Capitalists will incorporate & commodify any^[1] trend/movement into their branding. 1971.

It helps to check which mods are active, meaning which ones have recently made posts/comments. Otherwise your message may never be read.

I wouldn’t assume he’ll quit. He’s already got infinite money, and he and his tech multi-billionaire peers seem more interested in investing in political power nowadays.

Money doesn’t always work. It usually does, but not always. Bloomberg, having made himself a symbol of corporate wealth, was a little too on the nose.

My first thought is that this may be for 1) political leverage and 2) propaganda. Leverage as a spoiler, to pressure/influence the other two parties in the election cycle. Propaganda is pretty self-explanatory, I think: getting into the news & podcaster cycles, throwing events, sending out mailers/flyers etc.

Some people (rich & poor) and interest groups/super PACs may fund it, so it won’t even have to be all his own money.

🤦

A KGB spy and a CIA agent meet up in a bar for a friendly drink.

“I have to admit, I’m always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up,” the CIA agent says.

“Thank you,” the KGB says. “We do our best but truly, it’s nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your state media tells them.”

The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. “Thank you friend, but you must be confused… There’s no propaganda in America.”

How do you not understand that most of us were raised under the same indoctrination and have experienced the same propaganda as everyone else here? We’re not the ones still propagandized by that upbringing, education, and media exposure. I suggest starting here to learn how to see past it.

I would ask them why they’re happy, not us.

The same Germany that is denying the genocide it is currently supporting and is suppressing anti-Zionist voices?

Some people seem to think LLMs are oracles of truth, so if you wanted to rewrite history, this is how you might try to go about it.

Not really: The poorer you are, the less a person you are, which is why Enron Muck is the greatest person in the world.

So if anything should happen, know that each incident was by a lone wolf and not a member of any fascist paramilitary organization.

I enjoyed A Podcast Of Unnecessary Detail. They stopped producing new episodes, though.

Hopefully more people will realize that bourgeois democracy is working as intended, and that it cannot be reformed; it must be replaced.

The [political] killing of Jeremy Corbyn

For anyone unfamiliar with this malarkey: Reconciliation (United States Congress)

Budget reconciliation is a special parliamentary procedure of the United States Congress set up to expedite the passage of certain federal budget legislation in the Senate. The procedure overrides the Senate’s filibuster rules, which may otherwise require a 60-vote supermajority for passage. Bills described as reconciliation bills can pass the Senate by a simple majority of 51 votes or 50 votes plus the vice president’s as the tie-breaker. The reconciliation procedure also applies to the House of Representatives, but it has minor significance there, as the rules of the House of Representatives do not have a de facto supermajority requirement.

The Senate filibuster rules aren’t formal law. They’re rules the Senate imposed on itself over the last hundred years, and it can remove them just as easily. Both parties want these supermajority rules because they don’t want to pass bills that aren’t bipartisan.

So Democrats would have to get 60 seats who never vote against their own party. But it doesn’t ever work that way because there are always some rotating villians in those seats. If necessary, they’ll use other dirty tricks, for instance the Parliamentarian, who blocked a minimum wage increase in 2021. Congress is Kayfabe.

I knew where this was going: 1 April 2013

• ☑ Do something every day to help undermine public perception of the empire.
• ☑ Draw attention to its abuses in places like Gaza.
• ☑ Get people laughing at its absurdities and hypocrisies.
• ☑ Spread distrust in the imperial propaganda services known as the western press by spotlighting their deceptions and manipulations.
• ☑ Help people to recognize all the ways their government is screwing them over for the benefit of the rich and powerful.
• ☑ Facilitate the collective dawning of the realization that everything westerners have been taught about their society and their world is a lie.
• ☑ Help people to understand that it really, truly does not need to be this way.
• ☑ Use every means at your disposal to help open up the next pair of eyelids to the ugly reality of the empire.

I’m not sure that works, because AFAIK there currently are no such regulations, and this bill was preemptive of any future ones. In any case, what got blocked in the Senate was a ban of any future such regulations.