this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2025
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Leopards Ate My Face

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David Rice, a disabled Army paratrooper who has been on probation since joining the U.S. Department of Energy in September, also learned Thursday night that he had lost his job.

Rice, who has been working as a foreign affairs specialist on health matters relating to radiation exposure, said he’d been led to believe that his job would likely be safe. But on Thursday night, when he logged into his computer for a meeting with Japanese representatives, he saw an email saying he’d been fired.

“It’s just been chaos,” said Rice, 50, who had just bought a house in Melbourne, Florida, after he got the job.

Rice said he agrees with the Trump administration’s goal of making the government more efficient, but objects to the random, scattershot approach being taken.

Originally linked here:

https://lemmy.wtf/post/16645266

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[–] [email protected] 193 points 6 days ago (3 children)

A disabled federal government worker who supports Trump. You have to be a special kind of clueless to be in all of those camps.

Did he think being a veteran would protect him from the fickle judgement of the guy who famously called dead and injured soldiers "suckers and losers"?

[–] [email protected] 106 points 6 days ago (2 children)

DEI allowed people with disabilities to work in government. This dipshit Trumper MAGA fuckwit thinks he was immune. Fuck him. Hope he gets everything he voted for.

[–] [email protected] 96 points 6 days ago (3 children)

That's because they think DEI just means black. As usual they don't know what the fuck they are talking about

[–] [email protected] 52 points 6 days ago

Now now now, they also think it means you hire women.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 5 days ago

DEI is the safe n word now.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I have yet to hear one of those fuckers IRL tell me what DEI stands for, they don't know!

[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 days ago

It stands for Donald, Eric, Ivanka.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 days ago (1 children)

That’s because Trumpers conveniently forget to mention the “A” in “DEIA”. The A stands for “Accessibility”. As in, accessibility for the disabled to actually be able to do their jobs with reasonable accommodations. If you kill DEI, you also kill accessibility.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 days ago

theyd have him in a camp alright

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 5 days ago (1 children)

There is not a conservative community on Lemmy. There are, however, a few communities entirely composed of one guy posting conservative leaning articles that all get downvoted to zero and have a half dozen comments saying he's wrong.

[–] Stalinwolf 9 points 5 days ago

I love that so much..

[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

In the jungle, the mighty jungle

The Leopard feasts tonight

[–] [email protected] 80 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

It's funny how people support getting others in their situation fired because they all think they are indispensable.

Hint: nobody is indispensable.

Of course, it's a bit late to warn Trump voters. But I'll leave this here for when the next autocratic populist comes along in a few years.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 5 days ago

People act like it's only government workers that are lazy and wasteful. But lazy workers are universal, especially with the soulless jobs that the vast majority of people have to do in order to survive.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 5 days ago

Our leopards are starting to look a bit, uh, not super healthy.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 days ago

They think other government workers are a waste but they themselves are a special case because reasons. It's easy to criticize when you don't understand what is going on. Hopefully they learn from this instead of thinking it's an honest mistake.

[–] OutlierBlue 28 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Wait, he's still in his probationary period at a new job and he committed to buying a new house?! The job isn't even really yours until you're hired permanently. You can be let go for any reason at all. (I know this the US, where worker protections suck even after that)

Getting a new probationary job means you can commit to going out for dinner to celebrate, not tying yourself down with a 20 year mortgage.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 days ago (2 children)

To clear up some of what you're saying, it sounds like you're applying private sector rules to government jobs.

Government probationary jobs have fewer protections than non-probationary, but they still have way more protections than the private sector. Once they make it past probation, government employees can only be fired after 30 days notice and an opportunity to challenge the firing in writing, so it takes a while to lay the groundwork for firing an employee. And then a fired employee has appeal rights.

While on probation, government employees don't have the right to notice before firing, or an opportunity to challenge the firing before it happens, and their appeal rights are seriously limited. But the law is that they still can't be fired except for poor performance.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 days ago

"... but objects to bring personally affected by the retribution he asked for." ftfy

[–] [email protected] 60 points 6 days ago (14 children)

They all fail at game theory. When being negative, everyone loses. Tit for Tat + 10% forgiveness is the most successful and highest growth potential. T4T means you are always nice, always positive, and when someone is negative, you respond in kind but randomly forgive 10% of the time to exit the stupidity spiral. Most world leaders know and operate under T4T now that it was established as the only path to maximal growth for everyone. Failing to apply this when everyone else is applying it will ALWAYS result in bringing everyone down but the most damage will ALWAYS occur to the perpetrating entity when all others are playing T4Tpt.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 6 days ago (4 children)

This is interesting, how did they get those calculations?

[–] [email protected] 29 points 6 days ago

The person you're replying to is describing (without giving proper context except for "game theory") an algorithm that's fairly successful at the "iterated prisoners dilemma": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat

[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 days ago

I don't know where this particular graph came from, but Richard Dawkins has a whole chapter about strategies for the prisoner's dilemma in his book "The Selfish Gene".

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 days ago

Veritasium did a nice video covering the research and explaining the sources. It was an academic competition of sorts

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 days ago

The conservative consequences.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 days ago (5 children)

Their first rule says:

  1. No racism or bigotry.

So... is it really a conservative community?

[–] doylio 2 points 3 days ago

Conservatism != racism

Frankly I'd love to see more non-racist conservatives on Lemmy! If we want the fediverse to replace big tech, we can't be a left wing echo chamber

But yeah, you can't be a dick

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago

That's a good point, didn't they want to make it illegal to be against racism?

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago

"random, scattershot approach" AKA "They did not only target the non-white people!"

[–] [email protected] 35 points 6 days ago (5 children)

This is the first I've seen of a conservative Lemmy community. God willing it is the last I see of one as well. At this point I unironically believe Lemmy needs a healthy amount of tankies so that right-wingers know they're not welcome here~ ❤️

That's mean to say but I'm trying to switch over from Reddit and I'm honestly just so done with MAGA stinking up every damn space it's insane, I don't want them to even breathe in my direction. With RFK Jr as the recent pick for the Department of Health and Human Services, I just might need to enforce that boundary literally.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 days ago (2 children)

I’ve had a very difficult time differentiating tankies from trumpers.

[–] ImplyingImplications 15 points 5 days ago (6 children)

From what I've seen, any "conservative" community on Lemmy is 2 or 3 troll accounts that make up 90% of posts. Why would far right people use Lemmy when Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook are so welcoming to them?

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 days ago (1 children)

On the bright side, if there is another pandemic, we'll get a nice case study in Darwinism

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 days ago

I knew a few people that died (working in a hospital) from COVID but the last one that did was a full on conservitive that was the first to take the mask off and complain about it.... until one day when I went to his desk and his coworkers told me he was out sick.... and then a week later he was dead from complications from COVID.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 6 days ago

Last paragraph says it all He believes the rhetoric and then complains when they do what they told him they were going to do.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Claiming to on some level support Trump as a government worker is just common sense at this point, regardless of what you actually believe.

There's a sliver of a chance this article goes viral. If MAGA sees him as "one of them", he might get his job back. If not, he might get ruined in ways that go beyond job loss.

It's kinda like some Chinese protests have signs glorifying the CCP and Xi.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 days ago (1 children)

If MAGA sees him as "one of them", he might get his job back. If not, he might get ruined in ways that go beyond job loss.

As if. MAGA doesn't give a shot about injured veterans. For them, veterans are just an advertisement for the armed forces, and injured veterans taint the image. Also he's a textbook DEI hire.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 days ago (1 children)

How braindead do you have to be to equate efficiency with destruction?!

Unless of course, destruction is the point.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Lots of folks want it all to burn down, not see it healed. Accelerationism is not unique to maga, they just differ in what they hope comes next

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 days ago
[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 days ago

"I thought it meant they would fire one of THEM, not me!"

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I've seen about 3 pop up in All so far. And I just block them as they appear.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago (7 children)

I don't block them, I down vote them.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago

I like having it around. It's like seeing the bullied kid get bullied, but in this case they totally deserve it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago

The Political DEI, under the Orange Turd, did not save his ass. Oh well, zero sympathy and another classic FAFO case.

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