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Honest Office Haiku for the Impending Recession

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/honest-office-haiku-for-the-impending-reces…
Created
Fri, 28/04/2023 - 03:00

“We Need to Synch Our Agile
Framework with Our Projected Workflow”

Okay, listen up.
I don’t know what you just said.
Am I getting axed?

- - -

“We’re Instituting a ‘Return-to-Office’ Mandate
to Improve Company Performance”

What saves you money,
And would help prevent layoffs?
No more offices.

- - -

“Is This a Realistic Timeline for This Project?”

Absolutely not.
It’s the work of three people,
with no overtime.

- - -

“Do You Have a Minute to Talk?”

Oh no. This is it.
Hold on, you just need a file?
WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?

- - -

“Happy Employee Appreciation Day!”

Are you kidding me?
We know layoffs are coming.
Thanks for the free pen.

Hitler built a beautiful autobahn

https://digbysblog.net/2023/04/27/hitler-built-a-beautiful-autobahn/
Created
Fri, 28/04/2023 - 02:00
… and created a bunch of jobs. Was it worth it? There is a tendency among some on the left to reflexively adopt the enemy of my enemy is my friend concept when it comes to certain critiques of “neoliberalism” and the Democratic establishment. In my view it’s a lazy kind of thinking and I don’t pay much attention to it. That impulse was on display yesterday when The American Prospect published a lauditory piece on Tucker Carlson and the internet blew up. It was a very bad piece. Today the magazine offered a response and it’s quite good: On Tuesday afternoon, the Prospect posted an article about Tucker Carlson on its home page. Focusing almost solely on Carlson’s opposition to corporate globalism, it missed a very large forest for some very cherry-picked trees. It failed to note the roots of Carlson’s positions, in a broader sense failing to note that opposition to neoliberal orthodoxy is an element of both progressive and fascist politics, and hence, depending on whence it comes, not automatically worthy of celebration.

Thanks for nothing

https://digbysblog.net/2023/04/27/thanks-for-nothing/
Created
Fri, 28/04/2023 - 00:31
GOP wants to cut $30 billion from veterans spending “The Republican Party is always looking to ‘thank Veterans for their service’ but when it comes time to put your money where your mouth is this is what they do,” tweets Rep. Eric Ager, one of our local Democratic state House members. “So many veterans in NC like me rely on the VA for healthcare and this won’t help.” This is what the GOP wants to do to those veterans. Democrats Rep. Mark A. Takano (Calif.), Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.) and Rep. Chris Deluzio (Pa.) write at Military Times: Thirty million fewer healthcare visits. Fewer staff, increased claims backlog, longer wait times for benefits. Almost a $30 billion shortfall for veterans funding. That’s the uncertainty that awaits America’s veterans, should Congressional Republicans succeed in dramatically slashing federal spending as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy proposed on April 19. Last Congress, we honored our promise to toxic-exposed veterans by providing benefits and care to approximately three million veterans exposed to toxins, including burn pits.

The Rise of China (and the Fall of the U.S.?)

https://tomdispatch.com/the-rise-of-china-and-the-fall-of-the-u-s/
Created
Thu, 27/04/2023 - 23:01

From the ashes of a world war that killed 80 million people and reduced great cities to smoking rubble, America rose like a Titan of Greek legend, unharmed and armed with extraordinary military and economic power, to govern the globe. During four years of combat against the Axis leaders in Berlin and Tokyo that raged across the planet, America’s wartime commanders — George Marshall in Washington, Dwight D. Eisenhower in Europe, and Chester Nimitz in the Pacific — knew that their main strategic objective was to gain control over the vast Eurasian landmass. Whether you’re talking about desert warfare in North Africa, the D-Day landing at Normandy, bloody battles on the Burma-India border, or the island-hopping campaign across the Pacific,... Read more

Hubris will take its toll

https://digbysblog.net/2023/04/27/hubris-will-take-its-toll/
Created
Thu, 27/04/2023 - 23:00
“One of the great renewable resources” “You can’t keep a good homicidal maniac down” is an essential trope from slasher films. In the zombie genre, the lingering question of, “How long can they last?” persists alongside the infectious, shambling dead. Given the Outrage Industrial Complex extant since the 1980s, the same uncertainties apply to MAGA. How long can people addicted to daily outrage keep going before burning out? “What used to rule the day on the American right was ‘owning the libs.’ But now they are owning one another,” writes Peter Wehner in The Atlantic. How long can political meth addicts maintain before finally, beset by paranoia, visual and auditory hallucinations, they crash and/or devour each other? With Dominion’s massive defamation settlement against Fox News, with Tucker Carlson’s ouster from the network, and with looming legal accountability for Donald Trump, perhaps MAGA’s collapse is, if not as imminent as that Fani Willis indictment, on the horizon.

“Red Team Blues” and the As-You-Know-Bob problem

https://crookedtimber.org/2023/04/27/red-team-blues-and-the-as-you-know-bob-pro…
Created
Thu, 27/04/2023 - 22:17
I’ve just finished reading Cory Doctorow’s great, fun novel, Red Team Blues, and I’ve been thinking about how well it exemplifies one of the strengths of good science fiction. Back when we ran our seminar on Francis Spufford’s novel, Red Plenty, there was a back-and-forth between Francis and Felix Gilman. As Francis described it post-hoc, […]

Help Us Remove Spam Facebook Accounts, So You Can Get Flooded With Bullshit from Real Facebook Accounts

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/help-us-remove-spam-facebook-accounts-so-yo…
Created
Thu, 27/04/2023 - 22:01

“If you come across spam on Facebook, report it to us. By doing so, you’ll be playing an important role in helping us protect other people from scams.”
— Facebook

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We’re here today asking you to help us remove spam accounts on our platform. Please report any Facebook profiles you think might be bots trying to get you to visit pornography sites, so we can make room for all the real people trying to get you to believe 5G towers are transmitting Chinese pornography into your head.

It’s important we work together on this. In recent years, fake accounts have gotten significantly better at appearing human, while human Facebook users have gotten significantly better at appearing like malfunctioning alt-right drones programmed to say the most insane shit they can think of.

This situation is serious. We need your help eliminating fraudsters that are ruining the Facebook experience.

Trader Joe’s Ketchup-Flavored Sprinkle Seasoning Blend

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/trader-joes-ketchup-flavored-sprinkle-seaso…
Created
Thu, 27/04/2023 - 21:59

What if a food that works fine in its original goopy form were deconstructed into its elemental components, dehydrated, and rebranded as a spice? That’s the question that Trader Joe’s can’t stop asking, and the latest incomprehensible answer is Ketchup-Flavored Sprinkle Seasoning Blend.

My own question is, why? Especially given that ketchup already exists. Is it supposed to be astronaut food, like Tang?

No. You can’t sprinkle powder willy-nilly in zero G. (Tang was contained in a vacuum-sealed pouch, after all.) That’s why you never see old footage of astronauts doing lines of coke off the lunar module.

Perhaps the target consumers aren’t spacemen but terrestrial folks who can’t be trusted to squirt ketchup safely. Like maybe a hapless employee at TJ’s product labs was squeezing a half-empty Heinz bottle over her hot dog at the company cookout, causing it to emit a slurpy farting noise in front of her crush. And lo, she went into her lab the next day and created Trader Joe’s Ketchup-Flavored Sprinkle Seasoning Blend (TJKFSSB) in the crucible of her mortification.

Remembering Antonio Gramsci

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2023/04/remembering-antonio-gramsci-2/
Created
Thu, 27/04/2023 - 20:57

It’s late at night on Turin’s Via dell’Arcivescovado. A man with a Southern accent shows up at L’Ordine Nuovo’s office, insisting on speaking with the lead editor. For L’Ordine Nuovo is not only the workers’ daily, but also the paper of Antonio Gramsci. Yet the political climate here in Turin at the start of the 1920s is tense […]

Kwame Nkrumah’s Pan-African Socialism

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2023/04/kwame-nkrumahs-pan-african-socialism/
Created
Thu, 27/04/2023 - 19:25

Today marks the 51st  anniversary of the death of Ghana’s first Prime Minister and President, Kwame Nkrumah. Nkrumah’s Pan-African dream envisioned a united Africa free from neocolonial exploitation and capable of representing itself as an equal on the world stage. While these dreams sadly never came to full realisation, they continue to provide inspiration to […]