RationalWiki:What is going on in the blogosphere?/October 2022

October 2022
The UK terror survivors tracked down by ‘disaster trolls’ - a British perspective on the phenomenon The Verge on Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter: "Welcome to hell, Elon." We Finally Know Who Funded Trump's Truth Social. Former President Donald Trump's struggling platform, unsurprisingly, has friends in high places. What? You thought he funded it himself? Jaysus. Swedish politician freezes for 26 seconds after question over pay increase 'A Generation of Bad Decisions'; how the UK became one of the poorest nations in Western Europe. Meet James Mac, Patriotic Alternative’s Nazi “Reverend” calling for “Racial Holy War" Yep, you read that right, a Racial holy war. What a halfwit. Why economic sanctions (usually) don't work.  Graham Norton Exits Twitter Soon After On-Stage Discussion About Trans Rights  How Xi Jinping became the most powerful Chinese leader in decades.  Since the Economist labelled Liz Truss the lettuce PM, due to the likelihood she would have the shelf life of a lettuce, Low-brow tabloid  has launched a YouTube livestream of a picture of Truss and lettuce, to see which one would last longer. The Onion were asked to submit evidence to the US government, defending satire, and they did a good job. Honestly, this could be the thing that they're remembered for in the long run. Swiftian. A new Gilded Age of media barons? Elon Musk and the oligarchs of the ‘Second Gilded Age’ can not only sway the public – they can exploit their data, too. Musk pushing Putin propaganda is not historically new: British aristos did the same in WWII with Hitler 'peace offers'. What's new is that an oligarch can switch off critical internet infrastructure at a whim, and undermine crucial military operations against a genocidal regime. We make enough food to feed a growing population several times over, but we continue to let politics and greed get in the way of feeding people. James Dannenberg, a retired Hawaii state judge, explains in a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts why the current dangerous direction of the US Supreme Court has made him lose all respect for the Chief Justice and the conservative majority. Sleepwalking into fascism. That reactionary politics today lack a mass character is what makes them so dangerous.