Friday links! Decay of the art of lying edition

Mark Twain, in no way the Gary Cohn of his day

In 1882, Mark Twain published “On the Decay of the Art of Lying,” an essay lamenting the disappearance of quality falsehoods from the world. Twain’s complaint wasn’t that people had stopped lying. It was that they were lying poorly—”injudiciously,” as he puts it, which neatly captures the elements of both technical sloppiness and tactical unwisdom. “I sometimes think it were even better and safer not to lie at all than to lie
injudiciously,” he writes. “An awkward, unscientific lie is often as ineffectual as the truth.” I’m sure he didn’t mean that and only let his emotions get the better of him. But his words have become true in the 21st century: ill-conceived, injudicious lies—lies without even internal coherence—threaten to reduce all statements, true and untrue, to the same ineffectual broth. Today is Friday, and we’re all Just Sayin’ Stuff now. Won’t you stop even trying to make your lies sound true with me?

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Charter to Missoula: Screw you, we have a monopoly

The high-speed internet market (artist's conception)

The market for high-speed internet (artist’s conception)

I work from home, so when the internet stops working, I have a bad time. One such bad time was had throughout Missoula yesterday, when Charter internet service went down for the whole damn town. The Missoulian confirms the outage, but it doesn’t offer much else. Maybe that’s because even reporters can’t communicate with Charter except through their customer service call center, where a representative from the company would not say why the outage happened, when it would be fixed, how many customers were affected or what her own name was. Later in the day, a company spokesman declined to say most of the same things, although at least he offered his name. I hope the negative publicity from this failure doesn’t affect Charter’s busine—oh, right. They have a monopoly.

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Friday links! Corporatocracy edition

jammer5_corporate_us_flag

I’m not saying it’s a conspiracy, but “Kleenex” is in the Mac OS spellchecker where “corporatocracy” is not. Postindustrial America is the land of the free, meaning that government has declined to struggle with multinational corporations for control of our lives. Multi-thousand dollar insurance that doesn’t cover doctor visits? Fine, as long as it keeps government out of health care. Refusal to regulate high-efficiency killing machines that the vast majority of Americans want controlled? Whatever you say, paid lobbyists of gun manufacturers. Today is Friday, and the wolves want to set you free from the shepherds. Won’t you bleat plaintively with me?

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