Trump’s moves to bludgeon trading partners with tariffs and leave them to bear the brunt of a reckless, counterproductive war with Iran opened the door for China to present itself as a model of stability in a world of Trumpian chaos. open.substack.com/pub/contrari...
It's difficult to describe my weird talk, so here are a few teaser slides.
the lineup for Mark Leckey's "The Physics of Mystics" at GPS.
On April 30th, I'm giving the strangest talk I've ever given as part of a 3-day event for artist Mark Leckey ("The Physics of Mystics") at Giorno Poetry Systems in the Bowery, NYC.
Our President’s betrayal of you, and the EU, really drives much of our animus towards him and his minions.
We deserve your suspicion, but when we get our country back we’re going to fight hard to make this right.
None of this should have ever happened nor would it have without Russian infowars….
Convos around sex worker safety + anti-trafficking are often centered on the West.
It’s important to recognize how different the experiences of sex workers in the non-Western regions exploited by global superpowers are.
I mean, he DID corrupt a Hobbit into his minion and got him elected Vice President.
It probably says something that I learned the Pitt was a show about a hospital significantly after I learned the Pitt was a show where the fanbase were fanbasing.
while @jamellebouie.net isn’t wrong to note that this sounds like warmed over David Duke ca 1990, it is also very much vintage Peter Thiel circa 1988. these arguments were circulating in the debate over Stanford’s western culture program, a debate Thiel lost.
he’s been bent on vengeance ever since.
No previous American president, in any era, of any party, would have tolerated a drunken, erratic, absent FBI chief
www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...
At man overhovedet købte software fra Palantir viser - igen - den danske stats håbløse naivitet og infantile godtroenhed. De embedsmænd, der stod for indkøbet dengang har hverken sat sig ind i datasikkerhed eller Peter Thiels anti-demokratiske sindelag.
I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I HAVE TO REPOST THIS BECAUSE YOU ARE 110% RIGHT ON.
The crucial thing to understand about Peter Thiel is that he adores "The Lord of the Rings" and no one in human history has ever so utterly completely missed all the salient points of what a book is about.
EARTH. SET.
(You were 100% right about the “sound on,” Yashar.
Absolutely incredible.
NASA Astronaut Reid Wiseman, who commanded Artemis II, took this footage from the far side of the Moon with his iPhone.
Watch with sound on.
In the same manifesto, Palantir's owners argued that we need a national military draft, that soft power is over, and that we were too hard on Germany and Japan after World War II. I don't think that company should be allowed to exist anymore.
something something something
To the Shores of Tripoli….
‘Saying "never better," baby,
am I a victim of luck?
Never better, baby,
I was a victim of luck
Never better, baby,
at last I don't give a fuck
Baby, I’m freeeeeeeeeee….’
music.apple.com/us/album/vic...
Emily Haines has long been one of my favorite songwriters, and she doesn’t disappoint on “Victim of Luck,” one of the preview cuts for METRIC’s upcoming 11th LP, 𝑹𝒐𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒊𝒛𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑫𝒊𝒗𝒆.
(I’m a sucker for double, triple, and sometimes quadruple meanings depending on where one punctuates the lyrics.)
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf left me with the not entirely inaccurate impression that the primary problem with most abusers is that they’re not written by Edward Albee and played by Elizabeth Taylor or Richard Burton.
Oh what have they done? There’s no fun to a draconian crackdown. And what will you do When they come for you In the draconian crackdown?
Something’s wrong
oh very very
wrong here
The chaotic nature
of the soured atmosphere
We have found ourselves
participants in their nightmare
I took the blame
the hatred
then with certainty
I said “I now declare a state of emergency
with immediate effect indefinitely”
music.apple.com/us/album/dra...
Now that I’ve stared into the void So many people I’ve annoyed I have to find a middle way A better way of giving
…not going to do that mustache, though;
WHY, MOLKO, WHY?!?
(I’m probably a little old for “What Would Brian Molko Do?” but then again so is Brian Molko.)
music.apple.com/us/album/bri...
…It’s a maze For rats to try. It’s a race A race for rats A race for rats To die….
Sick and tired of
Maggie’s farm
She’s a bitch
With broken arms
To wave
You worries
And cares
Goodbye
music.apple.com/us/album/sla...
A diagram showing the VDA framework and the Arc of Democracy. At the top, three icons label the essential elements of democracy: Verification (tick), Deliberation (speech bubble), and Accountability (magnifying glass). Arrows descend from each through three horizontal bands representing the arc: Substantial (truth tested, voices included, power constrained), Performative (forms remain but substance is weak, rituals without consequence), and Simulated (appearance maintained but functions inverted: propaganda as verification, polarisation as deliberation, scapegoating as accountability). A vertical arrow on the left marks the arc's direction: improvements, decline, collapse. A column on the right maps counterpublics onto the same three states: functional counterpublics act in a substantial way, hollow counterpublics in a performative way, disordered counterpublics in a simulated way. The bands shift from grey through pink to red as democracy moves toward simulation.
A society that runs on this stack doesn't stop holding elections, or debating, or running investigations. The forms stay, but what goes is their capacity to constrain power. The arc bends toward simulation, carried out in the language of defending democracy.
For the kind of work I do, verification that applies the same standards to allies and adversaries, that scrutinises power on whichever side it sits, this worldview is structurally hostile. Symmetric verification becomes part of the cultural pathology the document wants reined in.
It's also worth being clear about who's doing the arguing. Palantir sells operational software to defence, intelligence, immigration & police agencies. These 22 points aren't philosophy floating in space, they're the public ideology of a company whose revenue depends on the politics it's advocating.
Neither configuration can coexist with functional VDA. Verification gets reduced to selective fact-display. Deliberation runs as theatre while the questions that matter are ruled out of order. Accountability gets pointed at critics while leadership is left untouched. This is VDA as simulation.
