Today's Water Cooler 2026-05-21

Birdsong of the Day

Moar mimidae:

Port Williams. Kings County, Nova Scotia, Canada. With cameo appearances by a Song Sparrow, a Northern Yellow Warbler, and a Ring-necked Pheasant (!).

In Case You Might Miss…

(1) Beyond Neoliberalism?

(2) Rick Beato Versus the NY Times.

(3) Advice and Consent for Major Governmental AI Deployments

Politics

The Constitutional Order

“Meet Larry and Leanne” [FIRE]. “Larry missed the birth of his granddaughter because he was in jail for 37 days. His “crime”? He posted a meme on Facebook that a nearby sheriff didn’t like…. After the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Larry shared a meme that accurately quoted Donald Trump’s statement after a school shooting: ‘We have to get over it.’ That image — which Larry didn’t create or alter — included a reference to the 2024 school shooting at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa. But that did not stop local sheriff Nick Weems from seeking and obtaining a warrant for Larry’s arrest, based on the absurd notion that it could be interpreted as a threat against Perry County High School in Tennessee. Weems admitted in a later interview that he knew that Larry’s post was a pre-existing meme that referred to an actual shooting that took place in a different state, over 500 miles away. But he left out that extremely important context from the warrant application. Not that it should have mattered; the Supreme Court has long held that heated political rhetoric is fully protected by the First Amendment. Larry spent over a month behind bars on a $2 million bond. Perry County released him from jail only after his plight went viral nationwide and prompted outrage. After his release, he teamed up with FIRE to hold those who violated his constitutional rights accountable. No one should be hauled off to jail in the dark of night over a Facebook post just because the authorities disagree with its message. But Larry was just one of hundreds of Americans censored for online speech after Kirk’s assassination.” • Wait. What about freeze peach?

“Advice and Consent for Major Governmental AI Deployments” [Lawfare]. “While Congress should resolve many of these matters, its ability to prospectively regulate governmental AI systems is limited. Developing and deploying AI systems in government settings requires myriad choices, many of which could impact safety, security, and constitutional values. Congress cannot easily anticipate all of these choices, much less decide on rules for them in advance. This creates a dilemma: A complete legislative specification of these design choices will remain impossible, but reliance on the good faith of the executive branch to govern its own AI deployments responsibly is equally unwise. Additional oversight mechanisms are therefore necessary. This article proposes a new approach: Congress should require the executive branch to secure affirmative congressional approval before deploying AI in certain high-risk domains. Here’s how this could work. Congress would first designate certain governmental domains as “Protected Use Cases”: areas of use where, in its judgment, additional congressional oversight is warranted. Congress would then enact a default rule prohibiting the use of (specific types of) AI for Protected Use Cases. To overcome this prohibition, the president would be required to submit to Congress a detailed proposal for deploying AI in a Protected Use Case. This would include, for example, a particularized description of the AI system, planned guardrails, authorized and prohibited use cases, authorized users, oversight affordances, and permitted modifications. After back-and-forth negotiations between the branches, Congress would vote on ordinary legislation to provide a specific exception for the proposed deployment, as amended by Congress during the legislative process. Once the bill becomes law, the specific deployment would be approved, but the background prohibition on Protected Use Cases would remain for other, nonapproved AI systems.” • Hmm. Here’s one for Ro Khanna: “No US citizen or resident may be deprived of a government benefit by an AI.” Now, how to write that so civll service centaurs aren’t doing whatever the digital equivalent of rubberstamping might be, but presumably that can be ironed out. And see Doctorow, There’s no such thing as “age verification”.

I’ve come to the conclusion that our state government, starting with the governor, Senate leadership and some senators, are bought and paid for.

“Summit pipeline opponents, supporters seek action from utilities commission” [News from the States]. “Iowa property owners asked the Iowa Utilities Commission Wednesday to deny Summit Carbon Solution’s recent filing seeking to modify its pipeline project, while ag group members and some others called for approval of the plan. Colleen Tucker, a Mitchell County landowner and resident, said she feels “cautious optimism” about the proposed changes, but emphasized that there are still many Iowa landowners still impacted by the pipeline. She and others asked the IUC during the public comment period of its monthly meeting to deny Summit’s proposal.” More: “ ‘We landowners have no right to celebrate. We’ve tried to be Iowa nice for five years and that’s running kind of thin,’ [Jann Reinig, a Shelby County landowner] said. ‘We aren’t Iowa stupid. Even though this proposal has been cut back, there are still almost 4,000 parcels of Iowa land that we have no idea what’s going to happen to.’ ‘I’ve come to the conclusion that our state government, starting with the governor, Senate leadership and some senators, are bought and paid for,’ [Darlene Partlow, a Guthrie County landowner] said. ‘Why else will we be fighting this battle when our state constitution specifically states eminent domain can only be used strictly for public use.’” • Both data center siting and eminent domain for pipelines are being fought out at the lowest possible level of government (“we landowners”). Yet both have enormoous national, indeed global impact. Odd.

Election 2026

GA: “Trump gets revenge on Massie, but primary may haunt GOP” [Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine]. “Perhaps the most exciting sign for Georgia Democrats, whose ticket will be headed up in November by the well-regarded and abundantly funded Senator Jon Ossoff, is that their total primary vote exceeded the GOP tally by well over a 100,000 votes. Since most of the fireworks were on the Republican side, that’s impressive. While Democrats can now focus on November, Republicans must endure not only the Jones-Jackson slugfest, but another statewide runoff to determine an Ossoff opponent. Ultra-MAGA congressman Mike Collins ran first and will face another self-styled “outsider,” former football coach Derek Dooley, hand-picked by his lifelong friend outgoing Governor Brian Kemp. Dooley came from behind and edged out another MAGA congressman, Buddy Carter, for the runoff slot; Trump has yet to endorse a candidate in this race.”

PA: “Matchups for 4 battleground House races are set in Pennsylvania” [Roll Call]. “Pennsylvania Democrats on Tuesday picked their nominees for a handful of House races that could help determine control of the chamber this fall. Bob Brooks, a union leader and retired firefighter, won the Democratic primary to challenge freshman Republican Rep. Ryan Mackenzie in Pennsylvania’s 7th District in what was the night’s most competitive primary for a battleground seat in the commonwealth…. Democrats view Mackenzie’s Lehigh Valley seat as one of their best pickup opportunities in this year’s midterm elections as they seek to win control of the House. The Mackenzie-Brooks matchup will be one of the most closely watched nationwide come November.” And: “In the 8th District, Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti was unopposed Tuesday for the Democratic nod and will take on Republican freshman Rob Bresnahan in the fall. Inside Elections rates the race Tilt Republican. And in the 1st District, outside Philadelphia, Bucks County Commissioner Bob Harvie won the Democratic nomination to challenge GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a longtime party target and a rare House Republican to hold a seat that Kamala Harris carried in 2024. Inside Elections rates the race Lean Republican. Meanwhile, in the 3rd District, state Rep. Chris Rabb won the Democratic primary in the race to succeed retiring Rep. Dwight Evans. The Philadelphia-based district is one of the most Democratic-leaning in the country, with Harris having carried it by 77 points in 2024, meaning Tuesday’s primary was the real contest to decide its next member of Congress.”

Republican Funhouse

Trump is doing exactly what his critics a decade ago said needed to be done—he is restoring discipline to a party that had become institutionally weak

“Thomas Massie’s Dead-End Libertarianism” [Compact]. “Ten years into Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican party, his opponents continue to misunderstand and underestimate him. The defeat of Thomas Massie in his contest for renomination to Congress on Tuesday is yet more proof of this. Trump is doing exactly what his critics a decade ago said needed to be done—he is restoring discipline to a party that had become institutionally weak. Massie was a symptom of that weakness.”

Democrats en Déshabillé

“Senate Democrats Try to Make Nice With Fetterman” [NOTUS]. “But Fetterman responded [to rumors Republicans were courting him] with an op-ed in The Washington Post, saying he had ‘no plans to leave’ the Democratic Party. “My values have not changed, and I have always turned to those kinds of ideals that defined being a Democrat. I remain strongly pro-choice, pro-weed, pro-LGBT, pro-SNAP, pro-labor and even pro-rib-eye over bio slop,’ he wrote.’ ‘I’d be a terrible Republican who still votes overwhelmingly with Democrats,’ he concluded. His fellow Democratic senators think Fetterman’s critics should cut him some slack. They argued the Democratic Party should be more inclusive of differing opinions if they are to expand the Senate map and win a majority next year, especially in red states they are eyeing like Ohio, Alaska, Iowa and Texas.” • Fetterman ran a brilliant campaign (“Every county, every vote”). To my knowledge, the only Democrat following a similar strategy is Platner. Odd.

“Democrats scramble to contain their Maureen Galindo problem” [Axios]. “House Democrats are in a mad dash to isolate Texas Democratic congressional candidate Maureen Galindo, who has said she wants to turn an ICE facility into a ‘prison for American Zionists.;” More: “A mysterious PAC is spending hundreds of thousands to boost Galindo, which Democrats allege is a Republican attempt to ensure the GOP candidate in that district faces a weak opponent in November. The latest: Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) said in a joint statement, ‘If, for some reason, Maureen Galindo wins … as soon as she is sworn in, we will force a vote to expel her every day she is here.’” • And if she does win? (Hard to imagine: If you’re going to throw gasoline on a fire, make sure you aren’t going to get singed!)

Realignment and Legitimacy

Lambert here: I didn’t have time to do short excerpts, so I did long ones! My apologies. All worth reading, however!

* * *

“Beyond Neoliberalism?” [Nathan Sperber, New Left Review]. The whole article, being in the NLR, is very long and well worth a read. “[E]mphatic diagnostics of neoliberalism’s impending demise have accompanied its entire historical arc, even at the most unlikely of times—e.g., Eric Hobsbawm writing in 1998 that ‘the neo-liberal balloon is visibly deflating.’ Since the global financial crisis of 2008, such verdicts have proliferated and become louder, seizing upon, inter alia, the Great Recession, Brexit, Trump’s first presidency, the Covid-19 pandemic, the ‘geo-economic’ challenge of China’s rise, ‘Bidenomics’, climate disorder, the Ukraine war and, finally, Trump’s second coming with its attendant trade commotions and military aggressions.” It’s the same with national security dissidents (Mearsheimer, Wilkerson, Deisen, Johnson, Freeman, etc. I keep hearing about the demise of The Empire in our Eastern European and West Asian theatres, but last I checked, both fascist governments we support — Zelinsky’s and Netanyahu’s — were very much still fighting. Saying doesn’t make it so. More: “On the opposite side of the argument, many interventions have emphasized persistence and adaptation. Colin Crouch and Philip Mirowski each published a memorable book in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, highlighting the neoliberal doctrine’s uncanny tendency to be recast as the very solution to the economic failings and financial disorders caused by the adoption of its precepts.footnote…. What, then, are we to make of the present state of ‘the most successful political ideology in world history’? The following pages will suggest that the pattern of accumulation—financialized, globalized, elite-driven—birthed by neoliberalism’s ascent in the late twentieth century endures and that it might not be as fragile or decrepit as some of its detractors think. At the same time, however, neoliberalism as a policy doctrine has, by this point, unravelled in the West…. This process of doctrinal dissolution has come about because Western governing strata, faced with a series of destabilizing developments stretching from 2008 to the present, have taken it upon themselves to discard neoliberal principles and violate neoliberal norms, one after the other, in a succession of political moves aimed above all at preserving the established pattern of accumulation. The resultant loss in intellectual integrity suits dominant corporate and class interests well enough for the time being. Scholars may find the absence of a consistent policy paradigm difficult to accept; accumulators of capital have fewer qualms.” • I’ve got the phrase “Mr. Qualms” in my mind. Where the heck does it come from?

Scholars may find the absence of a consistent [neoliberal] policy paradigm difficult to accept; accumulators of capital have fewer qualms.

“Regime Change in the West?” [Perry Anderson, London Review of Books (2025)]. The whole article, being by Perry Anderson, is very long and well worth a read. Tis seems useful in the present moment (or conjuncture, we might say): “The reason populism of the right has enjoyed an advantage over populism of the left is not hard to see. In the neoliberal order, inequality, oligarchy and factor mobility form an interconnected system. Populisms of the right and left can, in differing ways, attack the first two with more or less equally uninhibited vigour. But only the right can assail the third with still greater vehemence, xenophobia towards immigrants operating as its trump card. There, populisms of the left cannot follow without moral suicide. Nor can they easily finesse the problem of immigration, for two reasons. It is not pure myth that business imports cheap labour from abroad – that is, workers typically unprotected by citizenship rights – to depress wages and in some cases to take jobs from local workers, whom any left must seek to defend. Nor is it the case that, in a neoliberal society, voters have usually been consulted about either the arrival or the scale of labour from abroad: this has virtually always happened behind their backs, becoming a political issue not ex ante but ex post facto. There is a transatlantic difference here. The negation of democracy that the structure of the European Union has become included from the start denial of any democratic say in the composition of its population. The constitution of the United States, woefully anachronistic in many other respects, is not so radically undemocratic. Historically too, of course, the US is an immigrant society, as no European country has ever been. That means there is a tradition of selective welcome and solidarity for newcomers that doesn’t exist at anything like the same emotional pitch in Europe. But on both sides of the Atlantic, left populism faces the same difficulty. Right populisms have a straightforward position on immigration: bar the door to foreigners and kick out those who shouldn’t be here. The left can have nothing to do with this. But what exactly is its policy on immigration: open borders, or skill tests, or regional quotas, or what? Nowhere has a politically coherent, empirically detailed, candid answer yet been spelled out. So long as that persists, populism of the right is all too likely to retain its edge on populism of the left.” • Hence the utter incoherence both by liberals and the left to ICE. Liberals can’t say “working class,” so they say “neighbors” or “families.” But the left can’t say “working class” either, because, well, the working class is international. A hard circle to square.

“How to Tell If You’re Living in a Binary Crisis” [Ted Gioia, The Honest Broker]. “There’s a rule here, but an ugly rule. The key to effective teamwork is having a single enemy. Now here’s something even uglier. The same team-building hostility is heating up over in the enemy’s camp. That evil team is getting bigger and stronger because it hates you—and precisely because you’re bonding with your own team. Some of this stuff is so toxic nobody wants to talk about it. But I’ve actually seen management teams bond together more effectively because they all hate the CEO. That’s what finally brings them together, and gets them to cooperate. But don’t expect to hear human resources explain this at your next office seminar on teamwork. The reality is that, at some companies today, workers bond together to battle HR.” More: “Somebody should write a global history of binary conflicts—because no force has exerted more influence over human affairs. Rome collapsed while its citizens fought over the colors blue and green. That sounds crazy, but it’s absolutely true….The more you study the phenomenon, the clearer it becomes that the main motivating force of each [blue or green] group was hatred of the other group. Making the opponent suffer was far more satisfying than any mere policy. As a result, the most trifling incident at the chariot races or theaters could set off the factions, and as Rome declined the violence got worse. By the time we get into the fifth century AD, the conflicts sometimes took the form of pitched battles in the streets.” And:

How can you tell when you’re living in a binary collapse? Here are seven warning signs:

1. All conflicts are channeled into a single binary opposition between two teams.
2. Each team is obsessed with punishing the other—
3. The common good turns into an empty concept,
4. Even institutions and vocations that have no direct connection with the two teams get drawn into the battle.
5. The fault of the other team is never a simple matter, but always involves a long list of extreme accusations
6. Despite their espoused hatred, the two teams repeatedly imitate each other—in fact the hated enemy is also the main role model.
7. People who try to operate outside this binary conflict have no impact.

Seems familiar, especially point seven. One trinary: Republican, Democrat, non-voter. Non-voters have no impact. Another, not entirely overlapping: Conservative, Liberal, left. The left has no impact. Capitalists, PMC, working class. The working class has no impact. (Of course, capitalists, who rule, have massive impact but different factions according the composition of capital they control, and the PMC, who govern, have lesser impact.) And yet non-voters, the left, and the working class are all numerically significant (regardless of majority, minority, independents are really Democrats or Republicans, etc.) What to do?

“A fascist paradigm” [Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic]. “In a complex system – say, an ecosystem – the parts are meshed in a web of unobvious relationships that make it difficult to predict what effect will follow from a given perturbation. When a blight kills off a plant species, the soil stability declines, resulting in landslides during the rainy season, changing the mineral content of nearby waterways, which creates microbial blooms or fish die-offs in a distant, downstream lake….. But systems thinking isn’t a counsel of despair that insists that you shouldn’t do anything because you can never predict what will come of your actions. In Thinking in Systems, [Donella] Meadows presents a hierarchy of leverage points for changing a system, ranked from least effective (‘Constants, numbers, parameters’) to most (‘The power to shift paradigms to deal with new challenges’).” More: “But when you’re confronted with a system that is significantly, persistently dysfunctional [examples needed. Ha ha], you will likely have to work at sites that are further up the hierarchy, such as ‘the distribution of power over the rules of the system’ or ‘the goals of the system’; or the most profound of all, ‘the paradigm out of which the system — its goals, power structure, rules, its culture — arises.’” Hence my question here. More: “the paradigm of democracy is that all of us are capable of both wise self-governance and self-rationalized misgovernance, and each of us has a useful perspective to contribute. The fascist paradigm is that we can’t be trusted to rule ourselves, and only the people who are born with ‘good blood’ are capable of directing our lives: ‘The real fight we have is over that paradigm: we have to convince our neighbors that they are smart enough to rule themselves, and so are we, and so is everyone else. We have to convince them that even the smartest and wisest person (including us, including them) is capable of folly and needs to have checks on their (our) authority. We need to attack the theory of the ‘unitary executive’ and every other autocratic ideology head on.” • It has been my thought that one way forward is an entirely parallel voting system (paper ballots, of course). Not for offices, at least at the beginning, but policies… paradigms…..

Business Sentiment

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 61 Greed (previous close: 60 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 64 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). • Still drifting lower….

Lambert here: The business section (formerly “Stats”) was far too long and hard to read. So I’m breaking it up into buckets. Of course, there will be overlap: “AI” with “Police and Thieves” — so hard to choose! And of course no buckets survive contact with content, so expect more changes. Suggestions welcome; please use the Contact form!

Business: Shipping

“Iran’s “Persian Gulf Strait Authority” Takes Steps Towards Operations” [Maritime Executive]. “Iran’s self-proclaimed “Persian Gulf Strait Authority” for the administration of Strait of Hormuz transit authorization has formally launched with an official account on X.com, a sign of its progression into full public-facing operation. The toll regime under the PGSA could reportedly cost international shipowners a fee of up to $2 million per passage in Bitcoin or yuan. The fee offers owners a binary compliance choice, since it is strictly prohibited by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control and sanctionable under U.S. law. The U.S. Treasury has announced its intention to find and sanction owners who pay Iran for safe passage; so far, it has yet to set an enforcement precedent by initiating the first penalty, though it has sanctioned scores of other ships over the years for various links to Iranian trade. The PGSA mechanism is more than a fee collection plan, though the revenue will be important to the regime. Before receiving authorization for transit, merchant vessels will have to apply to the agency for permission; the application includes detailed and sensitive information on the ship’s operation. The required documents include a declaration describing the vessel’s crew, its cargo, ownership, insurance provisions, and past port calls and routing - all of which will be used to determine whether the ship will be allowed to pass. Ships with ties to Israel will be strictly prohibited, with heavy restrictions on traffic linked to the U.S. and to Iran’s other rivals.” • What, Bitcoin and yuan, and not dollars?

Business: Manufacturing

“Custom manufacturing startup SendCutSend secured a $110 million investment…” [Wall Street Journal Logistics Report] “… co-led by Sequoia, Paradigm and Stripe co-founders, valuing the business at $1 billion. SendCutSend, founded by Jim Belosic, is one of a growing group of companies focused on the production of physical goods that are drawing backing from venture-capital firms that previously focused on buzzy software and AI-native companies. The WSJ’s Kate Clark writes that SendCutSend has become a key supplier to a range of businesses, producing everything from data-center racks and brackets to robot prototypes. Belosic’s goal is to bring Amazon-like delivery speeds to industrial fabrication and make custom parts instantly accessible across major metropolitan areas. The company currently has facilities in Nevada, Kentucky and Texas and plans to add more.” • Hmm. VCs rotating out of AI? Do tell.

Business: Retail

“C-stores are getting dinged for having higher prices, report says” [C-Store Dive]. “On average, c-store chocolate and confection prices were 67% higher than all retailers for the 52 weeks ended March 21, according to the report. While the gap was narrower for some categories — cookies were only 34% more expensive in convenience stores — other categories like chips, crackers and popcorn were roughly double the price. As a result, 50% of respondents to a NielsenIQ survey said they’re shopping at c-stores less often. This impact is being felt across the store. Dollar sales were down around half a percent year over year in March, while unit sales were down 2.6% according to the report. Additionally, c-stores experienced unit sale losses in all major categories, including alcohol, nicotine, snacks and candy. Of all the categories NielsenIQ listed, only candy, gum and mints saw dollar sales growth.” • I noticed this awhile back: I’d settle on a brank cookies I liked, and buy only those. After awhile, that brand would disappear from the shelves. Must be algorithmic, but what’s the logic? Good value, so remove it?

Business: Management

“Execs admit to making ‘material’ decisions based on bad data” [CFO Dive]. “Nearly half (47%) of finance and technology executives have made a ‘material’ business decision during the past year based on inaccurate, incomplete or outdated financial data, according to a recent survey by enterprise software provider OneStream.

Over 70% of respondents said bad data had cost their organizations at least $500,000, while 37% reported losses exceeding $1 million. The findings point to mounting pressure on organizations to tighten their data governance efforts as artificial intelligence deployments expand across finance operations, according to OneStream.

‘Unless companies have data they can trust, AI will only accelerate and amplify bad decisions,’ Tom Shea, CEO of OneStream, said in the announcement.” • Sounds like a press release from OneStream, but Shea does have a point.

Business: AI

“Researchers who use hallucinated references to face arXiv ban” [Nature]. “The physical-sciences repository arXiv is banning researchers from posting their manuscripts on the platform for one year if a submission is found to contain references that have been hallucinated by artificial-intelligence tools. The ban also applies to authors who submit manuscripts containing other ‘incontrovertible’ signs of generative AI usage that demonstrate the AI results haven’t been carefully checked. What’s more, after a researcher’s one-year penalty is over, they will not be able to post any manuscripts to arXiv unless the work has already been accepted at a ‘reputable peer-reviewed venue’, according to Thomas Dietterich, a computer scientist at Oregon State University in Corvallis and chair of arXiv’s computer science section.” And: “Dietterich thinks that researchers put too much trust in outputs from LLMs and are not spending enough time analysing the models’ results. ‘The trouble is, if they’re not checking for these simple things, what else are they not checking for?’ He also notes that some of this AI-generated content originates from paper mills — companies that sell authorship slots and citations on manuscripts that have already been accepted for publication in journals. AI slop is most prevalent in arXiv’s computer science section, which posts around half of all papers submitted to the preprint server, Dietterich says. ‘The authors there are the early adopters of LLM technology, and the earlier abusers of it.’” • LOL.

Business: Police and Thieves

“SpaceX Listed Grok’s ‘Spicy’ Mode as a Risk in Its IPO Filing” [Wired]. “SpaceX warned investors that AI features such as Grok’s “Spicy” and “Unhinged” modes, which allow the chatbot to generate raunchy image or voice responses with fewer safety filters, could expose the company to regulatory scrutiny and reputational damages, according to a filing submitted Wednesday as part of the company’s planned initial public offering. As of December, SpaceX had set aside $530 million for potential litigation losses, some of which could stem from ongoing complaints filed against its AI unit over sexualized imagery generated by its Grok chatbot. The disclosures show how SpaceX took on new financial and reputational risks when it acquired Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI in February, a deal which sent the rocket maker’s private valuation soaring to over $1 trillion. In the filing, SpaceX repeatedly claims that xAI’s mission is to develop ‘truth-seeking artificial intelligence.’ In practice, that has often meant launching AI features with minimal guardrails. While Grok’s free-wheeling nature is often framed by Musk as a selling point, it has landed xAI in hot water with regulators.” • $530 million is just a cost of doing business (0.053% of one trillion).

The Gallery

Wow:

The Conservatory

“Rick Beato Versus the NY Times” [The Honest Broker]. “Fifteen days ago, the New York Times published its list of the 30 greatest living American songwriters. Since then, all hell has broken loose in the music world. And in the last 48 hours, that Hades just got a lot hotter.”

But wait! There’s more:

I think it would be fair to say that the PMC, and their party, the Democrats, aren’t especially keen on letting the citizenry govern themselves, either.

Class Warfare

“Industrial Capitalism Needed Us. Primitive Accumulation Doesn’t.” [Undiplomatic]. “Here’s my terrifying gist of the big picture: The oligarchic form of capitalism that dominates today (financialized, rentier-based, asset-inflating at the top, debt-fueled at the bottom) doesn’t need a mass workforce. What looks like the “middle class” hollowing out, shrinking, is the working majority becoming surplus labor.” And: “Every day we see more signs of what it looks like for the ruling class to wield state power while viewing its fellow citizens as a surplus population whose labor the economy doesn’t need and whose consent is not required to function: it’s militarism against democracy, it’s dehumanization, it’s the commodification of repression, and it’s the enclosure of both the commons and community spaces. In short, it’s the persistence of capital accumulation but increasingly through primitive, pre-industrial means.” • Hmm. Well, when the Gaza tech comes home, the drone part of (say) whacking union organizers with drones is post-industrial. The whacking part, though: Pre-industrial (?).

“The Limits of the the Labor Revival” [Compact]. • Yo, Compact! If you fired your copy editor, hire them back! (Hilariously, the error is in the URL, too: the-limits-of-the-the-labor-revival.

News of the Wired

I am not feeling wired today.

Plant of the Day

Via CE. Wow:

CW writes: “The trilliums are blooming here in eastern Ontario. Our woods are full of them. The trillium is Ontario’s provincial flower.” • Isn’t it nice when the trilliums pop up!

Send your plantidotes as attachments to lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [AT] protonmail [DOT] com. And if you put “Plant” or “Plantidote” in the subject line, I’ll be less likely to lose it. Gardens are fine. Gardening season approaches, at least in the Northeast! Fungi are honorary plants.