After years of giving a platform to climate change denialism, transphobic fearmongering, pearl clutching over too much woke at liberal colleges, both-sideing the efficacy of vaccines and indulging in Covid conspiracy nonsense, the NYT has finally achieved its goal.

For those wondering why Allen would care about praising Trump: Not only was Woody Allen Epstein’s neighbor; he and his “wife/adopted daughter” were “frequent dinner guests” at Epstein’s.

That reads a little bit like victim-blaming, because the worship of billionaires only applies to one segment of the working poor. Another big part of the problem is billionaires corrupting the political system to the point where whoever gets elected immediately gets love-bombed by the richest people in the world who promise them a share of the loot. Convincing people that voting “for the other guy” won’t solve the systemic problems of our political systems is a tremendously difficult job and the billionaires and their bought lackeys know this.

If anyone is interested in how serious Putin’s threats are… The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation states:

France engaged in a slow, but steady build-up of its nuclear arsenal and by 1980, it neared the threshold of what the Soviets considered posing the threat of “unacceptable damage” to the Soviet Union.

Yes, France has reduced its arsenal since the peak of the Cold War, but it is still around the same level as 1980.

Strange how self-declared “”“libertarians”“” like Milei always turn out to loooove mass surveillance once they are in power. /s

The news of the “AI bubble bursting” make me thing of Hunter S. Thompson (as quoted in the movie "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas):

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

Well, when did you last conquer two villages, hm? See…!

I remember when Microsoft first attempted to prevent the standardisation of Open Document Format (used by LibreOffice and others) and then bullied its way into getting approval for own OOXML standard. Already back then, supporters of FOSS warned that Microsoft would use the overly complicated OOXML to maintain its stranglehold on users of Office-like software.:

Whenever applicable and possible, standards should build upon previous standardisation efforts and not depend on proprietary, vendor-specific technologies. Albeit, MS-OOXML neglects various standards and uses its own vendor-specific formats instead. This puts a substantial burden on all vendors to fully implement MS-OOXML. It seems questionable how any third party could ever implement them equally well, especially when a standard comes with 6000 pages of specifications without serving its minimalistic purpose.

These people can help.

It is very telling how much science backlash is rooted in the base desire of the rich and powerful to suppress any speech that contradicts them. It never was about (scientific) truth or facts, it was always about the power to impose their will on others and independent science challenges this totalitarian claim to power.

Since the first messenger who told Tigranes that Lucullus was coming had his head cut off for his pains, no one else would tell him anything, and so he sat in ignorance while the fires of war were blazing around him, giving ear only to those who flattered him.

Plutarch, ~ 100 A.D.

Because I could not believe it myself, I went and checked and it seems to be authentic. Link to a digital version of the book (the picture appears on page 30): https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/biblio/100357933/1?ln=ja

The art is by Aïda Amer who works for Axios.

It’s quite amazing how these people show their asses on LinkedIn and think it makes them look smart, instead of proving that they completely lost touch with reality. It fits the picture that one the very same day they laid of thousands, Microsoft also send out an invitation to hear them pitch genAI at GamesCom. That’s corpo brain on late stage capitalism.

I was once a fan of Nina Paley, because of her activism against copyright and even bought some of her merch. Then I found out that she is a capital-letters TERF.

You can find a “TERFy Archive” with all her transphobic writing on her website, she hosts a transphobic podcast with the subtitle “A TERF and a t-slur walk into a podcast studio” which she uses to promote the “autogynephilia” conspiracy theory, among so, so much more transphobia.

Paley would consider this comment of mine to be “censorship”. As usual with her type she wants to dish out, but doesn’t want to be criticized for it.

Lowering workers’ wages is exactly why he got a pay bump. Capitalism working as intended.

Also Mustelids, because Mustelids are hella cute and who can blame nature for wanting to create more cute things?!

Ah, well, better skip “Strange Days”, “12 Monkeys” and “Gattaca” then…

June 12th:

“I am pleased to confirm the 6th round of Iran US talks will be held in Muscat this Sunday the 15th,” Bad Albusaidi, the country’s foreign minister said on social media.

Israel struck Iran later the same day.

So why should Iran have any reason to believe that “talks” will stop Israel and the US?

They don’t want to save Hollywood, they want to control it. They can’t control it if the studios shoot their films outside of the US.