Edward Bernays was the foremost proponent of “public relations” (which encompasses marketing, political propaganda, and other means of manipulating society) – an interesting character, who seemed almost as if he wanted to set himself up as a target for conspiracy theories.
This is the first in what will be a short series that I will try to drop over the course of the year. Because, I grew up reading National Geographic and it wasn’t until I was well into my adulthood that I discovered that I had been absorbing subtle doses of propaganda along with the cool stuff that excited and inspired me.
Content Warning: Torture
After this, I am going to stop posting about torture, and resume being my usual fake happy soap-making, nihilist, anarchist, technology strategy-loving self. I promise.
“Money can’t buy everything,” they say – but, then, why do the rich hunger after more, more, more? Once you’ve got a few tens of millions stashed away, you can spend the rest of your life in a blur of luxury, sex, drugs, fast cars and rock ‘n roll, if that’s your thing.
If you like numbers and charts and stuff, you’re going to love FredBlog! [fredblog]
Some things about Trump’s apparent disclosure of secret information.
When I read some of this stuff, I wind up sitting and scratching my head, missing my lead foil-lined hat. Conspiracy theorists and fake news make it hard to know what’s what, sometimes, and you can’t tell if you’re looking at a story or disinformation to create a story. Or, are you looking at disinformation intended to obscure a story?
New Orleans’ statue of Jefferson Davis was finally taken down. And there was great wailing and gnashing of teeth. Davis is more popular with today’s racist fringe than he ever was when he was president of the racist fringe.
A bit more detail has come out about one of the American spies in North Korea. And the story’s not fascinating and full of interesting trade-craft. There’s a bunch of clueless christian privilege.
Russia Times had a now-famous “meet and greet” conference like the Milken conference. [stderr] And there are some fun pictures of the attendees…