Be willing to bet they were greasing their profit margins to an insane degree. I used to work at one of the slimy defense contractors (second tier right below the primes). There is this law called TINA (Truth in Negotiations Act). Anything under $2.5M required ZERO cost justification. So managers / directors would bump price right up to the ceiling regardless. Even when the TINA threshold was crossed, they had a bottomless bag of reasons to juice their margins beyond anything reasonable. The thinnest justification would work because the gov knew there was basically no competition left thanks to mergers, acquisitions & consolidation (that politicians directly benefited from). If there wasn’t some conflated or exagerrsted reason easily at hand, those in charge of approving the proposal would just say COVID supply chain inflation OR knowingly avoid ever pressing a supplier to reduce their inflated margins knowing they could present it as a reason for price increases. I never saw the gov extract any meaningful price concessions. It was just one giant cesspool of greasy contractors from top to bottom. Number go up, more bombs forever. So glad I’m out of that parasitic, death merchant industry.

Great point about the relentless slaughter of Arabs. So easily forgotten how many innocents America slaughtered during this time period. America is morally rotten to the core, high on its own supply of hatred and cruelty.

Bitwarden’s last update made the iOS categorically worse and impacted the Pin unlock functionality on Linus desktop. Guess I’m migrating to Proton’s offering along with the rest of their suite. Hope they don’t go down the enshittification rabbit hole anytime soon.

Excellent suffering lol. I love the authenticity. So many of the YouTubers now are manufacturing unpleasantness, and it’s so easy to spot. Come on, there must be plenty of true travel disasters out there, but the algorithms don’t find them!

I’m interested in this too now haha

Sounds like you should write an article.

I really started to get into this article upon reading: “My first client was one of the biggest banks in the country: a hellish circus of inefficiency, coked-out managers, feudal power dynamics, and pre-GDPR surveillance marketing.”

Just a warning on MS email services. I stopped paying for OneDrive and the DAY my sub expired they stopped allowing me to receive or send emails on my linked Outlook and Hotmail email addresses. Not sure whether this same policy applies to stand alone legacy Hotmail accounts, but it’s the same company running the service.

In terms of which company I detest more: I think it’s still Microsoft hands down. At least Google doesn’t suspend send / receive if you stop paying. MS is a dumpster fire of tax evasion, monopoly, and predatory behavior.

Anything in those categories from No Starch Press

Seriously!! Not my smartest move.

Most EHS departments are like most HR departments. Perception management to benefit 1) the department and 2) the company. Any possible way EHS can use lax regulations (most places outside the EU) to avoid accountability, it will happen in nearly every circumstance.

I worked in EHS for a time. The amount of scab, toxic and corrupt behavior I saw made me NOPE out of that career field real fast. EHS got more people fired and swept more incidents under the rug than anyone else. Masters of gaslighting and virtue signaling.

Of course there will be exceptions, and I’m sure you’re one of them.