Fas­ci­nat­ing con­ver­sa­tion on the lat­est episode of ShopTalk between @davatron5000 and @chriscoyier. These algo­rithms have essen­tial­ly made con­tent cre­ators into slaves who have to fol­low unknown rules just to get their hard work seen.

Embrace MLK, Reject Barack Oba­ma. Why Left­ists Need to Chal­lenge the Scourge of Black Neoliberalism

Black mis-lead­er­ship like Jim Clyburn is only pos­si­ble because the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty learned that they could hide evil cor­rupt cor­po­ratism behind peo­ple of col­or and women. This is why Kamala Har­ris, despite her atro­cious crim­i­nal jus­tice record and sup­port for US impe­ri­al­ism, quick­ly shot to the top of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty despite vot­ers harsh­ly reject­ing her dur­ing the 2020 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Primaries.

Now I am see­ing a more trou­bling pat­tern emerge, Democ­rats are using these black cor­rupt lead­ers to shut down and sti­fle move­ments against the estab­lish­ment. For exam­ple, Jim Clyburn, Jamie Har­ri­son, Barack Oba­ma, Raphael Warnock, and many oth­er black lead­ers are the Demo­c­ra­t­ic attack dogs used to attack grass­roots activist move­ments like Defund the Police. Jim Clyburn com­par­ing Defund the Police to ​“burn baby burn” and Barack Oba­ma con­cern trolling about the slo­gan is how they are used to under­mine our move­ment. Let us be clear, Defund the Police is NOT a slo­gan. It is a pol­i­cy demand. One which these black con­gres­sion­al oli­garchs do not like because Democ­rats receive more mon­ey from the police than Repub­li­cans do. Once again, these black estab­lish­ment Democ­rats are sell­ing out our peo­ple and attack­ing our move­ment for mon­ey and polit­i­cal power.

What ​‘Democ­ra­cy’ Is Under Attack? Notes From The Edge Of The Nar­ra­tive Matrix

Right­ists suck at con­spir­a­cy analy­sis because their world­view requires an elite cabal plan­ning and orches­trat­ing all evil dynam­ics, where­as left­ists under­stand that many (though not all) of those dynam­ics will unfold on their own in a sys­tem where human behav­ior is dri­ven by prof­it-seek­ing. In sit­u­a­tions where you are ide­o­log­i­cal­ly pro­hib­it­ed from blam­ing the obvi­ous cul­prit cap­i­tal­ism, you’ll come up with all kinds of oth­er wacky explanations.

Cap­i­tal­ism is at the core of the rot con­sum­ing the US. A bold social­ist agen­da would help us heal the plan­et and offer every­one a life of dignity.

Dems Reject Big­ger Sur­vival Checks, Float Tax Breaks For The Rich

The lack of clar­i­ty around what a $2,000 check actu­al­ly means gave Biden an oppor­tu­ni­ty to decide whether to press for more or less relief to mil­lions of Amer­i­can fac­ing evic­tion, star­va­tion and bank­rupt­cy. He chose to use the ambi­gu­i­ty to call for less.

Indeed, rather than push­ing for a full $2,000 check, the pres­i­dent-elect and par­ty lead­ers decid­ed to parse their own rhetoric and offer up a legal­is­tic jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for a small­er amount of relief — a big win for con­ser­v­a­tive Democ­rats such as Joe Manchin, who has said that many peo­ple don’t need the checks and argued instead for more ​“tar­get­ed” relief.

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty doesn’t rep­re­sent the inter­ests of reg­u­lar people.

I’m back on Word­Press for my per­son­al blog and I hon­est­ly don’t know why I leave. I tin­ker too much for my own good sometimes.

I miss exist­ing with­out the con­stant wor­ry that I might die.

This video from @mattbirchler on mov­ing his newslet­ter to Sub­stack is fas­ci­nat­ing. I love that Sub­stack gives you an RSS feed and a canon­i­cal URL. Not to men­tion the ease with which you can cre­ate a sub­scrip­tion. I’d try it if I had the ener­gy to write a con­sis­tent newsletter 🤣

I love the sen­ti­ment of this tweet:

guilty plea­sure is stu­pid. like what you like despite oth­er peo­ple hat­ing what­ev­er you find fun. ignore bitch­es who get in the way of you enjoy­ing harm­less shit they’ve decid­ed is uncool

tru­ly the most fun peo­ple I know dont give a fuck about cool

— A Myth­ic Bitch👼🐍 unblock fee $555✨(🐿️ not girl)  @Mulletp0wer) Jan­u­ary 14, 2021

I’ve strug­gled my whole life with this. Mold­ing myself into what­ev­er I thought oth­er peo­ple would like. Try­ing to fit in where I did­n’t, and think­ing I was some­how doing some­thing wrong or the things I liked weren’t ​“cool”. Learn­ing to be authen­tic instead and stand­ing by that authen­tic­i­ty has been a breath of fresh air in my life, and so far has brought about meet­ing some of the best people.

Ulti­mate­ly, I accept and love myself. Why would I allow peo­ple who don’t into my bubble?

I’m excit­ed to see news about an open-world Star Wars game. I would love to see more games with a sto­ry like Star Wars Jedi: Fall­en Order, but who are we kid­ding? When it comes to Star Wars, I stay hyped.

I respect the peo­ple on this call, but I dis­agree. Lives are on the line. Inten­tions don’t mat­ter. A politi­cian that isn’t active­ly push­ing for #M4A dur­ing a dead­ly pan­dem­ic is my ene­my. I’ll call you my ally when I see you fight­ing for us.

This video from @RaniaKhalek explains per­fect­ly why I find the ban­ning of Trump (and the uncrit­i­cal praise for it) so alarming.

Let this song be the anthem of the 20’s once this god damn pan­dem­ic is over.

I had no idea Chris Stuck­mann used to be a Jehovah’s Wit­ness. His lat­est video is a small peak into the life of being one, and as a for­mer mem­ber myself, it’s pret­ty hor­ri­fy­ing. It brings me much joy to see fel­low exJWs hap­py and pur­su­ing their dreams. I hope to one day have the brav­ery to tell my sto­ry so hon­est­ly and open­ly like Chris does.

This is the woman the #fraud­squad betrayed us for. This shell of a per­son, they will­ing­ly vot­ed for with­out any mean­ing­ful con­ces­sions. A per­son that stands by the deci­sion of obstruct­ing stim­u­lus for eight months. Fuck­ing unbelievable.

It Wasn’t 2020, It Was The Rul­ing Class Try­ing to Kill You

What need­ed to hap­pen here in the US was the imme­di­ate imple­men­ta­tion of a sys­tem of nation­al health­care, a cam­paign to guar­an­tee wide­ly acces­si­ble and free test­ing, and the deploy­ment of a trained army of con­tact trac­ers track­ing infec­tions and help­ing peo­ple into paid, catered quar­an­tines. There should have edu­ca­tion­al cam­paigns – not just tele­vi­sion ads and offi­cial announce­ments but brigades of doc­tors, nurs­es, and med­ical stu­dents going door to door nation-wide, explain­ing the basics of the sit­u­a­tion in lan­guage the peo­ple could under­stand just as Cuba was able to do. There should have been rent and bill freezes, mas­sive free food dis­tri­b­u­tions, and recur­ring month­ly sur­vival pay­ments. There should have been a com­pre­hen­sive long term plan to con­trol the spread and make sure that peo­ple could stay home and social dis­tance with­out bring­ing down eco­nom­ic and emo­tion­al dev­as­ta­tion upon them­selves and their loved ones. That is, of course, not what happened.

Basi­cal­ly every oth­er coun­try has the pan­dem­ic under con­trol. We’ve had a whole year of our lives stolen, and yet there’s no end in sight. Will Democ­rats pass the bold type of leg­is­la­tion need­ed to get out of the hell­hole we’re in? I’m not par­tic­u­lar­ly hope­ful. It’s more impor­tant than ever to orga­nize and par­tic­i­pate in direct action.

Patri­ot Act 2, Cen­sor­ship, And Oth­er Notes From The Edge Of The Nar­ra­tive Matrix

To sup­port the cen­sor­ship of online speech is to sup­port the author­i­ty of monop­o­lis­tic tech oli­garchs to exert more and more glob­al con­trol over human com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Regard­less of your atti­tude toward who­ev­er hap­pens to be get­ting deplat­formed today, sup­port­ing this is self-destructive.

There are many gems in this newslet­ter, and I can’t agree more. We can agree Trump is hor­ri­ble, but fas­cism won’t go away by ignor­ing it. As Caitlin lat­er writes:

Try­ing to stop fas­cism by mak­ing it invis­i­ble is like try­ing to avert a charg­ing bull by putting your hands over your eyes.

If you want to stop the rise of fas­cism you need to change. Change your sick soci­ety. Pro­found­ly. Not just cov­er up the man­i­fes­ta­tions of that sickness.

I watched The King of Stat­en Island today and loved it. Pete David­son is fuck­ing bril­liant in it. In fact the whole cast is great. Def­i­nite­ly rec­om­mend it.