Reading @gilduran.com’s Nerd Reich this morning, I was reminded that Trump’s ballroom is funded by Apple, Coinbase, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Palantir. Internalize the fact of Billionaire tech lords funding the desecration of the People’s House and consider it alongside the rise of Tech fascism.

Phil Lewis@phillewis.bsky.social · yesterday

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is allowing the White House to continue construction on Trump's $400 million ballroom project for now

say what you will about the myriad valid concerns with current LLMs but I personally will never get over the fact that Aaron Swartz was prosecuted to his literal death for downloading JSTOR and then a decade later, they downloaded & ingested the entire world and our IP laws just went ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I reviewed Gil Duràn’s new book on tech-fascism and Silicon Valley’ panoply of hard-right ideology so vividly on display here since 2022. Give it a read -“ The Nerd Reich” is a unique book that steers readers through the obscure and, frankly, insane ideologies of SV’s oligarchs

The Baffler@thebaffler.com · 2d ago

Silicon Valley is waging a war on democracy. A new book examines the ideological origins and terrifying ambitions of their campaign. @awinston.bsky.social reviews Gil Durán’s “The Nerd Reich.”

Eight days after a historic storm knocked out power to most of Gary, a NIPSCO official announced that the utility is targeting 11:59 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 25, to fully restore power to the city. For some Gary residents, that could mean nearly two weeks without electricity. https://bit.ly/4c4rpfc

25,000 Gary Residents Still Without Power After Historic Storm - Capital B Gary

A top executive addressed restoration delays as nearly 25,000 customers in the city still remain without power.

gary.capitalbnews.org

ICE just arrested a 5-year-old on his way to a soccer game in Austin. His name is Liam, just like the little boy from Minnesota. He should be in kindergarten this week. Instead he's in a trailer prison in the desert. Release Liam. Release these kids. Close the Dilley children’s prison.

Corporate Democrats are on the defensive because their campaign cash isn’t working the way it used to. Now, finally, the Democratic Party has an opportunity to once again become the party of working Americans, as it used to be, rather than the party of the wealthy elite.

Maybe cashing checks from folks who have wine cellars isn’t the most effective way to do politics

Unbelievably happy Nixon got the nomination. A public servant who knows the importance of all Floridians not just the residents from Up North. A woman who will be an amazing senator. Hopefully the national party learned their lesson and actually gives her campaign support. #angieforflorida

Maxwell Frost@maxwellfrost.bsky.social · 4d ago

OUR DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE FOR THE US SENATE! ANGIE NIXON! Let’s get to work, Florida. Let’s win in November.

Required reading. Been following @gilduran.com for a few years now and it's exciting to see all his great work come together in this book. Super stoked. Go Bay Area writers! Support local independent journalism!

The pregnancy mortality rate in Missouri is 31.2 per 100,000 live births. The pregnancy mortality rate in California is 15 per 100,000 live births. What’s the difference? Republicans. 

See NYT asked me for an op-ed on the Colorado River water issue. So that's what I told them. And the editors panicked & cancelled the piece. In case we're wondering why "nobody can figure out how to solve this difficult issue." We absolutely can, a lot of our professional talkers are just cowards.

Vague Pariah@vaguepariah.bsky.social · 5d ago

Maybe just start by charging a market rate for water instead of using prior appropriation

Incredible chart here. The cows are drinking the river dry. Ag is 79% or was then; livestock is 55% of that.

The Colorado River Is Shrinking. See What’s Using All the Water. (Published 2023)

Hint: It’s less about long showers and more about what’s for dinner.

nytimes.com

And here's the best part: "Tehee but at least agriculture uses the water to make food!" Uh, you'd be surprised! Farmers are INCENTIVIZED TO WASTE WATER. To use more than we need, to grow thirsty crops in deserts, etc. A whole lot of that massive ag water use DOES NOT MEANINGFULLY GROW FOOD.

Independent Order of Odd Fellows Wentworth, SD

“I was asked not to mention the Times at all. I’m choosing not to honor that norm, b/c silence abt how accountability journalism gets suppressed is itself a form of suppression.” Read the back story of how @nytimes.com and @thebulwark.com killed @adambonica.bsky.social’s piece. What a mf badass.

With Fear and Favor

Institutions don’t have courage. They have incentives.

data4democracy.substack.com

We should consider developing a standing body of government officials who are trained in diplomacy and can be sent around the world to negotiate the interests of the USA, so the president doesn't have to send his grifting son-in-law, who doesn't have any skills or training or government clearances.

NPR@npr.org · 6d ago

Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law, held a rare meeting with Hamas leadership Sunday in Egypt, in a new diplomatic effort to make progress in the stalled Gaza ceasefire. n.pr/4zle6kh

“Keep your humorous attitude for later life as well, because very few human affairs are endurable without humor.” — Albert Einstein, Letter to Eduard Einstein

“These men and women signed up to serve their country. The least their country owes them is hot water, a working toilet and a real meal. Hegseth cannot even manage that, and he has the nerve to look their families in the eye and call them liars.”

USS Abraham Lincoln sailors tried to jump overboard amid extended deployment – reports

Aircraft carrier’s crew in ninth month at sea and has spent record 250 days consecutively without making land

theguardian.com

It’s not radical to believe you should be able to afford groceries, see a doctor, breathe clean air, and drink clean water. There’s nothing more American than fighting for a government of, by, and for the people.

our entire global financial system is currently leveraged to the hilt on the premise that it was good and right for a small cadre of US companies to steal all of the intellectual work ever produced by humanity and sell its back to us without credit or remuneration to the authors (plagiarism)

According to victims, the leaders of this church told children that once they had forgiven their abuser, speaking about it again would mean having an unforgiving heart. The burden of sin would fall on them — for not letting the matter rest. 🎧 Listen to the full episode:

How “Forgive and Forget” Buried a Church’s Dark Secret

Podcast Episode · Paper Trail · August 6 · 46m

podcasts.apple.com

"Being together in public is a practice, a ritual," said Pitter. "It's not an event, it's not entertainment, it's a part of repairing civic life. We see festivals as one-off initiatives, but they are part of a broader placemaking ecology. They need to be interwoven into the culture of the city."

Jay Pitter@jaypitter.bsky.social · 2w ago

My Toronto Star take on festival challenges: 1. Crowds aren’t the problem; poor spatial planning is. Many festivals have outgrown the car-centric streets and spaces where they began. Their growth needs to be matched with permanent pedestrianization, better design, and placemaking approaches.

14 million souls ended in a single year by Elon Musk's cruelty and stupidity Here are some of the comparisons: Rwandan genocide: 800k dead Cambodian genocide: 3 million dead The Holocaust: 7 million dead

Jørgen Heszlein@heszlein.bsky.social · 2w ago

New estimate of Elon Musk’s death toll just dropped www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Capital's tendency to accumulate in the hands of the already wealthy (r > g) means that these aristocrats end up setting an ever-larger proportion of our societal agenda, despite their manifest unfitness to govern and their absence of any kind of democratic legitimacy. 38/

Piketty shows that this holds true across markets and nations and eras: all other things being equal, the market system produces a class of hereditary aristocrats who command the world's capital and direct its deployment, despite never having *done* anything. 16/

ICE wants to spend tens of millions on electric shock gloves. The manual states the device should be deployed for 15 seconds. But a demo shows people falling to the ground almost immediately. @evystadium.bsky.social has more. Story by @josephcox.bsky.social: www.404media.co/heres-the-ma...

United and ready to defeat Trumpism.

The station would be within striking distance of Port Canaveral and its growing cruise industry as well as giving access to attractions such as Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.

Federal grant topping $57 million tapped for Brightline station in Cocoa

orlandosentinel.com

Sergey Brin is worth about $284 billion. After the proposed ONE-TIME 5% wealth tax, he would have roughly $270 billion. If, after that tragic loss, he spent $1 million every single day and never earned another cent, he would run out of money in the year 2766. Billionaires are an obscenity.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin spending more than $100 million fighting California wealth tax

Brin has been pouring money into Building a Better California, a group that's backing two measures that could nullify a proposed billionaire tax.

latimes.com

60 percent of Minnesota's population lives in the Twin Cities statistical area.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2w ago

Tom Emmer: "Minnesota doesn't necessarily lean Democrat. In fact, if you look at the 2024 presidential heat map, it is overwhelmingly red. There is a blue dot essentially in the Twin Cities."