After the Electoral College affirmed what the majority of us already knew, that President-elect Joe Biden won over President Trump, with an electoral count of 306 vs 232, coincidentally the same margin as Trump had and called a “landslide” in 2016, perhaps a sigh of relief can finally happen. Or even a little laugh. What better way to bid farewell to Trump than with a viral Twitter video.
Paul Lee Teeks shared a hilarious video of Trump being rolled out of the White House while he rants and raves about the “rigged” and “stolen” election. Trump blabs and continues to flap his gums all the way until the end when he is wheeled and lifted up into a moving truck.
The original video comes from creator of the “The President Show” Tony Atamanuik from the Comedy Central network. Teeks recreated the video placing the head of Trump (versus a caricature in the original) with dubbed audio, creating mass interest within the social media world. The hashtags #LoserOfTheCentury and #TrumpIsALaughingStock trended as a result.
If you like winning, this is your chance to do it, over and over and over…
Never before has a presidential candidate won his election so many times. Never before has a loser found so many ridiculous ways to avoid conceding to the winner. Of course, it is the very fact that a loser has brazenly lied and fabricated nonsense reasons and accusations to contest at every opportunity that has created the possibility for Biden to win, again and again.
First, Joe Biden won what appeared to be a relatively narrow victory on election day with enough confirmed electoral votes, along with a lead in enough other states to create an impossibility for Trump to get to 270, the margin of votes needed to prevail.
Next Biden was declared winner in states which had held back in declaring a projected winner. Then the re-counts, court challenges and and final tallies commenced.
Pennsylvania gave him a win. That was a big win and he became President-elect. Then the Georgia re-count was another time to celebrate his victory. And Arizona, a state he flipped for the first time since 1996, and before that a Republican won there since 1948.
So, get ready everyone, on December 14th there will be another win for Joe Biden. Tired of winning yet?
In the end Biden will have, barring any absolutely and totally unlikely changes, 306 electoral votes. “A landslide” according to Trump when it was his exact winning number. Of course he did not get more than 80 million popular votes, or vanquish his opponent by more than 6 million. That’s only another unique and first in all history – big big win for Biden.
Trump lost the popular vote by 2.9 million votes in 2016.
A comet, a meteor shower and a total eclipse of the sun (visible in some parts of the Earth) will all occur on December 14th. It also will be the final deadline for the Electoral College to officially confirm Joe Biden as President-elect. Are the stars, planets and even meteors in our solar system feeling like celebrating?
Florida is the only one of the four most populous states that has, as of yet, already been certified. Early in December was the deadline for the other large ones: California, Texas and New York. None of them were ever in doubt, of course.
Talk of “faithless electors” being put into action by Trump is becoming les and less likely by the day. Not 100% off the table but around 99.9999% not gonna happen.
I wonder if Trump is tired of losing yet? Gas-up the private jet. Moscow’s waiting.
Electoral College meets on Dec. 14, and all states must be certified before that, while any challenges to the results must have been resolved by Dec. 8.
For months we have seen ex-Mayor Giuliani exposing himself repeatedly, no, not to Borat’s daughter in that movie, but to the coronavirus. He’s been on video and in photos in direct, maskless contact with contact with infected people, including Trump while the two of them were preparing for his first debate against President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. in September – even during the recent voter fraud hearings, fiascos and spectacles, he has often been seen maskless.
Indeed, there is even a video of him blowing his nose into a handkerchief and then using it, wrong-side-out to wipe his face and hands. Honestly, it’s a miracle that this has not happened sooner. Hopefully, like Trump, he will get medical attention and recover quickly (and remain in quarantine to protect others)
“@RudyGiuliani, by far the greatest mayor in the history of NYC, and who has been working tirelessly exposing the most corrupt election (by far!) in the history of the USA, has tested positive for the China Virus. Get better soon Rudy, we will carry on!!!”
__Trump in a tweet
.@RudyGiuliani, by far the greatest mayor in the history of NYC, and who has been working tirelessly exposing the most corrupt election (by far!) in the history of the USA, has tested positive for the China Virus. Get better soon Rudy, we will carry on!!!
Why Mr. Trump took to twitter to announce this is anybody’s guess. It is unknown at this point, whether Mr. Giuliani, 76, is symptomatic, although he is clearly in a high risk group for covid-19.
As follows, a list of various other Republican establishment figures that have tested positive as well;
Melania Trump (First Lady)
Ronna McDaniel (Republican National Committee chairwoman)
Hope Hicks (White House communications aide)
Kellyanne Conway (Former White House counselor)
Bill Stepien (Trump campaign manager)
John Jenkins (University of Notre Dame president)
Chris Christie (Former New Jersey Gov.)
Nick Luna (Director of Oval Office operations)
Karoline Leavitt (White house assistant press secretary)
As the title indicates, the original review finds the documentary important and more than worth viewing, even to the extent that it should be considered as something that’s important beyond the entertainment value. And while nothing in that article needs, from our perspective, to be altered and still stands, there is an omission that has grown in importance over the intervening weeks and months.
The omission was not only in the review, and virtually every other review we’ve seen, but also is a glaring one in the film itself. As a matter of fact that omission is so large and so glaring that it warrants a deeper look. Hence the title of this piece: The Social Dilemma 2.0: Follow the Money Edition.
Why “Follow the Money”? Because the film, in its admittedly excellent execution, chose to follow a personal, social and psychological thread in its storytelling arc, and, out of necessity, since the subject matter is so huge and complex, took the comments from the “insider experts” who comprised the on-camera interview segments, and featured mainly those that reinforced the personal, family and social perspective.
Indeed, the film included a fictional family, presumably meant to show how, mainly social media platforms such as facebook, were negatively affecting individuals and society as a whole, through fake news and internet-addictions fostered by the software and algorithm designs.
And this “slant” was carried almost to the point, by the very end of the show, of connecting the software based social media designs and corporate behavior of Facebook and others, to the larger growing malaise in society and the world at large.
Unfortunately, by using the fictional family, trying to show how both young and old are impacted, the scope, depth and severity of the underlying problem was, in essence, minimized.
Based on online public comments people seemed to take away that the idea that the film was accusing social media and facebook in particular of, was of causing people to become addicted to social media, for greed and profit, and that this was pretty much the center of the problem.
Google, Amazon and others were only mentioned in passing and the greed and economic problems associated with big tech was touched on and passed over in order to make the case, inadvertently, but nevertheless, that this was an individual, social and personal problem, and one that could be blamed on social media technology.
Arguments and rebuttals arose over the finer points of addictive behavior in general and how social media or internet addiction was just one of many human foibles, and how no hard proof could be compiled to link facebook or any other online platform indisputably to any particular individuals behavior, blah, blah, blah.
All of this became an easy, knee-jerk way to dismiss, out of hand, all the deep and serious problems that were hinted at in the groundbreaking documentary and thereby stop, effectively, any possibility for the film to become a general wake-up call to all who want to isolate and identify the massive, expanding and world destroying effect these monolithic tech behemoths are having on life on this planet.
Which is what the film aspired to and had to potential to be a beginning of.
In our original review we made an attempt to shift some of the focus, away from the more narrow one of looking at individual personal problems and affronts that are being perpetrated, bad as that is, toward a more global and economically based set of concerns.
To that end we cherry picked quotes from the on-camera interviews in the film in order to point out that there was a larger, even more dangerous set of issues at stake that were only hinted at in the film. (We have reprinted a few of them interspersed below)
“Companies like Google and Facebook are some of the wealthiest and most successful of all time. They have relatively few employees. They just have this giant computer that rakes in money, right? Now, what are they being paid for? That’s a really important question.”
-Jaron Lanier, founding father of virtual reality, computer scientist
This quote is and inquiry into the deeper issue; one that is car larger than the question of whatever dangers there may be for individuals who may experience negative symptoms of “internet and social-media addiction”.
Focusing on the personal problems of users of social media in this context is like looking at a planet whose economic system is based on brutal exploitive human slavery and wanting to discuss the food, or living conditions or wardrobe choices offered to the 7 billion slaves.
“This is a new kind of marketplace now. It’s a marketplace that never existed before. And it’s a marketplace that trades exclusively in “human futures”. Just like there are markets that trade in pork belly futures or oil futures. We now have markets that trade in human futures at scale. And those markets have produced the trillions of dollars that have made the internet companies the richest companies in the history of humanity”
-Shoshanna Zuboff PhD., Harvard Business School Professor, emeritus and author of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism”
Like tobacco companies in the US 50 or more years ago the tech giants need helpless, addicted, impoverished victims to hold up their empire. And, just in the same way, the cost of using the “product” of big tech is pain, suffering and eventually death. And ultimately, just like with Big Tobacco , when the customer base “wakes up” all the empires will collapse, seemingly in a heartbeat.
In the meantime, unfortunately, misdirecting the scope and center of the problem is helping to maintain the empires and poses no threat to them, managing only to confuse and obfuscate the size and severity of the real problem that has emerged.
Above: Photo / Netflix
The real problem with having four companies control a massive percentage of the economy with virtually unlimited profit margins and almost no employees
As the quote above states. These “internet” firms are raking in trillions of dollars in a business model that is based on various forms of exploitation and virtual human trafficking.
This is where we diverge from, and must go far deeper into the problems, than the documentary was able to go.
Firstly, it was left unclear who exactly the firms are that are being singled out in the film. By calling the film “The Social Dilemma” which echos “The Social Network” film based on the origin story of Zuckerberg and Facebook, there’s an implication that Facebook is the “main” problem.
Naturally this choice was logical given that ex-Facebook and ex-Google heavyweights were represented in the interviews. However this is a huge, misleading and erroneous perspective.
Of the huge tech monopolistic-monoliths Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft are the most dangerous. (Apple, in an exception, however, for example, as it designs and builds actual physical products, although it is often unfairly combined with the other 4).
For the sake of simplicity, Microsoft, appearing, deceptively, like harmless-looking old grandfather by comparison, would be a complicated choice to tie into any exposé, therefore was never mentioned. (that we are aware of).
As a matter of fact, Amazon could have had a whole separate yet equally disturbing documentary assigned to its “alleged” crimes and misdemeanors, but ex-Amazon employees would be unlikely to come forward, potentially due to fear of retribution and possible bodily harm.
Thus, one is left with Facebook & Google and then Google becomes partially let off the hook, in the documentary, by focus on “social media”.
The Real Crimes are Economic and based on Inherently Evil Business Models that can not be Removed without causing the Giants Themselves to Collapse
And that’s why they can not be “reformed”. Like a somnambulistic slave population from some kind of dystopian sci-fi fantasy, within a short span of around twenty-five years of internet life, we have seen the emergence of an entirely new and, unfortunately ugly, economic system.
This new system created Jeff Bezos’ obscene, circa 200 billion fortune, as well as the behavioral diseases explored covered extensively in “The Social Dilemma”. The system has also created the sick twisted saga of WeWork and the exploitative business models of companies like Uber and Grub-hub and the like, thereby creating the “gig economy”.
The pandemic that began in 2020 has massively accelerated this highly problematic “new economic order” until Amazon is closing in on being the largest single employer in the USA. (currently #2 with over 750,000).
Why is that not something to applaud? Doesn’t that make them “ok” while Facebook is the real villain?
To the contrary, it can be argued that Amazon’s business model is even more destructive than Facebooks, with it’s vast system of not only exploiting workers but maintaining a serfdom of suppliers and small business “marketplace partners” who are eaten-up and spat-out with a viciousness no historical dictator could ever hope to match.
It is an historical fact that all of the (non-amazon) retail trade is seen by Amazon as an enemy to be eliminated, and that their explicit goal is to destroy the possibility of any economic transaction taking place, in countries where they operate, without Amazon earning a cut – a kind of Amazon-tax on all transactions. “Your margin is my opportunity” as Bezos famously cackled.
This mirrors, in products and computer services, the model of Facebook and Google have in online traffic and ad income, whose goals are to control and take a massive profit from at least 99% of all “digital” advertising revenues. These already represent the majority of all advertising and are growing in total amount and percentage every year.
“In 2019, digital will account for 50.1% of total media ad spending worldwide thanks to strong growth from major digital ad sellers like Google, Facebook, Alibaba and Amazon.” (emphasis mine)
The turning point we have reached, in other words, is one where the sheer size, power and dominance of these firms threatens to overwhelm our entire economy (what’s left of it after the pandemic).
And further, to succeed in controlling it, so totally, as to raise the likelihood that their cancerous behaviors and business models will ultimately cripple and kill the economy itself. Just in time for Global Warming to hit home.
The reason for such pessimism (shared incidentally by those insiders interviewed in “The Social Dilemma”)? Isn’t this all just “good ol’ capitalism”? Isn’t complaining about it just the “whining of losers”?
The problem lies in the self-destructive and totally out of control algorithmic dictatorship systems that these “genius” firms have built.
Take Amazon, again, for example. It’s power and dominance is based on bilking it’s marketplace parters (which have, during the life of the company, contributed the lion’s share of the revenue and an even larger percentage of the profits), and then using those funds to sell it’s own products at a large loss (an illegal activity, rarely prosecuted in the US, known as the loss-leader strategy), in order to harm and, if they succeed, destroy all external competitors (try selling products at less than cost at a massive scale with no source of funds to pay for the disparity).
This neat “fly-wheel”, which is the real one, not the one Bezos has bragged about for decades, is supplemented by enticing Chinese producers to further destroy the domestic market for any US competitors, and, voilà! this wonderful project is actually subsidized by the USPS.
When this monstrosity of a “turbo-charged-Ponzi Scheme” manages to starve its “partners” (millions of small business marketplace sellers) and enemies (everyone else) literally to death, customers will also die (financially).
That is if the government doesn’t intervene first.
The fear of government intervention at Facebook, Google and Amazon is palpable. The lost cases and launched actions are mounting month by month and year by year.
The worst case scenario is only possible if the connection is somehow kept “secret” long enough to deflect blame onto the government, addicted and victimized individuals and / or anyone one else they can attack.
Just like the whistle blower in “The Insider” who was threatened and forced to live in fear until Big Tobacco was finally held to account, we are all hostages of the largest most virulent form of anti-competitive-monopolistic behavior in history. And it is time to wake up.
Forget your internet addiction and all the smoke screens blocking the truth from being seen. The internet, and the communication and economic lifeline that it has become for all of us, is too important to be controlled by 3 or 4 obscenely massive companies.
The longer it takes to dismantle the current malfunctioning system and build a new one, the more we will all suffer and contribute to future suffering, at a scale that is impossible to imagine.
There is a bright spot in all of this! The corner has been turned on people taking notice that there is a problem with the way things are, regarding monopolistic control of the internet realm.
Companies that create build and actually provide and sell physical products, such as Apple and Tesla (and others) are, while far from perfect, not part of the gang that grows almost limitlessly based on exploitation. They do depend on prosperity to survive, since they research and design and innovate cutting edge technologically advanced products (expen$ive), that need to be bought by someone, at the end of the day.
That is why I believe that they, and others like them, will, more and more, become part of the solution, rather than trying to compete directly by being even more exploitative and evil than the others.
Next up: “The Social Dilemma 3.0” will be about business models that need to emerge if we are going to survive and prosper. Thanks for reading and stay tuned.
Witnesses of Evil and survivors deserve a decompression phase
For nearly all of 2017 the word “lie” rarely if ever appeared in an article written about the president. The reasons for this are more complex than it would first appear, and relate to the history of political journalism reaching back at least 50 years. The reason why, beginning in 2018 and early 2019, “lie” became a daily and oft used word in connection with this lying-president is a more subtle and interesting story.
As of this writing it is 100% clear that Trump has lost the election (odd to even have to say that, considering how obvious it is to any sane, rational observer) and that, ultimately, we will all benefit from forgetting about this attention-addicted-sociopath. However, with regard to something we all experienced, witnessed and endured over a period of four plus years; before forgetting there must first be a remembering.
And, for the benefit of those of us who have various forms of PTSD as a result of what he perpetrated and what we had to witness, that remembering is a healthy, necessary step.
For nearly all of 2017 the word “lie” rarely if ever appeared in an article written about the president. The reasons for this are more complex than it would first appear, and relate to the history of political journalism reaching back at least 50 years. The reason why, beginning in 2018 and early 2019, “lie” became a daily and oft used word in connection with this lying-president is a more subtle and interesting story.
As of this writing it is 100% clear that Trump has lost the election (odd to even have to say that, considering how obvious it is to any sane, rational observer) and that, ultimately, we will all benefit from forgetting about this attention-addicted-sociopath. However, with regard to something we all experienced, witnessed and endured over a period of four plus years; before forgetting there must first be a remembering.
And, for the benefit of those of us who have various forms of PTSD as a result of what he perpetrated and what we had to witness, that remembering is a healthy, necessary step.
Perhaps rushing forward to “fix” everything he broke, destroyed or tried to destroy must be combined with looking back.
Seeing some of the events that shaped the last four years through the eyes of the media and the press
The public perceptions and reactions to history during significant and extreme events are shaped over time, and meaning are not always clear until we look back. If this article was a typical “2020 Looking Back” year-end recap, and did not run 5000 words or more it’d be about the coronavirus, the election, and a skim through the various events on the periphery. Instead, we must begin on June 16th, 2015 when Donald J. Trump began his assault on America.
And, as we all remember, it started with “Mexicans”:
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best, they’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us [sic]. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Donald J. Trump, as he descended on his golden escalator
This technique of viciously attacking a particular ethic group, generally, and pandering to negative stereotypes was just getting started.
Also couching broad statements, that often included boldfaced lies, within statements that could have a tiny sliver of truth would also be a propaganda technique he would use, sometimes dozens of times in a day, over the next nearly 4.5 years.
Then came the nicknames. Again, maybe “little Marco” was not the tallest guy and “Low-energy Jeb” was not the most exciting. But Trump’s character traits that would later expand and multiply were not pretty, and were on full display even during the initial phases of the election.
Belittling opponents in an ugly personal way, pushing all dialog away from substance and toward personal attacks of the lowest form was standard operating procedure. All the signs were there of a mental sickness, one that we would all later experience more intimately, but at the time it was all an amusing diversion, since most believed he had “zero chance” of winning the 2016 presidential election.
Phase 2, 3, 4 and beyond: testing the limits of outrage
Just making a laundry list of outrageous and disgusting behavior by this man is easy, but of little value, beyond our mutual sharing of “I was there” recollections publicly. More interesting, it seems, would be an exploration of how “we”, the media, and the public, reacted and adjusted to having such a malignant presence in the White House.
It’s easy to forget that, around the time of the 2016 inauguration, many in the media went on and on about how the outrageous tactics were just a ploy, and a successful one at that, for him to get elected, and now that the election was over, Trump would magically become “Presidential”.
Then the lies began to multiply. All during 2017, however, it was very difficult to find the word “lie” in any article from a mainstream outlet that was about Trump, well, lying. The lengths that journalists went to avoid that word was, in a word, incredible. To look further into the history of not saying the word “lie” when a president lies, this Politco article from 2017 is a great deeper dive.
In the final paragraph summation the overall view at the time was encapsulated:
“Using the word “lie” promiscuously may, in the short term, score a point against a president who has shown a contempt for the facts. But over the long-term, the authority and credibility of aspirationally objective mainstream news organizations like the New York Times are best served by scrupulously trying to report the news in ways that can be trusted by readers of any political viewpoint. And it’s by upholding and reinforcing that authority and credibility that the Fourth Estate will best guide readers to the truth amid the misinformation, propaganda and lies produced by the administration of Donald J. Trump.”
David Greenberg, a professor of history and media studies at Rutgers in Politico Magazine
This viewpoint, ultimately, disintegrated and was abandoned, generally, by the middle of 2018 into the beginning of 2019. Trump literally bashed down that wall of civility with thousands and thousands of lies.
Terms and phrases like “decorum”, “deference”, “non-partisan” and “civilized discourse” became meaningless in the endless assault of lies, hate speech and outrageous acts. At Lynxotic, we made a decision fairly early that this was not a “normal” president and these were not normal times. We seriously had to ask ourselves, if this was an emerging danger to this country and to democracy itself, who would we be serving by mincing words?
And further, the news has always been, to a certain degree, opinion infused facts with a, sometimes, thin veneer of artificial authoritative eminence. And wasn’t the media often guilty of using “impartiality”, similarly to an arms dealer, selling ammunitions to both sides in a civil war?
As time went on, the incredible border “cages” scandals, then the impeachmentdrama came and went and on and on, until Trump’s massive coronavirus failures, and finally the election madness.
In the end all pretense of, and use for civility, any belief that a non-corrupt outcome was possible, revealed a truth that the choices for the nation were, and are, to jail the man famous for chants of “Lock her up” or let him continue until he destroys the democracy and possibly, ultimately the country itself.
The good thing that was bestowed upon all of us by a bad man
Of course, in all of this, he did do one good thing for the media and journalism. Not “ratings” or prosperity through scandal. No, what he did was to help us to remove the hypocrisy of the long standing “deference” to any and all sitting in the White House, just because they are there.
“When he “won” in 2016 it was on the shoulders of Russian hackers and social media “bots” that influenced the thinking of real, living, breathing humans. In 2020 those real humans showed up, 80 million strong, and took back the country.”
D.L.
The blurred lines between observation, opinion, facts and fiction are ones that have, in reality, always been blurred. To face that fact, and to grapple every day with the issues of how to communicate the hard truth, is also a legacy of this evil man.
When he “won” in 2016 it was on the shoulders of Russian hackers and social media “bots” that influenced the thinking of real, living, breathing humans. In 2020 those real humans showed up, 80 million strong, and took back the country.
That is also a lesson we owe to “The Donald”. That, if a pretender rises up, the rest of us have to rise up as well, to put him down.
The favor he did us all was to force us to examine the real facts, and make the real news and not the fake news matter, even if that news is that he is a liar, a grifter, a cheat and a criminal. And if any of his ilk come to power again, or continue to remain in power, they should be treated the same way, as needed.
If you like winning, this is your chance to do it, over and over and over…
Never before has a presidential candidate won his election so many times. Never before has a loser found so many ridiculous ways to avoid conceding to the winner. Of course, it is the very fact that a loser has brazenly lied and fabricated nonsense reasons and accusations to contest at every opportunity that has created the possibility for Biden to win, again and again.
First, Joe Biden won what appeared to be a relatively narrow victory on election day with enough confirmed electoral votes, along with a lead in enough other states to create an impossibility for Trump to get to 270, the margin of votes needed to prevail.
Next Biden was declared winner in states which had held back in declaring a projected winner. Then the re-counts, court challenges and and final tallies commenced.
Pennsylvania gave him a win. That was a big win and he became President-elect. Then the Georgia re-count was another time to celebrate his victory. And Arizona, a state he flipped for the first time since 1996, and before that a Republican won there since 1948.
So, get ready everyone, on December 14th there will be another win for Joe Biden. Tired of winning yet?
In the end Biden will have, barring any absolutely and totally unlikely changes, 306 electoral votes. “A landslide” according to Trump when it was his exact winning number. Of course he did not get more than 80 million popular votes, or vanquish his opponent by more than 6 million. That’s only another unique and first in all history – big big win for Biden.
Trump lost the popular vote by 2.9 million votes in 2016.
So far, 54 of his 306 Electoral College votes and Trump 73 of his 232 votes have been officially certified by a total of 16 states. They have awarded President-elect Joe Biden 54 of his 306 Electoral College votes, and Trump has been awarded 73 of his 232 votes.
Florida is the only one of the four most populous states that has, as of yet, already been certified. Early in December there’s a deadline for the other large ones: California, Texas and New York. None of them are at all in doubt, of course.
Talk of “faithless electors” being put into action by Trump is becoming les and less likely by the day. Not 100% off the table but around 99.9999% not gonna happen.
I wonder if Trump is tired of losing yet? Gas-up the private jet. Moscow’s waiting.
Electoral College meets on Dec. 14, and all states must be certified before that, while any challenges to the results must have been resolved by Dec. 8.
Trump, at the same time, said he was still not conceding
The first crack in Humpty-Trumpty’s fall is here. After more than two weeks since his victory in the electoral college was known, President-elect Joe Biden has been officially cleared to formally start his transition to the White House.
The General Services Administration, or GSA, has sent a letter and thereby formally acknowledged Biden as the apparent winner of the presidential election. This letter will allow him and his team to begin officially working on all aspects of the transition.
Non-concession concession, in a tweet, of course
“Nevertheless, in the best interest of our Country, I am recommending that Emily and her team do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols, and have told my team to do the same.”
Trump in Tweet on November 23rd, 2020
Trump, in a somewhat confused tweet, appears to concede, or at least accept that he can not block what is inevitable, and yet still clings to his “I believe we will prevail” line.
However the important part: “Nevertheless, in the best interest of our Country, I am recommending that Emily and her team do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols, and have told my team to do the same.” Was there for all to see in the second section of the tweet.
The president-elect cannot access federal transition funds or contact federal agencies to plan staffing, as per federal law, until the GSA recognizes him as the electoral winner.
Apparently this was all an off-the-cuff-tweet-scenario, as there were reports that various senior staff in the White House were unaware of this development, until having read the tweet themselves.
Many White House officials have said in confidence, according to reports, that they have been pushing for this next, important step, and only Rudy Giuliani was against moving forward.
“Today’s decision is a needed step to begin tackling the challenges facing our nation, including getting the pandemic under control and our economy back on track”
— Johannes Abraham, transition executive director for Biden / Harris, in a statement Monday
Until now the GSA has remained silent, thus limiting the President-elect from proceeding in some aspects of the transition. Now that the GSA has acknowledged formally via this letter, Biden‘s team will have access to more than $7 million of public funds.
…fight, and I believe we will prevail! Nevertheless, in the best interest of our Country, I am recommending that Emily and her team do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols, and have told my team to do the same.
Biden transition team reveals multiple top position picks, NYT reveals
According to a New York Times article, Joe Biden’s transition office said that they plan to announce multiple new top national security picks on Tuesday. The news will be accounted officially at an event in Washington.
The picks are said to include Alejandro Mayorkas, who will be the first Latino to head the Department of Homeland Security. Additionally, Avril Haines is slated to be his director of national intelligence and will become the first woman to head the intelligence community.
John Kerry will be nominated to for climate czar. Kerry, who was formerly secretary of state, will also will be on the National security council, which, since it is not a cabinet position will not need to be confirmed by the Senate.
Janet Yellen will be Treasury Secretary & Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan in cabinet positions
Janet Yellen, formerly chair of the Federal Reserve, from 2014 – 2018, is said to be on the list and expected to be nominated for head of the treasury depart. and would therefore be the first woman Treasury secretary of the United States
According to the transition team President-elect Biden also plans to nominate Linda Thomas-Greenfield, an African-American woman to be ambassador to the United Nations and, as a result of his intention to restore the position to cabinet-level status, will thereby also give Ms. Thomas-Greenfield a National Security Council seat.
These picks follow the announcement that Antony J. Blinken will be nominated for secretary of state, Jake Sullivan is to be White House national security adviser, also reported through sources from the transition team.
Art meets and imitates life squared in new Comedy series inspired by Trump and Produced by the Obamas
Barack and Michelle Obama are producing a sketch comedy series for Netflix inspired by Trump’s 2016 presidential win and transition. The Obamas’ production company “Higher Ground” will bring in U.S. comedian to host the show, which has been titled, “The G Word with Adam Conover”. Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground Productions has a multi-year agreement to produce films and series (both scripted and unscripted) for Netflix.
Click to see “The Fifth Risk” and help Independent Bookstores. Also available on Amazon.
The streaming series is loosely inspired by the book “The Fifth Risk” by Michael Lewis. Written in 2018 his book is about the narrative of the Trump administration’s botched presidential transition, and takes us into the engine rooms of a government under attack by its leaders through willful ignorance and greed.
Interestingly, Barack Obama was himself a topic and participated, to some degree, in the transition and it is interesting to imagine what, if any, insight he may have been able to ad to the comedic potential of the subject matter.
The Federal Government manages a vast array of critical services that are meant to keep us safe and underpin our lives, from ensuring the safety of our food and drugs and predicting extreme weather events to tracking and locating black market uranium before the terrorists do. Trump’s lack of interest or ability in managing the transition, let alone the Government itself, is the basic fodder for the comedic premise.
BoJack Horseman treatment could yield fantastic and funny results
Adam Conover confirmed the news on Twitter; “Very happy to finally be able to share this news: I’m creating a new comedy series for Netflix about the federal government. It’s called The G Word, and I can’t wait to share it with you.”
Conover is known for “Adam Ruins Everything” and “BoJack Horseman” and will use his comedic chops to blend sketch comedy with documentary elements, as the focus of the show is, in normal times, a pretty serious one, the government.
Netflix’s press release shared a little more light into what the show will bring to viewers:
”Using fast-paced visual comedy, Conover reveals the profound power and complexity of the U.S. government, introduces viewers to the heroic civil servants who make it work, and takes an incisive satirical look at its shortcomings.”
NETFLIX PRESS RELEASE
Filming is set to begin sometime early 2021, during the same general time as Barack Obama’s former vice president Joe Biden will be taking office as the 26th President.
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Above: Photo Collage showing the 4 Georgia Senate runoff election Candidates & Mike Pence
Critical Georgia Senate race seeing possible coronavirus impact early
After a campaign event for the upcoming Georgia run-off election that will decide which party controls the senate, and where Ms Loeffler was seen with primarily “unmasked” crowds, she tested positive on Friday. An initial, less reliable, test was “inconclusive” earlier in the day.
Though often seen wearing a mask in public, and wearing one during a post-rally series of meetings with a line of voters who had, lined up to greet her.
According to the New York Times, After her initial “rapid test” came back negative, she was “cleared” to appear at event on Friday, including a Rally that also had Georgia Senator David Perdue and Mike Pence in attendance. The second test was a so-called P.C.R. test, considered more accurate, was positive.
Ms Loeffler and Mr. Perdue are facing a runoff election in January against Democrats Dr. Raphael G Warnock and Jon Ossoff, respectively. The runoff is certain to attract intense national attention, due to the fact that, if Democrats are able to prevail in both cases the Senate will have a 50 – 50 split with VP-elect Kamala Harris as a tie-breaker, effectively putting the Democrats in a position to marginally control both the House and Senate.
…No surprise, yet another of the Trump clan has covid-19
Asymptomatic but in quarantine, one more of the anti-mask Trump crew has been added to the list of those that have tested positive for the Covid 19 virus. It’s unknown whether the public would have been informed by either Trump Jr. or the White House without the story from Bloomberg broken.
“Don tested positive at the start of the week and has been quarantining out at his cabin since the result, He’s been completely asymptomatic so far and is following all medically recommended COVID-19 guidelines.”
Spokesperson for Donald Trump Jr.
Also On Friday, a White House aide who is also Rudy Giuliani’s son Andrew Giuliani, put out a tweet that was also positive. In addition, an aide to aides to VP Mike Pence, including, Hannah McInnis, was also positive surrounding to the Bloomberg article. Other aides of the VP were previously infected, such as his press secretary and chief of staff. Pence himself has not yet announced any positive diagnosis.
It’s unknown whether the public would have been informed by either Trump Jr. or the White House without the story from Bloomberg broken. This is a developing story and will be updated as news breaks.
As follows, a list of various other Republican establishment figures that have tested positive as well;
Melania Trump (First Lady)
Ronna McDaniel (Republican National Committee chairwoman)
Hope Hicks (White House communications aide)
Kellyanne Conway (Former White House counselor)
Bill Stepien (Trump campaign manager)
John Jenkins (University of Notre Dame president)
Chris Christie (Former New Jersey Gov.)
Nick Luna (Director of Oval Office operations)
Karoline Leavitt (White house assistant press secretary)
Chad Gilmartin (White House press office staffer)
Kayleigh McEnany (White House press secretary)
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah)
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.)
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.)
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As twitter explodes with Memes and tributes to those that stepped up, the story is halfway: grand finale is yet to come
Georgia has flipped from Red to Blue. This, in case you were wondering, is big and unusual, and has not happened since 1992. Twenty-eight years ago, when Bill Clinton won the state, it was a different time and a different electorate. This year it was new voters, many under 35 that stepped up and shifted the count away from Trump and the Republicans. Black, Latina and Asian voters are on the rise and traditional white voters as a percentage are shrinking, currently just below 53%.
This is a snapshot of what the entire country is moving towards as the racial make up of the country becomes ever more diverse and inclusive. This shift was already well underway during the eight Obama years and will not stop just because Trump and his backward looking followers wish it was so.
Georgia’s heroism is set to be an ever more meaningful theme as it needs to flip again, or else the Biden administration will be severely hindered by another Republican majority, which would lead to a repeat of the problems Obama had during his tenure.
The focus on Georgia is not going away anytime soon, of course…
The run-off election for the two, suddenly insanely valuable Senate seats is already about to ramp up into the fight of the century. In a sense the races are even more important for the Republicans to win, as control of the Senate is the last chance to wield power over the next four years.
“Let me be clear, those who come to Georgia with the intention of voter fraud will be prosecuted,” said Secretary Raffensperger. “We thoroughly investigate every single allegation of voter fraud. Anyone is welcome to move to the state named the No. 1 place to do business. However, let me warn anyone attempting election mischief: If you illegally participate in our elections, you might be spending a lot more time in Georgia than you planned.”
— Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger
Don’t think for a second though that the importance is not clear to the Democrats across the country. Warnings from the Georgia Secretary of State that moving there temporarily to vote in the January Runoffs is illegal were deemed necessary; that’s how serious it is being taken across the country.
Today, before all of that gets started – let’s salute the heroes of Georgia, led by Stacy Abrams, who will certainly run for Governor again, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, the 50,000 that worked to collect and count the ballots and most of all the voters in the now-flipped-into-bright-Blue State.
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Snowden may indeed receive a pardon and shortly after a bunk-mate in the form of the same soon-to-be ex-President
Trump says so many crazy things on any given day, it is easy to let any one particular thing just float on by and get ready for whatever the next outrageous or just wacko thing that comes out of his mouth.
Ascribing some kind of motivation is often a fools errand of second convolution logic that leads to a parlor game of either elevating this mental-midget to a “very stable genius” or trying to follow clues as to his source for the “idea” (like what was aired on Fox News in the 12 hours prior to his tweet or crazy proclamation).
The idea he came up with of leaving the country, after he loses to “the worst candidate in the history of politics”, is not one of those run-of-the-mill , dime-a-dozen utterances. No. It is a very real concern that appears to be weighing heavily on his mind, and that he feels the need to discuss with thousands of his closest friends (the audiences at his super-spreader rallies).
If there is a genius to Trump, it is his ability to go so far beyond the pale that even those that know his predilection for bizarre suggestions and actions have not followed his twisted logic quite as far as he is about to take it.
Floating the idea of a Pardon for Snowden was Clue #1
The backward inverted idea of a pardon initiated by Trump for someone he once called a “traitor” is pure, simple Trump-ian thought at it’s most absurd. All Snowden needed to do to become Trump’s new friend was to hang out for a while with Trump’s other friend; Putin. So, as is so often the case with the most obtuse and simultaneously transparent maniac, one only has to connect the dots to reach a simple rock-solid conclusion: Trump is shopping for a post-election-loss safe-haven and joining Snowden in Moscow is his very first choice.
Now, never mind that Snowden is not a Trump supporter or sycophant, his proximity alone, to Putin, in Trump’s bent mind, makes him an ally of sorts. And if pushed, I am certain Trump would somehow use this thought process to link Wikileaks, which he “loves” when they leak Democratic dirt, and Assange, though strange bedfellows don’t begin to cover that trio of compatriots.
The phrase: “Banana republic” comes to mind
This prediction, written on this very parchment at 21:21 on October 21, 2020, is herby put forth – however, in fairness, it is actually at least 3 predictions.
First, that Trump will lose Bigly on or around November 3rd. Second, that he will opt for plan c, after his wannabe civil warriors fail to show up for any dubious would-be battles, and leave the USA forthwith. Third that he is already entertaining offers but has Moscow very high on his list, since the shit-hole countries, that he bad-mouthed on the way up the ladder of infamy, do not have an interest in harboring him.
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Rules that favor the sane are clearly unpopular with the chief of interruptions and accusations
The final Presidential debate, currently scheduled for Thursday October 22 will have 90 minutes divided into six fifteen-minute segments. Each segment will have 2 minutes of time for each candidate to speak, guaranteed without interruption, before the topic is “discussed” in open debate format.
Trump, whining to reporters last night disagreed with virtually everything about the debate: “I will participate but it’s very unfair that they changed the topics and it’s very unfair that again we have an anchor who’s totally biased.”
During an hour long interview with “Fox & Friends” he went further:
‘This was supposed to be a foreign policy debate, and new all of a sudden we’re talking about things that are not foreign policy. And, frankly, it was a change that they made that was far bigger than the mute button, I mean, frankly. But they made a change, and it shouldn’t have happened. It shouldn’t have happened”
During Barack Obama’s two terms, Pete Souza was with the President during more crucial moments than anyone else — and he photographed them all. Souza captured nearly two million photographs of President Obama, in moments highly classified and disarmingly candid. Obama: An Intimate Portrait reproduces more than 300 of Souza’s most iconic photographs with fine-art print quality in an oversize collectible format.
Some are already speculating that Trump will scream and yell and wave his arms during the time that his mic is muted. Alternatively, he could choose to cancel, which appears to be unlikely at this late juncture. Apparently, while the last debate was all about talking over, interrupting and generally trying to disrupt the proceedings, this time it will be about complaining outside the actual performance itself. I guess we’ll all have to tune in to see.
“We realize, after discussions with both campaigns, that neither campaign may be totally satisfied with the measures announced today. We are comfortable that these actions strike the right balance and that they are in the interest of the American people, for whom these debates are held.”
– The Commission on Presidential Debates
In addition to the 2 minutes of time each is given to speak without interruption there will be an attempt made to calculate the time one candidate loses due to an interruption by the other candidate will be credited back to the candidate that was interrupted.
Since Trump interrupted three times as often as Biden in the first debate; 71 times vs. 22 by the former Vice President, it was always unlikely that these rules would be welcomed by the Trump campaign. The bizarre strategy of “winning by interruption” will have far less potential in the new format.
The groundwork has been laid to choose to blame and mock the commission and the moderator or simply refuse to attend
On Monday a complaint in advance was already sent to the commission by Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign manager:
“It is completely unacceptable for anyone to wield such power, and a decision to proceed with that change amounts to turning further editorial control of the debate over to the Commission which has already demonstrated its partiality to Biden,” said Stepien.
Additionally, the Trump campaign appears to be unhappy with the topics that were announced by the debate commission and in the same letter quoted above attempted to steer the debate topics away from the Covid-19 pandemic and into “foreign policy” and other issues.
All the grousing could be a set-up for a last minute cancelation by the Trump camp, as has been speculated.
That would likely only benefit Biden, and speed-up the need for Trump to find a country that would host him in exile.
However, as of last night this quote from Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien still stands: Trump “is committed to debating Joe Biden regardless of last minute rule changes from the biased commission in their latest attempt to provide advantage to their favored candidate.”
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Among all Trump’s lackeys and sycophants, one stands out as the biggest loser of them all. A former attacker of the orange menace, his hypocrisy is seemingly limitless and shocking even among the nasty crowd his rums with; Moscow Mitch, Pompeo, Perry, Don Jr.
A person with such and obvious and total lack of honor or integrity must be remove from the senate post haste. And that means November 3rd’s election. Like his perverted uncle Moscow Mitch he has been milking the system for nefarious ends far too long. Flapping in the wind and flipping sides regardless of any ethics or meaning, that’s where he should (and will , with your help) find himself on November 4th: Out-to-dry, out-to-pasture and flapping in the wind.
As you might be aware, a new documentary is on the top ten most watched list on Netflix and is getting a lot of attention. The Social Dilemma is a well made documentary, directed by Jeff Orlowski, that aims to reveal the problems, very very big problems that have arisen, mainly in the past decade in the way social media and internet platforms generally, are operating and prospering.
While that may sound harmless at first blush, it’s the sheer scale; trillions of dollars, and the lack of any product or service, other than to advertisers, that begs the question: at what expense to humanity?
This is a big, important subject and is one that is extremely difficult to cram into an “entertaining” documentary. Here, an attempt is made to tackle that difficulty in two main ways.
First there are many on-camera interviews with almost exclusively former and current Silicon Valley insiders, many of whom where partially responsible for the very systems and methods that are being called into question here, and second, the two inter-twined semi-fictional dramatic elements, clearly meant to help viewers that may lose interest in discussions of algorithms, machine learning and corrupt business models.
Choosing insiders is not an oversight but by design
The choice of such a long list of high level tech insiders as interviewees is important and meaningful. The very fact that people, most of whom profited and made careers out of building these systems and platforms, are willing, now, to passionately speak out about them, and agree that they are horrific mistakes that have the potential to destroy not just people’s lives but humanity and the planet itself, speaks volumes.
While there are many other scholars, journalists and witnesses that could, and should, have their ideas and opinions heard, it is the extreme fact that insiders are willing to address these problems so candidly and so passionately, that helps this to be a mind-blowing and impossible to ignore documentary film.
Companies like Google and Facebook are some of the wealthiest and most successful of all time. They have relatively few employees. They just have this giant computer that rakes in money, right? Now, what are they being paid for? That’s a really important question.
-Jaron Lanier, founding father of virtual reality, computer scientist
The film must be seen, and the information absorbed, to understand the true importance, but, in a nut-shell, what is becoming more obvious by the minute is that the combination of massive power based on worldwide near-monopoly status, and a business model that has no contribution to make or product to sell, has allowed these platforms to amass trillion dollar fortunes in a lethal mix that must be stopped at all costs.
”The first fifty years of Silicon Valley the industry made products, hardware, software, sold them to customers, nice, simple business. For the last ten years the biggest companies in Silicon Valley have been in the business of selling their users”.
-Roger McNamee, Early Facebook investor and Venture Capitalist
Critics fail to see the film’s urgency and instead nitpick it as an imperfect entertainment product
There are layers of irony in the fact that the weaknesses decried by many critical articles written about this film are the same ones that the film is pointing to, and a major force, one that propelled these online platforms to positions of virtually unlimited power in the first place: human weaknesses and short attention spans.
”The classic saying is: “if you’re not paying for the product, then, you are the product”
-Classic Silicon Valley truism
The interviews are powerful and the quotes and alternately chilling and illuminating. So much so that it is actually difficult to absorb all at once. Many reviewers chose to simplify this reality by boiling the many serious quotes down to “dystopian” cliché, as if the end of the world is a topic for a cartoon movie review. Others harped on the weakness of the acted-out semi-fictional stories as not being the optimum way to get the real data and facts across.
The two narrative threads portrayed by actors revolve around an imaginary semi-suburban mixed family and their interactions with technology platforms and social media and a fictional visualization of the “back end” of the software systems used by the giant platforms (Facebook, Google, etc).
This back end software is elevated to a “triple-android” character, portrayed by Vincent Kartheiser, of Madmen fame, as sort of automaton-triplets that embody the actions of the software, AI and the integrated instructions, presumably from Zuckerberg himself (or the equivalent at Google or other platforms. (character name is, revealingly, “AI”)
This is a new kind of marketplace now. It’s a marketplace that never existed before. And it’s a marketplace that trades exclusively in “human futures”. Just like there are markets that trade in pork belly futures or oil futures. We now have markets that trade in human futures at scale. And those markets have produced the trillions of dollars that have made the internet companies the richest companies in the history of humanity”
-Shoshanna Zuboff PhD., Harvard Business School Professor, emeritus and author of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism”
While these filmic-devices are not ideal or particularly precise in showing the problems with the entire complex system, they are, nevertheless, a good choice to find a way for the statements of the interviewees to be dramatized. They can help people who are not technical analysts to viscerally grasp the deep and serious problems being discussed. Without these elements the film’s audience would be, almost certainly, far smaller. This fact was not appreciated by many reviewers, however.
”Many people call this ‘surveillance capitalism’. Capitalism profiting off of the infinite tracking of everywhere everyone goes, by large technology companies whose business model is to make sure that advertisers are as successful as possible”
-Tristan Harris, Google’s former design ethicist and co-founder of The Center for Humane Technology
One reviewer even mistook the fictional anthropomorphic portrayal of software algorithms and artificial intelligence, all three by the same actor, as a real “unnamed” social platform and that these characters were supposed to be employees of the “unnamed” platform!
All of this confusion is directly related and lies at the heart of the eponymous dilemma being addressed. If the interview subjects, many of whom have become extremely rich from their contributions, are terrified of the evil power of these systems and platforms, what can be done to stop them from getting even bigger and more powerful and eventually destroying us all?
What chance of understanding and solving the problem to the rest of us have?
”How much of your life can we get you to give to us? We often talked about, at Facebook, this idea, of being able to just “dial that” as needed. And we talked about, you know, Mark (Zuckerberg) have those dials… “let’s dial up the ads a little bit”, dial up the monetization, just slightly… At all these companies there’s that level of precision”
-Tim Kendall, Facebook / former director of monetization, Pinterest / former president, CEO / Moment
Such a question sounds almost like a joke to anyone who has not followed and investigated the rise of these behemoths and the “legal” and yet criminal behaviors they perpetrate on a global scale, amplified by computing and financial powers that would have been unimaginable even 2 decades ago.
Therein lies the rub.
The beginning of the end of malignant big tech structures or of us?
The only criticism that stands out to this reviewer is that the message of doom was portrayed as an open question with not much in the way of suggestions for solution, or ways forward other than “delete your social media accounts”.
”there are times when there is a national interest, there are times when the interests of people, of users, is actually more important than the profits of somebody who is already a billionaire”
-Roger McNamee, Early Facebook investor and Venture Capitalist
While that, in and of itself, is a start, the reality is that governments around the world, particularly in Europe and Australia have convicted the giants of criminal behavior on multiple occasions and there are many pending anti-trust actions, not to mention grass roots support for radical change to laws and regulations as a response to the truly destructive nature of these platforms.
“These markets undermine democracy and they undermine freedom and they should be outlawed. This is not a radical proposal. There are other markets that we outlaw. We outlaw markets in human organs. We outlaw markets in human slaves. Because they have inevitable destructive consequences.”
-Shoshanna Zuboff PhD., Harvard Business School Professor, emeritus and author of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism”
In an odd way the truth of even the most hyperbolic statements is what makes it so hard to keep people engaged. If these platforms and, in particular the dangerous and destructive business models that they are allowed to operate under, are not replaced or at least broken up, this could represent an even larger threat to humanity than climate change or nuclear war, so where do we start to dismantle them?
”We could tax data collection and processing. The same way that you, for example, pay your water bill, by monitoring the amount of water that you use. You tax these companies on the data assets that they have. It gives them a fiscal reason to not acquire every piece of data on the planet.”
-Joe Toscano, Google / Former experience design consultant and author of “Automating Humanity”
This is where interviewing and asking some very distinguished people who were, in part, responsible for building these systems, falls apart. Why should they be expected to have a solution for a problem that they, admittedly, were a part of creating?
”What I see are a bunch of people who are trapped, by a business model, and economic incentive and shareholder pressure that makes it almost impossible to do something else.
-Tristan Harris, Google’s former design ethicist and co-founder of The Center for Humane Technology
The answer is, of course, that they should not be expected to be the ones with the solutions – though their support of finding solutions and tackling the problems is very valuable, indeed. This is why this film deserves not criticism as an imperfect entertainment vehicle, but rather support and recommendation, as an important beginning in recognizing the threat posed by these business models; to mental health, economic prosperity and political stability of all nations.
”Whether it is to be utopia or oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment…”
