“Without the petty bourgeois and intelligentsia to function as polite buffers between the classes, society will collapse into omnidirectional chaos” is a fairly relatable message across capitalist societies, yes
the new middlebrow podcast with @mcmansionhell is very enjoyable. many of the points raised feel salient to menswear — deskilling in the trades, rise of bad taste because an uneducated customer goes wild with options, poptimism vs cultural criticism, etc
IG middlebrowpod
For the millionth time you can't have it both ways, either the left is a negligible political cohort that doesn't have the leverage to demand anything and can be ignored or it swings elections and should be catered to. Those are the two options sorry
Bill Clinton forced Haiti to cut food import tariffs from 35% to 3%, then flooded Haiti with government subsidized rice from his home state of Arkansas, making Haiti the 3rd largest importer of rice globally, & Arkansas the largest producer of rice. This led to the collapse of Haiti’s domestic food production
NEW: The new food pyramid was built by corporate interests.
General Mills, Danone, the beef industry, and more had financial ties to the scientists writing the new dietary guidelines.
RFK said he couldn't be bought, then he let Big Food write the nutrition guidelines.
The plan is greater Israel by any means necessary. That’s it. There is no other 12D chess going on here. The war is destroying the petrodollar, they don’t give a fuck. It’s not part of some deep strategy involving energy resources, it strengthens China immensely. They don’t care. They will burn everything to the ground to try to get greater Israel.
It was a common error in analysis to treat the Iraq war as “stupid” or “a mistake.” Paul Bremer dismissing the Iraqi army, obliterating the state through De-Ba'athification, creating the insurgency. It doesn’t make any sense as a strategy unless you understand that the war was for Israel.
The Iraqi state had to be pulverized so it could never again threaten Israel. Iraqi academics, engineers, specialists of all kinds had to be killed or chased out in terror. Then ditto in Libya, ditto in Syria. The only plan is to try to do that to Iran.
None of this was “a mistake.” None of it was “stupid.” The actual goals were just different from the justifications presented for public consumption.
The Israel lobby is immensely powerful but a war with Iran was always the one thing they couldn’t get. U.S. state planners since the Iranian revolution have understood what closure of the strait of Hormuz would mean. It is apocalyptic for the maintenance of the petrodollar that the U.S. empire depends on.
The lobby has been working our government for decades now. They’ve finally got a president blackmailed enough and a deep state zogged enough that the initial start of the war could go forward. Now they’re riding on the back of a tiger.
The cost of living crisis is coming home. They have to keep the war going over what will be increasing civil unrest. Eventually they’re going to push Trump into doubling down. The goal is to go nuclear. That’s what they think is the way out. Nuking Iran.
This is genocidal madness. It’s why everyone in Congress needs to be held accountable for not funding a single dollar for this illegal war. It’s why the anti war movement in this country needs to wake up and recognize that we are in a crisis moment. Our passivity will be taken by the ruling class as permission to do the unthinkable.
Game design shops are very hard to organize for a variety of reasons (rank-and-file skew younger with little history of union membership previously, “dream job” mystification, etc.); good luck to those fighting for better treatment.
NEW: Prediction markets are scamming the working class.
Polymarket and Kalshi claim they are "democratizing finance," but their business model enables a handful of elites to fleece their customers.
On Polymarket just 0.04% of traders capture 70% of the profits.
A CEO ASKED CHATGPT HOW TO STEAL $250M FROM GAME DEVS. BIG MISTAKE
→ Krafton buys Subnautica studio for $500M
→ Promises $250M bonus if the sequel sells well
→ Sequel is about to sell really well
→ CEO panics, asks ChatGPT how to get out of it
→ GPT writes him a takeover plan called "Project X"
→ CEO ignores his lawyers and executes the plan
→ Delaware court reads his ChatGPT logs at trial
→ Judge calls it out by name in the ruling
→ CEO loses. Devs get reinstated. $250M still owed.
Conversations with AI are not privileged.
Executives haven't figured this out yet.
UnitedHealth is the nation’s largest health insurance conglomerate.
ProPublica obtained what is effectively the company’s internal playbook for limiting and cutting therapy costs.
Here’s what we found.
https://t.co/asm5jwMxkd
Biden had four years to rejoin the JCPOA or make another nuclear deal with Iran. Instead he quietly fired Robert Malley, the lead US negotiator of the JCPOA, and subjected him to a retaliatory criminal investigation. Just like the genocide he did this as a favor to Israel
this is what so many people bragging about doing capitalism right right now don't understand. It's going to outrun you eventually. Plenty of people who lead comfortable lives in their 20s-50s are in this situation now.