• Letter to the Editor: Why These Agents Argue Books Aren’t Essential(Publishers Weekly) “The natural endpoint of an industry treating the sale of its product as essential but its workers as expendable is already visible: we need only to look at the horrors occurring in Amazon warehouses and fulfillment centers.”
• Jeffrey Epstein’s Harvard ties were extensive, new report reveals (Boston Globe) And Harvard already had more money than it knew what to do with, even with Larry Summers mismanaging the fund a few years back.
• Pizza-Fueled Lizard Broke The Constipation Record, RIP (Cracked) 80% of the lizard’s body mass was a “Fecal Bolus” from eating garbage from a pizza shop. Clearly Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles could never exist.
• The real Lord of the Flies: what happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (The Guardian) Schoolboys were shipwrecked on a desert island 50 years ago, and they behaved with kindness and caring for one another.
• How Bullwinkle Helped Us Laugh Off Nuclear Annihilation (Zócalo Public Square) Bullwinkle was UNBELIEVABLY subversive.
• One Nation Under Guard (New York Times) More cops and prison guards as inequaljty increases, because their purpose to protect rich looters from the poor.
• Facebook and the Folly of Self-Regulation (Wired) Self-regulation is to regulation as self-importance is to importance. 

This will make you hate your old (new) toaster FOREVER, and there are models of this toaster from 1948 still working.

• All US Jobs Created Since 2009 Lost Over Past 4 Weeks (The Big Picture) 11 years of job gains.  This is not going to be a “V-Shaped” recession.
• The Perfect Killing Machine (Dr. David Healy) An interesting take-down of our pharmaceutical driven medicine.  I’m not sure I agree, but you should read this.
• The Real Reason Centrists Keep Bringing Up Bernie, Hillary, and 2016. (Medium) Spoiler, it’s to avoid the role of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) in losing elections.
• Web pages a little too style over substance? Behold the Windows 98 CSS file (The Register) What people do when they are under quarantine and go stir crazy.
• Do you know a good submarine-maker? (1843) Submarines are the latest play thing of the ultra-wealthy.  Does anyone know where I can buy some depth charges?
• How economists are destroying life on Earth – We Don’t Have Time (Medium) The current strain of “Free Market Mousketeer” economics will destroy the world.

There is something strangely satisfying about setting fire to a Corona Virus replica:

• Chernobyl’s on Fire. Great. (VICE) Not the reactor, forests in the area, which are releasing radioactivity into the air that had been captured by the plants.
• Evaluating Tara Reade’s Allegation Against Joe Biden (Current Affairs) Less an evaluation than a catalogue of how the feminist left is very disingenuous about this.
• The S.E.C. Rule That Destroyed The Universe (Matt Taibbi) SEC Rule 10b-18 allowing stock buybacks adopted in 1982.
• French pensioner ejected from fighter jet after accidentally grabbing bang seat* handle (The Register) Worst, and most metaphorical, retirement party ever.
• Initial Property Continues to Vex Libertarians (People’s Policy Project) For private property to be created out of public space, there must be a coercive state to enforce this. Libertarians has a sad.

Seriously, if you are concerned about Covid-19, wait 3 days, or use some damn hand sanitizer:

Apparently someone thought it was a good idea to disinfect $5,000 Canadian dollars using a microwave. Plot twist- Canada uses plastic money. pic.twitter.com/bOkalVxbE8

— Greg (เกร็ก) (@BkkGreg) April 13, 2020

• Bailing Out the Coronavirus Bailout (Rolling Stone) Matt Taibbi describes how the bailout package repeats, and reinforces, every error that was a part of the 2008-2009 bailout.  It’s a must read.
• F-35 tests positive for Coronavirus (Deffelblog)  It’s parody.
• Ted Chiang Explains the Disaster Novel We All Suddenly Live In
•  (Electric Literature) This is depressing,”What we’re living through is only partly a disaster novel; it’s also—and perhaps mostly—a grotesque political satire.”

A documentary on the creation of the BBC’s spaghetti harvest documentary:

• The Democrats’ Cult of Pragmatism (New Republic) The pragmatists claim that they can “get things done”.  They don’t.
• A Warning: The Medieval Reenactment “Society for Creative Anachronism” (SCA) is a SEX CULT (Barnhardt) It appears that I have been going to the WRONG SCA events.
• Age-Specific Mortality During the 1918 Influenza Pandemic: Unravelling the Mystery of High Young Adult Mortality (PLoS One) “We report a peak of mortality at the exact age of 28 during the pandemic and argue that this increased mortality resulted from an early life exposure to influenza during the previous Russian flu pandemic of 1889–90.”
• Irish planners reject Trump golf resort’s plan to build wall (The Guardian) The Schadenfreud is delicious.
• Did RuPaul just announce he has a fracking empire on his ranch? (The Guardian) Yes, RuPaul’s ranch is primarily a fracking site.

Have some SNL parody commercials:

• Leaked Documents Suggest Apple Could Be Forced to Build iPhones With User-Removable Batteries in Europe (MacRumors) About f%$#ing time.
• How a Rank-and-File Revolt in Las Vegas Dealt Bernie a Winning Hand (The Nation) The members of the Culinary Workers Union bucked the leadership.
• Clearview AI, Facial Recognition Company That Works With Law Enforcement, Says Entire Client List Was Stolen (Daily Beast) BECAUSE, OF COURSE.
• If This Isn’t Stock Manipulation, I Don’t Know What Is (Medium) Stock Buybacks.
• Down on the Farm That Harvests Metal From Plants (New York Times) Biological mineral extraction.
• Major General buried with copies of all his favorite PowerPoint Slides (Duffelblog) Yeah, pretty much.
• Why the US Sucks at Building Public Transit (VICE) Personally, I blame Judge Doom from Roger Rabbit.

This NOT an official Muppets video:

• This App Automatically Cancels and Sues Robocallers (VICE) Please let this work
• SHAUN KING: Voting for Mike Bloomberg is the line I just can’t cross (The North Star) Voting for an unrepentant racist is a bridge too far.
• Privatizing Sovereignty, Socializing Property: What Economics Doesn’t Teach You About the Corporation (Law and Political Economy) The nature of the corporation is not what you think.
• My Name is Elizabeth Warren, and I Have a Plan to Destroy All of Them (Weekly Humorist) Elizabeth Warren as a relentless assassin. Very funny.
• How a Rank-and-File Revolt in Las Vegas Dealt Bernie a Winning Hand (The Nation) The leadership of the Culinary Union picked a fight with Sanders over Medicare for all, the rank and file overwhelmingly supported the Vermont Senator.
• Clearview AI, Facial Recognition Company That Works With Law Enforcement, Says Entire Client List Was Stolen (Daily Beast) BECAUSE, OF COURSE. 
• Leaked Documents Suggest Apple Could Be Forced to Build iPhones With User-Removable Batteries in Europe (MacRumors) Striking a blow against planned obsolescence.

Have some Cyanide and Happiness:

• Technology, Patents, and Inequality: An Explanation that Even Economists Can Understand (Brave New Europe) Dean Baker explains hwo
• Google Maps Hacks (Simon Weckert)A performance artist puts a few dozen smart phones in a wagon, turns on Google Maps, and creates virtual traffic jams.
• Class Carpetbagger (The Baffler) It’s a rousing takedown of Pete Buttigieg.
• Phantom of the ADAS (Ben Nassi) How self driving systems are inherently vulnerable to trivial hacks
• One of Amy Klobuchar’s Biggest Backers Is ‘the Worst Company in the World’ (Daily Beast) She has been a creature of Cargill during her time in the Senate.
• Goatf*ck or Ratf*ck (Medium) The goatf%$# (also clusterf%$#) is the product of incompetence, the ratf%$# is the product of malice.
• Beer Waste Helps Montana Town Save Money On Water Treatment (NPR) Behold the power of beer.

Australian 1960s SF show.  Note the accents, they are all speaking “Beeb” more than an what is thought of as an Australian accent today.   It’s reminiscent of the original Dark Shadows:

• Jobs for All: A job guarantee puts workers in the driver’s seat (nonsite.org) If people don’t have the threat of penury and starvation, employers will lose leverage.
• How five members of Joe Biden’s family got rich through his connections (New York Post) This is completely legal, which is the real problem.
• Did a 1912 Newspaper Article Predict Global Warming? (Snopes) Yes.
• Operation Encore and the Saudi Connection: A Secret History of the 9/11 Investigation (ProPublica) The House of Saud is not our friend.
• Hillary Clinton is still trying to sell herself as a feminist icon. Don’t buy it (The Guardian) “The real issue of ‘representation’ isn’t that there aren’t enough powerful women. It’s that what is represented as feminism is actually corporatism.”
• Ultrafast Trading Costs Stock Investors Nearly $5 Billion a Year, Study Says (Wall Street Journal) This is theft by guys in bespoke suits.
• Ring Doorbell App Packed with Third-Party Trackers (Electronic Frontier Foundation) Not shocked.
• Dean Baker – Technology, Patents, and Inequality: An Explanation that Even Economists Can Understand (Brave New Europe) Patents are a tax on the rest of us.

A Knifemaker Talks Knives:

• Lands’ End sued by Delta Air Lines employees who claim uniforms cause health problems (Madison.com) “Testing of the employees’ uniforms found several heavy metals and chemicals present above safe levels, including mercury, formaldehyde, fluorine and chromium, the lawsuit claims.” Capitalism at it’s finest.
• What Poland Has to Hide About the Origins of World War II (Strategic Culture) By this account, the Polish government was Hitler’s biggest supporter.
• Vulture feces disrupting CBP communications on US-Mexico border (Quartz) This is both real and a strong metaphor.
• Reporting Recipe: How to Investigate Professors’ Conflicts of Interest (ProPublica) The news org launches a way for people to blow the whistle on corrupt academics.
• How New York’s Bagel Union Took on the Mob (Grupstreet) Unfortunately, they ended up losing to Lenders, which is why it is so difficult to find a decent bagel.
• Answering the question that won me the Ig Nobel prize: Are cats liquid? (The Conversation) A study on the rheology of cats.
• William Barr: The Carl Schmitt of Our Time (The New York Review of Books) FYI, Carl Schmitt was the author of Nazi jurisprudence, such as it was.
• SIGAR inspector general John Spoko tells Congress the war in Afghanistan plagued by ‘mendacity’ and lies (Washington Post) “U.S. officials have routinely lied to the public during the 18-year war.”

I love the way that this scene is composed. It’s like a Utagawa Hiroshige print:

• Rachel Maddow rooted for the Steele dossier to be true. Then it fell apart. (Washington Post) Seriously, her transition from happy warrior to tinfoil hat wearer is sad.
• Driver training was reportedly too much of “a bottleneck” for Amazon (Ars Technica) Safety, schmafety, we have another monopoly to create.
• California Gave Billions in Taxpayer Dollars to Improve Jails. But That’s Not How These Sheriffs Are Spending It. (ProPublica) This is the rule, rather than the exception, for law enforcement.
• Isis’s destruction of an ancient civilisation mattered more to the west than human casualties (The Independent) This is depressingly true.
• Sports Teams Should Be Owned by the Public (Jacobin) Certainly, taking down Jerry Jones and Dan Snyder is an unalloyed good.
• Portugal has found an antidote to right wing populism (Kontrast.at) Portugal’s left of center government has eschewed austerity, and instead invested in social welfare programs.
• With ingestible pill, you can track fart development in real time on your phone (Ars Technica) This is a brave new world.

Starwars Down Under (Fan Film)

• How the 1% Scrubs Its Image Online (Wall Street Journal) This should make you angry.
• Southern Poverty Law Center employees vote to join union (Chattanooga Times Free Press) Do not support charities that are not charitable to their employees.
• U.S. diabetes patients turn to ‘black market’ for medications, supplies (Reuters) We have the best healthcare system in the world.
• People hate shopping for health insurance (Axios) For all those people who insist that there be no tax increases for Medicare for all, they ignore this tax of our time. 
• The problem with Buttigieg’s work at McKinsey isn’t his clients. It’s McKinsey. (Washington Post) If you are a Rhodes Scholar and go to work for McKinsey & Company, it says something bad about you, even if you weren’t personally doing anything bad.
• SPIEGEL Responds to Browder Criticisms of Magnitsky Story (SPIEGEL) Browder is a con man and a tax cheat, which is exactly what the Russians say about him.

Dear Satan, An Animated Short About a Girl Who Accidentally Writes Letter to Satan Instead of Santa: (Narrated by Patrick Stewart)

• The Case of Sergei Magnitsky: Anti-Corruption Champion or Corrupt Anti-Hero? (Speigel) Magnitsky wast an accountant for serial financial criminal Bill Browder, and his name is on a Russia sanctions bill that increasingly appears to be result of a con played on the US government. 
• The New Deal Wasn’t Intrinsically Racist (The New Republic) “This more complex view of the New Deal’s significance for African Americans helps us to understand why black people supported both it and the Roosevelt administration so enthusiastically.“
• 32 UK Towns With Hilarious Names That Actually Exist (Bored Panda) and let us not forget Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch.
• Why the profit motive fails in education (The Conversation) How Australia privatizing vocation education led to an explosion of corruption.
• File an Information Request with Every Grievance (Labor Notes) An important reason why you want a union:  They have a right to a broad range of information in the event of a dispute.
• Ring’s Neighbors Data Let Us Map Amazon’s Home Surveillance Network (Gizmodo) Ring has always used profligate information with law enforcement in its business plan, and now they are owned by Amazon.

A good summary on how McKinsey & Company have taken over the Democratic Party establishment:

• Disinvestment, discouragement and inequity in small business lending (NCRC) Banks discriminate against people of color/
• Undercover investigation reveals evidence of unequal treatment by Long Island real estate agents  (Newsday) Racism on Long Island?  So not surprised.
• The Rewards of Poor Performance: CEO, Hedge Fund, and Private Equity Compensation (American Affairs Journal) “There is little link between the pay of CEOs and the returns they provide to shareholders.”
• Car Crashes Aren’t Always Unavoidable (The Atlantic) How politics made car an indispensable part of American society.
• Ban Facial Recognition (Fight for the Future) Using facial recognition on members of Congress to get them to ban the tech.
• We Need To Stop Talking About The Teacher Shortage (Forbes) Teachers are underpaid, poorly treated, and villified.  This is why people do not want to be teachers.

This is literally every newspaper movie ever made:

• The Tiresome Demand to Coddle Republicans (Dame Magazine) F%$# their feelings, they are a bunch of snow flakes.
• Lemming Suicide Myth (Alaska Department of Fish and Game) Lemmings migrate when food runs short, they do not commit suicide.  The myth was promulgated by Disney, and involved a film maker literally tossing the rodents off of a cliff.
• It’s Time to Break Up Disney: Part One (Matt Stoller) This does not include Disney murdering lemmings, it’s about how awful they are as stewards of their work.
• The real reason Kamala Harris is tanking (The Week) She claims that it is because she is a woman of color, but her campaign’s collapse began when Tulsi Gabbard challenged her on her awful record as prosecutor.
• New Report Confirms Just How Sh%$#y US Workers Have It (VICE) Vacation, maternity and paternity leave, etc.  The US is the Texas of the industrialized world.
• Guy In Philosophy Class Needs To Shut The F%$# Up (The Onion) Everyone who has had Philosophy 101 can relate.

The DR Who Theme as a Spaghetti Western Theme is a complete mind-f%$#:

• The Working Person’s Guide to the Industry That Might Kill Your Company (Splinter News) Private equity parasites produce nothing of value, they just monetise misery.
• Creepy human-like skin makes your phone ticklish and pinchable (New Scientist) Soylent phone case is people!
• Iraqi Kurds turn to Zoroastrianism as faith, identity entwine  Not sure if this is an actual trend, but it bears watching.
• Investors Are Souring on America’s Fracking Revolution (Bloomberg) Fracking has never been profitable, the costs are high, the price of oil and gas have been driven down, and the wells drop off rate is insane.  The only ones making money were the speculators.
• How a Veteran Reporter Worked with Giuliani’s Associates to Launch the Ukraine Conspiracy (ProPublica) John Solomon, has been a partisan operative for decades.  It’s noce to see that someone noticed.

Brian Blessed chewing the scenery about Brian Blessed chewing the scenery:

• 315 billion-tonne iceberg breaks off Antarctica (BBC) You arrogant ass, you killed us!
• Autonomous Weapons Need Autonomous Lawyers (The Air Force JAG Corps Reporter) If this does not terrify you, you are not paying attention.
• How Bill Clinton and American Financiers Armed China (Matt Stoller) How the Clinton administration’s attempt to rescue McDonnell Douglas led to the Chinese getting sensitive sensitive technology, as well as its merger with Boeing.
• Announcing the First Winner of the Archie McCardell Award for Truly Horrendous Management: WeWork (naked capitalism) Archie McCardell destroyed International Harvester, and is generally considered one of the worst CEOs ever.
• How Joe Biden Empowered China’s Censorship of the NBA (Matt Stoller) It was an artifact of the Obama administration’s efforts, largely led by Biden, to create an opening for US films in China.
• Beware the digital Stasi in your pocket (Financial Times) Your smart phone is spying on you.

This take-down of Australian mining billionaire, abusive employer, and wannabee politician, Clive Parker, is a true thing of beauty. Watch the whole thing:

• George Washington Warned Us About Saudi Arabia (The American Conservative) That whole foreign entanglements thing.
• First GOP governor comes out in support of Trump impeachment inquiry (Axios) Vermont, of course.
• IPO crashes send chills from Wall Street to Silicon Valley (Financial Times) Yes, but where are the prosecutions?
• A Phone Conversation Between Dread Lord Nyarlathotep and a Minor Shoggoth Regarding Investigating Rival Great Old One, Hastur (McSweeney’s Internet Tendency) Better title than article
• 2 suspects scaled 6-foot fence to put porn on Michigan freeway billboard (mlive.com) Personally, I’d do the Mason Williams and 3000 years or art video (below) with speakers, or I’d Rick Roll the billboard.
• YouTube is experimenting with ways to make its algorithm even more addictive (MIT Technology Review) That whole, “Don’t be evil,” thing is clearly inoperative.

Mason Williams and 3000 Years of Art:

• Russia Has ‘Oligarchs,’ the US Has ‘Businessmen’ (FAIR) Jamie Dimon, ’nuff said.
• The Truth About Faster Internet: It’s Not Worth It (Wall Street Journal) I wish that the article addressed the elephant in the room: The subsidies given to the providers to provide this service.
• We Asked Prosecutors if Health Insurance Companies Care About Fraud. They Laughed at Us. (ProPublica) “I tracked down a dozen or so investigators who once worked for insurers, and they all said the same thing: Insurers don’t police fraud as much as they could because it hurts the bottom line.”
• Crash Course (The New Republic) How the financialization of Boeing’s culture ruined the company, like it ruins everything else.
• Inmates built computers hidden in ceiling, connected them to prison network (Ars Technica) Warden Wilhelm Klink is unavailable for comment.
• NYT opinion columnists writing about Twitter slights: It didn’t start with the bedbugs. (Slate) Delicate snowflakes with the maturity of middle-schoolers.

Thomas Edison’s Venture Into Porno Films:

• Dorian likely whipped up a 100-foot rogue wave near Newfoundland (Washington Post) Surf’s up. 
• Russia Has ‘Oligarchs,’ the US Has ‘Businessmen’ (FAIR) Why does FAIR hate america.
• The Truth About Faster Internet: It’s Not Worth It (Wall Street Journal) It’s nearly impossible for home users to max out their current high speed data, the promised increases look to be an excuise for government subsidies.
• We Asked Prosecutors if Health Insurance Companies Care About Fraud. They Laughed at Us.
• (ProPublica) “I tracked down a dozen or so investigators who once worked for insurers, and they all said the same thing: Insurers don’t police fraud as much as they could because it hurts the bottom line.” 
• Kabul Relieves Traffic Congestion By Creating Car Bomb Lane (Duffelblog)  Parody, but only just barely.
• Marie Kondo urges nation to thank veterans for their service before discarding them (Duffelblog)  ALSO parody, but only just barely. 
• This Tel Aviv sex shop is keeping it kosher – Israel News (Haaretz) Rabbi Shmuley’s daughter Chana Boteach runs the store.  Weird.
• The Worst Environmentalists in the World (Jacobin) “The New York chapter of the League of Conservation Voters is a cesspool of fossil fuel greenwashing.”

I loves me some vintage airshow newsreels:

#OnThisDay 1950: Newsreel was at the Farnborough Air Show to take a gander at all the latest planes. pic.twitter.com/n82J0zxFqe

— BBC Archive (@BBCArchive) September 8, 2019