Friday Fumes
A somewhat random look at some lesser known news at the end of the week, August 9, 2024
Today’s end-of-week news on news you probably haven’t heard…
Yesterday, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), which is just a fancy name for a trade group of major advertisers, decided to shut its doors.
They did this because Elon Musk sued them for not advertising on his capricious right-wing social monstrosity once formally known as Twitter.
Musk has used the Twitter platform to spread lies for the right-wing communication infrastructure that used to be dominated by Fox News but is now sort of everywhere.
Companies like PepsiCo and Mastercard are loathe to advertise on the right-wing platform because not only has Musk reinstated hundreds of far-right accounts, he has been posting things like deep fakes of Kamala Harris and far-right nutter tweets he acquires from his base of fanboys and Andrew Tate cheerleaders.
Musk has claimed that the companies in GARM are refusing to advertise on Twitter (I don’t refer it to as X because, well, I don’t want to) through some form of conspiracy or another. Legally, there’s no basis for his claim, because even if it’s true, there’s nothing wrong with a bunch of companies getting together and refusing to advertise on a platform that spreads more lies than an AI bot cloned from the brain of George Santos.
Think about how absurd it is. Can I sue you for not advertising your book on my Substack?
Instead of spending the money to fight him in court, GARM companies simply disbanded the entity he sued.
One funny side note: Musk sued them about a month after he celebrated rejoining them:
I guess his fine, upstanding global town square is no longer a member since the organization is now kaput. What’s an apartheid-loving, serial baby maker to do?
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, affectionately also known as Gym Jordan (Google it if you don’t know why), has also taken aim at the now defunct group, yelling that they are trying to smother right-wing voices, as if we don’t hear enough from them.
The bluster will probably not only have zero effect on advertisers wishing to flee the hot mess that Twitter has become, but will likely substantially increase the flights.
Musk will have the same luck stopping the exodus that Breitbart had when it tried to fight Kellogg’s and other companies for fleeing their right-wing media farm.
If you think the right-wing propaganda outlets are harmless, consider the UK riots by right-wing nutters. These were fueled in large part by false online claims that an immigrant killed three kids. The businesswoman who originated the virus, which she acknowledged she received from a Russian website, was arrested this week.
According to Metro UK, her messaging received “27 million impressions in a single day.”
Trouble in Sudan…
More than 10 million refugees have fled Sudan in its latest civil war, this time ostensibly between the government and a paramilitary group but in reality a proxy war between Russia and the United States, with Saudi Arabia butting in because Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud has knives he needs to keep sharp.
Ever since the Biden administration gave the Crown Prince, aka MBS, immunity for slicing and dicing a journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018, MBS has rewarded the administration by foaming up more trouble wherever he can, including Sudan and Yemen. In Yemen, he’s at war with Houthis who are trying to gain full control of Yemen and have armed themselves to the teeth.
The Houthis have been blasting away at container ships in the busy shipping lanes surrounding the Saudi peninsula with modern weaponry and drones provided by Iran.
Meanwhile, Israel and Iran are on the verge of a major war after one of the world’s most despicable humans, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, sent drones into Iran to kill a Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, on Iranian turf. This happened not long after Netanyahu arranged for the killing of a key member of Iran’s military, Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in Syria.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think Netanyahu was trying to influence the American election in Trump’s favor. I guess I’m pretty paranoid, huh?
The most terrible and ridiculous thing about Haniyeh’s assassination is that he was the lead negotiator during Gaza peace talks. And they were getting somewhere. So what does Netanyahu do? He assassinates him.
Hamas responded by installing a warlord as its new leader, the architect of the October 6, 2023 attacks, Yahya Sinwar. He is said to be uncompromising in talks that the U.S. is deeming a “last chance” for peace in Gaza, which is already in ruins through a conflict that has killed nearly 50,000 Palestinians, including thousands of children.
So on one side of “negotiations,” you have a rapacious, genocidal maniac in Netanyahu and the other a maniac, in Sinwar, who slaughters and kidnaps civilians, with people worldwide somehow lining up cheering on one of the two sides, including here in the U.S. They both suck and deserve to be dragged by their feet to the Hague.
No wonder Biden looks like he’s added twenty years in the last twenty months.
An extrajudicial killing in Illinois has pissed off the guv there…
Illinois governor JB Pritzker, apparently unfazed by losing the veepstakes to his midwestern gubernatorial cohort Coach Walz, has called for the resignation of Sangamon Country Sheriff Jack Campbell after the extrajudicial slaying of Sonya Massey.
Massey is the latest American shot for being Black. Massey called 911 to report a prowler. When Sangamon County deputy Sean Grayson showed up and entered her home, she was boiling a pot of water. Grayson told her to step away from the water, so for some reason, she rebuked him in the name of Jesus, and, for some reason, he thought this meant she planned to kill her, so he shot her in the head.
Sangamon County is the home of Springfield, Illinois and the University of Illinois. About 200,000 people live there, about 11% of whom are Black.
Campbell has effectively laughed off Pritzger’s demands, calling it “political maneuvering.”
If the good deputy was worried about what Massey might do in the name of Jesus with the pot of water, you’d think he could have tased her instead of shooting her in the head. That’s what makes this an extrajudicial shooting. Massey was killed because her skin was a darker Pantone than Grayson’s.
The benefits of Biden’s infrastructure bill…
In more positive Illinois news, the Biden infrastructure bill is in full swing there. The South Side of Chicago has long been haunted by the vacant U.S. Steel South Works site, a sprawling steel production area that went stagnant when most steel producers ran to other countries to melt metal.
Socialist Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who we’ve been warned is bad for business, has cobbled together a massive deal for developing the South Works into a “transformational” quantum computer commercial development.
To make it happen, Johnson and the communist-infested Chicago city council passed a $1.25 billion bond to help finance the development of the site into a tech-happy center for quantum technology called the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park. This all comes with the help of Biden’s massive infrastructure program, which is dropping multibillion-dollar projects all across the American landscape like a gigantic Pokemon player armed with goodies.
It’s not going to be one of those empty boondoggles. Johnson and his fellow socialists have already signed up an anchor tenant, PsiQuantum. According to the Chicago Tribune, another bad-for-business politician, socialist Illinois governor JB Pritzker, played a key role in landing PsiQuantum:
Pritzker also played a major role in attracting PsiQuantum to make Illinois its home, employing $500 million in the state’s 2025 budget for the development of the quantum park. That total includes $200 million for the buildout of the shared cryogenic cooling plant.
In addition, the state offered PsiQuantum $200 million in incentives for a minimum $1 billion investment and the creation of at least 150 jobs.
150 jobs? That’s not a lot for such a massive outlay. Welcome to the new world of AI, quantum computing, and permanent joblessness. But if you ask me who I want to preside over this brave new world, I can tell you that I don’t want someone who turned orange one day just for ducks and thinks grabbing a woman by the crotch is something to brag about to a journalist.
Speaking of job loss…
According to Business Insider, “VC firms will raise less than $200 billion in 2024, a 48% drop from the industry's peak in 2021.” The business pub notes that as a result, many tech bro financiers are leaving the scene of the accident, looking for browner pastures.
Layoffs have been hammering all parts of the tech industry. On Monday, for example, Austin-based Dell told employees that it would redistribute its sales staff and, (what else?) redirect energy toward artificial intelligence, because who doesn’t want AI in their laptop?
AI is sucking the life out of tech as a whole as companies pour all their investments into AI at the expense of real innovation, causing layoffs of all kinds. Now these same layoffs are hitting VCs, who are scrambling to find start-ups to fund outside of the “AI” space.
Rain, rain, rain…
Tropical storm Debby has rebounded back into the Carolinas for a double whammy. A new flood of rain, this time from 4 to 8 to as much as 15 inches is expected across the coasts of Carolinas and Virginia today that, according to weather service alerts, could bring “considerable to locally catastrophic impacts.”
You know what this means, right? Insurance companies will deny claims en masse and more of them will pull out, causing further wreckage to the homeownership insurance market. At this rate, if you own a home twenty years from now, you won’t be able to insure it. Especially if you live in a coastal area. Or an earthquake-prone area. Or an area where trees burn.
I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman,
"Where's the self-help section?"
She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.
Today’s dad joke was stolen directly from today’s Prayables newsletter.
Notes
Friday Fumes may or may not become a regular weekly feature. Mostly, this will depend on reader interest.
As always, thanks for reading!