油管：文革和红卫兵 : I personally don’t have much memory of Culture Revolution (文化大革命）。 But I do recall the time when chairman Mao died. It was like one of the supreme leader in North Korea died. I was 5 years old. I started school when I was 7 years old: we didn’t have kindergarten, and I started at 1st grade. The 1st lesson of my Chinese class: Chairman Mao is always in our hearts （毛主席永远活在我们心中）。
Now I think about it, the zeal some American people had towards the Jesus in the church is very similar to the zeal Chinese people towards Mao Zedong. And people in North Korea nowadays still worship their dear leader like this too.
Also, (the hill seems agree with my initial impression) Chairman Musk and his young acolytes bring a Mao-like cultural revolution to Washington
My personal experience
More recent personal experience of mine: when I was working for Ascension Health in year 2019, shortly after I started there, I saw McKinsey people in a conference room, or to be precise I saw signs of “McKinsey”. And it made me to think they were probably trying to get efficiency via outsourcing or laying off people.
Sometime in 2019 (probably May 2019), one morning, my boss told me that his boss’ boss was outed suddenly. Around lunch time (noon), my boss’ boss did a townhall to calm down the troops. A few months later, my boss’s boss was outed too. I kind of saw that coming because my boss and I transferred to a new team called “software engineering”. Before that we were a part of “consumer experience” team under the large enterprise application team. Later in year 2019, Ascension and Google working together on healthcare transformation.
My guess was correct: the outsourcing and layoff happened in year 2021 (during pandemic). I was not laid off at the time, but I decided to pursue opportunities outside the organization.
Layoffs hit Ascension Health, former employees want to know why
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Refereences
(Politico) How spending $153M to pay its bills put USAID in DOGE’s crosshairs
The $153 million, they pointed out, covered numerous payments, including a key set of employee salaries and money owed to organizations for work already done. In the USAID officials’ view, the payments did not violate the Trump foreign aid freeze. — this somehow reminds me of Trump stiffen vendors (not paying bills) over the years.
(YT) Kara Swisher on the Radicalization of Elon Musk | The Ezra Klein Show
(AP News) Musk team’s access to student loan systems raises alarm over borrowers’ personal information
(YT) Elon Musk says Department of Education no longer ‘exists’
(YT) Rep. Goldman on Elon Musk: “That is Banana Republic Shit”
IT IS A COUP (Carole Cadwalladr, Substack)
(AP News) Vatican’s Caritas outraged at ‘reckless’ USAID cuts, says millions will die, others left in poverty
In an interview with The Associated Press, Czerny said every incoming government has the right to review its foreign aid budget, and even to reform an agency like USAID. But he said it’s another thing to dismantle an agency after it has made funding commitments.
(The Hill) Chairman Musk and his young acolytes bring a Mao-like cultural revolution to Washington
(BI) We got a staff list for Elon Musk’s DOGE
特朗普马斯克裁撤USAID之殇：官僚体系的利弊权衡（修订版）
(Washington Post, Paywalled) The CFPB took aim at Big Tech. Then Elon Musk moved to dismantle it.
(UK, The Guardian) Some federal workers given just 30 minutes to leave amid Trump layoffs – this reminds me of my blog post I wrote in year 2023 – Layoffs.
Technical – refer to What are the DOGE engineers doing?
PS:
I just realized DOGE minions has zero knowledge re: how economy works – and their ring leader is basically a narcissist who is a social media star and who knows how to beat up or lay off people in order to make something happen. I have slept in office couple times when I was in the graduate school in Rolla too. But I didn’t have the fancy sleep pods like the DOGE minions have.
Federal government employees, by place of residence. Federal workers could be our friends or neighbors. I selected Missouri from the website, and saw 12% of the workforce in Fort Leonard Wood, MO are federal workers. I can say for certain the rest of employment there heavily rely on the federal workers’ employment too. In other words, Fort Leonard Wood will likely be a ghost town if the DOGE cuts the workers there. Crazy way to make America (Missouri) less great.