After years of giving a platform to climate change denialism, transphobic fearmongering, pearl clutching over too much woke at liberal colleges, both-sideing the efficacy of vaccines and indulging in Covid conspiracy nonsense, the NYT has finally achieved its goal.

If MTG and Massie are the only sources of that information, I would not count on it being reliable. I would not be surprised if their version of the Epstein files only included Democrats.

For those wondering why Allen would care about praising Trump: Not only was Woody Allen Epstein’s neighbor; he and his “wife/adopted daughter” were “frequent dinner guests” at Epstein’s.

Link to the (first) episode for those interested

Robert Maxwell’s story is wild. I don’t want to spoil anything, because it is very much worth hearing about him. Let’s just say: His life story is full of larger-than-life twists and turns.

Everyone who remembers TTIP knows: It’s not the first time that European leaders are attempting to use trade deals to forego the democratic process in their countries/the EU.

Strange how self-declared “”“libertarians”“” like Milei always turn out to loooove mass surveillance once they are in power. /s

I remember when Microsoft first attempted to prevent the standardisation of Open Document Format (used by LibreOffice and others) and then bullied its way into getting approval for own OOXML standard. Already back then, supporters of FOSS warned that Microsoft would use the overly complicated OOXML to maintain its stranglehold on users of Office-like software.:

Whenever applicable and possible, standards should build upon previous standardisation efforts and not depend on proprietary, vendor-specific technologies. Albeit, MS-OOXML neglects various standards and uses its own vendor-specific formats instead. This puts a substantial burden on all vendors to fully implement MS-OOXML. It seems questionable how any third party could ever implement them equally well, especially when a standard comes with 6000 pages of specifications without serving its minimalistic purpose.

It is very telling how much science backlash is rooted in the base desire of the rich and powerful to suppress any speech that contradicts them. It never was about (scientific) truth or facts, it was always about the power to impose their will on others and independent science challenges this totalitarian claim to power.

Since the first messenger who told Tigranes that Lucullus was coming had his head cut off for his pains, no one else would tell him anything, and so he sat in ignorance while the fires of war were blazing around him, giving ear only to those who flattered him.

Plutarch, ~ 100 A.D.

Oh, it surely is a crappy AI prompt. The point I am making here is that Musk’s aesthetics are stuck in a past. A past when the various elements of the picture were still considered “cool” to a certain degree, but it’s all trite now.

For example, the anime girl in the picture is meant to depict a feature of the Grok LLM, a sexy anime girl chatbot which will slowly wear less and less clothing. Even under the most charitable interpretation, it is cheapest kind of titillation and is no way or form anything new and innovative. Yet Musk puts her in the front anyway. Pretty much every detail in that picture harks back to the past: Cyberpunk atmosphere? We got that for ages! Edgy SuperGrok with a gold chain and a cigar? The look of an R’nB star from (at least) a decade ago!

It’s all been done for a long time and it only shows how much Musk is stuck in a past when he considered himself cool and on the cutting edge of pop culture. Yet it all comes down to Musk displaying how much he is out of touch with current pop culture which has progressed further in the meantime.

It all makes sense if you assume that everything Musk does is intended to impress a 4chan nazi circa 2012.

The art is by Aïda Amer who works for Axios.

I was once a fan of Nina Paley, because of her activism against copyright and even bought some of her merch. Then I found out that she is a capital-letters TERF.

You can find a “TERFy Archive” with all her transphobic writing on her website, she hosts a transphobic podcast with the subtitle “A TERF and a t-slur walk into a podcast studio” which she uses to promote the “autogynephilia” conspiracy theory, among so, so much more transphobia.

Paley would consider this comment of mine to be “censorship”. As usual with her type she wants to dish out, but doesn’t want to be criticized for it.

June 12th:

“I am pleased to confirm the 6th round of Iran US talks will be held in Muscat this Sunday the 15th,” Bad Albusaidi, the country’s foreign minister said on social media.

Israel struck Iran later the same day.

So why should Iran have any reason to believe that “talks” will stop Israel and the US?

They don’t want to save Hollywood, they want to control it. They can’t control it if the studios shoot their films outside of the US.

Despite subsequent repairs to the parapet, the cracks there periodically reappeared. Fallingwater’s problems were so numerous that Edgar Sr. referred to it as “Rising Mildew”.

This part never fails to amuse me.

The Guardian shedding crocodile’s tears? Boohoo, we spend years vilifying trans people and now look what happened…

It all may sound like a great big bucket of bad news for the car company, but the stock market has a different take. “If this is the worst it gets for Tesla, then certainly there must be some upside for the stock once tailwinds, such as the highly-awaited cheaper model and the Robotaxi, finally hit the market later this year,” wrote Thomas Monteiro, senior analyst at investing .com.

Quote from this article by Ars Technica

I am not posting this because I think it makes any sense. It only makes sense if you are a rich person with way too much money to be bothered by Elon Musk’s track record of just making shit up.

No, he didn’t make a u-turn. Kid Starver - ever the opportunist - only uses the moment to reveal his complete lack of morals and convictions yet again.