FYI if backpay is denied, furloughed federal workers are still on the hook for the portion of insurance normally deducted from their paycheck. This would come out of future paychecks rather than be deducted from the backpay.

None of this though is to say I didn't already dislike everything else the administration is doing to my fellow citizens and good people in the world. I was anxious, concerned, frustrated, and sad. I was dedicated to resist and oppose. I stand where I am. But i wasn't angry, and now I am. It burns

I can't get my grandmother back.

So on a personal level, fuck this administration for causing me this pain. My grandmother raised me when my parents couldn't. She kept me alive when nothing else was doing the job. I could find a new job. I could save up money. I could deal with everything else.

I did not want to travel when I could lose my job at any moment. I did not want to be away if I had to go to a new team with new duties and have them resent me for not being there. I did not go visit my grandmother when I could have. And now she's passed and I didn't get to see her one last time.

It's the death of my grandmother that burns the most. It was chaos at work earlier this year as we didn't know if we'd have our careers one week to the next. We learned our organization was undergoing a reorg and we didn't know where we'd end up.

It's not even my mother and I going no contact after she admitted she didn't want me as a child to receive health care for being trans. It's not the constant fear that I'm being targeted for being trans, or that I'd lose insurance coverage for it.

Me and my engraving tool are going to have a lot of fun defacing these with messages and putting them back in circulation.

The swimming scene has the best voice acting ever for animation.

What even is a record? Adventures in Government Administration.

Not only that, but internally to the USA, if you can't pay to play and bring in needed skills, then you will remain below and lose out to those entrenched who have the funds.

Didn't he withdraw American forces from Afghanistan under his first term and give up control of it back to Afghanistan?

The end state of crashing the economy is everything his cabinet and kronies want.

Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos and its sequel Operation Luna.

I am drowning in inspiration, but also adhd and endless responsibilities that i can't offload through task sharing (single) or throwing money at them (This economy am i right).

Friend: Why haven't you read more books this year?
Me: *broadly guesturing at the world... I am a bit distracted.

I really like in Stross' A Colder War how the US Gov dedicated a lot to take on the threat of Cthulhu and similar entities and it was so not effective. Perfect setting build up and then used to show how bad everything really was.

It won't