Afternoon Tea 10.19.2020 - Flood The Zone

Giuliani's "story" continues to unravel, murder-by-Marshals, babysitter unions, and Viva Bolivia!

October 19, 2020

Facebook suppressed left-of-center outlets while Zuck dined with Ben Shapiro, Bolivia throws the OAS-enabled bums out, babysitters tried to have unions, Giuliani’s scheme is still burning up on re-entry, and the underlying reason you chafe watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians. It is Monday, October 19th 2020, and this is the Tea.

Now We Know Facebook Made Changes to Show You Less News From Mother Jones (Mother Jones) Between 2017 & 2018, Facebook swore up and down that they were not throttling Mother Jones’ traffic. The WSJ published an article detailing the various ways Zuckerberg interacted with Trump administration members and alt right message force multipliers, like Ben Shapiro. So, until Zuck has dinner with DSA leadership or some form of antifascist coalition Voltron, you’ll excuse me from any arguments about FB bias against anyone but the Left.

Bolivia election: Evo Morales's leftwing party celebrates stunning comeback (The Guardian) A year ago, the Organization of American States & the Trump Administration’s coup ousted Evo Morales from power, an event largely papered over by sources like the New York Times. Over the weekend, the Bolivian voted to restore that party by a margin that surpassed all foreign policy estimates. Many had hoped Luis Arce & the Movimiento al Socialismo would survive the run-off. No one predicted he’d win outright. Here’s some leftist troll material for your coup-supporting friends from Jacobin. #VivaBolivia

Chanos says ‘torches and pitchforks are undervalued’ after allegation that hedge funds were privately briefed by White House about coronavirus early in 2020 (Marketwatch) Hedge funds & rich people got much more sober info on the virus and spread from those true Johnny Everymen-of-the-People Trump & Kudlow.

Flooding the zone with the New York Post (Columbia Journalism Review) Steve Bannon’s “Flood the Zone with Shit” strategy is actually an oversimplification of the “Firehose of Falsehood” model used by Vladmir Putin. As we’ve seen, this effort is so provably and obnoxiously false, it’s become the 3rd person in the misinformation tool human centipede.

How Team Trump used Fox News as a laundromat for unverified Russian information about top Democrats (CNN) A little older, but somehow related to the news of the day. Also, Misinformation Laundromat is the name of my new noisecore label.

New Eyewitness Accounts: Feds Didn’t Identify Themselves Before Opening Fire on Portland Antifa Suspect (ProPublica) If US Marshals really carried out an extrajudicial killing of a US citizen on US soil during a civil protest action…2020 is chugging along?

What TikTok Thinks Brands Should—and Shouldn’t—Take Away From Ocean Spray’s Viral Moment (AdWeek) Fun little piece about what to do if you find yourself going viral because of something the younglings are doing.

Nobody’s Baby: A Review by Kirsten Pike (Jump Cut) Included for this one point: many of the urban legends associated with babysitters behaving badly were propagated in response to unionizing efforts by babysitters in the 40s-60s. Who knew Babysitter’s Club was supposed to be a union shop.

The 100 Sequences That Shaped Animation (Vulture) Does what it says on the tin. Massive archive of critical animation, organized chronologically. Bugs Bunny features prominently #GetInTheFuckingRobotShinji

The Frustration of Watching the Kardashians as a Black Woman (Slate) Spectacular piece that explains what I now realize I couldn’t stand about a lot of these shows: Centering the culture without the people.

This was a show where Black women were either strategically placed (as, say, Black best friends) or altogether absent—a show that relied on a Black-woman aesthetic without Black women, and working-class style without working-class realities. If it weren’t for money, fame, and whiteness, the show would have been read as a ghettoized trope. The show always featured an array of Black boyfriends/baby daddies/husbands, but the presence of Black men never compensated for the glaring absence of Black women except as accessories.

Song of the Tea With the Beastie Boys licensing “Sabotage” for use in the Biden campaign, for maybe only the 3rd time ever, here they are in 1994 changing the sonic world forever.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Yours,T