Conservatives won the German elections but the far-right AfD doubled support.

What is Long Covid: A beginner’s guide. By Julia Doubleday.

Your kink is health care? Good luck, babe: When Chappell Roan spoke out to ask the music industry to offer health benefits to struggling musicians, the industry struck back to shut her up to protect their oligopoly. In the music industry, a few big companies dominate everything — recording, distribution, publicity and performance. Musicians and fans have no freedom to take their business elsewhere." [For] a capitalist society to function, there has to be competition. And if everything’s connected and all the interests are shared on one side, there’s no way to compete,” Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney said.

The New Antitrust Consensus: The Trump administration is maintaining the merger guidelines that Lina Khan co-authored, and big business is angry.

Hamilton Nolan: Don’t look for a governing philosophy in the White House and Republican Party — Donald Trump is a crime boss. “The goal of all this is not ‘remaking the government in a conservative image’—it is ‘if you want anything, you have to ask me for it.’ The rules that governed how the government works are tossed out and replaced with ‘Trump’s will.’ That’s how mob bosses rule.”

Sources: The Guardian First Thing, Pluralistic