@mattsheffield@mastodon.social avatar

mattsheffield

@mattsheffield@mastodon.social

🟦 Publisher, https://masto.ai/@discoverflux
🟦 Host, Theory of Change
🟦 Co-host, Doomscroll and So This Just Happened
🟦 Front-end developer
🟦 Creator of #JohnMastodon meme

Posts about politics, religion, media, and technology with occasional memes

Signal: 202-215-9123

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

mattsheffield, to random
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Anyone thinking about supporting Donald Trump should know that electing him means that you are actually voting for the dangerous freak Russ Vought. He and his fellow christofascists will control a Trump White House.

They're openly promising to ban birth control, eliminate same-sex marriage, end public schools, and build concentration camps for tens of millions of unauthorized immigrants. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/08/russ-vought-trump-second-term-radical-constitutional/

mattsheffield, to random
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Dick Van Dyke truly is a living legend. It's great to see that he's still working and doing amazingly well at 98 https://variety.com/2024/tv/awards/dick-van-dyke-daytime-emmys-winner-days-of-our-lives-1236029346/

mattsheffield, to random
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Deranged grifter Cornel West has hired Republican operatives to help him get on the ballot in Colorado as a third-party candidate https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/operatives-gop-ties-are-helping-cornel-west-get-ballot-key-state-rcna153110

mattsheffield, to random
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@Mallulady This is him throwing in the towel on his evasion. He realized he is just making his fees worse. So it's the start of the payment process

mattsheffield, to random
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In the new episode of my "Theory of Change" podcast, I talked with @gilduran about a new techno-libertarian cult led by a Bitcoin grifter which is seeking to effectively buy up local governments to block out anyone who disagrees.

San Francisco is the guinea pig, but they have national ambitions. https://plus.flux.community/p/libertarian-oligarchs-are-trying

video/mp4

mattsheffield, to random
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Wonderful news: Alex Jones has abandoned his doomed efforts to avoid personal bankruptcy after defaming Sandy Hook Elementary families. He's going to be relinquishing ownership of InfoWars https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/06/media/alex-jones-assets-sandy-hook/index.html

mattsheffield, to random
@mattsheffield@mastodon.social avatar

With "The Dress" is back in the news, did you know that neither side of the white/gold blue/black controversy has it correct in terms of the actual on-screen version of the colors?

Obviously, the physical item was blue and black, but on a screen, it's actually grey/brown.

You could say it's blue-grey and goldish-brown, if you really wanted to.

FWIW, I usually see it as white/gold, but occasionally can see blue/black.

A screen capture video of an image editor using a color picking tool to show the on-screen representation of colors of a dress.

mattsheffield, to random
@mattsheffield@mastodon.social avatar

25 years ago, Napster set in motion the modern content economy https://torrentfreak.com/napster-sparked-a-file-sharing-revolution-25-years-ago-250601/

mattsheffield, to random
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Donald Trump has decided to explicitly run as a criminal and the self-described party of law and order couldn't be happier. Some funny and necessary analysis from my friend and podcast partner Lisa Curry for @discoverflux https://plus.flux.community/p/after-his-felony-convictions-donald

mattsheffield, to fediverse
@mattsheffield@mastodon.social avatar

One of the best things about having no algorithm in the is that Americans can finally see that the rest of the industrialized world regards the Republican Party as stupid and evil.

Most Americans really don't know how horribly abnormal that Republicans are.

mattsheffield, to random
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#LockHimUp

mattsheffield, to random
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On the latest episode of my "Doomscroll" podcast, we discussed how Nikki Haley's humiliating endorsement of Donald Trump shows at the end of the day, Republicans will always fall in line behind their larger goal of destroying democracy. They instinctively understand that primaries are the only place to score ideological points in the American political system. https://plus.flux.community/p/trump-gets-booed-heavily-at-libertarian

video/mp4

mattsheffield, to Netherlands
@mattsheffield@mastodon.social avatar

I was today years old when I learned that marijuana is actually illegal in the all thanks to Nikki Minaj https://www.thedailybeast.com/nicki-minaj-livestreams-her-own-drug-arrest-in-amsterdam

mattsheffield,
@mattsheffield@mastodon.social avatar

@ProfT I saw it 30 years ago so definitely wouldn't remember that

mattsheffield, (edited ) to random
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🧵 A small positive of Elon Musk buying Twitter is that he's made it impossible for Donald Trump's Truth Social to succeed.

Traffic at TS has been declining for months despite Trump flooding the site with posts about his high-profile NY criminal trial.

There simply aren't that many far-right political junkies out there. The few that do exist are running amok on Twitter. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/24/truth-social-traffic-trump-media-djt-data.html

mattsheffield,
@mattsheffield@mastodon.social avatar

So basically, Truth Social is a ghost town in which tech-savvy Trump supporters have dutifully created profiles, but they don't use.

There's no need. They get more eyeballs on Twitter. If they want to read Trump's daily lies, they can do on Twitter. And Elmo lets them be racist also.

mattsheffield,
@mattsheffield@mastodon.social avatar

But the fact that Trump Social is bleeding users and losing money hand over fist has no bearing on its stock price though.

This is an illustration of a critical difference between the US left and right. Left-wingers are actually more capitalistic.

mattsheffield,
@mattsheffield@mastodon.social avatar

Because most Americans align with progressive viewpoints on things like spending, abortion, divorce, religion, LGBT rights, and regulation, Republicans are very eager to help each other resist the majority. So they help each other constantly.

Producers at Fox and every other right wing outlet scour the country every day trying to find and elevate right wing voices. They've done it for decades.

mattsheffield,
@mattsheffield@mastodon.social avatar

Liberals, particularly those with money and institutional power are much less helpful to each other, especially people trying to get started.

Fox News, a multi-billion dollar tv channel with an audience in the millions loves elevating new voices. By contrast, most popular left wing podcasts, whose audiences are far smaller, almost never invite new voices. MSNBC almost entirely goes for the same 20 people.

This is a huge problem and a big part of why the right punches far above its weight.

mattsheffield,
@mattsheffield@mastodon.social avatar

The business prospects of Trump Social aren't good. But it's getting a chance because it's being propped up by MAGA investors.

This should have happened with Air America, the progressive radio network that was cancelled after barely existing. There are many other instances of this, sadly.

The left must do better at supporting its own content creators. /end

mattsheffield,
@mattsheffield@mastodon.social avatar

@samvarma Most of the shares are owned by small investors

mattsheffield,
@mattsheffield@mastodon.social avatar

@samvarma It's hard to know for sure since unfortunately there are so few mandatory stock ownership disclosure laws. There is/was at least one hedge fund owned by Jeff Yass with a stake.

As I recall, TS CEO Devin Nunes has said to the FTC that most of the shareholders are retail, and that would be an easy perjury conviction if he had lied to the agency.

mattsheffield,
@mattsheffield@mastodon.social avatar

@KatM @MaryAustinBooks Yeah it's not helping anyone to hear from the same people, especially since we can all be mistaken. Better to talk to lots of people and get wider knowledge.

mattsheffield,
@mattsheffield@mastodon.social avatar

@rwg Those nonprofits are prohibited legally from saying things that need to be said, such as specific candidates or ballot initiatives to support. But they have their place.

mattsheffield,
@mattsheffield@mastodon.social avatar

@Codhisattva I don't disagree with your points. But it is absolutely the case that most popular left wing podcasts and TV shows only book guests who are friends with the hosts or producers, or are similarly popular. This is not movement behavior, it's capitalist behavior.

mattsheffield,
@mattsheffield@mastodon.social avatar

@DaSkinny1 Quite literally. But imagine if they had kept at it and others had copied! This country would've been much better off.

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