hard to imagine a more perfect combo of the Reaping / Sowing, Consequences of My Own Actions, and We're All Trying to Find the Guy Who Did This memes than an architect of austerity who's called for deliberately perpetuating unemployment now feigning distress over premature deaths

https://twitter.com/LHSummers/status/1641831721178939392

OTOH clearly this doesn't "transcend" politics, since my man has basically endorsed precarity-induced Deaths of Despair as sound policy. OTOH our elites generally view lubricating The Economy qua death machine as a prerequisite for and outside of political reckoning as such, so

neither here nor there but a number of people I've spoken to who are struggling with long COVID (including participating in clinical studies) have told me that doctors have variously prescribed and/or offered stimulants to them and others, stimulants which are now in shortage to be clear I can't speak to the pharmacology, the supply chain logistics, or any of that, but what strikes me most here is how people facing very real problems with cognitive symptoms, chronic fatigue, etc have to get back to work one way or another and so this feels inevitable

if you'd like to witness something truly deranged I would encourage you to check out the frequency with which Elon Musk replies to an unaffiliated twitter blue account called "musk university" that just quotes him twitter.com/search?q=from%… compared to this level of alumni engagement bari weiss and truth university of austin don't stand a chance

weird how a guy who positions himself as a champion of free speech and open disagreement yet is paranoid about people around him being bots, ghost job holders, etc would also frame as an existential enemy an abstract, contagious cognitive pathogen infecting the minds of others its probably fine though, its not like this belies a basic inability to conceptualize the existence of other human beings, a refusal to reckon with the ideas and speech he supposedly values, or has any historical precedent in ideologies that dehumanize/verminize abjected others

ICYMI here's my long-read deep-dive high-low extravaganza on Elon Musk's Boss Baby solipsism, Jeff Bezos' fixation on where and when his peons poop, and why billionaires are fine with shitting the bed that is the earth as long as they can flee to the stars apocalypsevibecheck.substack.com/p/the-anality-… "A James Bond-inspired birthday bash for billionaire Robert F Smith reportedly left guests rattled due to intense security measures at his Florida mansion—including the bizarre decision to close off all of the building's 15 bathrooms to guests in favor of outdoor port-a-potties."

jesus wept

https://twitter.com/colourmeamused_/status/1596116629355892736

the richest yet emptiest man in the world stealing abject grief for clout, and to use as a weapon

maybe obvious but worth saying: when reactionaries panic over LGBTQ people supposedly sexualizing or abusing kids but are copacetic with child beauty pageants, purity balls, etc the core issue is less projection or hypocrisy than a cohesive vision of patriarchal prerogatives in other words, you could indeed call theirs a defense of "traditional family values," insofar as that the thruline is the non-negotiable proposition that some things must only ever be kept within a particular vision of the family

(long drag on cigarette) the Romans were real, but the Greeks, well, the Romans made those guys up on the one hand sure there are some red flags in seeking to reassert the pure traditions of "European indigenous cultures" over and against the corrupting influence of the so-called "Roman" Church but have you considered how the Thor movies are actually about friendship

incredibly dark shit going on here, especially given how much of the discourse this week has been sickening variations on the idea that LGBTQ people are threats to children and that mass shooting victims in Colorado thus had it coming OTOH its entirely possible a guy who understands neither parody nor irony and has to steal jokes constantly thinks "hate speech" is just a list of words in Excel compiled by SlurBot 5000 (or mean replies to him) but OTOH he's also transparently a reactionary piece of shit

I would really like people to confront the fact that when a mass shooter turns out to have had a lengthy history of threats, domestic violence, encounters with police, etc what that reflects is not a loophole, bug, or incidental oversight, but a fundamental feature of the system IE years before Sandy Hook law enforcement was told the shooter had access to an AR-15 and was going to attack that school. they did - and supposedly could do - nothing. beyond the technicalities what this reveals is what the system's values, priorities and purpose actually are

hard to imagine a more compromised space for getting news about a mass shooting at an LGBTQ club than a platform owned by a guy who boosted an unhinged homophobic conspiracy theory less than a month ago and who has since gutted what once passed for its content moderation staff as people understandably struggle for answers and meaning the hours immediately following an event like this have always been a chaotic shitshow of the worst kinds of speculation, blamesmaking, clout-chasing, etc. the old verification scheme barely helped, but now, just, fuck

wild how just on the barest and most practical level elon musk seems incapable of imagining that twitter provides user experiences or has developed functionalities beyond just "being a guy who replies sycophantically to him." a solipsism so pure, yet also so fragile philosophers may debate how much anybody can truly recognize the existence of others. psychiatrists may speculate whether certain pathological types sense what they're missing and feel a reactive rage or emptiness. but us here have ringside seats to something truly remarkable

fixing twitters debt problem by introducing a font called corncob that only elon can use to say he's not owned

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589390597798125568

its true however that nobody could parody this guy better than he does himself

what depresses me most about this situation is that it's both the familiar story of a wealthy guy pillaging what was already a shitty infrastructure / deeply flawed communal space AND of countless dupes and ghouls lining up to literally pay to wring some malice out of its demise its bad now but depending how grim it gets its also gonna be professionally disastrous for a lot of people working in creative professions that were already almost impossible to work in. it just feels so terribly wasteful and sad.

going through old tweets about/by musk is a fucking trip (clout chasing Ramzan Kadyrov, personally moving to Mars, brain uploading, etc) but the one that really took my breath away was when he promised to bring clean water to flint in 2018. truly just a massive piece of shit imagine the most coked out person whos ever pigeonholed you at a party but they've spent years messaging you their most grandiosely ludicrous plans and whiniest fits but also they're also somehow incredibly boring and forgettable

sure we've got politicians working to subvert elections, grassroots movements of armed paramilitaries, and a social media apparatus that mobilizes stochastic terrorism by unhinged people but have you considered how talking about those things or saying "fascism" is the REAL threat IDK folks but it's almost like people whose entire job is to comment on discourse and flatten real world asymmetries of power into neatly balanced clauses that pivot on meaningless moralistic abstractions will somehow inevitably overrate the power of people talking about things

imagining a random, vaguely fash, ideologically incoherent but definitely prickish and contrarian for the sake of it anonymous reply guy getting a blue check and experiencing transformational happiness truly, reader, that is not how blue checks, satisfaction, or anything else actually works. and yet

I don't really ever post a long thread screencap like this (I'm sorry) but very rarely if ever do you get this kind of clarity about the depths and seriousness of a person's thought after several years of trying TL;DR my man believes the US was an "old, consolidated democracy" for precisely as long as the Voting Rights Act held (1965-2021) but not when the US was engaged in any foreign wars (generously -1975, 1990-1991, 2001-onwards), and also that democracy is doing better now than ever

sure the rapidity with which our social order has worked to metabolize COVID mortality and mass disability seems bad but what if we considered it a giant exercise in hardening hearts and shaping norms in anticipation of near future scenarios that look to leave billions dead if you get bent out of shape over a few millions dying, your own dying, those you love dying, etc, how are you supposed to Go Back to Normal and Get Back to Work when entire latitudes get broiled or drowned, or when nuclear exchanges happen in earnest? it's called Resilience™

a thing that's become distressingly clear reading a lot of recent history that takes Reconstruction as less the end of the US Civil War than as a recognizably modern low intensity war in its own right is that US electoral formalities can coexist with tons of mass violence black militias had to march in armed columns to protect voters! local elites organized and deputized posses to ambush and open fire on republican rallies! activists organizers teachers and others were regularly murdered! and this was a democracy with unprecedented participation!

I'm spending the day doing bibliography work and am going to post some highlights and plug books I think you should buy. currently it's stuff on the US antebellum era / civil war / reconstruction. here goes! 1/x "Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South" by @smccurry3 is a superb treatment of the CSA's politics, tackling politicization of women, internal debates over ideas of property and the prospect of arming slaves, and much more 2/x indiebound.org/book/978067406…