US uses visa bans to aid tech companies

It has long been the case, probably since the end World War II which saw the emergence of the US as the dominant world power largely unscathed by the destruction that had been wrought in Europe, that the US saw itself as the one true power and that other nations, including those ostensibly its allies in Europe, as vassal states. This was not overtly stated. Instead we had supposedly multi-nation collaborative arrangements such as NATO and various economic groupings, as the US sought to limit the impact of the USSR and the Warsaw pact countries, and later with Russia when that pact collapsed. But there was always the steel hand beneath that velvet glove, the implied threat that the US would always want to have its own way in international affairs.

But in the Trump era, that veneer of cooperation has been rapidly wearing away and the steel hand is now manifesting itself in many ways, big and small. One way is of course the unilateral imposition of tariffs and other trade measures. The other is the demand that other countries not impose their laws on those US companies and industries that the US favors, such as the tech sector, which has been accused of actively encouraging harmful behaviors on the internet.

This took a dramatic turn yesterday when the US imposed visa bans on five EU high-ranking officials who had been involved in the drafting and execution of laws regulating tech companies.
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The slow release of the Epstein files

I was not in the least surprised that the release of the Epstein files was limited and consisted of heavily redacted pages. It was never in the cards that attorney general Pam Bondi, loyal and obsequious sycophant of Trump that she is, would ever allow the release of anything that might even remotely embarrass him. or anyone close to him However, the limited release and the sweeping nature of the redactions has caused an uproar, and has resulted in further dribs and drabs coming out.

One new release today was a sickening letter that Epstein purportedly sent to Larry Nasser the doctor now in prison for sexually abusing large numbers of young women, including members of the US gymnastics team. The letter was postmarked August 13, 2019, three days after Epstein died by suicide.

“As you will know by now, I have taken the ‘short route’ home,” the letter, which appears to have been signed from Epstein to Nasser, reads. “Good luck! We shared one thing … our love & caring for young ladies and the hope they reach their full potential.”

The letter continues: “Our president also shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by he loved to ‘grab snatch’, whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system.”

The letter is signed: “Life is unfair. Yours, J. Epstein.”
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The letter is postmarked 13 August 2019, notably three days after Epstein died in custody in what was ruled a suicide. It was found by investigators in the jail mail room weeks later after it was returned from a prison in Arizona and marked “no longer at this address”.
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The document comes as questions continue to swirl around Epstein’s death in custody, with his brother, Mark Epstein, continuing to maintain that the sex offender was murdered in his cell.

It has also been suggested that Epstein blamed his former friend Donald Trump for his 2019 arrest on sex-trafficking charges, which came more than a decade after he was granted immunity from prosecution under a 2007 Florida state plea deal where he pleaded guilty to solicitation of a minor.

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The menace of influencers and the ‘Free Birth’ movement

I am becoming increasingly concerned whenever I see the word ‘influencer’ associated with someone on the internet. It is a vaguely defined terms and a brief search yields examples such as “one who exerts influence : a person who inspires or guides the actions of others” or “a person who is able to generate interest in something (such as a consumer product) by posting about it on social media” or “a person who has become well known through regular social media posts and is able to promote a product or service by recommending or using it online.”

I would like to add a further definition as “someone who has no real expertise or credentials about whatever they are talking about but are using their own experience or those of a few others to make sweeping claims that others should follow their advice even when that can be dangerous”.

I don’t really care about influencers who advise people about restaurants or hotels or vacation spots or what cleaning and cooking utensils to buy. Sure, the advice may be useless and they are likely being paid to shill for those things. But those are usually harmless and only result in a loss of money for the gullible. I am more concerned about those who give medical advice about treating ailments or who promote diets that can be harmful if continued for a long time.

One of the more dangerous influencers that I read about recently was in an investigative series by reporters from the Guardian newspaper promoting something called ‘free births’. To be clear, these are not so-called natural or unassisted births where women choose to give birth at home under the guidance of midwives and doulas who are able to quickly summon medical help if something goes seriously wrong with the delivery. (A midwife is a trained medical professional who knows how to deliver babies while a doula is someone who has no medical training but provides non-medical emotional and moral support.)
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When Archie Bunker meets Meathead

Much has been written in tribute about Rob Reiner after the brutal murder of him and his wife Michele. Rob was the son of actor and writer Carl Reiner and became well known playing the liberal Michael Stivic as a counterpoint to the bigoted Archie Bunker in the groundbreaking TV series All in the Family, a show that broached many social issues and taboos.

Much to Archie’s displeasure, Stivic is the boyfriend (and later husband) of Bunker’s daughter Gloria. In this clip we see the first meeting of Stivic and Archie and Edith (his wife) and hear the first time that he is called ‘Meathead’, the name that stuck forever after.

Some days, the news is just too depressing to blog

Although I do not always comment on breaking news, that news is on my mind and these last two days it has just been too awful to ignore, while to write about it just makes me feel even worse.

I am talking about the terrible succession of events. First we had the shooting at Brown University, then we had the horrific massacre of Jews celebrating Hanukkah in Australia, and then we had the brutal murder of Rob and Michele Reiner in their home, allegedly by their son.

And if all that wasn’t bad enough, we have Trump positively gloating over the deaths of the Reiners. The depths of sociopathology to which that man can sink never cease to amaze me.

So take this post as an open thread, to comment on what you will.

Cory Doctorow on ‘enshittification’ and how to combat it

The writer and digital rights activist coined the term ‘enshittifcation’ to describe the deterioration of the internet and it caught on. I wrote about it a couple of times (see here and here). He now has a book with that title that I will get and read soon.

In this interview with Ronny Chieng on The Daily Show Doctorow explains succinctly how enshittification comes about and what can be done about it. It is an excellent informative interview.

This guy really, really loves sleeping

In an earlier post, I wrote about how I enjoyed sleeping. But clearly I am a mere piker in this regard. This article about a Hollywood director convicted of scamming Netflix out of $11 million shows that he must love sleeping much more than me.

Then came the lavish purchases, prosecutors said, with Rinsch buying five Rolls-Royces and one Ferrari, along with $652,000 on watches and clothes. He also bought two mattresses for about $638,000 and spent another $295,000 on luxury bedding and linens. In addition, he used some of the money to pay off about $1.8m in credit card bills, prosecutors said.

What? Two mattresses for $638,000? How can that be possible?

Rich people can be so strange. The fact that his purchase of five Rolls Royces was not the most ridiculous thing about him says something about the level of weirdness on display.

What recent Democratic upset wins might mean

Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani upset the political establishment by winning the mayoralty of New York City but now comes along another upset, this time in the city of Miami in deep-red Florida.

Miami’s new mayor, Eileen Higgins, hailed it as “a new day” for the city after the Democrat ended three decades of Republican rule on Tuesday night in a stunning election triumph.

In reality, the result is more of a seismic shifting of sands given the magnitude of her victory over the Donald Trump-backed Republican candidate, Emilio González, in the most populous city in Miami-Dade county, which the president won in 2024 by 12%.

Higgins won the run-off with almost 60% of the vote, according to preliminary results reported Wednesday by the Miami Herald. More than just further evidence of a growing national backlash against Trump’s policies on the national stage, particularly immigration, her win has reset Miami’s political landscape in a manner not seen in some ways in 28 years, and in others not at all.

Higgins is the first woman to hold the office; the first Democrat to win it in 28 years; and the first non-Hispanic candidate since the 1990s. As if to bookend neatly the passing back of the Republican torch, the outgoing incumbent, Francis Suarez, is the son of the most recent Democratic Miami mayor, Xavier Suarez, who was elected in 1997.
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The swing back towards Democrats was notable given that Hispanic voters contributed to the red wave that last year saw Trump become the first Republican presidential candidate to win Miami-Dade county since 1988.

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The Business Idiot and Tesla

Commenter Dunc pointed me to a long but fascinating article by Edward Zitron titled The Era Of The Business Idiot where he brutally analyzes how US businesses seem to have been taken over by owners and a managerial class that he calls Business Idiots who have become alienated from the actual manufacturing process of whatever their company produces, and make decisions that tend to work against actual productivity and quality in favor of things that advance their own careers and income. (The thrust of the article is similar to Cory Doctorow’s evisceration of the internet that he calls enshittification and the extension of that idea more broadly to American power.)

The Business Idiot thrives on alienation — on distancing themselves from the customer and the thing they consume, and in many ways from society itself. Mark Zuckerberg wants us to have fake friends, Sam Altman wants us to have fake colleagues, and an increasingly loud group of executives salivate at the idea of replacing us with a fake version of us that will make a shittier version of what we make for a customer that said executive doesn’t fucking care about. 

They’re building products for other people that don’t interact with the real world. We are no longer their customers, and so, we’re worth even less than before — which, as is the case in a world dominated by shareholder supremacy, not all that much.

They do not exist to make us better — the Business Idiot doesn’t really care about the real world, or what you do, or who you are, or anything other than your contribution to their power and wealth. This is why so many squealing little middle managers look up to the Musks and Altmans of the world, because they see in them the same kind of specious corporate authoritarian, someone above work, and thinking, and knowledge.

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How Uruguay’s energy supply became 98% renewable

The fossil fuel industry likes to make out that it is a pipe dream to think that we can completely replace fossil fuels with alternative sustainable sources. But the example of Uruguay shows that it is not only possible but the transformation can be done in as short a time as five years.

By the early 2010s, Uruguay’s government realized that continuing to rely on imported fossil fuels was economically unsustainable. Méndez Galain, then a particle physicist with no formal experience in the energy sector, proposed a bold plan: to build a system that relied almost entirely on domestic renewable resources—wind, solar, and biomass—and do it in a way that was cheaper than fossil fuels.

The results speak for themselves. Today, Uruguay produces nearly 99% of its electricity from renewable sources, with only a small fraction—roughly 1%–3%—coming from flexible thermal plants, such as those powered by natural gas. They are used only when hydroelectric power cannot fully cover periods when wind and solar energy are low. The energy mix is diverse: while hydropower accounts for 45%, wind can contribute up to 35% of total electricity, and biomass—once considered a waste problem—now makes up 15%. Solar fills the gaps.
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