0. it takes the reigning POTUS to realize its causing problems that are impacting wealthy elites (24 hours in the case of tariffs)

1. 4 years.

If i were product owner/manager of any of these teams id recommend we fork the codebase for 4 years and call it done. keep the forked version on standby with backports of major content updated in case you wind up with this sort of situation again, but dont start ripping all this stuff out of prod.

Or if on a longer timeline, build culture war into the release as a feature flag (culture=1, culture=0, etc..)

That's optimistic.

We put a business executive in charge of the federal government. There's no such thing as term limits or checks-and-balances in the mind of a business executive, just taking a good horse out of the race and inefficiencies. On the first count, if Trump's still in relatively good health, I could absolutely see him making that case for scrapping the term limit on the Presidency.

They're already working on a constitutional amendment to allow a third term[0] and right wing lawyers have suggested that there are legal strategies Trump could try employing to stay in power. That along with Trump himself "jokingly" saying that we won't need to vote again if he's elected does not inspire confidence.

0: https://ogles.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-ogles-propo...

He isn't. Even absent any impact that catching covid may have had on his body, he's visibly obese. More detailed reports on his health are hard to come by thanks to (a) that being private, and (b) the extremely noisy people who either want to demonise or deify him, but it's not unreasonable to think he's got a 25% chance of old age catching up with him fatally by the end of this term.

But if the term limits get scrapped, I wouldn't be surprised to see a return of Bush or Obama as alternatives. Or Bill Clinton. Bill, George, and Donald were all born in 1946.

(1946 was also the same year the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council started meeting. Coincidence, or the secret world government? Coincidence, obviously).

We're also at the technological pace now where even just the previous Presidential election seems ancient in terms of tech. Was anybody following along Biden Admin changes in GitHub back in 2021?

This is a ridiculous statement that boils down to "this thing occasionally does stuff I disagree with, therefore it is completely corrupt."

But ooh yeah, 3 out of 9 are clean, so there's a chance? Let's just ignore the 6 incompetent apparatchiks and "simple majority rule" shall we?

Don't be so obtuse, we know you're not that stupid.

My point was more that if "liberal" == "clean" and "conservative" == "incompetent apparatchiks" then you're (the royal you) a shill whose opinion should be disregarded out of hand. Just the same as if "conservative" == "patriotic" and "liberal" == "gay ISIS terrorist"

I remember a time where there could be political discussions here where people were passionate, and disagreed, and yeah you'd have one or two assholes in the bunch who would get flagged and maybe even banned, but by and large it was enjoyable. Is it that this particular thread includes GitHub links so everyone loses their damned minds?

Sure, typical whatever-you-are tactic of changing the topic when being attacked. Plus some "Won't somebody think of the site's rules?!".

If I consider all the ones who voted for Presidential immunity corrupt does that make me a shill? It's a decision with no constitutional basis (the constitution grants no presidential immunity, but does grant other immunities, implying if it was intended it'd be in there) and ahistorical (we can find plenty of examples of presidents assuming they or their predecessor could be prosecuted).

That still leaves us in the same place a Supreme Court where the majority is beholden to the current President, not the constitution.

"The judicial branch is bought and paid for" is a ridiculous shill thing to say because 1) it assumes that smart, well-educated, successful people only believe a thing because of corruption. 2) it obviates the need to address any of the other side's claims on their merits, because they're just corrupt so who cares. 3) it sets up your side as the victors-by-default, because the other corrupt and you hate everything the other side does so by definition you're Good. It used to be a common refrain of the right when most judges and justices and most courts were left-of-center. But now that federal circuit courts are evenly split between R-appointed and D-appointed justices, and SCOTUS has more Republican appointees than Democratic, the judiciary is farcical.

"This is a hallowed, storied institution just so long as it does things I like, and a corrupt oligarchy when it doesn't" is the very definition of shill.

You're very optimistic that there are going to be elections in 4 years time. You have a king and a court with unfettered access to power now.

If this is the case, incepting everyone with the idea in advance subconsciously lowers resistance right now, when nothing can be done, because this is all hypothetical.

And if it isn't the case, you can't be taken seriously.

Simply respond to the moment, in the moment. That is already enough.

Plus remember: he doesn't need to be a dictator, because he won a democratic election. If anything, liberals should be focusing on how to avoid JD Vance simply winning in 2028.

This _is_ a democratic attempt to salvage the federal government and our democracy from a failing oligarchy of “experts”, lest these problems continue to go unaddressed and we actually do lose our democratic process with some much more aggressive successor (from the left or right)

So, relecting a person who has already shown a tendency to want to bend and break rules to stay in office, and is willing to simply ignore laws that aren't convenient is a problem. When that person starts installing sycophants into positions that actually control the military, financial and other fundamental levers of governing it becomes that persons choice, not the people or other democratically elected leaders whether to step down, or for that matter do anything else. The people who founded the USA understood that the president was just a step away from being a king and tried their best to counteract that. But, those people are a hundred and seventy years dead and the country has survived because the people elected to those positions were willing to adhere to the norms of governing, even if they didn't believe in the results.

So, I don't think anyone with any critical reasoning skills who has paid even the slightest attention over the past 12+ years believes that to be true of Trump or many of the people he is surrounding himself with this time. The McMasters who say "no you can't do that its illegal" are gone and daily any remaining resistance is being removed. Frankly at this point even if Trump steps down after 4 years. The Senators who have allowed it to progress this far have repeatedly abdicated their fundamental duty and are unfit for office (and that is putting it mildly).

If you can cut off funding to congressionally appropriate USAID programs, its just a likely you can cut off funding to the military unit that won't kiss the ring.

Since WW2 we have had a growing unelected federal bureaucracy (staffed by college graduates more and more left-leaning), that is controlled by congress as you mentioned. Congress is run by seniority, most are re-elected every year and are elected along party lines without much thought. And most legislation is written by lobbyists and activists. People are apathetic about congress, there is not much democracy there. People care much more about the presidential election.

I think if you look at the actions of our federal government over past decades you will see it has not been very good for the health of the American people. I think any action by a president to take back some power from Congress to upend that order is a good thing. Throughout our history certain presidents have completely changed the federal government during their terms in office, and afterwards the title goes back to more complacent presidents. Over time systems decay and you may need to start with something new.

Is this a true statement or not?

As it stands, the only durable policy win of his term so far was achieved on a bipartisan basis and mostly passed before he even took office: the Laken Riley Act. Why isn't the opposition party acting as opposition?

> If you care about the US remaining a functioning democracy, you should work in whatever way you can toward removing the current administration from power.

The U.S. is already not a functioning democracy (see 2016 and 2020), and removing the current administration from power (illegally?) will not change that.

This constant cycle of ineffective freakouts that America's liberal bloc find themselves in every 4 years is a large part of the reason why Trump won to begin with.

he won because many groups of people were promised exactly what they wanted to hear. majority of america is very dumb. to the point it seems intentional. they reject any attempt to be informed about this subject. people routinely having abortions voted trump. people on SSI voted for trump. unemployed people voted for trump. disabled veterans voted for trump. literal nazis trump -- and i'm not saying HE is one, i'm saying that his campaign made sure they see him as one, and it absolutely worked ... over and over again against many of these groups whom are just frothing for fellow haters

i get really upset trying to figure out how to resolve this. but i can't even talk to the couple of relatives i have who are in this cult. if they detect you aren't praising the leader, things get hostile fast.

But people have the sense -- in some cases rightfully and in some not -- that their lives aren't going great. So they look to someone to offer an opportunity for change. And they're willing -- really primed, by all of American society -- to throw under the bus whatever boogeyman is necessary as dictated by the Fox News monster of the week™

This attitude is another reason he won.

He was elected President, not king. The laws being broken applied to all previous election winners.

It may turn out to be ironic that you describe Trump and our Monarch (or any other) within the same breath.

Please recall (or look up) what happened to Charles I of England.

Once you find the quote, go onto politco (a not exactly pro-trump site) fact-checking service to get the full context.

Here from his own mouth https://youtube.com/shorts/DpVsZZtEpS8?feature=shared

And a proposed amendment to go with it, excluding Obama of course https://ogles.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-ogles-propo...

It has practically zero support and has an actual zero chance of being ratified.

Histerioinics and history are not associated with the same word.

Grow up.

So did Hitler.

He didn't "realize" anything. All of the show we're seeing was planned posturing and "deal-making by leverage". We shouldn't be accepting even talking about the US annexing Greenland FFS - but here we are, with credible proposals for installing new US military presence on Greenland being discussed. That's alarming.

> 4 years.

Bold of you to assume there will be elections in four years, that these elections will be anywhere close to fair, or that the people who voted for the 47th won't just vote for him (or his successor, assuming the 47th goes six-feet-under) again.

The parties in power failed to unwind any of this so instead they got an unhinged strongman who promised to do it with a sledgehammer. Trump is a symptom rather than a cause.

... and will do just the opposite of what he promised and they were hoping for. Recent news about how scientific grants are being retroactively reviewed for any signs of "woke" language - if that isn't a vast expansion of governmental authoritarian powers, I seriously don't know what is.

Genuine question: why? Expansionism may be out of style, but I don't see how it's inherently evil.

Any society IMHO has the right to self-determination and self-sovereignty, as long as they adhere to at least the minimum standards of civilized societies aka UDHR - and the governments of those that don't even pay lip service to it should be fair game for everyone else to depose, we've seen the horrors of Syria, the new Taliban regime in Afghanistan, the genocides of Russia (against Ukrainians), Myanmar and China (Uyghurs and Tibetans) or the kleptocracy that was Gaza under Hamas, enough is enough and someone has to at least enforce the basic laws of humanity.

In the end, the people of Greenland should be the ones that have the say about what happens to their country, not the Americans, and for all I care the question if Denmark should have authority over Greenland should be seriously reconsidered as well given the atrocities of the last decades - among others, kidnapping children and forcibly sterilizing women [1].

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/greenland-denmark-relations-scandals/a...

2. The amount of effort being put into this is much higher than GitHub changing their default for new repos to "main"

Sorry but that's bullshit. This is just deleting a few words from static content. The whole `main` thing required:

* Github (and Gitlab etc.) to make `master` configurable - an entirely new feature.

* All tooling that previously could assume a default of `master` now can't have a sensible default. You have to specify every time.

* Users to remember which one to use for every repo.

This is still causing me pain. Repos I use are about 50:50 split between `main` and `master`. I sure do love having to retype `git switch master` half the time I do it.

This is dumb, but it definitely is less effort than the dumb `main` change.

... and the git changes were allowed to happen on a sane schedule.

Oh, and most of the people or projects affected by the git change got a choice.

He barely survived and today, I think 10 years later, he still suffers from severe migraines and doesn't have movement in half his body.

And I wouldn't blame you if you didn't believe me. I sometimes also don't believe this happened, that that was just a bad dream. That we actually need laws to prevent people from killing each other just because.

    #!/bin/bash
    
    git remote show origin | sed -n '/^ *HEAD branch: */s///p'

    git switch $(git master)

(This is of course irrelevant to the topic of the top-level post.)

The former may annoy some folks until they standardize or figure out a way to tag the repos. The latter is actively aiming to be detrimental to people in a large way, and unless stopped, will very likely succeed in that goal.

Sure, I know the etymology doesn't go to what it sounds like, but even without any culture war stuff — and this is very mild, I view "not using 'master'" in this context as "being polite" — even without culture war stuff, what you're whinging about was already something people had to handle.

You already had the problem you're whinging about, even without any culture war.

And I really do mean it when I say you are 'whinging' here: of all the things people in software have to deal with, what something is called is among the more trivial.

A policy that strips people of money, even with good reason, is much more disruptive than "what's this called?", that you call this "bullshit" and *this* is your comparison? It's like a posh person in WW1 saying that their caviar being rationed is more important than the troops getting winter jackets.

Usually you're switching from a feature branch back to main or master anyway.

The buck didn't stop with that useless piece of wokeism that, oh so curiously, didn't go after master degrees.

The funniest thing when red is in power instead of blue is how all the blue people pretend their crap was good and the crap of red is bad and how it's not about the action but about who does it.

They are both probably forms of overcorrection, this too far in the wrong direction where the former could have been too far in the more ideal direction.

Pandering is not as bad as discrimination, as you’ve pointed out.

This comments section seem to be full of the "Fuck Woke DEI" Maganazis and mentioning "systemic racism" will trigger them, but if you're still reading, look at George Floyd, in an alternate world, he'd be a wealthy person descendant of landowners, but in this reality, his grandparents' land was stolen, he grew up poor (and black) and ended up being yet another black-murdered-by-cop figure: https://dwkcommentaries.com/2020/10/08/a-moving-biography-of... . But snowflakes get triggered if there's an idea of better treatment for descendants of victims of systemic racism (another snowflake trigger word).

To the snowflakes: Hey, why care about all that, your continued violence has won you the ethno-supremacy fascism you wanted, where being white and incompetent doesn't matter, because you'll get that cushy job anyway!

You are part of the problem. Yes. You.

An example might be jobs postings, in computer science the tone used for the post might discourage more women to apply than man. Having a process to ensure this doesn't happen results in more women applying, but more men as well, the increase is just less than woman in %

I also not see an issue with changing a word that has a bleak history with one that hasn't, it doesn't remove anything from people

I will be very blunt. You are simply wrong. Not just inaccurate, but wrong. Not technically wrong, but wrong. If it removes word, it removes something. And since "something" is far, far removed from 'not anything'. You are factually wrong. As in, you cannot get more wrong than you just did. Fucking QED.

In this case, the engineers are changing the functionality of the product, not just changing code identifiers.

You can't ignore the policy aims when determining what is "productive" as productivity is directly to the end result. It's WORSE that this is productive vs non-productive.

You're "Tired of nazi comparisons" when... Musk did two Nazi Salutes! He brought the comparison on by doing a Nazi salute! Twice! You're the one who refuses to see a salute for what it is.

If I keep having to roll my eyes over all these idiotic Nazi comments because people are tired of far-left culture war issues I'm going to have to go to the doctor for RSI.

2) False equivalency.

Uhm, yes. Yes they were.

Here's one example:

https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2021/09/renaming-whi...

> This seems just as ridiculous and frustrating as a few years ago, dropping whatever they're doing to remove "master" and "whitelisting" from the code. Different team, same silliness.

I could go pull my company's JIRA ticket and I guarantee you it hasn't been touched since 2020.

These companies were only going to do enough work for a PR win and nothing more.

I was just pointing out that the companies that changed terminology due to “wokeness” only did it for a PR. It was never an actual endorsement of progressive politics or whatever these dorks try to sell it as.

It really isn't a both sides situation.

Gas chambers when?

But if there was an option, they definitely should.

Changing the names back because you were upset that somone changed them in the first place, with the express knowledge that some people may be affected by this, is a dick move.

One of these moves is a virtue signal, yes, but it has no real impact once completed. This current move from 'main' to 'master' is designed to both virtue signal and to upset/piss people off/etc.