[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]
There’s a lot of stupid going on right now. Here’s an open thread to talk about it. Let me start off with three examples.
~ 3 ~
Ding dong, the witch is dead — Ronna McDaniel has been terminated less than a week after she signed a contract with NBC.
Even her agency dropped her.
I like journalist Sam Adam’s take:
Story at HuffPo: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nbc-fires-ronna-mcdaniel-election-lies_n_6602d903e4b06a4403a3e80a
NBCUniversal News Group Chairman Cesar Conde accepted the blame for McDaniel’s hiring though he noted it was a collective decision by “collective recommendation by some members of our leadership team” to hire the unindicted January 6 co-conspirator.
It’d be nice if folks who support democracy and a free press checked their investment portfolios for Comcast (Nasdaq:CMCSA) including their mutual fund holdings’ portfolios — and then sent letters to Investor Relations asking for accountability at Comcast and NBC for this stupid hiring decision which damaged NBC.
~ 2 ~
BlackRock CEO is fucking clueless about Millennials and Gen Z, spewing this crap:
You know what’s causing these two demographic groups so much economic anxiety? The two things which cost them the most: tuition debt and housing.
They can’t save for a house if they have tuition debt hanging over them. President Biden has steadily chipped away at this but it isn’t enough.
They can’t buy a house because there’s too little housing available which in turn drives up pricing. Sure, mortgages are pricey right now but if there’s not enough housing, mortgages aren’t the bigger problem.
Rental housing is also overpriced and getting worse; it’s been unaffordable for persons working a full-time minimum wage job for years thanks to continued corporate pressure to resist raising minimum wages at state and federal level for decades. This has begun to change but Millennials are digging their way out of a deep hole to amass savings.
One of the biggest contributors to rising rental housing costs is the commodification of housing as a tradeable asset in the form of real estate investment trusts (REITs). Investors treat REITs as if they should increase in value and payouts like other tradeable stocks.
Gee, guess what BlackRock’s funds include?
Fink also hasn’t gotten the memo that there is a growing wave of disability as a result of the COVID pandemic. People will need to retire earlier, not later, and his bullshit refusal to accept wealthier persons must pay more into Social Security is not going to help.
Side note: I can’t recommend using Fortune magazine at this time. The link to this story follows but be warned: Fortune changed its privacy policy and you will be forced to accept that policy in order to read the fucking privacy policy. Absolutely unacceptable dark pattern.
Source: https://fortune.com/2024/03/26/blackrock-ceo-larry-fink-boomers-fix-retirement-crisis-millennials-gen-z-economically-anxious/
~ 1 ~
Trump’s POS social media platform appears to have lifted older Mastodon source code and slapped on a new frontend, without having addressed vulnerabilities in the older source code or handled the open source licensing correctly.
source: https://mstdn.social/@stux/112163975507522652
This massive stupidity is what the new Trump Media & Technology group is based on — the stock for which began trading today.
I’m going to have to buy popcorn futures for this.
~ 0 ~
Once again, this is an open thread. Bring all the stray stupid here along with topics not covered by other posts.