Shocked by how many large company websites are just forever broken now. Companies no longer care if anything works.

@rpm

Wondering if the attitudes of the Epstein Class contaminate the mainstream.

"Distributed income" is the new euphemism for employment precarity.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/henriktotterman/2026/03/22/from-lifetime-employment-to-distributed-income/

Rich folk want to only pay for labor when they need it.

The training, the logistics, the wait times, the preparation & planning -- they don't want to pay for any of it.

They ignore what happens in crisis when there's not enough talent ready to go & available in a crunch, crisis, or peak period.

1/

From Lifetime Employment To Distributed Income

Professional stability is shifting from single-employer careers to portfolio-based models. Leaders now manage multiple roles, income streams, and networks.

Forbes

2/

They ignore proven practices for resilience like redundancy.

They just see it as paying people to loaf around, not as paying fire fiighters between 911 calls.

Paying a medical specialist for their 10 years of preparatory training is viewed as a waste.

Their attitudes towards labor have pernicious impacts on business.

Web sites that aren't maintained is just one example.

Cory Doctorow describes the huge waste of Uber drivers constantly driving around the downtown core waiting & unpaid

The Billionaire Oligarchs Funding Project 2025’s ‘Unpopular, Self-Enriching Policies’

Fmr. Adviser for Bernie Sanders Campaign David Sirota explains to Mehdi how Project 2025 has been in the making for years now.

Zeteo

4/

Andrew Mellon, Tim Mellon's grandfather, advocated for the same self-dealing corruption of today's MAGA faithful.

"critics of the Harding administration saw the Mellon appointment as a sign that Harding would "reseat the power of special privileged interests, the powers of avarice and greed, the powers that seek self-aggrandizement at the expense of the general public."

"Mellon believed that economic recessions, such as those that had occurred in 1873 and 1907, were a necessary part of...

5/

... the business cycle because they purged the economy.

In his memoirs, Hoover wrote that Mellon advised him to "liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate. Purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. ... enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people."

Social darwinism "Purging the economy" attitudes towards the labor force laid the groundwork for disastrous policy like...

6/

... Smoot-Hawley, directly attributable to the onslaught of empire building in Italy, Japan, & Germany and then WW2.

"Half-court tennis" policies with global impact as historian S.C.M. Paine describes it.
https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/sarah-paine-japan

In the 1920's a small number of self-serving corrupt oligarchs set in motion policies that would domino & trigger WW2 and caused 90 million deaths.

All because of elite attitudes towards the 99% as 'undeserving' of good jobs & stable employment.

Sarah Paine — Why Japan lost WWII (lecture & interview)

Continuing our WWII series: the ideas and economics behind Japanese imperialism and the fatal flaw in their military culture that cost them the war

Dwarkesh Podcast

@Npars01 'recessions are good because they purge the economy' -- this puts "drain the swamp" in a whole new light: to them, we are the swamp. The government programs they destroy, which keep the world stable and prosperous, are the swamp.

The corruption we think of as "the swamp" is, to them, the goal of the entire system: personal wealth (victory) for the "winners" who played the game right, which means making the right "friends".

Making the world more chaotic just makes the game more interesting, to them.

@Npars01 They don't understand how "the swamp" is necessary for their wealth.

They're like a parasite that hasn't figured out it needs to not kill the host -- a cloud of mosquitoes that will bleed us dry because they can, believing that their "success" at "making blood" proves they should.

Cancerous manifest destiny.

@woozle

Andrew Mellon, like his allies & descendants, had eugenics belief systems.

https://bylinetimes.com/2025/12/05/how-epstein-channelled-race-science-and-climate-culling-into-silicon-valleys-ai-elite/

https://slate.com/technology/2026/03/jeffrey-epstein-files-dna-eugenics-transhumanism.html

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/02/epstein-emails-eugenics-chomsky-altruism-billionaires/

https://jacobin.com/2019/08/jeffrey-epstein-billionaire-sex-offender-elite-eugenics

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/business/jeffrey-epstein-eugenics.html

https://www.ms.now/news/epstein-emailed-with-silicon-valley-elites-about-racist-eugenicist-ideas

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/01/jeffrey-epstein-seed-human-race-report

https://www.splcenter.org/resources/reports/john-tantons-private-papers-expose-more-20-years-hate/

The Tanton Network, Clairemont Institute, Scaife Foundation, Colcom Foundation
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/01/24/capitalism-is-smartphones-and-eugenics/

https://www.fastcompany.com/91490280/epstein-files-how-ultra-wealthy-peddle-climate-denialism

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2026/03/14/eric-fassin-sociologist-the-epstein-case-reveals-the-absolute-power-of-men-who-by-flaunting-their-transgressions-declared-themselves-above-the-law_6751426_23.html

https://newrepublic.com/article/140951/trump-gets-fuzzy-border-math

https://americasvoice.org/press_releases/millers-support-for-white-supremacist-groups-puts-spotlight-on-the-foundations-and-donors-who-fund-them/

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How Epstein Channelled Race Science and 'Climate Culling' Into Silicon Valley’s AI Elite

The Epstein files expose how racial hierarchy, genetic “optimisation” and even climate-driven population culling circulated inside Big Tech circles

Byline Times
Pioneer Fund

Started in 1937 by textile magnate Wickliffe Draper, the Pioneer Fund's original mandate was to pursue "race betterment" by promoting the genetic stock of those "deemed to be descended predominantly from white persons who settled in the original thirteen states prior to the adoption of the Constitution."

Southern Poverty Law Center
@Npars01 Remember what those "Georgia Guidestones" said about population?

@Nazani

Does anyone want to live in a post-apocalyptic world possessed by racist mini-Musk's?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones

Georgia Guidestones - Wikipedia

@Npars01 No to the Musklings. But, I am probably the wrong person to ask about a post-apocalyptic world. What I watch for stress relief:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVI-MVWBgqw&list=PLob1mZcVWOaioqL7walgL9p5tPhyYYem0
Life After People: Bodies Decay After Mankind's Annihilation (Season 1) | History

YouTube

@Nazani

I remember watching that series.

I was amused by the idea of a stainless steel sink lying in a stream being the last remnant of the human species.

Not buildings. Not some monument to a tyrant. A kitchen sink.

@Npars01 I was touched by parrots being the last species to speak human words. But mostly I loved seeing vegetation cover everything.