- cross-posted to:
- washingtondc
- cross-posted to:
- washingtondc
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I offered David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter. I suggested to him that if the answer wasn’t “hell yes,” then it had to be “no.” After careful consideration, David decided to step away.
That is termination, not resignation.
Fucking scumbag.
Buy your axe grinding wheels now before it’s hard to keep them in stock.
Billionaire meddling turns a respected paper into a megaphone for personal agendas.
😼😼
Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.
this is a very interesting sentence to find in a post that outlines the ways in which the opinion page will be losing some of its editorial freedom.
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
It’s also gotta be one of the worst sentences I’ve ever read, yikes. Maybe get an editor to look it over.
Hey, I like to think that sometimes I might feel the need to write remarkably similar sentences to the kinds that you, u/bearboiblake might have referenced in this particular editorial expression of human nature and sentiment in America, today.
-You know, badly,
Yeah two em dashes in a single sentence is too many, and that one’s got three
He’s basically making the exact same argument as Faux News did, 30 years or more after anyone reasonable realized that they were blatantly lying.
what’s “stunning” about the statement?
All I saw was:
- Opinion Editor did not want to continue to be a meat puppet for this propaganda outlet
- Bezos accepted resignation
- Bezos to look for new meat puppet
I assumed the stunning part was this:
We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.
It’s just pretty blatant.
Bezos accepted resignation
Bezos constructed resignation, which is legally termination, not resignation at all.
We recently got rid of our subscriptions and canceled Prime. Wish we had done it much sooner, but better late than never.
For those on the fence on quitting Amazon: you can still use the website and shop, just search for the manufacturers website on stuff you want and purchase direct from them.
You know, like going to a book store and ordering the books you find there from Amazon.
Great suggestion!
Most decent manufacturers have their own website and fast shipping. I had to leave Amazon just for the fake and damaged merchandise alone.
Yeah, I am currently dealing with my last couple returns through them before I can properly cancel. I consider it punishment for not doing it earlier.
Ordered an ergo trackball, got sent the wrong model. Now since it’s through a third party seller my return documentation says I need to call the seller, on the god damned telephone, for a free return label rather than paying for postage myself. I haven’t even shipped the return yet and I have already been using one I bought direct from Logitech that was cheaper and arrived in 1-2 days with their free “4-7 day” shipping.
I am also awaiting my third copy of a monitor that comes with a no dead pixel guarantee. The number of dead pixels has been nonzero and increasing with each new monitor. This isn’t necessarily Amazon’s fault – it took 3 tries to get my old 50" Panasonic plasma without a dead pixel – but sending returns right back out the door is entirely likely too. I have bought and returned far more expensive things that absolutely looked like they were used (pro camera lenses for one).
I’ve already set up subscriptions with several manufacturers directly through their sites vs ordering through Amazon. Same or better prices, too.
Y’all, stop buying shit from Amazon, completely. That’s where you start.
Bezos has money because we continue to give it to him. So, the first order of business is to simply stop spending money with him.
As in, forever.
Find an alternative vendor, or even schlep on down to a physical store if you need to.
I agree, but also they don’t make their money from sales. They make money from AWS servers/ services. I would bet that they lose money or maybe slightly break even on every sale of a physical item.
Are any lemmy instances hosted on AWS?
Yeah, the warehouses are quite badly run.
Edit; I’ve had a beer. In my experience of the one I’ve worked in.
Ugh, that really sucks. I didn’t realize AWS was their bread and butter now.
Even so.
Last time I looked at Amazon’s books, their retail arm was barely profitable. Most of their actual profits came from AWS.
Azure (MS) or GCP (Google) are the alternatives.
Or if you want to avoid Big Tech altogether, there’s DigitalOcean, Akamai, Linode, IBM, Cloudflare, and a handful of other point providers.
if you want to avoid Big Tech altogether, there’s … IBM
If I had been drinking anything when I read that it would have ended up all over my screen.
OIC, too.
Would love to see a really comprehensive list of sites that aren’t garbage AI slop scam alleyways that would help cover the goods and services that Amazon acts as a one-stop convenience for. I don’t want to support Amazon, but I also don’t want to get scammed by handing out my credit card info to any old shopping site.
Feel free to add more suggestions in your own replies.
I’ll start :
Electronics : B&H Photo - owned by religious folks so hours of operation are a little odd sometimes, but overall good customer service, fair prices, reliable shipping
Grocieries : Central Market - HEB’s high-tier store chain for high-quality groceries, instead of Whole Foods
Kitchen supplies : Webstaurant - Wholesale store for things like home kitchen goods and supplies, as well as things like flatware and dishes
Thanks
B&H photo isn’t just “owned by religious folks”. They staff everything above the warehouse exclusively with Hasidic Orthodox Jewish men.
Afaik they aren’t tied to supporting Zionism. They had some problems a decade ago with safety standards and union busting.
Afaik they aren’t tied to supporting Zionism. They had some problems a decade ago with safety standards and union busting.
Didn’t know that… :( - Open to hear other alternatives, but when NewEgg became much worse notably a few years back, and NCIX went under, B&H has been an online staple for my computer parts, camera, and general electronics needs… save for cables from Infinite Cables.
I do go to Micro Center in person due to being lucky enough to have one within a sensible distance, but that’s still quite a drive for me, and I know not everyone else has one nearby.
I want a non profit/open source store aggregator where we can search for what we want like Amazon but direct is to the site with the item we are looking for.
Like pcpartpicker, but for everything!
Amazon is a server hosting company that happens to sell cheap junk.
All of lemmy shopping Prime is a drop in the oceans of the millions per month my company pays aws
Jeff Bezos Announces Resignation
They had us in the first half, not gonna lie
What position would Bezos resign from, out of curiosity?
Being alive, ideally
Instead, he asked Freedom Of the Press to step down.
“Democracy dies in Darkness”
-Washington Post
“Nah, I knifed that bitch in the back in broad daylight.”
-Jeff Bezos
We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.
Democracy dies in the free market.
Capitalism
Who wants democracy, when we can have an anarcho-capitalist libertarian utopia?
anarcho-capitalist libertarian utopia?
I hate that edgelord libertarians are trying to rebrand themselves as “anarcho-capatalist”. Anarchy and capitalism are antithetical to one another. It doesn’t have anything to do with anarchy if you aren’t evaluating hierarchy, and capitalism is literally one of the most hierarchical organizational structures possible.
anarcho-capitalist
So, sociopath.
libertarian
That’s like a narcissist hat on top of a sociopath hat. It’s a hat on a hat.
Fun fact: Conservatism was literally invented by a monarchist in the aftermath of the French revolution trying to find a way for an aristocracy to exist within democracy.
Except England wasn’t a democracy at the time, it was a heavily rigged parliamentary system with a limited franchise, and it could be overridden by the Lords. But yeah, conservatism represented the interests of the aristocrats, in opposition to Englightenment notions like equality, accountability, rule of law and meritocracy.
edgelord libertarians are trying to rebrand themselves as "anarcho-capatalist
Actually, American style " libertarianism" IS anarcho-capitalism. They’ve just been trying to keep that a secret until recently.
Anarchy and capitalism are antithetical to one another.
Yes, and no. Anarcho-capitalism is anarchic in the colloquial “no rules, no order” sense, whereas political anarchy very much isn’t.
The stupidity of the term is what makes it apt, though: the people politically illiterate enough to think that a total lack of regulations and worker’s rights would lead to anything resembling freedom also think that the colloquial definition of anarchy is the politically accurate one.
It’s anarchy for the hierarchies, not for the components of the hierarchies
At least guns and ammo will be plentiful because the market will soon demand more.
Ammoseek is pretty good for ammo. Just be careful around the low rated vendors
Thank you. What about good gun deals?
People voted for the leopards, you can’t say it’s not democracy.
I see this comment a lot, and I legit don’t think we did. I think it’s weird how Elon had this team of hackers ready to go for Doge. The weird, “they’ll never know what we did” comment out of his kid who seemed to be imitating Elon in the Tucker Carlson interview, and Trump’s odd vote counting computers comment has me seriously thinking they hacked it. I think they both had their backs against the wall. Trump with his criminal prosecution, and musk with the starlink investigation.
With Elon, let’s start at the smallest issue. Recently Musk has talked about how he’s like the greatest gamer ever and is ranked super high in a bunch of games. Turns out he’s just paying people to grind those games and boost his ranking. He’s so concerned about being on top that he’s willing to hire people to get a top the leader board and lie about how good he is to stroke his own ego. It’s a very small thing, but points to a larger pattern of behavior for Musk.
Now, onto the Ukraine thing. If anyone remembers, he wouldn’t let Ukraine use starlink for an attack because he was “worried it’d start a nuclear war.” Whether it would or wouldn’t was not up to him as the guy selling Internet satellites to the government. He had provided all the starlink kits to Ukraine during a war to help them, and the US was paying it. He was not supposed to be the arbiter of what they could/ couldn’t be used for. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were going to come after him for treason as he actively aided a (then) adversary through this action.
https://apnews.com/article/spacex-ukraine-starlink-russia-air-force-fde93d9a69d7dbd1326022ecfdbc53c2
Trump and Musk had to win, or they were fucked. The guy that worked for Doge happened to make a sketchy ballot counting app which you can read about below that could have been used to disqualify dem ballots.
https://bsky.app/profile/denisedwheeler.bsky.social/post/3lhowh3ijgs2f
Elon has always found ways around the rules. When his company needed money all of the sudden magically the value exploded. I think he was involved in squeezing the stock price up through the use of call options, and once that happened, they were able to raise money in the form of multiple stock sales. You can read this now 5 year old thread that proves itself time and time again. Do I have any proof Elon was behind this? No, but who has enough money to do something like this?
https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/hk7nqe/tesla_infinity_call_gamma_squeeze/
When the election came in 2024, Elon gave away (illegally I might add) $100 to anyone who registered Republican. There had to be something nefarious going on there too. I would not be surprised if they thought anyone who took them up on that was only doing it for the free money and wasn’t actually going to vote so they cast ballots in their names. Again, I have no proof, but if anyone would have the will to do something so shitty to win, it’d be him.
As for Trump, Jack Smith said they had enough evidence to convict Trump, and only couldn’t because of arbitrary sitting president rules. They have like a 99% conviction rate for a reason.
Trump and Musk are absolutely petty enough to bend / break rules and laws to get what they want, and are going to go all out to avoid prison. I strongly believe that this is not what we voted for, and we are going to be stuck with this the rest of our lives because what is happening cannot be undone, and they will cling to power as long as possible to avoid facing any consequences. They will break everything and fire anyone who was involved in any way shape or form in any of the investigations and will break the system beyond repair to ensure that they remain in power. Elections are still going to happen, but they will never be voted out.
That’s a very well written comment, and Elon and trump certainly have committed more crimes than we can count, but the polls before the election were all pointing to the same result, so trumps victory wasn’t a major upset. I don’t think they hacked the election, I think the people are that dumb.
A real democracy wouldn’t allow a fascist to even run for office. Advocating for fascism and authoritarianism in a republic isn’t a valid political stance. It’s sedition.
Well, if over 50% of votes agree, is it sedition? The American people wanted the treasonous, corrupt, criminal, draft dodger sexual predator as president. We might not like it, but it’s what the majority wanted.
*Plurality and it’s still sedition on the part of the leaders. If you advocate for authoritarianism in a republic then you are inherently advocating for overthrowing the republic. You are advocating for some people to have rights, while others don’t.
It doesn’t matter if a majority of voters want that, they don’t have the right to strip the minority of their right to representation.
All authoritarian ideologies are inherently incompatible with the concept of natural rights
Those who don’t vote make an explicit choice, so it is a majority.
And the fascist, dictatorial intentions were known from the beginning so kind of hard to argue with the result.
People voted to convert the republic to an empire.
In a more democratic system there wouldn’t be president Trump because there would be no presidents. So I disagree with the premise.
The presidency is fundamentally undemocratic, regardless of the quasi-performative democratic ritual by which he is selected.
There is no such thing as a free market.
Bezos can get fucked.
And not in the good way.
I propose a backwards pineapple
I wrote a haiku for this sort of thing!
Anal pineapples
Should be administered
Sideways foreverI’ve got a rusty pitchfork. Will that work?
Zuck’s taking care of that with Jeff’s wife
There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views.
That’s exactly what a journalistic organisation is meant to do Jeff, especially now when the world is increasingly being filled with mouthpieces that regurgitate what their owners want them to.
An organisation that puts out only one opinion, or is only allowed to put out one opinion, is nothing more than a mouthpiece.
Its a shame to see the Post becoming just another mouthpiece.
Bezos’s exercise of greater control over the Post‘s journalism in recent months has raised eyebrows.
Raised eyebrows? Is mild-washing a word? It should be.
The gall of these billionaires to just buy a news organization and then blatantly state “we’re not going to do news anymore” is just incredible.
Even Rupert Murdock had the courtesy to come up with the Fox News “Fair and Balanced” slogan (even though it was completely full of shit).
Bezos is just like “yeah we’re going full on propaganda, go fuck yourself.”
On the other end, you’ve got billionaire Jeff Lawson rescuing The Onion from private equity hell. I count their revived print subscription as one of the best things I’ve spent money on recently, considering it used to be free.
Among many reasons, I’ll never subscribe to WP again. I used to.
I used to as well. And I’m Canadian.
Never again as long as that asshole owns the paper.
Historically, journalism was about sifting through the different things that multiple people say are true, in order to figure out what actually is true.
But now it can just be about what one person says is true, and the internet can figure out what’s actually true!
You misspelled propaganda.
Interestingly, the Post and the NYT both lean heavily on their Opinion sections to pretend they’re not licking boots. Now the Post won’t have that option.
Maybe it’s time for people to start submitting Opinion pieces detailing how we can use the free market to make companies regret discontinuing their DEI programs or Pride merchandise, or telling how bodily autonomy and control over one’s reproductive equipment is a central pillar of personal liberty.
Editing to add: in the event your submission is rejected, consider adding an opener such as: “This article was rejected by The Washington Post despite meeting their criteria of focus on the free market (or personal liberty).” And then submitting it to one or several of their competitors. Even the ones that aren’t any better, pitting their competitive instincts against their conservativism.
You’re right, it’s time. Apes together strong.
