A website shouldn’t just go down when the people managing it stop working, it’s not like they’re pedaling away inside the servers. Block the federal highways with army tanks, sorry the government is closed.
There is a nontrivial set of the voting public who legitimately believe money equals tech working via magical alchemy.
The name derives from the National Park Service’s alleged habit of saying that any cuts would lead to an immediate closure of the wildly popular Washington Monument.
As a sysadmin, if I were to be furloughed indefinitely I would probably spin down any nontrivial servers. A server that goes wrong and can’t be accessed is a really, really, really, really terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad thing. And things go wrong on a regular basis in normal times; when the government is shut down and a million things that get done everyday suddenly stop being done, something somewhere is going to break. Some 12-year-old legacy cron job sitting in an obscure corner of an obscure server written by a long-departed contractor is going to notice that the foobar queue is empty , which turns out to be an undefined behavior because the foobar queue has always had stuff going through it before, so it executes an else branch it’s never had occasion to execute, which sends raw debugging information to a production server because the contractor was bad at things, and also included passwords in their debugging because they were really bad at things…
This is actually a terrible example of Washington Monument Syndrome.
″
Hi, Server admin here… We cost money as does our infrastructure, I imagine a site that large costs a very good deal, we aren’t talking five bucks on bluehost here.
I am private sector, but if I were to be furloughed for an indeterminate amount of time you really have two options.
Leave things on autopilot until the servers inevitably break or the site crashes at which point parts or all of it will be left broken without notice or explanation. Or put up a splash page and spin down 99% of my infrastructure (That splash page can run on a five dollar bluehost account) and then leave. I won’t be able to come in while furloughed to put it up after it crashes.
If you really think web apps keep themselves running 24⁄7 without intervention we really have been doing a great job with that illusion and I guess the sleepless nights have been worth it to be successfully taken for-granted.”
This is true; however keeping a website running is still very, very cheap compared to almost anything else the government does, including functions that are continuing as usual during the shutdown.
If web apps are too high maintenance, that does not explain the shutdown of government Twitters (example: https://twitter.com/NOAA, which went to the extra effort of posting that “we won’t be tweeting ’cause shutdown.”) I note with amusement however that the Health and Human Services Twitter is alive and well and tweeting about the ACA.
“This is true; however keeping a website running is still very, very cheap compared to almost anything else the government does, including functions that are continuing as usual during the shutdown.”
This is literally irrelevant when the non-essential services have to be shut down. If your techs get furloughed, shutting down the site is appropriate.
The twitter accounts are “shut down” in the sense that the employee who would have done the tweeting is now furloughed and can’t. Putting out a tweet explaining the upcoming lapse makes a whole lot of sense to me.
Perhaps an analogy to war is useful. War is stupid–you could always take the result of the war, implement it without fighting, and leave everyone better off. But sometimes a weak parties believes it is stronger than it really is. This makes it overly optimistic in bargaining, leading to a breakdown and war. However, the process of fighting reveals the weakness, in turn making the weak side willing to sit down at the bargaining table. The Republicans are the weak side. The Democrats are the strong side. The costs of war are the costs of the shutdown.
William Spaniel says on twitter he is not sure about how he feels about our models of war also explaining U.S. Congress bargaining. Besides war being politics by other means, I say we obviously should expect the models to work to a limited extent. Democracy is a highly ritualized form of civil war and not any kind of war but the kind practiced in the 19th century when democracy began its march. Instead of drafting a mob and then ordering them to shoot the opposing mob, you orderly assemble your respective mobs and then count them via voting. Since Samuel Colt made men equal in the 19th century you assume the slightly larger mob wins. Some nations even factor in territory held to decide outcomes. After elections both mobs go safely home and about their business, while in theory the government implements a real outcome of the simulated war.
I’m half expecting that sooner or later someone will realize you can with current technology win civil wars with drones agains mobs and Democracy will be discarded in favor of a more stable equilibrium. On the other hand early 20th century thinkers, futurists and fiction writers expected people to realize air power changed the calculus of war and for this change to impact politics quite profoundly. Arguably maybe we would even be better off had they been right. All power to the pilots! Yet they weren’t. Evidence against.
I suspect it would be illegal to run those servers. The Anti-Deficiency Act forbids the government from “involving the government in any obligation to pay money before funds have been appropriated”. The Army can’t purchase new tanks, NASA can’t order a new space shuttle, and I bet most agencies can’t rack up more obligations with their ISPs and electric companies.
This act, by the way, is the reason nonessential workers are forbidden from volunteering for work.
As arundelo notes, it’s a trope. I think it’s meant to evoke the extremely stylized, not at all realistic nature of the art form… that is, it’s not that the audience is being tricked into thinking something is going on, it’s that the audience is willingly going along with the story being told.
How is it that the Democrats get to choose what gets shut down? Is the statement “The Democrat strategy is to do random bad things to the American public” even remotely true?
“Stuff like this is the main damage – the government continues as usual, illegally, in the sense that government employees continue to receive pay and exercise power”
Only “non-essential” parts of the government are closing. There is a legal framework determining who gets pay.
“But, if government activities, including Obamacare, continue as usual, despite not being legally funded”
Except that Obamacare is self-funded and was always known to not be affected by this political theater.
“When the Republicans fold, rendering their election victory irrelevant, that makes those irritating white voters irrelevant.”
What Republican election victory? How would the Republicans folding on their self-induced shutdown disregard the voters who overwhelmingly don’t want a government shutdown?
Interesting statements I ran into with regards to kabuki theater aspects of the so called United States federal government shutdown of 2013. This resulted in among other things closing down websites.
I was interested to know this kind of thing has a name: Washington Monument Syndrome.
As a sysadmin, if I were to be furloughed indefinitely I would probably spin down any nontrivial servers. A server that goes wrong and can’t be accessed is a really, really, really, really terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad thing. And things go wrong on a regular basis in normal times; when the government is shut down and a million things that get done everyday suddenly stop being done, something somewhere is going to break. Some 12-year-old legacy cron job sitting in an obscure corner of an obscure server written by a long-departed contractor is going to notice that the foobar queue is empty , which turns out to be an undefined behavior because the foobar queue has always had stuff going through it before, so it executes an else branch it’s never had occasion to execute, which sends raw debugging information to a production server because the contractor was bad at things, and also included passwords in their debugging because they were really bad at things…
This is actually a terrible example of Washington Monument Syndrome.
″ Hi, Server admin here… We cost money as does our infrastructure, I imagine a site that large costs a very good deal, we aren’t talking five bucks on bluehost here.
I am private sector, but if I were to be furloughed for an indeterminate amount of time you really have two options. Leave things on autopilot until the servers inevitably break or the site crashes at which point parts or all of it will be left broken without notice or explanation. Or put up a splash page and spin down 99% of my infrastructure (That splash page can run on a five dollar bluehost account) and then leave. I won’t be able to come in while furloughed to put it up after it crashes.
If you really think web apps keep themselves running 24⁄7 without intervention we really have been doing a great job with that illusion and I guess the sleepless nights have been worth it to be successfully taken for-granted.”
This is true; however keeping a website running is still very, very cheap compared to almost anything else the government does, including functions that are continuing as usual during the shutdown.
If web apps are too high maintenance, that does not explain the shutdown of government Twitters (example: https://twitter.com/NOAA, which went to the extra effort of posting that “we won’t be tweeting ’cause shutdown.”) I note with amusement however that the Health and Human Services Twitter is alive and well and tweeting about the ACA.
“This is true; however keeping a website running is still very, very cheap compared to almost anything else the government does, including functions that are continuing as usual during the shutdown.”
This is literally irrelevant when the non-essential services have to be shut down. If your techs get furloughed, shutting down the site is appropriate.
The twitter accounts are “shut down” in the sense that the employee who would have done the tweeting is now furloughed and can’t. Putting out a tweet explaining the upcoming lapse makes a whole lot of sense to me.
The Shutdown Wasn’t Pointless. It Revealed Information
William Spaniel says on twitter he is not sure about how he feels about our models of war also explaining U.S. Congress bargaining. Besides war being politics by other means, I say we obviously should expect the models to work to a limited extent. Democracy is a highly ritualized form of civil war and not any kind of war but the kind practiced in the 19th century when democracy began its march. Instead of drafting a mob and then ordering them to shoot the opposing mob, you orderly assemble your respective mobs and then count them via voting. Since Samuel Colt made men equal in the 19th century you assume the slightly larger mob wins. Some nations even factor in territory held to decide outcomes. After elections both mobs go safely home and about their business, while in theory the government implements a real outcome of the simulated war.
I’m half expecting that sooner or later someone will realize you can with current technology win civil wars with drones agains mobs and Democracy will be discarded in favor of a more stable equilibrium. On the other hand early 20th century thinkers, futurists and fiction writers expected people to realize air power changed the calculus of war and for this change to impact politics quite profoundly. Arguably maybe we would even be better off had they been right. All power to the pilots! Yet they weren’t. Evidence against.
I suspect it would be illegal to run those servers. The Anti-Deficiency Act forbids the government from “involving the government in any obligation to pay money before funds have been appropriated”. The Army can’t purchase new tanks, NASA can’t order a new space shuttle, and I bet most agencies can’t rack up more obligations with their ISPs and electric companies.
This act, by the way, is the reason nonessential workers are forbidden from volunteering for work.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ seems still to run.
BLAST and PubMed are running automatically but there is no updating of either of them with new materials.
Theater, certainly; in the sense of staging an elaborate show for the public (see also “security theater”) — but why kabuki specifically?
As arundelo notes, it’s a trope.
I think it’s meant to evoke the extremely stylized, not at all realistic nature of the art form… that is, it’s not that the audience is being tricked into thinking something is going on, it’s that the audience is willingly going along with the story being told.
It’s a common usage in some circles. Jon Lackman wrote a Slate article criticizing it.
Okay, so it’s like “Chinese fire drill”. Got it.
Actually, y’all wrong. It was simply a fun idea for celebrating 4chan’s 10th birthday.
An interesting post on the subject.
That post was pretty atrocious.
Some glaring problems:
How is it that the Democrats get to choose what gets shut down? Is the statement “The Democrat strategy is to do random bad things to the American public” even remotely true?
“Stuff like this is the main damage – the government continues as usual, illegally, in the sense that government employees continue to receive pay and exercise power”
Only “non-essential” parts of the government are closing. There is a legal framework determining who gets pay.
“But, if government activities, including Obamacare, continue as usual, despite not being legally funded”
Except that Obamacare is self-funded and was always known to not be affected by this political theater.
“When the Republicans fold, rendering their election victory irrelevant, that makes those irritating white voters irrelevant.”
What Republican election victory? How would the Republicans folding on their self-induced shutdown disregard the voters who overwhelmingly don’t want a government shutdown?
The president has a great deal of leeway on exactly how to implement the shutdown.
Yes. (I can provide more examples if you’re interested.)
That article is a big list of talking points with no sources and an obvious political agenda. Seriously?