Lots of people on Twitter saying they're seeing tweets vanishing. I think it's because Elmo slashed too much infrastructure spending, but it could be an old glitch that's resurfaced, and now there are no engineers to fix it.
https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-twitter-disappearing-tweets-1850253393

Yeah, if someone could maybe have a little chat with the Israelis and tell em to take it easy with those Palestinian civilians, that'd be great

AwwwWWW! 🤗

I *told* you Zuck's Metaverse was like Second Life but it's even dumber and not ready for prime time.
This (very funny) article talks about what it's like in there: people have no legs, there's a ton of weirdos, virtual porn, and, well, it's mostly empty: Zuck was expecting a billion users, there's only 20M at the moment.
I have no interest in it at all, but you do you, seriously. Hard pass.
//nymag.com/intelligencer/article/mark-zuckerberg-metaverse-meta-horizon-worlds.html

I literally cannot picture Marjorie Taylor-Greene in any other setting than watching old cowboy movies in a Texas Chainsaw Massacre house, with chickens and Guinea pigs running around the whole place and three super-smelly German shepherds barking constantly, which she really, really likes because she gets to hear her own voice going "SHUT! UP!" every 10 minutes.

Citizens aren't all stupid. They know what's good for them. When a government refuses to offer to pay to get them all trained in trades or provided with advanced education because it's too focused on expanding empire and enriching the rich, its leaders aren't doing their jobs, they're ruining the country, don't you think?

Last year, USA Today reported that since the start of covid, over 338,000 lives would have been saved if universal health care had been in place to address pre-existing conditions that contributed to COVID-related deaths.

It wasn't laziness that killed people, it was the systematic greed of our medical and pharmaceutical system.
Trump's politicization of the virus makes him guilty of pandemicide, but mass death was assured when a handful of unregulated-free-market capitalists smelled profits.

Twitter is going downhill fast. Elon's cutting corners on infrastructure and office space. The San Francisco HQ is down to 2 floors from 8. They closed the Sacramento data center and halved the Atlanta center, reduced AWS usage, and a good chunk of their Google Cloud is gone.

There's no room for the data.

Some techs on Reddit were joking that Elon might actually think he can run Twitter on his laptop. The consequences for all this are becoming alarmingly apparent to users large and small.

Some say the Inflation Reduction Act was actually more about green energy than reducing greed-driven inflation. It's already been successful in driving capitalists to invest in green businesses, more and more of which are suddenly popping up in WV etc.
It's nice, but doesn't guarantee companies will end fossil fuel production, being that it will always be profitable. This report looks at the economic sticks that need to come with all those pro-business tax-break carrots.

https://www.climateandcommunity.org/economists-case-end-fossil-fuels

In 2000, Harry Reid said that Koch Industries produces more greenhouse emissions than Chevron, Shell and Valero, a statement PolitiFact rated 'mostly true'.

They paid the highest fine *ever* imposed on a company for causing 300 oil spills.

Charles Koch *is* the climate crisis.

Fun facts about Henry Kissinger:

- Helped Nixon fight a secret war in Cambodia

- Encouraged bombing campaigns throughout Southeast Asia that either killed, wounded or left 6 million people homeless

- Helped brutal dictator Pol Pot gain power, which led to a genocide

- Won a Nobel Peace Prize

Waitwhat

So Marianne Williamson is just as wacky as she appears. Okay.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/16/marianne-williamson-former-staffers-abuse

The super-wealthy don't worry about covid because everything they do in their daily lives has a seclusive aspect: private planes, food preparers, country clubs, physicians making in-calls, all-inclusive hotel-sized homes, etc. They don't have to take the daily risks regular people do, so they quickly began to view covid as an inconvenience to their lifestyle.
Climate catastrophe is the problem that will force them to embrace massive change, and a lot sooner than you think.

Woke: subscribing to the admirable, very accurate belief that basically all groups are far less privileged and respected than cis het white males but meanwhile refusing to see that economic class is the great denominator and thus remaining completely unaware that in order to change our unregulated free-market torture-capitalist system they need to stand up for all workers who are less educated and financially secure than they are.

Somehow the 400-500 psychotically greedy families who own America successfully normalized a level of inflation in which every single thing suddenly cost twice what it did a few months ago. During a pandemic. During an unnecessary interest rate hike. The blame it on "energy costs" and "lack of workers," but that's bs.

This is how extreme nationalism grows, stuff exactly like that, when regular people are under so much stress that they blame everyone but the elites who screw them over.

The covid lab leak theory gets people really angry, mostly because it's culture war nonsense, like you're attacking science itself if you say "Sure, it's possible."
Seems kind of stupid for non-virologists to read one article and go online and yell "No way was it a lab accident! What are you, a Trump voter?!"
I can admit it's possible it was a mutation. So what? Half the shit you read online is a psyop to begin with. Shouldn't labs always be improving their safety standards anyway? Jfc.

America will never have a serious labor movement without making all workers understand that system-wide racism isn't helpful to the cause in any way. Fact, not opinion.

Lol I'm so totally overloaded with stuff to do.

Every day, apart from my day job, I work on a weekly music review column for Hippo Press, a full-time antiques-flipping side hustle, tons of social media stuff, and now I'm in the middle of writing a book.

It's my jam but not recommended. 3 months off would be so goddam mint. 😂

PS: I'm not a huge coffee lover either. Kinda sick of it to tell the truth.

ok

Ron DeSantis Was a Guantanamo Torturer?

Might be old news to you, but probable GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis did spend time in Guantanamo Bay as a JAG attorney. Months ago, The Empire Files interviewed a former Guantanamo detainee who swore that DeSantis' function was interviewing detainees in order to find find out how best to torture them.
Note that under the circumstances this is hearsay unless someone has corroborating anecdotes etc.
https://soundcloud.com/eyesleft/desantis

Our neoliberal, monetarist form of Capitalism can only sustain itself by perpetuating relations of ridiculous levels of inequality among human groups, so, for it to survive, it has to exploit and prey upon the unequal differentiations in human "value."

Other than that it's the best, don't get me wrong.