#Amanda Scales

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Caleb Ecarma and Judd Legum at Popular Information:

Several of Elon Musk’s associates installed at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) have received unprecedented access to federal human resources databases containing sensitive personal information for millions of federal employees. According to two members of OPM staff with direct knowledge, the Musk team running OPM has the ability to extract information from databases that store medical histories, personally identifiable information, workplace evaluations, and other private data. The staffers spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly and feared professional retaliation. Musk Watch also reviewed internal OPM correspondence confirming that expansive access to the database was provided to Musk associates.

The arrangement presents acute privacy and security risks, one of the OPM staffers said. Among the government outsiders granted entry to the OPM databases is University of California Berkeley student Akash Bobba, a software engineer who graduated high school less than three years ago. He previously interned at Meta and Palantir, a technology firm chaired by Musk-ally and fellow billionaire Peter Thiel. Edward Coristine, another 2022 high school graduate and former software engineering intern at Musk’s Neuralink, has also been given access to the databases.

Other Musk underlings embedded at OPM following President Donald Trump’s inauguration include the agency’s new chief of staff, Amanda Scales, who until January was a human resources staffer at xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence firm, and Brian Bjelde, who has spent the past 21 years at Musk's SpaceX, including the last 10 leading the human resources department. They are joined by Gavin Kliger, a former Twitter software engineer serving as a special advisor to the director of OPM, and Riccardo Biasini, a former software engineer at Musk’s tunneling venture, the Boring Company. OPM did not respond to a request for comment. Shortly after Trump took office, OPM installed Greg Hogan to serve as its new chief information officer (CIO). Hogan was tapped to replace OPM CIO Melvin Brown, who had accepted the job less than a month ago. The civil servants who oversee the OPM’s information technology services were then instructed to provide access to Musk's associates, according to the OPM staffers who spoke to Musk Watch. One of the OPM staffers received an email from the agency’s new leadership instructing them to give Musk’s team “access [to] the system as an admin user" and "code read and write permissions." “They have access to the code itself, which means they can make updates to anything that they want,” the staffer explained. USAJOBS, the federal government’s official hiring site, was one of the systems that Musk's associates were given access to. The database stores personal information — Social Security numbers, home addresses, employment records — provided by private individuals who have applied for federal jobs, regardless of whether the applicants went on to work for the government. Musk’s aides were also given access to the OPM’s Enterprise Human Resources Integration (EHRI) system. Contained within the EHRI are the Social Security numbers, dates of birth, salaries, home addresses, and job descriptions of all civil government workers, along with any disciplinary actions they have faced. “They’re looking through all the position descriptions… to remove folks,” one of the OPM staffers said of Musk’s team. “This is how they found all these DEI offices and had them removed — [by] reviewing position description level data.” Other databases Musk’s team has access to include USA Staffing, an onboarding system; USA Performance, a job performance review site; and HI, which the government uses to manage employee health care. “The health insurance one scares me because it's HIPAA [protected] information, but they have access to all this stuff,” the OPM staffer noted.

[...] A new server being used to control these databases has been placed in a conference room that Musk’s team is using as their command center, according to an OPM staffer. The staffer described the server as a piece of commercial hardware they believed was not obtained through the proper federal procurement process. There is a legal requirement that the installation of a new server undergo a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA), a formal process to ensure the change would not create any security vulnerabilities. But in this instance, the staff believes there was no PIA. “So this application and corresponding hardware are illegally operating,” they added. On Friday, Reuters reported that some senior civil servants have been blocked from accessing the EHRI and other OPM systems, making it difficult for career OPM employees to know what Musk’s team has been examining or modifying. In the same report, the outlet revealed the team had moved sofa beds into the agency's headquarters to continue their work around the clock.

This should be a major national news scandal.

Elon Musk and the underlings he put in place at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) have jeopardized data privacy and national security.

[blistexenthusiast]

Hurts Worse (Untitled Crisis Actors), Amanda Ross-Ho

[odditycollector]

My elevator summary of Amanda Waller is that she was, like Bruce Wayne, motivated by shattering personal tragedy to remake herself in order to remake the world.

Bruce - a rich young white boy - famously made himself into the scariest thing he could imagine: A Bat That Knows Karate.

and Amanda - a destitute widowed black single mother from worst of the 80's Chicago housing projects - became a powerful government bureaucrat with a category of people she considers expendable.

[irregularm4ngo]

just a for fun cute peaceful drawing request I thought of

Amanda Young from Saw 2

swimming underwater in dark aquatic background by a abandoned shipwreck and alongside the Bull Shark Pup aka the shark protagonist from the game Maneater as it silently helps keep Amanda safe and protects her as she is facing her darkness fears exploring free diving further underwater.

while the Bull Shark Pup being it’s innocent curious self

Amanda be also gently petting the snout of Magu Tapa a legendary great white shark from the game Endless Ocean as it doesn’t pose a threat and is quite silently curious about Amanda despite how big it was compared to her. 🦈🤿🫧

Details: the ref images were to help show what I mean and the design of both The Bull Shark Pup and Magu Tapa

and what Amanda Young wears while underwater and uses.

Amanda would wear a black red white swimsuit

and black red diving fins on her feet and black red diving mask on her face. While she is breathing from the mini respirator scuba tank and has dive knife holster attached to her leg just in case for underwater self defense.

But she be both equally petting the snout of Magu Tapa and the Bull Shark Pup. while underwater

sorry if I’m bothering with this request just thought it be cute to see this in digital art but pls have a safe day or night and only do what’s comfortable!

Thank you for such a cute request i love both amanda and sharks

hope you like it :)

[kushamisaru]

Did anyone else feel some type of way about how the in universe media responded to Sam's disappearance or am I still just sensitive from the election results

[themyscirah]

Just gonna put this here.

[pierswife]

"I'm tired of being the puppet of this world"

Jaded and disillusioned Contest Idol Amanda my beloved <3

Tbh a lot of this was sooooo much experimenting with layer effects and brushes and god I had so much fun with this. What if you??? Had a Chandelure??? And were just so damn tired of doing something that you used to love??? But felt like you couldn't escape from it because you were in too deep??? Yeah :)

[borom1r]

saying this w all the love in my heart bc I too would like more SAW merch but the moment u say “I want more SAW merch after the new movie” the monkey’s paw fucking curls and it will all be Billy. ONLY Billy. maybe a pig mask if we’re lucky, but we won’t be. mark my fucking words

[skrunksthatwunk]

i just finished saw v and i don't have high hopes for the rest of the franchise (based on what ive heard) but im in too deep to stop now

[margaret-hilda-thatcher]

what if margaret thatcher's granddaughter in the US becomes POTUS?

I don’t know much about her but considering her brother is a Republican, I’d assume she was raised with similar values and would therefore run for the GOP, and alas that’s just not my cup of tea personally.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Reuters Exclusive: In an authoritarian power grab, Musk aides lock government workers out of computer systems at US agency, sources say

Tim Reid at Reuters:

WASHINGTON, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Aides to Elon Musk charged with running the U.S. government human resources agency have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees, according to two agency officials. Since taking office 11 days ago, President Donald Trump has embarked on a massive government makeover, firing and sidelining hundreds of civil servants in his first steps toward downsizing the bureaucracy and installing more loyalists.

Musk, the billionaire Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab CEO and X owner tasked by Trump to slash the size of the 2.2 million-strong civilian government workforce, has moved swiftly to install allies at the agency known as the Office of Personnel Management. The two officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said some senior career employees at OPM have had their access revoked to some of the department's data systems. The systems include a vast database called Enterprise Human Resources Integration, which contains dates of birth, Social Security numbers, appraisals, home addresses, pay grades and length of service of government workers, the officials said. "We have no visibility into what they are doing with the computer and data systems," one of the officials said. "That is creating great concern. There is no oversight. It creates real cybersecurity and hacking implications." Officials affected by the move can still log on and access functions such as email but can no longer see the massive datasets that cover every facet of the federal workforce. [...]

MUSK INFLUENCE

A team including current and former employees of Musk assumed command of OPM on Jan. 20, the day Trump took office. They have moved sofa beds onto the fifth floor of the agency's headquarters, which contains the director's office and can only be accessed with a security badge or a security escort, one of the OPM employees said. The sofa beds have been installed so the team can work around the clock, the employee said. Musk, a major donor to a famously demanding boss, installed beds at X for employees to enable them to work longer when in 2022 he took over the social media platform, formerly known as Twitter. "It feels like a hostile takeover," the employee said. The new appointees in charge of OPM have moved the agency's chief management officer, Katie Malague, out of her office and to a new office on a different floor, the officials said. Malague did not respond to a request for comment.

The moves by Musk's aides at OPM, and upheaval inside the Treasury building caused by other Musk aides that was reported on Friday, underscore the sweeping influence Musk is having across government. David Lebryk, the top-ranking career U.S. Treasury Department official, is set to leave his post following a clash with allies of Musk after they asked for access to payment systems, the Washington Post reported on Friday. The new team at OPM includes software engineers and Brian Bjelde, who joined Musk's SpaceX venture in 2003 as an avionics engineer before rising to become the company's vice president of human resources. Bjelde's role at OPM is that of a senior adviser. The acting head of OPM, Charles Ezell, has been sending memos to the entire government workforce since Trump took office, including Tuesday's offering federal employees the chance to quit with eight months pay. "No-one here knew that the memos were coming out. We are finding out about these memos the same time as the rest of the world," one of the officials said. Among the group that now runs OPM is Amanda Scales, a former Musk employee, who is now OPM's chief of staff. In some memos sent out on Jan. 20 and Jan. 21 by Ezell, including one directing agencies to identify federal workers on probationary periods, agency heads were asked to email Scales at her OPM email address.

Elon Musk, along with Donald Trump, are helping to destroy the US government one power trip move at a time.

[silencespring]

Anonymous OPM employee posts the following to Reddit:

"I'm a current employee at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). This is a throwaway account for obvious reasons. I’m posting this because people need to know what’s going on at OPM.

I’ve been an OPM employee for nearly a decade and a Federal Employee for almost 20 years. I’ve never witnessed anything even remotely close to what’s happening right now. In short, there's a hostile takeover of the federal civil service.

Let me say this in no uncertain terms — OPM has been compromised and taken over. The very backbone of American Government, the HR of all HR in the U.S. Government has been taken over by outside politicals. In just five days, they managed to push aside dozens of non-political, career civil servants who were there specifically to prevent the civil service from becoming the President's henchmen.

The current Acting Director, Charles (Chuck) Ezell is a low-level branch chief. He's the friendliest “yes man” you'll ever meet. He never says no. It’s clear they pushed aside all the high-level non political civil servants who refused to do Donald Trump's bidding, until they found Chuck.

Under his name, they’ve sent numerous requests to all the agencies to collect information on gov't employees that they see as a threat to their agenda. Instructions say to send these lists to Amanda Scales. But Amanda is not actually an OPM employee, she works for Elon Musk. She wasn’t even properly cleared by OPM Personnel Security.

Our CIO, Melvin Brown, (also a non political career public servant) was pushed aside just one week into his tenure because he refused to setup email lists to send out direct communications to all career civil servants. Such communications are normally left up to each agency.

Instead, an on-prem (on-site) email server was setup. Someone literally walked into our building and plugged in an email server to our network to make it appear that emails were coming from OPM. It's been the one sending those various “test” message you've all seen. We think they're building a massive email list of all federal employees to generate mass RIF notices down the road.

The non-political civil servants here at OPM are watching helplessly as our government is being systematically dismantled bit by bit. Even the IGs are being fired to prevent them from investigating the numerous whistleblower complaints we've filed.

Please share this and tell the world that OPM is not the bad guy. We're just as helpless to stop this as the rest of our fellow public servants. Hopefully someone out there can help us, but it’s looking pretty grim."

Note: it has since been removed, but has been reposted here.

[danigrayextendeduniverse]

Character question: If your character went to college, what did they study?

Adam Nation: Psychology. Came into the Biosphere interested in human behavior and stuck with it. Works as a school psychologist.

Vincent Strange: Neurology and Anatomy. Started off as Psychology for the same reason as Adam, but shifted towards the medical route. Earned his MD and works as a surgeon.

Indrid Cold: Anthropology, Human Geography, and Social Studies. Was more interested in human culture than behavior. Had to take some politics class but couldn't study it, got way too heated. Works as a museum tour guide (loves infodumping).

Evelyn Kamiyama: Business. She's the baby in a family with four daughters and always wanted to make her own path. Starting her own restaurant was always her dream.

Daniel Nation: Projecting a little bit with this one, but English and Linguistics. Bounced around from major to major and different concentrations and foci, even considered switching to Music, but stuck out with English and just happened to accidentally double-major in Linguistics because of his free electives. Works as a teacher, gets his certification through an alternative program.

Diana Bullock: Theater and Live Performance. She knows it's not practical but she couldn't study anything else and be happy with it. She acts when she can and works as a barista between gigs.

Amanda Skies: Business, though she was forced into it. Her parents were paying for her to go to college so that she could take over the family business. She started her own ethically sourced business after graduating and is really good at accounting.

Cameron Scale: Didn't finish school, but started on the Photography track. Didn't like it at all, plus some of their professors wouldn't accommodate them so they ended up dropping after a few semesters. Does freelance photography to help pay the bills. Amanda helps them manage their business and website.

[bwat5-blog]

Collected Thoughts On Caitlyn From Last Few Days

**Spoilers From All Of Arcane**

So... as I have said many times in the past my thoughts come in bits and pieces over a day or two when I get locked onto a topic. That leads to the small blurbs all hovering around the same subject more or less. But this one seemed worth sort of putting all in one.

Amanda Overton confirmed the use of "The Grey" was strategic to a pinpoint but left the question to the asker if that made it forgivable or not. That is of course for each person to decide, but I will say this:

A- It isn't fatal. You can harp all you like about what may happen later. Vi may have CTE from getting punched in the head over and over. The shimmer in Jinx's blood may actually be breaking down her body little-by little over time, and same for Sevika. Timeline hopping may have irreparably damaged the cellular structure of Ekko's body and he only has days to live. We can only operate with what we know. There are many, MANY characters who have been openly exposed and appear to be just fine. And before you mention those images from Caitlyn's study when she is learning about the Grey, there is big difference between growing up surrounded by something every day of your life, and being exposed in a single targeted incident. B- The alternative was a full-scale Enforcer "invasion" armed with hex-tech, or. The strike team sans something that cleared innocents out of areas and left enemy soldiers standing and armed, instead of incapacitated and arrested.

2. Zaun is not an independent nation.

A- We know this since ya know.. they were voting on it before Jinx blew them up. B- This means that while Zaun it a separate city. It still falls completely under the jurisdiction of the council. C- When Caitlyn leads the strike team and uses a targeted, non-lethal crowd-dispersal chemical weapon, she is doing so not under any heading of war. But of peace keeping (using the term technically not emotionally. I understand they were not peaceful) and law-enforcement in a place that strictly legally speaking she has every ounce of authority to be in. (I am strictly speaking of legality and technical definition here. They were essentially a swat team sent to a really dangerous area. Not an invading army. Not a justification or excuse. But if we want to talk about this stuff we should do it properly). D- Zaun is under the council's jurisdiction. The council all agreed to martial law and let Caitlyn become the commander. Therefore this is the situation:

Caitlyn is the leader of a very small country with two cities, both under her control.

City A- Where she lives now.

City B- The other one. Where a dangerous terrorist is hiding who has almost killed her repeatedly, just assassinated three of their rulers and blew up a building, killed more than six enforcers and blew up another building, and as far as they know probably orchestrated the full scale attack at the memorial.

So what does Caitlyn actually approve? City B will be placed under lockdown until this woman who is quite clearly a massive threat to everyone's safety is caught.

Yep. there it is folks. "I am placing the city you all have given me complete authority over under control until we catch the person who tried to kill me,and has killed a bunch of us already. We will have patrols and set up checkpoints. People who violate the law will be arrested.

"Arrests require cause"

"Why is peace the justification for violence?"

She doesn't approve or give permission for any of the rest of that shit. the brutality, the experiments, none of it. And don't misunderstand me none of this is to say she didn't do anything wrong. But the dialogue around her is COMPLETELY. INSANE.

"War Crimes!"

"Fascist!"

"Dictator!"

Yall. She is literally getting up early to meet with a trade guild so they can bitch at her over supply issues. Dark Lord Kiramman she is not.

[lilac-hecox]

Here is some additional data comparing the Top 10 Smosh Dynamics of 2023 and then 2024.

2023

damien & shayne:

angela & chanse:

amanda & angela:

spencer & tommy:

anthony & ian:

courtney & shayne:

shayne & spencer:

arasha & ian:

angela & damien:

amanda & shayne:

2024:

Angela & Chanse +1 (previously #2)

Amanda & Angela +1 (previously #3)

Courtney & Shayne +3 (previously #6)

Amanda & Shayne +6 (previously #10)

Shayne & Spencer +2 (previously #7)

Ian & Anthony -1 (previously #5)

Spencer & Tommy -3 (previously #4)

Arasha & Trevor * (New this year)

Angela & Shayne * (New this year)

Damien & Shayne -9 (previously #1)

I want to break this down a little!

Now, granted in 2023 this was ran by @jovenshires who is/was a popular smoshblr blog! But I think we have to consider the main audience of their blog. The voting was tagged so anyone could see it/reblog it, but thinking in terms of jovenshires audience there were a lot of Shaymien and Spommy supporters amongst the voting!

Then, just in general thinking of how the landscape of Smosh has changed between 2023 and 2024 and what dynamics cropped up. I gotta admit though I am still extremely surprised that Shaymine managed to drop from #1 to #10. Though, to be fair, Damien scaled back his time at Smosh and Shaymien content has been sparse.

I think the same thing happened with Ianthony obviously as they stopped appearing as much and the fandom presence shrunk. I gotta tell you I was sweating bullets a couple times checking the standings prior to the voting ending and Ianthony had been in the #9 spot.

I am delighted that both Trevrasha and Shayngela popped up on the list, especially Trevrasha as compared to other dynamics it feels so much smaller.

I also honestly expected with Shayne and Courtney getting married for real that they would shoot up to number one or I thought Amangela would have it. I will say that consistently throughout the voting Changela, Amangela, and Shourtney, were always very close in votes until like two weeks out from the end of voting where Changela jumped ahead by I think over 200 votes? (I'll have to check the numbers which I have an ask related to that, so it'll have the numbers in that)

I am also not surprised that 5 out of 10 of the dynamics involve Shayne! He is universally loved and plays well off of almost anyone. Much the same is for Angela who has 4 out of 10 dynamics on the list.

So, that's my little comparison and thoughts. I'd love to hear yours if you have them!

[themyscirah]

Was thinking about how I would write a Suicide Squad book if I got the chance to post (hypothetical) Absolute Power and like... I would totally rock this guys

Won't go totally into it here I don't think because time and also feeling pumped about the idea so may write something for it (which I have an AWFUL track record for finishing, but also if current Waller appearances piss me off enough who knows) but anyways it would have Amanda Waller and Ben Turner (Bronze Tiger) as dueteragonists, (especially for the first few arcs, although moving to a greater Waller focus [at least for a bit] around issue 10? 15? When she really starts to do things). Anyways the main story (at least at the beginning) would follow Ben Turner as he leads the squad both in the field and at home (essentially acting as the "Waller" along with his normal field leader duties) while secretly having Waller herself in residence at Belle Reve pretending to be a prisoner.

Early issues would focus on Ben saving the world (and keeping the squad in check) while also struggling to hide Waller from the government, heroes, and the rest of Belle Reve (save an accomplice or two). This of course works great, until it doesn't