The Underlying Problem (Hamilton Nolan) — “This is happening because some people are too rich.”
The significant thing about the way that Elon Musk is presently dismantling our government is not the existence of his own political delusions, or his own self-interested quest to privatize public functions, or his own misreading of economics; it is the fact that he is able to do it. And he is able to do it because he has several hundred billion dollars. If he did not have several hundred billion dollars he would just be another idiot with bad opinions. Because he has several hundred billion dollars his bad opinions are now our collective lived experience.
And it’s not just Musk:
We have allowed too few people to accumulate too much wealth. The imbalance has grown so severe that a tiny number of individuals with twelve-figure net worths have the means to purchase so much political power that they can effectively make the federal government’s decisions.
What the Press Got Wrong About Hitler (Political Wire)
How did Snow White become the year’s most cursed movie? (Adrian Horton / The Guardian) — The anti-woke brigades are triggered that Disney cast an American actor of Colombian descent as Snow White. Pro-Palestinian advocates hate the casting of Gal Godot. Peter Dinklage hates the whole seven-dwarfs thing. And more.
I remember seeing the 1937 movie when I was a little kid, more than 55 years ago, and even then it seemed corny and old-fashioned.
I wanted to hate the 2025 update but the trailer looks pretty good.
Now that Ghost has launched its ActivityPub beta, I’m very curious to see what a long Ghost post looks like when it’s viewed from Mastodon.
Every read-it-later app I see plus my RSS reader is adding AI summarization features. I don’t need an app to read for me; I have been reading since I was six years old.
My latest on Fierce Network: Nvidia GTC: Top Telco Takeaways: AI-RAN, 6G, AI factories and oh! those cute robots
El Cajon nurse can’t shake COVID-19’s unrelenting grip: ‘I have lost relationships’
Nicole Baca, a 40-year-old registered nurse in the San Diego suburb of El Cajon, talks with the Union-Tribune’s Paul Sisson about her struggle with Long Covid. Her symptoms closely resemble people close to me:
Today, she’s grateful if she can take a walk at Ocean Beach with her husband, an act that requires meticulous pre-planning to avoid the racing pulse that can make her dangerously dizzy.
“Once, I had an episode where I almost passed out in a neighbor’s driveway,” she said. “I bent down to pick something up that was on the ground, and everything started to turn white.”
…
This never-ending fight started in June of 2020 when she found herself becoming strangely confused during a shift in a COVID-19 unit at the San Diego hospital where she worked. These were the days when health care workers were isolating themselves from their families, often staying in hotel rooms when off duty.
“My last day at work, I caught myself forgetting what I was doing, and I felt like I was on cold medicine, but I wasn’t,” she said. “I developed shortness of breath, a fever, fatigue, extreme bone pain, cough, diarrhea and dizziness.
“I was stumbling into the walls of my hotel room. Weirdly enough, I never lost my sense of taste or smell like most people did at the time.”
Most see such symptoms gradually resolve. For Baca, they worsened, permanently causing her body to overreact to small changes in elevation. Just standing up sends her pulse racing, the heart monitor in her Apple Watch warning of a dangerously erratic heartbeat. Such cardiac overcorrection causes her blood pressure to drop, increasing the chances that she will faint.
I am embarking on my fourth business trip in the past year after a four year hiatus. I feel I have regained the art of rapid packing — but maybe I should wait on saying that until I get to the hotel and find out that I’ve only packed right shoes.
We watched another episode of “The Rockford Files” last night. I am continually amazed at how well that show holds up 50 years later.
I want Rockford’s car. Of course I do. But I also want all of his sports jackets.
When watching early 70s mysteries, part of the treat is seeing the lineup of guest stars who would become big stars later in the decade, as well as formerly big stars at the end of their careers. Last night’s episode featured Suzanne Somers as a wealthy expatriate. This was only a year after she played the blonde in the T-Bird in American Graffiti, and she still doesn’t have a speaking role here. Jill Clayburgh plays a bubbly hippie artist’s model.
He Dreamed Up Bosch and the Lincoln Lawyer. It All Started With L.A. (Elisabeth Egan / NYT) — For almost four decades, Michael Connelly has set his characters loose in a city of big dreams and lucky breaks. Now they’re facing an altered landscape. So is he.
Jamelle Bouie: The Founders Were Afraid for the Country, Too (NYT) — Bouie quotes Franklin, Hamilton, Washington and Madison on their fears of despotism and and hopes for the enduring freedom of their new country. He ends on a note of cautious optimism:
We have a would-be despot in the White House. But even with a rotting Constitution on the verge of crisis, this is still a Republic, and the people are still sovereign. The task, then, is to make this clear to those in power who would like to pretend otherwise.
Amazon annihilates Alexa privacy settings, turns on continuous, nonconsensual audio uploading: (Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr / Pluralistic) “The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely.”
On r/AITA: AITA for breaking up with my GF after she gave away my dog…. AND LIED ABOUT IT? — NTA. The girlfriend is a psycho.
How a Quack TV Doctor Made It to Washington — Journalist Eoin Higgins profiles Dr. Oz for The New York Times.
Hamilton Nolan: Seeing Things For What They Are — The US political models that have been useful for the past 40 years have fundamentally changed. Democratic leadership in Washington, D.C., is hopelessly mired in the past.
Extreme things—things that sit completely outside of the mental framework that too many of our political leaders are still using to govern their decisions—are happening now. And they are going to happen more. And they are going to get more extreme. This does not mean that we are in a hopeless situation. It does, however, mean that we must adjust our interpretation of the world, or be left behind.
Not just political leaders. Every American needs to realize that the rules we operated under until 2024 are obsolete, and we need to reconcile with the new order.
New 'Starship Troopers' Movie in the Works from 'District 9' Filmmaker Neill Blomkamp
Borys Kyt at The Hollywood Reporter:
Blomkamp’s take is not a remake of the Verhoeven movie, and sources say the goal is to go back to the source material.
Not my favorite Heinlein. I guess I’ll see if if it looks good.
I’d love to see a movie or prestige miniseries of my favorite Heinlein: “Citizen of the Galaxy," “Starman Jones," “The Star Beast,” “Double Star” and “Methuselah’s Children.” “Orphans of the Sky” wasn’t a great book but it could be a great movie or series.
You want to bring back American ingenuity again? Make education and healthcare accessible to everyone. Make “right to repair” codified in the Constitution. Make Net Neutrality the law of the land. A person’s chance of surviving and having a roof over their head shouldn’t depend on “generational wealth”. Once those things happen, American ingenuity will return in full force again. It’s not Canada, Mexico, or Europe’s fault we’re here. It’s our own fault. But we can still do better.
— Scott Williams
@vwbusguy@mastodon.online
Lawmakers in red states are angling to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage (Associated Press / The Times of San Diego)
It Isn’t Just Trump. America’s Whole Reputation Is Shot (David Brooks / NYT) — The world now sees the US as a dangerous rogue superpower, Brooks notes. “I don’t care if Abraham Lincoln himself walked into the White House in 2029, no foreign leader can responsibly trust a nation that is perpetually four years away from electing another authoritarian nihilist,” he says. But Brooks ends his column on a hopeful note; when Trump and his movement inevitably self-destruct, that will be “an opportunity and rebirth.”
Helly vs. Helena, the Most Brutal Battle on ‘Severance’ (Maya Salam / NYT) — The Helly vs. Helena storyline is a metaphor for women’s self-loathing, Salam says. Great point — but men feel it too, in the real world outside the TV show.