Hey, I made a meme, inspired by the troubles besetting Trump’s transition team.
In case you haven’t been following the issue, here are a few just slightly alarming quotes from a Huffington Post piece on the chaos.
Donald Trump’s transition team is nearing a state of stasis, causing concern among both Democrats and Republicans in Washington that his White House will be woefully ill-prepared once he is inaugurated. …
The disarray has left agencies virtually frozen, unable to communicate with the people tasked with replacing them and their staff. Trump transition team officials were a no-show at the Pentagon, the Washington Examiner reported. Same goes for the Department of Energy, responsible for keeping the nation’s nuclear weapons safe, where officials had expected members of the Trump transition team on Monday. Ditto for the Department of Transportation. Over at the Justice Department, officials also are still waiting to hear from the Trump team. …
According to several sources close to the Trump transition team and inside the Obama administration, the president elect and his staff have had difficulty finding able-minded Republicans willing to take on critical posts. One Democratic source, who like others would only discuss sensitive talks on condition of anonymity, said transition officials had been informally asking Obama political appointees to recommend Republicans to take over their jobs.
Yeah, that’s kind of what happens when you elect a dude who has no freaking idea what he’s doing to the highest office in the land.
@dreemr, what can I say.
Once in a while, you don’t see the overweight, unfit ninja coming.
@Pie : encrypting messages isn’t that important.
Let’s suppose I want to identify a whistleblower who revealed a secret to a publicly known journalist, who only communicate through a crypted messenger.
If I can find the list of the account that people have talked to, even if they are anonymous, I am most likely golden. Even if some of them are anonymous account, the people they talk to outside that journalist, or the geographic position he talk from, are likely enough to deduce who he is. The only realistic way to avoid that is if it’s an account who did only that, and preferably one not accessed from the home of the tracked.
That’s why using multiple account is usually more important than encrypting your communications. A lot of the time, the police forces aren’t allowed to look at what you wrote anyway, or don’t bother shifting through everything.
Note that using multiple account is not foolproof. A french ex-president, Sarkozy, have been busted while trying that. But then again, the policemen who did that were specialized in tracking.
@Ohlmann
Consider it (at least in the form of perfect forward secrecy) a sort of “you must be at least this tall to be worth using as a communications medium”.
If you are already of interest (eg, the journalist in your example) then it is insufficient by itself, as you pointed out. If you are not (eg, you are like most people), it hampers the ability of automated systems to identify you as someone potentially interesting.
If you are attempting to disseminate stuff worthy of whilstleblowing, well, that’s a different sort of issue altogether, but didn’t appear to be what was being asked about here.
The fact that parallel construction is a thing suggests that relying on what they are and are not allowed to do isn’t necessarily a good idea.
Stuff is only going to become more automated.
OT
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/2016-oxford-word-of-year-1.3853930
Quote: “Post-truth” was proclaimed international word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries on Wednesday after beating “alt-right” and “Brexiteer,” a choice the publisher said reflected a year defined by emotive political discourse.
The compound adjective post-truth was defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”
Great..add this to the popularity in some circles (although to be honest, it’s probably not a new phenomena) of ‘truthiness’ and you get my belief that western civilization is in for a very rough and bumpy ride.
@Jesalin
Yup. I was reading a comment section on an article about Trump appointing his kids to his transition team and ran across a comment saying the media lied about him so much during the campaign they were only going to trust statements directly from the Trump team. I was aghast. I fully expect these tools to start calling him Mein Furher or Dear Leader next.
@Ohlmann
That’s why I’m specifying the pipedream where Clinton gets elected.
Again, I want to stress my lack of qualifications. But again, no, that doesn’t sound like an outcome that would be worse than letting this administration happen. As far as I can tell this is a fascist revolution, and a “peaceful transition” is emphatically not going to save anybody.
It’s against the law for a president to hire immediate family. I’m not sure if it’s against the law for a president elect to do so for a transition team, but in any case, it’s not looking good for the claim that a Trump vote was ever an anti-corruption vote.
So this is probably really off topic, but I just found out that apparently a part of a racist hate group is forming in my hometown. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/soldiers-of-odin-yukon-chapter-1.3852685
Yukon, noooooo
Ahhh, fuck, the Soldiers of Odin? Odin was a goddamn wandering wise-man, assholes, not some sort of racist shitheel. Hands off the Allfather!
Hi. Somewhat OT, but if anyone hasn’t seen this and is interested in a list of companies that support Trump Co. by caring their products and wish to boycott, this article links to a Google Docs spreadsheet of most major companies that are still carrying their products.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/boycott-trump-list-of-retailers_us_582c789de4b0aa8910bde58f
Well, I’m in the Yukon. 😛
Also because of this I’ve learned that Facebook only lets you report a group for one kind of hate speech which seems to be somewhat counter intuitive.
….-sigh-
I should have said – thanks, Zatar! I would have missed that article.
Scildfreja: Right!? and also just in general weren’t didn’t the vikings also do a whole bunch trading? because if they did that means that they would have had a whole bunch of contact with other cultures with very different traditions which they’d have had to be tolerate if they wanted to be successful, which is a lot more then I can say for these guys.
As a (partially) Norse person, get the fuck out of my ancestral heritage, white nationalist asshats!
The Vikings loved kitties. Doesn’t that disqualify them from being admired by far right wingers?
http://www.playfulkitty.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Freyas-Kitties-Title.jpg
Misandry!
There’s quite an interesting exploration of how the presidential line of succession works in the Tom Clancy books of all places.
In one of the books terrorists wipe out most of the cabinet by crashing an aeroplane into the Capital. Jack Ryan (the Red October bloke) ends up as president.
A major sub plot of the following book is a legal challenge into that. It goes into some detail about the relevant procedural and legal requirements.
Seconding, again. >:D
Nyan cat Freya.
http://img07.deviantart.net/e636/i/2011/331/9/3/freya__s_nyan_cat_drawn_carriage_by_daggerravionfall-d4hjku1.jpg
Squee!
@Scildfreja Wonder what they think of Odin’s dabbling in seiðr? OMG!!! MANGINA!! *snicker*
I suppose they are more enamoured of his berserker associations. 😛
Trump has no idea what he’s doing?!
That’s okay, because Steve Bannon does know what he’s doing.
Wait — you say that Bannon is a wife beater and a raging bigot?
As Kellyanne Conway explained, you’ve got to look at Bannon’s whole resume.
Is Donald Trump Steve Bannon’s Puppet?
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/11/16/is_donald_trump_steve_bannon_s_puppet.html
Here’s a bright spot in a landscape that seems desolate:
SpaceX exec quits to fight Trump ‘nightmare’
For Torricke-Barton, head of communications at SpaceX, it was personal. He is the son of a refugee from Burma and emigrated to the U.S. from the U.K.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/15/technology/dex-torricke-barton-trump/index.html
I’m sure Bannon will be one of the puppeteers pulling Trump’s strings, because Cheeto Jesus has absolutely no experience and and very little idea on how government works from the inside.
There is a passage from the Bible that says a tree is known by its fruits. Look at the fruit of the tree Bannon has grown: a web site full of yellow journalism and propaganda with a comment section full of people with the most loathsome and vile viewpoints. Whether Bannon himself is a misogynist bigot or he just cynically uses people who are to gain power and influence for himself is unimportant. He knowingly cultivated that weed and encouraged it to grow. If left unchecked he will do evil, either through his own actions and influence or by unleashing his army of flying monkeys at Breitbart to keep the Democrats and the dissenters within the Republican party in line.
Bannon has GOT to go.
The danes, swedes and others were all very worldly, and didn’t much care what race you were – they were all about travel and commerce. The vikingr were especially so. I mean, come on, they thought highly enough of the Byzantines to think working for them was a highly honourable post, and they traded all the way to the Persians! The finest and most prized swords were Persian steel!
And they loved kitties, and Freja and Odin both had equal halls to which the Valkyries bring the souls of warriors to fight in the Ragnarok! And kitties!
These assholes don’t know a damn thing.
Plus, Heimdall is black!
http://static.srcdn.com/slir/w500-h282-q90-c500:282/wp-content/uploads/idris-elba-heimdall-thor.jpg
Sorry.
This was just the best white tear inducing casting ever.