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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 months ago
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Corporate Bullshit
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I'm coming to BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).
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Corporate Bullshit: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power, and Wealth in America is Nick Hanauer, Joan Walsh and Donald Cohen's 2023 book on the history of corporate apologetics; it's great:
https://thenewpress.com/books/corporate-bullsht
I found out about this book last fall when David Dayen reviewed it for the The American Prospect; Dayen did a great job of breaking down its thesis, and I picked it up for my newsletter, which prompted Hanauer to send me a copy, which I finally got around to reading yesterday (I have gigantic backlog of reading):
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/27/six-sells/#youre-holding-it-wrong
The authors' thesis is that the business world has a well-worn playbook that they roll out whenever anything that might cause industry to behave even slightly less destructively is proposed. What's more, we keep falling for it. Every time we try to have nice things, our bosses – and their well-paid Renfields – dust off their talking points from the last go-round, do a little madlibs-style search and replace, and bust it out again.
It's a four-stage plan:
I. First, insist that there is no problem.
Enslaved people are actually happy. Smoking doesn't cause cancer. Higher CO2 levels are imaginary and they're caused by sunspots and they're good for crop yields. The hole in the ozone layer is only a problem if you foolishly decide to hang around outside (this is real!).
II. OK, there's a problem, but it's your fault.
An epidemic of on-the-job maimings is actually an epidemic of sloppy workers. A gigantic housing crash is really a gigantic cohort of greedy, feckless borrowers. Rampant price gouging is actually a problem of too much "spending power" (that is, "money") in the hands of working people.
III. Any attempt to fix this will make it worse.
Equal wages for equal work will cause bosses to fire women and people of color. Protecting people with disabilities will cause bosses to fire disable people. Minimum wages will cause bosses to buy machines and fire "unskilled" workers. Gun control will only increase underground gun sales. Banning carcinogenic pesticides will end agriculture as we know and we'll all starve to death.
IV. This is socialism.
Income tax is socialism. Estate tax is socialism. Medicare and Medicaid are socialism. Food stamps are socialism. Child labor laws are socialism. Public education is socialism. The National Labor Relations Act is socialism. Unions are socialism. Social security is socialism. The Fair Labor Standards Act is socialism. Obamacare is socialism. The Civil Rights Act is socialism. The Occupational Health and Safety Act is socialism. The Family Medical Leave Act is socialism. FDR is a socialist. JFK is a socialist. Lyndon Johnson is a socialist. Carter is a socialist. Clinton is a socialist. Obama is a socialist. Biden is a socialist (Biden: "I beat the socialist. That's how I got the nomination").
Though this playbook has been in existence since the nation's founding, the authors point out that from the New Deal until the Reagan era, it didn't get much traction. But starting in the Reagan years, the well-funded network of billionaire-backed think-tanks, endowed economics chairs, and latter-day propaganda vehicles like Prageru breathed new life into these tactics.
We can see this playing out right now as the corporate world scrambles for a response to the Harris campaign's proposal to address price-gouging. Reading Matt Stoller's dissection of this response, we can see the whole playbook on display:
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-price-gouging-vs
First, corporate apologists insisted that greedflation didn't exist, despite the fact that CEOs kept getting on earnings calls and boasting to their investors about how they were using the excuse of inflation to jack up prices:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/11/price-over-volume/#pepsi-pricing-power
Or the oil CEOs who boasted that the Russian invasion of Ukraine gave them cover to just screw us at the pump:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/15/sanctions-financing/#soak-the-rich
There are all these out-in-the-open commercial entities whose sole purpose is to "advise" large corporations about their prices, which is just a barely disguised euphemism for price-fixing, from meat-packing:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/04/dont-let-your-meat-loaf/#meaty-beaty-big-and-bouncy
To rents:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/24/gouging-the-all-seeing-eye/#i-spy
That's stage one: "there's no problem." Stage two is "it's your fault." That's Larry Summers and co insisting that a couple of stimulus checks a couple years ago are responsible for inflation, because it gave you too much "buying power," and so the only possible fix is to jack up interest rates and trigger mass layoffs and sharp wage decreases across the economy:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/14/medieval-bloodletters/#its-the-stupid-economy
Stage three is "any attempt to fix this will make it worse." When Isabella Weber pointed out that there was a long history of price-controls being used to fight price-gouging, corporate apologists lost their minds and brigaded her, calling her all kinds of nasty names and insisting that her prescription didn't even warrant serious discussion, because any attempt to control prices would destroy the economy:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/podcasts/lately/article-the-millennial-economist-who-took-on-the-world/
You may recognize this as cousin to the response to rent control proposals, which inevitably trigger a barrage of economists screaming that this will not work and will actually reduce the housing supply and drive up prices, which is true, provided that you ignore all evidence and history:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/16/mortgages-are-rent-control/#housing-is-a-human-right-not-an-asset
And stage four is "this is socialism." Look, I am a literal card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America and I can assure you, Kamala Harris is not a socialist (and more's the pity). But that didn't stop the most eminently guillotineable members of the investor class from hair-on-fire, ALL-CAPS denunciations of the Harris proposal as SOCIALISM and Harris herself as a COMMUNIST:
https://twitter.com/Jason/status/1824580470052725055
The author's thesis is that by naming the playbook and giving examples of it – for example, showing how the "proof" that minimum wage increases will destroy jobs was also offered as "proof" not to abolish slavery, ban child labor, add fireproofing to textile factories, and pay women and Black people the same as white guys – we can vaccinate ourselves against it.
Certainly, we've reached a moment where the public is increasingly skeptical of claims that we can't fix anything because the economists say that this is the best of all possible worlds, and if that means that we're all going to boil to death in our own skin, so be it:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horse
In other words, after 40 years of subordinating politics to economics, there's a resurgence of belief in politics – that is, doing stuff – rather than hunkering down and waiting for the technocrats to fix everything:
https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/seeing-like-a-matt
Corporate Bullshit is a brisk and bracing read – I got through it in about an hour in my hammock yesterday – and, in laying out the bullshit playbook's long history of nonsensical predictions and pronouncements, it does make a very good case that we should stop listening to people who quote from it.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/19/apologetics-spotters-guide/#narratives
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dadsinsuits · 2 months ago
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David L. Cohen
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mostlybrunettes · 9 months ago
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photo-dujenoir · 4 months ago
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David Cohen
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3lix13 · 1 year ago
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Happy Holidays and best wishes to all! Here's hoping the protection payments are on time and the paradox absorbing crumple zones are up to code in the coming new year....!  (tried out the new update from TVPaint Développement for the ink & paint on this after a long stint doing vector art in Toon Boom Harmony)
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everylittoral · 4 months ago
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David Cohen
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knittinganddrinkingtea · 11 months ago
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Frida Gustavsson by David Cohen de Lara for Elle France June 2017
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hang-on-lil-tomato · 1 year ago
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are you JOKING, oh blocked person?
yeah, indigenous/Jewish Executive Producer Taika Waititi shouldn’t have signed off on all that anti indigenous, anti brown person stuff! Terrible terrible. Izzy even called him a “dog”. 😱🤯🙄🙄🙄🙄
I don’t know where this now blocked account is coming from, but this hue and cry of razzism in OFMD is so FUBAR!
do people know it was color blind and accent blind casting to hire Taika as Blackbeard? Like most of the show. Which strives for inclusive casting. real life Blackbeard was most likely WHITE from the early 1700s England.
Real life Stede Bonnet was from the Barbados, and was NOT a kiwi.
Can PoC not play mass murderers? I don’t get this!
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mariocki · 2 years ago
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Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning, 1985)
"Jason Voorhees? You're out of your fucking mind, you've been out in the sun too long! Jason Voorhees is dead! His body was cremated, he's nothing but a handful of ash."
"You know that for sure, mayor? Were you there? Did you see him cremated?"
#friday the 13th part v: a new beginning#jasoniad#slasher film#horror imagery tw#1985#danny steinmann#martin kitrosser#david cohen#john shepherd#shavar ross#juliette cummins#todd bryant#tiffany helm#melanie kinnaman#corey parker#miguel a. núñez jr.#sonny shields#dick wieand#rebecca wood#ric mancini#absolutely the dumbest film in the series so far‚ and contender for one of the dumbest slashers to come out of the 80s marathon of big#screen splatterers. starts with an unlikeable vibe full of ott eccentric characters and needlessly goofy asides and silly performances#and ends with one of the most inane and inexplicable twists in horror cinema (so much so that a scene explaining it had to be shot and#inserted in post after test audiences understandably reacted with bafflement). I'd be even harder on this film if it wasn't also doing#one thing really well: it sets up one twist so cleverly and with such capable misdirection that i was fully suckered when it DOESN'T happen#and instead the stupider twist does. it sounds weird but it's a case of leading on a smug and self confident horror viewer (guilty) and#it's honestly a brilliant bit of 'i bet you have this figured out huh.. Wrong!'. otherwise tho yeah this is not a great film. also it's#very noticeably sleazier and nastier than its predecessors‚ with much more nudity and sex and general exploitation.#director Steinmann had a background in pornography and it shows pretty clearly; disquieting too to read about the bts shoots which give an#impression of an unsafe and exploitative film production which pressured the women in the cast into doing more nude work
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khakilike · 11 months ago
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The Holy Roller #3, Andy Samberg et al. and Roland Boschi
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dalekofchaos · 3 days ago
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My top 10 Jack The Ripper suspects
Jacob Levy
David Cohen
Hyam Hyams
Aaron Kosminski
Montague John Druit
Royal Conspiracy/Prince Albert Victor
Walter Sickert
Francis Tumblety
Dr John Williams
Thomas Bond
Runnerups:
Charles Allen Lechmere William Henry Bury George Chapman Frederick Bailey Deeming James Kelly Joseph Barnett James Maybrick
Bonus theories.
I believe it was a doctor that worked at the Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary. All of the women were recently treated there before they were murdered.
Other than that, I DO still think the Royal connection is possible, if not the Royals, than a very Upper classman who took pleasure in controlling the poor with fear and punishing women.
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news-buzz · 14 days ago
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Canada’s privacy laws limit cross-border sex trafficking probes: U.S. envoy - National News Buzz
Canada’s privacy laws are one of the “real barriers” to addressing the significant issue of cross-border sex trafficking, the outgoing U.S. ambassador to Canada says. Sex trafficking is one of several border security concerns that have been routinely discussed between the two countries under the Biden administration, Ambassador David Cohen says, long before U.S. president-elect Donald Trump…
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aanews69 · 3 months ago
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What happened to San Francisco after Dreamforce? The city's issues resurfaced, prompting a call for permanent solutions. Share your thoughts! #SanFrancisco #DreamforceAftermath #SFCleanup #HomelessIssue Subscribe����: https://vist.ly/3mhd4nq Get Gear 👉: https://inspiredgear.vista.page/
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head-post · 3 months ago
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Global media control gaining momentum
Poland discusses reforming state media while a lawsuit in Greece threatens to silence journalists, with social streaming and media giants collecting user data.
The Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) consortium completed a two-day mission to Poland on 16-17 September, holding meetings with the Minister of Justice, Adam Bodnar, the Ministry of Culture, as well as journalists, publishers, regulators, and media law experts.
The mission focused on measures to reform public media, the protection of journalists from Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) and proposals to reform the media landscape in line with the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA).
The meetings discussed changes in the state media after Donald Tusk’s government used legal mechanisms to remove senior figures from the public broadcaster Telewizja Polska S.A. The ministry also said it had swiftly withdrawn 37 SLAPP cases brought by the previous cabinet.
The government has been criticised for being slow to implement reforms and provide legal and financial certainty for the public broadcaster, which has been in a state of “liquidation” since the beginning of the year.
Press freedom in Greek court
MFRR expressed its full support to Greek journalist Stavroula Poulimeni and media outlet Alterthess ahead of their appeal hearing on 19 September. The hearing followed a court ruling. The judgement partially upheld a civil suit seeking damages for Poulimeni’s reporting on the conviction of two Hellas Gold executives for water pollution.
Alterthess was ordered to pay €3,000 to one of the executives in 2023 for reporting on his court conviction in October 2020. The judge ruled that although the sentence was publicly available information, the publication of his name was a breach of his privacy protected by GDPR rules and caused moral damage.
If the judgement stands, the future of judicial journalism and the public’s right of access to court decisions will be jeopardised. Moreover, the court’s ruling risks fuelling new SLAPP aimed at silencing media outlets in Greece, where journalists are already facing increasing legal harassment.
No data protection
Social media companies collect, share, and process vast amounts of information about their users without transparency or oversight, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) report.
The document published on Thursday analyses how Meta Platforms, ByteDance’s TikTok, Amazon’s Twitch gaming platform, and other companies manage user data. The FTC concludes that data management and storage policies at many of them are “woefully inadequate.”
Media companies collected data through tracking technologies used in online advertising, by buying information from data brokers, and in other ways, FTC Chair Lina Khan stated.
While lucrative for the companies, these surveillance practices can endanger people’s privacy, threaten their freedoms, and expose them to a host of harms, from identity theft to stalking.
Data privacy, especially for children and teens, is a hot topic. The US House is considering bills passed by the Senate in July to address the impact of social media on young users. Meta recently released accounts for teens that include enhanced parental control features.
In addition to collecting data, most of the companies reviewed by the FTC collected users’ ages and genders or guessed them based on other information. Some also gathered information about users’ income, education, and marital status.
However, advertising industry groups criticised the report on Thursday. David Cohen, chief executive of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, an advertising and marketing group including Snapchat, TikTok and Amazon, said:
We are disappointed with the FTC’s continued characterisation of the digital advertising industry as engaged in ‘mass commercial surveillance.
Meta recently said it would ban Russian state media from using its apps, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads. The measure was taken after US prosecutors claimed that RT allegedly funded influence campaigns through social media.
Read more HERE
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photo-dujenoir · 4 months ago
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David Cohen
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that-other-smile · 4 months ago
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David Cohen
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