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Shitposting since 2005










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I think I’m done with the future… And I know that is a slightly inconvenient position to take when everyone around me is very excited about the newest, smartest, fastest, most technologically advanced thing humanity has managed to produce this week. But honestly? I am fucking exhausted.
I am exhausted by my phone.
I am exhausted by notifications. I am exhausted by Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, emails, news alerts, screen time reports telling me I spent six hours looking at my phone and then apparently expecting me to congratulate myself for reducing it by twelve minutes. I am exhausted by opening my phone to check one thing and resurfacing forty-five minutes later having watched a stranger clean their fridge…
And after years of being told that technology was going to make our lives easier, more efficient, more connected, I think a growing number of us are quietly asking a very different question: Can you please just leave us the fuck alone? And then Apple announces the new iPhone Duo, its first foldable IPhone, with a 7.6-inch internal display designed to give us more room to multitask, work, watch, create and generally do more things on one device.
And I understand why it’s impressive. It is impressive, and I want it. Why wouldn’t I, right? A giant screen in my pocket. Two apps side by side. More room to work. More room to watch. More room to… presumably never look away from my phone ever again. But do we, ACTUALLY, really, REEEALLY, want this? Because culturally, I don’t think we do.
The strange thing is that the culture is moving backwards while the technology companies keep sprinting forwards. And I’m starting to wonder whether they have completely misunderstood what we’re asking for. We don’t necessarily want a better smartphone. We want less smartphone. There is a huuuge difference.
Somehow along the way, our phones stopped being tools and became environments. They became our alarm clocks, calendars, cameras, banks, offices, televisions, dating lives, shopping centres, newspapers, social lives and tiny little portals into everyone else’s existence. They are in our bedrooms when we wake up. They’re in our hands while we eat. They’re beside us while we work. They’re with us when we walk. They’re in our pockets at dinner. They’re charging next to our beds.
And apparently the solution to this deeply “healthy arrangement’ is to make the screen bigger. I’m sorry, but… What the fuck are we doing? I’m not asking for less technology because I hate technology. I’m asking for less because I like my life. I want to walk somewhere without documenting it. I want to have dinner without half my brain wondering what notifications I’ve missed.
I want to have a conversation without a device sitting between us, quietly recording, tracking, pinging and predicting. I want to be bored, actually bored. The kind of bored where your brain has to entertain itself. And this is where I think the tech industry has completely missed the cultural mood.
They keep asking: What else can we add? What else can AI do? What else can our watches hear? What else can our phones remember? What else can we automate? What else can we optimise? What else can we put on a screen? How about instead we ask: What can we take away?
So no, Apple. I don’t want your biggest screen. I don’t want another device that remembers more, hears more, tracks more, predicts more, or gives me another reason to stare at a screen.
I, actually, really, really, want less… Less fucking everything. And if that sounds anti-tech, maybe that’s the point. What if the most revolutionary thing Apple could build right now is a reason to put the fucking thing down.
[source]
I didn’t write this, but it definitely resonated with me. Odd, considering tech has been my entire adult life…
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Apologies for the sheer number of these tonight. And I know a some of them are a little stale at this point, but to paraphrase the famous quote from Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, post promptly when you find something you could miss it.” In bloging—especially blogs with a political slant—this is SO true!



























































































And lastly…

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Yanni before he became YANNI and the caricature of all that was horrible about 80s New Age music. The second—and my first—of his albums holds a special place in my heart because it—along with Patrick O’Hearn’s Ancient Dreams were a gift from my ex the first Christmas we were in San Francisco. I hadn’t heard of either artist, but immediately fell in love with both.
I bought only two more of Yanni’s albums—Out of Silence and Chameleon Days—before he hooked up with Linda Evans and his music went to hell..
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Apple released MacOS 27, aka Golden Gate, yesterday. I’ve been using it since one of the early betas, and I have to say it’s been a very pleasant experience.
Unlike Tahoe—which definitely wasn’t ready for prime time even on its general release date—Golden Gate has been surprisingly stable through all its beta iterations. To be honest there have been a few small glitches, but I can’t say for sure if it was the OS, the application, or just plain old user error that caused any of them because I could never reproduce them.
If you’re on Tahoe, definitely upgrade. If you’re still on Sequoia and you’re happy with it, stick with it. There are still many (mostly graphical) things I prefer about Sequoia, but the glaring inconsistencies and annoyances in the newer interface introduced in Tahoe have been addressed in Golden Gate. All the window corner radii match. Mostly. The “liquid glass” effect can be easily adjusted to your liking without having to resort to hitting the Accessibility panel to turn off window transparency completely. In general it feels snappier and more polished. A lot of the reviews I’ve read are saying it’s the Snow Leopard of the current generation of MacOS. If you catch that reference, congratulations—you’ve been at this as long (or longer) than I have.
As with any upgrade, make sure you have a full Time Machine (or whatever app* you use for backups—you do back up don’t you?) prior to upgrading in the unlikely event anything goes south.
Let me know what you think and how your upgrade goes.
*personally I use Carbon Copy Cloner, an app I’ve been trusting my data to for years.
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You’ve caved to your billionaire buddy Robert Kraft, you’ve deferred to the pearl-clutching Pink, you’ve fallen in line behind your promoters, and you’ve kowtowed to a handful of football stadium owners and allowed rapper Macklemore to be bootedfrom your tour for saying the words “Free Palestine.”
I can imagine how traumatic that must have been for your audience, the emotional scars they must be carrying right now from being asked to see the Palestinian people as deserving of dignity and self-determination…. the horror.
My newsfeed is absolutely littered with news stories, think pieces, and video critiques lambasting you for what people are saying is your cowardice, your selfishness, your obvious racism, your thinly veiled Zionism.
And with the fierce media firestorm raging all around you right now, I wonder if anyone’s considered your feelings, what it’s like to walk a mile in your custom Air Jordans.
I mean, this couldn’t have been an easy decision for you. In this economy, a guy with a net worth of 400 million has to stay on the road to keep the lights on, right? We can’t have you missing any meals out here, can we?
Oh, sure, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been brutally murdered, once vibrant cities leveled to dust, and an ancient culture violently erased. Yes, generations of human beings have been assassinated, starved, tortured, and burned alive. And yeah, children are being raped and shot and ripped from their mutilated parents in these very moments, but the show must go on, right? Can’t let a little genocide stop the party.
So what if a few thousand miles away an entire country is being wiped off the map with the taxes of your fanbase, you got a gig to do, merch to move, a few more homes to add to the mere three dozen or so you’re being forced to make do with.
You’ve dismissed Macklemore for having the audacity to choose integrity over the paycheck, for giving a damn about thousands of brown-skinned people who can’t buy concert tickets or boost your streaming numbers, and you’re going to bravely carry on with business as usual, playing the part of the happy, humble white savior of soccer moms and suburban preteens everywhere.
You’ll continue packing out stadiums, basking in the breathless adoration of a mix of the uninformed, the lazy, and the heartless; people who either don’t know what’s going on in Palestine or who simply don’t care enough to be inconvenienced enough to opt out (though you could inform and inspire them).
And you’ll get up there awash in spotlights and the intoxicating roar of an army of the most privileged people on the planet. You’ll wear that grinning everyman facade you’ve perfected. You’ll joyfully churn out your loops and whirl around in the middle of a massive sea of humanity (the largely white kind, the kind whose worth and safety might actually matter enough to you for you to get “political,” as you did with Ukraine, btw).
I’m sure it’ll be a blast… but not the kid-killing IDF kind.
But I wonder if the crowds at the shows will sing loud enough to cover the screams erupting from the rubble of Palestine. I wonder if the stratospheric tour revenue will be worth the suffering you’ve ignored to get it.
Maybe I’m being too hard on you. Maybe you’re really struggling with this. Maybe you’re going to have a change of heart and show some courage and something resembling a spine, and allow your humanity to take the lead. Maybe I’ll end up apologizing to you for underestimating you. I would welcome that, because it would mean you decided to leverage your privilege to save the lives of people who are being treated like animals.
But right now, Ed, for a guy who’s made a fortune with words, it’s your silence is most telling. You are choosing to say nothing, and there is a cost to that, too. Unfortunately, you won’t be the one paying the highest price.
Maybe you are exactly what they say you are. Maybe you’re a coward, or worse. Maybe the people of Palestine aren’t worth the show guarantees you’d have to part with to stand up to the bullies and the Zionists. Maybe it isn’t that you’re not willing to take sides (because you have been), but that the Palestinian people don’t fall within the borders of your empathy or the comfort of your courage.
I suppose no matter how successful and powerful someone gets, every person has their price, and yours was a 10-city tour.
The Palestinian people deserve our discomfort, Ed. They deserve to be on our breath because the voices of white people can carry their cries to people in the world who need to hear them, despite how uneasy it makes them.
It’s just really sad that with the size of the stage and the reach of the microphone you’ve been handed, and with the voice you’ve been given that could resonate so loudly on behalf of imperiled human beings, you have such moral laryngitis now.
Enjoy the rest of the tour, Ed… knock ‘em dead out there.
Free Palestine.
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so there we all were, just trying to make it though another fucked-up Monday, when out of the clear blue, we got hit with the News of the Century:
after three months of being hidden away from the public, Mitch McConnell was on his way to the Senate.
holy shit-kadoodle, Batman! he’s alive!
but then we got the video of The Esteemed Senator Turtlehump being wheeled out of his terrarium, and it was a big bowl of what in the actual fuck?
what bill of goods are we being sold here?
okay, there’s Mitch, clearly most sincerely not dead — but does he really look alive? we see him being wheelchaired from his doorway to his waiting car, but do we really see any sense of cognition — any sign at all that Mitch has any idea where he is, or what is happening to him?
even presidential side-piece Laura Loopy was all what on God’s green shitpile are they trying to pull?

Like I said, Mitch is brain dead. You can’t look at his face and say he’s not a vegetable. He’s not even responding to cognition tests. It’s like wheeling a corpse around. Worse than what the Democrats did with Joe Biden to be honest. He looks incapacitated. Brain dead.
the thing is, Laura’s not wrong. (I mean, not the part about Joe Biden, duh.) Mitch is clearly unwell.
later, when the MitchBot5000 showed up in the Senate, reporters were banned from recording video.

Some more photos of McConnell as he returned to the Senate for the first time in three months following a fall at his D.C. home.
Reporters were barred from recording video
perfectly normal stuff, am I right?
please do not record the senator while he is making grunting noises and shitting himself.
I mean, how do we know that’s not what Mitch is doing? they won’t allow us to find out.
could Mitch McConnell’s handlers kindly stop pissing on our heads and telling us it’s raining? it’s been over three months since McConnell was found unconscious on the floor of his house, and taken away in an ambulance. in all that time, there hadn’t been one single shred of evidence that Mitch was cognizant, or even alive. now that he’s finally here in front of us, all we want is an answer to a single question: is he competent to do his job? but instead of getting any answer from Team Mitch, we’re just cordially invited to go fuck ourselves.
what the hell? if McConnell is actually aware of his surroundings, why can’t we get any proof of it?

this is not how a functioning government works. this is how a clown show works.
wheeling a Zombie Mitch from location to location is just elder abuse at this point. why is he being dog-and-ponied around? is it because he grunted ‘iwaaaagwrrrrg’ and one of his handlers went, ‘Mitch says he wants to go to work’?
fuck off, Mitch. stay home. you’ve had a long, distinguished career of being the most evil person in the Senate, making life worse for We the People. bravo. job well done.
now step down, and try to enjoy what remains of your life.
* * *
there really need to be term limits, or age limits, in the Senate. look at Chuck Grassley. he’s 92. this session, he’s going to be expected to vote on things like data centers and AI. does he have the capacity to understand those issues? and it’s a bipartisan problem. three years ago, Democrat Dianne Feinstein died while in office at age 90. like McConnell, she had absent from the Senate for months, and when she finally returned, it was obvious that her brain had gone fuckity-bye.
When the fellow reporter asked her what the response from her colleagues had been like since her return, though, the conversation took an odd turn.
“No, I haven’t been gone,” she said.
four months after that conversation, she dropped dead. here’s what I wrote at the time.
look: I get why ancient Senators refuse to step down. it’s a cush job. the perks are awesome: power. free healthcare. a staff. travel. your face on TV. you don’t really have to work very hard, and you get shitloads of time off. and if you live in a safe, deeply-red or deeply-blue state, you don’t even have to campaign all that strenuously.
hell, I wouldn’t quit that job. would you?
of course you wouldn’t. you had to pry Dianne Feinstein’s job out of her cold, dead hands. is Mitch McConnell next?
come on, this shit ain’t supportable. term limits, now.
here’s some other cheery news we got yesterday. it turns out that some Putin-linked Russian oligarch bankrolled First Failson Cokey McSniffles’ lavish, private-island wedding.

New: Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev footed the bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars of wedding expenses at Donald Trump Jr.’s lavish wedding, including renting out a private island and paying for the fireworks show.
perfectly normal stuff, am I right? I mean, who among us hasn’t had some corrupt crony of Putin’s drop a couple-hundred thou in our lap, so we can get hitched in style?
National security experts expressed alarm at Trump Jr. accepting the oligarch’s largesse, saying it raised an urgent question: What motivated Kremlev to spend a fortune cultivating the connection?
“If I’m paying for your wedding, at some point, you’re going to owe me something,” said Frank Montoya Jr., a retired career FBI official who held senior counterintelligence roles.
no fucking duh. of course Mister Oligarch is going to expect something in return. that’s how this ‘enjoy your free wedding’ shit works. at this point, I think I’d be shocked if Donny and his family managed to do something that wasn’t corrupt.
naturally, House Republicans swore to get to the bottom of this scandal, vowing to immediately open hearings.
no, wait — what am I saying? Republicans didn’t promise to do any of that shit. instead, they had the most predictable response in the universe: look over there, it’s Hunter Biden!
Florida Rep Anna Paulina Luna: “there’s no evidence. we opened an investigation into Hunter Biden because of the evidence in the laptop that specifically pertained to influence peddling, and unless there’s a laptop that comes out with specific criminal evidence, I don’t think that opening up an investigation into Don Jr.’s wedding party is something that’s a good use of taxpayer dollars.”
holy shit, An Appalling Lunatic is more brain-dead than Mitch McConnell. not this again. there was never any Hunter Biden laptop. what there was, was a tampered-with hard drive that someone claimed had come from Hunter Biden’s laptop.
in Don Jr.’s case, we don’t need anyone to gin up fake evidence. we’ve got evidence up the yin-yang. over to you, ProPublica.
Kremlev footed the bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars of wedding expenses, according to records reviewed by ProPublica and interviews with three people familiar with the event.
In response to detailed questions, a spokesperson for Trump Jr. did not dispute the wedding payments from Kremlev. “Umar is a personal friend of Don,” he said.
can someone please copy the ProPublica article onto a laptop, and claim it came from Hunter Biden? maybe we can trick these Republican shitweasels into investigating it.
yesterday, the dumbest fucking moron in the known multiverse spent an entire day power-loading an infinite series of diapers, because AI.

Concerning AI, when, in the History of Business, did anyone see the Leaders of an Industry call for Regulation that, if strongly implemented, will drive them into oblivion and bankruptcy? AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX.
what Dear Leader was reacting to were the multiple stories that have been in the news lately about how the three largest AI honchos have all called for putting the brakes on the current race to build the smartest six-fingered plagiarism robots possible, lest these super-smart AIs start running wild and doing shit we can no longer control.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay asking that the pace of capability advance be slowed and committing his own company to embed outside evaluators with employee-level access. Sam Altman agreed and said OpenAI would do likewise. Elon Musk … wrote three words: “Dario is right.” Three rival laboratories in the most valuable commercial race on earth asked to be restrained, against their own immediate interest.
and that came right on the heels of this cheery news.

For three years, Jacob Coxon helped train increasingly powerful AI systems at OpenAI and Anthropic. On Sept. 8, he walked away.
“I resigned from Anthropic today,” Coxon posted on X. “Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.” His dire warning amassed more than 90 million views in less than 24 hours.
tell me, is is bad when the guy who helped invent the tech gets so terrified of what he’s done that he quits his job and starts blowing the whistle — and then, his own boss and the boss’s cronies go ‘he’s right, this shit’s hella bad’?
That sounds pretty fucking terrifying to me. isn’t that the plot of umpteen science fiction books any movies — some rogue AI decides that humanity needs to be killed to death — or turned into batteries?

literally everyone is concerned right now that the rush to build ever-smart AIs is a bad idea that’s in need of regulation: We the People, our elected officials — and even the homies who built the damned things. shouldn’t that tell you that something in fact needs to be done?
oh no, wait. there’s one dumb asshole who’s totally down with letting AI do its evil, unregulated thing — and he’s pulled out his favorite word: hoax.

I am the Hoax Buster, and I’m right now breaking another Hoax — That AI is going to take over, consume, and destroy the World, and that Robots will be marching into our Cities, and getting rid of us all! This is even wilder than the RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA HOAX, or the Global Warming Scam. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP
this fucking idiot — everything he doesn’t like is a hoax. yeah, as if the tech bros now clanging the alarms are hoaxing themselves. cool stor
why is Donny so dead-set against regulating the development of plagiarism robots ? because, as Robert Reich reports in his post from this morning, he and his failsons stand to make a mint off of AI tech.
So what explains Trump’s absolute refusal to regulate AI? Could it possibly be that he and his family have personal financial stakes in it?
Indeed, Donald Jr. and Eric Trump have invested substantially in American Data Centers, a firm created to support AI cloud computing and AI infrastructure.
remember what I said earlier about how, ‘at this point, I think I’d be shocked if Donny and his family managed to do something that wasn’tcorrupt’?
but Donny says not to worry, because he knows more about six-fingered plagiarism robots than all the six-fingered plagiarism robots — and he knows exactly what’s needed to keep things from getting out of hand.
So what explains Trump’s absolute refusal to regulate AI? Could it possibly be that he and his family have personal financial stakes in it?
Indeed, Donald Jr. and Eric Trump have invested substantially in American Data Centers, a firm created to support AI cloud computing and AI infrastructure.
but Donny says not to worry, because he knows more about six-fingered plagiarism robots than all the six-fingered plagiarism robots — and he knows exactly what’s needed to keep things from getting out of hand.

The only control or “guardrails” that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT
so that’s all we need, to keep from ending up as batteries to power the matrix? a smart president?
oh shit, we’re fucked.
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Now I’ve got The Lonely Goatherd as an earworm the rest of the day.
No, not this version:

That file still makes me laugh.
I don’t remember the context under which I created it, other than the screaming goat was sort of an inside joke between myself and a coworker at DISH in response to something our horrible supervisor did.
Said coworker was the closest thing I’ve ever had to a work husband, but I cut off all contact after we moved back to Phoenix and he admitted he voted for Trump in 2016. It was kind of a surprise because he was a very liberal guy.
Gawd…I don’t even remember his name at this point.

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Chris is only one of two artists whom I’ve written (as in a handwritten, ink on paper) who has ever responded. For that reason alone, he remains one of my favorite Ambient/New Age artists
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I am so tired of the phlegm, of the goop, of the snot. I am so tired of the acid reflux. I am so tired of the itching that becomes nearly unbearable after dark and how small blisters are still forming after a total of twelve weeks of prednisone that have caused leg swelling and blood-sugar readings that are off the chart. I am so tired of not being able to feel anything in my lower left jaw and lip. But most of all, I am so tired of not being able to swallow. The other night I dreamt I was eating and I can’t tell you how satisfying it was to feel the food going down normally and not ending up in my windpipe. Alas, it was only a dream.
Yeah, I’ve made adjustments to my physical life, but emotionally I’ve still not fully caught up. Ben brought a big, juicy burrito home for lunch today that he offered to split with me. Earlier, his dad dropped off some pastries from a French bakery. I could have put either one in the Ninja and turned them to liquid, but some days it’s just not worth the effort.
All I know is that a year ago before the sugery if I knew what the situation would be 12 months later, I would never have gone through with ANY of it.
And with that I’ll close for tonight. I’m going to go devote my full attention to the remainder of Celebration before heading to bed. Tomorrow’a new day, no doubt full of fresh horrors, but we’ll deal with them as they come. So get a good night’s sleep my friends.I know I shall try.
❤️ you all.
—MA
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impeach_the_imposters:
In December 2024, Adam Zarnowski, ex-CIA agent and author of Jörmungandr was personally involved in an NSA‑authorized forensic audit of the 2024 election. He says; “Kamala Harris and Tim Walz won—by a wide margin. Trump lost dramatically. There are multiple layers of complexity to this cover‑up, including transnational organized crime syndicates that extend far beyond the United States and our elections. To that point, I work in the human trafficking sector, which intersects with the stolen election(s) and has ties to Trump and Epstein—not to President Biden, Vice President Harris, or Governor Walz, but to the allied interests responsible for burying the audit.” — Adam Zarnowski, ex-CIA agent and author of Jörmungandr.
That’s all very well and good, but when wil any of these criminals be punished for their crimes? Felon 45 is pretty much off limits—for now—but Musk? Haul his ass in!
And more than anything else right now, JUST ONCE, I’d like to see someone’s fist wipe that smirk off Felon 45’s face. Seriously.
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A massive federal clash just DETONATED.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed an executive order barring federal ICE agents from entering any city-owned property without a judicial warrant. The bold directive covers public schools, shelters, and hospitals to protect immigrant rights. Is this crucial sanctuary protection, or dangerous defiance of federal immigration law?
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When HE claimed FBI agents had been ushering January 6th rioters into the Capitol, SHE told him directly there was no evidence of that.
When HE insisted the 2024 California elections were being rigged in real time, SHE asked for evidence.
When HE said all he had to do was look, SHE pushed back again: “But that’s not evidence,” she said, calmly and without flinching.
SHE pressed him on his abandoned $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, demanding a straight answer on whether he was backing off it completely.
SHE confronted him on the 170 people who pleaded guilty to assaulting police officers on January 6th.
SHE cited his own words back to him on his “no new wars” pledge and refused to accept his attempts to rewrite history.
And HE responded the way he always does when cornered: he called her names, turned an ungodly shade of orange, and stormed off.
SHE. DIDN’T. FLINCH.
If ANY other president had behaved like this, we’d never let him live it down.
Why is the 34x convicted felon special?
To borrow from Tiedrich:

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adhd_memetherapy: The grocery industry in New York City spent decades pulling out of low-income neighborhoods, then charged those same people more when they were forced to shop at their relocated stores. Now the city wants to open five stores of its own, one per borough, in those exact neighborhoods, selling groceries around 30 percent cheaper so that working-class people can have an affordable option. The supermarket lobby is distraught because their overpriced food can’t possibly compete with stores that don’t run on the hyper greed model that every corporation in this country runs on or learned to implement in their MBA programs. So instead of competing, like the system of capitalism was designed for, they’re trying to sue to stop it before a single one of these city run marts opens. Five stores in the Bronx and Harlem aren’t going to bankrupt anybody. What scares them is a city proving in public that it can feed people cheaper than they do without price gouging everyone. And look at who’s actually paying for the lawsuit. It was filed with the backing of the America First Policy Institute, Larry Kudlow’s Trump think tank, which has never cared about a bodega in the Bronx in its life. They’re in it because Chicago and Atlanta are already looking at copying this, and if a socialist mayor in the biggest city in the country shows that the government can sell you eggs for less than Kroger can, every other city is going to want one too, and there goes the story they’ve been telling us for fifty years about how the private sector always does it better.
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