Hope everyone is having a great week so far. Better than this guy:
Ew.
Stormy Daniels testifies about alleged sex with Trump
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/07/trump-hush-money-trial-live-updates
Imagine being too racist for an Ole Miss frat. Yikes
Phi Delta Theta member removed from Ole Miss fraternity after confrontation during campus protest
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/06/us/phi-delta-theta-ole-miss-revoked-reaj/index.html
LOL
Rudy Giuliani struggles to find an accountant: ‘nobody seems interested’
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/07/rudy-giuliani-accountant-bankruptcy
If anyone doesn’t have much to do today, here’s a rabbithole for ya:
I think I kinda love him?
PS: We interviewed someone today and I think he’s a little prick and everyone else loved him so I’m just parking this here so I can remember that I said he’s a little prick when I’m proven correct.
Have a super day!
The thing that I love about Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg’s son, John Schlossberg, aside from his hotness, is that as far as I know Kennedy appears nowhere in the name.
There are like 8,000 of them and they all manage to sneak Kennedy in there somewhere. “Rose Katherine Ethel Kennedy O’Connell-MacNamara” or whatever. When Kerry Kennedy married Handsy Andy (shudder) she took his last name but did not relinquish that golden ring, so she became Kerry Kennedy Cuomo. Caroline Kennedy herself is seldom referred to as Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, let alone just Caroline Schlossberg. So good for you, Jack Schlossberg.
…ok…I don’t have anything like the time apparently required to delve into exactly how sketchy the “pastor” in that tweet is…so to save time I’m going to assume he’s as sketchy as he seems at first glance…& ought to be in jail awaiting a murder prosecution?
…meanwhile…china is somehow suing the US for infringement of its constitutional rights…& might even have a workable 1st amendment suit…which is plenty bonkers enough…but not as bonkers as the pastor sounds…& for bonus points
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/may/07/jack-dorsey-quits-bluesky-board-urges-users-stay-elon-musk-x-twitter
…@jack started a new twitter when his boy paid out for the old one so he could add blackjack & hookers…& then turned out to think blackjack meant jackboots & hookers referred to that fish hook theory about the political spectrum…which apparently dorsey would rather endorse than his attempt at a medium place
…forget about students for a minute…the pro-enshittification lobby needs attention…preferably in the form of a swift kick in the nuts…but I looked & as far as I can tell there sadly is not yet an app for that?
Yeah, Jack is like “What? We’re not going to make this place terrible? I’m out.”
Also in a world in which we actually made an effort to live by Constitutional law, China’s lawsuit isn’t just workable, it’s an open-and-shut case. They won’t win here in this world, of course, but there could be some serious boomerang consequences from what Congress is doing and any company that does business in China — or has any workers overseas — should be pretty concerned about it!
…except elon…who apparently traded nixing the fast charging network in the US for getting to generate statistics for self-driving in a place that can suppress bad press?
Because he’s really, really, really bad at his job! Not that I want to give him the benefit of the doubt on the drug use or being a neo-Nazi or rampant sexual escapades with employees, etc. etc. ad infintium, but … once you get past the hero worship, there’s no “there” there? He’s just a bad CEO. And he always has been, but before it was huge promises that if you squinted, maybe they seemed possible and zero/negative interest rates meant there was always money to burn. Years later those promises have devolved to “lol no way” or “do not use this tech because it will kill you or others.”
And once again — I love when dual comment synergy happens! — if we lived in a world where law was real, all this shit would have been nipped in the bud YEARS AGO by regulators, who are only now starting to think about considering the possibility of maybe telling Elmo to stop running beta tests on self-driving cars that kill people. Soon, they swear.
Coincidentally … or maybe not … Bluesky just released a customer roadmap which prominently features anti-harassment improvements.
I think it’s a coincidence but LOL if it isn’t. It sounded like Jack did not like Bluesky’s attempt to not suck previously, though, so I think it’s been building to this.
Yeah, it’s worth remembering that Twitter was bad under Jack. It just got exponentially worse under Elmo. And frankly, the fact he’s back to pimping Xitter does make you wonder if he decided that he couldn’t push Bluesky toward activities like fascism, racism, election interference, and all the other fuckery that occurred on his watch at Twitter.
Jack is pure, uncut tech bro asshole. No argument here. But it is worth noting that a lot of Twitter’s slide in the wrong direction came when it was publicly owned, which is to say I don’t think Jack was opposed to any of it necessarily but that he wasn’t entirely calling the shots, either. He wants the profit margin; I don’t think he cares how they get there.
Ah, he was also her youth pastor and apparently met her when she was 14 and he was 28. Cool, cool, cool cool cool. I’m sure the holy spirit was moving through him when he did that, too.
I cannot reiterate this enough: Whenever you deal with an “evangelical,” make sure:
1. Your children are safe.
2. Your wallet is hidden.
3. Your bullshit detector is dialed up to 11.
Source: Someone who was raised evangelical.
Don’t forget the Catholics (Now that The Onion is free, I wonder if we’ll get Kelly back on a reliable weekly schedule)
https://www.theonion.com/catch-as-catch-vatican-1851446255
I don’t. It’s just that I’m not Catholic, and therefore can’t attest to their actions. I leave it to others who have faced it to address that. With evangelicals, I’ve got personal experiences to draw on.
Catholics tend to be pretty cheap when it comes to donations because usually the archdiocese has major income from rental properties etc. So it’s like eh fine I’ll toss a few bucks in the collection basket, but fuck right off if you actually expect me to tithe 10%.
Just keep the kids away from the priests.
Oh look, Biden is discreetly withholding a small amount of weapons of genocide while also loudly and proudly supporting genocide. Feels like a PR spin to try to satisfy both sides of his supporters.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-administration-pauses-ammunition-shipments-israel-us-officials/story?id=109993270
IMO: It’s too little, too late, but any bit of withholding from them is good.
Poor Better Half. There are many things I don’t miss about corporate life and one of them are those fraudulent make-work HR consultant-generated exercises in fable-spinning, the Self-Assessment.
He has never had to do one before. At least not for this company. You know what I would do if I ran a company? Fire everyone on the spot who had anything to do with introducing this time-wasting nonsense.
There’s a sort of open-ended, almost college essay-like, piece, and I offered to wordsmith it for him. He rejected it.
Those things are awful. I remember at one company event I was overseeing, we all had a self-assessment due the following day. Six or seven of us sat in a conference room and copied each other’s answers. No one noticed any similarities, which strongly suggests that no one reads them.
Those things are set up to be so ambiguous that a serial killer who is a top earner will pass but anyone they want to fire will be red flagged.
Nobody does pointless busywork better than HR!
“These personality profiles will help your boss manage your team! You’re ‘The Worker,’ that’s good! Your boss is ‘Hysterical Tyrant,’ so anyway, no doubt he’ll change his ways to make sure you’re making a maximum impact!”
One year, I wrote that my strongest contribution to our team was an amazing sense of which gif and meme to use during team communications.
Heard no feedback about that gem.
…that clearly deserves a raise
…that’s the only reason they’d ignore it, I reckon
So how does Jimmy pronounce Chowder?
Looks like John-Paul should change his name to John-Paul-Prime Suspect
This is really, really bad and gives the game away as to what’s going to happen going forward: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-lawmakers-await-biden-administration-report-israeli-weapons-use-2024-05-07/
They’re not going to deliver the report on what Israel is doing with the weapons because we all know what the answer is and they don’t want it on the record.
This sounds about right…
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/us/rfk-jr-brain-health-memory-loss.html?unlocked_article_code=1.qU0.XaTI.WiaeCe7CG7u6&smid=tw-share
I was just about to post this! He has actual brain worms!!!!! It’s too on the nose!!!!!!!
The Mica Miller story is sketchy AF. But Robbie Harvey is not a credible source of information. He makes his living exploiting trauma. And is being sued by a man who he knowingly falsely accused of domestic violence. He ignored all the social workers and court reports. He ignored the statements of the children themselves while repeatedly showing videos that the ex wife edited showing the children. The man eventually lost his job. He has befriended DV survivors online and quickly turned super creepy in their DMs. The way he talks to and about his wife gives strong Pastor Miller vibes.
Well, telling people that a man beat his wife and kids is an easy story to believe. When it goes the other way? It’s either crickets or an outright, full-tilt, outrage campaign about how that never happens. Source: me.
Oh no, even a top officer of the the NYPD has been cancelled!
https://www.nydailynews.com/2024/05/07/under-fire-for-political-stands-nypd-chief-john-chell-to-appear-at-republican-event/
NYC has seen major drops in crime but top brass and the GOP are getting together to call it a crisis? Who could have predicted it?
They are in crisis as any drops in crime ruins GOPer talking points and NYPD budget increases.
One of the things that really bugs me is that the rank and file could be huge beneficiaries of police reform.
There are a ton of opportunities for win-win outcomes. Officers can get just as much overtime in a system that prioritizes non-aggressive interventions as a system where police sit around in squad cars for the first seven hours of a shift then roll up at the end of the day and make some arbitrary arrests that get dismissed.
But it requires people who have been doing things for 20 years and are looking forward to an early retirement to change. And they just don’t want to bother.
They’re not bovvered.
It doesn’t matter what the levels of crime are; the fear of its existence is enough reason to crack down for most people.
In part it’s that fear, which is hard to deal with, but it’s also that people’s beliefs are often unshaken even in the face of giant amounts of contrary evidence. A great example is gun control; no job would be made better or safer through gun control than that of a police officer, who often lament about how dangerous their jobs are. And yet! No major police groups have ever come out in favor of national gun control, no matter how many officers are killed by handguns. It’s not unlike truck drivers complaining back in the day about seat belts.
Just 30 years ago police organizations were big backers of the Brady handgun bill and the assault weapons ban, and openly lobbyed for Clinton’s efforts to pass them. The shift to the present day neatly parallels how both the leadership and unions of police departments have become increasingly partisan operations.
In the short run I think there’s a financial bump from joining in GOP fearmongering for big city PDs. But it’s deeply self defeating in the long run, because driving away the tax base leads to massive budget cuts and pay freezes, and they are going to face hostile GOP politicians at the state and federal level who will block any outside help.
It would be in the interest of department leadership to bandwagon off the major drops in big city crime since Trump was defeated. Strong economies and growing populations boost police spending and salaries. But they and the police unions are locked in a GOP mindset that sees badmouthing Democrats and big cities as a winner. It may be for rural GOP politicians, but that’s where it stops.
This is a good critique of the defense offered by top NY Times brass of their supposedly “objective” coverage:
https://newrepublic.com/article/181353/new-york-times-editor-joe-kahn-defense-coverage-trump
Sargent was a press reporter for the Washington Post until the recent buyouts precipitating by their collapsing readership. One of the key points he makes is how hopelessly superficial top editor Joe Kahn’s defense was, claiming critics simply wanted the Times to be Biden’s “Xinhua News Agency or Pravda.”
There is something really dispiriting about Kahn’s defense in how it hasn’t changed from their defense of covering Clinton in 2016.
Back then top political editor Carolyn Ryan blew off criticism by claiming it was an “unrelenting pundit-led effort to delegitimize all negative reporting about Hillary Clinton” and backed it up by citing, of all people, Glenn Greenwald.
The great Charlie Pierce had this response: “Very few people outside the campaign want a “cessation” of negative coverage of HRC. Many of us simply want the coverage to make some fcking sense. ”
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a48443/new-york-times-2016-election-coverage/
The thing about so many critics like Sargent and Pierce is that they are press veterans. They cite specific failures and what’s more they talk about them in terms of the mechanics of journalism. They know how the business works as well as anyone at the Times.
But the top editors at the Times have felt free then and now to run away to the safe place of false dilemmas. It’s the mindset of some 19th Century colonial hack, feeling safe inside his confiscated palace, positive the people out there are some lower species of human.