The chief information security officer and the head of integrity and safety both quit this week too. This clownshow is circling the drain even faster than I expected.

Pretty soon, Twitter will be worth nearly as much as Truth Social.

Stop giving this guy air.

NBC needs to put right what once went wrong: get Bakula back, give Sam Beckett a proper farewell, and make up for on of the most dismaying, gut punch finales in TV history. Even if it’s just something like a two-part guest spot or whatever, the best reason to make this show is to bring Sam home.

Uvalde is a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, closer to Mexico than any Texas town of size. I doubt anyone who works for the city in any capacity is used to oversight or scrutiny from outsiders. The fact that they continue to behave like this while the world is watching is revealing.

Washington Post is reporting that journalists are being harassed by police AND “bikers claiming to have police sanction.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/06/28/we-were-seen-enemies-journalists-uvalde-threatened-by-police/

Washington Post is reporting that journalists on the scene are being harassed by police (and biker gangs that seem to have been emboldened or even sent by police) too: https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/06/28/we-were-seen-enemies-journalists-uvalde-threatened-by-police/

Similar? Indistinguishable.

This is remarkably similar to intimidation and extortion, as done by organized crime.

No. It’s not they couldn’t. They didn’t want to. They knew they had to go in, but they chose not to because they could defray responsibility without looking like cowards (which they were).

At some point, the fact that police are literally just a state-sponsored street gang is going to finally filter into popular consciousness, right? Like, sooner or later the general public will figure out that the cops are not and have never been “good guys”? Right?

wow what a surprise the thin yellow line are such snowflakes, they harass someone who did what they couldn’t.

“’Contrary to many of the allegations, the Board and its external advisors have determined that there is no evidence to suggest that Activision Blizzard senior executives ever intentionally ignored or attempted to downplay the instances of gender harassment that occurred and were reported,’ the Workplace…

Of course.  They will avoid paying any income tax and maybe just have to deal with the much lower capital gains tax instead.  There is probably a way for them to dodge the other payroll related taxes as well.

The whole “executive team is forgoing salaries” is a bit of a smoke screen. The CEO makes $400,000 year in salary but over $2,000,000 in stock.

I wondered how long it would take for consumers to sour on their business model of buying used cars and charging thousands of dollars more than brick and mortar dealerships. Carvana is the Ticketmaster of used cars.

Light From Uncommon Stars, Ryka Aoki

I feel like I saw several articles too around when the kickstarter began. Stuff that suggested anyone could just cut out the middle man etc etc. But now there are a ton of articles talking about how that is in fact NOT the case.

You can really tell the difference between the folks who are really interested in telling stories, and self-publishing is their chosen method of distribution, and the folks for whom self-publishing is in-and-of-itself the purpose. For the latter, their whole rhetoric is basically it doesn’t matter what you write, as…

So I’m pretty sure this is a prevalent thing, but I’m only aware of it from a very specific niche of SF&F authors. Basically there are several cliques of primarily self-published authors - some of them do short stories or work for hire for large publishing houses, but mostly their output is in Amazon / self-publishing…