John Skiles Skinner

@skiles.blue

31435 Followers 945 Following

I work on @securedrop.org Former fed at 18F "deleted" by DOGE 🔗 https://skiles.blue/

Book cover of American Midnight The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis. By Adam Hochschild.
How Ben Sasse Is Living Now That He Is Dying The former senator wants to heal the America he’s leaving behind.
"The Coca Cola company is not happy with me--that's okay, I'll still keep drinking that garbage."
A spokesperson for the Social Security Administration, which is still under control by DOGE, denied that a former employee stole data on U.S. citizens. The spokesperson said the Washington Post was “desperate for clicks and eager to publish fake news to scare seniors.” The inspector general’s office; which is independent from the Trump administration, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Slack messages between me and Thomas Shedd
The plaintiffs’ lawyers also asked Mr. Fox about some grants flagged in his original ChatGPT search, like one for a documentary about the 1873 massacre in Colfax, La., where dozens of Black men were murdered by a mob of former Confederates and Ku Klux Klan members. ChatGPT had deemed it “D.E.I.” Mr. Fox said he agreed. “Because it focuses on exclusively anti-Black violence, which is a race,” he said.
Web servers at the Internet Archive headquarters, a church
Musk at World Economic Forum
In one particularly nasty post, Rosiak wrote “More of 18F's totally merit-based and nonpartisan employees” over a screenshot of nonwhite and non-gender conforming staff photos—implying they were unqualified “DEI” hires for being nonwhite and using pronouns. Shortly after, Musk responded to the thread by saying “That group has been deleted.” That was not true at the time, but now it’s clear it presaged what was to come.
In the mid-90’s the fact that media moguls David Geffen, Barry Diller, and Sandy Gallin, designer Calvin Klein, painter Ross Bleckner, and writer Fran Lebowitz were all close friends gave rise to rumors of a “Gay Mafia” (or “Velvet Mafia”) in charge of Hollywood. Once such clusters were identified as working in each other’s interests, it was a short step to the inference that they were working in the interests of gayness as a whole and excluding heterosexuals. The presence of more than one gay person evokes the possibility of a perverse cultural coup. I’m reminded of how President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and his supporters keep calling the cabinet of British Prime Minister Tony Blair a “gay mafia” merely because it used to include two gay ministers.
Opening of Wikipedia article on the Lavender Scare
A screenshot of a story by Wired, "Inside the Gay Tech Mafia" featuring a bizarre image of a handshake with the hands emerging from within two mens' pans
Exodus 34 You shall worship no other god You shall not make cast idols You shall keep the festival of unleavened bread All that first opens the womb is mine On the seventh day you shall rest You shall observe the festival of weeks You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven The sacrifice of the festival of the passover shall not be left until the morning The best of the first fruits of your ground you shall bring to the house of the Lord your God You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk
Top Trump official attacks New York Fed over tariff study The study found that US consumers and businesses are bearing the bulk of higher costs from Trump's tariffs.
The potential for this sort of misuse is not far-fetched. In early January, the DOJ admitted that a DOGE employee at the Social Security Administration “signed a ‘Voter Data Agreement,’ in his capacity as an SSA employee” with an advocacy group whose “stated aim was to find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain States.” The willingness of the administration to share sensitive information with outside actors intent on overturning election results makes the memorandum of understanding even more troubling.
Screenshot of Wikipedia showing the spelling "Scots"
A racist tweet by Elon Musk: For a country to survive, there has to be a common culture. Nobody dies to defend a "multicultural economic zone!" American culture, with its English-Scootts-Irish origin, is great and worth fighting for. Some may not realize it, but that's why people come here.
White House’s chilling warning about midterm elections: ‘Can’t guarantee an ICE agent won’t be around polling locations’ Threat of stationing immigration agents around voting locations has become a concern as it can be a deterrent to legal residents of color who are concerned they may be harassed by federal agents Andrew Feinberg in Washington, D.C. Thursday 05 February 2026 16:24 EST
While the Treasury Department has denied the existence of a contract for this work, IRS engineers were invited to another three-day “training and building session” on the project located at Palantir’s Georgetown offices in Washington, DC, this week, according to a document viewed by WIRED.
We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper Could have gone to some great parties. Did that instead
In testimony 404 Media obtained from a case in Oregon, an ICE official said ELITE is what ICE sometimes uses to track the apparent density of people at a particular location to target. “You’re going to go to a more dense population rather than [...] like, if there’s one pin at a house and the likelihood of them actually living there is like 10 percent [...] you’re not going to go there,” the official said. “It’s basically a map of the United States. It’s kind of like Google Maps.” That case related to a woman, who has the initials MJMA in the court records, who was detained with more than 30 other people in what her lawyers described as a dragnet.
The Wikipedia 25th birthday gathering at the SF public library. Me and a an older man have our heads together over a laptop. Lots of other Wikipedians in the room.
Mr. Thompson’s departure is a major blow to the effort. A self-described workaholic, he has encyclopedic knowledge of dozens of investigations involving a complex web of defendants and transactions.
Google search for "UTC+2"
The state of possibility with memory safety today is similar to the state of automobile safety just prior to the widespread adoption of mandatory seat-belt laws. As car manufacturers began to integrate seat belts as a standard feature across their model lines and states began to require that drivers wear seat belts while driving, the rate of traffic fatalities and severity of traffic-related injuries dropped drastically. Seat belts did not solve automobile safety, but they credibly improved it, and at remarkably low cost. The same can be done with memory safety. There is an opportunity to make substantial inroads at addressing a serious class of vulnerabilities while also, long-term, saving money on the development and operation of software systems. Memory safety is not a silver bullet, but it is a credible and cost-effective assurance technique that we as an industry should pursue aggressively. We do not need to wait for regulation to catch up; it is in our best interests to act today.
Jesus did not come to help you feel great about loving your country Jesus did not come to make you feel comfortable about centering your self-interest Jesus did not come to co-sign the opinions you already held
Cover of the book Hacks, Leaks, and Revelations
An illustration from the Wired article "Inside Elon Musk’s ‘Digital Coup’" of March 13, 2025
Probationary employee layoffs There have also been wide-ranging layoffs of probationary employees — those generally on the job for less than a year and who have yet to gain civil service protection. Potentially hundreds of thousands are affected. On Feb. 13, the administration ordered agencies to lay off nearly all such workers. According to government data maintained by OPM, 220,000 federal employees had less than a year on the job as of March 2024.
Spirit Halloween meme making fun of techforce.gov the web design: A robot man with a computer monitor head, cut from the website, pasted onto a Spirit branded packaging. The words on the package are partly unreadable in a way that's similar to how the website appears on a mobile phone.
A tweet from Elon Musk: "falsely labeling non-violent prior as "fascist" or "Nazi" should be treated as incitement to murder
Magnum PI taking off his shoes, Season 3 Episode 11
How hype becomes a tool of authoritarian governance In 2012, Peter Thiel stated that “when technology's unregulated you can change the world without getting approval from other people. At its best, it's not subject to democratic control, and not subject to the majority, which I think is often hostile to change."
There must be no personal data record-keeping system whose very existence is secret. There must be a way for an individual to find out what information about him is in a record and how it is used. There must be a way for an individual to prevent information about him that was obtained for one purpose from being used or made available for other purposes without his consent.
A camera hidden within a roadside traffic barrel
Trump Administration Will No Longer Commemorate World AIDS Day The State Department warned employees not to use government funds for the occasion and to “refrain from publicly promoting World AIDS Day through any communication channels.”
Do you believe you have been discriminated against because of diversity, equity and inclusion? Get help NOW!
A screenshot in which DOGE X account claims to have "fixed" the FAFSA form because Libs of TikTok complained it had a "nonbinary" gender option
"Fork in the Road FAQs" email from DOGE
A banneer on the hud.gov website: The Radical Left are going to shut down the government and inflict massive pain on the American people unless they get their $1.5 trillion wish list of demands. The Trump administration wants to keep the government open for the American people.
In early June, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, told lawmakers that the vision for DOGE was for it to become more "institutionalized" within agencies as “in-house consultants,” and that the leadership of DOGE was “decentralized” and with agency heads.
The General Services Administration’s acting leader told employees in a recent all-staff meeting there’s no one from the Department of Government Efficiency at the agency. “There’s nobody working for DOGE here,” acting GSA Administrator Stephen Ehikian said at a March 20 town hall.
As the White House became aware of Davis’ attempts to continue wielding power, the Presidential Personnel Office set to work rooting out Davis’ influence throughout the government. Trump’s appointees, under the direction of then-personnel chief Sergio Gor, quietly contacted DOGE staffers, sometimes through the White House liaisons in the agencies, with instructions to cease all communication with Davis. (Gor didn’t respond to a request for comment on his role.) Personnel office staffers also began to conduct 15-minute interviews with DOGE staffers to determine what exactly each did. At least one Cabinet member was informed that he was free to fire any name he found from lists of DOGE employees.
Elon Musk receiving some sort of golden key trinket from Donald Trump. Musk has a visible black eye.
Since most federal funds for public health flow to states, Vought is rivaling the Department of Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in his ability to upend government-led efforts to keep Americans healthy. In Texas, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funds to stem a measles outbreak weren’t available until after the crisis had subsided and two children had died. A project to protect Alabamans from raw sewage and hookworm was abandoned. People with HIV have had to delay medical care as clinics scale back hours. Time-dependent surveys on HIV and maternal mortality were halted. Food banks have canceled events. Tobacco prevention programs lapsed. Initiatives to protect older adults at risk of falling have been harried.
The movie poser of "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar"
From: J [jeevacation@gmail.com] Sent: 1/31/2019 10:47:52 PM To: Michael Wolff _____________ worked at mara lago. . she was the one that accused prince andrew. . trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever. . of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop
They sought to play down Mr. Epstein’s assertion that Mr. Trump had spent extensive time with one of the victims by publicly naming Ms. Giuffre, whose name was redacted in the emails. Ms. Giuffre had said that Ms. Maxwell recruited her into Mr. Epstein’s sex ring while she was working at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Palm Beach, as a teenager.
From: J [jeevacation@gmail.com] Sent: 11/7/2018 11:05:27 AM To: Peter Thiel Subject: Re: Dec visit me Caribbean On Wed, Nov 7, 2018 at 1:34 AM Peter Thiel < > wrote: Can't complain thus far...
49 “‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. 50 They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.
Trifluoronitrosomethane gas, blue-green in color, in a spherical glass container
Murree retired in 1948 after more than 60 years of prominence as a professional roller skater. He was still receiving requests to book roller skating exhibitions, but he could not fulfill them because of arthritis and failing eyesight.[2] Toward the end of his career, he said, "I have enjoyed a full and useful life on skates".[4]
A linkedin screenshot "666 Connections"
The original tweet "cant say for sure but he might be the first vp..."
A horrifying tweet from Elon Musk: "We spend the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could have gone to some great parties. Did that instead."
Take a concrete example. There is a well-known bug in our pattern-detection system that causes us to vastly overestimate the effectiveness of punishment at motivating behavioural change in others. Because we tend to punish unusually bad behaviour and to reward unusually good behaviour, regression to the mean dictates that punishment will more often be followed by better behaviour and reward by worse behaviour. This generates the impression that, not only was the punishment effective, but the reward was counterproductive. Many “common sense” ideas about incentivization (like “spare the rod, spoil the child”) are a direct result of this illusion.
A flagpole held by one person in a crowd with several flags on it, one of which is similar to the United Nations flag but with stars instead of continents
Protesting nurses on top of a car near SF city hall