If someone has to work to make money they are not rich. It doesn't matter what they do to work or how much they get paid. They are still selling their time and labour to someone else. They are being exploited by their employer even if they are "self-employed".

People who work are not the problem with the world.

The people who are a problem are the people who do not work but still make money from unearned rentier incomes. Landlords, patent holders, shareholders and more. People who earn money while sound asleep in their beds. People who make money without lifting a finger. People who make money by breathing in and out.

These people used to be aristocrats. Now they are oligarchs and plutocrats. They are presidents too.

The French had a good idea about what to do with these people in 1789. The Russians took up the idea in 1917. The Spanish tried too and so have others around the world too.

Right now it is more important than ever to kick out the jamms (motherfuckers) and all around the world too. The future of humanity depends on it.

#pollitics #economics #rents #work #KickOutTheJamms

#Ring cancels #Flock deal after dystopian #SuperBowl ad prompts mass outrage

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/02/after-creepy-super-bowl-ad-sparks-outrage-ring-abandons-flock-deal/

#SearchParty #privacy #pollitics #surveillance

You've probably heard about tariffs on penguins, but how that happened is even more depressing.

These morons asked chat GPT about tariffs and it came back with "trade deficit over import ratio" as a formula to calculate current rate (might be from some academic model, but definitely doesn't reflect real values).

That chart is just a fancy spreadsheet with hidden export & import columns, and "Reciprocal rate" is rounded half of that made up value with 10% minimum.

#pollitics #trump

AN AMAZING INTERVIEW: "He's Survived the LA #Wildfires for 96 Hours. Here's WHAT HE SAW"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kweylOyDWto #news #pollitics #press #losangeles #california #usa #podcast #CaliforniaWildFires #russia #climate #video #sociamedia #media #trump #us #climatechange

Sunday Morning Reading

We may not have started the fire. In the words of Billy Joel, “it was always burning.” Still we can always try and fight it. I’m not sure how that’s working out but it does seem to be our lot. Sifting through smoke and ashes, here’s a little Sunday Morning Reading to share.

Kicking things off is David Todd McCarty’s Looking for God, Sitting in Hell. Summed up nicely, “we get so lost in semantics that we forget the important parts.” Indeed.

David Sterling Brown tells us What Shakespeare Revealed About the Chaotic Reign of Richard III – And Why The Play Still Resonates In The Age of Donald Trump. The only thing I question is the word “still” in the headline. There’s not a moment of being human that isn’t contained in the stories and characters of Shakespeare. We haven’t invented a new way of being good, bad or indifferent in quite some time.

And while we’re on the literature beat Brian Klaas give us Faustian Capitalism. Again, there’s nothing new under the sun here as we watch this country’s wealthiest men bend their knees in supplication, but there’s some small comfort in knowing we’ve been this selfishly stupid before.

John Pavlovitz hits a nail on the head with The California Fires Are a Disaster. The American Cruelty Is A Tragedy. It may be beyond our capacity to comprehend devastation, but as the previous two entries show, it shouldn’t be beyond our ability to know we keep repeating the same mistakes.  Or maybe that’s really just the hell we’re living?

Speaking of Faustian bargains, Mike Masnick lays out The Good, The Bad, And The Stupid In Meta’s New Content Policies.

This piece should scare you, but again, its subject is as old as humankind’s penchant for inhumanity. Stephanie McCrummen shines a bit of light as The Army Of God Comes Out Of The Shadows.

Derek Thompson takes a look at The Anti-Social Century and how our reality is changing as we spend so much of our time alone.

Perhaps one of the keys to being less alone and less anti-social is choosing your friends wisely. Natasha MH says that “To survive this life, it’s crucial to discern which friends are worth keeping and which aren’t. You are the guardian of your own peace of mind” as she lays out The Optimist’s Dilemma In A Pessimistic World.

And finally, Ian Dunt offers A Little Bit Of Hope After A Terrible Week, in what he calls a survival guide for the next four years. Ian says “History has no direction.” He’s correct. It’s a circle, a cycle, a carousel.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here.  You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. You can also find me on social networks under my own name.

#books #Culture #Faust #History #Meta #Pollitics #reading #Shakespeare #SocialMedia #SundayMorningReading #Tech #williamShakespeare