ladyfindel

[ladyfindel]

While the Onion buying InfoWars is indeed extremely funny, very few of the posts I've seen commenting on the sale have mentioned that the families of the Sandy Hook victims apparently agreed to voluntarily reduce their lawsuit payout as part of a deal to ensure that the Onion would acquire InfoWars wholesale, rather than having the company broken up and auctioned off piecemeal, as the latter course could potentially have allowed some of those pieces to end up back in the hands of Alex Jones' cronies.

Like, yes, it is in fact very funny that InfoWars is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Clickhole, but the real props go out to the Sandy Hook families who saw the opportunity and willingly gave up the additional millions of dollars that could have been realised by stripping InfoWars for parts in order to make that happen.

[ladyfindel]

Satirical news publication The Onion has bought Infowars, the media organisation headed by right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, for an undisclosed price at a court-ordered auction.

The Onion said that the bid was secured with the backing of families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, who won a $1.5bn (£1.18bn) defamation lawsuit against Jones for spreading false rumours about the massacre.

[…] The Onion plans to rebuild the website and feature well-known internet humour writers and content creators.

“We are planning on making it a very funny, very stupid website,” said Ben Collins, a former NBC News journalist who is chief executive of The Onion’s parent company, in a statement.

The website also posted a jokey article, saying that Infowars “has shown an unswerving commitment to manufacturing anger and radicalizing the most vulnerable members of society".

[…] No price would be too high for such a cornucopia of malleable assets and minds. And yet, in a stroke of good fortune, a formidable special interest group has outwitted the hapless owner of InfoWars (a forgettable man with an already-forgotten name) and forced him to sell it at a steep bargain: less than one trillion dollars.

Make no mistake: This is a coup for our company and a well-deserved victory for multinational elites the world over.

What’s next for InfoWars remains a live issue. The excess funds initially allocated for the purchase will be reinvested into our philanthropic efforts that include business school scholarships for promising cult leaders, a charity that donates elections to at-risk third world dictators, and a new pro bono program pairing orphans with stable factory jobs at no cost to the factories.

As for the vitamins and supplements, we are halting their sale immediately. Utilitarian logic dictates that if we can extend even one CEO’s life by 10 minutes, diluting these miracle elixirs for public consumption is an unethical waste. Instead, we plan to collect the entire stock of the InfoWars warehouses into a large vat and boil the contents down into a single candy bar–sized omnivitamin that one executive (I will not name names) may eat in order to increase his power and perhaps become immortal.

[ladyfindel]

psst... two and a half weeks, y'all.

[ladyfindel]

I’m brushing off my account over there—I just really got out of the habit of “microblogging” and wasn’t able to get my head back into it. I haven’t been able to post today because it looks like the new traffic is a bit much, but I’d be really happy if this does in fact become the primary Twitter alternative. I think the biggest problem has been getting a critical mass of people to make the move (artistic livelihoods, it’s tough), but now Muskworld is just untenable. It took a week and a governmental meme appointment, but people have finally had it.

As much as people like Mastodon, I went over there and could not figure it out. Possibly because I didn’t know what server(s) to go to and if I’d be welcome when I parachuted in. Which is fine; I feel like Mastodon probably doesn’t want to be the town square where anyone and everyone can sign up and there are uniform safety measures across the entire service. We basically need “Twitter before it went to shit ten years ago and also a little bit better.”

[ladyfindel]

never wanted something so badly

[ladyfindel]

Cretaceous Characters - Quetzalcoatlus meets a sub-adult triceratops. Just a silly paleoart cartoon thing of mine.

[ladyfindel]

[ladyfindel]

Kiki Smith, Constellation, 1996

[ladyfindel]

[ladyfindel]

Computers are very simple you see we take the hearts of dead stars and we flatten them into crystal chips and then we etch tiny pathways using concentrated light into the dead star crystal chips and if we etch the pathways just so we can trick the crystals into doing our thinking for us hope this clears things up.

[ladyfindel]

HOLY COW!

British Pathé was once a dominant feature of the British cinema experience, renowned for first-class reporting and an informative yet uniquely entertaining style. It is now considered to be the finest newsreel archive in existence. Spanning the years from 1896 to 1976, the collection includes footage — not only from Britain, but from around the globe — of major events, famous faces, fashion trends, travel, sport and culture. The archive is particularly strong in its coverage of the First and Second World Wars.

This is an extraordinary resource. (making a note to go hunting for some things...)

[ladyfindel]

Ambulocetus in the Light The world is haunted by a past far older than ours. Whales once walked on land. Sometimes the land remembers them–or they remember the land.

Homage to history and my beautiful but fraught Pacific Northwest.

In my shop

[ladyfindel]

i love this team so much. this dude ballerina twirled around the first defender who came at him and then hurdled backwards over the next one, an entire grown ass man, like it was nothing. like he's in a goddamn sports anime. unbelievable

[ladyfindel]

[ladyfindel]

[ladyfindel]

Hi. Things are bleak, I know that. I know that we paid for Trump's last term with blood and it is likely the price will be blood again.

But listen to me. LISTEN.

You do not have to force yourself to witness horrors as an act of activism. It is not a form of activism. You can put your phone down, you can block that horrific video. We cannot win if you cannot fight and you will not be able to fight if you are hopeless.

Do not let them guilt you into this. People who are exhausted are easier to walk over. Take care of yourself, find community where you find joy.

[ladyfindel]