Mitch's Blog

Monitors at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development were hacked [Monday] morning and made to display an AI-generated video of President Donald Trump licking Elon Musk’s feet."

— Ryan Broderick at Garbage Day

Broderick theorizes that Trump lets Musk gets away with what Musk does because Musk has convinced Trump that Musk bought the election.

Also from Broderick: Yes, the far right did pretty well in Germany, but it was an equally big showing for the Left party. My $0.02: This underscores the theory that we might not be seeing a global swing to the right in democracies, but rather global ouster of incumbents.

And: “A crypto trader that went by the username @MistaFuccYou killed himself on a X livestream over the weekend, telling viewers, ‘If I die, make me a memecoin.'”

Rep. Mark Alford tells fired Kansas City federal workers “God has a plan." Alford’s constituents, are suffering and angry and Alford is laughing at them.

Alford is a former Fox News host because of course he is.

Cory Doctorow at Pluralistic: Americans served by privately owned electric companies saw their rates increase 49% over inflation over the last three years. Americans served by publicly electrical utilities saw rates go up at 44% below inflation over the same period.

Cory:

Power is that much-theorized economic marvel: a “natural monopoly.” Once someone has gone to the trouble of bringing a power wire to your house, it’s almost impossible to convince anyone else to invest in bringing a competing wire to your electrical service mast. For this reason, most people in the world get their energy from a publicly owned utility, and the rates reflect social priorities as well as cost-recovery. For example, basic power to run lights and a refrigerator might be steeply discounted, while energy-gobbling McMansions pay a substantial premium for the extra power to heat and cool their ostentatious lawyer-foyers and “great rooms.”

But in America, we believe in the miracle of the market, even where no market could possibly exist because of natural monopolies. That’s why about 70% of Americans get their power from shareholder-owned companies, whose managers' prime directive is extracting profit, not serving their communities.

Your Local Epidemiologist: “The overlap between medical and scientific professionals and pro-vaccine positions is nearly universal–because vaccines work” The Trump administration is undermining our public health infrastructure as flu and measles are rising.

Ian Welsh: Germany’s Merz Is A Moron, But At Least He’s Got Some Guts Merz realizes Germany needs to declare independence from the US.

Mapquest, which is still a thing, has a “Gulf of… " generator. The body of water formerly known as the Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of Mitch.

Rusty Foster: “If Trump Season One was a galvanizing historical threat to the Republic, so far Season Two is a re-tread with a lot of the same tropes but more D-list celebrity cameos and a much less coherent plot.”

The Coup Has Failed. Also: The Democratic Brand Has Tanked. Trump Is Doing the Same to the Republican Party. And: James Carville says the Trump administration will collapse within 30 days. Democrats just need to “play possum,” Carville says. All may be true; but Trump has more lives than a cat. He repeatedly teeters on the verge of destruction and bounces back stronger than ever.

I’m not counseling despair — Trump and his movement are beatable. But don’t take anything for granted.

Looks like Dave Winer is doing valuable work on Wordland, a simple, web-based front end for Wordpress. It appears to be an implementation of the WordPress for One idea he talked about last year. No Mastodon or BlueSky integration, just RSS. I love seeing more simple, easy-to-use blogging platforms.

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