This week's #comic shows the results of late stage capitalism. The archive can be found at https://www.stanyan.me/comic-strip/lmoe for now.
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#latestagecapitalism
3 posts3 participants0 posts today
For decades leftists have cheerfully called some especially troublesome developments in our society #LateStageCapitalism or post capitalism - acting like those developments were a sign that capitalism has run its course and we'd be freed from it soon.
I never understood that, as the natural successor to (hyper) capitalism is fascism, not socialism.
I wish I had been wrong.
Soooooo.... capitalism is at it again.
https://jacobin.com/2025/07/adam-curtis-y2k-blair-mcqueen
>The most common critiques of Curtis — that his narratives are too sweeping, his editing too manipulative, his conclusions more atmospheric than analytical — are not wrong exactly. I’ve made them myself, sometimes mid-episode. It feels, though, like this misses the point. It’s true that Curtis deals in allegory more than argument, in vibes rather than frameworks. But what vibes they are! Others have no patience for what they describe as his conspiratorialism. Fair enough, but it’s a strange species of conspiracy to suggest the problem is that no one is at the wheel rather than this or that cabal of villains is really pulling the strings. He’s on record politically as someone who believes progress is a result of great ideas that animate societies, not the class struggle. You could rebuke him with a line from the Eighteenth Brumaire followed by a discussion of the dialectical relation of the material conditions of society to ideology, but what would be the point, really? Critical viewers ought to allow themselves a little Hegelian idealism, as a treat.
LOL. Okay I'll watch Curtis' Shifty. #socialism #communism #marxism #LateStageCapitalism
>This isn’t to say that the ideas his films explore lack depth or theoretical rigor. Quite the contrary. It’s just that when you translate sprawling political and emotional histories of the world into montages fashioned from forgotten BBC specials — cutting between Muammar Gaddafi, rave flyers, and National Health Service waiting rooms — experts will always object to the connective tissue. But none of them — neither the historians nor the theorists nor the journalists — can score archival footage to ambient synths and spiraling monologues quite like Curtis can. He might not explain the world perfectly, but he may capture how its collapse feels better than anyone.
Alright alright alright I'm sold.
jacobin.comIn Shifty, Adam Curtis Charts the UK’s UnravelingDirector Adam Curtis’s latest BBC docuseries, Shifty, follows Britain’s late 20th-century retreat into make-believe as managed decline tears everything apart. It’s the familiar Curtis aesthetic, but still as powerful and haunting as ever.
In Star Trek the Humans don't have Capitalism so they're not shits (on the whole)
Amazing how something so radical can come from US TV!
"Kill Capitalism and reach for the Stars!"
Pure Capitalism, everything has a price, wealth is the only goal.
Dozy lads in a parasocial relationship with a porn star, somehow I don't see the Online Safety Act really doing anything about this....
The Guardian · Moral outrage over Bonnie Blue’s porn empire misses the point: this is hardcore economics
OK, hear me out on this....
"A core reason why almost everyone is miserable, I think, is that we as a society ... have fairly comprehensively shut off most options we had for improving our lives without having to ask for permission. Almost all options that we currently have ... are based on someone in a position of power giving it to us, ... Most of us cannot, however we try, decide to make a change and just do it without relying on someone letting us."
deadSimpleTechOn our discontents | deadSimpleTechWhen the first and most important skill for survival in a society is persuading some very wealthy, very stupid people, it completely fucks the whole incentive structure of the global economy. Certainly, it starts off fine: you just have to tune your communications to the people you're targeting a bit more, pander a little more, be a little more corporate. But that, of course, has a reinforcing effect.
Replied in thread
@urlyman I think it might help to summarize this thread. The current trajectory of #LateStageCapitalism looks bleak. Especially with the Trump GOP push of #CryptoCurrency
Capitalism won't work out in Space, why aren't we on Mars yet? Capitalism is why. Look at the state of things with Musk, his shitty rocket was supposed to be on Mars by next year, it still can't leave orbit.
He's a huckster, don't believe any of his promises.
Replied in thread
The Hype is the Product
https://rys.io/en/180.html
For large tech companies the products or services they offer don't really matter all that much anymore, it seems.
Whatever the company is ostensibly selling just needs to be barely good enough to keep people from escaping the lock-in.
Because their real audience are not the customers or people using these services – their real audience are the stockholders.
And the real product is the hype itself.
Songs on the Security of Networks · The Hype is the Product
More from 
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 
“Things were somehow so good that they were in danger of becoming very bad because what is fully mature is very close to rotting.”
Clarice Lispector, A Hora da Estrela
#Github sucks.
#Microsoft sucks.
#AI sucks.
#LateStageCapitalism sucks
(Correction to image caption: Mr. Akhtar is British, of Pakistani origin, and the image was taken at a cricket match, not football)
"Elon Musk’s associates at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have begun vacating their headquarters at the General Services Administration (GSA) in Washington, DC. An apocalyptic scene of toddler play sets, mattresses, and pillows remains.
Near rooms where DOGE once operated, a seemingly abandoned children’s wooden kitchen set sits next to a rainbow climbing arch and an easel covered in crumpled paper, according to photos obtained by WIRED. Other children’s toys are within reach, with colorful books and other playthings neatly organized in white plastic bins. A few related items are strewn about the floor. Nearby, trash bags full of pillows and five mattresses, some with sheets and mattress toppers still on them, are stuffed in a corner.
It looks like a scene out of a zombie movie, where villagers had to flee in the middle of the night to avoid a raid. But it’s not a movie; it’s the aftermath of DOGE’s wholesale assault on the GSA and the federal government writ large. DOGE isn’t gone, but as it morphs into its new phase, post-Musk’s chain-saw-style leadership, the children’s toys have been left behind."
https://www.wired.com/story/photos-bedding-childrens-play-sets-doge-old-offices/
WIRED · Photos: Here Are the Piles of Used Bedding and Children’s Play Sets Left Near DOGE’s Old Offices
Continued thread
DHMC is accepting new patients...in theory. They have no intake appointments available in the next 90 days, even in locations we'd have to drive two hours to get to.
$300 for the two of us to have regular care and be able to be seen on short notice feels like a godsend, even if it's fucking Amazon. 