All of Puerto Rico loses power

1.4 million people in Puerto Rico lost power yesterday in an outage that lasted for a day and left part of the island without power even after service was mainly restored. (more…)
Tags: Post, News, Austerity, Class War, Maria, Puerto Rico, Ethnic Cleansing, Neoliberalism, Late Stage Capitalism, Administrative Incompetence, Puertopia

A Worrying Number of Amazon’s Warehouse Workers Are Reportedly Living Off Food Stamps

Amazon bills itself as a creator of jobs. Look no further than the ludicrous subsidy packages offered by cities in competition to host its second headquarters. But according to public records requests obtained by the Intercept, Amazon can drain public coffers in other ways, with five states listing Bezos’s empire as a…Read more...
Tags: Amazon, Science, Jeff Bezos, Bezos, Amazon Warehouse, Late Stage Capitalism, Intercept Amazon

Facebook vs regulation: we exist nowhere and everywhere, all at once

Where is Facebook located? Well, if you're the taxman, Facebook's global HQ is a tiny shed somewhere in Ireland, where Facebook can escape virtually all taxation; but on the other hand, if you're the EU, Facebook is headquartered in America, where the General Data Protection Regulation doesn't apply. (more…)
Tags: Facebook, Post, Business, News, Privacy, America, Ireland, Gdpr, General Data Protection Regulation, Late Stage Capitalism, EU Facebook, DeleteFacebook, Legal Fictions

Tesla pulls a Trump, smears critical press outlet as "extremists"

Tesla was extremely upset to learn that the employees who'd been injured and maimed in its factories spoke to Reveal News about the unsafe working conditions and culture of cover-ups at the Tesla plants. (more…)
Tags: Post, News, Streisand Effect, Labor, Tesla, Class War, Media Theory, Trump, UAW, Late Stage Capitalism, Evil Billionaires, Baffle Em With Bullshit

The US workforce is the most productive, best educated in history and unemployment is at an all-time low, but wages are stagnant

Orthodox market economics holds that when unemployment falls and the labor supply gets tighter wages go up; it also predicts that better-educated workers and more-productive workers get paid more for their work -- none of this has happened. (more…)
Tags: Post, News, Labor, US, Piketty, Collusion, Late Stage Capitalism, Guillotine Watch, Monopolism, Alt-labor, Monopsony, Wildcat Labor

Credit bubble a-burstin': wave of bankruptcies sweeps subprime car-lenders

The subprime car-lending industry -- charging exorbitant rates for car-loans to people least suited to afford them, enforced through orwellian technologies, obscuring the risk by spinning the debt into high-risk/high-yield bonds -- is collapsing. (more…)
Tags: Post, News, Finance, Fraud, Transit, Inequality, War On General Purpose Computing, Subprime, Urban Theory, Late Stage Capitalism, Bubblenomics, Eschatology Watch

Lawsuit reveals the deadly, out-of-control free-for-all inside Red State America's for-profit prisons

The Management & Training Corporation operates two federal prisons and 20 more state/local prisons around America; previously, it has been censured by Arizona for its role in deadly prison riots; now, the ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center are suing the state of Mississippi over the violence, neglect, and rampant human rights abuses at Management & Training's East Mississippi Correctional Facility, near Meridian in Lauderdale County. (more…)
Tags: Post, News, Mississippi, Race, America, Aclu, Arizona, Carceral State, Meridian, Barbarism, Southern Poverty Law Center, Lauderdale County, The Invisible Hand, Private prisons, Red State America, Late Stage Capitalism

New Florida law lets beachfront property owners kick people off of public coasts

A new Florida law redefines the reach of beachfront property owners' claims to "the land above the mean high-tide level." This seemingly innocuous change means that private property owners -- and their patrolling rent-a-cops -- will have vastly expanded powers to kick members of the public off of public beaches. (more…)
Tags: Post, Florida, News, Law, Climate, Property, Class War, New Florida, Late Stage Capitalism, Guillotine Watch, Hb631, New Enclosure Movement

Scammy phone company Centurylink: "No one can sue us because we don't have any customers"

Centurylink is a giant, scammy telco notorious for larding its customers' bills with fraudulent charges, and instructing its customer service reps to do everything possible not to waive those charges; they also open fake accounts in their customers' names, a la Wells Fargo, and then rack up charges against them. (more…)
Tags: Post, Business, News, Law, Scams, Wells Fargo, Class Action, Centurylink, Late Stage Capitalism, Binding Arbitration, Telcos

Cyber-arms-dealer Grey Heron really, really doesn't want you to know about the connections between them and the disgraced Hacking Team

When Grey Heron surfaced this month selling anti-Signal and anti-Telegram surveillance tools at a UK trade show for cyber-arms-dealers, sharp-eyed journalists at Motherboard immediately noticed that the company's spokesman was last seen fronting for Hacking Team, a disgraced Italian cyber-arms-dealer that provided surveillance weapons to some of the world's cruelest dictators. (more…)
Tags: Post, UK, News, Malware, Spyware, Italy, Days, Hacking Team, Grey Heron, Surveillance Capitalism, Late Stage Capitalism, Arms Dealers, Zuboff

Seasteading meets the shock doctrine in Puerto Rico, where ethnic cleansing precedes Going Galt

Naomi Klein's l(ooooo)ongread in The Intercept about the state of play in Puerto Rico is the comprehensive summary of the post-Maria fuckery and hope that has gripped America's colonial laboratory, the place where taxation without representation, austerity, chemical weapons, new drugs, and new agribusiness techniques get trialed before the rest of America are subjected to them. (more…)
Tags: Post, News, Climate, America, Austerity, Tax Avoidance, Cryptocurrencies, Naomi Klein, Maria, Blockchain, Puerto Rico, Late Stage Capitalism, Guillotine Watch, Going Galt, Disaster Capitalism, Shock Doctrine

Big Telco hates "regulation," but they love their billions in government handouts

When it comes to killing Net Neutrality, Big Telco's major talking point is that "government regulation" has no place in telcoms; but the reality is that the nation's telecommunications providers are the recipients of regulatory gifts that run to $5B/year, and are expected to do very little in return for this corporate welfare. (more…)
Tags: Post, News, Cable Company Fuckery, Fcc, Regulatory Capture, Telcoms, Competition, Network Neutrality, Big Telco, Ajit Pai, Late Stage Capitalism, Ill Communication

Clearchannel took over America's local radio, Bain Capital took over Clearchannel, Clearchannel went bankrupt

As I've written, the demise of newsmedia can't be blamed on tech -- rather, it was the combination of technology and deregulated, neoliberal capitalism, which saw media companies merged and acquired, vertically and horizontally integrated, with quality lowered, staff outsourced and assets stripped, leaving them vulnerable to technological shocks, after all their in-house experts were turned into contractors who drifted away, their physical plant sold and leased back, their war-chests drained b...
Tags: Post, News, America, Mitt Romney, Media Theory, Bain Capital, Graeber, Iheartradio, Late Stage Capitalism, Vulture Capitalism, Guillotine Watch, Clearchannel, Media Consolidation, Clearchannel Clearchannel

SEC charges former Equifax CIO with insider trading

Jun Ying was serving as CIO of Equifax when he avoided more than $117,000 in losses by exercising and liquidating all of his stock options before the public was notified of the company's catastrophic breach -- but after he had figured out what was going on. (more…)
Tags: Post, Crime, News, Finance, Fraud, SEC, Equifax, Late Stage Capitalism, Jun Ying, Equifax CIO

Wells Fargo gives its CEO a $4.6m raise on flat earnings and more scandals

Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan has only been on the job since October, but he's earned a 35%, $4.6m raise, despite flat earnings and a series of scandals since Sloan took over from the cartoonishly villainous John Stumpf. (more…)
Tags: Post, Business, News, Finance, Wells Fargo, Sloan, John Stumpf, Late Stage Capitalism, Tim Sloan, Mediocre White Men, Failing Up

Stephen Hawking's final words to the internet: robots aren't the problem, capitalism is

The last message Stephen Hawking posted to a public internet forum was an answer to a question in a Reddit AMA, querying how humanity will weather an age of technological unemployment. (more…)
Tags: Post, News, Reddit, Stephen Hawking, Class War, Late Stage Capitalism, Robots Stole My Jerb

Brexit is deflating the London housing bubble, with prices down 15% in some neighbourhoods

London's housing bubble has appeared unprickable, stabilised by influxes of offshore money from "investors" who saw property in the capital as a safe, easily liquidated bet even after the 2008 crisis when the rest of the UK saw housing prices tumble. (more…)
Tags: Post, Business, UK, London, News, Property, Brexit, Late Stage Capitalism, Weaponized Shelter, Bubblenomics

The company that turned Grenfell Tower into a deathtrap reports profits up 50% and anticipates no downside from the disaster

The fire in Grenfell Tower had many causes: Tory MPs protecting their rental incomes by voting down basic tenant safety; the Conservative Party's campaign against "safety culture"; but much of the blood is on the hands of Rydon, the contractor who sheathed the tower in the highly flammable cladding -- and came out on top, winning the contract to undo their work on other towers that had been similarly clad. (more…)
Tags: Post, Business, UK, News, Tories, Conservative Party, Impunity, Grenfell, Late Stage Capitalism, Guillotine Watch, Grenfell Tower, Rydon, Red-hot Business

Corbyn says he'll end asset-stripping hostile takeovers

Labour leader and PM-in-waiting Jeremy Corbyn has promised that when he is Prime Minister, his government will introduce regulations that ban the finance-driven, asset-stripping hostile takeovers of UK companies, in a bid to make finance the "servants of industry not the masters of us all." (more…)
Tags: Post, Corruption, UK, News, Debt, Labour, Private Equity, Tories, Piketty, Kraft, Graeber, Hedge Funds, Jeremy Corbyn, Cadbury, Gkn, Corbyn

Wells Fargo admits it ripped off its customers, creates low-response-rate opt-in system for its victims to get paid back

Wells Fargo has admitted wrongdoing in defrauding 110,000 mortgage borrowers, and to make good on it, they're sending out letters that look like junk-mail, containing a form that customers have to fill in to confirm that they want their stolen money back; if Wells doesn't get a reply, it will assume that those customers are donating their settlements back to the bank's shareholders.
Tags: Post, Business, Corruption, News, Finance, Elizabeth Warren, Fraud, Banksters, Wells Fargo, Wells, Charlie Munger, Late Stage Capitalism, Guillotine Watch, Reverse Robin Hoods

The pharma billionaires whose family company created the opioid epidemic are disintegrating into a bickering mess

The Sackler family is best known for the buildings adorned with their names thanks to their acts of philanthropy, which is either motivated by a public spirit, or by the desperate need for some reputation washing as the public becomes increasingly aware that the family fortune was built on the perfection of shady techniques for marketing addictive drugs, which reached its zenith when Perdue, the family pharma business, created the Oxy epidemic, by falsifying addictiveness research and aggressiv...
Tags: Post, News, Drugs, Pharma, Perdue, Sackler, Late Stage Capitalism, Opioid Epidemic, Guillotine Watch, Sacklers, Evil Billionaires, Reputation Washing

Forced GIFs are the new forced memes

In an inevitable development, Giphy, which created a very handy platform for creating GIFs from existing content, is now bringing influencers into their studios to deliberately create original GIFs in hopes of getting some of that seconds-long heat for brands. (more…)
Tags: Post, News, Marketing, Gif, Meme, Late Stage Capitalism, Attention Economy, Forced Memes, Short Attention Span Theater

The world's worst money launderers are the UK, Switzerland and the USA

The USA has moved up in the Tax Justice Network's Financial Secrecy Index to number two, behind Switzerland; in reality, though, the UK is the world's worst money-laundry, but because its laundering activities are spread out over its overseas territories -- taken as a whole, the UK leads the world in helping criminals and looters hide their fortunes. (more…)
Tags: Post, Usa, UK, News, Africa, Switzerland, Piketty, Money Laundering, UK Switzerland, Tax Justice Network, Secrecy Jurisdictions, Wealth of Nations, Late Stage Capitalism, Guillotine Watch, Financial Secrecy Index, Looting

Oklahoma schools go on four-day weeks so teachers can make rent by working at Walmart on Mondays

In 1992, Oklahoma passed a ballot initiative saying that the state could only raise taxes with a three quarters majority in the state assembly, creating a one-way ratchet where every tax cut becomes effectively permanent, including the sweetheart deals cut for frackers and the deep cuts to taxes on the wealthiest residents of the state. (more…)
Tags: Post, News, Education, Walmart, Fracking, Gop, Oklahoma, Class War, Late Stage Capitalism, Guillotine Watch, Hydrocarbonism, Trickle-down Economics

California State Senator wants to remake cities with midrises near public transit, but he is facing a wave of nimbyism

Scott Wiener is California State Senator for San Francisco, whose SB827, co-sponsored by State Senator Nancy Skinner, will move some zoning responsibility from cities to the state, forcing cities to allow the construction of higher-density housing (duplexes, eight-plexes and midrise, six-story apartment buildings) near public transit stops. (more…)
Tags: Post, News, California, San Francisco, Housing Crisis, Scott Wiener, State, California State, NIMBY, Demographics Are Destiny, Late Stage Capitalism, Weaponized Shelter, Nancy Skinner, Sb827

After neoliberalism: how Corbyn and Labour can win the next general election

Paul Mason, author of Postcapitalism, inaugurates his new column at Open Democracy with a history of the collapse of neoliberal capitalism and a path for a Labour victory in the next General Election, which, at this rate, could come any day. (more…)
Tags: Post, News, Labour, Jeremy Corbyn, Paul Mason, Ukpoli, Corbyn, Late Stage Capitalism, Postcapitalism

Teen Bo$$: a magazine advising tweens on how to get rich by being "social media brands"

Bauer Media's Teen Boss is a new quarterly magazine, launched last summer for "Gen-Z entrepreneurs" aged 8-15 who want to pursue careers as "influencers." (more…)
Tags: Post, Publishing, News, Web Theory, Bauer Media, Late Stage Capitalism, Intergenerational Warfare, Gen Z Media Influencers, Slime Side-hustles

In-depth investigation of the Alibaba-to-Instagram pipeline for scammy crapgadgets with excellent branding

Artist Jenny Odell created the Bureau of Suspended Objects to photographically archive and researched the manufacturing origins of 200 objects found at a San Francisco city dump; last August, she prepared a special report for Oakland's Museum of Capitalism about the bizarre world of shitty "free" watches sold through Instagram influences and heavily promoted through bottom-feeding remnant ad-buys, uncovering a twilight zone of copypasted imagery and promotional materials livened with fake sto...
Tags: Post, News, Instagram, China, Marketing, Scams, Alibaba, Ads, Bureau, San Francisco City, MLM, Jenny Odell, Late Stage Capitalism, No Such Thing As A Free Watch, Oakland s Museum of Capitalism

Investors throw $300m at dog-walking startup that hired ex-CEO of fraudulent anti-fraud company Lifelock

Before being hired to serve as CEO of Wag, a dogwalking startup that just received a $300,000,000 investment from Softbank, Hilary Schneider presided over Lifelock, a company whose fraudulent anti-fraud products cost it over $100,000,000 in fines, before Schneider convinced Symantec to buy it for an absurd $2.6 billion. (more…)
Tags: Post, Business, News, Softbank, Symantec, LifeLock, Schneider, Late Stage Capitalism, Wag The Dog, Mom As A Service, Softbank Hilary Schneider

Research report explains how adtech supercharges political deceit, allowing even bumblers to be master propagandists

A new report from the New America Foundation uses the current fear that Russian government elements manipulated the 2016 US election to explore the relationship between advertising technology, surveillance capitalism, and "precision propaganda," showing how the toolsuite developed for the advertising industry is readily repurposable by even modestly competent actors to spread disinformation campaigns. (more…)
Tags: Facebook, Twitter, Post, Politics, Elections, News, Web Theory, US, Social Media, Scholarship, Antitrust, Machine Learning, Propaganda, Ai, Adtech, Botwars