Gwen Betts (@gwennasaurus.bsky.social)

Ok folks, officially making the jump to the blue butterfly app. Find me as gwennasaurus there, too!

I served two years in Congress during the first Trump Admin. Here are a few pieces of advice I’m giving to Democrats. First: Stay focused on the real people being harmed by Trump’s policies. It’s easy for DC politicians to exist in a bubble, but Washington should stay focused on the actual effects of Trump’s policies and Democrats should focus on how we can mitigate the damage.

This ended up worse than I thought. Over 40% of people who responded work at places where less than 10% of the company uses their own product daily. ngmi My dogfooding non-negotiables: - everyone has a production account, use it in “real life” scenarios - leaders MUST actually use the product on a regular basis - everyone on the team should be able to do a basic demo - PM/EM/Design leads cannot source testing to engineers, they must also go end to end through new products personally - have an opinion on the product, share it - no one gets excused by “I’m not the target user” - If you PM a dev tool, code is the product so you better learn to write code if you don’t already - dogfood the whole service, including support, customer success, activation emails, docs, etc. - come at everything with a unforgiving newbie eye, not your jaded expert eye - if you’re paying for a competitor…yikes! - but if you haven’t used your competitor’s product deeply (presuming you can)…yikes! Too many teams treat their products like they’re theoretical, whatever is in a deck or on the website is enough to do the job. But dogfooding is life. Everyone should be doing it. Leaders should be demonstrating it. Why aren’t you?

8) Trump lies, Speaker Johnson lies, and the GOP/MAGA lies because they actually don’t have any realistic solutions or ideas. So they must lie and blame “the Democrats” to deflect from their own ignorance of science and stubborn refusal to enact wise government policies.

7/ Let’s learn from pioneers in evidence-based medicine. They knew being 'blinded by science' was foolish. Immediate, practical decisions were needed, even without full certainty. We don’t deny a lifebuoy to someone drowning just because it hasn’t been reviewed.

When there is no undo option available, practice pays off. I think that is what “craft” is really all about.

@HackingDave O.M.G. 🤩

The secret to an amazing crust is real mayonnaise. Slather that stuff on the top, throw some salt pepper garlic in there and sear to perfection. Perfect blend of fats and oils. After, I have a hot pan of butter and I sit the steaks in for the rest and drizzle on top after.

Let’s clear some things up. Immigrant, not migrant… my bad 😅 We hire 4 people born in America for every 1 immigrant. We’re in the whitest part of America. We pay at the 99th percentile of our industry. White people line up (literally) for these jobs. The immigrants here are driving UP wages, and we’ve RAISED wages by 40% in just 2 years to continue hiring great people. Those of you disqualifying this because you’re all referring to “illegals” not legals are missing the point — the point is: Americans aren’t losing well paying jobs to immigrants because they’re cheaper. They’re losing because they’re being outworked.

They receive $0 in taxpayer funds. Meanwhile, y’all are proposing defunding Veteran’s healthcare, Medicare, and Social Security when you think no one is watching. Doesn’t get lower than gutting some of the only lifelines left for veterans, seniors, widows, and the disabled.

A reminder that the Biden-Harris Admin approved a rule that required overtime pay for Americans making less than $58,600 and working more than 40 hours a week. A Trump-appointed judge reversed it. Despite what Republicans may claim, they are not for the working class.

And yet, the media has been consumed not with the story that the incoming “President” is attempting to staff the most important law enforcement positions (e.g. AG, head of FBI) with criminal loyalists, but on Biden’s “rejection of the rule of law.” Again, the media fails America.

I monitor MAGA for a living. All day, every day they’re talking about rounding up “leftists” (any liberal), prosecuting DOJ and FBI officials, shutting down “legacy” media and purging the government to install loyalists but don’t you dare call them fascists.

To be perfectly clear, I am concerned that all of this chatter like WSJ OpEds, Hannity pieces, and Economist articles about cutting VA and veterans benefits are trial balloons. They are shaping the discussion so anything short of cutting all of us and closing the VA is a “compromise” when it means millions of veteran losing life saving benefits. I’ve been in politics long enough to see how this plays out. It’s not good.

@FPWellman I'm a 100% disabled Viet Nam vet. It took me 46 years to get that rating, and I only have one lung. And my monthly amount from the VA is less than $4,000. To publish this type of misinformation is journalistic malpractice. A quick fact check would prove its falsehood.

The second misunderstanding involves how the government has handled national deficits in the past. When the US government can’t cover its expenses with the revenue it brings in, mainly taxes, it issues Treasury bonds (and other types of securities) to raise money. You and anyone else can purchase these bonds. They are one of the most stable investments available. While many of these bonds are bought by people and organizations, the government also borrows from itself. Social Security is required by law to invest surpluses into Treasury bonds that it holds in a trust fund. The government began borrowing from this trust fund in the 1980s to the tune of almost $3 trillion. Just like people and organizations collect on their bonds, Social Security does, too. This isn’t creating debt; it is collecting on existing outstanding debt. Politicians have discussed cutting Social Security to create government debt forgiveness by erasing the money it owes at the expense of the American people. That would be terrible.

Americans pay a specific tax, known as a payroll tax, that funds Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance. Social Security must use the funds it receives through the payroll tax to pay benefits and is prohibited from borrowing money. By law, Social Security can never increase the national debt. So why do people claim that Social Security is increasing the debt? The first reason is conflating a deficit with debt. Social Security has been paying out more than it has brought in in recent years. It has a deficit, but past years' surpluses have covered it. Social Security has not borrowed a penny to cover this deficit. When people talk about how Social Security will run out of money at some point in the future, they mean that the past surpluses will be used up. At that point, Social Security still wouldn’t borrow money. Benefits would be reduced to what it can afford, about 80% of what they are today. Reduced benefits would be a problem, so there is an urgency to solve the deficit before the surplus runs out, but Social Security would neither be out of money nor incurring debt.

Just a reminder to the people still here: Kamala had a plan to lower food costs, cut student debt, 25k help with buying a first home, 6K for a new baby, 3K a year to help with children, a plan to make housing more available by blocking private equity from buying homes, and

The people who say they want to see a revival of US manufacturing often don't actually support it. They're the ones who will buy the cheaper t-shirt every time, which means the one made abroad. Meanwhile, the luxury consumer doesn't care where something is made but will pay $$$.

IMO, consumers often just want their cake and eat it too. They want cheap clothes without the yucky suspicion that someone was exploited on the other end. Many make up totally fantastical ideas about automated manufacturing to justify cheap t-shirt, but reality is often yucky.