July 2018

to put it bluntly

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Russiagate is a Ruling Class Diversion (Black Agenda Report)

Also, a little history of US "meddling" in the Eastern Bloc (Counterpunch). Didn't know that the US sent "expeditionary" troops to Vladivostok in 1918 -- the Russians certainly remember it -- here's a photo.

In the Counterpunch article Paul Street thinks Americans in 2018 are being swayed by the constant drumbeat of anti-Russian propaganda on TV. Polls seem to indicate this is true, if by Americans we mean Americans who voted for Hillary Clinton. (chart source)

fake criticism

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assembly

In this performance work, the artist dresses like a 1950s assembly line worker, yet instead of building, prepares bins of wire stripped from old computers for copper recycling, in a post-industrial economy.

hat tip png01

dark infantilization patterns

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addcontent

This is too trivial to qualify as a dark pattern but it is annoying.
The designer (this is from Feedly.com) doesn't think it's enough to have a big white-on-green plus sign telling you where to add an RSS feed ("content") to your list of feeds.
No, like a small baby you need a pulsating crib toy to draw your eye down to that part of the page.

strange times (3)

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Talking about the loss of America's "fictive kinship" and the war between the (let's call them) Trump-haters and Hillary-haters, a friend notes that market forces (global business, multinationals, unelected corporate "oligarchs") profit from these divisions. As long as the Trump-haters and Hillary-haters are arguing about topics such as "should a screaming baby be snatched from its mother's arms and put in a concentration camp [click 'yes' or 'no']," they are not finding common cause on issues such as their flat wages and diminishing social safety net. My friend "Harry" who was emailing about those babies and "civility" sort of gets this but can't abandon his Trump fixation. In an email I ventured that "the oligarchs are laughing while people argue about child-snatching"; in his reply Harry changed it to "the oligarchy and Trump": "Yes, the oligarchy and Trump have engineered increased polarization and division in the US and in the world. It aids them on their way to the bank and on their way to nearly unstoppable control. Pervasive, nonviolent responses are one way to fight it." By pervasive, nonviolent responses he meant refusing to serve Trump staffers. He implicitly compares himself to Martin Luther King, fighting the lonely fight one staffer at a time, and seems not to realize he has the entire "deep state" and Washington media apparatus on his side.