Wut?

In a sign of the impending apocalypse, Democrat Mary Peltola won the Congressional special election for Alaska's single representative.

She beat Sarah Palin and Nick Begich III in a 3-way runoff using instant runoff voting.

The last time that a Democrat won a state wide race in Alaska, it was Mark Begich, Nick's uncle., and that was only after his opponent, Ted Stevens,w as convicted of corruption. (Family dinners in the Begich family must be interesting.)

The current electoral system, a jungle primary followed by a ranked choice voting general among the top 3 (or 4) primary candidates was created in an attempt to marginalize the right wing whack jobs influence in Republican Party primaries.

It appears that it worked:

Democrat Mary Peltola has won a special election for the U.S. House in Alaska, defeating Republican Sarah Palin and becoming the first-ever Alaska Native to win a seat in Congress as well as the first woman to clinch the state’s at-large district.

Peltola’s win flips a seat that had long been in Republican hands. She will serve the remainder of a term left open by the sudden death of Rep. Don Young (R) in March. Young represented Alaska in Congress for 49 years.

Peltola, who’s Yup’ik, [Eskimo, not Indian, FYI] is a tribal fisheries manager and former state representative who led in initial counts after the Aug. 16 election. But her win wasn’t assured until Wednesday, when Alaska election officials made decisive second-choice counts using the state’s new ranked-choice voting system. Republican Nick Begich III, who finished third, was eliminated, and his supporters’ second-choice votes were redistributed to the remaining candidates.

………

Peltola had nearly 40 percent of first-choice votes after preliminary counts, which put her about 16,000 votes ahead of Palin. Half of the Alaskans who made Begich their first choice ranked Palin second, and 21 percent did not make a second choice. The remaining 29 percent — a surprisingly large fraction, even to some of Peltola’s supporters — ranked Peltola second, flipping from a Republican to a Democrat. The second-choice support for Peltola was enough for her to hold off Palin, leaving the Democrat about 5,200 votes ahead.

………

Palin’s defeat comes in her first campaign since she stepped down as Alaska’s governor in 2009; former president Donald Trump endorsed her and held a rally on her behalf in Anchorage.

Mercy, Palin lost despite a Trump endorsement.  That's some strong schadenfreude/

Peltola’s campaign focused on local issues, such as what to do about declining salmon returns. She is expected to be sworn in to office in mid-September.

All to often, the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) will choose a carpet-bagger who has money, or a gift for raising money who knows nothing of local issues.

This is a losing proposition.

………

Until she ran for Congress, Peltola was the executive director of the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, which co-manages federal salmon fisheries in a partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Peltola’s Yukon-Kuskokwim region — named for two major salmon rivers that flow through the area — has seen unprecedented collapses of key subsistence salmon runs in recent years. Peltola pledged to tackle the issue if elected.

………

Forty-eight candidates ran in a special primary election in June. That race narrowed the field to four — independent Al Gross later dropped out — before the Aug. 16 general election.

Meanwhile, a regularly scheduled election is playing out to decide who will hold the same U.S. House seat for the next two years, once the rest of Young’s term concludes. The primary for that race also was held Aug. 16, and Peltola, Palin and Begich are projected to advance, according to the Associated Press. There will also be a fourth spot on the ranked-choice ballot in November.

The November election is going to be very odd, no thanks in large part to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.

I am still not optimistic, but I am less pessimistic.

Now Fire Them

At the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor has refused to stay the enforcement of the vaccine mandate by New York City.

Now fire them.  The NYPD, and the whole City of New York, will benefit by their removal.

Being an anti-vaxx assholes is an indicator of a whole bunch of other problems with these individuals.

They never should have been given a gun and a badge:

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Monday declined to block New York City from enforcing its mandate that all municipal workers be vaccinated against COVID-19, rebuffing a police detective who challenged the public health policy.

The liberal justice denied Detective Anthony Marciano's request for a stay of the vaccination requirement while an appeal over his claims continue in a lower court. A federal judge threw out Marciano's case in March.

Sotomayor is the justice designated by the court to act on some matters arising from New York and certain other states.

………

Marciano remains on active duty while he appeals the denial of his vaccine exemption request. The city's health department ordered the mandate in October 2021. In February of this year, 1,430 municipal workers were fired for failing to comply.

Marciano filed his lawsuit last December in a state court. After the case was moved to Manhattan federal court, U.S. Judge Jed Rakoff dismissed the case in March.

………

The Manhattan-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied Marciano's stay request on Aug. 2.

Now fire his flabby cop ass.

This is Prize

A group of Texas knuckle draggers decided that it would good fun to intimidate a drag party.

They were greeted by heavily armed counter-protesters.

I can just imagine the expression on their faces when they realized that the queer folk that they were looking to beat down were armed: 

Fueled by months of lies teed up by far-right conspiracy mongers like Libs of TikTok’s Chaya Raichiklike and Georgia Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, what happened on Sunday in Roanoke, Texas, has by now become something of a familiar scene. 

Crowds were gathered outside a family friendly drag show at Anderson Distillery and Grill, close to the Dallas-Fort Worth area, some with signs accusing the establishment and its patrons of sexually abusing children, or of “grooming” them for abuse. 

This time, however, counter-protestors showed up, too. Armed with AR-15 style rifles, they outnumbered the anti-LGBTQ+ activists, according to Steven Monacelli, a journalist with Rolling Stone and Texas Observer, who was there to witness the heated exchanges and document some of the conflict on Twitter.

NOW: anti-trans activists are protesting a drag brunch in Roanoke, Texas, but are outnumbered by supporters of the event. I've only been here for about five minutes and I've already seen quite a few heated exchanges. pic.twitter.com/l4RcwWFlSZ

— steven monacelli (@stevanzetti) August 28, 2022

Shades of the "Battle of Maxton Field."

More of this.

Ha Ha!!!!!

Disgraced medical fraudster, and poster child for backpfeifengesicht, Martin Shkreli has claimed that he had been been hacked by a Trojan attached to pr0n that he downloaded.

I hope that this is true, because the alternative is that he conducted another scam on his investors, and that is WAY less expensive:

Martin Shkreli, one of the most notorious grifters of the 2010s, has already destroyed whatever goodwill he was trying to secure through the creation of Druglike, a web3 platform for pharmaceutical modeling. Not even a month removed from the venture’s announcement, Shkreli has been tied to an early token dump for the cryptocurrency that was supposedly powering the project.

As reported by Web3isgoinggreat, $MSI’s (short for Martin Shkreli Inu, which is in fact a real token) valuation dropped by 90 percent after a crypto wallet connected to Shkreli dumped its holdings in exchange for 239 ETH, or a little over $450,000.

………

BigTitsRoundAsses.exe — After YouTuber Muta Anas posted a video calling out Shkreli for being hacked, Shkreli himself reached out to Anas, the man behind a channel called SomeOrdinaryGamers, to offer an explanation for the dump. According to Shkreli, the suspicious token dump was the result of a hack stemming from malware inadvertently torrented while Shkreli tried to download some pornography.

………

Fool me twice — Shkreli is fresh out of a prison stint that was imposed for a series of financial crimes that were unrelated to his pharmaceutical price-gouging; he’s barely holding on, if at all, to any credibility. Given that, it would certainly be a choice to engage in traceable pump-and-dump crypto scheming this soon after re-entering society. Maybe he did get hacked after all? We can’t say for sure, but he’s provided at least some receipts owning to that fact.

Regardless of the exact reasoning for the sell-off, one thing is clear: Any venture headed by Shkreli, especially one that is pharmaceutical-adjacent, should probably be steered clear of.

Yeah.  He and Elizabeth Holmes should be banished to a deserted island.

They won't be but they should be.

Mandy Rice Davies Applies

Of course the Germans want to eliminate the ability of individual member nations to veto EU policy. 

They know that the dynamics of power in the European Union are such that they can always coerce a simple majority:

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday called on EU members to abandon the right to veto in favor of majority voting in a number of key areas. Such a move could facilitate the bloc’s future expansion.

………

“Where unanimity is required today, the risk of an individual country using its veto and preventing all the others from forging ahead increases with each additional member state,” the German chancellor said.

………

The German leader also wants the EU to switch to majority voting in areas such as taxation and foreign policy, adding that he knows “full well that this would also have repercussions for Germany.”

He's lying when he says that.  The Germans expect to dominate the alliance ad infinitum.

………

As it currently stands, any of the 27 EU members can override a decision supported by the other countries. This gives small states significant leverage on the bloc’s policies, which can at times paralyze decision-making.

If the EU wants majority rule, they need to implement real democratic government in the EU, and establish the primacy of voter elected representatives over the current bureaucratic structures.

Mikhail Gorbachev Dead at 91

He was arguably the most significant figure of the last quarter of the 20th century.

He was also naive in his dealing with the United States, where he assumed that engaging with the west would result a new cooperative world order.

What he got was NATO expansion, looting that put the elderly on the street, and forced the young to walk the street, and created the oligarchs.

On the plus side, he tried, and maybe someone will eventually succeed:

Mikhail Gorbachev, who has died aged 91, was the most important world figure of the last quarter of the 20th century. Almost singlehandedly he brought an end to 40 years of east-west confrontation in Europe and liberated the world from the danger of nuclear conflagration. It was not the objective he set himself when he was elected general secretary of the Soviet Communist party in March 1985, nor did he predict or plan the way the cold war would end, the haemorrhaging of the Communist party, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from eastern Europe, the reunification of Germany or the break-up of the Soviet Union itself.

What distinguished Gorbachev from previous Soviet leaders was that he started a process of reform and did not try to reverse it once it threatened to spin out of control. The great facilitator, he carried on, even to the point of resigning with dignity as his power faded away.

In the aftermath of his downfall, as his successor Boris Yeltsin stumbled into market economics, it became fashionable in the west to sneer at Gorbachev as “just another communist at heart”. He was called a failure because he had not been willing to liberalise state-controlled prices, privatise industry and open the Soviet economy to outside forces as fast as the emerging Russian elite or Yeltsin’s rightwing western advisers wanted. He was ridiculed for trying to “reform” communism when he should have recognised that it was dead.

The charges were unfair – as well as inaccurate – since they characterised Gorbachev as an ideologue when he was, in fact, one of the great pragmatists of modern Russian history. The only part that was true was that he tried to “reform” life for Russians. He sought to maintain some form of democratic socialism, with a continuing role for government intervention and a foundation of social justice. Compared with the crony capitalism and chaotic collapse of public services that marked the first years of post-communism in Russia, his goals seem admirable. There were a variety of avenues for developing democracy and introducing a market economy, and his view that the process should be done gradually was legitimate and honourable.

The world order following the dissolution of the USSR has not been a significant improvement.

Police Nazis. I hate Police Nazis.

In Omaha, Nebraska, police decided to swap weapons with a Nazi gun shop. 

Since the SPLC has revealed the transaction, this has all been put on hold.

A gear swap between the Omaha Police Department and local gun range 88 Tactical that was set to be approved by the Omaha City Council was removed from the council's consent agenda before Tuesday's meeting.

Just so you know, "88" = "HH" = Heil Hitler, and the good folks at 88 tactical have a bunker, a Nazi eagle on the front of their building, and there are Nazi and Neo-Nazi symbols throughout their lair.

The proposal had drawn heavy criticism on social media and prompted a letter from a local anti-gun group.

The proposal from Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer would have had the Omaha Police Department swap 28 expired ballistic helmets and 28 rifle plates in exchange for 120 Coyote AR magazines, 60 Glock 17 magazines and 30 orange Glock magazine base plates from 88 Tactical.

This swap is a sweetheart deal, intended to offer a support for a Nazi operation.

………

The OPD item was tabled "for further discussion and consideration," said Lt. Neal Bonacci, a department spokesman. He said he did not know when or if it might appear on the agenda again.

………

"The deal offered by 88 Tactical was the most beneficial to the department and would allow us to obtain needed equipment at no additional cost to taxpayers," Bonacci said.

Yeah, right, it was a good deal for the taxpayers. 

………

In her memo, she estimated that the city's items were worth about $11,000, while the ammunition they would receive in exchange was valued at about $2,550.

Yeah, a great deal for the taxpayer.

The cops were doing a favor for their Nazi buddy who is closely linked to police training initiatives.

Larry Ellison Has Been a Very Bad Boy

It's difficult to be more cavalier about the privacy of computer users than  the criminal enterprise formerly known as Facebook™, but Oracle is accused of unlawfully tracking 5 billion people.

Given that the current world population is 7¾ billion, this is quite an accomplishment:

American multinational tech company Oracle is facing a class-action lawsuit claiming it tracks and collects personal information on billions of people, generating revenue of over $40 billion a year in the process.

The class-action has three class representatives, including Dr. Johnny Ryan, Senior Fellow of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL), and was filed against Oracle in the US District Court for the Northern District of California last week. It alleges Oracle has violated the Federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act, California's state constitution, the California Invasion of Privacy Act, competition law, and California Common Law.

………

Oracle stands accused of collecting detailed dossiers on 5 billion people, with the information gathered including names, home addresses, emails, purchases online and in the real world, physical movements in the real world, income, interests and political views, and a detailed account of online activity.

This claim is backed up by a video on the ICCL website(Opens in a new window) of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison describing how the company's real-time machine learning system collects this information and confirms the 5 billion profiles stored in the "Oracle Data Cloud." The profiles are referred to as a "Consumers Identity Graph."

(emphsis mine)

They have him on tape? Oh snap!

It will be interesting to see how Ellison buys his way out of this.

Interesting Insight

The author makes a compelling case that argues that the fury over student loan forgiveness is driven by old school bigotry and elitism.

The idea is that getting out of school without multiple years of wages of debt is not just a privilege, but it is a marker of privilege, and so we experience ferocious hostility from people who think that they are better than the rest of us:

I have a new piece up for Slate on the history of debt relief as an essential safety valve for a functioning credit-based economy. Hillary Frey is running a great shop over there, and I encourage you to read Mark Joseph Stern's piece on Biden's legal options should the Supreme Court engineer any problems for his new student debt forgiveness program.

As I emphasize in the Slate piece, debts are discharged every day in the United States. But as CNN's John Harwood notes, there's a striking degree of animosity over the prospect of student debt in particular that doesn't seem to be about, well, debt:

………


Even the somewhat more sober macroeconomic critics are letting their rhetoric get the best of them. Jason Furman attacked Biden's plan as "reckless," saying it would pour "half trillion dollars of gasoline on the inflationary fire that is already burning." But when he finally got around to talking numbers, he informed us that he expects just 0.2 - 0.3 percentage points of inflation from the plan. That does not sound like pouring gasoline on a fire to me.

………


So why all the vitriol over student debt? When we argue about student debt, we aren't really debating credit policy, inflation, growth or the separation of powers under the U.S. Constitution. All of these avenues of discussion are elaborate detours around the central issue: the structure of the American social order.

In the United States, a college degree is about much more than securing a higher wage. People without college degrees aren't just excluded from a lot of jobs that pay well. They're more likely to be laid off and less likely to be hired during recessions. They're less likely to have health insurance, and more likely to have a disability (the causal arrow there probably points both ways, but the combination is particularly cruel). People who do not graduate from college even have shorter life expectancies than people who do. Higher education is perhaps the single most important factor in determining who has access to a financially secure lifestyle and the leisure to pursue intellectually interesting activities. A college degree confers respect and prestige.

………

Student debt allows a certain kind of prestige-hoarder to pay lip service to the ideal of universal education, while also looking down on some graduates as, well, not quite the real thing. "Technically, you have a degree, but we all know you don't truly belong up here, dear." Erase that debt, and this distinction disappears. College graduates are all just college graduates again. A little bit more equality has entered the picture, and a little bit of prestige has departed.

I suspect this is what most people really mean when they say student debt relief is "unfair."

(emphasis original) 

Student debt confers a lack of virtue, and hence a lack of worth.  Attempting to address that issue is assault on privilege, and one of the things that our elites cannot tolerate, in particular conservative elites, is losing their special perks.

To quote Emilio Estevez in Repo Man, "F%$# that."

What Do They Have to Hide?

Facebook has thrown in the towel in the Cambridge Analytica lawsuit, because the thought of Zuckerberg and Sandberg testifying under oath was not something that they wanted to "Lean In" to.

They know that, unlike Congressional testimony, if they get caught in a lie, they could be in a world of hurt.

It's a pity.  I want both of them in a world of hurt:

Facebook has dramatically agreed to settle a lawsuit seeking damages for allowing Cambridge Analytica access to the private data of tens of millions of users, four years after the Observer exposed the scandal that mired the tech giant in repeated controversy.

A court filing reveals that Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has in principle settled for an undisclosed sum a long-running lawsuit that claimed Facebook illegally shared user data with the UK analysis firm.

………

However, some expressed dismay that the timing of the potential settlement would prevent Zuckerberg and Meta’s outgoing chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, being made to testify during up to six hours of questioning by plaintiffs’ lawyers next month.

Carole Cadwalladr, the Observer journalist whose investigations into Facebook and Cambridge Analytica also helped inspire the Netflix film The Great Hack, said: “It is a measure of how desperate Zuckerberg is to avoid answering questions about Facebook’s cover-up of the Cambridge Analytica data breach that Facebook has settled this case just days away from him being cross-examined under oath for six hours.”

………

The latest developments follow a separate lawsuit last year that claimed Facebook paid $4.9bn more than necessary to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in a settlement over the Cambridge Analytica scandal in order to protect Zuckerberg.

The lawsuit alleged that the size of the $5bn settlement was motivated by a desire to prevent Facebook’s founder from being named in the FTC complaint.

Cadwalladr added: “Facebook has proved that they are prepared to pay almost any sum of money to avoid their executives answering these questions. This settlement comes on top of the $5bn they already paid the FTC.

“The truth will come out one day – but today is not that day.”

The truth won't come out so long as Zuckerberg is in complete control of the criminal enterprise formerly known as Facebook™.

Rule number one of Zuck is that Zuck is number 1.

The, "I am a Blithering Idiot," Defense

I understand that a lawyer has an obligation to provide a vigorous defense to their clients. 

In pursuing their clients' interests, they can make arguments that on their face are absurd.

That being said, this is the first time, outside of a criminal trial at least, where counsel is arguing that is too stupid to cut their own meat:

On August 22, oral arguments ended in the Justice Department’s antitrust trial to block the book publisher Penguin Random House from merging with rival Simon & Schuster. The result of the trial, which is expected to be decided later this fall, will have a massive impact on both the multibillion-dollar book publishing industry and on how the government handles corporate consolidation going forward. Perhaps fittingly for a case with such high stakes, the trial was characterized by obfuscation and downright disinformation nearly the whole way through.

Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster are two members of what’s called the “Big Five” of publishing, with the other three slots filled by HarperCollins, Hachette, and Macmillan. The Big Five control roughly 80 percent of the trade market for books in the US, and Penguin Random House, with a market share of 25 percent in 2020, is the biggest one of all. Penguin Random House is itself the product of many mergers, with one independent publishing imprint after another joining together to form a massive conglomerate, culminating in the merger of Penguin and Random House in 2013 that brought the then-Big Six down to the Big Five.

………

It was clear that a new publishing house made of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster would dominate the industry in a way no one had seen before, but few in the industry appeared to believe that then-President Trump’s apparently corporate-friendly Justice Department would actually care enough about the proposed merger to try to interfere.

………

One year later, under the new Biden administration, the DOJ filed suit against both Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, as well as parent companies Bertelsmann and ViacomCBS. “Authors are the lifeblood of book publishing,” the suit argued. “Penguin Random House’s proposed acquisition of Simon & Schuster would result in substantial harm to authors, particularly authors of anticipated top-selling books.”

Most of us are familiar with the idea of a monopoly and how such a selling market can drive up consumer prices, but with this case, the DOJ was arguing that PRHS&S would form a monopsony — an unfair buying market that would drive down the money paid to authors. Such cases are historically rare. If the DOJ succeeds here, it will be setting a major precedent for the way the US prosecutes corporate giants.

It will also be putting a stop to one of the biggest publishing houses American publishing would ever be likely to see. Yet despite the very real possibility that Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster could combine to form a monster of a corporation, both publishers have continually presented themselves as scrappy underdogs doing their best to ride out a tough market. When the proposed merger between PRH and S&S was first announced in 2020, the prevailing narrative was that a combined PRHS&S would give helpless publishers the leverage they needed to push back against the almighty force of Amazon.

………

Over the course of the trial that ensued, publishers would continue to insist on their existing public image as helpless incompetents at the whims of larger companies and an irrational market. The government, meanwhile, stuck to the narrative that the publishers were savvy operators who knew exactly what they were doing with their billion-dollar companies. The question of which story was most convincing will help decide the future of American antitrust law.

A monopsony is the mirror image of a monopoly, and is sometimes called a buyer’s monopoly. Instead of a market with only one seller who can charge whatever they like, a monopsony is a market with only one buyer, who can set their price however they like. It’s still a case where the laws of supply and demand have been skewed to favor one party unfairly over the other.

A mining town where the mining company is the only major employer, and as such can set wages low, would be one example of a monopsony. The Justice Department’s argument was that the merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster would create another.

Should PRH and S&S combine forces, they would be publishing what the Wall Street Journal estimated to be one-third of all the books in the US every year. The government’s model is more specific. It sets a market of what it’s calling “anticipated top-sellers”: books for which publishers pay an advance of $250,000 or more, which they presumably expect will sell very well when they hit bookstores. The government estimates that in such a market, a combined PRHS&S would have a 50 percent market share. The next largest publisher, HarperCollins, would have less than half that.

………

Under the most recent two Democratic presidents, though, monopsony theory has slowly become more mainstream. In 2016, President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers released an issues brief arguing that consolidation across industries could lead to monopsonistic labor markets that depressed worker wages. In 2021, Congress introduced the Competition and Antitrust Law Enforcement Reform Act, which would amend existing antitrust law to explicitly preclude monopsonies. Just this past July, President Joe Biden signed an executive order promising to use antitrust laws to combat “the harmful effects of monopoly and monopsony,” noting that his administration would be “especially” focused on the way these issues affect labor markets.

Some antitrust experts have been thinking of this trial as a kind of test balloon. If the government wins, we could be entering an era in which monopsonies in many other industries (Hollywood, for instance, as well as Big Tech) could face much more aggressive government scrutiny than before. Power could be redistributed away from giant corporations and back toward the independent workers they employ. If the publishers win, meanwhile, the government will have to rethink its strategy.

………

One of the ironies of this trial, industry magazine Publishers Weekly noted early on, was that “the government’s case relies in part on making publishers look extraordinarily savvy about the market in which they operate, in addition to benefiting from their sheer size.” For publishers to rebut that case, they in turn had to present themselves as essentially incompetent gamblers, risking the company’s money in an industry no one could predict, all for the sheer love of literature.

If they were as the publishers depicted themselves, this merger would never happen.  The only value for Penguin Random House buying Simon & Schuster at a significant premium is the ability to extract anti-competitive (in this case monopsony) rents.

“Everything is random in publishing,” Penguin Random House CEO Markus Dohle told the court during his testimony. “Success is random. Bestsellers are random. That is why we are the Random House!” He went on to describe the editors and publishers of PRH as “angel investors in our authors and their dreams, their stories.”

Throughout the trial, publishers depicted the industry as one of chaos and romance in equal measure, a hazy and lovely space in which publishers routinely hand out large sums of money for great works of literature, unable to either predict or care whether they would ever make their money back. Within this space, publishers argued, the narrow slice of publishing that the government was focused on — books with an advance of $250,000 and above — was meaningless. There was no true correlation, they said, between the books that they paid high advances for and the actual sales figures of those books. And so one by one, highly paid CEOs took the stand to argue that they had no idea what they were doing with all their money.

………

Both depictions of publishing on display at this trial, as Publishers Weekly acknowledged, have an element of truth. The book market really is notoriously unpredictable, and book publishers really are fairly savvy about manipulating that market in order to insure their own profits. That’s how publishing CEOs traditionally justify their enormous salaries: They are supposed to be the people who understand how to make money out of an irrational business.

If I were the government I would use the obscene pay for publishing CEOs as evidence that they know what the f%$# that they are doing.

If the publishing companies, who are publicly owned and have a responsible to shareholders, are paying millions of dollars to CEOs who are no better than flipping a coin, then they are defrauding the company.

………

In reality, as DOJ attorney John Read repeatedly emphasized, no new publisher has been able to successfully break into the ranks of the Big Five in over 30 years. The big publishers are now so big, with such extensive backlists and such deep pockets, that it’s nearly impossible to compete with them at scale. Regardless of their claims, they wield enormous power in the industry.

………

“Consolidation is bad for competition,” opined Stephen King, when he appeared at the trial to testify for the government. King, who introduced himself as a freelance writer, described a publishing landscape that’s changed dramatically over his 50 years in the industry.

When Stephen f%$#ing King says that the publishing giants have too much power, the publishing giants have too much power.  QED.

If the government loses, and this case is not a slam dunk, the hypocrisy of Robert Bork still dominates antitrust theory, they need to appeal, and not drop the case.

Fight this to the bitter end, because there have been two generations of bad and corrupt precedent that needs to be beaten back.

Linkage

• The Strange Case of Nakamoto's Bitcoin - Part 1 (Sal Bayat) Money quote, "Bitcoin and all cryptocurrency systems as they exist in their present form are examples of harmful technology. They are dangerous and should not be allowed to exist. Value must be tied to the utility provided by a resource, and not to deception or an externality." 
• ‘They said it was impossible’: how medieval carpenters are rebuilding Notre Dame (The Guardian) They are very lucky that there are some people preserving the old ways.
  
• Bull rampages through bank in central Israel (The Times of Israel) Apparently, Merrill Lynch is bullish on Israel too.
  
• I’m not over the moon about mooncakes – in my reality, everybody hates them. So why are we still eating these Mid-Autumn Festival gifts? (South China Morning Post) Similar to fruit cakes in the west?
• Twitter Whistleblowing Report Actually Seems To Confirm Twitter’s Legal Argument, While Pretending To Support Musk’s (Techdirt) What a surprise.
  
• Did a Random Person on Twitter Name the Latest COVID Variant ‘Centaurus’? (Vice) Spoiler:  Yes.
  

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Deep Thought

We all know of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and some times we all wonder which one represents us.

What you mean not now you said there were more than seven dwarfs, but Disney suppressed the inconvenient ones.

So you have Tacky, Kinky, Preppy, Sleazy, etc., And the obvious question then is, "Which one are you?"

I cannot speak for anyone else, but I know in my heart of hearts that I am the dwarf, "Gassy."

This may be the least surprising fact about me.

Can We Please Return Texas to Mexico? Part MMMMMMMMDCLVII

In Southlake, Texas, a suburb of Dallas and Ft. Worth, education officials at the George Dawson Middle School are looking to ban the autobiography of George Dawson.

Yes, these are the SAME George Dawsons, so they are considering banning the book written by the guy who they named the school after.

Why?  Racism, because it always comes down to racism, and they are concerned that any discussion of lynching might give some white people a sad, and Mr. Dawson related how his best friend was lynched:

You name a new school building after a man or woman, and decades later few remember who that person was. In the case of the late George Dawson of Dallas — he of George Dawson Middle School fame in Southlake’s Carroll ISD — the reason his name is on a school is something of a miracle.

Yet now we learn from Dallas Morning News Education Lab reporter Meghan Mangrum that a committee of district educators reviewed Dawson’s book to check for, in the words of Superintendent Lane Ledbetter, “age and content appropriateness for students.”

………

Students can still read most of the book. But for seventh graders any discussion of the most important chapter must instead be overseen by a teacher as part of a guided discussion. To me, it sounds like the book’s key chapter might not get read at all, but instead be summarized by the teacher.

Critics call this a book ban. The Carroll district, already suffering image-wise from a slew of battles over race relations in its schools, fights this labeling. I’d say it’s more of a book censoring than a banning. Is there a difference? I’m not sure.

This has not come up in the first 20 years Dawson’s name has been on that building.

I never met George Dawson, but I studied his life on the day he was buried in July 2001 by reading his book. And it’s a most remarkable book.

………

In summary, he was the grandson of a former slave who learned to read at age 98.

The Dallas man became a symbol of literacy worldwide, appearing on Oprah Winfrey’s show, and being profiled in newspapers and magazines. He lived to 103, long enough to know that his name was on a building. And yes, he could read it.

What follows is the specific story that some Carroll leaders believe is inappropriate for 12-year-olds. You can decide.

The boy in town he most looked up to was a friend named Pete, one of the finest baseball players in East Texas. Pete once gave George the ball from Pete’s game-winning hit with the advice: “You practice with it, George. You’ll be a hitter someday, too.”

………

When George was 10, he was downtown in Marshall with his father when Pete was accused of getting a white woman pregnant.

“It wasn’t me!” Pete screamed as a mob encircled him. “I didn’t touch her! Lord, let me go!”

The true story is that the woman became pregnant with her white boyfriend, and the baby’s birth months later would prove that. But to avoid the wrath of her father, she blamed Pete.

………

As the lynching took place, George buried his head against his father’s chest. Pete’s neck broke instantly.

“His eyes were open,” George writes. “Pete was still looking at me, and I knew that he alwways would be.”

You know, if the parents of George Dawson students are so concerned about their children thinking that they are racist, perhaps they should stop being racist.

Your white hood is showing.

Tweet of the Day

Brilliant. pic.twitter.com/Sov0YK7F9H

— Harvey Freedenberg (@HarvF) August 28, 2022

Whoever though this one up is a Dick Tuck level genius.

Not a Surprise

The US and Australia have been making noises about invading the Solomon Islands for a few months now, because of the increasingly close ties between Honiara and Beijing. (Earlier story here.)

It should come as no surprise then that, the island nation has denied permission to dock to US and UK warships.

File under, well, duh:

A United States coast guard vessel was unable to enter Solomon Islands for a routine port call because its government did not respond to a request to refuel and provision, a US official said.

The Solomons government did not immediately answer a Reuters request for comment. It has had a tense relationship with the US and its allies since striking a security pact with China in May.

The USCGC Oliver Henry was on patrol for illegal fishing in the South Pacific for a regional fisheries agency when it failed to obtain entry to refuel at Honiara, the Solomons’ capital, a US coast guard press officer said in an emailed statement.

Yeah, I know, the Coast Guard is not a part of the Pentagon, but it is a warship, sporting 25mm cannon and .50 cal machine guns.  It's a warship.

………

The Solomons’ government and Beijing have ruled out a Chinese military base on the islands, although a leaked draft showed the security agreement would allow the Chinese navy to dock and replenish.

The fisheries agency for the Pacific Islands Forum, a block of 17 Pacific nations, has a maritime surveillance centre in Honiara, and holds annual surveillance operations for illegal fishing with assistance from Australia, the US, New Zealand and France.

The Oliver Henry had been scheduled for a routine logistics port call in Solomon Islands, said Kristin Kam, public affairs officer for the US coast guard in Hawaii.

“The government of the Solomon Islands did not respond to the US government’s request for diplomatic clearance for the vessel to refuel and provision in Honiara,” she said in a statement.

China's increased presence in the western Pacific region has the US and Australia, which have traditionally seen this area as their private pond, has resulted in increased paranoia among the members of the ANZUS axis, which has lead to a pressure campaign and threats against other governments in the region, particularly the Solomon Islands.

It is no surprise that the response from these governments is hostility.

Tweet of the Day

If a show was released today where a disabled girl dominated 90% of fights she was in, was never a love interest to anyone, and actually taught the male protagonist 25% of his combat skillset, they’d call it woke propaganda.

Anyway, her name is Toph. pic.twitter.com/PUOil1ReH6

— Diregentleman (@Diregentleman) August 24, 2022

Avatar, the Last Airbender really was an amazingly good TV series.

Also, "My cabbages!"

Support Your Local Police

Police in Torrance, California, who have shot an astonishingly high number of black and brown people over the past few years,* and now hundreds of violent and racist texts amongst members of the TPD have come to light:

The day after Torrance police shot Christopher DeAndre Mitchell in 2018, his mother and a dozen of his loved ones staged a protest outside the department’s headquarters.

At the same time, a group of officers — including the two who had killed Mitchell — were discussing the situation via text message.

“Was going to tell you all those [N-word] family members are all pissed off in front of the station,” one wrote, according to court documents recently reviewed by The Times.

Court records show the officers later mused about what might happen once the identities of those who shot the 23-year-old became public.

“Gun cleaning Party at my house when they release my name??” one asked.

“Yes absolutely let’s all just post in your yard with lawn chairs in a [firing] squad,” another replied.

Eight months ago, a Los Angeles Times investigation revealed portions of racist and homophobic text messages exchanged by at least a dozen Torrance police officers, a scandal that sparked an investigation by the California attorney general’s office.

Criminal cases in which the officers were involved continue to be dismissed, and at least one man has been released from prison. Lawsuits filed against officers involved have already cost Torrance more than $10 million. Still, most of the officers implicated remain employed by the city.

Of course the cops are still employed by the city.  The city government is terrified of what the cops will do to them if they try to hold them to account.

………

And earlier this year, another trove of offensive texts came to light.

In response to a court filing from officers implicated in the scandal, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office submitted an exhibit containing all 390 “anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic or transphobic remarks” allegedly made by the officers between 2018 and 2020. The documents, which were heavily redacted, included the comments about Mitchell’s loved ones and contained racist cartoons of Black and Latino residents as well as remarks about lynching suspects and killing Black children.

Officers have long been trying to suppress evidence of the texts, which were found last year shortly before prosecutors charged former Torrance police officers Christopher Tomsic and Cody Weldin with spray-painting a swastika inside a car.

Lovely fellows, huh? 

Policing in the United States needs to be razed to the ground and rebuilt on a completely new foundation.

^*Police Scorecard — Torrence, California.

F%$#ing Fight for Your F%$#ing Right to Say F%$#

Street wear fashion house FUCT (Friends You Can't Trust) won a Supreme Court case where it was determined that the USPTO could not deny them a trademark because their name is, "Scandalous,"

It's actually a decision that I approve of.  If you are going to subsidize everyone else through the coercive power of the state, which is what the current IP regime is, you must do it for everyone.

That being when FUCT attempted to f%$#ing trademark the word "F%$#" for a line of jewelry, I am very glad that the f%$#ing Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) told the f%$#ing fashion house to go f%$# themselves.

F%$# belongs to all of us, and any f%$#ing f%$# who f%$#ing tries to f%$#ing take that f%$#ing word  away from uu can go f%$# themselves: 

I love this story so much I want it to find other similar vulgar stories so that those stories can have little baby vulgar stories for me to read. You may recall the saga of Erik Brunetti, founder of FUCT, a fashion brand with a name supposedly standing for Friends U Can’t Trust. We wrote about FUCT at first being denied a trademark on the brand over vulgarity concerns, a decision overturned on appeal on First Amendment grounds. It was a good ruling on the merits, as the government shouldn’t be in the business of saving our ears from naughty words based on its judgement of naughtiness.

Well, Brunetti is back at it again. He applied for a trademark on the word “f%$#” for a bunch of fashion categories, such as bags, jewelery, cell phone cases, and the like. That application too was denied. Brunetti again went to the Trademark Trial and Appeals Board, which upheld the denial of the application, but not over concerns for vulgarity. No, in a magical moment, instead the TTAB essentially suggested that “f%$#” is a word that belongs to all of us.

………

The function of a trademark is to identify a single source and to distinguish that seller’s goods from others, and the Trademark Act does not allow registration unless a proposed mark serves this function. The record before us establishes that the word F%$# expresses well-recognized familiar sentiments and the relevant consumers are accustomed to seeing it in widespread use, by many different sources, on the kind of goods identified in the F%$# Applications. Consequently, we find that it does not create the commercial impression of a source indicator, and does not function as a trademark to distinguish Applicant’s goods and services in commerce and indicate their source. Team Jesus, 2020 USPQ2d 11489, at *18-19. Consequently, Applicant cannot appropriate the term exclusively to itself, denying others the ability to use it freely. “‘[I]t is the type of expression that should remain free for all to use.’” Univ. of Kentucky v. 40-0, LLC, 2021 USPQ2d 253, at *36 (quoting Eagle Crest, 96 USPQ2d at 1230).

“[F%$#] is the type of expression that should remain free for all to use…” now there is something to put on a t-shirt.

(F%$# mine)

If anyone tries to take the word f%$# away from me, I and my f%$#ing legions will f%$#ing f%$# you up?  Understand mother-f%$#er?

About Bloody Time

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) will start requiring all that all publications receiving federal funding make their research immediately available to the public free of charge, which means that the good folks at Elsevier will no longer be able to extract the enormous rents that they currently do for their "Services."

Basically, the author of the study (generally) pays for publication, unpaid volunteers do peer review, and then the academic publishing giant charges thousands of dollars a year for subscriptions to their magazines.

Given that the US government is the largest source of funding for research in the world, this is a big f%$#ing deal.

Publicly funding research should be available to the public:

Many federal policy changes are well known before they are announced. Hints in speeches, leaks, and early access to reporters at major publications all pave the way for the eventual confirmation. But on Thursday, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) dropped a big one that seemed to take everyone by surprise. Starting in 2026, any scientific publication that receives federal funding will need to be openly accessible on the day it's published.

The move has the potential to further shake up the scientific publishing industry, which has already adopted preprint archives, similar mandates from other funding organizations, and greatly expanded access to publications during the pandemic.

The change was announced by Alondra Nelson, acting head of the OSTP (a permanent director is in the process of Senate confirmation). The formal policy is laid out in an accompanying memorandum.

The US government is likely to be the world's largest funder of scientific research. For medical research, the US National Institutes of Health spends more than the rest of the top 20 organizations combined. Yet, for decades, the scientific publishing system was set up so that the government (much less the people it represented) didn't necessarily have access to the research it was funding. Instead, access was predicated on paid subscriptions to the journals the work was published in.

Two trends have undercut that limitation. One is the rise of open-access journals, which charge an up-front fee to the researchers and then provide anyone with Internet service access to the final research publication. The second is the trend toward "preprints." Preprint servers, pioneered by researchers in physics and astronomy, provide access to manuscripts submitted to publishers for peer review. Their use in the biological sciences expanded considerably during the COVID-19 pandemic.

No mention here of Sci-Hub, the Russia based library website that has been making millions of papers available free of charge for more than a decade.

That organization, under legal siege across the world, has shown what is possible in the world or academic research without parasites erecting paywalls.

This is arguably the greatest step forward in science in decades.

Not Double Dipping, a Protection Racket

Over 30 years ago, I was running a science fiction convention, and it was suggested that we hired an off duty cop for security.

I did not see the reason for this.  The prior year, with a similar number of attendees located in Boston (Downtown Crossing) there was no need.

At science fiction conventions, people dress funny, but generally they are non-violent and are not inclined to engage in actions leading to property damage.

In suburban Boston, specifically Waltham, a number of people suggested that we needed to hire an off duty cop to avoid problems FROM the cops.  It was basically a shake-down. (I guess that the Waltham PD had more time on their hands than the Boston PD)

I demurred, rather sanctimoniously as I recall, and the hotel ended up hiring a cop as a security guard.

Derek Chauvin, before he murdered George Floyd, worked in a similar racket at a club, where he was paid to sit outside the club in his squad car.  It's common and customary practice, but basically it is a protection racket.

Well, down in Prince George's County 14 Prince George's officers were just indicted for being paid as private security guards while on duty.  (It also happened in Montgomery County a few years ago)

Clearly these guys knew that they were not supposed to do this while they were on duty, and equally clearly, it was clear that they could not actually perform their private security duties while on duty.

It did not matter, because it was racketeering under cover of badge:

Fourteen Prince George’s County police officers were indicted by a grand jury Thursday in what prosecutors allege was an elaborate double-dipping scheme to make money as private security officers while on the clock for their regular department shifts.

The officers, 13 who remain on the force and one who is retired, had their police powers suspended in April 2021, Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Aisha Braveboy and Police Chief Malik Aziz announced during a news conference.

………

The men are accused of exploiting a Prince George’s County Police Department program known as secondary employment, which allows officers to earn additional income working private security. Often, officers working secondary employment provide security at apartment complexes, concerts, liquor stores, nightclubs or sporting events. The program allows officers to use their county-issued uniform, badge, gun and cruiser.

Under department rules in place at the time of the alleged misconduct — from January 2019 to March 2021 — officers were allowed to find secondary work themselves or become an employee of a private security firm that brokered the jobs for them. All secondary work was supposed to be approved through the department and performed during off-duty hours.

But that didn’t occur in the case of the 14 officers indicted, prosecutors alleged. The officers were identified as: Cpl. Nick Agapov, Cpl. Jonathan Haskett, Cpl. Matthew Obordo, Cpl. Matthew Cotillo, Cpl. Joshua Hitchens, Cpl. Chris Hall, Cpl. Michael O’Connell, Cpl. Travis Popielarcheck, Cpl. Kyle Cook, Cpl. Anthony Brooke, Cpl. Brandon Farley, Officer Christopher Oliver, Officer John Mcintosh and retired Cpl. James Lubonski.

These officers, prosecutors say, worked private security shifts at the same time as their on-duty department work, then concealed the overlap from the police department. Officials said at the news conference that the officers all worked for a fellow Prince George’s County officer, who owned a private security company and recently pleaded guilty to tax evasion charges related to his business.

That officer was Edward “Scott” Finn, according to two people with knowledge of the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing probe. Finn, a now-retired police lieutenant, employed his colleagues through his company, Edward Finn Inc., which provided security services to more than 20 apartment complexes in the county.

Prosecutors and officials allege that the officers who worked for Finn provided false information, including about arrests, to the apartment complexes to justify their private security services.

Falsifying arrest records in order to justify their being paid off?

This was clearly a protection racket, and they should be prosecuted as a criminal gang.

Tweet of the Day

Did hanging out with women who have actual jobs make you feel inadequate? https://t.co/rnTZ2i9ZmQ

— Kira Khrushchev, Refugee from 🍌 Republic of 🇺🇸 (@KiraKhrushchev) August 24, 2022

This response to the Apple TV+ docuseries, "Gutsy," where Hillary and Chelsea Clinton go around to interview "Gutsy" women like ……… Checks notes ……… Kim Kardashian?

Send Chelsea to the burn ward, because that is savage.

(on edit)

It has come to my attention that the author of this tweet is a right wing Trumper.

I got milkshake ducked.

It's Thursday

And we have the new initial jobless claims for last week.  Also, the updated GDP numbers have improved relative to the initial report:

The second-quarter decline in U.S. economic output was less severe than initially estimated and unemployment claims fell slightly last week, signs of measured slowing in the overall economy in the face of high inflation and easing consumer demand.

U.S. gross domestic product contracted at a 0.6% annual rate from April to June, compared with an initial estimate of a 0.9% decline, the Commerce Department said on Thursday. One factor was an upward revision of consumer spending, which accounts for the bulk of economic output.

………

Initial jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, decreased to a seasonally adjusted 243,000 last week from a revised 245,000 the previous week, the Labor Department said Thursday. The weekly number has held close to 250,000 since early July after rising from a 50-year low in March.

………

Last week’s unemployment claims total was below the 2022 peak of 261,000 set in July but above the 2019 weekly average of 218,000. The four-week moving average for initial claims, which smooths out weekly volatility, rose by 1,500 to 247,000.

Continuing claims, a proxy for the number of people receiving government unemployment payments, decreased by 19,000 to 1.42 million in the week ended Aug. 13. Continuing claims are reported with a one-week lag.

I have no clue where all this is going in the next few months.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Shopping for a New Car Sucks

Particularly when one is looking for a hybrid station wagon, which are increasingly rare.

That is all.

Conservatives and Their Coup Attempts

No, not Trump in Mar-a-Lago, this time it's Scott Morrison in Australia. 

He took control of the most powerful ministries in government secretly:

………

Morrison’s arguments are now being seen in a different light after it was revealed that he covertly appointed himself to jointly run five ministries — including health, resources, home affairs, finance and the treasury — without telling most of the ministers involved.

The case has sent shockwaves through the Australian political establishment. The flouting of convention has drawn comparisons to authoritarian governments around the world that used the pretext of the pandemic to strengthen their grip on power and tainted Morrison’s tenure as prime minister.

Anthony Albanese, Morrison’s successor, has launched an independent inquiry into the affair following advice from Stephen Donaghue, Australia’s solicitor-general, who said on Tuesday that the former leader’s actions were neither illegal nor unconstitutional but had “fundamentally undermined” the principles of responsible government.

“Plainly enough, it is impossible for the parliament to hold ministers to account for the administration of departments if it does not know which ministers are responsible for which departments,” Donaghue said.

………

“I was steering the ship during the tempest,” he said, adding that he had not told all ministers because it would have distracted them from their jobs.

Yet his pandemic defence was undermined by the one intervention he made when he overruled his resources minister to block an offshore gas project — a decision that is now being legally challenged and had nothing to do with the health crisis.

Luke Beck, a professor of constitutional law at Monash University, said Morrison’s own views on not trusting governments had been laid bare by his actions. “That statement demonstrates his rank hypocrisy,” he said. “He himself wilfully and deliberately undertook a scheme to breach convention and misled his own government ministers, parliament and the public.”

………

The scandal has also highlighted the role of David Hurley, the governor-general who acts as Queen Elizabeth’s representative in Australia, who signed off the secret appointments.

The solicitor-general and constitutional experts said Hurley did nothing wrong in approving Morrison’s ministerial grab, adding that he was not required to publicise the decisions.

But Matt Thistlethwaite, the minister for the republic who has been tasked with kick-starting a debate about the political system ahead of a potential referendum on ditching the queen as head of state, said the controversy represented a “mini constitutional crisis” that undermined the monarchist argument that the current structure works.

“The governor-general is appointed by, and swears an allegiance to, the Queen,” he said. “If we had an Australian head of state swearing an allegiance to the Australian people then it would be inconceivable that they would not have told the public about this.”

The Australians need to seriously consider firing the British royals and going (Small R) republican.

Come to think of it, so should be the British.

This Has Evil Plot Written All over It

I am referring, of course, to Amazon’s takeover of Roomba, the robotic vacuum cleaner people.

What's to be understood here is that this has nothing to do with making a few bucks off of selling vacuum cleaners to people.  It's about extracting information from the appliances to do things like mapping people's homes, including things like where high traffic areas are in a house.

It's about Amazon expanding its stalking technology beyond things like Alexa and Ring:

Earlier this month, Amazon announced that it was buying the Roomba vacuum maker iRobot. On the surface, this move looks like a massive online retail marketplace acquiring a popular gadget to sell to its loyal shoppers. Roomba is a sparkling consumer product, and iRobot has sold 40 million of them over the past two decades. Shoppers today find them occupying end caps at big retailers such as Costco and Target. The device’s smooth, spinning design has given it a huge chunk of the $3 billion-a-year robot-vacuum market; three quarters of all smart vacuums sold in America bear the Roomba name. In that way, the deal makes sense.

But my suspicion is that, for Amazon, the deal has nothing to do with cleaning your floors. What it seems to be about—expanding the company’s reach further into people’s lives—should trouble everyone.

………


The iRobot deal follows a known Amazon strategy, one that Jeff Bezos has admitted to in the past: using mergers to buy its way to dominance. (I asked Amazon if this is what it’s doing with Roomba, but the company did not comment.) Several companies make and sell robotic vacuums, including brands like Shark and others. But Roomba is the household name, so ubiquitous that it’s shorthand for every other robot vacuum available. By simply taking over the company that makes the most popular product in the industry, Amazon can grow its monopoly without actually having to out-innovate and out-compete its rivals.

………

This merger isn’t just about controlling the robot-vacuum industry, or even about smart-home devices. Owning Roomba would give the world’s most dominant spy-tech maker yet another portal into our homes and lives. It could map where we live, what we own, and what it should be selling to its hundreds of millions of captured customers.

………

These devices have given Amazon incredible access to people’s daily lives. The company has a documented history of leveraging the data its vast home-tech network captures in order to grow—and to expand its monopoly power. For example, Amazon has for years used Alexa’s algorithm to steer customers toward Amazon’s own products. Ring monitors and records every interaction with a customer's doorbell, including every doorbell buzz and every movement in proximity to the outside of the door, and congressional investigators found that “acquiring Ring and Blink was in part to expand and reinforce [Amazon’s] market power for its other business lines.”

………

The latest Roomba models capture information that Amazon, at the moment, doesn’t have access to. iRobot’s new operating system maps the floor plan and contents of the spaces in which it operates. The vacuums are now equipped with a camera so it can respond to commands like “Clean in front of the couch.” But that means it knows what kind of couch you have—and crib, and dog bed, and so on. If the deal goes through, Amazon will too, whether or not you wanted Amazon to know that stuff. (Amazon did not comment on how it would use data collected by Roombas.)

If this deal feels bad and intrusive, that’s because it is. People buy a Roomba because they want something that will clean their floors. Most folks don’t want a spinning, camera-equipped data vacuum taking stock of their home and its contents, then beaming that information back to the most powerful retail monopoly on Earth.

Amazon's entire business strategy is about expanding its monopoly status and then extracting rents from its customers.

I really hope that Lina Khan and the rest of the apparatus of the state comes down Amazon and Jeff Bezos in full wrath of God mode.

Meh

There's a lot of ink today about Joe Biden's plan to forgive $10,000 (20K for Pell Grant recipients) in student debt.

I am not particularly impressed.

It's not enough, and means testing makes it likely that the Department of Education will do its level best to exclude as many people as possible.

On the other hand, it might get a few votes in November, which is what this is REALLY about:

The Biden administration on Wednesday announced it was canceling up to $10,000 of student debt for millions of people and up to $20,000 of debt for low- and middle-income borrowers who previously received a Pell Grant.

The loan relief will be limited to borrowers who earn less than $125,000 a year or families earning less than $250,000. In addition, the White House plans to extend the moratorium on monthly payments and interest for a “final time” through Dec. 31.

In a speech at the White House on Wednesday, Biden talked about the rising cost of attending college in the U.S., and the overwhelming burden this places on low- and middle-income Americans.

“An entire generation is now saddled with unsustainable debt in exchange for an attempt, at least, at a college degree,” Biden said. “The burden is so heavy, even if you graduate, you may not have access to the middle-class life that the college degree once provided. Many people can’t qualify for a mortgage to buy a home because of the debt they continue to carry.”

Half measures and means testing.  It's like moderate Democrats are determined to make sure that anything that they do to improve people's lives is as painful as possible.

Lucky Bastards

Here in the US, we have insurrection, misappropriation of nuclear secrets, the filibuster, voter suppression, and a corrupt supreme court.

In Finland, they have people complaining that their Prime Minister parties too hard, and that a guest at the official residence took a topless photograph.

That seems positively idyllic.

Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin has apologised for a topless photo of guests at her official residence.

It comes days after she deflected accusations of having an excessive party lifestyle, by voluntarily taking a drug test - which came back clean.

The latest photo, of two well-known influencers, was taken inside the prime minister's residence in July and widely shared on social media on Tuesday.

Ms Marin admitted "the picture is not appropriate" and apologised.

In it, two women can be seen kissing each other covering up their bare chests with an official-looking sign reading "Finland".

………

The 36-year-old, who came to power in 2019, was until recently the world's youngest prime minister.

Their political kerfuffles seem so quaint, and I'm jealous.  I want some quaint here in the States.

We all need some quaint here in the States.

Sometimes I Do Not Have a Clue

This is a sentiment that members of my immediate family would agree with, as well as my brother Bear Who Swims.

In this case though, I am acknowledging my inability to come to any conclusions regarding the murder of Darya Dugina in Russia.

My level of ignorance on this matter is so vast that it is beyond my normal capability to ignorantly pontificate on this matter on this blog.

I'm sure this admission will shock my reader(s) who have seen me consistently offering ill-informed and poorly written on things well out of my bailiwick.

What can I say, even my big mouth has limits.

Another US Sponsored Coup in 3 ……… 2 ………

The new president of Columbia, Gustavo Petro is seriously considering decriminalizing cocaine.

He is also unabashedly left of center, and has promised to uphold ceasefire the deal with the FARC that most of his predecessors have tried to sabotage, and he has promised to negotiate with insurgent groups, primarily the ELN, still in the field in good faith.

He is promising to raise taxes on the wealthy, reduce Columbia's dependence on extractive industries, deprivatize things like healthcare and water, land reform, etc.

If you don't think that that there are folks in the US state security apparatus who are dusting off plans for a coup in Columbia at this very moment, then you have the political acumen of Little Orphan Annie.

It’s the largest producer of cocaine in the world, the source of more than 90 percent of the drug seized in the United States. It’s home to the largest Drug Enforcement Administration office overseas. And for decades, it’s been a key partner in Washington’s never-ending “war on drugs.”

Now, Colombia is calling for an end to that war. It wants instead to lead a global experiment: decriminalizing cocaine.

Two weeks after taking office, the country’s first leftist government is proposing an end to “prohibition” and the start of a government-regulated cocaine market. Through legislation and alliances with other leftist governments in the region, officials in this South American nation hope to turn their country into a laboratory for drug decriminalization.

“It is time for a new international convention that accepts that the war on drugs has failed,” President Gustavo Petro said in his inaugural address this month.

It’s a radical turn in this historically conservative country, one that could upend its long-standing — and lucrative — counternarcotics relationship with the United States. U.S. officials past and present are signaling concern; the drug was responsible for an estimated 25,000 overdose deaths in the United States last year.

Columbia is not, "Historically Conservative," it's dominated by a murderous right wing, with multiple assassinations of left wing politicians and massacres performed by right wing paramilitaries.\

………

Domestically, Petro’s administration is planning to back legislation to decriminalize cocaine and marijuana. It plans to put an end to aerial spraying and the manual eradication of coca, which critics say unfairly targets poor rural farmers. By regulating the sale of cocaine, Tascón argued, the government would wrest the market from armed groups and cartels.

This is true, of course, but there are elements in the US and Columbia who are fine with a continued conflict and continued war on drugs, the people make money selling the weapons and training for the effort, the elements of the US state security apparatus whose careers are made on these efforts, and elites in Columbia who find the war on drugs a useful cover for terrorizing ordinary Colombians to maintain their privilege.

Given the actions of the US with regard to Bolivia and Venezuela over the past few years, I would be very surprised if attempts to destabilize his government were not already underway.

Tweet of the Day

Now this is a phishing attack:

This is actual cyberpunk pic.twitter.com/cs33CLPyu9

— Rooflemonger (@Rooflemonger) August 18, 2022

I guess that he did this just for the halibut.

If Not at the Top of the Fascist Hit Parade

Antisemitism is always in the top 3: 

Amid the discussion around the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago and what it might mean for Trump and the rule of law in America, there is a detail that I worry isn’t receiving enough attention but that points to a dangerous reality in the United States today. 

It centers on Bruce Reinhart, the magistrate judge who signed the FBI's search warrant. As his name became public, he has faced a withering volume of threats from those who believe Trump should be above the law. In today’s America, with the MAGA crowd revved up for attack, that was to be expected. But that attacks were to be expected should not obscure the fact that they are dangerous. Very. The possibility of their leading to violence should not be underestimated. 

Many of these threats focused on the fact that Judge Reinhart is Jewish. It got to the point that the synagogue where Judge Reinhart sits on the board had to cancel Shabbat services:

"Temple Beth David in South Florida has canceled its Beach Shabbat this week under a deluge of antisemitic threats about Bruce Reinhart, the judge who signed the Mar-a-Lago search warrant and sits on the synagogue’s board." https://t.co/3e8h1Bp7hw

— Vera Bergengruen (@VeraMBergen) August 12, 2022

It really does surprise me just how eager some Jews, particularly among the Orthodox community, are so eager to act as Kapos for the right wing.

If (probably when) these folks come, they will not spare you.

How Long Have We Known About Anthropogenic Climate Change?

At least according to the Rodney and Otamatea Times, Waitemata and Kaipara Gazette



And also the 2012 Popular Mechanics

According to Snopes, well over 100 years: 

On 11 October 2016, the Facebook page “Sustainable Business Network NZ” posted a photograph of a clipping from the 14 August 1912 edition of the Rodney and Otamatea Times, Waitemata and Kaipara Gazette that included a brief item headlined “Coal Consumption Affecting Climate”:

The furnaces of the world are now burning about 2,000,000,000 tons of coal a year. When this is burned, uniting with oxygen, it adds about 7,000,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere yearly. This tends to make the air a more effective blanket for the earth and to raise its temperature. The effect may be considerable in a few centuries.

This article’s authenticity is supported by the fact it can be found in the digital archives of the National Library of New Zealand.

Further attesting to its authenticity (and perhaps its role as a bit of stock news used to fill space) is that an identical story had appeared in an Australian newspaper a month prior, in the 17 July 1912, issue of The Braidwood Dispatch and Mining Journal, as found in the digital archives of the National Library of Australia.

An even deeper dive reveals that the text of this news item has its origins in the March 1912 issue of Popular Mechanics, where it appeared as a caption in an article titled “Remarkable Weather of 1911: The Effect of the Combustion of Coal on the Climate — What Scientists Predict for the Future”

The science behind this goes back at least 20 years before that.

I first heard about this in 1980.