New piece. If you like it please share. open.substack.com/pub/thelater...

A telltale sign of fascism is the hollowing out of the public and the exultation of privatization. Along with this comes a devaluing of professors, doctors, and intellectuals. Learn to recognize the signs.

Whoever is not willing to talk about Capitalism should also keep quiet about Fascism. —Max Horkheimer

Happy Met Gala

Looks like they’ve renamed the American economy ChatGDP

Since he likes religious imagery so much

In Straub’s Ghost Story and King’s It the creatures (Alma and Pennywise, respectively) are referred to as the same thing (what natives called a “manitou”). Further, Salem’s Lot, Ghost Story, and It have a LOT of similarities. Surprised more hasn’t been made of this. @club-stephenking.bsky.social

The layoffs aren’t going anywhere. At least you should know why. open.substack.com/pub/thelater...

@spavel.bsky.social Why’d this make me think of you?

Some light reading

Can you imagine if people were dying in U.S. hospitals because another country had shut their power off???

Ping ping

Sick and tired of journalists (and coaches) acting like there’s a positive correlation between the depth of a question and how much they struggle to articulate it. Makes nearly every interview on NPR an insufferable circle jerk.

So I tried the Jeff Daniels sandwich….

I worked 18 hours yesterday. F that!

Do not be torn between feeling you can do nothing about the way things are and feeling you have to do everything. What we need is more and more people realizing they can do a little, and then doing it. open.substack.com/pub/thelater...

Managers that do layoffs should have to hear about what they’ve done to people and their families. Creating jobs that pay living wages can and should be a reason for businesses existing.

Ok peeps I’m going to give Bluesky another shot. Why is this the place to be?

@stephenking.bsky.social Question for fans or the King himself. It really seems like Straub’s Ghost Story is inspired by King’s Salem’s Lot and that King’s It is in turn inspired by Ghost Story. Thoughts? Super fun and fascinating if true.

New article. thelaterallens.substack.com/p/demanding-...

According the the WSJ, the US is running out of ammunition. It has been supplying so much to Ukraine and Israel that there isn’t much left. Trump hopes to disarm Iran before this becomes apparent. Simulations suggest that in a war with China the US would run out of ammo in a matter of days.

Instead of asking how many people communism killed in the 20th century, why not ask how many people have needlessly died because the USSR was dismantled? Why not ask how many people capitalism has killed?

In other news, apparently Bad Bunny not singing in English is a bigger deal than the Epstein emails.

Any society that would be fundamentally different if its working class had an actual say in how its economy functions is an oppressive society, end of story.

Amen

A: Making higher education free would greatly reduce the significance of getting a college degree. B: College is artificially kept prohibitively expensive to help maintain our class system. C: You’re both saying the same thing.

You can’t make this stuff up. Canada throws in the towel on its much hyped “Victims of Communism” memorial after realizing that the majority of names they were going to inscribe on it were of Nazis. ottawacitizen.com/public-servi...

At least they get to feel morally superior about it

What if Captain America was actually more like Galactus? open.substack.com/pub/thelater...

Stories contain frames. Frames contextualize interpretation. A frame shared by enough people is invisible. It’s “just the way things are”, the background against which the figure emerges in contrast. Just because a frame is unnoticed doesn’t mean it’s not there. open.substack.com/pub/thelater...

If we really want to “make America great again” then the focus needs to be on labor organizing, extreme regulation of corporations, governmental oversight of big tech, and wealth taxes. We will not return to the heyday of working class jobs without the politics that prioritized workers.

After what is perhaps its second-longest hiatus of its 13-year history, my blog will be back on Monday. Thank you for your patience as I switched careers.

A full 50% of all consumer spending is now done by the richest 10% of the population and the swelling AI bubble, if it pops, will be 4x larger than the 2008 crash. This is not sustainable, but hey, as long as the rich get richer.

Convincing you that liberals are leftists is perhaps the greatest trick capitalists ever pulled.

In George Romero’s LAND OF THE DEAD, the zombies become class conscious, which I guess makes the living dead smarter than most Americans.

Over a third of U.S. GDP growth is spent on data centers. This has now outpaced consumer spending. The AI hype machine is holding up our failing economy, and the bubble could easily burst. finance.yahoo.com/news/spendin...

This wins the fucking internet

When people would ask if you had any plans for the fall, people used to assume you were talking about autumn. Not anymore.

My great-grandparents were murdered in Buchenwald. I know what I’m seeing, too.

The Department of Justice has removed a study showing that white supremacist and far-right violence “continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism” in the United States. 🔗 www.404media.co/doj-deletes-...

Neoliberalism is collapsing, and the West no longer has a living, breathing leftist/labor movement to counter the rising tide of reactionary fascism that is filling the void.

People really need to start connecting the dots. The whiffs of fascism we keep getting are no accident.

This is gold