Subterfuge at work, a fun subject to study.

Some of my favorites from a declassified WWII "simple productivity sabotage" manual:

• Insist on doing everything through "channels." Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.

• Make "speeches." Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your "points" by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences.

• When possible, refer all matters to committees, for "further study and consideration." Attempt to make the committee as large as possible — never less than five.

• Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.

• Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.

• Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.

• Advocate "caution." Be "reasonable" and urge your fellow-conferees to be "reasonable"and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.

When I first saw these I was like goddamn, psyops got to my executive director!

The Aristocrats!

I can remember the first time a young person tried to tell me about some Booth fella was the one that shot JFK.

And I was like oh no son, you're severely mistaken. It was Lincoln that assassinated Washington, I was there on the banks of the Potomac and watched the whole thing unfold.

That's a feature. Statistically, comment quality is inversely proportional to it's depth.

Don't go deep diving!

(And this is /s if anyone's wondering.)

Inb4 the apologists try to argue "bbbut trump hasn't been convicted of a being an insurrectionist!". To those people, show me where in the article that's a requirement:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

And the US government was left scrambling to get a formal contract in for Ukrainian access after Musk started to publicly spout pro kremlin shit. So there's no way an ITAR argument could fly: the DoD wanted a contract to help ensure starlink availability for fucks sake, especially since Musk proved unreliable and a useful idiot for Putin's wildest assplay desires.

Pffft.

What about the hadron collider firing up in 2009?

Or the Mayan calendar running out in 2012?

Or the great cosmic body collision of 2024?

Oh wait...

"How can we trick the voters into thinking we're less shitty than we know we really are?"

The old(?) Ricola cough drops commercials. They were huge in the '90s, not sure about since then though (I stopped watching tv a little after that period).

"No, they're minerals! Jesus, Marie!"

That 90 days isn't just random either. It happens to be the length of summer vacation for most kids here in the US. Perfect for exploiting them on their summer break!

Gonna go to camp this summer little Johnny and Jane? Fuck no you're not, off to the factory with you, and here's your six dollars (that's like a dollar an hour!).

That's pretty daring of them to do, they're risking their severance package by so publicly making their former employer look so bad. Oh wait...