Featured Editorials

The Lady in the Green Astroturf Dress

Its alarming to watch the astrorturf (massive free media) celebrity, AOC, steal the clothes of the 50 year old environmental movement and its ten year old Green New Deal. Naive environmentalists are surprised and delighted that the corporate media is actually reporting on the topic, and do not ask the vital questions of why publicity is given and where AOC is taking the discussion.

The Streisand Effect

If you're not familiar with the concept it goes a little like this- In 2003 Barbra Streisand sued a photographer over pictures of her Malibu Estate, claiming "invasion of privacy". The instant reaction was to hugely increase the popularity of the image and doxx her address to anyone who cared to know.

The coinage itself came from Mike Masnick of TechDirt, a site I read several times daily and frequently cite (among many flaws of written English currently is a failure to correctly use the homophones 'cite', 'site', and 'sight', don't get me started about the proper use of 'affect', which is to pretend, and 'effect', which is to cause), in a 2005 discussion of a takedown notice issued to urinal.net, which naturally enough specialized in pictures of urinals, by a resort that was unhappy to be included in a compendium of male restroom plumbing.

Worked about as well for them as it did for Streisand.

Anyway, I am happy to report Comrades that our Socialist Revolution has received a great, and totally unintended, boost from Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio and his capitalist Republican running dogs.

c99% Portland OR meetup 2/10/19

We had five people show -- Cassiodorus, granma, detroitmechworks, earthling1, StudentOfEarth. We ate good Chinese food and had lots of fun. I ordered the gai lan and the salt and pepper tofu. We talked about science fiction and my book. StudentOfEarth talked about Bend and about people who were 72 who took a piece of dry land and built homes and farms from scratch. earthling1 talked about his southern California past.

Where does a tip to an Amazon driver go? In some cases, toward the driver's base pay

This really is shameful.

Where does a tip to an Amazon driver go? In some cases, toward the driver's base pay

Amazon at times dips into the tips earned by contracted delivery drivers to cover their promised pay, a Times review of emails and receipts reveals.

The Weekly Watch

Constipation of Imagination

You see things; and you say “Why?” But I dream things that never were; and I say “Why not?”
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Back to Methuselah, act I, Selected Plays with Prefaces, vol. 2, p. 7 (1949). The serpent says these words to Eve.

Robert F. Kennedy used a similar quotation as a theme of his 1968 campaign: “Some men see things as they are and say, why; I dream things that never were and say, why not.”

The Primary and Secondary Contradictions of the American Empire

To understand what I mean by contradictions, let me offer some recommended reading:

Mao's Essay On Contradiction

What exactly are the contradictions in our rotting empire? To begin with, our economy can't survive without the very things we claim to abhor such as imperialism, various means of exploitation, exceptions that maintain the rule, and that's just three.

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