Shunpike: The Road Less Travelled

Cartoonist E. J. Barnes on art, life, the comics and cartooning industries, and green things in general.

[ejbarnes]

Harvard Square's 41st Annual MayFair - Harvard Square Business Association

Sunday, May 31st, 2026 11am-6pm Rain Date June 7th Music, Dancing, Beer Gardens, Artisans, Food, Vendors, Crafts and Patios! The Harvard Squ

See you in Harvard Square tomorrow for MayFair! My booth will be on Mount Auburn Street near Million Year Picnic.

[ejbarnes]

JUNE 2026 Zoom reading: “The Death of Granny Fernandez” (with Intro)

E. J. gives her 5th Zoom reading of 2026, Blaster Al's story “The Death of Granny Fernandez”, with Introduction to The Davenport Continuum

My voice isn't 100% back up to recording standards yet, so I regret to announce that the Zoom reading of "The Death of Granny Fernandez" is postponed yet again -- to 21 June. So there's still plenty of time to sign up!

[ejbarnes]

May 2026 Zoom reading: “The Death of Granny Fernandez” (with Intro)

E. J. gives her 5th Zoom reading of 2026, Blaster Al's story “The Death of Granny Fernandez”, with Introduction to The Davenport Continuum

The May Blaster Al Ackerman Zoom reading is "The Death of Granny Fernandez" (with an Introduction to The Davenport Continuum). The performance is this COMING Sunday, 31 May at 8 PM EDT. Sign up below and I'll email you with the Zoom link on that day.

Story Synopsis: Edgar Allan Poe Messenger editor Stark Lee Davenport, the Old-South Poet of Richmond, VA, is given a copy of a scandalous counterfeit version of his own magazine, only to find himself caught in a trap of recursive narrative.

(Content warnings: Alcohol abuse, ethnic slurs, attempted grant fraud, identity theft, unsolicited homosexual flirting, mail hoaxes, four-letter words, incest, madness, miscegenation, arson, necrophilia, mopery, murder, infanticide, congenital feeble-mindedness, spirit channeling, narcotic abuse, hallucination, slurs against the disabled, cafeteria fights, bad poetry, desecration of corpses, sexual slang, sexual situations, suicide, disability fetishism, prescription abuse, injury to the eye motif, Confederates in the attic and elsewhere. Recommended for listeners aged 18 and up.)

We gratefully acknowledge the permission granted for this performance by the Estate of Will Greathouse. This performance is dedicated to the late Lon Spiegelman.

This is part of a series of Blaster Al Ackerman readings on Zoom. Readings for 2026:

· Sunday, 25 January: “2,976 Vienna sausages”

· Sunday, 22 February: “Ack’s Wacks: The Macaroni Column”

· Sunday, 22 March: “The Day When Money Will Be Found in the Streets”

· Sunday, 26 April: “The Fool”

· Sunday, 31 May: “Introduction to The Davenport Continuum”/“The Death of Granny Fernandez”

· June: “Heaving Las Vegas”

· July: “Floaters”

· August: “I Taught My Dog to Shoot a Gun”

· September: “Blind Ka”

· October: “The Squid Boys of Terre Haute”

· November: “Miss Mantis”

· December: “Red Flies”

Exact dates for future 2026 readings TBA.

[ejbarnes]

Wicked Comic Con is this Saturday at the Westin Boston Seaport District -- and I'll be at Table BD 414! The show is FREE 10 AM -- 5 PM at 425 Summer Street, Boston.

Official Boston Wicked Comic Con Website

A 100% Boston homegrown show dedicated to comic books, comic book creators, comic book art, and cosplay.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

In praise of vultures

I’m coming to GUELPH, ONTARIO THIS FRIDAY (May 8) to deliver the Musagetes Lecture.

One of my bedrock beliefs is that capitalists really hate capitalism. They may name their beloved institutes after the likes of Adam Smith, but they ignore everything Smith had to say about the necessity of competition to keep markets from turning into monopolies:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/09/commissar-merck/#price-giver

The theory of capitalism holds that markets are a kind of distributed computer that aggregates trillions of decisions from billions of market participants in order to optimize production and distribution of goods and services, creating a "Pareto-optimal" world where no one can be made better off without making someone else worse off.

Whether or not you believe that this computer exists and functions as predicted, one indisputable fact about it is that it requires the freedom to choose in order to work. The point of market-as-computer is that it aggregates decisions, so it can only work if everyone is as free as possible to decide.

But that's not the world capitalists want. For capitalists, the point is to restrict other people's choices in order to maximize your own freedom. That's how we get economic doctrines like "revealed preferences": the idea that if a person says they want one thing, but does another thing, then you can tell what they really prefer by looking at the latter and disregarding the former. This is the kind of doctrine you can only fully embrace after sustaining the kind of highly specific neurological injury that is induced by taking an economics degree, an injury that makes you incapable of perceiving or reasoning about power. Under the doctrine of revealed preferences, someone who sells their kidney to make the rent has a revealed preference for only having one kidney:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/30/players-of-games/#know-when-to-fold-em

Capitalism is supposed to run on risk: the risk of being overtaken by a competitor drives businesses to deliver better services more efficiently, thus producing a bounty for all. But capitalists really hate risk, hence the drive to monopoly: Mark Zuckerberg admitted, in writing, that he only bought Instagram so that he wouldn't have to compete with it ("It is better to buy than to compete" -M. Zuckerberg):

https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/20/if-you-wanted-to-get-there/#i-wouldnt-start-from-here

Capitalists hate capitalism, but they love feudalism. Feudalism is like capitalism, in that you have a ruling class that creams off the surplus generated by labor; but under feudalism, society is organized to protect rents (money you get from owning stuff) over profits (money you get from doing stuff). The beauty of rents is that they are insulated from risk: if you own a coffee shop, you're in constant danger of being put out of business by a better coffee shop. But if you own the building and your coffee shop tenant goes under, well, you've still got the building, and hey, now it's on the same hot block as the amazing new cafe that's driving its competitors out of business:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

Douglas Rushkoff calls this "going meta": don't drive a taxi, rent a medallion to a taxi driver. Don't rent a medallion, start a ride-hailing app company. Don't start a ride-hailing company, invest in the company. Don't invest in the company, but options on the company's shares. Each layer of indirection takes you further from the delivery of a useful service – and insulates you further from risk:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/13/collapse-porn/#collapse-porn

Monopoly is to capitalism as gerrymandering is to democracy, a way to strip out any meaningful choice. Think of the two giant packaged goods companies that fill your grocery aisles: Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Practically everything on your grocer's shelves is made by a division of one of these two massive conglomerates. If you try to "vote with your wallet" by buying a low-packaging version of a product, it's going to be sold to you by the same company that sells the high-packaging version. If you switch to an artisanal brand of cookies made by a local family business, Unilever or P&G will buy that company and issue a press release declaring that they made the acquisition because they know "their customers value choice":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/18/market-discipline/#too-big-to-care

Gerrymandering strips your vote of any impact on political outcomes. Monopoly strips your purchases of any ability to influence economic outcomes. Wrap both of them in "revealed preferences" and you get a system that endlessly narrates its ability to deliver choice, and then blames your misery on your having chosen badly.

This is the method of the entire conservative project. As Dan Savage says: the thing that unites conservative assaults on voting, birth control, abortion and no-fault divorce is the stripping away of choice. Conservatives are trying to create a world populated by husbands you can't divorce, pregnancies you can't prevent or terminate, and politicians you can't vote out of office. Add to that Trump's assault on the National Labor Relations Board, his reversal of the FTC's ban on noncompetes, and his protection of "TRAP" agreements that force employees to pay thousands of dollars if they quit their jobs, and you get "jobs you can't quit":

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/09/germanium-valley/#i-cant-quit-you

Conservative strongmen like Trump and Musk exalt the value of self-determination – for themselves, at everyone else's expense. Trump's ability to stiff the contractors that built his hotels and Musk's ability to rain flaming rocket debris down on the people who live near his company town require that everyone else be stripped of protections. They get to determine their own course in life by taking away your ability to determine your own. Their right to swing their fists ends two inches past your nose:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/21/torment-nexusism/#marching-to-pretoria

Cheaters and bullies hate the rule of law, hence Trump's endless repetition of Nixon's mantra: "When the president does it, that means it is not illegal." But not everyone can be president, and the world is full of would-be Trumps in positions of power who would like to be able to commit crimes without fear of legal repercussions. For these people, we have something called "binding arbitration."

"Binding arbitration" is a widely used contractual term that forces you to surrender your right to sue a company that wrongs you. Instead of suing, binding arbitration forces you to take your case to an "arbitrator"; that is, a lawyer who is paid by the company that cheated you or maimed you or killed your loved one. The arbitrator decides whether their client is guilty, and, if so, how much that client owes you. The entire process is confidential and it is non-precedential, meaning that if a company rips off millions of people in the same way, each of them has to arbitrate their claims separately, and people who are successful can't share their tactical notes with the people who are next in line to plead for justice.

That makes binding arbitration another key weapon in the conservative movement's war on choice: not just jobs you can't quit and politicians you can't vote out of office, but also companies you can't sue. Binding arbitration is a creation of the Federalist Society and their champion Antonin Scalia, who authored a series of Supreme Court dissents and (ultimately) decisions that opened the door for binding arbitration everywhere:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/27/shit-shack/#binding-arbitration

Given the Fedsoc's role in shoving binding arbitration down every worker and shopper's throat, it's decidedly odd that they invited Ashley Keller to be their keynote debater in 2021, where he argued that "concentrated corporate power is a greater threat than government power":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY5MrHGjVT8

Keller is a powerhouse lawyer, and an avowed conservative, who has pioneered many tactics for overcoming binding arbitration clauses. He helped create "mass arbitration," bringing thousands of arbitration cases on behalf of Uber drivers who'd had their wages stolen by the company. Since Uber has to pay the arbitrators in each of those cases, they faced a much larger bill than they would face in any possible class action suit:

https://www.reuters.com/article/otc-uber-frankel-idUKKCN1P42OH/

Mass arbitration cases spread to all kinds of large firms that used petty grifts to steal from thousands or even millions of people, like Intuit, who deceive – and rip off – millions of Americans every year with their fake Turbotax "free file" system:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/24/uber-for-arbitration/#nibbled-to-death-by-ducks

Mass arbitration worked so well that Amazon actually revised its terms of service to remove binding arbitration from their terms of service, because they realized that they'd be better off facing class action suits:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/02/arbitrary-arbitration/#petard

Of course, the point of binding arbitration was never to create a streamlined system of justice – it was to bring about a world of no justice, where you have no right to sue. It's part of the decades-old "tort reform" movement that the business lobby has used to take away your right to sue altogether. Any time you hear about a seemingly crazy lawsuit (like the urban legends about the McDonald's "hot coffee" case), you're being propagandized for a world without legal consequences for companies that defraud you, steal from you, injure you, or kill you:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/12/hot-coffee/#mcgeico

That's why companies (like Bluesky) are now trying terms of service that also ban you from mass arbitration, while retaining the right to consolidate claims into a mass arbitration case if that's advantageous to them:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/15/dogs-breakfast/#by-clicking-this-you-agree-on-behalf-of-your-employer-to-release-me-from-all-obligations-and-waivers-arising-from-any-and-all-NON-NEGOTIATED-agreements

But Keller keeps finding creative ways around binding arbitration. He's currently bringing thousands of arbitration claims against Google, on behalf of advertisers whom Google stole from (Google is a thrice-convicted monopolist, and they lost a case last year over their monopolization of ad-tech, where they were found to have defrauded advertisers).

He also just argued before the Supreme Court in a case against Monsanto over the company's attempt to escape liability for causing cancer in farmworkers with their Roundup pesticide:

https://www.npr.org/2026/04/27/nx-s1-5793804/supreme-court-monsanto-roundup-arguments

Keller appears in the latest episode of the Organized Money podcast, for a fascinating interview about his work and outlook, and how he reconciles his work fighting corporate power with his identity as a movement conservative:

https://www.organizedmoney.fm/p/the-conservative-who-torments-big

Keller's first big, important point is that (basically), capitalists hate capitalism (see above). He cites Milton Friedman, who "always said that the tort system is the best way to ensure that companies behave and follow the rules." For Keller (and Friedman) the alternative to private litigation against bad businesses is "government regulation and the alphabet soup of Washington, DC agencies [that] try and police these companies."

But, of course, the businesses that want binding arbitration and tort reform (so they can't be sued) also want to "dismantle the administrative state" (so they can't be regulated). They're the impunity movement, the "when the president does it, that means it is not illegal" movement, the "heads I win, tails you lose" movement. They're the caveat emptor movement, the "that makes me smart" movement:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/04/its-not-a-lie/#its-a-premature-truth

They don't want efficient markets, with the ever-present threat of a better competitor putting them out of business. They want feudalism. They want to go meta. They want to have the kind of self-determination you can only achieve by taking away everyone else's self-determination.

I was very struck by Keller's claim to be engaged in an exercise that Milton Friedman identified as the best one for making markets work. One of Keller's most forceful points is that class action suits are especially important for reining in petty, recurrent grifts, the junk fees that are the hallmark of enshittification.

He quotes his old boss, the archconservative judge Richard Posner, who said "Only a lunatic or a fanatic sues for $20." But if you multiply a $20 junk fee by ten million purchases, a company can use that fact to make hundreds of millions of dollars. That's real folding money, which is why every company has figured out a way to whack you for a $20 junk fee.

There are two ways to end this racket: one is litigation, the other is regulation, and the capitalism-hating-capitalists who run the world want to kill both. That's why the business lobby smears lawyers like Keller as being "vultures." But as Matt Stoller says, "vultures look aggressive and whatnot, but when you actually get rid of vultures out of an ecosystem, all sorts of things go haywire."

I love this point. Vultures live off the disgusting, rotting crap that would otherwise pile up around us, breeding disease and emitting an unbearable stench. If plaintiff-side, no-win/no-fee lawyers are vultures, then junk fees, wage theft, and the million petty frauds they fight are the disgusting, rotting crap that vultures feed off of – and the harder we make it for our noble vulture lawyers, the more disgusting, rotting crap we have to live with, hence the unbearable stench that is all around us.

Listening to Keller was a fascinating exercise. I thoroughly disagree with him about many things – the way he characterized Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act couldn't have been more wrong – but it's quite bracing to hear a capitalist who doesn't hate capitalism defend it against the vast majority of capitalists, who hate capitalism more than any socialist ever did.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/06/champerty-loves-company/#circle-of-life

[ejbarnes]

Remember: Capitalism is not an ideology, it is a system. And you are not a capitalist unless you have capital. (Also: He's referencing an old anarchist joke: Two anarchists were talking about the pragmatic limits of absolute individual freedom. One says to the other, "Why, I should be free to punch you in the nose!" The other replies, "Your freedom ends where my nose begins.")

[fu-boss]

Real life Road Runner

[sahonithereadwolf]

Looney Tunes is real and happening outside.

[dancing-crow]

good lord its feet really do spin around in a circle when going fast

[ejbarnes]

Meep Meep

[ejbarnes]

April 2026 Zoom reading: “The Fool”, by Blaster Al Ackerman

E. J. Barnes gives her fourth Zoom reading of 2026, Blaster Al Ackerman’s occult essay, “The Fool”.

This coming Sunday evening, 26 April, at 8 PM EDT, is my next Blaster Al Zoom reading, his occult essay "The Fool". You'll need me to email you the Zoom link, so sign up on EventBrite now!

Story Synopsis: Dr. Ackerman discusses the relative merits of differing portrayals of the “Fool” card from the Greater Arcana of the Tarot.

(Content warnings: Occult references, scatological references, ethnic slurs and stereotypes, vampirism, allusions to unsanitary sexual practices, urine, developmental disorders, insanity, nudity, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, allusion to strategies for preventing child sexual abuse, and perverted Roman emperors. Recommended for listeners aged 18 and up.)

We gratefully acknowledge the permission granted for this performance by the Estate of Will Greathouse. This performance is dedicated to Gerald Simonsen.

This is part of a series of Blaster Al Ackerman readings on Zoom. Readings for 2026:

Sunday, 25 January: “2,976 Vienna sausages”

Sunday, 22 February: “Ack’s Wacks: The Macaroni Column”

Sunday, 22 March: “The Day When Money Will Be Found in the Streets”

Sunday, 26 April: “The Fool”

May: “Introduction to the Davenport Continuum”/“The Death of Granny Fernandez”

June: “Heaving Las Vegas”

July: “Floaters”

August: “I Taught My Dog to Shoot a Gun”

September: “Blind Ka”

October: “The Squid Boys of Terre Haute”

November: “Miss Mantis”

December: "Red Flies"

Exact dates for future 2026 readings TBA.

[ayeforscotland]

All due respect to Tumblr staff for listening and rolling back a feature that was obviously not what people wanted. Like, doing that is actually commendable.

[ejbarnes]

I'd mercifully missed this little cock-up.

[ejbarnes]

Blaster Al Zoom reading: “The Day When Money Will Be Found in the Streets”

E. J. Barnes gives her third Zoom reading of 2026, Blaster Al Ackerman’s short story, “The Day When Money Will Be Found in the Streets”.

This Sunday at 8 PM EDT is when I'm giving this month's Blaster Al Ackerman Zoom reading, of his story "The Day When Money Will Be Found in the Streets". Follow the link to sign up on EventBrite, so I can send you the Zoom link on the day of the reading!

Story Synopsis: Red has a close encounter with a talking hog maw.

(Content warnings: Implied sexual activity, raw meat, alcohol abuse, political terrorism, hallucinations, animal cruelty, pyromania, suicidal ideation, clinical insanity, run-on sentences. Recommended for listeners aged 14 and up.)

We gratefully acknowledge the permission granted for this performance by the Estate of Will Greathouse.

This is part of a series of Blaster Al Ackerman readings on Zoom. Readings for 2026:

Sunday, 25 January: “2,976 Vienna sausages”

Sunday, 22 February: “Ack’s Wacks: The Macaroni Column”

Sunday, 22 March: “The Day When Money Will Be Found in the Streets”

April: “The Fool”

May: “Introduction to the Davenport Continuum”/“The Death of Granny Fernandez”

June: “Heaving Las Vegas”

July: “Floaters”

August: “I Taught My Dog to Shoot a Gun”

September: “Blind Ka”

October: “The Squid Boys of Terre Haute”

November: “Miss Mantis”

Exact dates for future 2026 readings TBA.

[ejbarnes]

February 2026 Zoom reading: “The Macaroni Column”, by Blaster Al Ackerman

E. J. Barnes gives her second Zoom reading of 2026, Blaster Al Ackerman’s essay, “Ack’s Wacks: The Macaroni Column”.

This is a reminder that this Sunday, 22 February at 8 PM EST, I'll be giving another one of my Zoom readings of a Blaster Al Ackerman story. This one is "Ack's Wacks: The Macaroni Column", which I thought might be appropriate, or perhaps inappropriate, for Valentine's month.

You need to sign up on EventBrite so I'll know to email you the Zoom link on the day of the performance. The reading (though not the Zoom meeting as a whole) will be recorded, and later posted on my Vimeo channel.

Story Synopsis: “When four readers of this magazine, one right after another, sent letters that complimented me on my most recent column I knew there must be something wrong…Their letters seemed to assume that my column had been about macaroni….”

(Content warnings: Profanity in multiple languages, false memory, corpses, necrophilia, racist gambling games, practicing medicine without a license, malnutrition, sexual situations, foul odors, train accidents, circus “freaks”, freak accidents, malapropisms. Recommended for listeners aged 18 and up.)

We gratefully acknowledge the permission granted for this performance by the Estate of Will Greathouse. This performance is dedicated to Monty Cantsin.

This is part of a series of Blaster Al Ackerman readings on Zoom. Readings for 2026:

Sunday, 25 January: “2,976 Vienna sausages”

Sunday, 22 February: “Ack’s Wacks: The Macaroni Column”

March: “The Day When Money Will Be Found in the Streets”

April: “The Fool”

May: “Introduction to the Davenport Continuum”/”The Death of Granny Fernandez”

June: “Heaving Las Vegas”

July: “Floaters”

August: “I Taught My Dog to Shoot a Gun”

September: “Blind Ka”

October: “The Squid Boys of Terre Haute”

November: “Miss Mantis”

Exact dates for future 2026 readings TBA.

[ejbarnes]

30 Jan--1 Feb I took a 3-day watercolor workshop with Tim Saternow, under the auspices of the New England Watercolor Society. The workshop was held at the Guild of Boston Artists on Newbury Street. These are the pieces I painted based on photos I'd taken in 2012 in Latvia. Both were scenes from Rīga, Latvia, when I was there for the month of March 2012 during my Projekt NOASS art residency: one of the famous Cat House in Rīga's Old Town (Vecrīga), the other of a wooden windmill moved from the province of Zemgale to the Latvian Ethnographic Open-Air Museum on the east side of the city.

Both of these pieces are too big to fit on my already large (12" x 17") scanner, so I scanned each in 3 passes; then I stitched the pieces together in Photoshop. Since whatever side of the scan "sticks out" is likely to be distorted by curling up from under the lid of the scanner, I cropped each scan on the side in question -- both sides, in the case of the middle scan. I recently learned -- by accident, really -- a good way to figure out how to overlap the layers: Change the mode of the adjoining layers from Normal to Multiply. This way, it's easy to see how the layers overlap, including while rotating one of the layers to line up properly with the other. But both layers have to be reset to Normal before being merged, and all layers need to be Normal before flattening (i.e. merging into one single layer for the whole document). I did this when scanning the pencils before the workshop, and I did it today with the color scans.

[keepthedelta]

possibly the best ever piece of american sports journalism

[fumblrina]

EASILY the best ever piece of [us]american sports journalism. I’m weeping

This is @zoesupreme level sports commentary, I won’t accept anything less

[ejbarnes]

We had our badminton set in the side yard. I don't remember having to throw things to get the birdie out of the tree -- even though there was an oak at one end of our "court" and a crabapple at the other.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Trump antitrust is dead

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/13/khanservatives/#kid-rock-eats-shit

Remember when the American right decided that it hated (some) big businesses, specifically Big Tech? A whole branch of the Trump coalition (including JD Vance, Matt Gaetz and Josh Hawley) declared themselves to be "Khanservatives," a cheering section for Biden's generationally important FTC commissioner Lina Khan:

https://www.fastcompany.com/91156980/trump-vp-pick-j-d-vance-supports-big-tech-antitrust-crackdown

Trump owes his power to his ability to bully and flatter a big, distrustful coalition of people who mostly hate each other into acting together, like the business lobby and the grievance-saturated conspiratorialists who hate Big Tech because they were momentarily prevented from calling for genocide or peddling election disinformation:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/18/winning-is-easy/#governing-is-harder

The best framing for the MAGA war on Big Tech comes from Trashfuture's Riley Quinn, who predicted that the whole thing could be settled by tech companies' boards agreeing to open every meeting with a solemn "stolen likes acknowledgment" that made repentance for all the shadowbanned culture warriors whose clout had been poached by soy content moderators.

And that's basically what happened. Trump's antitrust agencies practiced "boss politics antitrust" in which favored courtiers were given free passes to violate the law, while Trump's enemies were threatened with punitive antitrust investigations until they fell into line:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/29/bondi-and-domination/#superjove

Trump's antitrust boss Gail Slater talked a big game about "Trump Antitrust" but was thwarted at every turn by giant corporations who figured out that if they gave a million bucks to a MAGA podcaster, they could go over Slater's head and kill her enforcement actions. When Slater's deputy, Roger Alford, went public to denounce the sleazy backroom dealings that led to the approval of the HPE/Juniper merger, he was forced out of the agency altogether and replaced with a Pam Bondi loyalist who served as a kind of politburo political officer in Slater's agency:

https://abovethelaw.com/2025/08/former-maga-attorney-goes-scorched-earth-with-corruption-allegations-in-antitrust-division/

Bondi made no secret of her contempt for Slater, and frequently humiliated her in public. Now it seems that Bondi has gotten tired of this game and has forced Slater out altogether. As ever, Matt Stoller has the best analysis of how this happened and what it means:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/trump-antitrust-chief-ousted-by-ticketmaster

Stoller's main thesis is that the "conservative populist" movement only gained relevance by complaining about "censorship of conservatives" on the Big Tech platforms. While it's true that the platforms constitute an existential risk to free expression thanks to their chokehold over speech forums, it was always categorically untrue that conservatives were singled out by tech moderators:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

Conservative populists' grievance-based politics is in contrast with the progressive wing of the anti-monopoly movement, which was concerned with the idea of concentrated power itself, and sought to dismantle and neuter the power of the business lobby and the billionaires who ran it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/20/we-should-not-endure-a-king/

The problem with conservative populism, then, is that its movement was propelled by the idea that Big Tech was soy and cucked and mean to conservatives. That meant that Big Tech bosses had an easy path out of its crosshairs: climb into the tank for MAGA.

That's just what they did: Musk bought Twitter; Zuck ordered his content moderators to censor the left and push MAGA influencers; Bezos neutered his newspaper in the run up to the 2024 elections; Tim Cook hand-assembled a gold participation trophy for Trump live on camera. These CEOs paid a million dollars each for seats on Trump's inauguration dais and their companies donated millions for Trump's Epstein Memorial Ballroom.

Slater's political assassination merely formalizes something that's been obvious for a year now: you can rip off the American people with impunity so long as you flatter and bribe Trump.

The HP/Juniper merger means that one company now supplies the majority of commercial-grade wifi routers, meaning that one company now controls all the public, commercial, and institutional internet you'll ever connect to. The merger was worth $14b, and Trump's trustbusters promised to kill it. So the companies paid MAGA influencer Mike Davis (who had publicly opposed the merger) a million bucks and he got Trump to overrule his own enforcers. Getting your $14b merger approved by slipping a podcaster a million bucks is a hell of a bargain.

HP/Juniper were first, but they weren't the last. There was the Discover/Capital One merger, which rolled up the two credit cards that low-waged people rely on the most, freeing the new company up for even more predatory practices, price-gouging, junk-fees, and strong-arm collections. When the bill collectors are at your door looking for thousands you owe from junk fees, remember that it was Gail Slater's weakness that sent them there:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/03/business/dealbook/capital-one-discover-merger.html

Slater also waved through the rollup of a string of nursing homes by one of the world's most notoriously greedy and cruel private equity firms, KKR. When your grandma dies of dehydration in a dirty diaper, thank Gail Slater:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/09/dingo-babysitter/#maybe-the-dingos-ate-your-nan

Slater approved the merger of Unitedhealth – a company notorious for overbilling the government while underdelivering to patients – with Amedisys, who provide hospice care and home health help:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-requires-broad-divestitures-resolve-challenge-unitedhealths-acquisition

The hits keep coming. Want to know why your next vacation was so expensive? Thank Slater for greenlighting the merger of American Express Global Business Travel and CWT Holdings, which Slater challenged but then dropped, reportedly because MAGA influencer Mike Davis told her to.

Davis also got Slater to reverse her opposition to the Compass/Anywhere Real Estate merger, which will make America's dysfunctional housing market even worse:

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/real-estate-brokerages-avoided-merger-investigation-after-justice-department-rift-e846c797?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqdSXg4z1XPl2UpqdHR4V2-sNj9M7oDcWHscPIXuSU-5n0gtYEv8Q5XZG7qtzfY%3D&gaa_ts=698e44a6&gaa_sig=IO7tWGaHZSYER64YyUzyoiVtrOKR77ZsYMMOdwN1P7koRt9zXYRJ1hxw2oDU9cD40-aGgHHVfwMWg14olFwNaw%3D%3D

It's not just homebuyers whose lives are worse off because of Slater's failures, it's tenants, too. Slater settled the DoJ's case against Realpage, a price-fixing platform for landlords that is one of the most culpable villains in the affordability crisis. Realpage was facing an existential battle with the DoJ; instead, they got away with a wrist-slap and (crucially) are allowed to continue to make billions helping landlords rig the rental market against tenants.

So Slater's defenestration is really just a way of formalizing Trump's approach to antitrust: threaten and prosecute companies that don't bend the knee to the president, personally…and allow companies to rob the American people with impunity if they agree to kick up a percentage to the Oval Office.

But while Slater will barely rate a footnote in the history of the Trump administration, the precipitating event for her political execution is itself very interesting. Back in September, Trump posed with Kid Rock and announced that he was going after Ticketmaster/Live Nation, a combine with a long, exhaustively documented history of ripping off and defrauding every entertainer, fan and venue in America:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/ftc-sues-ticketmaster-saying-it-uses-illegal-tactics-to-make-fans-pay-more-for-live-events

At the time, it was clear that Trump had been prodded into action by two factors: the incredible success of the Mamdani campaign's focus on "affordability" (Ticketmaster's above-inflation price hikes are one of the most visible symptoms of the affordability crisis) and Kid Rock's personal grievances about Ticketmaster.

Kid Rock is the biggest-name entertainer in the Trump coalition, the guy Trump got to headline a MAGA halftime show that notably failed to dim Bad Bunny's star by a single milliwatt. Trump – a failed Broadway producer – is also notoriously susceptible to random pronouncements by celebrities (hence the Fox and Friends-to-Trump policy pipeline), so it's natural that Kid Rock's grousing got action after decades of documented abuses went nowhere.

Ticketmaster could have solved the problem by offering to exempt Trump-loyal entertainers from its predatory practices. They could have announced a touring Trumpapalooza festival headlined by Kid Rock, Christian rock acts, and AI-generated country singers, free from all junk fees. Instead, they got Gail Slater fired.

Mike Davis doesn't just represent HPE/Juniper, Amex travel, and Compass/Anywhere – he's also the fixer that Ticketmaster hired to get off the hook with the DoJ. He's boasting about getting Slater fired:

https://x.com/gekaminsky/status/2022076364279755066

And Ticketmaster is off the hook:

https://prospect.org/2026/02/12/trump-justice-department-ticketmaster-live-nation-monopoly/

What's interesting about all this is that there were elements of the Biden coalition that also hated antitrust (think of all the Biden billionaires who called for Lina Khan to be fired while serving as "proxies" for Kamala Harris). And yet, Biden's trustbusters did more in four short years than their predecessors managed over the preceding forty.

Stoller's theory is that the progressive anti-monopoly movement (the "Brandeisians") were able to best their coalitional rivals because they did the hard work of winning support for the idea of shattering corporate power itself – not just arguing that corporate power was bad when it was used against them.

This was a slower, harder road than dividing up the world into good monopolies and bad ones, but it paid off. Today the Brandeisians who made their bones under Biden are serving the like of Mamdani:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/15/unconscionability/#standalone-authority

And their ideas have spread far and wide – even to other countries:

https://lewisforleader.ca/ideas/public-options-full-plan/

They lit a fire that burns still. Who knows, maybe someday it'll even help Kid Rock scorch the Ticketmaster ticks that are draining his blood from a thousand tiny wounds. He probably won't have the good manners to say thank you.

[mckitterick]

if the swinging pendulum of politics continues its usual reactionary bop, the next two elections (assuming this country continues to offer elections) will give voters the opportunity to sweep out so much trash that we might actually see real, lasting progress that strips billionaires and their all-powerful corporations of their stranglehold over the world

[ejbarnes]

February 2026 Zoom reading: “The Macaroni Column”, by Blaster Al Ackerman

E. J. Barnes gives her second Zoom reading of 2026, Blaster Al Ackerman’s essay, “Ack’s Wacks: The Macaroni Column”.

I'm giving another free Zoom reading of a Blaster Al Ackerman story, in this case the "essay" "Ack's Wacks: The Macaroni Column". The reading is on Sunday, 22 February, at 8 PM EST. To get the Zoom link, sign up on the EventBrite link above. On the day of the reading I'll send an email to those who signed up.

For those unfamiliar with the art and/or writing of the late mail artist Blaster Al Ackerman (1939--2013), he was the author of the Ling Master stories, on which I based (with his permission) the Tales of the Ling Master comics. These stories show the clear influence of the old "pulps" on his work.

I chose this piece for February because it is one of Blaster Al's more romantic pieces, albeit (like most everything Blaster wrote) in questionable taste. So be careful to read the content warnings on the EventBrite page before agreeing to subject yourself to the performance.

The performance (but not the entire Zoom call) will be recorded (with me pinned, so I'm the only person included in the performance). The recording will then be posted on my Vimeo channel, so that even if you miss the Zoom call you'll be able to view the reading within 24 hours afterward. (Or anytime afterward, really.)

[junflower123]

[fvlter]

I was gunna put this in the tags but it’s a lot. When i first started going through the process of getting a diagnosis, i was labelled with ODD. I immediately took issue with this, it seemed like an unfair diagnosis based entirely on the session the psychiatrist had with my parents (which mostly consisted of “my child is being really difficult on purpose”), and Hoo Boy when i tell you ODD immediately strips you of your ability to call out anyone on anything, that would be an understatement. I couldn’t even disagree or bring up my concerns about the validity of MY OWN DIAGNOSIS without it being labelled as oppositional defiance. Whenever i displayed any negative emotion the “treatments” did so much more harm than good. When you label someone as ‘defiant’ (ugh), when that word is put on their medical record, that person is never allowed to complain about anything again. Knowing that POC are disproportionately affected with this diagnosis makes me feel sick, i can only imagine what’s being swept under the rug as someone just being “defiant to authority”, not even just in the medical field but as justification for police brutality and mass incarceration. When i say medical racism kills people, this is what i mean.

[noodle-the-queen]

this is so fucking important. reblog.

[ejbarnes]

January 2026 Zoom reading: “2,976 Vienna Sausages, by Blaster Al Ackerman

E. J. Barnes gives her first Zoom reading of 2026, Blaster Al Ackerman’s classic short story, “2,976 Vienna Sausages”.

My first Blaster Al Ackerman Zoom reading for 2026 is his classic story, "2,976 Vienna Sausages" -- just 3 days from now! The reading is THIS Sunday, 25 January at 8 PM EST. Sign up now on EventBrite to receive the Zoom link for this FREE performance of a story that I adapted as a short comic, which has appeared as a mini-comic and in Shattered Wig Poetry Review. I will email you with the link on the day of the event.

Please arrive promptly so the reading can start and finish within a reasonable time. No one will be admitted from the Zoom waiting room after the reading begins. This reading (though not the entire Zoom session) will be recorded. Recording will be posted at https://vimeo.com/ejbarnescomics

Story Synopsis: Plopman attempts to impress the attractive blonde in the apartment across the courtyard by building a suit made entirely of Vienna sausages. The coming months of this project bring to light a number of problems he failed to anticipate.

(Content warnings: Sexual and scatological references, partial nudity, alcohol abuse, food wastage and putrefaction, hallucinations, fire hazards, and flies. Recommended for listeners aged 12 and up.)

We gratefully acknowledge the permission granted for this performance by the Estate of Will Greathouse.

This is part of a series of Blaster Al Ackerman readings on Zoom. Readings for 2026:

Sunday, 25 January: “2,976 Vienna sausages”

February: “The Macaroni Column”

March: “The Day When Money Will Be Found in the Streets”

April: “The Fool”

May: “Introduction to the Davenport Continuum”/”The Death of Granny Fernandez”

June: “Heaving Las Vegas”

July: “Floaters”

August: “I Taught My Dog to Shoot a Gun”

September: “Blind Ka”

October: “The Squid Boys of Terre Haute”

November: “Miss Mantis”

Exact dates for future 2026 readings TBA. If you have to miss the January reading, I'll have the recording up on my Vimeo channel no later than the following day.

[saywhat-politics]

Attorney general announces the arrest of at least 2 people involved in a Minnesota church protest

Attorney General Pam Bondi says a woman who led an anti-immigration enforcement protest that disrupted a service at a Minnesota church has b

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A prominent civil rights attorney and at least one other person involved in an anti-immigration enforcement protest that disrupted a service at a Minnesota church have been arrested, Attorney General Pam Bondi said Thursday, just as Vice President JD Vance is set to visit the state.

Bondi announced the arrest of Nekima Levy Armstrong in a post on X. On Sunday, protesters entered the Cities Church in St. Paul, where a local official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement serves as a pastor. Bondi later posted on X that a second person had been arrested.

The Justice Department quickly opened a civil rights investigation after the group interrupted services by chanting “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good,” referring to the 37-year-old mother of three who was fatally shot by an ICE officer in Minneapolis earlier this month.

“Listen loud and clear: WE DO NOT TOLERATE ATTACKS ON PLACES OF WORSHIP,” the attorney general wrote on X.

Cities Church belongs to the Southern Baptist Convention and lists one of its pastors as David Easterwood, who leads the local ICE field office. Many Baptist churches have pastors who work at least part-time in other jobs.

[wilwheaton]

A protest is not an attack, you Nazi fucks.

[ejbarnes]

Hoping this one gets thrown out.