2026-04-20
Worthy
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I helped build a fake grassroots organization once. Senior Account Supervisor, Edelman Public Affairs, 2006. The campaign was called Working Families for Walmart. It was not working families. It was Edelman’s Washington DC office, a steering committee of clergy and academics, a blog written by a staffer’s sister traveling in a corporate-funded RV, and a press kit. The “we” came first. The constituency was assembled afterward, to fill it. When critics called it a sock puppet for Edelman, they weren’t wrong. It became a textbook case in PR ethics courses. I was in the room. I’m not confessing because I’m ashamed, exactly. I’m confessing because it’s useful. Because what Edelman did professionally for Walmart, with a budget and a deliverable, is what political activists, vanguard intellectuals, and identity politicians do every day for free, out of sincere conviction. The difference is the invoice. The machinery is identical. Somebody decides they speak for a group. They name the group. They describe the group’s interests. They begin speaking in the group’s name. The group, to whatever extent it exists as a coherent body at all, was never consulted.
The professional term for it is vanguard politics, and Lenin formalized it more clearly than anyone before or since. The working class, left to its own devices, would only ever develop what he called “trade union consciousness”—immediate, local, self-interested demands. What they needed was a revolutionary vanguard: a small group of enlightened professionals who understood the workers’ true interests better than the workers did, and who would lead them there whether the workers wanted to go or not. This is the cleanest articulation of the unauthorized “we” ever committed to paper. The vanguard speaks for the class. The class did not elect the vanguard. The vanguard’s authority derives entirely from its own certainty that it is correct. That’s not representation. That’s substitution. And substitution, pursued with sufficient conviction, ends in coercion—because when the people you claim to represent don’t act the way their true interests require, you have to conclude they’re wrong, and wrong people need to be corrected. The purity test is the enforcement mechanism. Once identity-equals-belief is established as doctrine, any deviation becomes existential. You’re not a Latino who disagrees—you’re not a real Latino. You’re not a working-class woman with complicated views—you’re suffering from internalized whatever. The purity test isn’t cruelty for its own sake. It’s load-bearing. It keeps the false homogeneity from collapsing under the weight of actual human variation.
Horseshit
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The Seaside Town Trying to Reclaim Its Title as 'Submarine Capital of the World'
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Chernobyl's last wedding: The couple who married as a nuclear disaster unfolded
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Master of chaos wins $3M math prize for 'blowing up' equations
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Cory Doctorow on the High Cost of Living with the Ultra-Rich
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They Went Abroad to Save Money. Moving Back Seems Unaffordable
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'Meow, meow': Pilots scolded after animal noises heard on air traffic radio
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Fear and Loathing Among the Haves and Have Mores in San Francisco
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
Electric / Self Driving cars
Robot uprising / Humanioid Helpers
Religion / Tribal / Culture War and Re-Segregation
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
TechSuck / Geek Bait
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Ruby Central in 'real financial jeopardy' following RubyGems maintainer ruckus
Ruby Central, a nonprofit that supports the Ruby programming language ecosystem, in is "real financial jeopardy," according to a missive from its board members. Board members Jey Flores and Ran Craycraft said that, after joining Ruby Central Board at the start of 2026, they had seen the organization's finances "become overly dependent on the optimistic timing of when funds may be received against fixed timelines for when our expenses are due." The statement, released last night, follows a spat between different groups, with Ruby Central (which is the non-profit organization that manages the rubygems.org infrastructure) removing long-standing maintainers who then went on to launch a rival Gem Cooperative and create a gem server called gem.coop. The former maintainers claimed they were removed without notice from several flagship Ruby open source projects, including the RubyGems and Bundler ecosystems, without their consent.
Space / Boomy Zoomers / UFO
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Artemis 2’s heat shield seems to have aced its trial by fire.
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NASA selects Falcon Heavy to launch ESA Mars rover mission despite budget threat
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In a first, Blue Origin uses a recycled rocket to send a satellite into space
After today’s successful booster touchdown, the focus shifted to the mission’s primary objective: deploying BlueBird 7 from the rocket’s second stage. That was due to take place an hour and 15 minutes after liftoff, but it took an hour longer for Blue Origin to issue its update — which stopped short of saying whether the satellite can be saved. Rocket reusability is another technological realm where SpaceX has long been a leader but is now facing heightened competition. The ability to recover and reuse rocket boosters plays a huge part in SpaceX’s strategy to drive down launch costs. Despite the unwelcome news about the satellite’s status, today’s launch demonstrated that Blue Origin is able to leverage rocket reusability as well.
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
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First trailer released for western starring AI version of Val Kilmer
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Uber's AI Push Hits a Wall–CTO Says Budget Struggles Despite $3.4B Spend
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Cursor in talks to raise $2B round at valuation of over $50B
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You're About to See a Lot of Critical Software Updates. Don't Ignore Them
- surely these "AI security foxes" would not be introducing the architecture by which the future AI overlords bootstrap themselves into control of the digital infrastructure they feel is vital to their continued existence. We can trust the AI companies.
Neo Gambling / Crypto con games
Economicon / Business / Finance
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
Trump
Left Angst
Law Breaking / Police / Internal Security
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
World
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EU age verification app: "Worry-free package" with security vulnerabilities
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Air Canada suspends 6 routes 'no longer economically feasible'
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Bluetooth tracker hidden in postcard and mailed to warship exposed its location
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Airline worker arrested after sharing photos of bomb damage in WhatsApp group
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PM Carney declares U.S. ties now a 'weakness' in address to Canadians
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Welsh council workers 'encouraged' to only speak Welsh at work