The Weekly Whatever: rapid unscheduled disassembly
Tucker is gone but the problem continues
- If you subscribe to cable or satellite TV, you’re subsidizing Fox News. But the contracts between Fox and the cable and satellite operators are up for renegotiation this year, so now is the perfect time to contact your provider and demand that they stop making you pay for Fox News.
Very fine people
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Someone broke the first rule of Texas middle school fight club.
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Ali Alexander of “Stop the Steal” fame turns out to have been asking teenage boys for sexually explicit photos.
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Mike “MyPillow” Lindell also claimed the 2020 election was “stolen”, and challenged people to prove that the data he had was nothing to do with the election, offering $5m if anyone could. Someone did, but Mike refused to pay up. Now an arbitration tribunal has ordered him to pay up within 30 days.
Technology
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The Forbes “30 Under 30” have collectively raised $5.3B in funding, and been arrested for frauds and scams worth over $18.5B.
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Google and Facebook trained their neural net chatbots on 4chan, Kiwifarms, Stormfront, and vdare.com, as well as a web site full of pirated ebooks.
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Inmarsat I-4F1 goes offline; GPS-controlled tractors across Australia stop working.
$8chan
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Twitter removes the “state-affiliated” and “government-funded” labels from NPR and PBS… and also RT, Sputnik and Xinhua. Pro-genocide Tweets from Russian government accounts are now OK, and the Tweets are eligible for promotion into your feed.
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The purge arrives, and holders of legacy verified Twitter accounts are required to pay up. Around 28 rush to do so. Elon orders that celebs be given blue checkmarks for free whether they like it or not.
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Elon’s dad confirms the emerald mine story.
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Microsoft removes Twitter support from its online advertising platform.
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Sweden’s public radio exits Twitter, saying their audience have already left.
Law and order
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The official autopsy reveals that Cop City protester Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán was unarmed when police shot him 57 times. A previous autopsy had revealed that he had his hands raised at the time.
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A Denver protester gets a $350,000 settlement after a police beating left him needing surgery. Allegedly an officer tried to sodomize him with a baton. “The Denver Police Department Internal Affairs Bureau investigated this incident and the officer who used his baton was not found to have violated the Department’s Use of Force policy”.
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Oklahoma sheriff Sheriff Kevin Clardy is recorded talking with Republican county commissioner Mark Jennings about how to get journalists killed. Jennings laments that they can’t lynch black people any more. (transcripts). After a newspaper reports on the recordings, the commissioner resigns, but the sheriff responds that recording them was illegal and that felony charges will be filed.
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A Walgreens employee believes a pregnant woman is shoplifting; he follows her into the car park and shoots her, then claims he “was in fear”.
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A study finds that during the 2020 protests, Portland police blanketed the streets with more than 50x the amount of tear gas that regulators consider “immediately dangerous to life or health”.
Brexit dividends
This is fine
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New COVID variant dropped. Also, New York rats carry COVID.