Biden has done more to undermine the US empire in the last 8 months than Trump did in 4 years. Biden is exposing the contradictions of US empire in a way that Trump could never.

If Trump was president, then the mainstream narrative would be that the genocide in Gaza was simply because of Trump and Bibi's leadership. And you know what? Given how past presidents were able to rein in Israel when polite society started sympathizing with Palestinians, it would be believable. Instead, we get to see front and center, how a man that's been at the top echelons of us foreign policy for decades approves and supports genocide. This is the establishment's genocidal war.

In other words, Trump is perceived as an aberration, even when hes just continuing the same US foreign policy that weve been doing for decades. Moving the embassy to Jerusalem is still framed as entirely Trump's decision, even though he was just enacting a policy that Biden voted for in the 90s. And of course Biden did nothing to reverse that move, or even try to extract concessions to move peace talks forward.

Biden is damaging the "international rules-based order" in a way that would make Dick Cheney blush. Bush at least tried to put a veneer of international law on the criminal invasion of Iraq. But it appears the US and Israel are ready to burn the UN to the ground in order to carry out this genocide. Trump would be doing the same exact thing, except he would also serve as a scape goat for the liberal order (just get trump out of office, and we can go back to rule-following)

Don't get me wrong, they're both excellent accelerationist candidates. The world is watching two senile, hateful, egotistical vile men fight for control of the empire as the world burns.

Looking for recommendations of music podcasts. The only one I listen to is Afropop worldwide, which is one of my favorite podcasts/radio shows . I realize there aren't a ton of straight-up music podcasts because of copyright issues, but what have you got?

Their original intro was a banger. It's something like a ringtone trying to do pop punk. 5 seconds into the intro, the hosts start telling you the upcoming stories as the music fades in and out. A host tells the date and her name, then the other hosts introduce themselves. 40 seconds in, the show starts. The whole time that song was fun. A+ intro. I would have no problem listening to the intro anywhere.

Compare that to their current intro. It's a slow dollar store Brian eno jingle that swells as you hear the most cliche'd clips about what science is. You have an old professorial European talking about "data". You have an annoying kid asking a question about light. 40 seconds into the intro, and you're just getting the headlines. That just takes a few seconds, then you're forced to suffer through 10 more seconds of the Brian eNot.

An example of the old intro: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02159-6 after just 5 seconds you're hearing about mollusk fossils

Example of the new intro: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01230-1 It's cringe. I would die if someone heard that intro coming from my car (still a good podcast though).

I recently got a Sony prs 600 e reader from 2009. The battery is at the end of its life (It lasts about 3 days with heavy reading, and a couple weeks without reading). No backlight, no Wi-Fi, just an SD card that I can load epub files and small PDFs. The screen is slow and the contrast isn't the best. The "touch screen" is the old resistive type where you really need to press with your nail or a stylus. Despite all those flaws, it's fantastic. It's just good enough for reading books.

I read with large text so I don't even need to put on glasses, and it's easier to read than an actual book. Combined with Anna's archive, I'm reading more than I ever have before. No Wi-Fi nd slow screen make the experience feel closer to an actual book than a smartphone. It's great to just have a device do one thing without distractions popping up every minute.

It's all old technology, but it's so rare to see anyone with an e-reader. Probably because they're still expensive and designed to microtransact the fuck out of you.

So do you think there could be a simple open source e reader? I see pine64 is making the "pinenote", but it's still just the developer version, it's expensive, doesn't have an sd card, and looks like it's trying to be a lot more than an reader. Maybe it'll come down in cost, or they'll release a simpler version? The biggest obstacle for making an e-reader seems to be the screen, so maybe the pinenote's screen could become something of a standard.

Or maybe I'm overthinking it, because there's already so many old Kindles and nooks out there that could be improved with a new battery and maybe new firmware too.

Thoughts?

I need y'all to understand: Biden isnt losing votes from the far left. He never had those votes, and could never get them.

He's losing the votes of Muslims and Arabs in Michigan and Philly. He's losing the votes of moderates who are watching Israel's final solution in horror. He's losing the votes of Latinos and Haitians who see the southern border is getting more militarized and more violent every year

[Edit] to be 100% clear: If you oppose Israel's war on Palestine, but plan on voting for Biden this November,this post isn't about you.