To everyone asking how all these celebs are "Benjamin Buttoning":

1. Deep plane face lifts (they pull the muscle up, instead of the skin)

2. Fat replacement with a fat matrix donated from corpses (true story)

https://twitter.com/popbase/status/1916802180498989166

The corpse-fat is an injectable called Renuva and it basically provides the scaffolding to hold fat under the skin for years, plumping up undereye hollows, temples, etc. That's why the celebs look younger as well as lifted.

theaestheticguide.com/injectables/a-…

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jo…

Trump uses trial balloons in all his policy ideas. It's a negotiating tactic he took from the world of financial deals. If the trial balloon fails, he reverses himself. I wish more people understood this and also understood that PUSHING BACK ON ALL HIS TRIAL BALLOONS would change his policies. He walks back his policies ALL THE TIME. Most of us who were paying attention expected him to walk back the tariffs too. I just wish people pushed back like the stock market did on immigration and the other unhinged policies he announces.

I think her team knows her core audience is aspirational girlbosses with no self-awareness and more ambition than ability tbh. This would have been a great idea if The Wing were still around and "ladyboss" was still a word, circa 2017. Hillary and her pantsuits etc. It was all part neoliberal movement for respectability politics for women centered around telling them that they should copy patriarchal, individualist and imperialist modes of power.

But after Covid disrupted work, this audience is gone. I mean, Girlboss in Chief Sheryl Sandberg is unemployed and embroiled in a sex scandal. The hustle is over. It will also be interesting to see how she tries to monetize conversation, which she's really not good at. Her previous podcast series was a dud.

On her cooking show, she demonstrates herself to be abrupt and tactless. (for instance, putting numbers on the jars of preserves she sends to friends, causing them to wonder what their friendship rank is; bragging about taking her husband's made-up last name while talking to a pretty famous single unmarried mother; never asking any of the guests about themselves, as a good hostess would be required to.) Maybe try another form of media, like visuals.

I'm really torn on the M e g h a n M a r k l e discourse because on the one hand, her whole transparently fake persona and California girlboss-earth-mother attempts set my teeth on edge, but on the other hand it's absolutely wild to see how she has white women almost literally hissing with envy because she married their white prince. She's annoying BUT they also clearly want to tear her down in self-referential terms that scream of envy and racism This discourse is not consumable at all because everyone who does a lil video about her flaws is clearly seething that they married some ox who abandoned them in the kitchen instead of a prince who thinks they hung the moon and buys them a home with a berry patch in the back

there's a man across from me dictating a text out loud to his girlfriend where he says he will not give her a ring or make it official but "you have my love" and quoting scripture then saying "as a male I have privileges that the female does not have." i would like to throw something at him on her behalf "you are loved by me ... you took the necessary steps to earn my love" brother I hate this guy soooo much.

I don't want to freak anyone out but personally I do not think this crash will go away. I've reported on tech crashes (and financial crashes) in the past and my take is that this is going to drag our unofficial recession into a real recession really fast. More layoffs in tech, higher unemployment generally, not great times ahead. Usually sudden shocks (like China releasing DeepSeek) don't lead to longer crashes or recessions... UNLESS the shock is letting the air out of some very overinflated tires. We've had overinflated tires for years now.

The market has been at record high after record high for a long time. The tech bubble never popped, or even paused, even when Silicon Valley Bank collapsed.

To me it feels like the long, slow grinding crash of the 2008 financial crisis, which actually started in 2006 with a VERY high peak followed by lower valuations on mortgage instruments, and then came to a head only after two Bear Stearns hedge funds collapsed in mid-2007. (The shock that revealed the overinflated tires). From there it was bailouts and a slow roll to disaster until March 2008 when Bear Stearns itself collapsed due to lack of market confidence.

This is how real crashes come: Slowly, then all at once.

I didn't tweet this at the time (because the K h i v e is comprised of psychopaths) but my strong feeling was that Doug would leave K a m a l a after she lost. I don't think she's initiating anything. My impression from the stories he told about them meeting -- how dazzled he was about her job, how he mentioned it constantly -- is that he was hooked on the status her career gave him and without that status, he would seek it elsewhere. Not that she's not insufferable (as we have now seen) but he is sketchy as hell imo.

You do not, under any circumstances, have to hand it to Amanda Palmer. I'm seeing some reluctance to attribute responsibility to Palmer, because her entire shtick is using feminism as a cover for her self-interest.

But now we have more information about how she moves. She is not a feminist.

She exploits other women financially, taking their labor and not paying them.

She earned their trust and swore to be their friend and advocate, then sent over a dozen women to a rapist who she knew to be a dark, abusive monster.

She is a rape survivor herself, and built her public image and her art around the pain from that -- but when a woman who was raped BY AMANDA'S HUSBAND came to her, she told her she was basically just one of 14 other women who had the same experience -- meaning Palmer knew Gaiman was an alleged serial rapist and an abuser -- and dismissively, dehumanizingly called her "another suicidal mass left on my doorstep."

Then she refused to talk to the police, so that the victim could never receive justice.

The allegations against Gaiman are that he's a rapist. Palmer would be the accomplice.

All this horror ...why? So that Palmer keep her social position and her big houses. Which she has now lost to the same rapist she spent years covering for and enabling.

Amanda Palmer is not a fucking feminist. Do not defend her on feminist grounds. She should be in jail.

Indigenous Americans -- Navajo and Apache -- created an effective way to limit wildfires. It worked for centuries.

Their method would have addressed the same conditions that led to the Palisades fires: Overgrown brush from several wet years becoming tinder in a dry year.

The U.S. government has never adopted their methods.
Link here:

science.org/content/articl…

I think the way New Orleans officials are emphasizing the safety of tourism while several local citizens died is gross. But I also understand where their fear comes from. After Katrina, New Orleans was completely abandoned by the government and by tourists for years. It made it that much harder, and took that much longer, to rebuild and repair the city. The trauma of being financially abandoned is really strong in that city, and it's for a reason imo. Tourism brings about $10 billion a year to New Orleans, and accounts for around 75,000 jobs there. It's close to half the city's overall revenue -- an enormous percentage. A drop in tourism would be catastrophic for many New Orleans residents who work directly in hospitality -- and that's before you get to store owners, who are mostly mom-and-pop shops especially in the French Quarter.

bizneworleans.com/tourism-is-eco…

I just want to editorialize here and say that choosing this route will backfire on them. They chose terrorism so they could increase the murder charge, but what that does is also bring up the ideology behind the shooting. And if they're going to try to defend healthcare insurance abuses on ideological grounds, they will absolutely create a far worse situation in public opinion than already exists. If prosecutors are planning to defend the healthcare insurance system on ideological grounds...good luck

https://twitter.com/kaoticleftist/status/1869389780313928172

I'm sorry but I am deeply skeptical that a guy who planned out an audacious killing to the second, wearing imperceptible clothing, was caught at a McDonald's with a manifesto and the same fake ID he used at a hostel. Come onnnn. It's not that people don't make mistakes, it's that a guy who plans an audacious assassination with almost no evidence is not a guy who's going to carry around a manifesto with him

Because it revealed who she really is. Disrespectful, snotty, deeply unserious. It exposed her frivolity and her arrogance completely. A total lightweight, unprepared to deal with serious issues. Zero gravitas. Just ego.

https://twitter.com/taliaotg/status/1853969785744203993

People who are reflexively dismissive about accountability and apologies are deeply dangerous and unworthy of holding a high position. It tells you EVERYTHING about a person.

Watching a video of a man who bought a $15,000 house in France (the cheapest house for sale in France) and he recorded 30 days of renovations, which involve demolishing the entire inside down to the studs. Maybe more than the studs, because he had for remove walls, ceilings, floors, and joists. I am not exaggerating when I say I started this with very low expectations and now I think it's the most compelling thing I've watched in months Really starting to understand those older Italian men who gather outside construction sites every day just to watch the proceedings

I saw a TikTok from a young woman about how she paid $1000 to go to a yacht event in Monaco and people invited her to parties on some yachts "because I was dressed to impress...you can dress to show you bring value to the yacht."

And I don't know if anyone will tell her that cute dresses are not why young women are invited to yacht parties. She's getting cooked in the comments -- but only because other young women don't think the dress is cute, not because anyone is pointing out the obvious fact that inviting young women with no money onto yachts is the equivalent of "ladies night" at a bar. The young women -- in any dress -- are there to bring the old men in.

My landlord just sent out an email saying he changed the front-door lock an hour ago (?!) and our front-door keys no longer work and we all have to see him personally for a new key.

No warning at all. No preparation. People are coming home from work standing around waiting for someone else to come out. Residents can't even get into the building to see him (because the key no longer works). Masterfully chaotic. It gets better, I just went to see him and he's out of copies of the new keys 😂😭

I think a lot of lefties backing Kamala are not genuinely contradicting their claimed ideals but ARE extremely practical about the fact that there is no antizionist candidate, there is no socialist candidate, and it's a waste of organizing time and power to sit on the couch until the perfect one comes along. You have to pressure politicians. They're not going to come to us straight out of the box with the right policies. That's how politics works. I'm sorry, I'm just really annoyed with the posturing about how True Leftists don't vote for Kamala. She introduced a version of M4A and co-sponsored the Green New Deal, which is as close as this country has gotten to leftism in the past 30 years. She has slowly changed her position on Israel, and that needs to go a lot further. So she can be pushed. Sitting at home and playing with anti-imperialism dolls living in the perfect commune is a waste of the chance to shape the historical moment. There's no purity in sitting around and complaining. Do something, say something, work with this moment instead of wishing for some perfect future that doesn't exist yet. Biden has been pushed out. Changing things is possible.

The idea that Dems are vetting PA governor Josh Shapiro is evidence of how out of touch the party is with the historical moment.

Shapiro is anti-free speech: He wants to harm people who speak up against apartheid and genocide. He's the classic neoliberal concession to mid-2000 neocons, but mid-2000 neocons aren't a real voting bloc any more. He does nothing to combat either the MAGA vote or the young white working class vote that JD Vance brings or the libertarian capitalist vote. Electorally, he's useless.

They can get all the benefits of a "swing state pick" with just an endorsement from Shapiro and a promise to campaign for her. Along with the promise of an ambassadorship. He doesn't need to be VP. And he shouldn't be in the cabinet either, considering his embarrassing and controversial stances against free speech and the First Amendment.

The rest of the country is not Pennsylvania. Getting Pennsylvania's votes - which it's not even clear Shapiro can deliver - will not help close the electoral gap significantly between Kamala and Trump.

This weird Democratic obsession with Pennsylvania is a creation of the Democratic consulting class -- which, by the way, has only ever picked similar liberal neocon failures in that state, like Conor Lamb.

Kamala represents, to many people, a chance for an empathetic future. Beshear is the only choice that works with that energy, and he delivers the Southern and evangelical votes who are on the fence and want an option other than Trump.

For Kamala to pick a throwback Boomer-style West Wing liberal neocon like Shapiro who is cold, rigid and unlikeable will hurt her image -- and her votes -- considerably. Additionally: Whatever the liberal Democratic consulting class - the people who are ALWAYS WRONG - say, it's crazy work to choose to lock down Pennsylvania while ignoring the enormous effect of Uncommitted in far more important stages including Michigan and Minnesota.

If Dems try to ignore the message of Uncommitted, it WILL come back to bite them. And picking Josh Shapiro, a pro-genocide anti-First Amendment neocon, will lose all those states for Kamala.

Kamala will be kryptonite to Trump, and I'll tell you why: She's attractive. Trump's form of somatic (body-based) narcissism prevents him from criticizing attractive people. He can't help but admire them. Trump is going to fold quickly whenever Kamala comes at him in a debate.

As an example, his one (1) criticism of Kamala this week has been that she has a laugh that he called "crazy," but then he swiftly followed it with "not as crazy as Nancy Pelosi." Trump will never fully attack an attractive person because he needs to see himself as one of them. As a narcissist, he defines himself by his youthful attractiveness and so he sees other attractive people as his "mirrors," like him. So he will never fully mobilize against another attractive person.

I saw a TikTok about some eye makeup that was allegedly so good that "it made her ex cook her a roast chicken" and I was like "because of some colored wax and talc? Come on now. Surely men are not THAT stupid." Anyway I tried it and three separate men have respectfully told me I look great today. We are not here to gatekeep and it's Friday so please go forth and try this this weekend if you are so moved. It's a basic smoky eye but it's very imprecise (and dare I say, French) so it takes literally less than a minute

tiktok.com/t/ZTNLxyqJB/

I just want to give this post points for using "déshabille"

https://twitter.com/dieworkwear/status/1802102989181890563

Pronounced "dess- hab - iyay" by the way, NOT "dish-abile"