Summary

The Trump administration is facing backlash after reports that the Defense Department flagged over 26,000 images for deletion due to alleged connections to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

Among them are photos of trailblazing pilots, including the Tuskegee Airmen and Col. Jeannie Leavitt.

Most controversially, an image of the WWII aircraft Enola Gay was flagged, seemingly because its name includes the word “gay.”

The revelation has sparked mockery online, with critics calling this “the STUPIDEST administration in American history.”

  • Floppybutton@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    I know I’m late to stopping the damage that’s already occurred, but I have plenty of hard disk space on my server. Anybody know where I can download a backup of these sites so we have another copy in the world? Even better, if I could mirror a backup from before the Fourth Reich moved in.

  • circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org
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    15 hours ago

    Most of these people no longer understand the difference between facts and opinions.

    From the standpoint where they’re equal, it should be possible to rewrite history to fit the opinion. But of course, reality doesn’t work that way.

  • aushtan@lemm.ee
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    20 hours ago

    I heard someone say that next they’ll ban Transatlantic flights

  • 4am@lemm.ee
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    23 hours ago

    “MOST controversially”???

    They’re deleting the Tuskegee Airmen! An all-black Army fighter and bomber group!

    They are literally calling them “DEI” when they’re from a time where they couldn’t share water fountains with white people.

    That Big Ball’s regex he pulled from a Twitch extension tutorial on setting up automod highlighting found the word “Gay” an no one reviewed the context is certainly one of the dumbest things, but cmon it’s hardly the fucking worst shit they’re doing.

    They are literally deleting our history in front of us. Fuck these guys, may they be tried, convicted, and sentenced to death!

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      Down the memory hole it goes.

      This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs – to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.

      Orwell, 1984

    • randompasta@lemmy.today
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      16 hours ago

      The Onion should start coming up with headlines like “Trump has quiet evening at home with Melania”. That’d be pretty unbelievable.

    • Skvlp@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      The Onion making up more plausible and more believable articles to show people that the world don’t have to be this insane?

    • JiminaMann@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      At this point we can have a game of “guess that onion”

      Is this news header an onion? Take a guess and see whether you’re correct!

  • yesman@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    The Enola Gay hangs in the Udvar Hazy branch of the Smithsonian, and seeing it in person is the only time I’ve ever been overwhelmed by an artifact. I was grateful that there was a bench right there to sit on, and it occurred to me that probably wasn’t a random placement.

    • Aviandelight @mander.xyz
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      23 hours ago

      I adore going to the Air and Space museum. I’m usually overwhelmed with wonder by all the space craft because seeing a thing makes it all real and tangible but seeing the Enola Gay was a different kind of overwhelming. Seeing it drives home a true sense of horror for what happened that day and what has been unleashed on the world. But that museum contains more than just artifacts; it contains our cumulative memories and experiences as a country. My last visit was almost two decades ago but I had the most moving experience I’ll probably ever have there. At one point during our tour my husband and I were walking through an exhibit of planes used in the Asia-Pacific theater. We were in this tight little offshoot where there was a single plane in the center of the room and placards along the walls. It was really crowded and noisy but I wanted to read all the placards. As I was reading with my back turned the room almost suddenly got real quiet and thinned out real quick. My husband nudged me to get my attention and as I turned around there was an old man in a wheelchair right in front of the plane. He must have been a veteran because he had his service ball-cap on. Everyone was instinctively giving this man room and a moment of silence as he openly wept while staring at the plane. My husband and I stood there a few moments longer before quietly nodding at his family members in recognition and respect before we too left the room. I’ll never be able to imagine what was going through that man’s mind or what he was re-living in that moment but I’ve been thinking about that experience a lot since last November. I felt respect, empathy, and even a bit of patriotism at the time but lately all I feel is shame that this country has gleefully spit in the face of our veterans and their service today.

    • IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world
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      23 hours ago

      Back in the mid 90’s I worked on developing an internet search engine long before Google existed. One of the tasks I worked on was a porn filter. Our first attempt failed miserably when we tried filtering on XXX and suddenly everything from Super Bowl 30 to all manner of other content with Roman numerals got flagged…

      This reminds me of just how clueless we were way back then…

      • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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        12 hours ago

        Unrelated, but I have always hated how they use roman numerals for Super Bowls. I can convert roman numerals to arabic but I never feel like actually doing so, so whenever I read something about a particular game I never really know which one they’re talking about. Even if they used arabic, it still wouldn’t be as useful as just knowing what year it was.

      • rebelsimile@sh.itjust.works
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        23 hours ago

        It’s a bit worse now because we have “AI” that parses through things, makes crazy different kinds of mistakes and people in power have more faith in its accuracy than they do in the humans whose lives they alter because of it.

      • kernelle@0d.gs
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        23 hours ago

        Amazing, I’m sure you’ve got many an interesting story to tell being in the field for that long.

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    20 hours ago

    Whole lot of damage can be done by stupid people, especially if they are young and given a permission structure to break shit. For reference, see the Nazi Youth, the Red Guards, etc…

    Not sure who is actually heading this up, but I would not be surprised if it was handed off to some eager beaver teenagers because a whole lot of idiots think that kids understand tech better than others (which is of course just very stupid in itself, but I suspect it’s an Inception of idiocy with this bunch, so if they adopted that counterfactual view, too, it would not be surprising).

  • ATDA@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Elon’s crotch gremlin tech kiddies probably think the twin towers were a ride at six flags…

  • ClanOfTheOcho@lemmy.world
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    24 hours ago

    Not to argue with the article headline, but the stupidest line was crossed long ago. The administration is just padding their stupidity score at this point.

  • Dragomus@lemmy.world
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    23 hours ago

    So, how many in the government are called Gaylord? Will they be detained and forced to give up their name? Mandatory change to Petey?

    I guess there’s also a Gaylord street and monument here and there?