John Skiles Skinner
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skiles.blue
John Skiles Skinner
@skiles.blue
30K followers 830 following 2.4K posts
I work on @securedrop.org
Former fed at 18F "deleted" by DOGE
🔗 https://skiles.blue/
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skiles.blue
Wikipedia HERO

A guy discovered a faked photo of a rare blue gas on Wikipedia. So he SYNTHESIZED THE GAS HIMSELF so that he could photograph it. Yesterday he updated the article with this real photo of trifluoronitrosomethane:
Trifluoronitrosomethane gas, blue-green in color, in a spherical glass container
November 8, 2025 at 8:51 PM
skiles.blue
His whole biography is incredible, but what stays with me most is his retirement. A friend once told me that paragraph epitomizes a happy human life, well-lived.
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]
November 8, 2025 at 3:48 AM
skiles.blue
The ritual is complete
A linkedin screenshot "666 Connections"
November 8, 2025 at 3:01 AM
skiles.blue
The origin is a little earlier than the faked page from his book. The origin is this reference to an imaginary page. The faked page was a response.
The original tweet "cant say for sure but he might be the first vp..."
November 7, 2025 at 11:40 PM
skiles.blue
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."
November 7, 2025 at 4:41 PM
skiles.blue
One explanation: people crave punishment because they experience a simple cognitive illusion that punishment is more effective than it actually is
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.
November 6, 2025 at 6:05 AM
skiles.blue
United Federation of Planets flag spotted in San Francisco (Starfleet Headquarters)
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
October 19, 2025 at 2:37 AM
skiles.blue
Nurses care for all people
Protesting nurses on top of a car near SF city hall
October 18, 2025 at 10:21 PM
skiles.blue
"No hate no fear immigrants are welcome here"
October 18, 2025 at 9:26 PM
skiles.blue
San Francisco says NO KINGS
October 18, 2025 at 8:28 PM
skiles.blue
YUP. Estonia's excellent tax system was an inspiration for the US Direct File, a program so successful that they sent Elon Musk to fire me and all my coworkers at 18F and shut the program down. Republicans and billionaires really don't want working government technology.
A tweet by Elon Musk: "That group has been deleted" Retweeting a complaint about Direct File and 18F, which it calls "the far left government wide computer office"
October 11, 2025 at 11:04 PM
skiles.blue
A new government website literally called "TrumpRX.gov" that uses an AI-generated American flag missing stars 🤦

Oh and on a second look, it also has an inconsistent number of stripes. Trump's name and face are the new symbols of America apparently, the old ones are getting blurry.
An AI-generated photo of an American flag flying, lacking stars
October 11, 2025 at 8:17 PM
skiles.blue
Court administrators refuse to fix it. They keep citing a project with my old org, 18F, way back in 2021. We recommended they start building immediately! Instead the have been "approaching the development and implementation phase" for 4-5 years, building nothing. And lacking proper security.
Recognizing the need to leverage outside expertise in the development of our ITinitiatives, the AO has used many of the recommendations made by the General ServicesAdministration’s 18F organization in 2021 in our preparations for modernizing CM/ECF.Although in your letter you state, “[w]hile the judiciary has solicited advice from leadinggovernment experts on establishing a modern, secure and efficient case management system, thejudiciary thus far has ignored that advice and has made no meaningful progress towards areplacement,” this is simply not the case.The AO remains at work in modernizing CM/ECF to bring it in line with currenttechnology practices. Substantial planning for the modernization effort began in 2022, and weare now approaching the development and implementation phase of the project. We expectimplementation will begin in the next two years in a modular and iterative manner. For the pastfew years we have been analyzing and developing operations standards while testing technicalcomponents. The AO is centralizing the operation and data standards for the system to allow amore secure environment and to ensure local rules and procedures are accommodated.
October 11, 2025 at 3:26 AM
skiles.blue
Before: a visual history of civil rights in the U.S. including people of all kinds. A report button that actually worked.

After: Removed all the people; the report button is grayed out. No more "woke" stuff on the website -- in other words, no more civil rights at the Civil Rights Division.
A screenshot from an older version of https://civilrights.justice.gov/ which includes photos of anti-racist and anti-homophobia activists and a girl dressed as the Statue of Liberty. A screenshot from the current version of https://civilrights.justice.gov/ which has no images. The "start a report" button is not working.
October 10, 2025 at 4:58 PM
skiles.blue
The administration has added another layer of Orwellian vandalism to the DOJ Civil Rights website.
Democrats have shut down the government. Department of Justice websites are not currently regularly updated. Please refer to the Department of Justice’s contingency plan for more information.
October 10, 2025 at 4:44 PM
skiles.blue
I dunno if I'm the last one to hear about this? But the reason the president is sending the *National Guard* to Portland is because the city mailed the government's landlord...a zoning violation notice?

They are sending in the troops to avoid "a monthly code enforcement fee"??
Notice of Zoning Violation on official City of Portland letterhead
October 7, 2025 at 5:38 AM
skiles.blue
Spotted at the Billings, MT airport:

Your rights, redacted
A TSA-issued poster headed "Equal Opportunity Notice" that has been modified with black boxes obscuring some of the text: If you feel you have been subject to discrimination based on race/ethnicity, color, national origin, sex [redacted], religion, age, or disability, [redacted] you may file a complaint at (followed by addresses)
October 3, 2025 at 6:58 PM
skiles.blue
I submit to you: Elko, Nevada
A photo of a casino in Elko with only the word "sin" remaining on the neon sign. Also a giant polar bear mascot labeled White King.
October 1, 2025 at 4:24 AM
skiles.blue
Next time you report on this, mention the person who has taken responsibility. Just like you would for a terrorist attack.
A tweet from Elon Musk: "We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead."
September 21, 2025 at 7:52 PM
skiles.blue
A tweet from Elon Musk: "We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead."
September 21, 2025 at 6:28 PM
skiles.blue
I wish the reporting specifically named Musk and DOGE's responsibility for this.
A tweet from Elon Musk: "We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead."
September 21, 2025 at 6:23 PM
skiles.blue
Really glad to see reporting directly on the people harmed! But I wish the article also named the man responsible.
A tweet from Elon Musk: "We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could have gone to some great parties. Did that instead."
September 21, 2025 at 6:19 PM
skiles.blue
Good reporting! but I also wish you had named the man responsible
September 21, 2025 at 6:16 PM
skiles.blue
"a statue of Charlie Kirk sitting at a table with an empty seat across from him"

So they want to make this
"Change My Mind" meme template
September 21, 2025 at 1:39 AM
skiles.blue
I'll be going to the black site prison for one that's not even funny
A lot of people who "are country" are just fans of country western music and other symbols, with no real connection to rurality
September 18, 2025 at 9:45 PM