12.09.13

National Pain Gods

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle at 3:58 pm by George Smith

Krugman in “The Punishment Cure:” “[It’s] part of a general pattern of afflicting the afflicted while comforting the comfortable … So the odds, I’m sorry to say, are that the long-term unemployed will be cut off, thanks to a perfect marriage of callousness — a complete lack of empathy for the unfortunate and bad economics.” […]

The digital sweatshop letter the LA Times didn’t print

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle at 3:29 pm by George Smith

Hello: Your interesting Column One — Mappers Spot all the Pools in LA Basin — informed that 43,123 pools in the Los Angeles basin were counted by the digital sweatshop house, Mechanical Turk. And it cost researchers Benedikt Gross and Joseph Lee $350. I thought you might like to know what that came out to […]

12.06.13

Rumble from ‘They Live’

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Rock 'n' Roll at 12:50 pm by George Smith

John Carpenter’s They Live, from 1988, was the best art describing where we are in 2013. Just take the spotted aliens as the 1 percent and their servant class. No remake could do justice to the original. But it would certainly be great for an enthusiastic revival on movie channels. Would you like an MP3 […]

12.05.13

Digital sweat-shopping counts the swimming pools of LA

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle at 4:47 pm by George Smith

How many swimming pools are in the Los Angeles basin? A UCLA/MIT student and a German graphic designer wanted to know. They employed digital sweat shop labor to find out. From the Los Angeles Times: German graphic designer Benedikt Gross was flying into Los Angeles for the first time when he gazed out the jetliner’s […]

12.02.13

Empire of Bezos Misdirection Play

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle at 8:51 am by George Smith

Classic Culture of Lickspittle. When the bad press starts piling up about digital sweat-shopping, underpaying and overworking labor in the fulfillment warehouses until they drop, air out some absurd thing, yell “innovation,” and hope it will distract everyone from all the crap reality. On 60 Minutes, which I don’t watch, but you couldn’t miss the […]

11.25.13

You don’t live in America, you survive it

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Decline and Fall at 1:53 pm by George Smith

From a book by a man named Henry Giroux, who was interviewed by Bill Moyers recently: “The ideology of hardness and cruelty runs through American culture like an electric current…” He adds: “Yeah, it sure does. I mean, to see poor people, their benefits being cut, to see pensions of Americans who have worked like […]

11.16.13

The Plutocrat’s Instruments

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Decline and Fall, Made in China, Rock 'n' Roll at 2:06 pm by George Smith

Today, more ridiculous advertising from the American guitar industry, one among many good examples of inequality, the abandonment of a middle class society, and the shift of domestic manufacturing to lavish goods for the one percent and their still employed white collar servants. If you follow the rock instrument industry you run into hordes of […]

11.13.13

Liquidate your life in the sharing economy

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle at 10:20 am by George Smith

The revolution of global networks is now in high gear developing those fabulous on-line bazaars where those with capital can leverage the desperation of the out-of-work or underemployed through the simple power of apps and smartphones. Obamacare will be a necessity in this new world, asserted NY Times columnist Tom Friedman over the weekend. This […]

11.08.13

Rock & Bluesmen for the Plutocracy

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Permanent Fail, Rock 'n' Roll at 4:03 pm by George Smith

In the mail today. Price: $1250 before tax, per. Made in low employment density custom-shop America, for the [1 percent and their not-yet-obsolete upper middle class servant] people. Bifurcation of US market into domestic manufacturing for the haves, offshore or nothing for everyone else. More instruments for corporate fascists, to reference last week. The virtual […]

11.04.13

A High Button Shit Fit

Posted in Culture of Lickspittle at 3:14 pm by George Smith

The New York Times devotes a story to Mrs. Jeff Bezos’ negative review of a book about the empire of Bezos. America’s plutocrats are vain and egotistical. This is unsurprising. There’s a long record of those who have everything vehemently objecting to anything not done exactly to their liking: Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, […]

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