Suddenly Facebook seemed to be accusing me of being a robot, and it presented me with a button to prove I wasn't, but when I clicked it, nothing happened. Then it told me it had disabled my account and offered me a button to ask for a review, which did work and they said I didn't pass and they'd permanently disabled my account. They didn't respond to my efforts to contact them, so I started a new one using the same name which it let me do, but it's nearly impossible to reconstruct an account that's over a decade old, and of course I've lost all my data (they offered me a button to download my data, but that didn't work, either.) It breaks my heart that I can no longer read all those memories with discussions that included friends who are no longer with us. And I can't remember all those names. Took two weeks for my sister to notice my friend request, and she's the whole reason I ever joined Facebook in the first place, dammit.
Once again, events are leaving me speechless. Someone shot Charlie Kirk. To me, that fact alone meant it was probably a right-winger, since most people on the left didn't rate him as important enough to want dead, and anyway the right-wingers are the ones with the guns. But right-wingers instantly started inventing reasons why the entire "left" should be rounded up for killing Charlie Kirk (and so much for free speech), while some gamers all said he was a Groyper. It makes more sense to think this was right-on-right violence, but the alleged killer apparently shared a landlord with a transperson so this is obvious definitive proof that there are vast left-wing violence networks funneling money from George Soros to the Democratic Socialists of America through AOC and Mamdani. No, I am not the person who made that up. Next to that one, even the theory that Mossad took him out doesn't sound so absurd. But now, suddenly, we have a text between the alleged shooter and his alleged lover that supplies all the evidence needed to wrench the whole story back to the story everyone was trying to tell on day one that got derailed when the "He wrote 'trans' on the bullet" story turned out to be a misunderstanding of the letters TRN engraved on the casing in its manufacture. So we had this whole "It was a trans!" story floating around for more than a day, then it got debunked and he seemed to be part of gamer-Groyper culture, and then we got redirected right back around to, "Oh, what a relief, it was the queers and trannies after all!" I've got whiplash.
Meanwhile, late-night television is taking hits because, bottom line, conservatives never, ever, want to be criticized. Making sure that critics get fired is their version of "free speech". Stephen Colbert is fired, Jimmy Kimmel is swept off the air, and small publications are nuisance-suited out of existence while Trump himself launches utterly laughable suits against The New York Times, even though it's a pretty conservative paper. Trump has now called for the firing of Seth Myers and Jimmy Fallon.
I wanted Obama put on trial for killing Americans without charge or trail, and I want Trump put on trial for making up reasons to shoot up a Venezuelan boat on an even more dubious pretext.
"Bernie Sanders claims Israel is committing genocide in Gaza: Sanders, who is Jewish and had previously refrained from saying that Israel was committing a genocide against the Palestinians, called the Gaza War 'a genocide'. 'Many legal experts have now concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza,' US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) said Wednesday. In an article published on his personal website, he cited several human-rights groups and international organizations that said the Israel-Hamas War qualified as a genocide. They include the International Association of Genocide Scholars and Israeli groups B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel." I'd wondered why he hadn't already, but I guess the UN making it official may have tipped the balance.
Joe Wrote, "A Winning Strategy? The DNC Tells Its Voters to F&#ck Off: 'Why don't people like us?' The Democrats do not have a 'young voter problem.' Nor do they have a 'Latino voter problem,' a 'working-class voter problem,' or a 'male voter problem.' The Democratic Party's poor performances with various demographics can be traced to an underlying cause: The Democrats have a Democrat problem. With exceptions, the party is composed of officials, staffers, pundits, donors, and politicians who do not believe in politics, at least not in the literal sense of the word. While most parties try to build support by turning their constituents' wishes into policy, the Democrats take the opposite approach. The political objective is determined by wealthy party and media insiders, who then try to convince their constituents that the elite-decreed platform is in their best interest. This was best illustrated in the concluding chapter of Abundance, which outlined a top-down political theory: the policies are decided by the donor class, and the job of Democrat-aligned media and politicians is to sell those policies to American voters."
"'What Other Country Gets Away With All of This?': Israel Bombs Hamas Ceasefire Negotiating Team in Doha: 'The whole point was to gather people together to discuss the peace offer to kill them,' said one journalist. The government of Qatar slammed Israel for a "cowardly" attack in violation of international law on Tuesday, an assassination attempt which targeted members of Hamas' negotiating team in the capital city of Doha who had gathered to discuss a new Gaza ceasefire proposal put forth by US President Donald Trump. As they attacked the negotiating team, the Israel Defense Forces also demanded the evacuation of 1.3 million Palestinians from Gaza City and areas north of it, as they intensify attacks there. The assassination attempt came hours after Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said Israel had accepted the US proposal, many of the details of which have not been disclosed. According to Al Jazeera, the proposal was similar to one previously proposed by the US which would require the release of half of the living Israeli captives who were kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, 2023, after which a 60-day ceasefire would begin with negotiations for a permanent end to the war. That deal was agreed to by both parties before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed out."
A must-read at Infinite Jaz, "Israel might annex the West Bank—what would that actually mean? A brief explainer. For weeks now, stories about Israel's looming declaration of sovereignty over the West Bank have been breaking almost daily. I've argued—along with others—that annexation has in many ways already happened. Yet what's actually unfolding on the ground, and what would change with a formal declaration, remains shrouded in mystery to most observers, like so much of the occupation, long buried under euphemism. This explainer is meant to get you up to speed." They can't just declare the whole West Bank a part of Israel without coming up with some explanation for why the Palestinians who live there can't vote in their "democracy". But they can't let them vote, either. So watch for them trying to provoke a third intifada.
Cory Doctorow on "The worst possible antitrust outcome [...] But Judge Mehta turned his courtroom into a Star Chamber, a black hole whence no embarrassing information about Google's wicked deeds could emerge. That meant that the only punishment Google would have to bear from this trial would come after the government won its case, when the judge decided on a punishment (the term of art is 'remedy') for Google. Yesterday, he handed down that remedy and it is as bad as it could be. In fact, it is likely the worst possible remedy for this case: Let's start with what's not in this remedy. Google will not be forced to sell off any of its divisions – not Chrome, not Android. Despite the fact that the judge found that Google's vertical integration with the world's dominant mobile operating system and browser were a key factor in its monopolization, Mehta decided to leave the Google octopus with all its limbs intact. Google won't be forced to offer users a "choice screen" when they set up their Android accounts, to give browsers other than Chrome a fair shake. Nor will Google be prevented from bribing competitors to stay out of the search market. One of the facts established in the verdict was that Google had been slipping Apple more than $20b/year in exchange for which, Apple forbore from making a competing search engine. This exposed every Safari and iOS user to Google surveillance, while insulating Google from the threat of an Apple competitor. And then there's Google's data. Google is the world's most prolific surveiller, and the company boasts to investors about the advantage that its 24/7 spying confers on it in the search market, because Google knows so much about us and can therefore tailor our results. Even if this is true – a big if – it's nevertheless a fucking nightmare. Google has stolen every fact about our lives, in service to propping up a monopoly that lets it steal our money, too. Any remedy worth the name would have required Google to delete ("disgorge," in law-speak) all that data." And then it gets worse.
"'They Roll Right Over': Poll Finds Many Democrats Call Party Weak And Ineffective: Nine months after Trump won a second term, Democrats appear to harbor more resentment toward their party than do Republicans, an AP-NORC poll says [...] Respondents were asked to share the first word or phrase that came to mind when they thought of the Republican and Democratic parties. Answers were then sorted into broad categories, including negative and positive attributes. Overall, U.S. adults held a dim view of both parties, with about 4 in 10 using negative attributes, including words such as 'dishonest' or 'stupid.' But nearly nine months after Republican Donald Trump won a second presidential term, Democrats appear to be harboring more resentment about the state of their party than do Republicans. Democrats were likelier to describe their own party negatively than Republicans. Republicans were about twice as likely to describe their own party positively. 'They're spineless,' Cathia Krehbiel, a 48-year-old Democrat from Indianola, Iowa, said of her party."
Radley Balko, "A warning from a friend [...] At one point during the conference I chatted with a friend and former colleague I've known for 25 years. (I'm not using his name because it was a casual conversation.) He might be the most well-read person I know. He's a scholar who has studied authoritarianism for decades, but he's also an activist who has provided aid and support for dissident movements fighting authoritarian governments dating back to the Cold War — at times at some risk to himself. Because of that work, he's seen the abuses of authoritarian states firsthand. So he's been scornful over the years when Americans have hyperbolically likened their political opponents to Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pinochet, or some other totalitarian figure. I suspect that once you've seen real authoritarianism on the ground, that sort of posturing probably seems insulting. In other words, I've always found him to be a sober realist about these things. So at the conference I asked him straight up, on a scale of one to ten, how worried he is about what's happening in the U.S. right now. I was hoping he'd give me a historical reality check — that he'd tell me my own fears are exaggerated. He answered, 'I think I'm at eleven.' I spoke with another old friend and colleague who works in AI and data systems. I asked her if DOGE's access to health records, financial records, and other sensitive data is as bad as it seems. 'However bad you think it is, it's worse,' she answered. 'They have everything.'"
RIP: "Mark Volman, Co-Founder of the Turtles and Vocalist on Flower Power Classic 'Happy Together,' Dead at 78: With longtime friend Howard Kaylan, Volman formed the duo Flo and Eddie, who worked with Frank Zappa, T. Rex, Alice Cooper, and more" I've been gratified to see a lot of tributes to him in the last few days, I hadn't realized he was as fondly remembered by so many others as he is by me.
RIP: " Bobby Hart, co-writer of Monkees hits like Last Train to Clarksville, dies aged 86." Of course, they wrote for other people and Boyce & Hart's "Hurt So Bad" was a hit for Little Anthony & The Imperials, and "Come A Little Bit Closer was an enormous hit for Jay & The Americans, but everyone remembers those Monkees hits like "Last Train To Clarksville and their title music, "Hey Hey We´re The Monkees". (I hadn't realized, though, that they also wrote "I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight".)
RIP: "Robert Redford, Legendary Leading Man and Oscar-Winning Director, Dies at 89: The founder of the Sundance Institute died early Tuesday morning at home in Utah surrounded by those he loved." I know I've mentioned before that Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid is still my favorite porn movie, but I don't think I've said anything about how much I loved Sneakers. But when I saw that he had died, I wasn't really thinking of those movies, but him. How could they not realize that this is what we had to compare them to, and no matter how high they rise or how much money they make, they could never measure up?
Doctorow on the connection between Wilhoit's Law and everything that's going on, "By all means, tread on those people: The thing that makes Wilhoit's Law so apt to this moment – and to our understanding of the recent history that produced this moment – is how it connects the petty with the terrifying, the trivial with the radical, the micro with the macro. It's a way to join the dots between fascists' business dealings, their interpersonal relationships, and their political views. It describes a continuum that ranges from minor commercial grifts to martial law, and shows how tolerance for the former creates the conditions for the latter."
Adolph Reed, Jr. in 2014, "Nothing Left: The long, slow surrender of American liberals For nearly all the twentieth century there was a dynamic left in the United States grounded in the belief that unrestrained capitalism generated unacceptable social costs. That left crested in influence between 1935 and 1945, when it anchored a coalition centered in the labor movement, most significantly within the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). It was a prominent voice in the Democratic Party of the era, and at the federal level its high point may have come in 1944, when FDR propounded what he called 'a second Bill of Rights.' Among these rights, Roosevelt proclaimed, were the right to a 'useful and remunerative job,' 'adequate medical care,' and 'adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment.'" And then something terrible happened.
Weldon Berger seems to be getting back into blogging. He has the latest on how George Santos Finds Prison Distasteful, Plus a number of other things old blog-readers might remember.
"Collapse of critical Atlantic current is no longer low-likelihood, study finds" — Please wait until I'm dead.
"Apparently this video was shown to the public in London"
The Turtles, "Let Me Be" (Shindig - Nov 13, 1965)
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