perfidy

h/t to dad of buckethead

If my calculations are correct, and they always are, then this is the first political post on the Ministry of Minor Perfidy in almost half a decade. There are many reasons for this, foremost among them a multi-year lapse in posting of any sort whatsoever. On a purely personal level the reasons ranged from laziness to guilt, on to ennui, then guilt over laziness, then guilt over ennui over guilt on laziness, then a sidestep into intermittent incandescent rage.

The real reason was something other. My views evolved - not in the typical bullshit-media sense of 'evolving' in a progressive, whig-history fashion toward ever-greater holiness - but rather in a more scientific sense of merely changing. And as it happens... in a more or less opposite direction. From where I stand, you are likely a communist.

This led inexorably to a sort of mental bog, wherein I was stuck, and unable to see anyway to communicate with the outside world in a way in which it would understand. I could mutter cryptic comments about the Cathedral, or Moldbug, or overton windows... and none of it connected to a political reality that prominently featured a guy named Barack Obama living at 1600 PA.

For the past eight years a disinterested observer - say, that famous guy from Mars, or maybe a herder from Eastern Outer Mongolia - might conclude that Obama's policies might be morally right, good for the environment, or good for humanity taken as a whole. (He might, if he's an idiot. But let's just leave that aside for the moment.)

Hundreds, thousands, for all I know hundreds of thousands of policies, regulations, laws, executive orders and daydreams emanated from Obama's pretty white house over the last eight years. Never once have I thought that even one of them would do me, personally, the least damn bit of good. Best-case scenario, that. For of course most of these schemes not only did not improve my life or that of my family, they caused it active and measurable harm.

A little bit of back-story. So, I was early on the bandwagon picking Trump as the eventual victor of our recent presidential ultra-marathon - Ann Coulter her own bad self only beat me by a month back in the summer of '15. But it took me some good time to reconcile myself to the reality of Trump. Crassness, gaucheness, the hair, shoot from the hip mentality. All of these things put me off my feed. But then, epiphany! None of that shit matters. I accommodated myself, and rejoiced in the defeat of at least a dozen people I truly and deeply despise. These things happen for a reason: and that reason is Trump is more or less exactly what he seems; and intends to do more or less exactly what he says. 

Now, just over a week into the reign of the God-Emperor Trump I have had the novel experience of witnessing a positive flood of orders from the white house, and not a single damn one of them was designed to screw me or my family. Naturally, this makes me paranoid. But then whispers came to my ears that even better things are in the works:

President Donald Trump's next target in his administration's immigration policy will focus on what Silicon Valley fears most: the work-visa programs that tech companies rely on to hire tens of thousands of workers each year, according to a report by Bloomberg.

The executive order is still a draft, according to the report, but if enacted, it could mean major overhauls in the way tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon recruit their employees. Under the order, companies would have to prioritize hiring American workers, and if they must hire foreign workers, then they must prioritize the most highly compensated, according to the report.

"Our country's immigration policies should be designed and implemented to serve, first and foremost, the U.S. national interest," the draft says, according to a copy obtained by Bloomberg.

"Visa programs for foreign workers … should be administered in a manner that protects the civil rights of American workers and current lawful residents, and that prioritizes the protection of American workers — our forgotten working people — and the jobs they hold," the draft states.

Trump's order affects a number of visa programs including H-1B, L-1, E-2, and B1. H-1B visas are commonly used among tech companies to recruit high-skilled workers from overseas when they can't find domestic talent to fill positions.

The new administration's proposed order would also create more transparency around visa programs by publishing statistics on who uses the programs within a month of the federal government's fiscal year.

Read the original Bloomberg report.

As non-Indian, non-Chinese, American-born IT worker, this is pure meat and no filler. Supply goes down, demand goes up - as do prices. What are the odds that in this year in this place, a president in these United States would do something that intentionally helped the citizens of the country he was elected to lead to the simultaneous detriment of non-citizens? 

[wik] While one can applaud, as I do, the benefits of this (as yet still potential) measure for American citizens, it will necessarily have ill-effects on the holders of H1B visas and jobs at American companies. It will cause disruption in their lives. I find that I have a mild regret for this. But one serious upside is that the non-English speaking tech recruiters will someday cease to be a thing. 

This is the fifth (or sixth) incarnation of a website that first staggered, drunken and confused, from primordial ooze in the long ago days of 2003. 

Perfidy has had a sordid history of wooing and then discarding hopeful blog platforms. The first victim was blogger, where perfidy masqueraded under modestly clever nom-de-net "Johnny Two-Cents’. It was only weeks before frustration with the limitations (if not the cost) of blogger led to its unseemly abandonment.

Then began the ambitious task of creating our own blog. The first blog that actually had the name Perfidy lived on the expression engine platform. It was rudimentary and frankly rather sad. The second effort saw improvement and actually approached mediocrity. For an absurdly long time, that blog remained visible for the simple if lame reason that we never bothered to export its content. It’s departure into the outer darkness was little noticed. 

The third incarnation of perfidy (and the fourth overall, for those without a program) saw the big move to Wordpress and the kicking-to-the-curb of an increasingly outmoded and unpopular Expression Engine.

Giddy with the possibilities of Wordpress theming and high as a kite generally, the perfidy design steering committee selected an ill-fated experimental design. This was nearly instantly shit-canned in favor of the fourth incarnation (whose own colophon you can read) and by far longest-lived of all perfidy flavors. 

As the demands of work and children took their toll, ministers fell away. Buckethead was the last to fall, and certainly most guilty. The blog staggered on with a single minister. After a nearly four-year lapse a fortuitous (nigh on to miraculous) intersection of increasing skill and increasing time allowed this, the fifth incarnation, to take shape. 

In what is now a dirty habit, Wordpress was left crying at the altar. This new and shiny Perfidy is on yet another new platform: Drupal. This also marks the first time in almost a decade that all of the content is in the same place. Many immigrant laborers, toiling in the code mines deep below the Perfidious fortress retreat suffered greatly so that you might easily read the random thoughts of a passel of overprivileged retards from 2005.  

Though this grand new Perfidy in many regards replicates the look of the old and lame previous Perfidy, it is in fact actually and entirely new. In designing this new theme, there were two primary considerations:

1. Recapture the unique perfidious magic of the previous design
2. Change it so that aging eyes can actually read the damn thing

The Ministry design steering committee believes that both of these objectives have been met. Because no sane developer starts from scratch unless threatened with grievous bodily harm, the perfidy theme was stolen in large part from the work of others. Most notably in this case from the Writer theme by Bryan Braun. From his own description, he valued:

• Brutally simple design
• Fantastic typography
• Support for code snippets

That third item won't likely be a huge factor here, but we liked the first two a lot. If Bryan saw what we did with his menu, he'd probably hate that; but mostly we kept to his excellent design. Some changes include the aforementioned menu (moved to the side in memory of perfidies that have gone before), the very same link colors we've used since the start, the category icons that we love so much, and a few other minor changes. Body text is Merriweather, meta text is Lato. Enjoy, and tell us what you think.

Over at Amazon.com, there is for sale at this very moment the greatest short story ever written.

It has profanity, gore, dinosaurs, Nazis, comedy, tragedy, dinosaur Nazis, 'splodey, shooting, and the Landkreuzer P.1000. Name one other story that has all of those elements! Name one!

Go buy "Call Me Mumbles" - the first episode of the Saga of Subcommandante Mumbles vs. The Dinosaur Nazis. BUY IT RIGHT NOW, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. Okay, it will never really be too late. But buy it now anyway.

Had to delete or fix a few posts thanks to the spammer douchebags. As it happens, they were all links to the Veil War, so I can just tell you again to go there and read.

The current chapter is Chapter 28, or you can start from the beginning here.

The Veil War is running again. Chapters 23, 24 and 25 are up - go read.

Once on the ground, the knights became a blur. Moving so fast that Lewis could barely follow their movements, the crusader knights spun, twisting through goblins who appeared almost frozen in place by the inhuman speed of their attackers.

Swords reached out, blurred fans of silvered metal to Lewis’ eyes. The power behind the strikes made them seem effortless, yet every time blade intersected with goblin, blood and limbs flew. Lewis had once watched a bird sucked in to a jet engine with less violence.

Tell your friends.

If the Soviet Union still existed, it would likely be in third place in the 2012 Summer Games:

Or, depending on how you look at it, second place. They'd be significantly behind the US in gold, but slightly ahead in overall medal count.

I've been thinking about this a bit, and while I can see certain tactical advantages for those who oppose Obama - this strikes me as on the whole entirely bad. Despite the decline in trust in our public institutions, the Supreme Court remains prestigious, and it has leant its imprimatur to a staggeringly bad policy. I can imagine the Republicans using this as a whipping horse, and it may help them retake the presidency, and possibly even the Senate (though almost certainly not a filibuster-proof majority...) Once again in power - how does this go away? If it had been struck down in its entirety, which we were apparently one vote away from doing, we could have a) done something sensible for once - unlikely in the extreme, b) done something marginally less stupid - moderately likely, or c) done nothing at all - also moderately likely. Option C would likely be best - we could have edged stepwise to better solutions like what Singapore has, or toward a more purely market solution, or even just reforming the most egregious abuses around the edges. But with Obamacare still in place, we have to hope that 535 self-involved, semi- to completely corrupt psychopaths will see it in their own best interest to remove something that is already a fait accompli. The badness is really intense. Consider:

1. We are already throwing money onto the fire at a ridiculous rate. This one program alone will add a minimum of a trillion dollars to the burn rate.
2. We are now for all intents and purposes going to be paying taxes to private entities. Remember how tax collectors were regarded in the New Testament?
3. It establishes a precedent for even greater government tentacle - your ass interface. The IRS will be watching whether you are paying the insurance company, and come down on you with all it's famed respect and care for the individual. Given their regard for due process, this is going to be fun.
4. The effect on jobs - are you going to start a new company when you might - in addition to all the normal risks - be subject to tax evasion if you let your insurance lapse?
5. The general fuckedupedness of the whole thing. The problem with our health care system is that patients are not the customers. You are spending (psychologically) someone else's money for your health care. More tests? Why the fuck not? Insurance covers it. Doctors and patients are marginalized. Try and find out how much something medical costs before they do it. I dare you. Obamacare not only does nothing to address this or other problems, it adds to them. The only 'positive' thing is that more people have coverage. Everything else is nightmarish.
6. The Supreme Court ruling basically gives the gubmint all the justification it needs to construe any behavior-modification scheme as a 'tax' and know that it will fly. The commerce clause is dead, long live the tax power! Granted that the constitution is mostly dead, this gives them a fig leaf the size of Rush Limbaugh's gut. Which is altogether too big.

I could go on. But this is bad, and it will all end in fire.

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[sub-wik] original image died a lonely death somewhere in the vasty depths of the internets. So, begin your guided visualization of what once was here with this starter meme template: 

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[alsø alsø wik] Through the magic of the Wayback Machine, I have recovered the original image that was lost: