#and news media is also monopolized in many ways

[sluthut6000]

sometimes I dream of being able to beat politicians with chairs . maybe to death. anyways unrelated - top historical things to make trendy again in 2024 ✍️

[handeaux]

In Cincinnati, Everybody Who Was Anybody Got The Scoop At Grandpa Hawley’s

The year before he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln, the actor John Wilkes Booth was in Cincinnati, performing at Wood’s Theater in Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice” and “The Taming of the Shrew.” Throughout the run, Booth was a frequent visitor to Grandpa Hawley’s newsstand, just two blocks south at Vine and Fourth. Years later, Hawley told the Cincinnati Post about Booth’s visits [28 April 1903]:

“He was in my store while here and I remember a conversation with him. I do not remember what we talked about in particular, but there was nothing to indicate that he had the least thought of perpetrating the dark crime with which his name is stained.”

By coincidence, James R. “Grandpa” Hawley also had a connection to Lincoln. Hawley first opened his business on Tuesday, 12 February 1861, and watched from the shop door as President-Elect Lincoln, on his way to Washington, was paraded down Vine Street to the Burnet House. Throughout the Civil War, Grandpa Hawley was the place to go for news of the conflict. Hawley told the Times-Star [10 January 1891]:

“That was in the war time, you know, and then the illustrated periodicals monopolized the sale, for in them were pictures of the generals and battles and the printed material dealt with the doings of the army.”

In fact, Hawley’s patrons often included those very generals themselves, picking up the latest weekly to read what was being said about the war. Generals Ulysses Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman famously mapped out the strategy to ensure a Confederate defeat in Parlor A of the Burnet House and gathered a lot of their information from Grandpa Hawley’s newsstand. He told the Post:

“I do not believe I ever saw them in uniform. Grant was not very talkative, but Sherman frequently started a conversation.”

Another regular military visitor to Hawley’s was Philip Henry Sheridan, whose triumph at the Battle of Cedar Creek was memorialized in Thomas Buchanan Read’s poem, “Sheridan’s Ride.” That poem was required reading for generations of American school children and the author, a Cincinnati resident, was also a frequent customer of Grandpa Hawley’s. It is not recorded whether poet and subject ever met at the Vine Street newsstand, but they might well have.

Vice President Andrew Johnson spent so much time at Hawley’s that the news vendor took to calling him “Andy.”

In addition to generals, politicians and poets, Grandpa Hawley’s shop was also a gathering place for the actors who trod the boards at Cincinnati’s theaters throughout the Nineteenth Century. Edwin Forrest was among the first Americans to gain distinction as a Shakespearian star. He frequently performed in Cincinnati and always stopped by to see Hawley, who recalled:

“In my mind I can see him now with his tragedy stride and hear his deep rumbling voice.”

In almost every interview he gave, Hawley mentioned Adelaide Neilson, whose fame as an actress almost equaled her fame as a great beauty.

“Neilson, the actress, has been here many times, and always used to pat the little newsboys on the head and give them an encouraging word.”

Hawley himself was something of a Cincinnati celebrity, mostly because of his enormous beard, which ran from his chin almost to his belt buckle. Most of the Cincinnati papers remarked about the “biblical” dimensions of his whiskers, rivaled only by those of Vine Street saloonist Andy Gilligan.

Many folks stopped by just to chat with Hawley, who was an especially entertaining raconteur, but most came for the news. In those pre-electric days, when “the media” meant print publications, Grandpa Hawley moved a lot of paper. He told the Times-Star that New York daily newspapers sold the most in his shop, followed by dailies from Chicago, St. Louis and Louisville. Among the weeklies, Harper’s and Leslie’s ran neck-and-neck, followed by the London Illustrated News. Some readers were quite dedicated to their favorite publication:

“One lady used to walk down from Walnut Hills every week to get the New York Ledger, because it would not be delivered to her until the morning following its arrival here. One day a Walnut Hills man who was a regular customer of mine asked me if I knew why he always took two copies of the New York Ledger. I told him I supposed he got one for a neighbor, but he said it was because he had two daughters and they were always squabbling about which should read it first, until, to keep peace in the family, he decided to give both a chance.”

Those were the days when multiple magazines appealed to every specialized interest. Hawley sold dozens of sports magazines, humor magazines, fashion magazines, science magazines and literary journals of contemporary thought like Atlantic Monthly and the North American Review – both of which are still published today. He carried most of the major periodicals published in German and French.

After 40 years in business, Grandpa Hawley found himself evicted from his landmark shop to make way for the construction of the Ingalls Building, the first reinforced concrete skyscraper in the world. Railroad magnate Melville E. Ingalls spent so much effort convincing city officials to allow him to build his revolutionary building that he gave little thought to the businesses he displaced.

Grandpa Hawley ended up relocating to the nearby Emery Arcade on the other side of Vine, but years of generosity caught up with him and bankruptcy was a real possibility. According to the Post:

“Everybody’s word goes with ‘Grandpa’ Hawley and were his customers so disposed they could carry away in overcoat pockets or under their arms several times as much as they paid for.”

At this dark moment, Hawley’s theatrical friends, accumulated over the decades, sprang into action and staged a benefit extravaganza for him at the Grand Opera House on 1 May 1903, raising more than $650 and saving the old man’s finances. It was a short-lived victory. Not quite a year later, Grandpa Hawley was dead. As he was laid to rest in Covington’s Linden Grove Cemetery, the Post [20 February 1904] eulogized:

“’Grandpa’ Hawley did not have an enemy in the world. For a lifetime he jogged along in an even, quiet way. He was honest and fair. He was never too busy to clasp hands warmly and talk entertainingly. He possessed a smile that was born of the natural kindness in his soul.”

[dailyanarchistposts]

Empire’s radical monopoly over life

Ivan Illich was a prominent radical intellectual in the 1970s, but aside from his radical critique of schooling, is not well-known today. For Illich, modern schooling was only one of the many ways that dependence was being entrenched—a dependence not only on capitalist production and consumption, but on a whole violent, industrialized, disciplined, and controlled way of life. His concept of radical monopoly points to something more systematic than the control over a particular market by a particular firm. Instead, radical monopoly gets at the way that Empire monopolizes life itself: how people relate to each other, how they get around, how they get their sustenance, and the whole texture of everyday life. A world built for cars forces out other ways of moving, and modern building codes and bylaws make it impossible and illegal for people to build their own dwellings, or even to live together at all if they cannot pass as a nuclear family. Modern medicine does not just create a new way of understanding the body: its scientific understanding is premised on a radical monopoly over health, and the subjugation (or commodification) of other healing traditions. To be healthy under Empire is to be a properly functioning, able-bodied, neurotypical individual capable of work, and to be sick often means becoming medicalized: isolated, confined, and dependent on strangers and experts. Law, policing, and prisons monopolize the field of justice by enforcing cycles of punishment and incarceration, forcing out the capacity of people to protect each other and resolve conflicts themselves. The rise of industrial agriculture has been accompanied by a loss of the convivial relations surrounding subsistence: the connection to the growing and processing of food, the intimacy with ecosystems and seasons it entails, and the collective rituals, celebrations, and practices that have accompanied these traditions. Empire’s infrastructure induces dependence on forms of production, specialized knowledge, expertise, and tools that detach people from their capacities to learn, grow, build, produce, and take care of each other.

Since Illich wrote, these monopolies have folded into ever more diffuse and generalized forms of control, sunk deeper into the fabric of life. Deleuze called this new form of power taking shape over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries “control societies.”[102] Rather than telling people exactly what to do, this mode of power regularizes life, calling forth certain ways of living and feeling, and making other forms of life die. Surveillance no longer ends when one exits a particular institution: through social media, smartphones, browsing histories, and credit cards, surveillance is ubiquitous, continuous, and increasingly participatory. We are enjoined to share, consume, and express ourselves, and every choice feeds back into algorithms that predict our habits and preferences with ever increasing precision. The performance of self-expression is constantly encouraged, and as the Institute for Precarious Consciousness writes, “Our success in this performance in turn affects everything from our ability to access human warmth to our ability to access means of subsistence, not just in the form of the wage but also in the form of credit.”[103] Under this apparatus, there is little room for silence, nuance, listening, exploration, or the rich subtleties of tone and body language. Anything too intense or subversive is either incorporated or surgically removed by security, police, or emergency personnel. Class, anti-Blackness, Islamophobia, ableism and other structured forms of violence are coded into the algorithms that make everyone a potential terrorist, thief, or error. Even those who are supposed to enjoy the most—those who can afford the newest screens and the most expensive forms of consumption—are inducted into a state of nearly constant distraction, numbness, and anxiety.

Perpetual individualization obscures the crushing collective effects of Empire. When this form of control is working, interactions are hypervisible, superficial, predictable, and self-managed. To be constantly mistrusted and controlled is also to be detached from one’s own capacity to experiment, make mistakes, and learn without instruction or coercion. To internalize the responsibilities of neoliberal individualism is to sink into the mesh of control and subjection. The responsible economic subject owns her own property, pays her own debts, invests in her future, and meets her needs and desires through consumption. She is individually responsible for her health, her economic situation, her life prospects, and even her emotional states. These forms of subjection make it difficult to imagine—let alone participate in—collective alternatives. From the dependence on armed strangers to resolve conflicts, to the hum of an extraction-fuelled world, to the glow of screens that beckon attention, to the stranglehold of policy and bureaucracy, to the intergenerational violence and abuse that permeate lovers and families, Empire is constantly entrenching dependence on a world that makes joy, trust, and responsibility difficult.

It is not a question of revealing this to people, as if they are dupes. Struggling amid these forms of control means grappling with their affective hold on us and our daily lives. Anxiety, addiction, and depression are not merely secrets to reveal or illusions to dispel. Preaching about Empire’s horrors can stoke cynicism or ironic detachment rather than undoing subjection. One can still feel bound and depleted, despite one’s awareness. Empire’s subjects are “free” to be mistrustful and resentful of the system under which they live. One can hate Empire as much as one wants, as long as one continues to work, pay rent, and consume. There is no simple correspondence between intentions and actions, as if the problem is simply figuring out what to do and doing it. Undoing subjection is not about conscious opposition, or finding a way to be happy amidst misery. Challenging Empire’s radical monopoly over life means interrupting its affective and infrastructural hold, undoing some of our existing attachments and desires, and creating new ones.

[workersolidarity]

Watch "How The Country's Largest Landlords Are Destroying Lives" on YouTube

Rents in America are completely insane, even as the Federal Minimum wage, which is still the only minimum wage in many states in the US South and Midwestern heartland, remains at historically low levels.

With the Minimum wage still set at $7.25 an hour, last raised in 2009, and rents at historic highs (the average renter is now paying $1'388 monthly), the Working Class is being squeezed more tightly than it has in more than a century. Working Class wealth is being sucked out of the system and shoveled into the pockets of endlessly consolidating and monopolizing Corporations controlled by the same small group of Billionaires and giant Corporate investors. Most of the largest and profitable corporations are all invested in and controlled by the very top 0.01% of the wealthiest billionaires, an increasing number of which aren't even necessarily American citizens, but rather are part of an International Capitalist Class with no National loyalties whatsoever.

To get an idea of just how squeezed the US Working Class is compared with the recent past, consider this: if the Minimum Wage had been tied to Rental inflation since 1968, than today's Minimum Wage would be roughly $22 today.

You can see this in the basic arithmetic yourself.

Average rent in the US in 1968 was close to $100 per month. Today it is $1'388 per month. That's an increase of 1'388%. And according to the Dept of Labor's online records, the Minimum Wage in 1968 for non-farm workers was $1.60 per hour. Multiply that by 1'388% and you get $22.20.

Headline inflation numbers released by Govts hide the true cost of inflation by factoring in things like the falling cost of certain technologies, most of which have little relevance to the average worker whose only concern is providing for their families a safe and happy environment in the midst of consistently rising prices and stagnant wages.

And that's just one example of how we are being squeezed as a Working Class like never before in the Post-WWII era.

We're also being squeezed from new directions and in other ways as well. Such as the consolidation of the food industry into a handful of private companies and giant corporations, predictably causing food costs to rise at an alarming rate. Add to that similar consolidation and rising prices with Banking Fees, Property Development and in the Energy sector and you get a disaster for the Working Class in the making.

We will all suffer greatly until we can close out the noise and division of the media and politicians, and unite as a Class against the Capitalists who long ago united against us.

We must put aside our differences in the culture wars, which are purposely being driven by the Corporate Media and the National Security State, and stand in solidarity with one another against the Capitalist machine, the giant Corporations, the Landlords, the Bosses, the Police State, and the corrupt Corporate State.

Our lives are being destroyed: Working Class lifespans, quality of life, addiction, alcoholism and other indicators are all tumbling downward at a rapid clip. Everything, especially rent, food, Energy and an education are all outlandishly expensive and getting more expensive, even as our wages have been stagnant for decades, Unions have been made powerless and corrupt, and Working Class Political action has died down to a trickle, or even just the rare droplet.

Until we come together and organize along Class Lines, our lives are only going to get worse and worse. And at the rate at which the Corporate State is consolidating its control over our information space, feeding us propaganda to promote their Capitalist Empire and divide Workers, we won't have long before the state of workers in the US is approaching the state of workers in some 3rd world countries under US Sanctions and Neocolonial economic blockade.

Get out there and Organize along Class lines Now! This IS Code Red for Workers!

When the task of the Working Class has been completed and our work as Socialists is done, the whole world will be a safer and better place for it.

It could be the dawn of new, fairer, Safer, more Progressive, Non-Imperialistic, Internationally collaborative, pro-Worker world with a Green future! It's up to all of us! 😊🌅🌱

[barbreypilled]

⭐ for ikte!!!

hehehehe

anyway I started writing this silly ahh fic in July 2022 after rereading the series and I have a lot of silly headcanons and silly little facts that I cooked up in my crazy brain hehehe also this is going to be annoyingly long so I'm putting it under a read more

-I’ve had the headcanon that the victors were trafficked out of a physical brothel since about 7th grade when I found out what a brothel was, i liked the idea of them all kind of commiserating. In my mind sex trafficking is actually a huge moneymaker in the Capitol even before Ptolemy’s time but he streamlined it in some way and eventually was able to monopolize it (I won’t get into that fully yet bc there’s a pretty big plot point related to that) (I spent way too much time thinking about this lmao), in addition to victors and ‘roadsiders’ as mentioned in the 3rd chapter he also gets his pick of new shipments of Avoxes, which go for way cheaper. (I’m trying to remember what has actually been published yet lmao I’m just omw home from work rn, none of this is like. major spoilers tho like I won’t talk about [REDACTED] or the [REDACTED] 🤪😎 anyway I love writing about evil shitty ppl doing weird evil shit my Baby Book headcanons are very ASOIAF coded

-idk how many chapters there are going to be yet but as of right now probably about 70, I’m contemplating breaking it up by year bc it starts w Annie’s games and ends right at the beginning of CF w a post-MJ epilogue. Im also giving pre-canon POV chapters to a few characters, as of rn I have one for Asenath and one for Ronan aka Ciaran’s dad but I can’t decide who else…. also on that note Asenath’s backstory is fucking bonkers and I can’t get into it rn without just openly spoiling a huge chunk of the second half of the fic but it’s. a lot. it starts to be hinted at in the 7th chapter which will ideally be up soon… >:)

-I have entirely too many opinions about fanon Annie and how I am literally the only person who Gets Her and I won’t get into all of that now but as an Actual Mentally Ill Person™️ I definitely don’t think the Capitol would have just left her alone after she Came Back Wrong like I definitely think the upper echelon would have kind of pretended all that never happened especially bc (at least in my take as we will see soon bc I have actually finished those chapters hehe) she was INCREDIBLY inconvenient as it pertained to mainstream entertainment/network tv but the tabloids and more low-brow media outlets would have had an absolute field day w her and that’s a major plot point in The Piss. Also as someone who has had actual psychotic episodes and has actual OCD and actual autism I’m definitely taking her in a different direction than most ppl do lmao. Also somewhat on that note I know there is a high demand for like. rly saccharine odesta content there is absolutely none of that in the piss lmao. Like they have cute little couple-y scenes but for a good chunk of it they are two deeply traumatized unemployed 18/19year olds w way too much money basically just sniping at each other until one of them overhears someone talking shit about the other and gets their child gladiator sleeper agent murder instinct triggered

-A few scenes I'm rly looking forward to publishing in no particular order without any context are The Seal Scene, Angerona Heavensbee's Wedding, the 72nd games, The Ismene Reveal, The Phoca Reveal and Persephone's introduction hehehehe and half of these are already fully finished >:)

[tomorrowusa]

China is stepping up its manipulation of US public opinion. It worked well for Putin in 2016 so why would Xi Jinping ignore the potential?

A Chinese marketing firm likely organized and promoted protests in Washington last year as part of a wide-ranging pro-Beijing influence campaign, according to new research. The Chinese firm also used a network of over 70 fake news websites to promote pro-China content in an example of the more aggressive efforts by pro-China operatives to influence US political debate in recent years, according to security firm Mandiant, which analyzed the activity. One of the protests was against a US government ban on goods produced in China’s Xinjiang region, where US officials have accused the Chinese government of systematic repression of the Uyghurs. The other protest was on the sidelines of a June conference on international religious freedom, Mandiant said. One of the protests only attracted roughly a dozen people but it showed the scope and ambition of the pro-China efforts. The hired protesters, who included self-proclaimed musicians and actors in the Washington, DC, area, apparently had no idea they were being enlisted in a pro-China influence campaign, the Mandiant researchers said. The campaign backed by the Chinese firm, Shanghai Haixun Technology Co., Ltd., is “intended to sow discord in US society,” Ryan Serabian, a senior analyst at Mandiant, told CNN.

Rent-a-protester is nothing new. There are companies like this one which will create a scene for you — for a price.

A bigger problem is the proliferation of bogus news sites. They often have names and branding which look like (but aren't identical) to those of legit news organizations.

It doesn't help matters that Google News is way lax about what it considers a "news" site.

Of course the most fertile ground for fake news sites is social media. Meta (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) is more interested in boosting activity than in accuracy of information. And Twitter (or whatever Elon is calling it today) these days has become a playpen for Nazis.

People need to SIMPLY STOP getting news from dubious social media sources.

There are plenty of respected sources for news. But it takes a bit more effort than just glancing at an unmoderated feed.

No source is 100% perfect; but a good news source will admit an error and then offer a correction.

Public broadcasters in liberal democracies are good sources. Even public broadcasters in some non-English speaking democracies may have English language content. Americans in particular need to get more news directly from reliable sources in other countries. It's a big world out there.

The corporatization and monopolization of local and regional newspapers in the US has been terrible news. However a lot of smaller excellent news sites have sprung up to fill the gap in local coverage in many municipalities.

So create your own news feed of legit sources – but keep it separate from strictly opinion sites.

If you do run across a dubious site pretending to be a news source, don't hesitate to call them out publicly. This "news site" may just be a propaganda boiler room operating in Shanghai or Saint Petersburg. It may seem like a game of whack-a-mole to some degree but keeping the lifespans of such sites short prevents them from building a base.

—··—— —··—— —··—— —··—— —··—— —··—— —··——

Speaking of China, apparently Foreign Minister Qin Gang has been purged.

China’s foreign minister Qin Gang ousted in surprise shake-up of Xi Jinping’s foreign policy leadership

[pumpkinstep]

absolutely this! It’s not just the devalue of the quality of content on the internet and the culture that surrounds it that has been manipulated by market freaks trying to milk profit out of what was otherwise a niche and tight knit landscape for micro communities.  I think everyone has noticed by now how difficult it is to find Any information on the internet these days, how pushed out real well learned groups are and how forums of all kinds have been washed off the search results due to corporate adware pushing.  Things really are worse than they used to be now than they ever have been. If you think your search results are worse and you only find products being pushed or Sponsored articles instead of off shoot websites made by some guy and their buddies, its because that really is what’s happening.  I’ve done a lot of searching around to try to find out the cause and, the most part and possibly unsurprisingly, the main sources of info and most vocal posts about this topic was found on reddit.  Social media is no longer small pockets to hang out with your friends and talk about dumb shit, (that is, i am willingly leaving out the hardcore drama and crimes that came along with the untamed net back in the day,), it’s now this monolith city full of strangers trying to make money the same way the bigwigs were when the canvas was new and fresh.  Of course there can be a lot said about how social media has fundementally altered how we treat each other and how mind-blowingly maddening it is to have every good and evil in the world beamed into your brain faster than you can process it but more or less i’ll ignore that too since it is a byproduct/symptom of the larger monopolization, or the cashing in/to profit off, of loneliness bred from corporate greed and the desire to isolate the public. source, observation of mmo gaming culture over the years, chat rooms taking form of video games,  and the noticeable increase of programs/online spaces or products or things geared towards getting lonely people to pay for a service that will take advantage of them more than really help.  I’m also aware of the age old practice of grifting and scams, lies and misinfo that have increased in practice as access to reach more people in shorter amounts of time. human’s havent really changed fundamentally in my opinion.  weh i got sidetracked but it’s kind of a complicated intertwined mess when it comes to the debasement of online culture and the push and pull of wanting to be the most special and popular/wanting to be seen and have a community, and the agenda of money makers.  Which i guess loops us back to search results.  From what i’ve seen, almost every major search engine is giving false result, or hits, numbers for searches and many of the pages will loop endlessly back on itself to give the impression of “new” results. <- this i’ve seen a lot personally. I use bing, and i’ve seen many posters talking about running into this problem when trying to search things up.  It looks like this is intentional, only feeding you information you’re guaranteed to click on and spend time on, do it’s job and say, i found exactly what you wanted, without giving you unbiased results. a lot of it has to do with search algos changing to combat misinfo and another big chunk is gaining a comfortable and solid ad rev stream through paid for links. This half is entirely tied to your search history and the kind of things you look up on every platform. Read something on a certain website? linger a bit too long on a paragraph about a certain topic? Talk to your buddies about something with your phone in your pocket or your smart home device nearby? You’ll be finding that ads will change to match the topic. It doesn’t matter if it was just a passing interest, you’ll now be sold ideas adjacent to your collective searches and results.  Personally, it makes it very difficult to find new information, to break out of what you usually search and find things like new music, art, plays, oddball research and opinion pieces on things you typically dont think about but wanted to know what other people thought cause it sounded interesting.  I suspect the over monotization of the internet as it is now will lead to a middle ground between the dark web and the normal surface level stuff, this sort of untouched exclusive bubble where things float in a gray area. From the looks of things, you can find this sort of thing in websites like reddit and 4chan, at least it looks that way. I’m not from either website so take what i say with a grain of salt, it’s just based on surface level observation. 

i think you could argue tumblr already fits a bit into the gray area, not neatly but sort of semi.  anyway, i have a lot of thoughts and feelings on the shittification of the internet.  This tedtalk is sponsored by me, some guy who grew up with early 2000′s internet culture

[81scorp]

Don't get it twisted: AI and fascism are fully buddied up. The only reason America tolerates artists is because the multi-billion dollar entertainment industry benefits late stage capitalists. AI's goal is to monopolize the means of production and control the narrative.

The successful societies of history venerated artists and thinkers; even if there was no direct art -> profit pipeline, they acknowledged that beauty is value in and of itself. Art is a statement, it's a symbol of grace and power, it is necessary for a free society to function.

Art is also the antithesis of propaganda. Freedom of expression allows societies to stay educated and informed. If our government is concerned about foreign spying and interference, why are they banning TikTok but not Facebook? Because TikTok facilities political expression.

What happens when all the artists and journalists are out of work, or buried under mountains of AI slop that online platforms push to the top, and the only way left to get information about the country / world is through Meta's AI news network?

Descent into fascism is always coupled with a silencing of the arts. The Nazi party burned books, fired artists and musicians from teaching positions, and created organizations to be sure art supported "racial purity." Sounding at all familiar??

AI businesses are terrible. This is not morality or hyperbole: they're terrible businesses. None of them are making money, but giant corporations keep pouring dump trucks of money into them. Why?? Corporations hate losing money!

Because they want to repeat what Amazon did. They're willing to operate a loss for years if it means they can undercut all competition, put everyone else out of business, monopolize as many industries as possible, then hike up the price cause you have no alternative.

When this happens, you won't get to have a conversation about Trump's crimes. You won't even know they're occurring. You'll ask google, "What did President Trump do?" and you'll get only AI generated answers from a *surely unbiased* capitalist megacorp.

Art and media have been PIVOTAL for progress throughout history. Creatives dare to challenge societal norms through entertainment, we normalize them by showing their beauty, and we make headway in changing hearts and minds for the better.

It used to be illegal for women to wear pants. It was illegal until 1923. It took another decade for Katharine Hepburn to wear pants in Vogue, and another 30 years for Mary Tyler Moore to normalize women wearing trousers on TV.

If a right as innocent as, "Can women wear pants?" is only 100 years old and it's only been normal for 60 years BECAUSE OF ART... what the hell do you think is going to happen to gay rights and civil rights when AI controls everything you see and hear?

It sounds ludicrous, but this has been the capitalist playbook for all time. They want a ruling class and they want slave labor, and in America they also want a Christian theocracy. Big business shoveling money into AI is in direct support of this goal.

So I'll say it again: don't mistake this as a silly fight over video game characters and, "Judy Gardland sings WAP" memes. Art, in all its forms, is a mandatory component of freedom. If we fail to support the humanities now, we will not recover in our lifetimes.

Jon Neimeister (on twitter, Jul 3, 2024)

[athenaalexandria]

I finally put my finger on why I get frustrated with Europeans (especially the Brit’s) talking about the US.

Often times when I talk to friends from Europe, or see someone from Europe on TikTok or YouTube or whatever, they are always belittling the US. Initially, this was fine and actually kind of appreciated, as I felt vindicated in my thoughts and emotions about my country. They would say “America Bad” and I would go “Yeah! America Bad!” But as time has gone on, those same talking points haven’t changed. And things in the US have gotten worse.

I’ve been told how loud Americans are, how unhealthy we are, how we are obsessed with racism, how ignorant we are, how violent we are. Yet none of the people saying these things have an ounce of empathy or self reflection. I’ve heard about the Danish Vs Swedish Vs Norwegian conflict so much, or the great history of the British empire. Yet if I try to talk about American history, it is immediately tossed aside like it’s not important. I will be lectured about how horrible it is that our cops shoot people, yet when I explain how this has come about with systemic racism stemming back to the founding of the US, and how monopolized violence is a bad and scary thing in every nation, suddenly I’m just another American who doesn’t understand that actually Germany can’t be racist, and the French police need to have assault rifles and body armor. Worst of all is when they discuss our mass shootings. I have been talked down to like a child so many times while backpacking through Europe about how guns are bad and we just need to get the government to stop it by voting that I want to tear my hair out. They will explain our politics, explain what we are missing, yet offer no solutions or help beyond “just stop doing that”.

Now, all of this I don’t think I would mind if anyone I’ve talked to was willing to do some self reflection and listen and learn. But it’s the blatant refusal to listen to us, to learn our geography, to learn about the many cultures in America. To lecture about something they don’t have to live through, tell us we are a third world nation, and then patronize us for letting it get this way.

The US government is a propaganda machine dedicated to churning out new workers who are ignorant of the world they live in so they don’t know they can strive for better. They use the media and violence to scare us, anger us, or make us feel defeated as a form of control to make sure the people in power stay there, and the capitalism keeps powering on. Even when we do learn of what we could have and what we could be, they have systematized everything so that it’s nearly impossible to escape. We are a nation founded on slavery, of the suppression of minorities, and of colonialism. But don’t worry, all that can change if we just stop being stupid and lazy and start to vote 🤗🙄

I could keep ranting about this subject for days. I didn’t even start on the “Americans never leave their country” thing, because I’d need a globe a tape measure and some mouth tape for my students to get across how scale and state vs federal government and land works. I just have had more and more anger over the years as I’ve realized that people from Europe are not better than Americans. It’s just the weird classism shit that I don’t understand rearing its ugly head again, and the US is beneath because we are still just viewed as a colony of lessers.

Now for my next post let me get into how South America is consistently left out of discussions on this, and that European Spanish and Portuguese is not better than Colombian Spanish or Brazilian Portuguese, and that “Americans” should not just refer to citizens of the US, because just in case you forgot the US is terrible too, I’m just also mad at Europeans. Goodnight everybody!

[truck-fump]

Is It Inflation? Or Is It Greedflation?It’s a paradox. Inflation...

New Post has been published on https://robertreich.org/post/747397511991459840

Is It Inflation? Or Is It Greedflation?It’s a paradox. Inflation...

Is It Inflation? Or Is It Greedflation?

It’s a paradox. Inflation is dropping but prices aren’t coming down. How can this be?

Because corporations have enough monopoly power to keep them high.

Here’s just one example that will make you fizz: Pepsi.

In 2021, PepsiCo, which makes all sorts of drinks and snacks, announced it was forced to raise prices due to “higher costs.” Forced? Really? The company reported $11 billion in profit that year.

In 2023 PepsiCo’s chief financial officer said that even though inflation was dropping, its prices would not. Pepsi hiked its prices by double digits and announced plans to keep them high in 2024.

How can they get away with this?

Well, if Pepsi were challenged by tougher competition, consumers would just buy something cheaper. But PepsiCo’s only major soda competitor is Coca-Cola, which – surprise, surprise – announced similar price hikes at about the same time as Pepsi, and also kept its prices high in 2023. The CEO of Coca-Cola claimed that the company had “earned the right” to push price hikes because its sodas are popular. Popular? The only thing that’s popular these days seems to be corporate price gouging.

We’re seeing this pattern across much of the economy — especially with groceries. Inflation is down. You see, the rate of inflation measures how quickly prices are rising. Prices are now rising far more slowly than in the past couple of years. And while supply chain disruptions really did make it more expensive to produce a lot of goods, the cost to produce them now is rising even more slowly than prices.

But consumer prices are still up, allowing most corporations to keep their profit margins near a 10-year high.

They can get away with overcharging you because they have monopoly power — or so few competitors they can easily coordinate price increases.  

If Pepsi and Coca-Cola had lots of competitors, they wouldn’t be able to raise prices so high because someone would make cheaper substitutes, and consumers would buy those instead. But Pepsi and Coke own most of the substitutes!

This isn’t just happening with Coke and Pepsi. Take meat products. At the end of 2023, Americans were paying at least 30% more for beef, pork, and poultry products than they were in 2020.

Why? Near-monopoly power! Just four companies now control processing of 80 percent of beef, nearly 70 percent of pork, and almost 60 percent of poultry. So of course, it’s easy for them to coordinate price increases.

And this goes well beyond the grocery store. In 75 percent of U.S. industries, fewer companies now control more of their markets than they did twenty years ago.

So what can we do?

Well, it’s largely flown under the media radar, but the Biden administration is taking on this monopolization with the aggressive use of antitrust laws.

It’s taken action against alleged price fixing in the meat industry — which has been a problem for decades.

It’s suing Amazon for using its dominance to artificially jack up prices — one of the biggest anti-monopoly lawsuits in a generation.

It successfully sued to block the merger of JetBlue and Spirit Airlines, which would have made consolidation in the airline industry even worse.

But given how concentrated American industry has become, there’s still a long way to go. Inflation is down. But many people don’t feel it because prices are still high, and in some cases are still rising because of continued price gouging.

This is where you have more power than you might think.

You might not be able to break up big corporations, but you can keep up the pressure on our government to fight corporate monopoly power.

And help spread the truth by sharing this video.

[nyasialiveshere]

jus one thing the xenophobia thing for why western audiences dont respond as well to kpop as some would like.. is kind of played out in an age of spanish music/afrobeats

where tons of english mixed with other languages are flooding the airwaves ( ps it has been for decades sort of thai rap, japanese rap has developed interest across the globe for it's unique contribution to the genre) music and art is still spreading and growing its idol culture that is waning in popularity but it's being framed as people just don't like any asian artists period which isn't true.

Plus it can't be said people just want to listen to music in a language they can understand. THIS IS NOT TRUE. Yes the radio has it's people picked but that is simply big money controlling what it monopolizes. That isn't reflective of the real world and how people feel. During times where black and white communities were almost completely seperate black motown artists were very popular on the radio

They don't push kpop because they don't have a financial stake in it it's little to do with what the people want. Though the public doesn't really like kpop all that much either compared to say regular pop, but the you cannot say it's due to language and cultural barriers. Because that exists in the us. There are towns that can be up to 80 percent one race, many people live mostly amongst their own race and immediate culture in some small towns and even large towns in america. It isn't the multicultural paradise it's framed to be. Someone who lives up north can be completely ignorant of southern culture/slang and verbage up to the point where they literally don't understand what their "fellow american" is saying.

There are people in america that can't even understand what 90 percent of what us rappers are saying by proxy of heavy heavy accents especially dealing with southern rap I'm from the south my brain has to recalibrate sometimes trying to figure out what they saying. People are simple they like stuff that makes them feel good and soundwaves that give them butterflies. kpop is simply not investing money into good producers and too many untalented nepo babies running the kpop industry. Lsm is gone, jyp is old and out of touch and yg is in jail these young club new rich chaebol kids are now doing the producing with absolutely none of the respect and admiration the old heads had for real music.

They are so in a tizzy with what to do next they are trying to make a korean one direction you can't make this stuff up

No surprise this is how kpop has survived this long mimicking and changing just enough to stay alive and outlive it's competition.

They can make a hit but not a classic. Many kpop fans are into the cult of personality completely disregarding the quality of the music the baritone, rifts, originality are unimportant, loud belting is impressive autotune can fix the rest. So ofc in the age of ai kpop will be targeted 1st. Many mainly care about the fanservice and wanting to interact with idols more so than the music everybody knows that. Particularly in places like Korea where this is apart of the band's marketing.

Whereas American promotion is more focused on western forms of promotion

because of these different promo styles you are getting different deliveries but in the end it's still a show being put on either way. Making music the backdrop and making the way companies secure their bags less obvious. It's hard to see a group of coworkers that hug, kiss, and spend every waking moment together as a company project. They are a family. They are also dolls that can be paired with one another or other dolls from different play houses.

Which isn't anything new but it's something we as consumers don't think to deeply about. If it's in front of you it's a product even if you don't spend money on it.

Where energy flows money goes. Interest in relationships lead to interest in albums

and when fans across borders and languages don't get there dopamine boost from these relationships they revolt.

I liked kpop for the theatrics in america its mainly the theater kids that like kpop and the artsy kids. The music and visuals is even loosing that appeal and becoming more tame and predictable(I assume I don't listen to music like that anymore.) But I wonder how they will usher in the ai idols thing, through tv and movies, anime, my guess is 1st realistic high grade chat bots and since they have a 360 deal they can use there voices and images as well I believe the best sell to these fans is interface.

lmao. man if they can up the programming and personalize it a real deal smart celeb bff lord.......they will have the souls of many.

This may be why so many group members are being allowed to leave without a war breaking out. Once they introduce this into kpop fandom wise this will change everything. After that experiment it will spread to different parts of the world slowly but surely. everybody gets their own person demon in an angel's body inside a screen..sigh. It's the closest the common person would get to having an actual robot I believe that would be way way to expensive but I won't doubt some people taking out loans to get one. The new wave of capitalism emotional money laundering.

blackpink will be having a vr concert on the 26th

Aespa already had one and since the concept is ai metaverse in it's inception this is most definitely not a one time thing

Sm has been ready for this for quite some time but because of gossip and company public distractions few paid attention of the bricks sm has been laying for the company and its artists future

"Addressing the tie-up in a statement, SM Entertainment CEO Sung-su Lee indicated that his company can “see the opportunity for our artists in the metaverse.” “SM is excited to expand our market to include metaverse content for artists using AmazeVR’s industry-leading VR technologies and proprietary concert creation tools. We’ve had a great interest in this market and see the opportunity for our artists in the metaverse,” the SM Entertainment head said in part."

This was a thought of mine awhile ago but it seems fans intense care for the idols has successfully allowed the companies to move the fans blindly into the next direction. I shouldn't have to say this is way bigger than music. Mark Zuckerburg has been pushing for the metaverse for a very very long time and it's no surprise that companies such as kpop one's who are always looking for new sponsors fell right into this global agenda.

Multiple movies have already been made

and it's interesting to see how people will respond, reject and eventually except this new reality since it's their favorite people pushing it to them

[visbankingnews]

What Is SWIFT and Why Should You Care?

By: Ken Chase. In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the U.S., Canada, and Europe took collective action to ban key Russian banks from accessing the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) network. For many people, that news probably meant little. After all, relatively few people outside of government and finance know much, if anything, about the SWIFT system or how it impacts the banking industry and economic activity. So, what is SWIFT – and why should you care? What is SWIFT? The SWIFT network has been in operation since 1977 and was created as a replacement for the old telex machines that banks used to use to communicate fund transfers with one another. Today, some 11,000 financial institutions in 200-plus countries use this network to deliver tens of millions of SWIFT messages each day. It is important to understand that SWIFT is not a trading clearance system. Instead, it is a system that enables banks to communicate information in a way that facilitates accurate, speedy financial transactions. Because the system is secure and frictionless, SWIFT has become the backbone of the global financial industry. In fact, most of the world’s trade activity involves use of SWIFT messaging. How SWIFT works If you are living in Paris and need to have your bank send a transfer to a relative in New York City, that bank does so by sending a message through the SWIFT network to that relative’s receiving bank in the U.S. The message will contain all the information the receiving bank needs to verify the transaction, including the relevant SWIFT codes that identify each bank. The receiving bank uses that information to make the deposit in your relative’s account. The two banks will later settle the payment transfer, adjusting each account accordingly. Why should you care about SWIFT? With the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war monopolizing much of the media coverage throughout the West, a proper understanding of SWIFT is important for anyone trying to keep pace with the U.S. and European response to that crisis. While bans on Russian oil imports and sanctions against that country’s oligarchs are readily understood by almost everybody, it is important to recognize that the West’s attempts to isolate the Russian Federation also include steps that strike right at the heart of Moscow’s ability to trade with the outside world. And because this service is an integral part of global finance and trade, any denial of access to that network is akin to being ejected from the world’s economy. Read the full article

[bonpourlorient]

Quick Thoughts About the Elections

Here are some disorganized thoughts I jotted down in the aftermath of the elections in Turkey. These aren’t in anyway authoritative. Just my hotcakes (with apologies to Sera).

1.      It feels like shit.

Some have described what has taken place in Turkey over the last election cycle as a historic defeat. For my part I can only say that electoral losses, while familiar by now, also feel like shit. Talking to other friends from Turkey, especially people who I’ve organized with, been in political parties with, protested with, this feeling seems to rıng true for others.

There are immediate material reasons that account for why the results feel so shit – a new regime of austerity, broader immiseration, worsened conditions of exploitation, further policing and violence against migrants, an enduring violence against women and LGBTQ people, the continuation of the Turkish state’s war against the Kurdish freedom movement… This seems to be the immediate future of Turkish politics.

In addition to all of this, I think the sense of despair I see in the Turkish left is an acknowledgement, in affective terms, of the ongoing foreclosure of the capacity to act collectively. This suspension is especially frustrating because at various times over the past 20 years, multiples centers of power on the left have found ways to mobilize despite adverse conditions. The election was especially frustrating, in other words, because it immediately followed the mobilization that the left in Turkey helped organized in the immediate aftermath of the February 6th earthquakes. It was shitty to witness Erdoğan win on the day the Gezi Park protests started. It’s additionally shitty that the mainstream opposition abandoned the more organized forms of collective resistance that have persisted throughout the 20 years of the AKP; especially queer liberation and the Kurdish freedom movements were not actively acknowledged or mobilized as bases of power.

Sure, all electoral politics are inherently liberal and almost always entail a foreclosure of radical politics in the long run. In this sense, elections will seldom ever be not disappointing. But there are two mechanisms that amplified this in the recent elections in Turkey. First is the amount of effort and attention that elections suck up. In an increasingly authoritarian regime like that of the AKP, where the party itself exercises sole authority over all state institutions, it takes a fuck ton of effort and time from hundreds of thousands of volunteers to hold elections. Second is that getting rid of Erdogan becomes such an overwhelming priority for so many people that actual matters of political contention are constantly suspended. The first dynamic I think is easier to make sense of. The AKP stuffs ballots, monopolizes all apparatuses of the state, dominates majority of news media through direct and indirect forms of control and economic pressure, intimidates voters especially in Kurdish majority regions, once elected mayors in Kurdish majority towns are suspended by the state and replaced with appointed trustees. But in a sense all of that is to be expected from this regime. What feels more shitty is the suspension of political priorities on the left, perhaps a deliberate almost strategic inaction.

2.      The Myth of Authoritarian Ineptitude

One common story that was told about the elections was that the government was already bound to lose the elections, that economic conditions were so bad, that poverty had worsened to such a degree, that jailing of reporters and dissidents had gotten so bad, that Erdogan and the regime oriented around him had finally lost so much credibility that it was bound to lose. This intuition that the AKP were “gidici” (on their way out) was something I heard over and over again during my time in Turkey.

I think what subtends this sense that the AKP were “gidici” is a of myth of authoritarian ineptitude. Maybe you’ve heard of the myth of fascist efficiency – the idea that, yes, fascists are terrible but at least they kept the trains running on time. I think there is a similar myth of authoritarian ineptitude – that regimes like that of Erdogan are so inept, so organized around a single charismatic figure, so ready to hallow out state institutions that they will, given time, self-annihilate. The sentiment that the JDP was bound to lose, that they were “gidici” given “objectively” how bad conditions are I think is in part related to this narrative of ineptitude.

The narrative betrays a liberal understanding of authoritarianism as a kind of irrational “populism” that rears its ugly head whenever experts are dismissed and strong men take charge. And of course it is wrong; the AKP regime and Erdogan are neither bumbling buffoons nor fascist masterminds but are responding to the realities of class politics, neoconservatism and racialization and the unfolding crises tendencies of capitalism as they manifest in a credit dependent, growth obsessed, hooked on cheap labor regime like that of Turkey.

Yet perhaps even more so, it misses the multiple power formations and forms of rightwing politics operating within the AKP regime. In fact, what has been especially instructive in the 20 years of the AKP era has been the constant dialectic between fascism and authoritarianism; the fascism of unrestrained credit backed by state power; of broadened immiseration but secured employment, of the dream of corporate sovereignty that wrests economic power away from international flows of capital (described as “the West” or the “interest lobby” by the AKP) on the one hand; the authoritarianism of controlled investment; of rising interest rates; of austerity and unemployment; of a rule based market-system on the other. I think what is hard for many liberals to accept is that this dialectic is one that is wholly internal to capital; it is a kind of double movement of capital.

In this sense, the AKP has always already been about its own self-reform. Party leaders routinely promise a return to the party’s “factory settings”; back to the early 2000s when the JDP promised a happy union between neoconservatism and neoliberalism; party leaders routinely admit that the regime needs restoration; are able to change policies and easily adapt. Similarly, today, the JDP are signaling a more “mainstream” economic policy, that will rise interest rates, seek to discipline labor, will increase unemployment. In many senses, this is the economic policy that the opposition also endorsed. Opposition political leaders and economic advisors often described the “bitter pill” (read austerity and unemployment) that would need to be swallowed to bring the Turkish economy under control. Under such conditions the regime’s plan of austerity wrapped up in narratives of economic sovereignty, megaprojects and neoconservative familial belonging might even be more palatable.

Opportunism; cynicism; pragmatism. These affects are part and parcel of contemporary capitalism even when this capitalism is articulated in more openly authoritarian hues.

3.   The Shitiness of Strategic inaction

This sentiment that the JDP were on their way out lead to a politics of strategic inaction – whereby oppositional actors of all political persuasions decided to suspend political action instead focusing narrowly on electoral results. Which lead to an incredible resurgence of rightwing sentiment of all kinds during the course of the last election.

Perhaps the most obvious case of such inaction was on the issue of refugees. The mainstream opposition openly embraced anti migrant rhetoric the main opposition party CHP even hung a poster with the phrase “borders are our virtue” on it from their party headquarters. They promised to “send back Syrians and Afghanis” within 2 years, later revised to 1 year in an attempt to court more far right voters. I honestly don’t know how one can carry out such promises without committing major human rights violations. This contributed to an atmosphere where anti migrant sentiment became the tip of the spear of far right politics in Turkey and helped become one of the main narratives through which opposition against the JDP was articulated. Inflation and rising cost of rent was articulated as a problem of migration. Increased political violence was articulated as a problem of migration. Even the opposition losing the elections was attributed to migrants being registered to vote for the JDP.

What’s frustrating about all of this is that the JDP’s migrant policy sucks. It effectively turns Turkey into the colonial office that contains and polices migrants on behalf of European nations. It denies migrants passage to Europe in return for financial aid to Turkey. It moreover denies migrants refugee status and forces migrants to act as a cheap labor force that helps discipline labor in Turkey. Last, it condones the Turkish military and state’s foreign interventions that act to cause migration in the first place.

What is frustrating is that strategic inaction refuses to politicize such issues. It refuses to imagine how migrants can become subjects of politics in Turkey rather than a problem to be solved. It refuses to imagine how to mobilize with migrants rather than silently condoning others mobilizing against them. Even when parties had progressive policies and stances against migrants we saw them reluctant to advocate or voice such policies instead choosing strategic inaction. More than the CHP for example it was disappointing that other, ostensibly socialist, and radical parties refused to openly politicize the issue.

A similar story is true about class politics more generally. In the aftermath of the pandemic, when inflation sky rocketed, a number of important workers strikes, protests and social reproduction struggles around rent materialized throughout Turkey. The opposition chose to deliberately ignore these in fears that they would distract from voting AKP out. What is more there was no compelling vision of what socialist parties would do for workers in Turkey. Beyond a generalized discourse about poverty and inequality there was no compelling vision of class politics. I think this is also true for how parties organized. The Turkish Labor Party who’s operations I have followed more closely and can speak more freely about, seemed to have embraced a tactic that was reminiscent of Justice Democrats in the US. Nominating charismatic, social media savvy MPs and seeking to grow participation through the “buzz” and interest this would generate. The flipside of such a tactic is that there is no strong class base for this kind of politics, you are beholden to what these charismatic figures individually say or do. Sure, they talk about “class” but there’s no class politics happening in the party structure, rather the party is composed of people who have found the idiosyncrasies of these media figures individually interesting or compelling. There weren’t really any overarching policies that became prominent during the campaigning stage – apart form we will oust Erdoğan and the AKP and will hold them to account after.

Last, neoconservative politics has been an important force in Turkey. In his victory speech on May 28th Erdogan directly targeted LGBT people in Turkey, rallying to “defend the family”. The same strategic inaction was also visible in this front. Mainstream opposition parties were almost wholly silent in response. But even more oppositional parties like the coalition of Kurdish, socialist and green left politics HDP/YSP and the socialist/populist TIP despite nominating trans and queer people as members of parliament didn’t openly vocalize an LGBTQ politics in their campaigns.

I think all of this also contributes to the shitty feeling. The story that the Turkish left collectively told itself was that once Erdoğan was ousted we could finally start to act politically once again.

I think it’s important to sit with this shitty feeling. And rather than paper over it with cheap optimism maybe once again ask, what does it mean to act?

[pinkmoondoll9shihtzu]

Ok this like legit made me spiral yeaterday and im still sad about it. Altho despite tumblrs constant need to make the site more unusable i suspect this is soundcloud's doing, as they cannot unleash their 30 second unskippable ads onto ppl who r usinf tumblr to stream music from them. Also it still works to upload songs from bandcamp so thts why i think itis a SC issue not tumblr.

but yea it jusr was really jarring, as i often feel defeated watching the way spotify has monopolized the way ppl discover & listen to music. For my own morals as poinytless as they may Be i cant stand the pressure to put my shit on tjere. But i worry that i wont even b able to realistically share music at all anymore if i dont give into it in the fututre.

All in All i am rly grateful to still b able to put my music on tumblr using bandcamp, and kno that ppL here rly will give it a listen...it touches my heart cuz u just kno ppl on ig/twitter dont gaf since theuy dont wanna have to click off the app theyre using to listen to a song they might not even like. tumblr is the last social media where sharing music actually makes sense cus ppl can easily listen in-app. And using tumblr from 2010-2015 is The entire reason my music taste is what it is..makes me feel doomer that So many ppl now r happy to rely on algorirthms to show them new music rather than, "Oh my cool & dope friend reblogged this i oughta check it out"

tldr; sad that social media at large doesnt facilitate music sharing (except spotify) nemore but ℹ simultaneously feel soso loving towards my tumblr fam who rly do care a lot & give me reasons to keep going Despite it All..!😭🩷 i pray this site will continue to allow ppl to enjoy new music easily. Amen

can you not embed soundcloud songs into tumblr posts anymore?????? bro what the fuck is happening

[headcanons-aus-and-stories]

The Sonic Event (1 Unfortunate Vulcan V.S. Earth’s Internet)

Hundreds of years ago, humanity created a global system of interconnected computer networks that came to be known as the internet. Once it was considered an archive of all human knowledge, but time has long since corrupted it’s credibility.

Despite its removal from professional settings, many social media platforms still remain in use along with much of their cultures.

Many Alien species, including Vulcans, had never heard of the archive. Those who had considered its contents inconsequential which caused them to underestimate its potential impact and the power of MEMEs.

This opinion quickly was changed after the “The Sonic Event” none more so than Sonic himself.

---

It all started during a conference between Starfleet Command and USS Intrepid, a star ship crewed entirely by Vulcans.

The meeting took place after a mission to L-S VI to oversee and study a major volcanic eruption taking place on the planet’s surface. The crew had collected various data and imagery from the eruption.

A Lieutenant was assigned the simple task of compiling this information into a standardized document which was presented during the meeting. Because of the simplicity of this task, no one thought to double check the document for errors beforehand.

This became a problem as, unbeknownst to his crewmates, the Lieutenant enjoyed “surrealistic photo editing” while unoccupied and had accidently incorporated one of his private creations* instead of an official photo.

As soon as the slide was revealed, the Lieutenant immediately realized his mistake and quickly fixed the error. The correction only took a few seconds and, fortunately, his superiors at Command happened to find the situation humorous. The individual faced no official consequences other than a new ship wide reminder to always have a fellow crewmate double check official presentations.

---

Of course the story does not end here as one member of command decided to share the story privately in their personal blog on Tumblr. Eventually a family member decided to re-share the post on a public forum for “internet clout”. The public post soon gained popularity and quickly became viral.

This lead to a resurgence of internet usage as more individuals attempted to view the unexpected “artwork” and share their own stories of “Vulcan ****-ups”.

The tale reached national news and the Lieutenant responsible for the image was bombarded by interview requests and other news sites reminding him that Earth now regards him as an icon of Vulcan failure.

The excitement did die down after some time... until the Lieutenant’s name was revealed to Sonek... pronounce the same was as the human word “Sonic”. It also happened to be the name of a popular fictional character which had been a stable of MEME culture for generations.

With this discovery the world went wild.

New meme formats emerged, old ones were revived. As Sonek’s fame skyrocketed, the way humanity viewed Vulcans completely changed. Some of these changes were positive, but most Vulcan citizens found them inconvenient.

---

After years of harassment from both media and his peers, Lieutenant Sonek found it logical to retire from star fleet and monopolize on his new found fame and pursue filmmaking on Earth (which was definitely not something he was secretly passionate about and had always wanted to do).

The catalyst for the extreme re-emergence of social media and the events following are now collectively known as the Sonic Event after the blue hedgehog.

* The image included the Lieutenant with his arms raised edited to appear emerging from the erupting volcano with his crewmates faces transposed onto figures “fleeing” the site. Upon further questioning, it was revealed that he was heavily inspired by classic Japanese monster movies.

If there is anyway to improve this AU/Headcannon/Thing, then please let me know.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Podcasting "Big Tech Isn't Stealing News Publishers' Content"

This week on my podcast, I read my Medium column, “Big Tech Isn’t Stealing News Publishers’ Content,” on how the news industry’s focus on charging tech firms to link to them is totally misguided, and misses the real issue: the rigging of the ad market.

https://doctorow.medium.com/big-tech-isnt-stealing-news-publishers-content-a97306884a6b

Countries all over the world — France, Australia, Brazil and now Canada (Bill C-11)- have fallen in love with the idea that the answer to the news media’s woes is to create a new licensable copyright over “snippets” of news that users post to social media.

Every country’s copyright system has a suite of “limitations and exceptions” (like fair use and fair dealing) that ensure that copyright is compatible with free expression. The right to quote the news historically fell squarely in this category: after all, it’s only the news if we’re talking about it (otherwise it’s a secret).

For decades, our public squares have been moving online. The pandemic accelerated and cemented this process. Today, when we talk about the news, we probably do so on an online platform, and, thanks to monopolization, the number of platforms where this takes place is vanishingly small and they are extraordinarily profitable.

Governments (correctly) observe that democracies need a free press, and they (correctly) observe that the news media is in trouble, and they (correctly) conclude that monopolies in the tech sector have something to do with this.

Then they come to the (alarmingly wrong) conclusion that the way to resolve all these issues is to create a new paracopyright that lets news companies charge for the right to talk about the news.

What’s wrong with this conclusion? Well, it’s a disaster from a human rights perspective, for starters. Remember, if you have the right to license discussion of the news, you have the right to withhold that license — that is, the right to decide who can debate, explain and analyze your own reporting.

But it also seriously misapprehends the way that tech firms rip off the news business. Quoting the news isn’t a copyright violation, so it’s just wrong to say that Big Tech is stealing the news companies’ content. Not just wrong, but badly misguided, because the reality is that Big Tech is stealing publishers’ money.

I’m talking about ad-fraud. The ad industry has been cornered by the Facebook/Google duopoly, through a blatantly illegal process that remains a thoroughly criminal enterprise to this day:

Anticompetitive aquisitions:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2020/12/ftc-sues-facebook-illegal-monopolization

Extinguishing privacy-respecting rivals:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3247362

Universal, nonconsensual surveillance, including surveillance of people who never signed up for or use their services:

https://ico.org.uk/media/about-the-ico/documents/4019050/opinion-on-data-protection-and-privacy-expectations-for-online-advertising-proposals.pdf

Clandestine agreements to rig the ad-bidding market:

https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/11/google-meta-jedi-blue-eu-uk-antitrust-probes/

Routine accounting fraud about every fact of ad-tech (who pays, how much, for what, how many times ads are shown, to whom):

https://www.niemanlab.org/2021/09/well-this-puts-a-nail-in-the-news-video-on-facebook-coffin/

That puts nearly half of the ad spending into the pockets of these two Big Tech companies. It’s the biggest fraud on the internet, worth more than all the crypto rug-pulls and ransomware attacks combined. If publishers were able to participate in a fraud-free ad market, they’d get lots more money, and it would be money that they deserved.

How would we unrig the ad market? There are lots of steps that governments and regulators could take right now, interventions that won’t take years or decades the way breakups will (though breakups are also a good idea!):

Ban ad transactions where a single company acts as the agent for both the buyer and seller;

Create Sarbanes-Oxley-style criminal penalties for accounting frauds;

Mandate audited transparency reports disclosing the true facts of ads — how much was collected and disbursed, and for what;

Create a meaningful statutory damages regime for ad fraud, including bid rigging;

Mandate open header bidding;

Ban surveillance advertising, thus eliminating Big Tech’s “data advantage” at the stroke of a pen, and kickstarting a new market in contextual ads (based on what’s being read, not who’s reading);

Mandate disclosure of the criteria used to uprank or downrank news material in search results and social media feeds.

Doing this stuff will pay all publishers, without having to create the dangerous right to license discussion of the news. So why are the big media companies so disinterested in it?

In a nutshell: because Big News is every bit as rotten as Big Tech, and the news giants have been gripped by corrupt financial mania for even longer than the tech sector. Long before the commercial internet, an orgy of corporate raider buyouts hollowed out the newspapers, merging them, killing local reporting, consolidating sales, laying off national beat reporters. The new corporate owners raided the companies’ cash reserves and sold off their physical plant to pay themselves, exposing the papers to rent shocks.

That’s how the newspapers — which weathered the telegraph, radio, TV, cable and satellite — went into the internet era with no cash reserves to experiment with, precariously dependent on the landlords they’d sold their buildings to.

The ensuing, inevitable failure of the news companies to adapt to the internet made them vulnerable to still more rapacious finance fuckery. Private equity rollups have turned once-great papers into glorified grocery store fliers with skeleton news crews operating out of remote brick bunkers the size of a Chipotle:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/16/sociopathic-monsters/#all-the-news-thats-fit-to-print

The billionaires who are looting the husks of our papers aren’t patricians from local wealthy families with a sense of civil duty. They’re far-flung vampires who have raised prices, lowered quality, smashed their unions and slashed wages:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/alden-global-capital-killing-americas-newspapers/620171/

These far-right ideologues front for kettles of vulture capitalists whose shamelessness knows no bounds. They are capable of devoting whole issues to extolling the virtues of completely unregulated capitalism:

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/the-capitalist-manifesto-in-energy-we-need-more-free-markets-not-more-socialism

Even as they are demanding government bailouts:

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/andrew-coyne-its-when-you-read-details-of-media-bailout-that-the-chill-sets-in

They style themselves as saviors of the news, but then they buy up national newspapers and refashion them as promotional vehicles for their online casino businesses:

https://www.canadaland.com/the-star-gambles-with-ethics/

The modern media baron is no defender of democracy; they’re a threat to democracy:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/03/media/reliable-sources-biden-murdoch-fox-news/index.html

And these eminently guillotinable hatemongers love snippet taxes. Take Rupert Murdoch, who used Australia’s snippet tax as leverage to cut a private sweetheart deal with Google and Facebook. That deal left the regional indie papers — filling the vacuum left behind when Murdoch bought and killed the local papers — out in the cold:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-56410335

In France, the biggest media companies arranged a snippet tax system that required newspapers to opt into Google Showcase, increasing the importance of Google to the news companies’ futures:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-google-deal-with-french-publishers-hold-pending-antitrust-decision-2021-06-29/

So why don’t big news companies want to unrig the ad market? Why are they focused on snippet taxes? Because they know that fair ad markets will benefit everyone, including the independent press — while snippet taxes are a fine basis for arranging cozy deals between media and tech monopolists.

Big Tech isn’t the answer to the news crisis. A snippet tax doesn’t promote the democratic function of the press — rather, it helps Big Tech and Big News consolidate their positions, keeping smaller news and tech companies at bay.

After all, any snippet tax that’s hefty enough to make a difference to the news is a snippet tax that a new tech company — say, a co-op or a nonprofit — can’t afford to pay.

It may feel like unrigging the ad market is an impossible tax, but there’s never been a better time to do it. Public sentiment has turned against commercial surveillance. Advertisers have wised up to the fact that the ad market is ripping them off, too.

But we need news workers to get onboard. The snippet taxes in Europe and Australia never would have succeeded without independent media outlets and beloved journalists promoting them. They got snookered: making media giants more profitable won’t translate into raises for reporters or new revenue for indies.

We have to get past the pathology that’s plagued the culture industries, in which workers resign themselves to the idea that the best they can hope for is to cheer on their own monopolists, who might drop a few crumbs as they gorge on their winnings.

We can — we must — hope for more than a slightly different division of the loot among tech and media monopolists.

Here’s the podcast episode:

https://craphound.com/news/2022/04/17/big-tech-isnt-stealing-news-publishers-content/

And here’s a direct link to the MP3 (hosting courtesy of the Internet Archive; they’ll host your stuff for free, forever):

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_423/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_423_-_Big_Tech_Isnt_Stealing_News_Publishers_Content.mp3

And here’s a link to my podcast feed:

https://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

[Image ID: A row of newspaper boxes on a lonely sidewalk; their windows are filled with the 'falling binary' Matrix waterfall effect.]