06.12.14
Posted in Bombing Paupers, Culture of Lickspittle, War On Terror at 11:52 am by George Smith
From a long time ago.
On the unfolding disaster, extract from the NYT today:
Iraq’s fracturing deepened on Thursday as Kurdish forces poured into the strategic northern oil city of Kirkuk after government troops fled, while emboldened Sunni militants who seized two other important northern cities this week moved closer to Baghdad and issued threats about advancing into the heavily Shiite south and destroying the shrines there, the holiest in Shiism …
Militants aligned with the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria swept across the porous border from Syria on Tuesday to overrun Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. They have been driving toward the capital since then, capturing the town of Tikrit, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein, seizing parts of the oil refinery city of Baiji and threatening Samarra, a city sacred to Shiites just 70 miles north of Baghdad.
I have nothing to say except we did this.
Now unintentionally hilarious and black quote from Salon writer Wagner James Au, at Salon, in 2002:
“You can see them in the field, in subsequent years, dedicated young men and women, their weapons merged into an information network that enables them to cut out with surgical precision the cancer that threatens us all — heat-packing humanitarians who leave the innocent unscathed, and full of renewed hope. In their wake, democracy, literacy and an Arab world restored to full flower, as it deserves to be, an equal in a burgeoning global culture …”
And in honor, you can again download and listen to Iraq N Roll by Uncle Sam & the JDAMs. Here.
The old recommended donation, not obligatory, was three dollars and fifty cents.
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06.10.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Ricin Kooks at 12:51 pm by George Smith
Jeffrey Levenderis of Akron, OH, was convicted in a ricin case that had been on the books since 2011 when the FBI discovered a mixture containing it in a jar in his former dwelling.
The government said is was to be part of a plot to kill his stepfather and “against first responders who might respond to a fire Levenderis planned to set at his house as part of an elaborate suicide plan,” according to a news report.
This, perhaps, speaks to the state of Levenderis’ mind. As described in the news the plan makes little sense. Ricin is a protein and is destroyed by heat. How it would be used in a fire is a mystery. That would now seem immaterial.
The jury trial took four days. Levenderis had been in jail since 2011 and was confined to a wheelchair.
Details are here and here.
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06.07.14
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle at 12:58 pm by George Smith
In the web environment made by Google and corporate America, clickbait reigns supreme. Working example, above, on the Yahoo news page, about 50 percent of which on any given day constitutes virtually fake news and useless career and lifestyle advice columns written by people, all of whom have smiling thumbnail photos in which they look almost exactly alike.
Has Russia banned the US from the International Space Station, tantamount to almost an act of war? No. But that’s the point of the weasel-worded headline, to get you to think so.
The link takes you to stock-picking advice column by Rich Smith who begins: Oh, no. Russia is mad at us again.
His bio is here but you don’t have to read it to know he’s a jerk off.
This week the Los Angeles Times held its yearly awards dinner. A friend of mine won one for copy editing. It’s a big deal.
Copy-editing and integrity still mean something, most of the time, at big newspapers. Someone caught writing a clickbait piece like the above would stand a good chance of being pulled off their beat and their career blighted in, at least, the short term.
And a copy editor would suffer for putting such a title on a piece, or waving it through.
But web news jerk-offs are now way more than a dime a dozen. It’s the economic model everyone is convinced is gold.
Let’s have a look at Upworthy today, to see what’s brewing at the pinnacle of click masturbaiting:
Haven’t Classic Children’s Stories Always Been About More Than What They’re About?
The author: “I’m a father, writer, and singer/songwriter (see label for actual order). I get it: Time is precious, every life is precious, this little blue marble is precious. We all want the same things, really. But, um, how do we do that? Let’s see if the Internet knows…”
A Pixelated Nietzsche Warns Us About The Danger Of Looking To Science For All The Answers
The author: “I was born in the hometown of Elvis and raised in the land of Mark Twain. I care about America, fairness, human beings, manners, and everyone’s right to be weird.”
This Illustration Of How Many Soldiers Died On D-Day Is Like A Kick To The Gut
The author: “By day I’m a transformative photographer and art therapist. At night, I sleuth the web for outrageously important stuff. I want you to be happier, smarter, healthier, and more generous.”
Oh Snap! The Government Just Got Put On Notice … By An 8th-Grader
The author: “I’m a poet and activist using my Internet unicorn powers for the greater good. I push myself and others to make a positive impact on their local and global communities. I believe the web is the one true equalizer in the world …”
If you look at all the writer bios on Upworthy, they have a common and numbing theme. Everyone is using all their power on the internet to make you, the nation and the world better and happier. They appear as little more than mannequins with smiley faces.
There’s another good way to characterize them: One note sincerity trolls.
“We see Upworthy as confirmation that the potential to have a broadly well-informed public still exists,??? Eli Pariser told New York Magazine back in March. You could have fooled me because I’ve never seen that potential.
The article goes on to explain Upworthy’s delivery is purposely like advertising, advertising specifically aimed at getting shares on social media, particularly Facebook. Pariser tells the interviewer he once worked for a college literary magazine, a model he then wished to avoid.
“Contributors,” or the writers aren’t just that. They’re also “curators” at Upworthy.
Curators of what? The best 3-second-to-minute-readable clickbait in hand-wringing sincerity, uplift and lessons for the day.
Moving along, we have Medium, the blogging platform started by the guy who made Twitter. Who then professed to have found that 140-character blurts don’t really constitute much in the way of information and journalism.
Roll it:
Holy shit, dude! How I accidentally lost 50 pounds in 8 months
The author: “Designer. Maker of things. Total weirdo. Husband to wife. Friend to startups. Avid fan: scary movies, loud music, lists.”
On Gradually Rebuilding My iTunes Library…
I wish I had an intern…
The author: “Bostonian/Independent A&R/Blogger/Writer @ Poisonous Paragraphs/Bastard Swordsman/Producers I Know/HipHop Wired/The Urban Daily/Killer Boombox & NPR”
“Somtimes i feel that Medium is like taking a sh*t???
Which is great value
The author: “UI/UX Designer.”
Listening to Russia’s State Media, It’s Hard to Tell Fact From Fiction
The Kremlin’s government-media complex spins the Ukraine crisis
Delivered without a hint of national self-recognition, one might add.
Two Weeks Ago, I Almost Died in the Deadliest Plane Crash Ever
The author: “Pittsburgher San Franciscan. Economic consultant and writer. Loves politics, economics, comedy, poetry, and Stanford football.”
Today I’m Going to Predict Your Future
Five important things that will happen to you before your 20-year college reunion
The author: “Head of @WebbmediaGroup, an emerging tech ideas + strategy agency.”
Finally, we turn to Henry Blodget, the CEO of Business Insider, a former stock-pumping fraud criminal, who re-invented himself as one of the web’s top MasturBaiters.
In a recent interview:
Henry Blodget is infamous for hyping dot-com stocks before the crash. Now he has one of his own Henry Blodget is enjoying an impressive second act. Eleven years ago, his career as a high-profile Wall Street analyst imploded with the collapse of the dot-com bubble, when he was accused of promoting stocks publicly and disparaging them privately. He was banned for life from the investment industry … Business Insider is loud and brash – a “scrappy upstart,??? as Mr. Blodget puts it, aimed at a young audience – with headlines that scream and content that roams well beyond a core business readership. It now claims more U.S. readers than The Wall Street Journal.
There are quite a few mainstream-media journalists gravitating toward start-ups, such as FiveThirtyEight and Vox. Is this a new era for journalism–and where is it headed?
Blodget: We are in a golden age for journalism. The digital medium is by far the richest, most flexible and most powerful medium ever developed, and it is creating amazing opportunities for entrepreneurs and journalists who embrace it.
Is the comparison to the Wall Street Journal valid? No.
Blodget claims the “editorial budget” of Business Insider is 10 million dollars. It employs 50 people as editorial staff.
The Wall Street Journal employs about 2,000 people worldwide, has 85 news bureaus and 26 printing plants, including one in southern California. It’s the country’s largest newspaper with a circulation of over 2 million, not including its website.
The newspaper is valued at around 5 billion dollars and has won over 30 Pulitzers. Business Insider and Henry Blodget will never win a Pulitzer.
If the web metric that Business Insider reaches more people than the Wall Street Journal is accurate, this only illustrates that the former is indeed, largely, just a mass of clickbait.
Being part of a story on Business Insider is virtually meaningless compared to the WSJ. Chances are high, too, it’s merely recycled and chopped content from somewhere else.
Jeff Bezos is a big fan and bank-roller of Henry Blodget, mostly for reasons having to do with the latter having hyped Amazon stock early on.
After Bezos bought the Washington Post, he sent Blodget to the paper to tutor its journalists in the ways of web news success. It would have been entertaining to see the rolling eyes, to hear the water-cooler talk after Blodget was no longer in earshot.
“We’re doomed,” somebody probably said.
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06.06.14
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Rock 'n' Roll at 4:29 pm by George Smith
The still life of a thicket of Colt 45s grows more lush. At the very end, the hand makes an appearance.
The glitzy version, full rock band with swiped GE commercial, was made about three years ago.
Since then, not so amazingly, nothing has changed.
And Tapatio sells more at my neighborhood market than Sriracha (1) so it makes an appearance. The packets come in bags of potato chips from Mexico, not at all a bad idea.
As an existential question that falls naturally from the music: What is one to do when you’ve been locked out of everything you are able to do in American life?
Since it’s now a condition that affects millions, it’s of some importance.
My answer is that in choosing not to answer it, the country will be an historic and unique example of a corporate fascist state characterized of crushing poverty and small enclaves of well-being where the wealthy and their high-button servants live, sub-nations where the people are protected by the security infrastructure and the general national character of servile obedience to wealth.
Fed by workers who bring them their meals through TaskRabbit, they will be continually delighted by consumer electronics from Apple, always enhanced by apps which allow them to use simple finger motions to summon the help.
1. Town burghers decided they did not want to continue bad relations with the company, anyway. Two weeks after the national news fight, everyone made nice.
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06.04.14
Posted in WhiteManistan at 12:43 pm by George Smith
There are enclaves of WhiteManistan in California. They just no longer count for much since no Republican holds any major public office in the state.
But, if you go to the land of northern redwoods, WhiteManistanis have been trying to secede for years.
Yesterday was election day, only one in three counties given the opportunity voted for forming the new state of Jefferson.
Between the three, there are less people than live in Pasadena. In the one voting for new statehood, this translates to to the wishes of probably a little over 4,000 people as a majority.
The people in favor of the new state of Jefferson are, bluntly, stupid. It’s an angry ego thing for them.
These places have no tax base. That they have public services and schools at all is because of the tax money flowing from the rest of the state, you know, the kind of money a still civilized society feels is necessary to be a civil society, even if there are places within it where not too many people live.
Yet the rationalization for the creation of Jefferson is they are tired of having no representation.
Voters in one far Northern California county defeated a measure to call for the creation of a 51st state named Jefferson while those in a neighboring county responded more favorably to the test of whether a secessionist movement has sails in a region accustomed to feeling overlooked by the rest of California.
Del Norte County voters rejected the secessionist measure by 59 percent Tuesday, while Tehama County voters were supporting the proposal by 56 percent with ballots still being tallied.
A similar but unrelated question on the ballot in Siskiyou County, to rename it the Republic of Jefferson, failed with only 44 percent of voters in favor.
Follow the link for the amusing picture.
The ludicrously named Neel Kashkari did win the opportunity to be crushed by Jerry Brown in the upcoming gubernatorial election.
So happy were election workers to see me in the afternoon at my polling place, they insisted I take an “I Voted!” sticker. I had the place to myself, it was a warm afternoon and did not want to disappoint them. Voter turnout was estimated to be a meager 13 percent.
There’s another secessionist movement in California, bankrolled by a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who wants to split the state into six different new ones. The most prosperous and bestest to be named, of course, Silicon Valley.
Check the guy pushing it, Tim Draper, singing to handfuls of nerds begging for his money. The guy’s fucking horrible.
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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Psychopath & Sociopath, WhiteManistan at 12:18 pm by George Smith
Postcard from Tarrant County, TX, where the freedom farms of WhiteManistan are the most fertile and lush of all. Sadly, this cannot be seen here in LA County because we’re shackled in the chains of government tyranny. You can’t satirize or publicly shame us. The roots of the tree of democrazy and gun-demental rights are refreshed, watered and strengthened by those things. Molon labe!
And if you’ve been along for the ride, you know the blog did a short rock opera on it.
Always under-appreciated but ahead of the curve.
And earlier.
They also have absolutely the worst taste in looks.
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06.01.14
Posted in Psychopath & Sociopath, WhiteManistan at 1:05 pm by George Smith
There’s little if any faith of in me but I know religion as spiritual poison when I see it.
And that’s WhiteManistan’s special brand of Christianity.
An excerpt from a letter submitted to the Roanoke Times of Virginia, spied at Pine View Farm:
Republicanized Christianity redefines the biblical view of humanity to include for-profit corporations; it demonizes the poor and ignores their exploitation despite the overwhelming amount of biblical data that teaches about God’s hatred for this practice. These injustices necessitated the prophets’ warnings about God’s intent to punish man.
How did we get from “blessed are the poor??? to the republicanized message of “the poor get what they deserve???? We have witnessed the hijacking of the Christian faith, one that is defined by politicians and devoid of Christian substance.
It’s true our Grand Old White Supremacy Party have honed their perverted vision to a fine point as they take the country down with them.
But, truth, it goes back awhile.
At the beginning of Jesus of America (watch it), I put a clip of the Reverend Billy Sunday. I dubbed him out for the sake of the intro.
But if you look for him on YouTube and listen, he goes on about the Bible and wealth, that the disciples of Jesus, if valued in his day’s money, were more affluent than Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.
Don’t believe me? Take a gander. His message appealed to millions at a time, the Gilded Age, that was much like now.
Read the comments. WhiteManistan still likes it.
Others, not so much:
Listen to what this devil is saying, twisting the words of the Bible. The Bible says clearly, “it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle!” And here this dick is saying that Holy Men were billionaires. America was not built of Christian values, dumbass pricks! You can’t twist the Bible into your own wicked fantasies, to have it justify the lunacy of modern times. America was built on capitalism and greed, not Biblical values. You can’t have it both ways.
?
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05.31.14
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Rock 'n' Roll at 12:44 pm by George Smith
Apple, with regard to music (now almost everything, actually) is similar to a disease for which finding the cure is fiendishly difficult. It’s tech malaria, with the efficiency and presence of the common cold thrown in. (Amazon fits the bill, too, but I’ve already spent a lot of time on the Empire of Bezos.)
The pic above is Apple’s Eddie Cue, the architect of the company’s recent deal to acquire Beats, the streamed music and half-assed tech company of which Dre, record mogul Jimmy Iovine and will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, are equity partners.
This is what Cue had to say, as reprinted from RockNYCLiveand Recorded:
“Music is dying???, says Apple executive Eddie Cue, the man responsible for the Apple buy out of Dre and Iovine’s beats …
It is hard to know where to begin with this stuff but let’s start by saying OK, music is dying, how the hell does Apple buying Beats change anything at all?
Eddie Cue is being silly. If he means that the music business is dying, well, welcome to 2002, now fuck off.
Cue’s worth the derision. And read the whole thing, The Apple/Beats Deal For Dummies,” here. It’s short but effectively captures the nut of it.
Apple felt the need for a streaming music service because those services, the most famous of which is Spotify, are cutting into iTunes’ lunch. Streaming music, as opposed to downloading files of it, left Apple out of the mix.
In terms of being good for music or artists, neither are. People get paid less and less, unto virtually nothing, courtesy of the technology. Only those who own the services make the piles.
However, in paying $3 billion dollars to get a really-not-that-good music streaming company that started as a maker of unremarkable name-branded headphones, you have a really good example of how gargantuan piles of money are made in the Culture of Lickspittle.
Our world, any part of it, music or otherwise, hardly required Jimmy Iovine, Dr. Dre and will.i.am to be turned into tech billionaires for little more than being there.
It’s a working example of the central thesis of Thomas Piketty’s Capital, the one that says a big pile of money trumps everything, even world growth, because our social economic structure just makes big piles of cash bigger faster than everything else by dint of their nature as big piles.
So you can think you want about the latest scam as some kind of new tech coup of wonderfulness and disruption but if Iovine, Dre and company are the faces of innovation, I’m Ernest Hemingway.
An interview at Fortune with will.i.am underscores how nothing instantly becomes worth a billion dollars. The only thing necessary is to just be on the receiving end as the river of money goes sloshing by from A to B.
In the process people are seen to turn from human beings with good qualities, the making of music that has made millions happy, into model plutocrats. Someone already very wealthy is given another king’s ransom for, essentially, zip, a null that has only the most trivial social potential for good.
In one effortless step they’re catapulted into the realm of compensation of the maligned American corporate CEO, you know, the class that’s now the constant symbol of advancing inequality.
At Fortune, will.i.am is interviewed and extolled, for vesting into the billionaires club for just being himself. This is described as “tireless promotion.”
The quotes are fatuous. It’s remarkable anyone even sat still for them.
“This is the craziest rollercoaster I’ve ever been on,” will.i.am tells the interviewer of the couple of weeks it took to make the Apple/Beats deal.
In 2003, will.i.am tells the journalist he saw camera phones in the audience: “[And] I tell Jimmy, ‘We need to make hardware. The world has changed. Hardware, hardware, hardware, hardware.’ ”
So what’s world-changing hardware, hardware, hardware?
A headphone. That he didn’t make. Never mind the only reason the transaction occurred is because of Beats transition into a digital music service from one that sold unspectacular but high-priced headphones and speakers.
“It’s not just good for the company, it’s good for the culture,” continues will.i.am.
“You have to look at it like, How is it good for kids in inner cities first? How do kids in inner cities not only dream about being athletes and musicians, but now, entrepreneurs, and bringers of new, disruptive, cool, lifestyle products.”
I think we can be certain, new disruptive lifestyle products will not and do not solve impoverishment and zero opportunity in America.
It was Steve Jobs genius, well after Apple was virtually destroyed in the PC and corporate network business by Microsoft, to remake iStuff as “lifestyle products.”
And such lifestyle products they were and are, priced well more than what they’re worth, but which people have to own because they are the electronic convenience baubles of our age.
iStuff has certainly not increased opportunity or empowered everyone to be their own entrepreneur. Polls show, although hardly ever well-publicized, that the majority don’t even want to be “entrepreneurs.”
Live in the distressed section of Pasadena, like me, and everyone owns smartphones, many of them Apple “lifestyle products.” They act as sole connections to the global networks, one of the major conduits of entertainments, and the only phone service.
Although often hyped as modern Philosopher’s Stones, capable of transmuting your leaden life into gold, they are not. Ownership doesn’t make you a small businessman, a self-made man or woman, a maker of new and upcoming “products.”
What, the Fortune interviewer asks, did Jimmy Iovine “want [will.i.am] available for?”
Answer: “I still don’t know, to this day.”
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05.28.14
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Psychopath & Sociopath, WhiteManistan at 12:08 pm by George Smith
Because there’s no such thing as excess in the Free Republic of Douchebags. And they’ve been busy the last few days. (Yes, yes, click that link.)
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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle at 11:47 am by George Smith
“What still doesn’t exist in the marketplace is a fantastic end-to-end user experience!”
“When we started working on this project we gave ourselves this provocation: What if you could send a 3D print to someone as easy as sending a text message?”
“We want to make this as easy as downloading an app to your phone. Having a curated library is important because everything on there [thousands of plans and renderings for plastic knick-knacks] is gonna be good!”
“You can add shapes to it. You can adorn it with your initials.”
I could go on. Near the end, encapsulated: Create meaningful relationships with plastic objects.
Count on people to throw half-a-million or more their way.
Gaily colored plastic things for setting on coffee tables, for the people who ride the Google bus, or whoever pass for them near you.
Last week, it was candy, cookies and pancakes.
Making abundant nothings for those who already have abundance.
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