National media advertising required mass audiences in order to be effective. All of corporate America had huge financial incentives to manufacture a national consensus culture to sell Levi’s and Chevy’s to. Civil War before mass culture, Civil War after.
Notice that Google has built and deployed an AI Deepfake detection tool because very rich content owners are to be feared.
Virginia Woolf, more than a hundred years ago:
A golden retriever has both paws up at a bank teller’s window.
“Are you the branch manager?”
“Yes I am, how can I help you?”
“I would like two branches, please.”
“How would you like that?”
“Two big sticks, four little sticks.”
Every accusation a confession. We should build a Justice Department in Exile to catalog it all.
SORKIN: There's a whole number of very large companies, including Apple and Amazon, that have not sought reimbursements yet for the tariffs. From what I understand, part of the reason is they're worried about offending you.
TRUMP: I think it's brilliant. They got to know me very well. I'm honored.
Journalism has been in a fight with AI ever since algorithms and online ad systems combined. We replaced human editors and publishers with robot platforms. The collapse of journalism, and all of the cultural knock on effects, is what AI job loss looks like. It’s the model for the future.
I’ve had the same editor since 1967. Many times he has said to me over the years or asked me, Why would you use a semicolon instead of a colon? And many times over the years I have said to him things like: I will never speak to you again. Forever. Goodbye. That is it. Thank you very much. And I leave. Then I read the piece and I think of his suggestions. I send him a telegram that says, OK, so you’re right. So what? Don’t ever mention this to me again. If you do, I will never speak to you again
Maya Angelou on the joys of being edited
What you have to understand is that the United States started a war, almost immediately lost it, then began the laborious process of negotiating against itself, and is now settling into the secondary denial phase …
Ossoff: "How does American politics really work? It's coin operated. Money goes in, favors come out. It's been running on secret money, corporate money, billionaire money ... all of this gave rise to a depraved president who exploits this rot to empower and enrich himself"
The real secret is that both can be true. 97% of the US land mass is classified as rural, but only 20% of the population lives there. There isn’t enough money in the world to make that population feel served the way an urban person feels served. Because they’re so far spread out.
someone should jump past the book directly to stopping it
Pete Hegseth Nailed It. No Really. talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/pete-...
It will never stop pissing me off how much trump is going to walk away from this presidency as a “real” billionaire in a way he never was before, and it is going to be solely because of the public office
A parliamentary system helps. You vote for your local mp, and the national issues come along.
Fascism is a child’s logic.
In fascism the will of the leader is central. Racism may be an object of the will, but it’s the finality of the will that matters. Because fascism superimposes the mortality of a man onto the state. No one follows him. No state exists beyond his death. All solutions must be final.
The adorable accent softens all criticism.
Yeah, I think one of the most incredible things about the pope-off is that when previous popes have done similar things, it had to go through a translation barrier, but no nuance and no shade is lost when the American pope is being bitchy [complimentary]
Joe Biden gave everyone the time to process and get ready for Trump again. He ameliorated the pandemic and blunted the democratic crisis. He didn’t save us from everything, but your opponents never let you win everything. If we turn Trump back, he’ll share in that victory.
KERNEN: We'd never be able to send anyone back if you needed a judicial warrant every single time
RAND PAUL: Well, I don't think that's true. Obeying the 4th Amendment of the Constitution shouldn't be too difficult. It's something we fought the revolution over.
Some personal news ;)
For exactly one election cycle.
Can WE join the European Prosecution Office?
Something like this will have to happen in this country once Trumpism is defeated. In the absence of accountability, the world will rightly assume that it will happen again.
Leo: "The message of the church, the message of the gospel -- blessed are the peacemakers. I do not look at my role as being political. I don't want to get into a debate with him. I don't think the message of the gospel is meant to be abused in the way that some people are doing."
Cardinal Cupich: "We're dehumanizing the victims of war by turning the suffering of people & killing of children & our own soldiers into entertainment. To splice together movie cuts w/ actual bombings & targeting of people for purposes of entertainment is sickening. This is not who we are."
This chart is wild. About 96 teen girls in every 1000 had babies in the 1950s, and virtually all of them were married. Today it’s 17 out of 1000, and almost all are unmarried. But even in the 90s it was about 62!! Just wild. We’ve culturally narrowed the acceptable child rearing years. A lot.
Massive declines since 1950, 1990, and then 2010. The most recent decline has tracked a huge decline in teens having any kind of sex. And similar increase in contraception among those who do have sex. Whites went from ~26 births per 1000 in 2008 to ~12 in 2018. www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...
Remember when he imprisoned sick immigrant children in order to terrorize their families? He doesn’t have “imminent” as a category related to “threat”. Just “threat”, where that word means “anything that isn’t actively fellating me, Donald Trump”, and where the response is “death”.
