“Hello everybody!”, starts the manifesto of wannabe political assassin, teacher, and failed indie game developer Cole Allen. A million conspiracies float around the internet. The lack of insider betting on polymarket is used as proof that it wasn’t an inside job. Because this is where we’re at. Some are blow-drying weather sensors to manipulate bets on ambient temperature highs, and others are making millions and millions betting on war crimes. Sacrificial lambs will be offered, like the special forces soldier betting on Maduro’s “ousting”¹, to keep those in power immune.

Will anyone in power be held accountable? Speculative gambling 8-ball says: “Outlook not so good.” 

Because even if all speculative betting stopped yesterday, oil companies still earned about $30 million in windfall profits a day during the USA’s illegal bombings of Iran. Saudi Aramco alone can make billions extra this year. That’s just capitalism, baby. Perfectly fine. That’s how you get your treats, like that new Neo Geo retro machine: just ignore the blood in the circuits.

In France they did arrest corporate executives as they found the entire corporation responsible for financing “terrorism.” A rare win against corporate responsibility. Is this a sign that there will be accountability? Corporate crime 8-ball says: “Don’t count on it.”

The court in Paris has just ruled that cynicism and an exclusive focus on profits can constitute a crime. We are not in Paris, of course. But one reason it was so gratifying to watch Lafarge be convicted and its executives, in their stiff-collared shirts and well-cut suits, be placed under arrest is that these men had surely never imagined that they could be punished for what they did.

France has a long and bloody history with Syria, right through to this year, so in the end it feels like selective political theatre. Is the outcome good? Absolutely. Bring more of it. Make the sentences harsher. Though it’s hard to not stay cynical when French multinational rail company Alstom profits off of illegal Israeli settlements without consequence. Only one sacrifice is allowed at the altar of status quo.

Would anyone else hold them liable? Certainly not in Ontario, where the government gave Alstom a billion dollar deal to operate passenger trains. Certainly not in the rest of Canada, which under the regime of our Banker-in-Chief is not likely to penalize Canadian corporate malfeasance. And thus they’re emboldened. Emboldened to graft the public. Emboldened to ignore indigenous rights to plunder resources. Emboldened to hire narco cartels to harass, and murder, workers who are threatening to unionize at a Canadian mine in Mexico.

“Who will be held accountable if mine personnel are beaten, disappear, or even murdered? This sets a very important precedent for the MLRR, prompting companies from the United States and Canada to reflect on the fact that they cannot come to Mexico and act as they cannot in their own countries. The complete lack of government response and the silence of the Canadian government and its embassy in Mexico are deeply concerning.”

The purpose of a system is what it does. Sacrifices will be tolerated as a pressure release valve, when the meter gets into the red, as long as they maintain the overall system’s working order. I can appreciate a good manifesto and ideological rupture but one shotgun blast isn’t going to upend the system. That will is better spent elsewhere, especially if you’re going to start off with “Hello everybody!”

In the (very Welsh and/or fantasy RPG named) town of Merthyr Mawr, in the UK, a kid found a Mexican axolotl in the wild. Meanwhile in Mexico, after a car crash in Chihuahua, they found CIA agents in the wild. Invasive species destabilize local ecology and need to be contained as soon as possible. Sometimes a cull is required. This includes golden oyster mushrooms in Ontario².

Wired wrote about the cuts at USAID in one of its newsletters: USAID Whistleblower Says It Was Even Worse Than People Knew (as usual, there’s a book to sell along with the investigative journalism; archive link.) Libs love USAID. Hell, even radical lib and wannabe political assassin Cole Allen reposted the above on his bluesky account³. I think it’s more complicated than that. 

And that's something that we saw all over Eastern Europe and pretty much anywhere we were trying to do democracy work.

Yes, USAID did provide assistance with health and disease prevention, but it also funded regime change and destabilization. Two things can be true. Let’s not fool ourselves, it wasn’t a purely philanthropic organization. USAID was directly tied to the State Department and when they say they did “democracy work” you have to ask yourself what that actually means. In Mexico, and many places, it means funding right-wing opposition, under the guise of humanitarian work. It’s often a cover for CIA and military personnel, for weapons, for drugs. Covert right-wing influence spread across the world.

But I’m sure it was just a coincidence that those CIA agents were operating in Mexico last week.

“Stay in school, kids.”

1. Illegal kidnapping.

2. As a vegan, oyster mushrooms are a regular part of our diet but please don’t buy ‘grow at home’ kits without a containment plan.

3. Has anyone given a good reason why it was deleted? It’s the most normal bluesky-ass account imaginable. Certainly if being accused of crimes, for stuff unrelated to your account, is enough to have it terminated JD Vance shouldn’t be allowed to retain his.

Related Links

The Blockade Is the Message. How a Fuel Price Spike Became a Fascist | by Louth For Ever | Apr, 2026

From protests in Ireland:

 The question, imported wholesale from American culture-war X/Twitter, with no organic relationship whatsoever to the price of a litre of diesel in County Meath, is the entire story of what these “fuel protests” actually are, compressed into three syllables shouted on a Dublin street. People genuinely furious about the cost of heating their homes do not, in unscripted moments of rage, reach for gender-critical talking points. They reach for the cost of heating their homes.

The Great Convergence and Its Discontents

I mean, aesthetically this is aimed squarely at me. A “long read,” full of asides and footnotes, punctuated by jumping pixel fonts and a design that crosses Half-Life’s G-Man with Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime”:

In 2025, two trajectories converged: the apex of technocratic authoritarianism, and the collapse of the civil society apparatus that was supposed to prevent it. This is a long piece and it covers hard ground: how and why the US-led institutional apparatus collapsed the way it did, who are the surplus elites who supplied the final push, and what opportunities exist to build a new kind of post-institution in its place. The question that remains is: what you build with its place?

Everything you need to know about the 'spaceport' in Nova Scotia - Halifax Examiner

Speaking of the Canadian private/public grift, take a look at the photos in this story about a ‘spaceport’ in Nova Scotia. A gravel road to an empty plot that I would barely consider safe for a roman candle, let alone an orbital rocket. 47 million dollars!

Premier Ford breaks ground on new FanDuel Toronto Primary School - The Beaverton

Renderings by FanDuel’s architects show young students entering the building being greeted by murals of famous parlays and spreads covered throughout Canadian sporting history. Math classes will also be provided with new textbooks called “Moneyline!” that explains betting odds.

Finally,

Palantir Employees Are Starting to Wonder if They’re the Bad Guys | WIRED

A little slow on the uptake there, guys. We can excuse the war crimes as a service platform or the CEO talking about killing ‘opposition’, but I draw the line at a fascist manifesto calling for a draft that might be interpreted badly and doesn’t start with “Hello everybody!”

Listen to This

There’s not much info provided about R. Boy’s “Trax From The Bottom Of A Well” but from what I gather online it’s an LP length side-project of acclaimed dance producer Finn. It’s a house album embracing that fuzzy nostalgia, sample heavy, though, per the short description, inspired by “feelings of misery and despair.”

It has a pastiche to it like Nicolas Jaar’s Against All Logic project, though more spacious and airy, soaking in those feelings of despair, but still dancing forward.

R. BoyOOMH (Fast Version)

Goodbye everybody!

sometimes.