reblogging for anyone who’s struggling with being an ex-fascist. Feel free to message me as well, I know how scary it can be.

Reblogging because, if this shows up often enough, maybe it will be someone else’s accidental click

^^This person was brave enough to share their struggle and their road. Honor that by reblogging.

isasamu:

luka-arts:

Cosplay PSA

Friendly reminder that while cosplaying Spider Gwen is awesome, wearing actual pointe shoes without formal training isn’t! Pointe shoes are expensive, uncomfortable and you could get seriously hurt! You’d be much better off with some neon turquoise Chuck Taylor’s or non-pointe ballet shoes 😄 Never sacrifice your safety for accuracy.

I an attest!!!! Ballet for a few years in these and they are VERY DANGEROUS IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING!! Please be safe!!