New blog entry: More in Sadness than in Anger: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/02/more-in-sadness-than-in-anger.html
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@KaylaAllen @cstross I wish more people realised how far away they are from billionaires and pushed for better tax on them!
I wish more people realized that if you have to work for a salary—if you can't just decide to retire tomorrow and still have an income in the top 1%—then you are not "rich".
"Rich" is like being Steve Jobs keeping a Gulfstream jet fueled up on the ramp, with crew ready and waiting 24x7 *for nine months*, in case a histocompatible liver came up for transplant at short notice in a neighboring state (they only last a few hours out of the donor body).
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The fact that Gates wanted to give his wife STD medication without her knowledge tells you everything you need to know about Microsoft's and the tech industry's approach to consent.
Also explains the uncontested divorce.
Some of us had an idea of what he was back when he ripped off DR DOS.
Source: https://culturacolectiva.com/en/technology/bill-gates-plagiarism-inventions/
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The fact that Gates wanted to give his wife STD medication without her knowledge tells you everything you need to know about Microsoft's and the tech industry's approach to consent.
@svavar@masto.svavar.com @cstross@wandering.shop
Take this medication so I don’t have to deal with the consequences of my dishonesty
| Yes | | Ask me again in 3 days | -
@callisto @jsl @cstross I am characterizing him as the president whose policies were the most to the left of any US president ever. I think the hate he got from the left was a massive own-goal. Doubly so since the left blamed him when the courts struck down the student loan cancellations. Are you saying that you prefer the current orange disaster? Are you an accelerationist?
@trademark @jsl @cstross Of course not, and you're proving my point. The Overton Ratchet only moves in one direction in the USA. We're not allowed to demand better from our leaders, because omg what about that worse person.
"Most to the left of any US president ever" is nonsense. Please read some history. But more importantly, if you're unwilling to listen to anyone to your left, you're missing the entire point. Dems keep losing BECAUSE they offer nothing but "we're not Trump."
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@trademark @jsl @cstross Of course not, and you're proving my point. The Overton Ratchet only moves in one direction in the USA. We're not allowed to demand better from our leaders, because omg what about that worse person.
"Most to the left of any US president ever" is nonsense. Please read some history. But more importantly, if you're unwilling to listen to anyone to your left, you're missing the entire point. Dems keep losing BECAUSE they offer nothing but "we're not Trump."
@callisto @jsl @cstross Your point is exactly what I am arguing against in the first place I'm saying "don't attack somebody who does what you want just because you don't perceive them as being leftist" And you you're saying "you don't understand HE IS NOT A LEFTIST!" Biden moved the Overton window leftwards, even standing on a picket line and for this he was attacked by the left.
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@callisto @jsl @cstross Your point is exactly what I am arguing against in the first place I'm saying "don't attack somebody who does what you want just because you don't perceive them as being leftist" And you you're saying "you don't understand HE IS NOT A LEFTIST!" Biden moved the Overton window leftwards, even standing on a picket line and for this he was attacked by the left.
@trademark @jsl @cstross And you're saying I'm attacking him by saying he isn't a leftist.
AND pulling out the sole issue - labor - on which he truly was significantly to the left of predecessors post FDR, neglecting the issues on which he was to the right of Reagan.
Okay.
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@trademark @jsl @cstross And you're saying I'm attacking him by saying he isn't a leftist.
AND pulling out the sole issue - labor - on which he truly was significantly to the left of predecessors post FDR, neglecting the issues on which he was to the right of Reagan.
Okay.
@callisto @jsl @cstross I showed that your claim that Biden did not listen to the left was false with an example of him listening. Now you are saying that this was the sole issue, which is also wrong, another instance of him listening to the left is with the stock buyback tax he introduced. This was a major outstretched hand to the left, but instead of taking it, the left spit in his face. It burned his relationship with Silicon Valley and this is why they turned hard right. Great job leftists!
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@callisto @jsl @cstross I showed that your claim that Biden did not listen to the left was false with an example of him listening. Now you are saying that this was the sole issue, which is also wrong, another instance of him listening to the left is with the stock buyback tax he introduced. This was a major outstretched hand to the left, but instead of taking it, the left spit in his face. It burned his relationship with Silicon Valley and this is why they turned hard right. Great job leftists!
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more recent ref: "In the 2000s, the Gates Foundation blocked South Africa from procuring the anti-retroviral AIDS drugs it was entitled to under the WTO's TRIPS agreement. The Gates Foundation blocked the Access to Medicines WIPO treaty, which would have vastly expanded the Global South's ability to manufacture life-saving drugs."
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more recent ref: "In the 2000s, the Gates Foundation blocked South Africa from procuring the anti-retroviral AIDS drugs it was entitled to under the WTO's TRIPS agreement. The Gates Foundation blocked the Access to Medicines WIPO treaty, which would have vastly expanded the Global South's ability to manufacture life-saving drugs."
... "And during the acute phase of the covid pandemic, Gates personally intervened to kill the WHO Covid-19 Technology Access Pool and to get Oxford to renege on its promise to make an open-source vaccine"
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R relay@relay.mycrowd.ca shared this topic
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@cstross I think there's an unusual degree of cognitive dissonance between the cultural (money = virtue), the propaganda (Gates spends on his image), and the "exceptionally terrible even considering" reality.
It would be nice to be able to believe these people with such vast and august power weren't ethically deficient by the standards of your common-or-garden city-burning slave-taking barbarian.
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@cstross I think there's an unusual degree of cognitive dissonance between the cultural (money = virtue), the propaganda (Gates spends on his image), and the "exceptionally terrible even considering" reality.
It would be nice to be able to believe these people with such vast and august power weren't ethically deficient by the standards of your common-or-garden city-burning slave-taking barbarian.
@graydon @cstross @pzmyers @javierg@mstdn.social @gjm
Turns out you can't make a billion dollars without also being an extremely bad person.
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@cstross I think most everybody thought Gates was terrible by the turn of the century, which is why he's spent 25 years and tens of billions of dollars convincing people he's actually a philanthropist.
And it was working out pretty well for him up until all the sex pest/Epstein buddy stuff caught up with him. @pzmyers @javierg
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@cstross @pzmyers @javierg @gjm I don't know if anyone else saw it, but there was a miniseries on Netflix (I think) a few years back about Bill Gates' various philanthropic efforts, each episode about a different one
It only took until about the second episode for me to realize it was obviously some kind of paid/funded propaganda, it was entirely uncritical. But the funniest part was in the last episode, they must have realised they had to ask at least SOMETHING critical or it would be too obvious it was a puff piece
So the interviewer asks Gates, "what do you say about the fact that none of these projects has actually been successful yet?" and Gates had no good answer to that question at all. I don't even remember what he did say as an answer, possibly because I was laughing too hard
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@trademark @cstross In the 2025 Reith lecture, Rutger Bregman makes the point that if somebody agrees with you 70%, that person ought to be your ally. The left is demanding levels of purity far, far higher and that harms their position.
Look at Evangelical Fundamentalists and Tech Bros. They have about as much in common as (as you mentioned Hitler) the German Adel had with the Socialist part of the NSDAP. Their only common goal was to get rid of the democratic institutions. That's not even close to 70% agreement.
So, how can the Left get jointly behind the idea of saving the western democratic model instead of bickering with the people's front of Judea?@jsl @trademark @cstross the problem is that those 70% allies stab you in the back sometimes. Happens a lot when anarchists cooperate with MLs
