People did not relate to Chapman though. Unless in some reality Lennon was a high rolling CEO of Beatles inc. and they tortured the American public with their song All you need is Life Insurance.

hahhaahahahaaaaa! yes

(they kind of did though lol)


everyone on the internet is a big talker with short memory

in the long run this just means more money spent on corporate security. and the customers will eat the costs

I've never been on twitter/x, but once Musk took over I vowed to never go there.

I've done a lot of Amazon ordering in my life. But once Bezos stopped his paper from making an endorsement in the election (not that it would have mattered, but the principle etc) I stopped. And now with his Muskish support and reported $1mil going to Teflon Don's Big Day, I vow never to Amazon again. I can live without it.

I know that nobody actually gives a fuck - but I do!

I'm being petulant and taking the "I was there first" attitude (even though I wasn't - he started posting there in 2010). I know alternatives like Bluesky exist, but I refuse to leave until the plug is pulled; I am a Japanese soldier from World War II and the website formerly known as Twitter is my Indonesian island.

ok this one is funny

there was a claim days ago that burger king had twatted a "we dont snitch" message (it was a fake)

but new mexican burger chain lottabgurger posted the same thing in their facebook for real. so, not original, but official


https://scontent-atl3-2.xx.fbcdn.net...&oe=67635DD E

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid...08133388016364

my fave comment:

"Mark White
All the fake religious people who never volunteer mad af in the comments ��"

...

anyway lol let's count the days and see how long this enthusiasm lasts

retail sales month on month suprised this morning to the upside. the american consumer keeps consuming, and cybermonday wasn't even counted because it happened in december

meanwhile everywhere else economies wither, budgets fail, and governments falter: france, germany, canada...

scary monsters & super creeps !


And in the back is a painting of his holy highness in his younger days.
This picture was made at Mar-e-Lago, and features Musk, Farage and some real estate bloke on the left. Apparently Musk is going to spend millions in funding Farage's right-wing Reform Party


What's next? Sooner or later Musk will have his puppets in every European country !?!?!
and then what? It will turn out that he's a Russian spy after all .... who will be the next James Bond?

i know, right? who are the real "globalists"?

--


anyway, little king melon and his sith lord donald t, meddling with the funding bill congress had agreed upon-- total assclownery!


here comes the gubmint shutdown (for the weekend) but if it goes on how about we cancel the inauguration? hahhahahahahahaaaaaaaa!

i want to laugh at all this. i will laugh

...

oh never mind, they have an agreement again, now covfefe and melon just need to SHUT THE FUCK UP

But most European countries already have governments leaning to the populist right.

John Waters on Luigi Mangione: "I mean, he's not that cute. He's alright. I did say in one of my early books, 'Everybody looks better under arrest.' I think that has something to do with it. But yeah, it is a phenomenon.''

He's got a point. Like, for instance: Trump would look way better ... behind bars.

hahahahahaaaaaaaaa this was a great joke and still is. every time. thank you again

must spread mo' butter

Vance spits on Europe, praises a Rumanian politician on the far right whose campaign money's said to have been provided by Russia.
Next?
What will the US look like in 4 years (for the people living in every state, not for the bunch of future criminal assholes on top)?

dont worry about what the usa will look like in 4 years (no idea tbh)

worry about europe not being in the position to be spat on again

last night's speech might have been narcissistic and spiteful and megalomaniac and peppered with lies, but it was also effective. it made some good points, not gonna lie. stylistically it made good use of humor and empathy and was cogent and energetic, in spite of the weird hairdo and lunatic claims. a strange tribal ritual, but it was successful

JoyDivision Vance talking about sOmE rAnDoM eUrOpEaN cOuNtRy like the most ignorant, cliched American yuppie. Imagine having some of the best initials possible and still being a prick, I hate him even more.

The closing of the speech, yeah. Took him 9 years but he pulled it off.

just read an interesting article in the Dutch newspaper. It's auto-translated by Firefox, so it's a bit sketchy at times.

https://thehill.com/opinion/5198022-...isinformation/

The IDF. The worst and most vicious army in the world. Actively and purposely targeting children and the vulnerable.

We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers, leave them kids alone

thanks for the link, i did read the source and the guy's credentials check out. does not seem like a partisan hack or foreign agent and reads "fair and balanced," as they say

about the thing you said the other day about the end of trumpo's speech: i did not mean that. yes he has learned to deliver the rhetorical heights of scripted texts with some style, but this is not the first time and it doesnt matter. if you check out his speech after the airplane/helicopter crash he said some beautiful things and then proceeded to spew some horrible mental vomit

the way i meant the speech to congress was successful is in a "television show" format. he made some funny jokes, scored points of common sense most people can agree with, delivered prizes to grieving parents and little children, told a bunch of people that he loved them, and had various other successful segments including his final peroration

the whole thing was not so much a "speech" as a television production. like a talk show where host and guest are one and the same. oprah interviews oprah, with the comedy stylings of oprah and the oprah band. and an oprah monologue. except instead of the word oprah use the word trump

oprah not sure what she does these days, but used to be the queen of daytime television. success in that way is what i meant. the mediatic kind, with a large mainstream audience

The thing I found frustrating about that Kuperman column is that there’s a lot of “well if it had been Trump and not Biden, this other thing would have happened.” That kind of speculative reasoning always sets off alarms for me because it’s based on nothing.

Notably:

Ok. I mean, maybe? But also who the fuck knows.

But yes, Trump is getting a bit more adept at appealing to crowds composed of people other than foam-at-the-mouth MAGAs. Sadly, he’s presenting relatively well despite being in the middle of the most dangerous leg of his fuck the world reunion tour.

well it's very characteristic of trump to be very transactional, he's never gonna offer something for nothing just in the name of ideals. i don't see it as speculation, it's just a very reasonable expectation of a habitual pattern with the guy


i'm staying open-minded and flexible. people voted for a revolution, they have a revolution. it's less bloody than most revolutions (so far), but we'll see eventually what it turns into. i don't have a crystal ball, i can't claim any claims, i just keep my eyes on the ball and see where it's moving. there are many unknowns, no use locking onto a single scenario at this point. in politics sometimes very good people do terrible things, and terrible people do very good things. i see no use in having too many convictions about the outcome. but the ball is rolling...

You have a lot more faith (or trust or willingness to go with the flow or whatever) than I do. In my household we work in the news, education and museum fields. We have close friends who are green card citizens. It’s really hard not to catastrophize because this all seems pretty goddamn catastrophic.

it's just the opposite. i have no trust or faith whatsoever

but i believe (oh looky here, belief just snuck back in, only it's belief written with a small b) that in a catastrophe it's much more useful to be alert and open minded than to believe exclusively in dismal outcomes

so yes, my eyes are open to all present and possible disasters, but also to present and possible opportunities. and my mind is for thinking, not believing, and it needs neither coddling nor terrorizing. it works best when left in neutral

When Jesus comes back, all you motherfuckers gonna pay

this guy?



and who's paying? i'm not buying...

okay so when i talked about staying alert i meant it as "stay woke" in THE ORIGINAL SENSE, not the sanctimonious appropriation of the term. stay awake and alert and mindful (not preachy and self-righteous and maoist)

so here to help maybe put the current upheaval into context, understanding large weather patterns helps make more sense of hurricanes and tornado season and such:

https://direct.mit.edu/isec/article/...of-the-Liberal

notice that this paper is from 2019. it claims this was going to happen one way or another due to fatal flaws in the system

those of us who grew up in the unipolar liberal world order sure will miss chasing girlfriends half a world away, plus all the other delights of cosmopolitism, like cheap portuguese wines and year-round mangos and avocados, digital nomadism, french au pairs, giant $500 teevees, multiple passports, international music festivals, etc

but these changes are larger historical forces at play, not the doings of a single person or president

understanding these large forces helps to see some logic in the chaos, and it gives the mind some rest from the apparent emergencies. and yes we don't have to like bad weather and tornado season, but we can at least prepare and dress for it. adaptation is what humans do best

i found myself looking at a list of most cosmopolitan cities in the world. #1 is dubai. #2 is brussels...


HELLO BRUSSELS :D

i'll trade you one bucket of kfc per each night of couchsurfing rights, hahahaha

yes i know we the children of the liberal world order are fucked now

but we can laugh instead of crying. laughter is braver

but hey, about this trauma: at least it's not personal. no use taking it personally. it's just the chaos realigning itself. of course it hurts, but whatchu gonna do...

after a couple of rereads, i thought there has been an "interesting" development since mearsheimer published that paper. i'm not talking about trump's reelection. the nationalist mantle could have been taken by someone else (although likely not as successfully)

the "interesting" part is based on the mearsheimer prediction of the rise of two realist bounded orders after the fall of the unipolar ideological order. particularly, he said that in the future europe should fold into the us-led order (as it did during the cold war). he also says explicitly that an ideological order is only possible in a unipolar world. the entire paper is about the failure of an ideological order as the world became multipolar!

but here is the fly in the ointment: the strange jd vance lecture to the europeans about accepting their extremist ideologues seems in fact an overture to herald a new ideological order within the us bound order. except the ideology is nationalistic, not liberal as before. (it could be argued however that the defense of "free speech" is actually a return to classical liberalism rather than a coddling of illiberal ideologies).

but no, really. any ideological angle is a dangerous spot for the usa. we already failed once at this! and by pushing an ideology instead of returning to the realist parameters of the cold war, we risk pushing europe into the hands of china, which operates in more agnostic ways internationally, as mearsheimer points out. then europe would be able to sell advanced technology to china to compete against the us-bound order!

this here is the danger that the 2019 paper did not forecast for 'merica. the europeans are correct in feeling riled up by vance's gestures. and if the liberal order alienated hungary, what liberal democraxies would be alienated instead by a possible j.d. vance presidency? i dont even want to think about it...

(we have already alienated canadians if you listen to carney's latest speech... maybe this is just electoral posturing as howard lutnick claims)

trump is a businessman, he thinks transactionally, it is possible to deal with him in those terms. but vance is a writer... a less pragmatic and more ideological profession. hence, more dangerous

anyway, the ball is rolling and rolling and rolling, and i am awake all night now trying to see where it's going so i can keep from getting knocked by it. thanks, internet friends! :D

--

eta: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Ranking enjoy it while you have it

well, that was a feverish night. nobody else wanna touch the topic? lol

-

eta: https://www.spiegel.de/international...e-62e40a506ad2

speaking of Brussels:
The EU’s funniest man

Belgian comedian (and Prime Minister) Bart De Wever’s 9 best quotes from the European Council summit.



spoiler alert:
only one of them actually has a slight sense of humour IMHO.



anyways, the quote is from the one song that's stuck in my head since a few months: JCMF
it's sill early morning here, so this is a quiet version

us treasury secretary scott bessent gave today an excellent speech at the imf/world bank meeting, outlining the economic policy objectives of covfefe's administration. i wish there were more adults like him communicating policy instead of the random foaming at the mouth we get from kkkaroline and all the sycophants

he started by saying that america first did not mean america alone, and that sctually more cooperation and integration was needed for his agenda. this is really good news for everyone

bessent's goal is to get china and europe to become alternative sources of consumer demand in the world. from europe, by unlocking excess savings (like in germany), and from china by promoting more domestic consumption instead of relying on exports. [he didnt specifically say this, but chinese workers would enjoy higher living standards as a result--these people run on 12 hour shifts 6 days a week and live in factories without seeing their families the entire year. a shorter workweek and more vacation and leisure would be nice...]

he spoke also of the imf/world bank needing to get back to the basics of lending in emergencies and for development purposes instead of pushing unrealistic agendas. eg countries that cannot pump water or run hospitals being forced to pursue wind and solar and gender agendas by first world lenders. also about the stupidity of lending indefinitely to governmente that won't get their house in order (like argentina during kirchnerism)

you might agree or disagree with this, but at least it was a reasonable and coherent plan one can argue with. of course the market spoke immediately after, with the dollar rising and us markets getting a boost. im sure many developing countries also let a sigh of relief

i wish the entire government was run by people like this instead of a bunch of retarded demagogues, for fucks sakes

congrats ostraylia on dodging that bullet

Dutton losing his seat is great, but the Greens performed poorly and that's both a surprise and a disappointment. I've been underwhelmed, to put it mildly, by Albanese I, so maybe now that they've had a term to fix things up Albanese II will hit some real progressive milestones.

and now we know what everyone knew already, that uncle joe is sick as a dog, the poor old man. metastasized to the bones

the lunatic currently in charge has sent his fake heartfelt message written by some anynymous professional. but he'll soon start trashing him again publicly like he does daily, which is an ugly spectacle

meanwhile, signs of stagflation in the consumer confidence surveys last friday, followed by moody's credit downgrade of the united states, the dollar started plunging late friday and coninuew today in the early monday asian session...

in spite of all the promises of "great deals" to come (the uk memorandum of understanding was a good development), and the temporary china truce, the fact that nobody knows where the hell the policy is going will cack even the most resilient economy

Trump loves Biden the same way the Joker loves Batman, he's probably genuinely a little sad that his biggest political rival is on the way out (plus terrifyingly aware of his own mortality).

it always depresses me to use comics as a reference mythology but we are in the kali yuga and so be it i guess lol

if the monster's speeches change in tone i'll let you know