These cloven toe pumps will make you look twice

These flesh-colored pumps by Maison Margiela ($825) are described as "cloven toe." I might be 12, but wouldn't a better description be "camel toe"? A similarly racy shoe is available in red for $1080. Thanks, Caroline B.!
Tags: Post, News, Shoes, Heels, Pumps, Maison Margiela, Late Stage Capitalism, Camel Toe, Explanation denied, Real things you can actually buy, Split Toe

Huh, MoviePass Leadership Sure Seems Shady

MoviePass has been operating for nearly a full year on its too-good-to-be-true premise of offering essentially unlimited movie passes to subscribers for just $9.99 per month. It’s the monorail and, according to a report from the Miami Herald, company CEO Ted Farnsworth sure seems like a dead ringer for Lyle Lanley.Read more...
Tags: Science, Moviepass, Miami Herald, Late Stage Capitalism, Ted Farnsworth, Failing Up, Psychic Hotline, Lyle Lanley Read

MoviePass is Selling Merch Now, Which Will Definitely Turn Things Around for It

MoviePass, a company that exists solely to piss off its customers despite offering a service so generously price that it will inevitably lead to its own downfall, entered the “we’re selling flamethrowers” phase of its existence Thursday with the official launch of its merch store. The collapse of the company is sure…Read more...
Tags: Science, Capitalism, Merchandise, Moviepass, Late Stage Capitalism

AT&T stands to make $800,000,000 more by sneakily tripling a bullshit "administrative fee"

When the DoJ greenlit the merger of AT&T and Time-Warner, they blessed a union that would see one of technology's most notorious monopolists get even bigger, with the presumption that scaling up to unimaginable size would curb a terrible company's worst abuses. (more…)
Tags: Post, News, Time Warner, AT&T, Ripoffs, Late Stage Capitalism, Guillotine Watch, Monopolism, Nickle And Dimed By The Death Star, Save US President Elizabeth Warren

What it's like to be personally responsible for automating away someone's high-paid, high-skill job

When Erin Winick was a sophomore, she got a summer internship at a company where her manager offered her the opportunity to use her passion for 3D printing to streamline the company's mold-making process; but when she started consulting with "Gary," a 34-year veteran of the company who was responsible for the complex molding process, she realized that she was about to put him out of a job. (more…)
Tags: Post, News, Employment, 3d Printing, Class War, Solidarity, Gary, Late Stage Capitalism, Deskilling, Robots Stole My Jerbs, Erin Winick

Googlers' ethical refusal to build airgap systems curtailed Google's ability to bid on sensitive military contracts

A group of elite Google Cloud engineers simply refused to put any work into an airgap system designed to let the company bid on sensitive military contracts, which undermined the company's ability to seek military work. (more…)
Tags: Google, Post, Business, News, Labor, Google Cloud, Late Stage Capitalism, Drone Be Evil, Babykiller Projects, I'm Feeling Lucky

We know how to fix homelessness, we just won't do it

The largest, wealthiest cities in America are filling up with tent cities -- especially on the west coast, where East Coast style right-to-shelter laws are rare -- and if the spectacle of human misery doesn't alarm you, perhaps you should be thinking about communicable disease epidemics. (more…)
Tags: Amazon, Post, Business, News, California, Race, America, Debt, Inequality, East Coast, Urban Theory, Ethnic Cleansing, Housing First, Nimbyism, Late Stage Capitalism, Weaponized Shelter

How markets plundered Free Software's best stuff and used it to create freedom for companies, not people

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBknF2yUZZ8&t=199s Bejamin "Mako" Hill (previously) is a free software developer, activist and academic with a long history of shrewd critical insights into the ways that free software, free culture and the wider world interact with each other. (more…)
Tags: Video, Floss, News, Economics, Free As In Freedom, Late Stage Capitalism, Strategic Closedness, Bejamin Mako Hill

David Graeber's "Bullshit Jobs": why does the economy sustain jobs that no one values?

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Tags: Reviews, Feature, Business, Happy Mutants, Gift Guide, News, Employment, Economics, Anthropology, Graeber, David Graeber, Late Stage Capitalism, Bullshit Jobs, Principal-agent Problems

Employees who practice mindfulness meditation are less motivated, having realized the futility of their jobs

In the NYT, a pair of behavioral scientists describe a forthcoming Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes article ( ) that studied the effect of mindfulness meditation (a trendy workplace moral-booster) on workers' motivation and performance. (more…)
Tags: Post, News, Labor, Mindfulness, Scholarship, Class War, OM, Late Stage Capitalism

Full time minimum wage workers can't afford the rent on a 2-bedroom apartment anywhere in the USA

In the US, states and cities have their own minimum wages, keyed to the local cost of living -- but every one of these minimum wages is insufficient to provide that most basic of needs: a roof over your head. (more…)
Tags: Post, Usa, News, US, Class War, Late Stage Capitalism, Guillotine Watch, Weaponized Shelter, Maslow Vs Private Equity

The rich-poor obesity gap in kids is widening

A long time ago, obesity was often used as a shorthand for wealth, but over the decades obesity has become more and more correlated with poverty, both in culture and science (while wealth is increasingly correlated with being slim). (more…)
Tags: Health, Post, Science, Kids, News, Parenting, Diet, Obesity, Austerity, Scholarship, Piketty, Late Stage Capitalism, Guillotine Watch, The Rich Are Different From You And Me

UPS Teamsters ready to stage America's biggest strike since 1997, with solidarity as the main sticking point

Unionized UPS Teamsters -- 260,000 of them -- are set to strike in the biggest American strike since UPS's unionized drivers walked out in 1997. (more…)
Tags: Post, Business, News, Labor, America, UPS, Logistics, Class War, Solidarity Forever, Late Stage Capitalism, UPS Teamsters

Mass protests against IMF austerity force Jordan's Prime Minister to resign

Jordan is broke, thanks to falling tax revenues due to tax avoidance and low taxes on the super-rich, and the country is seeking to bridge the gap in its finances by borrowing from the International Monetary Fund, which backed a bill that imposed crushing cuts on public services to ensure that money could be found to pay back Jordan's creditors. (more…)
Tags: Post, News, Debt, Austerity, Middle East, International Monetary Fund, Jordan, Graeber, Imf, Late Stage Capitalism, Guillotine Watch, Hani Mulki, Omar al-Razzaz

Private equity bosses took $200m out of Toys R Us and crashed the company, lifetime employees got $0 in severance

Private equity's favorite shell game is to take over profitable businesses, sell off their assets, con banks into loaning them hundreds of millions of dollars, cash out in the form of bonuses and dividends, then let the businesses fail and default on their debts. (more…)
Tags: Post, Business, Corruption, News, Labor, Usausausa, Private Equity, Class War, Toys R US, Late Stage Capitalism, Vulture Capitalism, Guillotine Watch, A Rich Poor Country

America is the world's first poor rich country

Americans' median income is $60,000 -- but the average American couldn't stump up $500 to bail themselves out of an emergency, and a third of Americans can't afford food, shelter and healthcare. (more…)
Tags: Health, Post, News, America, Debt, Usausausa, ACA, Graeber, Neoliberalism, Rent Seeking, Late Stage Capitalism, Guillotine Watch, Maslow Vs Von Mises

Youtubers with millions of followers are dropping out, citing stress and burnout from algorithm kremlinology

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKKwgq9LRgA Youtube allows people -- some of them not very nice -- to earn incredible livings by performing stunts, playing videogames, creating sketches, anything that attracts an audience. (more…)
Tags: Google, Business, Video, News, Youtube, Employment, Late Stage Capitalism, Algorithmic Transparency, Sharecropping, Skinner Boxes For Extroverts

Former Tory chancellor takes over newspaper, sells "money-can't buy" coverage to Uber, Google and others

George Osborne was David Cameron's Chancellor of the Exchequer, the architect of UK austerity; he was fired by Theresa May when she became Prime Minister and he did not run for re-election in the disastrous election of 2017, instead taking a job as editor-in-chief of the Evening Standard. (more…)
Tags: Google, Uber, Post, Corruption, UK, London, News, David Cameron, George Osborne, Theresa May, Tories, Corporatism, Media Theory, Ukpoli, Evening Standard, Uber Google

Spectacular read: a profile of Anna Sorokin, a con-artist who convinced New York that she was a high-rolling socialite trust-funder

Jessica Pressler's long, gripping profile of con artist Anna Sorokin (AKA Anna Delvey) has all the making of a first-rate grifter novel, where the likable, unflappable rogue is revealed by inches to be a sociopath, a broken person who can't herself tell truth from fiction. (more…)
Tags: Post, New York, Crime, News, New York City, Fraud, Con Artists, Jessica Pressler, Gilded Age, Late Stage Capitalism, Anna Sorokin, Trust Funds, Anna Delvey

84K: A grim meathook future novel of exterminism, with a theory of change and a glimmer of hope in its centre

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Tags: Reviews, Feature, Science Fiction, Gift Guide, Hope, News, Dystopia, Late Stage Capitalism, Exterminism

84: A grim meathook future novel of exterminism, with a theory of change and a glimmer of hope in its centre

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Tags: Reviews, Feature, Science Fiction, Gift Guide, Hope, News, Dystopia, Late Stage Capitalism, Exterminism

Supreme Court rules that employers can make signing away your right to sue them in a class a condition of employment

Supreme Court Justice Neal Gorsuch used his stolen Supreme Court seat to carry the day for corporations against workers in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, ruling that employers could force potential employees to sign away their legal right to participate in class action suits as a condition of employment. (more…)
Tags: Post, News, Supreme Court, Law, Scotus, Inequality, Class Action, Lewis, Late Stage Capitalism, Guillotine Watch, Epic Systems Corp, Neal Gorsuch, Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, Choice Theory, Exterminism

The Vatican dunks on the finance industry and its "amoral culture"

The Vatican has published “‘Oeconomicae et pecuniariae quaestiones’. Considerations for an ethical discernment regarding some aspects of the present economic-financial system” of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, 17.05.2018, a lengthy report on the wickedness of Wall Street, in which the finance industry is condemned in the strongest and most specific terms, accused of creating an "amoral culture" dedicated to the "profi...
Tags: Post, News, Finance, Religion, Catholicism, Pope Francis, Vatican, Piketty, Inequality, Late Stage Capitalism, Guillotine Watch, Liberation Theology, Woke Pope

The £7 billion Carillion collapse has the UK government talking about breaking up the Big Four accounting firms

Carrillion was the UK government's go-to outsourcing partner, a company with a long and disgraceful history of putting profits before people -- perhaps that's why HM Government was so ready to believe in the company's robust financial health as it amassed £7B in debts and then collapsed, spectacularly, leaving the UK in financial and infrastructural disarray. (more…)
Tags: Post, UK, News, Pwc, Tories, Deloitte, Kpmg, Ey, Corporatism, Carillion, Ukpoli, Quis custodiet, Late Stage Capitalism, Monopolism, Carrillion

The most hated company in America is about to get much, much bigger

Comcast is a perennial winner of national polls for the most hated company in America, and the bigger it gets, the worse it gets: back in 2011, the Obama administration let the company swallow NBC Universal, teeing it up to powerfully benefit from the destruction of Net Neutrality under Trump; now Trump is poised to let the company buy Fox and Sky, making the company bigger and more powerful. (more…)
Tags: Post, News, Cable Company Fuckery, Net Neutrality, Obama, America, Fox, Comcast, Corporatism, Nbc Universal, Trump, Thanks Obama, Late Stage Capitalism, Monopolism, Eschatology Watch

US housing prices skyrocket for homeowners and renters alike

Since the crash of 2008, both home ownership and renting have been getting steadily more expensive, with median house prices rising to levels surpassing pre-crisis levels, while the ballooning private equity megalandlords pushed prices for renters to never-seen levels, using an eviction mill that saw more Americans thrown out of their homes than at any time in history to keep renters paying. (more…)
Tags: Post, News, US, Class War, Urban Theory, Demographics Are Destiny, Late Stage Capitalism, Weaponized Shelter, Shared Misery

An excerpt from "Bullshit Jobs," David Graeber's forthcoming book about the rise of useless work

Anarchist anthropologist David Graeber made a landmark contribution to the debate about inequality, money, and wealth with his massive 2012 book Debt: The First 5,000 Years (a book that helped inspire my 2017 novel Walkaway). (more…)
Tags: Post, Books, Gift Guide, News, Labor, Employment, Class War, Occupy, Ows, Graeber, David Graeber, Late Stage Capitalism, Bullshit Jobs, Goons Duct-tapers Flunkies Box-tickers Taskmasters

Scottish Tories defeat anti-money-laundering measure aimed at shutting down the Russian oligarch-Scotland pipeline

The Scottish Limited Partnership is a notorious financial secrecy vehicle that's been used to launder at least $80 billion, mostly from oligarchs and organised crime figures from the former USSR, in only four years. (more…)
Tags: Post, Crime, News, Scotland, Finance, Russia, Tories, Ussr, Piketty, Money Laundering, Ukpoli, Late Stage Capitalism, Oligarchy, The Nasty Party, Financial Secrecy, Scottish Limited Partnership

The UK is finally cracking down on its Russian money-laundry, but hasn't hired people to do the job

Scottish Limited Partnerships are a preferred money-laundering tool of the world's criminals, looters and oligarchs, especially favored by criminals from the former USSR, who have pumped an estimated $80B through them in the past four years alone. (more…)
Tags: Post, UK, News, Scotland, Finance, Russia, Ussr, Ukpoli, Oligarchs, Late Stage Capitalism, Guillotine Watch, Financial Secrecy, Scottish Limited Partnerships

Thinking through the "What should we do about Facebook?" question

There is, at long last, a public appetite for Doing Something About Facebook (and, by extension, about all of Big Tech); I have been playing with the idea of regulating the outcome, rather than the method: we give Facebook a certain period of time to remedy the situation whereby people "can't afford to leave Facebook" and then, if that situation isn't remedied, impose some sanction and either break them up or give them another go, with more sanctions if they fail. (more…)
Tags: Facebook, Post, News, Ftc, Late Stage Capitalism, Monopolism, DeleteFacebook, Trustbusting