Yesterday, @cstross mentioned the old "Whoops, Apocalypse!" telly series, and I said "Excel, Apocalypse!".

The #ExcelApocalypse hashtag is now here, for the U.S. government that conducts military operations from unsecured personal 'phones in Moscow, that puts a MAX() function on a spreadsheet that erroneously impacts a load of countries, and that forgets to send out the formal order backing off from its tariff war to the blanket 10%.

https://mastodon.scot/@JdeBP/114310048344593910

@HollieK72

Yes, we live in a world that @cstross couldn't have made up.

We live in the world where the #TrumpCrash to the U.S.A. economy is in part happening because one of those #DOGE junior programmers or something made a dopey error in a spreadsheet that did not account for negative numbers when setting a floor of 10%.

And picked 0.25 for the φ constant in cell P399 instead of 0.95.

"Excel, Apocalypse!"

https://mastodonapp.uk/@JdeBP/114297838664086807

@HollieK72 @cstross

#LizTruss is alas probably enjoying the fact that words like "#Trussonomics" are going out of fashion now that Liz Truss Mk 2 has come along; whilst being ambivalent that xyr place in history has been usurped by a bloke whose Department of Dodgy junior programmers didn't realize what =MAX(T2,0.1) in their spreadsheet would do to the likes of the U.K., Australia, and a bunch of south American countries.

https://mastodon.scot/@JdeBP/114273713371607327

Yes: According to the U.S.A.'s own workings, in this table of so-called "rip-off"s it is the U.S.A. that has been "ripping-off" us.

(Not that this actually is ripping-off. That's just a nonsense explanation.)

The U.S.A. ate both of the saag paneer side orders, and is having the gall to put their steamed rice on *our* part of the bill.

I wonder whether Keir Starmer will have the courage to tell #DonaldJTrump that. (-:

I wonder how bad it has to get before it gets through to *everyone* that the global economy is in the hands of a person with a string of failed businesses, convictions for falsified business records, and a track record of playing a business magnate, who mainly fires people, on the telly, to xyr name.

And organizing beauty contests in Russia. And sharpies.

And xyr mate who pisses away billions for a laugh and shoots Tesla in the gut with fascist salutes.

What with entire government departments (e.g. USAID, USED) being shuttered and no Congressionally allocated funds being paid out, and huge tax hikes in the form of all of these extra #tariffs, no-one seems to be asking where all of this extra revenue and unspent appropriation is going.

What are the Department of Dodgy boys, with their fingers in the government spending computers, doing with it?

@cstross

It rather damages our claim to be the only country to have imposed economic sanctions on ourselves. (-:

It would be one of history's little ironies if highly visible U.S.A. multinationals like McDonalds and KFC got let back into Russia by #DonaldJTrump lifting U.S.A. sanctions at the same time as people in #Canada and Europe decided to start boycotting them.

History will probably not record swapping the European+Canadian markets for the Russian market as a smart business move, though.

(Last I heard, Burger King was still operating in Russia.)

#DonaldJTrump has declared a state of emergency on the whole U.S.A./Mexico border in order to impose tariffs, and declared an ongoing invasion of the U.S.A. by poor people:

https://whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/declaring-a-national-emergency-at-the-southern-border-of-the-united-states/

Further executive orders have mobilized the whole U.S.A. armed forces for sealing the border.

Note that these tariffs are only paused.

#DonaldJTrump has declared a state of emergency that for one thing bypasses the normal consultation processes of the Endangered Species Act, and also mobilizes the U.S.A. Army for oil drilling:

https://whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/declaring-a-national-energy-emergency/