Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Well, my internet is still down, but my neighbor across the street has boosted his signal for me, and my open wireless network on his router. He named my new temporary wireless Henry, which I loved.
So I am now catching up on work for my clients, but here’s an open thread, with an image I found.
That’s the full version, but I’ll probably going with this one. Looks like we may have occasion to use that one a lot.
Open thread.
Update: on a more positive note, here’s my first tomato of the year!
Rebecca Traister did a NY Mag feature piece on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s doomed campaign for the Democratic Party’s 2024 presidential nomination. Topline takeaway? Jesus — that guy is crazier than a sack of cats and has been for many years. Someone who knows Kennedy well described him thusly to Traister:
“He can look and sound so thoughtful and contemplative,” said one person who has known him a very long time. “And he’s just bursting with madness.”
In a thread yesterday, we talked about the chaos agents among us. Kennedy is one, and now he believes his time has come. He’s weaving a multigenerational, bipartisan coalition of kooks, conspiracy nutters, anti-government cranks and Camelot nostalgiacs.
He is both an addled conspiracy theorist and an undeniable manifestation of our post-pandemic politics. He is an aging but handsome scion of America’s most storied political family, facing off against an incumbent who many in his own party worry is too old and too unpopular to win a second term. Far from an exile, he is an extremely well-connected person with unparalleled access to the centers of influence in New York, Hollywood, and Washington, D.C., who either has no idea what kind of fire he’s playing with, or does and is therefore an arsonist.
He is running a surprisingly potent campaign that, thanks to the lurid dynamics of social media and the boosts he is receiving from some of the wealthiest, most listened-to people in America, stands to grow even more disruptive, his deep thoughts on Rogan’s podcast translating into overflow crowds at his rallies. Lesser threats than Kennedy have played spoilers in elections before, and if he succeeds in helping burn us all to the ground, it will not be because he is an outsider, as he claims, but because of a political and media culture that has protected and encouraged and fawned over him his whole life — handing a perpetual problem child, now 69 and desperate for attention, accelerant and matches…
Kennedy is boosted by MAGA chuds like Steve Bannon. He’s also amplified by edgelords like Musk and Rogan, who are basically MAGA chuds themselves, though they mistakenly believe a layer of ironic detachment separates them from embarrassing, double-decker-shirted, Febreezable toads like Bannon. (It doesn’t, or at least, it shouldn’t.) This influence shows in Kennedy’s rhetoric.
Anyhoo, I found Hillary Clinton’s responses to Kennedy, as described by Kennedy himself and then Traister when she asked Clinton to comment, the most relatable in the piece. Kennedy has denounced Clinton, Biden and lefty lawmakers like AOC as “warmongers,” so it was uncomfortable when Kennedy ran into Clinton at an unidentified soiree:
Kennedy recently bumped into Clinton at a Las Vegas event. “I knew it was going to be awkward,” he said, “because her Zeitgeist is pro-war and pro-vaccine … But I went up and said hello.” Clinton just looked at him, he told me, “and said, ‘I don’t know what to say.’” Reached for comment, Clinton said, “I still don’t.”
I mean, what do you say to a fool like that, besides please shut the fuck up and go away? He won’t, of course. He’ll keep right on accessing high-profile media platforms to complain about being silenced. His name will open doors that would otherwise be shut to people peddling that brand of crackpottery. And in a country that is arguably “bursting with madness” too, that’s a dangerous thing.
Open thread.
‘Bursting With Madness:’ RFK Jr. Tries to Burn It All DownPost + Comments (213)
WATCH: ?????? New York’s Pride parade took place amid polarizing debates over LGBTQ rights. The ACLU tracked 491 anti-LGBTQ bills in state legislatures this year. Listen to the Reuters World News podcast on LGBTQ+ around the world: https://t.co/zxcra5HPfS pic.twitter.com/MbcsflIJ3j
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 2, 2023
??????Thousands poured into the streets of London to take part in the annual Pride Parade pic.twitter.com/b4v0Wm9jSR
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 2, 2023
In celebration of Pride, @VP visited the Stonewall Inn with @Andy.
Together, we will continue to fight to advance the American ideals of equality and freedom. pic.twitter.com/CVRBZRLDSv
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) July 1, 2023
Not saying US democracy doesn’t have its flaws but one complaint I don’t get is when people say “*insert elected official* is only doing the thing I want because he needs the votes next election.”
Uh… yes? That’s the elevator pitch for the system.
— Melania Trump’s Burner Account (@IRHotTakes) June 30, 2023
Sunday Morning Open Thread: Never Let the Bastids Grind You DownPost + Comments (156)
does elon not realise he needs tweets to be more visible not less https://t.co/Rovv5njQ8V
— Ed Zitron (@edzitron) June 30, 2023
If you currently try to access Twitter without logging in to your user account, you’ll be unable to see any of the content that was previously available to the wider public. Instead, you’ll meet a Twitter window that asks you to either sign in to the platform or create a new account, effectively blocking you from viewing tweets and user profiles or browsing through threads unless you’re a registered Twitter user.
Twitter didn’t immediately make a public announcement, making it unclear if this was an intentional update or another technical mishap. Later on Friday, however, Twitter owner Elon Musk tweeted, claiming in a reply that the change is a “Temporary emergency measure,” blaming “data pillaging” for degrading the service for all users…
… Mashable recently reported that even people who pay the steep new rate for API access say they’ve seen unannounced changes, bugs, and no customer support. From the outside, we don’t know if that’s because of the scrapers Musk notes or his own attempts to cut costs that included layoffs within the teams that help keep Twitter’s servers running and reportedly leaving a Google Cloud bill unpaid for months before recently resuming payments, according to Bloomberg…
The move manages to both contradict and support other actions that owner Elon Musk has taken in the past year. In 2022, Musk hired noted iPhone hacker George Hotz to fix its search feature and get rid of the login prompt that prevents unregistered users from browsing the website. Hotz resigned less than halfway through his 12-week internship with the company, claiming he “didn’t think there was any real impact I could make there.” In April this year, Twitter then eliminated the platform’s search feature for unregistered users entirely.
Free Twitter account holders can still access publicly posted tweets and other information, though many of the features that enhance user experiences (such as editing tweets and user verification) are locked behind a Twitter Blue subscription, and more of the platform’s core features could soon follow. The company could probably use the cash injection from users paying for premium features — Twitter’s US advertising revenue between April and May this year plummeted by 59 percent compared to the previous year.
If you are an unverified Twitter user, this counts as one of the 600 posts that you get to read on the website today. https://t.co/i91fHl6lkU
— Variety (@Variety) July 1, 2023
[User query: If you are not registered on Twitter, can you tell me if you can still go directly to the Variety article by clicking on the variety.com line in the embedded tweet right above this?]
(Image by NEIVANMADE)
A couple of housekeeping items. First, as always, thank you all for the kind words. And you are all most welcome. Though, as I’ve repeatedly stated, I wish I didn’t have to keep doing these. But as long as the Ukrainians are fighting, we’ll sit the vigil for them. Second, a special thanks to PirateDan for not only the kind words but for stating them someplace he probably figured I wouldn’t see them. Should any of your fellow lizards follow you back, you all are most welcome. I scroll the comments over there somewhat regularly just to see who is linking to what. Third, and finally, I’m not sure how much material we’re going to have for these updates over the next few days until whatever it is that the Starlink Snowflake thinks he’s doing at Twitter gets resolved. Also, if you believe this has to do with data scraping, I’ve got a bridge on a beach on some Floriduh! swampland to sell you!
Last week, before all the Prigozhin excitement, commenter Low Key Swagger emailed me with the following question:
Hi Adam, you’ve been doing a bang up job keeping us posted on the events in Ukraine. I realize you are very busy so feel free to take all the time you need to respond. As you well know, after WW2 Israel developed very effective intelligence capabilities and used them to track down Nazis and their collaborators all over the world. Some were brought to justice, others eliminated on sight. They were very good at this. Assuming Ukraine achieves a complete victory, do you see a scenario wherein they develop similar covert groups to carry out similar operations? My understanding is that Ukraine has very good intelligence capabilities, and the language and cultural similarities might make doing so less difficult than it was for Israel. Do you think the world looks the other way?
Thank you, as well, for the kind words! I had hoped to get to this last weekend, but all the oxygen got used up by the revolt. So here’s the answer: I fully expect that the Ukrainians, specifically Major General Budanov’s Main Director of Intelligence, which is abbreviated as either the HUR or the GUR, has already been developing a strategy for this and building plans off of it. As for whether the world looks the other way, if the Ukrainians know their business, the world either won’t know or won’t be able to do much about it. The Israelis scarfed up an Iranian planning a terrorist attack in Cyprus last week. And they got him in Iran. Didn’t get a whole lot of coverage.
If you want a good read on Israel’s targeted assassination program, then give Ronen Bergman’s Rise and Kill First a read.
Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.
War for Ukraine Day 493: (Some of) You Have Questions, I (May) Have AnswersPost + Comments (39)
The Venezuelans Gov. DeSantis dropped in Martha’s Vineyard last fall as a political stunt are thriving.
“I did not even know where Martha’s Vineyard was. And now I feel welcomed by everybody here. I’m working, making friends and this is home for me now.”https://t.co/eeCaBxd8Q4
— Hannah Dreier (@hannahdreier) June 28, 2023
Only a handful of yet-to-be-certified refugees, but still a win for these lucky few. From the NYTimes, “How Migrants Flown to Martha’s Vineyard Came to Call It Home” [gift link]:
… When Ms. Cauro fled Venezuela last summer, she never imagined that one day she would be working and living on a wealthy island south of Cape Cod, surrounded by boats and mansions of the kind she had seen only in the movies.
It has been nine months since the government of Florida, under the direction of Gov. Ron DeSantis, chartered two flights from Texas that picked up Ms. Cauro and 48 other newly arrived migrants and dropped them off on Martha’s Vineyard, a liberal enclave that until then had little firsthand experience with the surge in migration on the U.S.-Mexico border.
The political move — repeated this month, when Florida officials arranged two more flights of migrants from Texas, this time bound for California — was an attempt to force Democratic leaders many miles away to deal with a surge in migration that has affected states along the border. The trips left many of the Venezuelans confused and alarmed. Some were told they were headed for Boston or Seattle, where there would be plentiful jobs, assistance and housing.
But neither was the destination; it was Martha’s Vineyard, and it was the end of the busy summer season when vacationers begin retreating home to offices and schools. There were no jobs and no places for them to stay. Volunteers put the new arrivals up at a local church and arranged for transportation.
Within days, most of the migrants were gone, headed for other parts of Massachusetts and places like New York, Washington and Michigan — places better equipped than a small island to settle people who had arrived with little or nothing of their own.
As it turned out, though, not all of them left.
Ms. Cauro is one of at least four migrants who have quietly stayed behind on the island, forming bonds with a community that opened what doors it could. Ms. Cauro, 25, is working as a landscaper. Her brother, Daniel, 29, and her cousin, Eliud Aguilar, 28, found jobs in painting and roofing.
They first stayed in the homes of Martha’s Vineyard residents who invited them in, and then began earning enough money for a house of their own, with the four of them currently chipping in $1,000 a month each for a two-bedroom house. They got bicycles to ride around town…
Weekend Read: Living Well (in Martha’s Vineyard) Is the Best RevengePost + Comments (47)
I have nothing to add to this, just rage at the endless corruption going on in plain sight.
NEW: The DeSantis Administration steered $92 million last year in federal covid stimulus money to a highway project that directly benefits a top political donor who gifted a golf simulator to governor's mansion w/@jdawsey1 @iarnsdorf https://t.co/iNhJMOWk6F
— Michael Scherer (@michaelscherer) June 29, 2023
Gift link to the Washington Post if you want to read more about it.
Open thread.
What A Fucking Corrupt Sleaze-bag DeSantis Is (Open Thread)Post + Comments (284)
