I don’t want to ask what America is thinking, but what are they thinking?

As more details of their social media information requests to enter the States came to light yesterday, the less I wanted to go there.

To get in I need to supply a wealth of personal information, including DNA and all my social media links. Now I love America and its people, but if I have to jump through all those hoops my first reaction is "forget it". 

The Land of the Free is no longer the Land of the Free Speech. Say the wrong thing on social media and they may cancel you. This is worse than anything under Biden or Obama, it’s cancel culture writ large.  

And the irony is that it’s so dumb. If you’re really an enemy of the States, you’ve already cancelled all your social media. This will cancel the tourists, not the terrorists.

Righto: here’s the most bonkers thing I heard yesterday out of Trump’s America 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio halted the State Department’s official use of the typeface Calibri, calling the Biden-era move “wasteful,” and ordered the return of Times New Roman. 

He called it a part of a push to stamp out diversity. Now how does that work? 

Well in 2023, Secretary of State Antony Blinken ordered the typeface change to Calibri to improve accessibility for readers with disabilities, such as low vision and dyslexia, and people who use assistive technologies, such as screen readers. 

Now that was true, it was invented for people with low vision, and by the way it’s Microsoft Office’s default font and apparently it works, but apparently that’s woke.

So back to Times New Roman we go, and the left are saying it tallies with MAGA’s obsession with all things Roman. And it would all be just a funny margin in history if it wasn’t so expensive and therefore wasteful.

You’d think that you’d just ask everyone to change their default and off we go. But no. Teams are going to have to check every little unit. Apparently, that’s $145 thousand an agency, and there’s a lot of agencies in American bureaucracy.

And here’s the real rub: Times New Roman takes more ink. And then when you calculate the sheer volume of wordage coming out of the American state, the cost actually mounts into the many millions. 

The right often complains about the cost of crazy left-wing ideology, seemingly blissfully unaware that they’re just as ideologically crazy.

I don’t want to ask what America is thinking, but what are they thinking?
As more details of their social media information requests to enter the States came to light yesterday, the less I wanted to go there.
To get in I need to supply a wealth of personal information, including DNA and all my social media links. Now I love America and its people, but if I have to jump through all those hoops my first reaction is "forget it".&nbsp;
The Land of the Free is no longer the Land of the Free Speech. Say the wrong thing on social media and they may cancel you. This is worse than anything under Biden or Obama, it’s cancel culture writ large. &nbsp;
And the irony is that it’s so dumb. If you’re really an enemy of the States, you’ve already cancelled all your social media. This will cancel the tourists, not the terrorists.
Righto: here’s the most bonkers thing I heard yesterday out of Trump’s America&nbsp;
Secretary of State Marco Rubio halted the State Department’s official use of the typeface Calibri, calling the Biden-era move “wasteful,” and ordered the return of Times New Roman.&nbsp;
He called it a part of a push to stamp out diversity. Now how does that work?&nbsp;
Well in 2023, Secretary of State Antony Blinken ordered the typeface change to Calibri to improve accessibility for readers with disabilities, such as low vision and dyslexia, and people who use assistive technologies, such as screen readers.&nbsp;
Now that was true, it was invented for people with low vision, and by the way it’s Microsoft Office’s default font and apparently it works, but apparently that’s woke.
So back to Times New Roman we go, and the left are saying it tallies with MAGA’s obsession with all things Roman.&nbsp;And it would all be just a funny margin in history if it wasn’t so expensive and therefore wasteful.
You’d think that you’d just ask everyone to change their default and off we go. But no. Teams are going to have to check every little unit. Apparently, that’s $145 thousand an agency, and there’s a lot of agencies in American bureaucracy.
And here’s the real rub: Times New Roman takes more ink. And then when you calculate the sheer volume of wordage coming out of the American state, the cost actually mounts into the many millions.&nbsp;
The right often complains about the cost of crazy left-wing ideology, seemingly blissfully unaware that they’re just as ideologically crazy.

A fresh and intelligent start to your day - catch the very latest international and domestic news developments, sport, entertainment and business on Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, on Newstalk ZB.

A fresh and intelligent start to your day - catch the very latest international and domestic news developments, sport, entertainment and business on Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, on Newstalk ZB.

Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

Andrew Dickens: Why should America check my socials?

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/7784f840-c291-422a-924b-ad9000bbad71/clips/1d327fd6-4d73-47f6-b680-b3b001191501/transcript