Today I’ve been messaging folks I haven’t communicated with in years, and it’s been interesting to see what the last messages we sent each other were, three years ago or whatever.
Maga’s boss class think they are immune to American carnage: They’re in for a surprise. pluralistic.net/2025/08/1…
Cory Doctorow:
… The Maga base wants a bunch of stuff that the Maga elites would never tolerate, but that’s OK, because the Maga elites are pretty sure they will never have to suffer under the laws they pass for others. Peter Theil is happy to support a political movement whose dominant factions would like to put him – and every other gay man – in a concentration camp, because he’s pretty sure that only applies to the poor gays, not the billionaire gays.
Financiers who back Trump know that they can afford to transport their daughters, wives, mistresses and the housekeepers, babysitters and teenagers they impregnate across state lines (or national borders) to get an abortion should the need arise. Their participation in Maga was a bet that after victory was attained, the base could be made to settle for performative cruelty against people other than them.
MAGA’s boss class are counting on so-called moderate Democrats to bail them out when the bubble pops, as happened in 2008, Cory says.
Or they will count on that bailout. For now, I don’t think they’re thinking that far ahead. They’re thinking the hell-bound train will never arrive at its destination.
Here’s something that I’m thinking about: The subprime mortgage bubble in 2008 looted the financial sector. That was catastrophic, but the feds dipped into the rest of the economy to bail out the financial sector.
Today’s looters, led by Trump, are pillaging the entire economy. When they’re done, will there be anything left to bail them out with?
Civilizations fall. It could well be our turn. And that turn may come within a few years, or even months.
No, these thoughts don’t keep me up at night. They’re too big to contemplate. I just go along living my day-to-day life, not too different from how I lived it in the 2010s.
Sorry, the optional AI is mandatory. www.jwz.org/blog/2025…
Scams And Bribery Are Becoming the Foundation of Our Economy. “The United States government taking steps to deliberately introduce cryptocurrency into the heart of our nation’s economy is kind of like a healthy person deciding to pick up a syringe and inject an unknown, harmful virus into themselves. Stick it right in the heart there!” www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/scams-a…
Cybersecurity “red teams” tell the UK government that AI is rubbish, and they don’t think much of quantum computing or blockchain either. pivot-to-ai.com/2025/08/1…
Events that mark the passing of the year: New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, my birthday, buying another year’s supply of dog poop bags, Labor Day, Julie’s birthday, etc.
Mitchellaneous Vol. CIX: Thirteen things I saw on the Internet
“One way to think about AI’s unwelcome intrusion into our lives can be summed up with Goodhart’s Law: ‘When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.'” — Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr pluralistic.net/2025/08/1…
Our two elderly cats, who previously hated each other and couldn’t stand to be in the same room, now lay companionably next to each other on the bed or on the floor.
They seem to have grown fond of each other. For now. It may be leading to a whole “whatever happened to baby Jane” situation.
Also, they were both terribly afraid of the dog, and kept to the back of the house, but now they are conscious of which room the dog is in, and will roam freely around the other rooms.
Seriously, I am confused by these changes. If they were acting badly, I would attribute it to feline dementia, but what accounts for this sudden outburst of more well adjusted behavior?
ICE arrested a mother outside a Chula Vista, San Diego, elementary school for overstaying her visa. They arrested Kyungjin Yu, an immigrant from South Korea, as students were arriving for class. www.kpbs.org/news/bord…