#a lot of people rightly angry at the US for voting against but let’s not forget to be angry at the UK too

[useless-englandfacts]

this probably goes without saying but fuck the uk for abstaining on the UN resolution demanding a ceasefire in gaza.

[rachelbethhines]

Tangled Salt Marathon - Secret of the Sun Drop (Part 1)

Were now at the season finale folks and it’s the beginning of the end. This is the series’ highpoint, it’s all downhill afterwards. However, while this episode is good, it’s still got flaws so let's get to it. 

Summary: On Rapunzel's nineteenth birthday, Frederic tightens his grip on the Rapunzel and the kingdom, while Varian makes his move to attack. 

More Indication of the Timeline 

Remember, Varian said that it would be matter of months until the rocks reached the island in QfaD and today is the day that they reach it. Now Raps is saying that Frederic has been lying to her for months. At least since TWoRR, which makes more sense if you remember that that particular episode was meant to slot between QfaD and this episode. 

The show has a bad habit of making the passage of time an important plot point but failing to showcase how much time has past. Showing episodes out of order didn’t help, but even more than that the audience shouldn’t have to rely on one line exposition to gain knowledge of what’s going on. The show fails to use actual visual indicators of what’s going on. There’s little visual change in seasons, next to no change in character models, and all we have are made up holidays to go by.   

Also yes, Rapunzel has left a fourteen year old alone for three months. This isn’t something that can be excused. Seriously, stop trying to do so people. It just makes you look bad when you do.  

Wow, Way to Victim Blame, Raps. 

“Unstable”? We’re seriously going to use ableist terms to describe a grieving young teenager who’s been persecuted and neglected for months on in?

And Rapunzel knows he’s been persecuted and abandoned for months at this point. She’s read the note. She’s been attacked by same the guards that attacked him. She’s heard the rumors. She seen his father’s corpse. She has just admitted in this very spiel that Frederic has been lying. She knows how people are unfairly treated by Corona’s legal system and that ‘treason’ is a death sentence to anyone but herself.  

Yet, all she can do here is whine about how all of this only affects her. This entire speech is just me, me, me, and I, I, I. Don’t tell me she’s a kind and compassionate person when her hypocrisy is made into a fundamental plot point for the season’s main conflict. 

But let's get to the real reason for this little recap. It’s to create bias in the viewer. 

The viewer is aware that Varian might be up to something, but Rapunzel logically, should not be. Varian technically hasn’t done anything wrong yet. The worst he’s done is feed people truth serum, which is no different than Xavier drugging folks with the mood potion. Given how Raps didn’t care about Xavier doing that she shouldn’t care about Varian doing it either, especially since it didn’t physically harm anyone. Also Varian very much is in the right to take the flower and she knows the only thing he’s going to use it for is to free his father and possibly stop the rocks. He’s been very upfront about that. 

Also don’t you dare bring up the stupid reprise! Intent isn’t action. You can't condemn people for having negative thoughts. You can only condemn people for acting upon their negative impulses, which, once again, has not happened yet. 

Furthermore, Rapunzel isn’t privy to Varian’s innermost thoughts and hasn’t been present for those instances where he did voice negative intent. Ergo, him singing a misplaced reprise does not excuse her behaviour. 

The characters in the show treat Varian as a villain before he ever actually becomes a villian, and that’s only because the creator wants you to side with his self-insert instead of actually addressing the moral conundrums that he’s written into the show. 

Does Anyone Else Besides Me Find the Glorification of Classism In the Show Disturbing? 

So supposedly all of these gifts have been given to Rapunzel by the regular citizenry of Corona. There might be a few from a couple of lower nobles or royals from outside of Corona, but for the most part it’s implied that all of theses presents are from poor people. 

Rapunzel is a princess. She’s literally the richest person in the whole kingdom and holds people’s lives in her hands. Giving a thoughtful gift because you like her is one thing, paying tribute to her very existence just because she technically owns you is another. 

Keep in mind people have been brainwashed for nearly two decades to worship Rapunzel. They’ve made a holiday out of her birthday. Later on we see the townspeople defend the King even when it’s been proven that he’s done them wrong. They follow Rapunzel blindly through out season three. ect. 

The people of Corona are dangerously loyal to feudalism, royalty, and authoritarian rule long past sanity, and given the other authoritarian messages in the show, it takes what is meant to be a sweet scene of a girl who grew up with nothing suddenly gaining acceptance and turns it into a creepy endorsement of the class system. 

More Evidence that Frederic is the Worst 

This scene makes it clear that Frederic is the one who is threatening Cassandra here, not her dad. It was never Cap who held the convent thing over her head. Now you can hold Cap accountable for choosing loyalty to the crown and his job over his daughter’s well being, but that is one of the few things that is actually addressed in the show, in this very episode in fact, so why would you? 

Also, why only now? Frederic has known about Cassandra’s involvement since TWoRR when he first read Rapunzel’s diary. It’s strange he’d go out of his way to silence Varian for months on in but waits until the last episode to persecute Rapunzel’s bestie. You could argue that maybe he didn’t wanna risk tipping off Rapunzel but then why didn’t this happen during TAR instead?  

Once again the writer is playing favorites in order to create bias. It’d be suddenly a lot harder to excuse Frederic if he was hunting down Cass along side Varian as she’s a main character and you couldn’t keep that as a ‘read between the lines’ scenario. Which, incidentally, is why we never get a Varian focused episode to show his time on the run. You couldn’t get away with having the main character siding with your dictator self-insert if you actually visually showed him persecuting a helpless child. 

Don’t Expect This to Go Anywhere

Rapunzel is rightly angry about this clear abuse, but then never brings it up ever again. It’s completely forgotten about after this point. Frederic is never held accountable for his actions. 

This is the Point Where Varian Actually Becomes a Villian

Not the flower, not the truth serum, not the damn reprise, but here. This is the point where his actions cross the line. Violence, particularly violence against people who aren’t currently hurting you, is wrong. Varian is a villain, he does do bad things, and I’m not going to ignore that. 

However, knowing where, when, how, and why he becomes a villain is extremely important in not only understanding the story but in also navigating the moral minefield that is this show. 

Because Varian is still the victim even as he slides into the role the antagonist. There’s been no change in the power dynamics. His life is still under threat from the king. Every action he takes is a step to either free his father and/or defend himself from a corrupt government that would see him hanged just for daring to defy it’s dictator.   

People defend Varian to this day, not because he has a tragic backstory, but because he’s been forced into a dangerous situation with little way out. There’s nothing else he could have done that wouldn’t have lead to his eventual untimely death. Because indirect violence is still violence. Frederic is no less evil just because Varian fights against the king’s indirect violence with direct violence.  

Varian’s Life was Forfeit the Moment He was Turned Away During the Storm and This is the Show Confirming That

This is a grown man, with all the power in the world, threatening a child. A child who he has cannonly persecuted for three months before this incident. A child that was neglected by Rapunzel despite him being her responsibility. 

Any excuse you give to defend either Frederic or Rapunzel is already made invalid by the simple fact that they are both adults and Varian is not. They are both in charge here, not the fourteen year old. 

We do not hold people under legal voting age to the same standards as adults for two simple reasons. One, they are powerless in making the laws that they are accused of breaking, and two, they haven’t reached the point of development where they can take care of themselves and be expected to make rational decisions within a functioning society. Now we could have an argument all day long about the pros and cons of when the rights and responsibilities of adulthood should be granted to people (16?18?21?), but at fourteen/fifteen, Varian isn’t there yet regardless. 

You can not in any good moral consciousness hold people lacking rights to the same responsibilities as those with rights. 

That isn’t to say that kids can’t do bad things. They obviously can and have before. But when enacting judgement and the punishment that goes along with that, you have to keep their lack of rights in mind and make the sentence proportional to both their age, circumstances, and their crime. This is why courts that try teens as adults are absolutely vile. I do not care what crime they commited, you don’t do that. 

I’m not criticizing Rapunzel and Frederic here because I personally dislike them or something. I’m criticizing them because I’m opposed to the messages that they become mouthpieces for. When you defend these two characters you defend their stance to persecute and abuse a child. Ergo, you spout the same authoritarian beliefs that are currently tearing my country apart and I will hold you accountable for it. 

Like them all you want, but liking a character does not mean blindly going along with their bullshit. 

This Still Abuse

In fact it’s the same abuse that Gothel did to her. It was wrong then and it’s wrong now and there’s no excuse for that. 

What a lot of people don’t seem to understand is that you can be both a victim and a bully at the same time. What differentiates Rapunzel, Frederic, and Varian from one other is their level of respective power in the situation and how their trauma actually impacts the rationale behind their actions. 

Frederic is the most accountable in this whole conflict because he’s the one with the most power and because his personal trauma isn’t grounds for what he does. They’re a reason that’s been given, but past trauma isn’t an excuse to hurt others who had nothing to do with that trauma. He is, ultimately the instigator of all of the conflicts in season one. 

Rapunzel is not as accountable, but she’s not entirely blameless either. As both an adult and a princess, Rapunzel held the power to save Varian and stop things from getting this far and she choose not to do so. Rapunzel’s trauma is a reason for why she fails in her responsibility but it’s still not an excuse as Varian has nothing to do with her personal insecurities. He’s not responsible for getting her to fix her shit and had he done nothing she would have continued on ignoring both his and her own problems. Frederic’s abuse would have still been there with or without the black rocks or Varian’s involvement. She’s not deserving of how her father treats her, but neither is Varian deserving of how she treats him.

Varian is the least accountable. Sure there are somethings that he does wrong, but as a child he holds no power in the situation. His only means of fighting back is his own intelligence, but being the smartest person in the room isn’t necessarily a power imbalance. Also his trauma is currently ongoing and his actions are directly tied into making his abusers stop. Because yeah, both Frederic and Rapunzel are abusive to Varian. Neglect is a form of abuse.

Eugene is the Only Person in this Situation with the Right Response, Shame It Won’t Amount to Anything

After all this, Eugene has no reason to ever trust Frederic again.  Neither does Rapunzel, nor the rest of kingdom. He should have been shunned from here on after. This isn’t promoting ‘cancel culture’ or whatever, this is acknowledging that ‘forgiveness’ isn’t and shouldn’t be a shield from the personal consequences for your actions. 

But Frederic is the Creator’s Self-Insert and Therein Lies the Problem

I keep calling Frederic the creator’s self-insert not because I’m making assumptions or accusations but because this is something that Chris has admitted to publicly on numerous occasions. If you want a reference than just check out his interview during D23. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ECeflBTS58

There’s also more confirmation on his twitter and in other interviews. Though I’d personally recommend that younger fans stay away from him and his twitter, given his past behavior. (more on this later)

Chris has also publicly made excuses whenever criticism of Frederic has reached him. The same excuses that he then puts into the show itself. That’s why he and the show is so desperate for Varian to be the hated villain instead and goes out of its way to create a bias in how characters and conflicts are presented. 

Look, having a self-insert or a character you relate to isn’t in of itself a bad thing. Nor does having such a character mean that you personally avocate all that they do. I mean Varian is my favorite character in the show, partly because I’m a political activist, but that doesn’t mean that I approve of attacking government officials in their homes or something. Yet, if you want to make your self-insert likable to the audience then why on earth would make them an abusive dictator and then never hold them accountable to that? 

I cannot say what goes through Chris’s mind nor what his actual beliefs are, but the very fact that show won’t acknowledge corruption for what it is and constantly excuses abusers is worrisome enough on its own. It either means that Chris is woefully incompetent, actually encourages authoritarian thought, or some combination of both. Add in his bullying of younger fans, to the point where his was kicked off the Tangled discord, and what is left is not a flattering picture of the man. 

The Show Completely Assassinates Arianna’s Character Here

You’re telling me that the Queen has no power? You’re telling me that the only mother in the show is going to stand aside and do nothing while her only daughter, who has been missing for 18 years, is abused? You’re telling me that Arianna only exists in the story to excuse her husband’s actions? You’re telling me that this ‘strong, independent, badass’ woman you co-opted from the movie is only here to be subservient to a man and you’re going to act like this is a good and noble thing, that it’s ‘true love’? You’re telling me that if she’s not only willing to do this, right now, then she apparently has done it before in his 18 long years reign of terror and oppression? 

Fuck whoever wrote this! This is an insulting to women everywhere and a slap in the face to people who were actually victims of abuse.  

This is Enabling Abuse, Don’t Do This! 

BULLSHIT!!!

This is the line abusers feed their victims all the damn time!!!

The movie smartly made the decision to keep Gothel’s personal feelings towards Rapunzel ambiguous. That’s why she is one of the best villains in Disney history. If we only look at the movie than she may have ‘loved’ Rapunzel too. Who knows? It doesn’t matter. 

Abuse Is Abuse Regardless of the Abuser’s Reasons or Personal Feelings Towards Their Victim

Many abusers think that they love their victims. It’s a lie that they sell to both themselves and their victims. But it’s a twisted, toxic, and possessive ‘love’ that doesn’t actually care for and respect it’s recipient. Ergo, not love at all. 

There’s not enough words to express my disgust with this exchange. There are children watching this. It’s directed right at them and sadly, yes, there are undoubtedly some watching who are trapped in abusive homes. The show just reinforced the beliefs of those abusers and helped to keep those children trapped in that situation by confirming what they’ve already been taught. 

This is beyond irresponsible, and someone higher up should have stepped in before this. It’s clear that this show lacked any sort of real oversight. You have a million dollar series being showrunned by two newbie producers with zero writing credit and no one thought  that there should maybe be a senior executive and editor involved?

That’s Not Enough

Admitting that something is wrong, right after excusing it, isn’t enough. You need to show the characters taking action and changing their ways. If Arianna truly believes that this ‘isn’t right’ then why does she not do anything about it after this conversation? 

So What Did the King Do to Monty?

He runs off the tell the king the very thing that said king has gone to great lengths to hide and has yet to admit his involvement in. Also Monty doesn’t re-appear until after Varian blows Frederic’s cover. So what happened in between now and then? Did Frederic persecute Monty as well, lie to him, or did Monty not ever reach the King before the scandal was revealed, because any one of those answers would conflict with Monty’s actions later in the story. 

Watch as Cass Forgets Her Motivation 

We’re at the end of the first season and the audience is only just now getting this important insight into the deuteragonist, a reveal that’ll only be walked back on in later seasons. 

If Cassandra’s whole motivation and reasoning is just to earn her father’s approval, which she does gain by the way, then how come she gives a crap about what other people besides him thinks? If being a guard is her true goal then why is she after praise from strangers constantly? You don't get praise from being a guard. It’s a thankless job and she should know that from see what her dad has to do all the time to stay in Frederic’s good graces. Also why not make her dad more central to her arc and resolution, then? 

What I’m getting at is that Cassandra isn’t consistent. What she wants changes conveniently to suit the story’s needs rather than being based in any actual logical progression of events. Often flip flopping from one supposed ill-defined goal to another and back again; till in the end she winds up with no goal at all.

Set Yourself Free is the Only Point Where Rapunzel’s Arc Works

This is the only lesson that Rapunzel actually learns. How to be assertive. This is set up, is build up to throughout the season, and then culminates into this climax/reveal. For once there’s an actual resolution here to a previously established problem. A resolution that isn’t then walked back on. Rapunzel remains assertive throughout the narrative and grows no further past this point. There’s nothing else learned, even as she takes this lesson and runs it into the ground by overstepping her bounds and going into full on bully mode in later seasons. 

Undermining Tension 

I talked about this in What the Hair, but Cassandra conveniently ignoring orders without consequence, or even any real effort on her part, showcases that the convent was never really all that much of a threat as it was built up to be. It goes from being a ‘threat to her safety’, a basic need, to a ‘threat to her sense of belonging’, a psychological need. One is less of an immediate threat to her physical being and ergo holds less tension. 

Even Hookfoot Admits He’s Useless to the Story

Look, pointing out the flaws in your story doesn’t make them any less of a flaw. I like Hoofoot, but he adds literally nothing to the series. There’s was no need to include him if you weren’t actually going to tie him to the plot. Just like Monty, Friedborg, Willow, and Axel; Hoofoot is a character who could have been exercised from the show and it wouldn’t have changed much of anything other than to give more screen time to the actual plot and main characters. 

And for those who want to come at me for saying they should get rid of the tokenistic disabled rep, just remember there was no reason why Lance couldn’t have served both functions in the story. He could have been both disabled and black, while carrying all of Hookfoot’s episodes and being part of the ongoing plot. Much in the same way that Xavier and Monty should have been streamlined; combining both Lance and Hookfoot into one person would have left us with a more rounded character and a more focused show overall. 

Varian Isn’t Lying Here

Look, just cause he’s the villain doesn’t mean he’s exaggerating the truth. Someone on tv tropes tried to claim that Varian was being unreasonable in accusing Frederic of ‘villfing’ him, but uh, no, that’s exactly what the king did. We got the on screen evidence for it back in Quest for Varain. It’s also true that he’s been keeping the rocks secret, lying to the populous, and has thereby endangered many of his citizens.   

Cap is the Only Parent on this Show to Get Called Out, Recognize his Failings, and Actively Change His Ways....and the Show Still Messes this up by Having Cass Apologize to Him?

Cap is the best parent in the show, hands down, but that’s a very low bar to clear. What makes him the best parent is that he admits his faults and goes to great lengths to fix them. He never goes back or reverts to old ways and doesn’t offer excuses for his behavior. 

But the show seems to think that you should forgive dad’s just because they’re dad’s, not because they’ve actually done anything to earn that forgiveness. That’s why Cass interrupting Cap’s apology to apologize herself doesn’t work here. She, and no other other child on this show, owes him (or any parent) such an apology and Chris can go stick a rusty nail up his butt for ever suggesting otherwise.  

Oh, Look, Cassandra Getting What She Wants, Again

What is this? The fifth or sixth time now that Cass has been rewarded by the narrative? Gee, it’s almost like she doesn't really have anything to complain about in seasons two and three. 

Varian isn’t Harming ‘Innocents’ Here

Remember when I said that Varian is both the victim and the villian? That’s reflected in who he actually attacks. Arianna, the guards, Cass, Eugene, ect. are all enablers for his abusers. They’ve knowingly chosen to side with a dictator who has repeatedly done unacceptable things. The guards and the main cast at least are very well aware of the truth. As to whether or not Arianna knew of the full details behind Varian’s treatment, she does know about Frederic’s past actions and has excused them for years.   

That doesn’t make Varian treatment of her, or others like her, right, but Arianna isn’t blamess either. 

If you’re a person with power who is attached to a system of government who goes on to uphold corruption, and remain silent in the face of that corruption, you become a part of the problem. You become the oppressor even if you’re not directly involved in the more violent events yourself or even personally hold the views of the person committing those violent acts. 

A queen is responsible for a her people and she abandons that responsibility by staying with Frederic and supporting him. 

Turning his Pet into a Mutant Monster is the Only Time Varian Hurts Someone Who Isn’t Involved 

As I said, Varian is a villian. I’m not going to act like he doesn’t do bad things or that all of his actions are justifiable. The reason I’ve gone into great detail about Varian’s reasonings into what he does isn’t to excuse his actions; it’s to point out that ‘heroes’ are every bit as much to blame as he is. 

Everyone is at fault here; not just Varian, not just the King, not just Rapunzel ect. But the show forces Varian to carry all of the blame regardless. Which is why the show fails. You can’t set up a morally complex situation like this and not follow through on it completely. Failing to do so winds up reflecting poorly upon the writers and those that try to excuse them. 

Conclusion 

Dang, this took forever. This is why I’m following Disney’s lead and splitting the review into two parts. Come back tomorrow, where hopefully part two will be up. 

[centaurianthropology]

The Magnus Archives ‘The Observer Effect’ (S02E20) Analysis

A tangential story about paranoia, and a possible solution to a long-running problem.  Are things resolved?  Are they only beginning?  Come in to hear my thoughts about ‘The Observer Effect’.

Not much in the way of lore for this one, though I did find it interesting that the Institute was working with Christopher Meyer before his death on the topic of Outer Cults.  It makes me think both of the People’s Church of the Divine Host, and of the Lovecraftian cults of a similar name, most of which worshipped the Elder Gods.  

It’s nice to hear about someone outside the Institute using it as a research facility.  People talk so much shit about the Institute that it’s largely forgotten that it has one of the finest collections of paranormal reference books (and paranormal books in general) in the world.  I do find it interesting that they wouldn’t cooperate with Rosa regarding her brother’s work there.  Could there be professional or contractual (or practical and dangerous) reasons the Institute wouldn’t tell Rosa what her brother had been doing? Certainly.  But given how unstable she was, it’s no great surprise she took their dismissal badly and tried to build an impromptu firebomb to use against the Institute.  Given that she can’t have been the first person to be that angry with the Institute, or that unstable, I do have to wonder how they haven’t suffered an attack of that sort before.  That also made me wonder if Prentiss wasn’t the first supernatural creature to bring the battle to the Institute.

But really, this episode was a paranoid buildup to what we all sort of expected to get:

An Intervention

That was … a lot less explosive than I was expecting.  Tim was pissed, but didn’t quit, which I admit that I had suspected he would do.  Not-Sasha did a good job of seeming concerned but slightly affronted (her blunted affect continues, but you can tell she does a decent job imitating human emotions, even if those emotions might not have been Sasha’s).  Martin just wants everyone happy and okay, and I did love the moment when he corrected Elias (or Tim?  But it seemed more Elias to me) about why they were there (firing vs making sure Sims was getting the help he needed).

Elias was firmly professional, and frankly way more understanding than I would have been in his place (also, Elias and Tim sound very alike to me, so my brain had some trouble sorting who was saying what), and actually furnished Sims with CCTV from the entire Institute save the Archives the day of the murder, which alibis everyone fairly thoroughly.

I have suspected that it’s no one so convenient for a while, that there is no traitor in the ranks, and that Sims’ paranoia just targeted the nearest people because they were there and because their betrayal would hurt the worst.  Of course, this now leaves Sims in the position of having cleared his colleagues of wrongdoing, but still sneaking around making his supplementals. Why?  And why wasn’t the conversation a bit longer, and a bit more a proper clearing of the air?  Because giving him the CCTV footage doesn’t finish things between him and his coworkers at all.  He still spied on Tim (wrongly) and Not-Sasha (rightly, but for the wrong reasons), and accused Martin of murder.  That’s … a lot of emotional baggage that needs unloading.  And a ton of apologizing and amending that Sims needs to do before his team is back with him.

We got factual closure this week, but I guess I’m waiting for at least a little emotional closure, which may be slow in coming.  Basically, Sims has done some particularly shitty things, and needs to acknowledge it and try to make it up to his assistants.  

Of course, one of those assistants actually is a doppleganger with unknown intent and a fascination with wax museums, soooo … maybe Sims being more open with them will pull to the forefront the subtle wrongness of Not-Sasha?  And hopefully not reignite his paranoia?

Conclusions

We’ve come a little way toward getting the team back together, but a lot more work is needed.  Sims could really do with talking everything he’s been through.  I doubt he would be sensible enough to seek out professional assistance, but let’s be honest: Martin would literally drop everything if Sims asked him to talk about what happened with Prentiss.  EVERYTHING.  Hell, even Elias and Tim would listen, and probably have some solid advice.  And honestly, Sims needs someone to talk to. He needs a confidant who’s there every day (I rule out Basira because she has her own shit going on, and her own job that keeps her very busy), who’s been through what he’s been through and can call him on it when he’s being ridiculous and paranoid.  I’m clearly biased, but I do vote for Martin on this one.  For all that he can be a pushover (he can), is still the world’s biggest mother hen.  If he thought Sims was caught in a destructive spiral (he is), Martin would be the first to do anything necessary to snap him out of it.  Of course, the tough love approach from Tim or Elias might be damned useful too.  Or, you know, Sims could actually talk to all of them like a sensible adult.  That would be novel.

I guess that, while I’m happy Sims didn’t get himself fired, and frankly shocked that he wasn’t at least put on some sort of probation, he still has some deep-seated issues that need working through before I’ll believe everything is settled.  Even if some of it’s influenced from the outside by the Archivist or something else (and I really do think that it must be, given the parallels between Sims and poor Rosa Meyer), talking through it and sharing it might go a long way toward diminishing the paranoia from functionally crippling to useful precaution.

Shit’s coming.  Huge, scary, nasty shit is coming.  And Sims as he is currently is not up to facing it. I’m not saying that the power of friendship is going to make him ready, but it could put him in the sort of headspace that sensibly calls for help when the badness comes, and on a footing with his colleagues that they would believe him.

Also, I want my archival team back.  And that means getting over himself, trusting Martin and Tim and Elias, and rescuing Sasha. And all of that is being held up by secretive paranoia.

[djatoon]

The war between technology & democracy

Superb article from Jamie Bartlett. 

Link to original article here: https://medium.com/@jamie.bartlett/the-war-between-technology-democracy-5ca57292956a

“My father was the first person any of us knew who owned a computer. A hulking IBM AS/400 B10, sturdy, expensive and imposing, sat in his home office in the late 1980s. My brother, sister and I mostly ignored it of course — it was dad’s ‘work’.

The problem was that the monster didn’t ignore us. My father, a creative disciplinarian, used his International Business Machine to design and print out the weekly chores in a 7-day grid: wash up, tidy bedroom, make beds, and so on. We called it The Schedule. Each day he would check off the tasks, and each failure would result in a 10 pence deduction from our weekly pocket money.

At the end of the week, the monster would churn out the numbers, and there was no arguing with its accuracy or fairness. All decisions final. Six months in, I was just about breaking even. My more laid-back brother owed dad a small fortune.

Maybe, even at this very young age, I vaguely sensed that machines aren’t just neutral tools that make your life easier. Much depends what existing power arrangements are in place. They can also be remarkably good tools of surveillance for those in charge and can make things possible that weren’t possible before.

Those childish thoughts are now a more serious preoccupation — both for me and society writ large. The last several years have been characterised by a succession of stories about how digital technology — especially the internet — is creating problems for our social, political and economic arrangements. You have doubtless read recently that our elections are being stolen, Russians are hacking our minds, fake news is duping us. If you’re feeling especially morbid, you’ll know robots are about to make us all obsolete.

Some of this hand-wringing is from liberals who are unable to understand how Trump won, and blaming the internet evidently makes them feel better about themselves. Some of the more outrageous news headlines — coming from both left and right — about Facebook and Google destroying everything are driven by the old barons losing ad revenue to these upstarts.

But nearly all of them miss the point. All the recent stories of bots, trolls, hacking, crypto, stolen data, are viewed in isolation, rather than symptoms of a much bigger problem we are facing. That bigger problem is the following: we have an analogue democracy and a new norm of digital technology. And the two don’t work very well together.

We rightly celebrate how the internet gives us a platform, allows new movements to form, and helps us access new information. These are good things, but don’t be blinded by to the other problems the same technology is creating. Our democracy relies on lots of boring stuff to make it actually work as a system of collective self-government that people believe in and support: a sovereign authority that functions effectively, a healthy political culture, a strong civil society, elections that people trust, active citizens who can make important moral judgements, a relatively strong middle class, and so on. We have built these institutions up over several decades — decades of analogue technology.

Now however we have a new set of technologies — digital technology — which is slowly eroding all of them. It’s not to blame one side or the other — simple to state there’s an incompatibility problem.

This structural problem is far more important than billionaires in Silicon Valley or troll farms in St Petersburg. And if we don’t find a new settlement between tech and democracy, more and more people will simply conclude that democracy no longer really works, and look for something else. This being a lecture series about dictatorship, you won’t be surprised to learn that some new form of dictatorship — a sort of gentle, benevolent data dictatorship — is the most likely candidate for replacing it. Something a little like my father’s efficient but depressing Schedule.

I’ll take three examples of how recently reported problems and explain how they are symptoms of this tech / democracy tension. Let’s start with Cambridge Analytica, one of the biggest stories of 2018, and also one of the most misunderstood.

You’ve probably heard something like this: Cambridge Analytica manipulated millions of minds with a magical technique called ‘psychographics’ — where people’s personality types were calculated, and then used to send messages which played to those personalities. Mind control and subliminal messaging! Alexander Nix, CEO of Cambridge Analytica called psychographics his secret sauce — while whistle-blower Christopher Wylie called it ‘Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare tool’.

I don’t think any of it worked. I’ve seen no evidence it was effective. My strong hunch is that most of it was salesperson’s bluster. The truth is at once simpler and more worrying. Cambridge Analytica, using perfectly legal means, bought or collected 5,000 data points of about 200 million Americans from the huge data brokerage industry which trades data about you: magazine subscriptions, gun ownership, car ownership, web-browsing habits, credit rating, and so on. They combined this data with Republican Party data (known as ‘Voter Vault’), and modelled each voter — what they cared about, and how likely they were to be persuaded to vote Trump. They grouped these voters into ‘universes’, such as American Mums who hadn’t voted before. They then designed specialised ads for each universe, and targeted them with personalised adverts, based on what they’d pieced together about them.

Everything was tested, re-tested, re-designed. They sent out thousands of versions of fundraising emails or Facebook ads, working out what performed best. They tried donate pages with red buttons, green buttons, yellow buttons. They even tested which unflattering picture of Hilary worked best.

A few weeks in, analysis suggested there were enough persuadable voters in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan to bring these states in play, even though most commentators thought they were unassailable Clinton territory. Driven by the data, they started to bombard people in those three states with Facebook and television ads. (They spent the tens of millions of dollars on targeted Facebook adverts, especially using the ‘custom audiences’ option, which allows you to target specific individuals). A later internal study by Facebook found that the Trump team were far better than Clinton at running Facebook ads.

This sort of thing never changes everyone’s mind — but it can, in tight elections, make a difference. Trump won Pennsylvania by 44 thousand votes out of 6 million cast, Wisconsin by 22 thousand, and Michigan by 11 thousand. If Clinton had won these three states, she would now be President.

The reason this is worrying is because everyone is doing it. Anyone working in online advertising will tell you it’s industry standard. Clinton was doing it. The Brexit campaign were doing it. The UK Labour Party is doing it.

Elections are becoming a data science, based on profile building and personalised adverts. Where does this take us? By 2020 there will be around 50 billion devices connected to the net — quadruple what there is now — each one hoovering up your data: cars, fridges, clothes, road signs, books. Within a decade your fridge will work out what time you eat, your car will know where you’ve been, and your home assistant device will work out your approximate anger levels by your voice tone. Obviously this will be gobbled up by hungry political analysts. By cross referencing fridge data against the number of emotional words in your Facebook posts, a strat-comm team of the future will correlate that you’re more angry when you’re hungry — and target you with an emotive, law and order candidate just as you’re feeling peckish. Just received a warm message plus donation page from the Greens? That’s because your smart bin shows you recycled that morning, and an analysis of your tweets suggests you’re in a good mood.

Politicians have always sought to understand and persuade citizens. The Republican Party boasted in the 1890s that it possessed a complete mailing list of voters, with names, addresses and ages. But elections run with industrial scale data science throws up new challenges which we’re not really set up to deal with.

What happens when, in a decade or so, each person receives a completely advert that’s entirely unique to them. Is it still really an election if one candidate sends 1 million different adverts to 1 million different people? Aren’t elections meant to be about the broad debates of the day, thrashed out in public? How do you hold candidates to account in such a system? And how do regulators check on what’s being served up in such a scenario? During the UK EU referendum, voters were show Facebook adverts claiming that the EU was trying to stop British people from drinking cups of tea! It is a miracle that the vote was so close.

It might even, in the long run, help certain types of politicians to thrive. If politics becomes a behavioural science of triggers and emotional nudges it’s reasonable to assume this would most benefit candidates with the least consistent principles, the ones who make the flexible campaign promises. Perhaps the politicians of the future will be those with the fewest ideas and greatest talent for emotionally charged vagueness, because that leaves maximum scope for algorithmic based targeted messaging.

I’ll let you decide whether this has already happened.

This is hard to stop with our current model because social media platforms are essentially ad firms. That’s where all the money comes from. Their incentive is to a) keep you on the platform for as long as possible, since that means serving you up more ads and b) build up a better profile of your hopes, fears, thoughts and feelings — because those ads can be better tailored to you. In addition to making us constantly distracted — the reason we check our phones so often is because the apps are designed to keep us hooked in — it also means the long-term plan is to know us better than we know ourselves. And that will open us up to knew forms of manipulation. In other words, Cambridge Analytica is just the start.

These are the things — the challenge of ten years from now on the current track — that we should be thinking about.

***

Journalists often miss the longer-term trends that underlie the tech stories, because they are under pressure to meet insane deadlines and produce insane headlines. Here’s another example.

There is at present an understandable concern that social media has been exploited by fascists and bigots, who use it to spread their message of hate. There are good grounds for such concerns of course. But I think the bigger trend is not that fascists are good at social media: it’s that social media is turning all of us into fascists. Not in our ideology, but in the style of politics we adopt.

The fascist style of politics is one which creates alternative realities, prioritises reaction without thought, whips are rage and encourages tribal loyalty to the Great Leader. If Mussolini were to design a communications system to encourage a fascist style of politics, I suspect it wouldn’t look too dissimilar to some of our popular social media platforms.

Let’s take fake news, an obsession de nos jours. It is widely assumed that people like Tommy Robinson — former leader of the English Defence League — surrounds himself with ‘fake news’ and conspiracy theories. It’s not quite that simple. I’ve spent a lot of time with Robinson (shadowing him for my second book, Radicals). He does read and share fake news of course, but it’s more accurate to say he surrounds himself with cherry picked true news, which corroborate his world view of Islam and the West being incompatible. For several years he has therefore constructed a plausible and coherent version of this world view, through careful one-sided selection of truth. This is not the same as ‘fake news’. This is a problem of selectively omitting certaintruths.

The ability to construct believable alternative realities is an important component of any fascist mode of politics, because where there is no commonly shared truth, there is nothing upon which you can anchor political discussion and debate. All that remains is two groups screaming at each other.

This is something we are all doing, albeit in a less extreme way. Selecting some truth and omitting others, in order to build our own plausible and coherent realities.

I’m not blaming Zuck or Dorsey or Brin or Page. It’s simply that certain technologies lend themselves to certain behaviours. Part of the problem stems from a major miscalculation repeatedly made (in good faith) since the 1990s in Silicon Valley. These techno-utopians believe that more information and connectivity will make us wiser, kinder, smarter. Our politics will be more informed if have more information. However, we have too much information. We’re drowning in blogs and facts and charts and more facts. It’s too much to deal with rationally. All we can do is relying on gut instincts and heuristics: my guy / not my guy, that feels true, that confirms what I already thought.Essentially, these are all emotional responses.

That overload, in part, drives us to select our truths. (And to make matter worse there is some evidence that social media platforms are incentivised to show more polarising, aggressive content: because that is more likely to attract our attention and keep us online. This is not even done consciously, it’s simply an algorithmic reflection of what we tend to click on.)

It also drives us to reaction without reflection. In a print-based society, for all its flaws, there is at least a cultural predisposition for an ordering and coherence of facts and ideas, something the linguist Walter Ong called “the analytic management of knowledge”. It lends itself to reflection. Social media platforms however are built to a very different logic: an endless, rapid flow of dissonant ideas and arguments, one after the other, without obvious order or sense of progression. It’s designed for you to blast out thoughts or ripostes over breakfast, on the move, at the bus-stop. It demands your immediate, ill-thought through response. What’s on your mind, Jamie? Facebook asks. What’s happening? Demands Twitter. I’ve noticed people rush to get their denouncements and public displays of outrage in quick, without bothering to work out what they actually think.

Fascists have always worshipped action for action’s sake, because to think is to emasculate oneself with doubt, critical analysis, and reasonableness. “Action being beautiful in itself,” explains Umberto Eco, in a famous essay about the fascism “it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection”. It would be difficult to write a better definition of a mad rampaging online mob than this. This tendency has been brilliantly exploited by Steve Bannon, who makes statements designed to provoke a frothing-mouth response from liberals. They always oblige, which forces people in the middle to take sides — and that’s the goal. I’m not talking about left or right here, by the way. Both are guilty, since both are reacting to the same basic incentives and new information structure.

All this — the speed, the info overload, the emotive mode — is driving a very obvious re-emergence of tribalism. This combines to create a new form of tribalism in politics. In our hyper-connected, information saturated world, we are encircled by enemies and protected by fellow travellers. Joining a tribe is the only way to survive. And online there is always a fact or a comment or a hot take to prove your side is right and the other side is utterly wrong. When was the last time you actually changed your mind after discussing something online? I’ll answer that for you: probably never, because who has time online for the long, careful, respectful discussion necessary to see the other side of it? In such a world, opponents can’t merely hold principled differences of opinion, they must have sinister motives. Our opponent are liars, cheats, Machiavellians. There’s no compromising with any of them.

These are of course prefect conditions for the tribal leader to arrive and channel the rage, fix the world’s chaos, and bring order to chaos. Hannah Arednt warned us of this decades ago.

Is it all that surprising therefore that social media is helping politicians that embrace this style? Populists are far more in keeping with the philosophy and feel of today’s tech. They promise easy and immediate solutions to complicated problems, without compromise or failure. This is Tinder politics. (They all, incidentally, are in favour of some form of direct democracy — because they claim to represent the ‘real people’).

Is it surprising that, despite this apparently being an age without deference, there is a newly found hero-worship and total leader loyalty in certain quarters? Whether Macron, Trump, Corbyn, Wilders, Trudeau — we await the anointed one to save us, and thus swear total loyalty and fealty to them.

Is it surprising that surveys find growing taste for authoritarian leaders? Is it all that surprising that, in these conditions, truth appears less important than loyalty to the side you’re on?

***

My final example is the artificial intelligence revolution that’s coming. As with my previous two stories, there are some ludicrous headlines about machines taking all our jobs. Or perhaps going sentient and turning on us. These stories are usually stupid and misleading. We’re very good at working out all the existing jobs we’ll lose, but very bad at imagining the ones not yet invented. And machine sentience is probably best left to the philosophers.

The actual problem is more subtle. Last year I travelled 150 kilometers on a driverless truck in Florida, built by a Silicon Valley start-up. Self-driving taxis in city centres are still a long time off — for both technical and regulatory reasons — but self-driving trucks are likely to disrupt the trucking industry fairly soon. Take this as illustrative from other aspects of the economy. Hundreds of thousands of people drive trucks for a living. For many people who left school without qualifications, it’s a decent, reliable job.

The actual as artificial intelligence and software play a far bigger role in our economy, who wins and loses? Will the losers — there are always losers in transitions — have opportunities to become winners? Whether the people who have the skills or the assets or the networks to take advantage of the inevitable AI-productivity boost to get wealthier relative to everyone else. Will the next wave of tech turbo-charge inequality?

In addition to favouring more skilled workers, digital technology tends increases the financial returns to capital owners over labour. Machines don’t demand a share of the profits, which means any machine-driven productivity gains accrue to whoever owns them, and that’s usually the wealthy. The percentage share of GDP going to labour relative to capital has been falling in recent years; for much of the twentieth century, the ratio of national wealth in the US between labour and capital was 66/33. It is now 58/42.

With this in mind, I always asked the self-driving technologists — who has created some good, well paid jobs of course — what the truckers should to do when the revolution arrives. I’d nearly always get the same answer:

They should retrain as machine learning specialists or robotics engineers.

I can’t decide if this is naive or devious. It’s certainly unrealistic. Some of them might: but not most. Far more likely, I suspect, is that they will smash these blasted machines up, as I used to imagine doing with the IBM. If you haven’t already done so, I recommend you read Ted Kascinski’s ‘Manifesto’, written in the mid-1990s.

“…machines will take care of more and more of the simpler tasks so that there will be an increasing surplus of human workers at the lower levels of ability…”

“Technology advances with great rapidity and threatens freedom at many different points at the same time (increasing dependence of individuals on large organizations, propaganda and other psychological techniques, invasion of privacy through surveillance devices and computers, etc.)”

At the time these read like the ravings of a mad-man, because no-one even owned a computer. And his actions were detestable of course: he murdered three people and injured many more. But you can now find very similar thoughts in editorials in our most prestigious newspapers.

If people come to see machines as a serious threat to their livelihoods, and without realistic means of replacement or routes to prosperity, they will try to sabotage them. Armed with white spray paint and leaked instruction manuals, displaced truckers will change the road markings in order to make them crash or malfunction.

***

Where does this all lead? I don’t believe democracy is on the verge of collapse. We’re not entering a world of crypto-anarchy, fully automated luxury communism or libertarian paradise.

The threat, I suspect, is more subtle. Over the next 20 years, on the current trajectory, growing numbers of people will conclude that democracy doesn’t work. Elections can’t be trusted. Jobs can’t be created. And everyone is getting furious and not listening to each other.

You have perhaps seen the various surveys that show confidence in democracy is on the wane, especially among younger people. A recent survey in the Journal of Democracy found that only thirty percent of US millennials agree that ‘it’s essential to live in a democracy’, compared to 75 per cent of those born in the 1930s, and results in most other democracies demonstrate a similar pattern. It is no coincidence that according to the most recent Economist index of democracies, over the last couple of years over half have become less democratic. (In the 2017 Democracy Index the average global score fell from 5.52 in 2016 to 5.48. 89 countries experienced a decline — only 27 saw an improvement).

These stats won’t get any better if it can’t solve things or deliver the things people ask of it. We need a new settlement. I’ve proposed some ways of doing that in my book The People vs Tech. Democracy needs an upgrade — and we need to start re-shaping our institutions and expectations too. But tech needs to be brought more under democratic control too. And of course all of us need to change our behaviour too: since it is, in the end, our swipes and clicks and shares that are constantly feeding the data machine.

The idea of democracy won’t disappear, especially in an age where everyone has a voice and a platform. It won’t be a return to the exact conditions of the 1930s — too much is different today. History rhymes but doesn’t repeat. I can’t predict exactly what might replace it, but one version is a techno-authoritarianism — populists armed with powerful tech, promising to use it to solve every problem. We could even still have plebiscites and MPs and the rest. But it would be little more than a shell system, where real power and authority was increasingly centralised and run by a small group of techno-wizards that no-one else understands. That could be in governments, which rely on increasingly technical solutions no-one can hold accountable, or the private sector owning all the data and the capital — with control over public attitudes and debate which is all but imperceptible.

This is hardly a catastrophic dystopia, but rather a damp and weary farewell to democracy. The worst part is that if a less democratic system delivered more wealth, prosperity and stability — many people would be perfectly happy with it. But at that point, it might be very difficult to get back what we’ll have lost.”

[d2kvirus]

Dickheads of the Month: June 2018

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of June 2018 to make sure that they are never forgotten.

It somehow didn’t occur to Isabel Oakeshott that, when she has seen evidence of collusion between Arron Banks of Leave.EU and the Kremlin, the correct course of action is to report this to the relevant bodies immediately - not withhold the information for a year thinking it would make her look really, really important when she reveals this information in her next book - a book which may well have been released after the after the Electoral Commission’s investigations into Banks’ activities - which also happens to obliterate her defence of not knowing how important the information was if she was holding it off for her next book, so her haranguing of Carole Cadwalladr when Cadwalladr suggested these links now looks a whole lot more unpleasant as Oakeshott knew Cadwalladr was correct but had to maintain her pro-Leave psychosis anyway

Satan’s personal cheerleader Ann Coulter outdid everyone on the right not named Alex Jones by claiming, on national television no less, that every single child see crying as they were torn away from their parents to be locked in cages were actors and their tears weren’t real - which not only comes across as sociopathic with her smears, but the fact she’s cribbing InfoWars’ usual gamibit means she’s not even being original

Architect of Britain’s economy tanking Boris Johnson responded to legitimate worries of British businesses that Britait will hit them hard with the comforting response of “fuck business” - which shows that Johnson is still doing a fine job of justifying how we send £141k a year to pay his salary when it could literally be spent on anything else, let alone taking responsibility for him being the person responsible for this complete mess

In a blatant attempt to pull the wool over the license fee payers’ eyes, the BBC reported how the proposed £20bn funding increase for the NHS would be paid for by a tax increase - pretending that they didn’t report just 48 hours previously that the cost would be comfortably paid by this mythical “Brexit dividend” that they were banging on about at the time in spite of the fact people with the most basic understanding of economics or mathematics (as well as MPs on both sides of the aisle) calling this a complete fabrication used to try and dupe the taxpayer

Unofficial spokesman for the FBPE mob Eddie Marsan decided the best response to somebody having the temerity to suggest that acting as if Britait is the only notable thing to happen in British politics since 2010 and that nothing else matters at the voting booth by calling the person with such foolish ideas a “stupid, over privileged, hipster socialist” - and that’s a direct quote

Lover of all the creatures on God’s green earth (except women, homosexuals, the poor, the elderly, and animals at the receiving end of bloodsports) Christopher Chote proved himself to be a master of the political world by blocking a debate into making upskirt photography illegal - which would have at least won him a few friends with The Sun, given their habit of publishing upskirt photos taken of random female celebrities without their knowledge or consent

Having dragged himself back into the limelight by paying the dessicated husk of UKIP’s £30, Milo Yiannopoulos rapidly reminded everyone what an irresponsible dickhead when telling a journalist “I can’t wait for the vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight” - and two days later, after somebody did just that in Maryland, the best he could come up with to defend what he said were how his words were something something twisted by the leftist agenda - rather than sounding remarkably like the threats that Brandon Griesemer sent to CNN back in January, the only difference being that Griesemer didn’t attempt a pathetic backtrack of “B-b-b-but I didn’t mean it, you leftist scum” when called out on it

So either Melania Trump is so brainless that it doesn’t occur to her that wearing a jacket bearing the slogan “I don’t really care” when going to visit one of her husband’s concentration camps for Mexican children could be seen as either grossly insensitive or outright antagonistic, or she knew exactly what she was doing which means that Ivanka isn’t the only one of the Trump women who the phrase “feckless cunt” applies to 

Tommy Robinson fanboy Jason Collins attempted to raise support for his boneheaded messiah by tweeting a photo purportedly showing the massive turnout for the Free Tommy protest in London - only for anyone capable of noticing landmarks to point out it was a photo from Liverpool taken in 2005 for their Champions League winners parade.  But apart from being the wrong city, the wrong decade and completely out of contest it proves...oh what’s the fucking point?

In response to the Argentine football team cancelling a friendly against Jerusalem in protest of Israel’s actions in Gaza, Israeli defence minister Avigdor Lieberman harrumphed about how "We will not yield before a pack of anti-Semitic terrorist supporters" - which is less a statement and more a high-scoring game of Zionist bingo

Britain’s answer to Ted Nugent Morrissey claimed that he was cancelling his entire tour because something something left-wing agenda, as opposed to the more commonly-accepted reason for him cancelling his tour (which is hardly unique, as he;s cancelled over 100 concerts since 2012) being related to lack of ticket sales due to tickets being priced at £75, which is double what several bands playing the same venues are charging

In response to Jimmy Durmaz conceding a last minute free kick that led to Germany winning the match in the last second, Sweden fans responded by racially abusing Durmaz on social media while sending death threats to him and his family

On a similar note, Columbia fans sent Carlos Sanchez’s death threats after his handball led to Columbia conceding a penalty and him being red carded - which, considering what happened to Andres Escobar after his own goal in the 1994 World Cup, is the sort of thing that shouldn’t be thrown around lightly

Completing the trifecta of football fans, fans from various African countries were quick to accuse the VAR system used in the World Cup of racism after Senegal failed to win a penalty after VAR rightly adjudged that the tackle from Columbia’s Davinson Sanchez (who also happens to be black, but that’s not important right now...) was fair.  Among the conspiratorial nonsense was a damning indictment of both these vocal idiots’ knowledge of geography or their memory spans

After literally years of horror stories predicting Russian fans committing acts of hooliganism and drowning matches under a tsunami of racist chants at their World Cup, it has to be pointed out that the most notable act of racism in the first two weeks of the tournament is Alan Sugar’s tweet about the Senegal team

Obnoxious host of Singled Out (no, not Jenny McCarthy, the other one) Chris Hardwick responded to accusations of being an abusive and controlling boyfriend by saying that Chloe Dykstra cheated on him, which not only failed to dismiss the accusations but also imply that Dykstra cheating on him meant it was perfectly okay for him to be an abusive and controlling boyfriend

Z-Pack spokesperson Chris Amann very kindly allowed his own incompetence to become a part of the legal record with his nuisance lawsuit against CM Punk & Colt Cabana which saw him attempt to claim loss of earnings and damage to his reputation in spite his remaining in the employ of WWE to this day, failing to even prove that Punk named him in the podcast in reference to what he was suing for, and hiring a lawyer who managed to submit the wrong evidence to trial on several occasions.  Suffice it to say Amann did not win - but he did draw attention to the fact he had an affair with a WWE employee...

Somehow it occurred to neither Chris Grayling nor the BBC that the chaos inflicted by Govia Thameslink on people using their Northern franchise was not unique, as those using their Southern franchise have suffered the exact same problems on a much larger scale but somehow this minor detail continued to be overlooked again and again and again

According to Priti Patel it is not acceptable to see rogue behaviour from government ministers.  Just a reminder: last year Priti Patel was sacked from the government for claiming to be on holiday when she was actually holding covert meetings with several Israeli officials, meetings she had not informed the government nor the Foreign Office about

It’s interesting that left-wing blogs such as Squawkbox, The Canary, Evolve Politics and Another Angry Voice all received micro donations of between 1p and 10p due to members of the FBPE mob and the usual Tory and UKIP trolls operating under the belief that donating so little money would cost the blogs money, when all they were actually doing was giving PayPal free money while giving those blogs plenty of free material - not just the story of people deludedly thinking they could bankrupt them with donations of a few pennies, but also how the supposedly left-wing FPBE mob are just as keen to silence opposing viewpoints as followers of Farage and Rees-Mogg 

In a remarkable lack of awareness, Butch Hartman stated that he loves anime but suggested that all animators should practise other art styles - which not only came across as remarkably condescending to a vast number of animators, but seemed oblivious to the fact that every single show he created uses the exact same art style 

For some reason Real Madrid thought the best way to prepare for Spain’s World Cup campaign would be to announce they had signed Spain coach Julen Lopetegui as their new manager just three days before Spain’s opening match.  The RFEF agreed that it was such a good idea that they promptly sacked Lopetegui the day after Real Madrid announced his signing - which of course drew the usual conspiratorial bollocks from Florentino Perez, who decided to play the victim rather than consider the concept that maybe not announcing Lopetegui as their coach on the eve of the World Cup might be a bloody stupid thing to do

So having torpedoed her comeback with a bunch of racist tweets, what has Roseanne Barr done since?  Attempt to blame it on being under the effects of Ambien and, when that failed to convince anyone who checked her post history, came up with some mealy-mouthed waffling saying that her tweet that compared  Valerie Jarrett to an ape was actually about anti-semitism, convincing precisely nobody

While promoting the forgettable fluff that is Ocean’s 8 Sandra Bullock stated that any and all criticism from male film critics could be ignored as the film is not for them.  Let me put this into perspective: when noted misogynist crackpot Sam Peckinpah never tried that line to dismiss any negative reviews from female reviewers such as Pauline Kael, yet Sandra Bullock attempts such obvious gatekeeping, this is the sort of things that people who believe that GamerGate was their Woodstock will pounce on

Special mention to both Nike and Adidas for their kit designs for the World Cup, where the two companies appear to be in a competition to take what should be a series of straightforward kits to design and instead decide to be “creative” and create something ugly

And finally, because of course it is, there’s the the only person who ever took advice about prison reform from Kim Kardashian Donald Trump - although he amazingly didn’t flip-flop on that decision like a petulant child, as opposed to a child he ripped away from their parents and locked inside a cage