But I am still here, flailing around but getting through as best I can.

Not exactly a newsflash, but things in the US suuuuuuck. ICE, CBP, & DOJ are completely out of control – kidnapping and trafficking people, due process out the window, and the courts just will not hold them to account. The courts will order them do stop being complete shitbirds, they don’t stop, and then nothing happens.

Dipshit in chief is ruining the economy with the tariffs. Manufacturing is DOWN, job openings are DOWN, and the Fed has said they’re not doing shit about interest rates without “clarity” on tariffs.*

Oh, and the shortages have started. Right now for me, it’s only cat stuff**, but more will come. Good fucking times.

Oh, and the administration is still destroying the government. And I don’t think people understand how easy it is to break things and how hard it is to fix them – this will take so long and cost so much to rebuild.

My rage towards the people who put us here – from institutions that utterly failed us to people who decided to stay home last November – knows no bounds at this point. Especially those who stayed home as some kind of protest over US policies on Israel/Gaza. Not only are things NOT AT ALL better in Gaza, everything is exponentially worse for everyone on the fucking planet.

I understand wanting to take a principled stand. But maybe you should have elected someone where you would have more than a snowballs chance in hell of influencing policy instead of giving the keys to the fascist that will traffic you to another country if you disagree with him.

One very bright spot is watching the elections in Canada & Australia and seeing people not be fooled by the hateful liars on the right and reject them wholeheartedly. So, good job watching and learning from our heinous mistakes here!

Work is…well, it’s work and I’d rather be retired, but I have not won the lottery. I still enjoy the actual work, the majority of days I like my coworkers, and breaking in my new manager continues. (Nothing bad happened, my old manager just had way too much on his plate, so some of us were moved to a different manager. Who now has too much on *his* plate.)

The executives are embracing AI, not just inside our products, but as internal tools. They want the devs to use AI agents so they can be more productive without having to pay more devs, or pay the existing devs more. (Yes, a director did accidentally say the quiet part out loud on that one.) Mind you, our devs are quite productive and the problem isn’t them, it’s executive planning and proclamations that are utterly unrealistic.

So, that’s annoying, but whatever.

Despite it all, Sean and Jorge continue to be awesome and keep me grounded.

* I can’t find where I read this about the Federal Reserve, but it was within the past 24 hours.
** I say “only” as though this isn’t bad – it’s bad. You try explaining to a cat what is going on and why you’re rationing their treats.