Mammon category archive
The Privatization Scam 0
Emma talks with Whitney Wimbish about how private prisons are profiteering from Donald Trump’s campaign against brown people immigrants.
Facebook Frolics 0
At SFGate, Stephen Council reports on the Zuckerborg’s turn to AI in its quest for assimilation. Council is not sanguine.
Here’s a tiny bit from his piece.
His point that people need more friends gels with recent research into the ill-health effects of isolation. But Zuckerberg’s idea of patching over loneliness with algorithmic avatars is an ugly vision of the world: a purposeful unraveling of the social fabric that gives us community, culture, accountability and love. We need to refuse this vision. The solution to not having enough friends is — needs to be — making more friends. More care and responsibility for our neighbors, not bubbles of solitude.
This New Gilded Age 0
In addition to all the other stupid, petty, and destructive things this is, how is this not also theft of labor?
“History Does Not Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes”* 0
Robert Reich looks how the Trump maladministration maladministrates and hears a rhyme from a long time ago:
“His Ministers, generals, mistresses, and courtiers soon found out his weak point, namely, his love of hearing his own praises. There was nothing he liked so much as flattery, or, to put it more plainly, adulation; the coarser and clumsier it was, the more he relished it. That was the only way to approach him; if he ever took a liking to a man it was invariably due to some lucky stroke of flattery in the first instance, and to indefatigable perseverance in the same line afterwards.”
__________________-
*Mark Twain.
Fly the Fiendly Skies 0
How is this not price-gouging?
Dis Coarse Discourse 0
Rebecca Watson bemoans the exploiting of staged debates, with a particular reference to the Jubilee Youtube channel, which has been in the news lately. She argues that they are devolving from a discussion of issues to a cage-match spectator sport in the pursuit of clicks and likes and lucre.
Or you can read the transcript.
This New Gilded Age 0
Starbucks workers at the “happiest place on Earth” are not at all happy with their employer. A snippet:
Suffer the Children 0
Once again, that’s not scripture. That’s Republican policy.
This New Gilded Age . . . 0
. . . in which moguls reside in their mansions, while their workers sleep in their cars.
Twits on Twitter X Offenders
0
See foot. Shoot foot.
Suffer the Children 0
Once again we are reminded that that’s not scripture. That’s a Republican family value.
The Privatization Scam 0
In the midst of a longer article about a school voucher scheme buried in Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bilk, Monica Dickson, almost as an aside, gets to the heart of the privatization scam:
This New Gilded Age 0
The editorial board of the Bangor Daily News looks at Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” and sees little more a transfer of wealth from the poor to the already wealthy, with a healthy side dish of mean for the sake of mean.
I commend their editorial to your attention.
The Crypto Con 0
David Shuster discusses how the Trump maladministration is going all in on the ultimate fiat currency, which is based on nothing and guaranteed by no one.