Stuttering Lede, Jan. 8th, 2025
“Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do no exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions, they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials.”
Neil Postman.
Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement earlier today about changes at Meta should be the last reminder that oligarchy and fascism are intimately intertwined and we must never forget that.
In good news, which are rare nowadays, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the French far-right leader, died today. If you wonder how French people feel about that, these are the scenes of celebration on the streets of Paris this evening. One sign reads “The dirty racist is dead.”
US
Yes. The January 6th insurrection was absolutely about white supremacy.
The House approved a bill that aims to deport unauthorized immigrants charged with minor crimes, and 48 Democrats joined Republicans to pass it. Here are the names of the 48. Some like Torres, Moskowitz, McBath, etc. are not entirely surprising, others, I don’t know enough to comment on.
All of this is bonkers but especially the fact that we're talking about deporting based on charges, not convictions. Reminder: police can charge anyone with anything. And this is akin to sentencing someone based on a charge alone.
US Military service is the strongest predictor of carrying out extremist violence.
The Militia and the Mole. For those who've been following the story of John Williams, the mole inside the militia movement, he's now released a significant portion of his files through
There is little the US can do to constrain Elon Musk. Bullshit.
There's plenty that the US can still do over the next ten days to not just constrain Musk but to fully stop his project of turning the entire world into the fourth Reich. The problem is that the Biden admin and Dem party have no desire to do anything but capitulate...
White Women Storm the Capitol: The audacious innocence afforded to white womanhood.
Trump Has Promised to Build More Ships. He May Deport the Workers Who Help Make Them.
Trump threatens Canada with ‘economic force’ amid turmoil over Trudeau exit.
Judge Aileen Cannon, in her infinite fascist wisdom blocked DOJ from releasing IC Smith’s report.
Trump, as predicted, is seeking a stay of his sentencing in NY.
Soldier who exploded Cybertruck in Las Vegas used ChatGPT to plan attack.
Medical debt will soon be wiped off credit reports for millions of Americans.
World
France To Trump: EU Will Defend Attack On Greenland. Still does not compute that it’s the French who are putting up resistance while everyone else is seemingly surrendering ahead of time.
Meanwhile, governments are beginning to crack down on the use of virtual private networks.
I simply can’t with these people: “Blinken said that the state department had conducted months of deliberation...Just days earlier, Blinken had dismissed suggestions that events in Gaza constituted genocide, responding: “No, it’s not” in an interview with the New York Times."
Why is Elon Musk attacking Keir Starmer over the grooming scandal?
Elon Musk knows ‘absolutely nothing’ about women and girls’ safety, says Jess Phillips.
Ten years after the Paris attacks, France lives in a 'permanent state of emergency.'
Kemi Badenoch’s Refusal to Distance Herself From Elon Musk is an Act of Moral Cowardice.
Women Rights
LGBTQA+ Rights
A recent series of sudden and unexplained cancelations by local authorities of appearances by her dance troupe has sparked fears Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s authoritarian drive is ensnaring the country’s most prominent openly transgender personality. So when China does it, it's an "authoritarian drive to ensnare" but when the us does it, it's "burnishing your conservative culture war bonafides"?
Tech
We are not ready for all of the ways generative AI allows bad actors to do evil shit.
Heritage Foundation plans to ‘identify and target’ Wikipedia editors.
Huge changes across Facebook's platforms coming soon. Mark Zuckerberg says the recent elections "feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech..."
“We're going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes, similar to X, starting in the U.S," Zuckerberg stated, asserting that "the fact-checkers have just been too politically biased, and have destroyed more trust than they've created, especially in the U.S."
Facebook will also "get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse," Zuckerberg says. The U.S.-based content review teams will be based in Texas, not California, going forward.
Intriguing parallels between OpenAI and Enron, as told by one of Enron's investment bankers.
New study finds that frequent use of AI tools encourages offloading cognitive tasks and reduces critical thinking. Higher AI usage correlated with lower critical thinking skills, especially in younger users. While AI can enhance efficiency in certain areas, over-reliance on these tools risks diminishing essential skills like problem-solving and analytical reasoning. My concern is that we may be fostering a generation with weaker critical thinking abilities, leaving them more susceptible to manipulation.
C-SPAN is in negotiations with A.I. companies to license its content, the channel's chief Sam Feist told me in an interview. So wait the one content creator in the whole world they’re maybe going to pay is the one broadcasting official acts and statements largely in the public domain?
Checkmarked X Users Caught Promoting Sites That Sell Child Sex Abuse Videos.
Don't call it a Substack. Now that you’ve seen Meta go full mask-off, lets remember that Substack has the same agenda.
Tesla’s remote parking feature under investigation after over a dozen crashes.
Education
Climate Change
Shrinking trees and tuskless elephants: the strange ways species are adapting to humans.
Biden to ban future offshore drilling across more than 600 million acres.
Misc.
Arthur Conan Doyle Discusses Sherlock Holmes and Psychics in a Rare Filmed Interview (1927).
Gigantic SUVs are a public health threat. Why don’t we treat them like one?
Humor
“Perhaps they were right putting love into books Perhaps it could not live anywhere else.”
William Faulkner