Would be an excellent time for more people to learn more about the Philippines.

Episode 443: Crashing in Mindanao

We’re joined by Bernadette from Bayan USA to talk about counter insurgency in Mindanao and the Philippines — and why a U.S. Marine just died in a surveillance plane crash.

Before there was AI slop there was auto-tuned slop.

And it ultimately flopped. The market became saturated with a product that people associated with flat, tinny, overly-electronic music. People scrambled to get away from it, and we got a mini-folk revival with lots of acoustics and more traditional instrumentals as a result.

In the same way, we’re seeing a scramble to get away from AI music saturation. I don’t think it’ll ever go away (any more than auto-tune did). But it creates a demand for something distinctively not-AI as a result.

One of the primary appeals of early streaming platforms (first via MySpace and then later through services like Napster and Pandora) was the opportunity to explore outside your normie musical tastes. For folks who weren’t living in some major metroplex with an active indie music scene, this was a reliable way to find new music and get outside whatever your parents had on repeat in the car on the way to school.

The modern scene has exploited a desire for “newness” in the abstract and stuffed everyone’s feeds with AI slop. But there is still a demand for media broadcasts outside the ClearChannel “Top 3 Pop Songs on a Loop” and Oldie “Mandatory Metallica” stations that go beyond what you have already listened to.

How do you fill your local collection if you aren’t listening to stuff outside your local collection?

Brother, I quoted from it.

Court documents filed at the trial of alleged double agent William Majcher reveals that at least 25 Canadian residents were targeted by Chinese police under an anti-corruption program, which doubled as a tool of transnational repression.

Hey, uh… what were these people being charged with again?

Xiao Jianhua and his company Tomorrow Holdings were charged with embezzlement and bribery, a court in Shanghai said.

Xiao and his firm were found guilty of “illegally absorbing public deposits, breaching trust in the use of entrusted property… [and] illegal use of funds,” a statement from the Shanghai court quoted by AFP said. It also said Tomorrow Holdings was guilty of the “crime of bribery”.

I’m trying to imagine a Western response to Chinese diplomats leaping to defend Sam Bankman-Fried or Jordan Belfort.

Actually, I don’t have to imagine, because Changpeng Zhao literally ran scams in China, fled to the United States, ran scams in the United States under the protection of the US consulate, and finally pissed off enough people that he ended up in a US federal prison. At which point he lobbied the President for a pardon and is right back out scamming people again.

US and Russia

It’s so funny to see a few US tech plutocrats going whole hog on Alberta separatism, US media fullying buying into the scam, and US O&G companies frothing for one more captured oil rich territory to govern under a de facto dictatorship.

And then the Brits - who are going through their own fascist transformation - come tiptoeing in to watch from the sidelines. There’s no mention of who owns Canadian social media. There’s no mention of which accounts are spreading disinformation. They don’t even link to the fucking joint-report that the article draws on.

We just get a casual “Yeah, Russia did it”. Empty head. No thoughts. Canada is so fucked.

Globalize the Intifada Azov Battalion

Ukraine is getting stronger

I’ve seen this line repeated ad nauseam since the war started. Can’t count how many predictions of a dramatic reversal fell flat. We get them at least twice a year.

Ukraine can trade small amounts of land to allow Russia to grind its self down

Russia is never going to “run out” of manpower or materials. It’s the world’s largest contiguous landmass, home to 150M people, and a trillion dollar economy that is second only to the US in arms manufacturing. This has always been a question of political capital. At what point does the United Russia political block sour on the war, in the same way Americans soured on Iraq and Afghanistan.

The problem with fascist states is that they can actually persist and thrive on an endless conflict. Americans wrote the textbook on the Forever War. But we’ve seen Turkiye and Israel and Russia all crib generously from it.

Both countries are functionally out of gas.

It’s cool that they managed to do this without flattening all of Hungry’s major urban and industrial centers.

I’m really proud of the restraint the rest of the EU/US showed.

a motion was passed in Canada, 266 to 0, recognizing the CCP’s actions against Uyghurs as genocide.

Were these the same folks that gave Yaroslav Hunka a standing ovation?

The same folks that continue to sell arms to Israel?

And collaborate with US ICE agents on mass deportation?

CBCWatcher

Why are we taking advice from a reactionary billionaire-funded media critic with a vested interest in US economic hegemony?

A lot more than that. But this isn’t really in response to the airstrikes on the Iranian territory. It’s more a result of the assassination of Iranian leadership and the disintegration of even war-time diplomatic relations.

These three particular individuals have been sitting on death row for a long while. These particular executions were deferred, on the theory that they might be traded for Iranian agents and diplomats seized abroad. Since diplomatic ties have degraded to the current point, there’s no real expectation that a trade of intelligence officers is possible, so there’s no value in simply jailing them any longer. Huge value in having a high profile execution for public morale.

Qatar’s premier international news source isn’t a huge fan of Indian Communists.

Improper implementation of dictatorship.

Iran has resumed attacks

Live Updates: U.S. sinks 6 small Iranian boats as Iran launches attacks on UAE and ships in Strait of Hormuz

Hey! No fair! Stop hitting back!!

Mr. Trump said over the weekend that he’d likely reject the Iranian proposal, as “they have not paid a big enough price.”

I was told the war was over and we’d won.

A Chinese diplomat’s warning against Canadian parliamentarians visiting Taiwan and Canadian naval vessels transiting the Taiwan Strait

🎼 One of these things 🎶

🎵 Is not like the other 🎶

he must urgently rethink his ties to China

STOP BUYING CHEAP EVs! YOU ARE SHOWING WEAKNESS!

BUY MORE F-150s! AMERICAN CAR = STRENGTH!