The Daily Parker

Just now on Facebook the first 15 things on my feed were:

• 4 posts from friends;
• 3 posts from groups I follow; and
• 8 posts from advertisers and accounts I don't follow.

That, my friends, is enshittification.

I remember when, not long ago, 8 posts would be from friends for every 2 that weren't. It's beginning to make Facebook unusable for me. Other things on the Internet have also enshittified to near uselessness, as these three stories attest.

First, Vandenberg Coalition executive director Carrie Filipetti argues that TikTok really is the threat Congress determined it was last year, so maybe let's enforce the ban?

Imagine the following scenario. China decides to attack Taiwan, and, fearing the United States will come to Taiwan’s aid, launches preemptive strikes against American targets overseas. In the United States, Chinese operators launch drone attacks from secret bases located on more than 380,000 acres of farmland China has purchased. As the government considers its options, the 170 million American TikTok users open their feeds to thousands of bots disguised as people, rattling off anti-American propaganda; encouraging young students desperate for meaning to fight their own government; and spreading disinformation at such a rapid rate that it is impossible to discern fact from fiction.

This scenario seemed plausible enough to Congress when it weighed TikTok’s future. Lawmakers were alarmed when Osama bin Laden’s terrorist screed “Letter to America” spread on the app following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack against Israel. TikTok denies it actively pushes political content, but the company only worsened Congress’s concerns about influence operations when its app successfully urged thousands of young Americans to lobby against counter-TikTok legislation. Lawmakers reported children and teenagers flooding their phone lines, often without knowing whom they were calling or why.

Times writer Nation Taylor Pemberton digs into the infantile nihilism in the corner of the Internet that seems to have informed Charlie Kirk's alleged assassin:

The only thing that can be said conclusively about Mr. Robinson, at this moment, is that he was a chronically online, white American male.

The internet’s political communities and the open-source sleuths currently scrambling to place Mr. Robinson into a coherent ideological camp certainly won’t be content with any of this. Nor will they be satisfied with the other likelihood awaiting us: that Mr. Robinson, the son of a seemingly content Mormon family, probably possesses a mishmash of ideological stances. Some held dearly. Others not so much. They also will not be satisfied that this horrific, society-changing act of violence was most likely committed both as an ironic gesture and as a pure political statement.

If your head is spinning from the internet’s attempts to read into Mr. Robinson’s alleged choices and political identity, that’s understandable. We’ve fully stepped into a different historical moment: the age of brain-poisoning meme politics.

And finally, NNGroup's Kate Moran explains why she (and I, for that matter) continues to collect physical video discs instead of relying on ever-worsening streaming services:

What used to make analog media inconvenient now feels charming. Choosing from among a limited set of curated, favorite movies feels like a relief compared to endlessly browsing through tens of thousands of options.

With physical media, I also feel a sense of security knowing that most of my favorites are available to watch at any time. I don’t have to go hunting through multiple streaming apps to figure out which one happens to have the rights to that film this month.

But the blame for subpar streaming experiences doesn’t lie solely with streaming apps. We have to talk about “smart” TVs.

This is an example of a deceptive pattern: I purchased a display, but the manufacturer treats it as a data-collection platform without reliably delivering on its basic functionality. It’s one thing to trade my privacy for a good experience. But I should be in charge of that decision. LG has not earned its privacy invasion in this case.

So now, I have a Roku attached to my smart TV. The TV has become a dumb display like in the old days, except worse.

I'll give you a concrete example of why physical discs make more sense in many cases. A streaming service recommended that I watch Le Bureau des Légends, a taut French series about agents in the DGSE (the French equivalent of the CIA). I loved the first season, which was on the streamer that recommended it. The second season, however, was on a different streamer, and they wanted $3.99 per episode to watch it. So instead of spending $40 on each of the 4 remaining seasons, I bought a 5-disc BluRay edition for $44.99. And I can watch them any time I want.

Don't even get me started on older stuff, like the ABC series Life Goes On that has a special connection to my family and which simply doesn't exist online anywhere. Or a Joss Whedon limited series that ran 6 of its 12 episodes on HBO before vanishing entirely. HBO produced all 12, and they exist somewhere, but I may never get to see them.

I wonder, has enshittification happened before, with other technologies?

Former Illinois governor Jim Edgar (R, 1991-1999) has died of pancreatic cancer:

Mr. Edgar was a moderate Republican whose ranks have all but disappeared in Illinois politics as the Trump-era MAGA movement took hold in the state. He was pro-choice on abortion and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, in her 2024 presidential bid against Donald Trump.

As the state’s 38th governor, he served two terms from 1991 to 1999. He also served in the Illinois House of Representatives from 1976 to 1979 and as Illinois secretary of state from 1981 to 1991.

In 2012, the former governor started the Edgar Fellows Program at the University of Illinois System’s Institute of Government and Public Affairs, which aims to foster bipartisanship and cooperation between parties by developing young leaders in Illinois. Participants include former and current Illinois state legislative staff, elected officials and other leaders across the state.

Gov. JB Pritzker on Sunday called Mr. Edgar a friend and mentor. Pritzker said flags across Illinois would fly at half-staff to honor Mr. Edgar’s legacy.

Edgar was the last sane, un-indicted Republican governor of Illinois. Today he likely would have run as a centrist Democrat, as evidenced by his votes for Joe Biden in 2020 and Kamala Harris in 2024.

I voted against him in both 1990 and 1994, though even I have to admit he was a better governor than Neil Hartigan would have been. And, of course, back then we didn't think it was the end of the world when someone in the other party got elected.

He will be remembered as a good public servant.

In the day since a yet-unknown sniper assassinated far-right activist Charlie Kirk, people across the political spectrum have reacted with anger and horror. Most--at least, from the center-right to the center-left--decried the violence itself, even when they found Kirk's politics reprehensible:

• Former presidents Biden, Obama, Bush, and Clinton soundly condemned the killing, with Obama posting, "We don't yet know what motivated the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk, but this kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy."
• Former US Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL): "Elected officials and public figures should set the tone by rejecting inflammatory language, by calming rather than exciting our worst instincts. Media outlets and online platforms must take seriously their power to either inflame or cool tensions. And each of us, in our conversations at home and online, has the chance to model a politics that is fierce but never violent. Democracy is not passive. It asks every citizen to participate, to stay engaged, to keep faith that peaceful change is still possible even when it feels slow or frustrating."
• David Graham in The Atlantic: "[E]employing force is actually an admission of defeat. A person who resorts to violence has concluded that he cannot change the terms of debate with words or arguments. Might may not make right, but it can end the conversation."
• Comedy writer Jeff Maurer doesn't think it was funny: "People who don’t appreciate the awfulness of this event aren’t just lacking empathy — they’re naive. They apparently don’t realize that political violence pushes us backwards on the civil society evolutionary timeline. People on the right who seem to be steeling themselves for a second civil war are making the same mistake, except that the far right hears “go backwards” and thinks “great idea”. But anyone who values the hard-earned progress that humanity has made separating political power from physical power should view this as a tragedy on a human and a societal level. This is the type of shit that we just don’t do anymore, and let’s hope that we’re not about to enter an era in which that statement is less true."
• Stephen Colbert had a similar response: "I’m old enough to personally remember the political violence of the 1960s, and I hope it is obvious to everyone in America that political violence does not solve any of our political differences. Political violence only leads to more political violence, and I pray with all my heart that this is the abhorrent action of a mad man and not a sign of things to come."

Unfortunately, the difference between centrists and the extremes has followed a predictable and depressing pattern, starting with the psychologically-damaged and demented man heading our government.

• The OAFPOTUS went with projection and vitriol: "For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now."
• Josh Marshall points out that the OAFPOTUS may have the attribution backwards: "Right-wing violence, both of an organized paramilitary sort and by radicalized loners, has become such a scourge in recent years that on the extremes you hear voices for things like armed versions of Antifa and the like as some sort of counter. ... Fascists do civil violence better than civic democrats. It’s a foundational element of their political philosophy. It’s the verdict of logic and history."
• Jen Rubin takes right-wingers to task for only expressing outrage when someone from their side of the aisle is targeted: "Sadly, [the OAFPOTUS] and the MAGA troops reserve outrage only when Republicans are targeted (compare the near-silence when Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro was targeted, the mockery when Paul Pelosi was nearly killed, and the snide remarks when two Minnesota Democrats were assassinated). As we saw yesterday, Democrats condemn political violence whoever is targeted, as such acts have no place in a democracy. Nor does selective outrage or scapegoating broad swaths of the country for violent attacks."
• Jonathan Chait also calls out the OAFPOTUS for failing, once again, to be the President of the United States: "Every political movement in history, including the most bloodthirsty, has condemned political violence by its opponents. The only real test is whether you also oppose political violence by your allies. This is a test Trump has repeatedly failed."
• Other far-right voices called for more violence and retribution: "We are up against demonic forces from the pit of Hell,” wrote commentator and podcaster Matt Walsh on X. “This is existential. A fight for our own existence and the existence of our country."

Kirk's assassination was reprehensible. As much as I wanted to see him discredited, ridiculed, exiled, and bankrupted, he didn't deserve to die.

Neither did the school kids shot in Colorado yesterday while all this was going on. I hope their stories don't get lost in the noise.

I just got back from a 30-minute walk with Cassie in 22°C early-autumn sun. We suffered. And now I'm back in my home office and she's back on the couch. She will spend the next several hours napping in a cool, breezy spot downstairs, and I will...work.

I will also read a bit, which is a skill that I'm glad Cassie does not have after encountering the day's news:

• It's official! The June jobs report showed a decline in US employment for the first time since December 2020, making President Biden the only president in history to have 48 consecutive months of job growth during his term.
• Dan Rather adds his voice to the chorus advising Senate Democrats to actually bring a knife to the knife fight they're about to have over a looming government shutdown on October 1st.
• Meanwhile, the OAFPOTUS continues driving the United States into a Perónist-style economic collapse for no reason other than his own incompetence. Paul Krugman worries that the OAFPOTUS's cratering popularity might not be enough to stop this.
• Matt Ford castigates Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts (R) for doing exactly what he tells other judges not to do: defying Court precedents. Jen Rubin rounds up reports of lower-court Federal judges saying similar things: "This intra-judicial fight is just the latest installment in the MAGA justices’ record of misbehavior and overreach."
• Pro Publica spent 15 hours with Leland Dudek, who oversaw the looting of the Social Security Administration after being illegally installed as part of the DOGE team by the Clown Prince of X.
• Jeff Maurer wishes people had known that RFK Jr is completely mental: "if only there had been signs that he’s an unqualified loon with out-of-the-mainstream views."
• Bruce Schneier questions the benefits of "AI in government," at least in the US.
• Because of Earth's axial procession, the Zodiac has shifted almost a full sign to the right in the last 2,000 years, making me a Leo and not a Virgo! (It's almost as if star signs are nonsense.)

Finally, the Chicago Dept of Transportation has published plans to designate Wellington Avenue a bike greenway from Leavitt Ave in North Center to the lakefront path. The project will include protected counterflow bike lanes on one-way segments of Wellington, traffic calming, signage, and a number of other features to protect bicyclists. The greenway will allow bikes to avoid Belmont and Diversey, two busy streets that aren't fun to ride on. CDOT expects to finish the project this fall.

Oh, and today is the 50th anniversary of Welcome Back, Kotter premiering on ABC. Let me tell you I'm Gen X without actually saying the words, right?

A total lunar eclipse has just started and will reach totality at 12:30 Chicago time, which is unfortunately about 10 hours too early for us to enjoy it here. It's a good way to end the first day of meteorological autumn, though, as is the 8 km walk Cassie and I have planned around 2 this afternoon. With a forecast high of 19°C, it should be lovely.

In other eclipses this past week:

• The OAFPOTUS has so badly damaged US foreign policy and our standing in the world that China has eclipsed us as the de facto soft power in the world.
• The OAFPOTUS's bad poll numbers released this morning have eclipsed his bad poll numbers from the previous...ever—and this is even before pollsters factored in HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy, Jr's excruciatingly horrific performance in front of the Senate on Friday.
• Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik's old company, the private equity firm Cantor Fitzgerald, has offered up to $1 billion to buy tariff refund rights at 20-30c on the dollar, a level of corruption only barely eclipsed by the OAFPOTUS's cryptocurrency scams.
• The crime data from hundreds of other cities around the world totally eclipse Chicago's, despite the OAFPOTUS's bullshit.
• Jeff Maurer warns, in his own special way, that lies about the Gaza war mostly eclipse any actual journalism that could otherwise be happening about it.
• James Fallows frets that the coverage of Harvard University's defiance of the OAFPOTUS may eclipse Harvard's actions themselves.

For what it's worth, the next total lunar eclipse visible from Chicago will be on 26 June 2029, starting at sunset and reaching totality at 21:31 CDT.

The Christianists in Florida, clearly getting bribes from Big Microbe, have ended the requirement that students get vaccinated in order to attend public schools:

Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, the Florida surgeon general, made the announcement on Wednesday alongside Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican. Mr. DeSantis rose to national prominence during the coronavirus pandemic, and over time he has espoused increasingly anti-vaccine views.

“Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body?” Dr. Ladapo, a vocal denigrator of vaccines, said to applause during an event on Wednesday in Valrico, Fla., near Tampa. “Your body is a gift from God.”

I mean, if it quacks like a duck...

Honestly, I have no idea why Republicans who should know better still play at being so hostile to science and reason. Ron DeSantis is a gigantic asshole, but he's not stupid. So why this religious nuttery?

While on a Brews & Choos mini-adventure yesterday, I learned that US Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) has leaked that she won't seek re-election. This comes just a day after Democrat Catelin Drey flipped Iowa Senate district 1 from +20 OAFPOTUS to +5 Democratic. (Drey's win also breaks the Republican Party's supermajority in the Iowa Senate.)

You may also remember Senator Ernst responding to her constituents alarm at HR 1* and its effects on their ability to remain breathing by saying "we're all going to die" and doubling down with a tin-eared video from a cemetery the next day.

Then, just a few minutes ago, I heard Scott Simon on NPR interviewing California Assemblyman James Gallagher (R-Yuba City) who proposed splitting California into two states along the coast because poor Republican politicians can't get any of their programs through, given they make up only 39% of the state's electorate. "It's not fair!" he whined. "The Democrats don't care about the smallfolk!" He then went on to list three different ways the OAFPOTUS has screwed his district, suggesting the Democrats did it.

Gallagher's proposal would create a Democratic-majority state and a Republican-likely state, with the coastal part having 30 million of the state's 40 million residents and 80% of its GDP. He neglects to mention that this would increase Republican representation in the US Senate by net +2, further diluting national Democratic power. Plus, the putative interior state would become a brand new taker state, as the coastal part would increase its relative payment imbalance to the Federal Government while the new interior part would need even more outside money to stay afloat. He also ignored the many other semi-serious proposals to divide California into three states, which would increase Democratic representation in the Senate by net +2 while increasing the population-to-Senator ratio of everyone in the State. Does Gallagher support that plan? No? Why not?

Also yesterday, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington threw out the majority of the OAFPOTUS's tariffs, but stayed the ruling until October 14th. (For a complete list of the administration's losses for the week, I give you Amanda Nelson.)

Welcome to the "find out" phase.

* I'm just not going to call the thing by the juvenile and stupid name Republicans gave it.

This weekend, I expect to finish a major personal (non-technical) project I started on June 15th, walk 20 km (without Cassie), and thanks to the desperation of the minor-league team on the South Side of Chicago, attend a Yankees game. It helps that the forecast looks exactly like one would want for the last weekend of summer: highs in the mid-20s and partly cloudy skies.

I might have time to read all of these things as well:

• Jeff Maurer, who watched (some of) this week's televised cabinet meeting so we didn't have to, really hates this season of The Apprentice.
• Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich (D) thinks the OAFPOTUS's "fascist capitalism" will ultimately bring down his regime.
• Jennifer Rubin asks, why is the OAFPOTUS administration trying to kill everyone?
• Paul Krugman likens our current economic situation to Wile E. Coyote not noticing he's run off the cliff.
• The Chicago Sun-Times has a map of all the lead pipes in the city. (I'm happy to learn that all of the water lines leading to my house are lead-free.)
• Rachel Janfaza wants to change the conversation around how the kids today use AI. Kyla Scanlon also dug into attitudes towards AI in the workplace.

Meanwhile, my birthday ribs order got delayed. One of the assistant butchers backed into a meat grinder, so they got behind in their work. He was the biggest ass in the shop until he recently got unseated, so I don't feel too bad for making him the butt of my jokes.

G'nite.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) social media team have decided that white Christianist nationalism is the way to go:

If you mashed together a Vietnam War epic with a Christian end-times movie, what might emerge is one of the recent social media videos produced by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. In early July, the department posted a minute-long short showing agents in tactical gear bathed in eerie red light — among them, Homeland Secretary Kristi L. Noem — piling into a helicopter, from which they survey a landscape as if preparing for an aerial attack. The soundtrack is a cover of the 1940s folk tune “God’s Gonna Cut You Down,” by the San Francisco rock band Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. As the action unfolds, a man is heard quoting from the Book of Isaiah: “I heard the voice of the Lord say, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go forth for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me.’”

The theme was echoed three weeks later by another DHS video showing murky images of heavily armed agents conducting a nighttime raid on a building.

The videos conjure a veritable holy war, in which God’s soldiers prepare to battle evil, a.k.a. undocumented immigrants. These adversaries are largely implied, rendered as shadows visible only through night vision goggles — a stunning bit of dehumanization. As in a lot of propaganda, facts get twisted to fit the message. The quote from Isaiah is wildly out of context. Read the chapters from which it is drawn, and you’ll learn that God was asking Isaiah not to spearhead a masked army, but to warn against profligacy and corruption. “Learn to do good; seek justice, rebuke the oppressor,” reads a verse in Chapter 1, “defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.” In other words, nothing to do with a helicopter full of people armed to the teeth.

These Christian-themed videos are part of a larger barrage of propaganda that clogs the social media feeds of DHS and those of its subdivision Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Log on to their Instagram, X and Facebook feeds, and it is as if someone took humdrum government recruitment ads, marinated them with unhinged 21st-century meme culture, then seasoned them with a bit of Bible and Batman.

Stylistically, the posts are all over the map, but they share a tone of petty meanness straight out of 4chan. You might find an AI-generated illustration of alligators wearing ICE baseball caps, used to promote a detention center in the Florida Everglades. Or you might stumble onto an image macro touting self-deportation that features a still from the 1982 film “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.” “Even E.T. knew when it was time to GO HOME,” reads the text. As journalist Tess Owen wrote in Wired, the maliciousness appeals to “the casual cruelty of the highly online far-right,” using “humor to make ICE seem like some sort of fun fraternity.”

I am so sick of these people. Most Americans are. But with the Republicans in Congress recently authorizing an eye-watering budget for the agency, the ethos these posts exhibit becomes downright scary. Read the history of the Schutzstaffel if I'm not being clear enough.

We've always had right-wing nationalism in this country; there's a good argument that the Founders were, to some extent, right-wing nationalists. (Less right-wing by the standards of their time than their ideas are today, of course.) These guys, though, are more nihilist than coherent in their ideology, which makes them far worse. We have 14 months to get Congress back. I hope that's enough time.

The OAFPOTUS's Roy Cohn-inspired habit of suing everyone who tells him to STFU came to its logical conclusion yesterday as US District Judge Thomas T Cullen (Va., Western) told him to STFU after his most egregious lawsuit yet:

A federal judge has forcefully rejected a highly unusual lawsuit the Trump administration filed against 15 other judges whom the Justice Department accused of hindering the president’s mass deportation agenda.

In tossing out the lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Thomas Cullen — a Trump appointee — lamented what he described as the White House’s months-long “smear” of the federal judiciary.

For months, Cullen wrote, top executive branch officials have attacked judges who rule against the administration as “‘left-wing,’ ‘liberal,’ ‘activists,’ ‘radical,’ ‘politically minded,’ ‘rogue,’ ‘unhinged,’ ‘outrageous, overzealous, [and] unconstitutional,’ ‘[c]rooked,’ and worse.”

“Although some tension between the coordinate branches of government is a hallmark of our constitutional system,” Cullen continued, “this concerted effort by the Executive to smear and impugn individual judges who rule against it is both unprecedented and unfortunate.”

“Whatever the merits of its grievance with the judges of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, the Executive must find a proper way to raise those concerns,” Cullen wrote. “All of this isn’t to say that the Executive is without any recourse; far from it. If the Executive truly believes that Defendants’ standing orders violate the law, it should avail itself of the tried-and-true recourse available to all federal litigants: It should appeal.”

Seriously, I guffawed when I heard about the case last week. But this is what happens when stupid people with big and fragile egos get told they're being stupid: they double down on the stupidity. And this is why we can't have nice things right now.

Update: I also guffawed several times reading the Court's opinion. My god, the administration's lawyers are idiots. I am a better lawyer than some of them and I never even sat for the Bar.