"Meta projected 10% of its 2024 revenue would come from ads for scams and banned goods, documents seen by Reuters show. And the social media giant internally estimates that its platforms show users 15 billion scam ads a day.

But the company only bans advertisers if its automated systems predict the marketers are at least 95% certain to be committing fraud, the documents show. If the company is less certain – but still believes the advertiser is a likely scammer – Meta charges higher ad rates as a penalty, according to the documents. The idea is to dissuade suspect advertisers from placing ads."

Genuinely Meta has to be one of the most disgusting policies on the planet

https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortune-deluge-fraudulent-ads-documents-show-2025-11-06/

- Start With Substance – Identify concrete problems, propose clear solutions, and explain the mechanisms of power and change, rather than offering vague promises.

- Win Attention Through Conflict – Engage in confrontations strategically, using them to highlight material struggles like rent, transit, and childcare, rather than culture wars or performative disputes.

- Let Style Serve Substance – Maintain a confident, approachable presence that reinforces the message, avoiding curated performance or influencer-style posturing.

- Meet Culture With Competence and Conviction – Address contentious issues directly, showing moral clarity and practical judgment, then pivot back to core city policies, linking inclusion and justice to actionable governance.

- Keep the Loop Small Enough to Echo – Maintain a focused, repeatable set of core priorities (affordability, transit, childcare, cost of living) to anchor messaging and make it coherent under media pressure.

https://jacobin.com/2025/10/zohran-mamdani-democrats-nyc-strategy/

In the post-World War II period, this was a winning strategy. New York had a highly developed social welfare state, once considered the closest U.S. example of Scandinavian-style social democracy.

Between 1945 and 1975, New York had free public higher education and a free municipal hospital system, spent billions on public and cooperative housing, initiated rent control and job training programs, expanded welfare payments, and, famously, subsidized the transit fare, which stayed at just five cents for the first 40 years of the MTA’s existence.

This “social welfare” economy of NYC came crashing down with a punch delivered by Wall Street in the 1970s. The 1975 fiscal crisis was the result of a collapsing municipal bond market and a severe economic depression. The city lost a whopping 500,000 manufacturing jobs between 1969 and 1975 as North American manufacturers moved plants out of cities and eventually out of the country. Both the depression and the market collapse were the result of actions by the “masters of the universe,” the Wall Street investors whose funds flowed to overseas investments rather than supporting domestic industry and the cities where they were rooted.

New York was caught in this neoliberal slurry. With a declining economy, it couldn’t pay its bills. And with the municipal bond market in free fall, it couldn’t get access to credit to help it bridge the down years.

This is where Wall Street’s punch came in. The punch was a “capital strike” in which major banks refused to issue New York City bonds until the municipal government cut social programs to the satisfaction of financiers. Welfare programs, public schools, drug treatment centers, senior centers, and even police and fire stations all got the axe. The City University of New York (CUNY) imposed tuition for the first time in its 130-year history. Sydenham hospital in Harlem was shuttered. By some estimates, as many as 60,000 municipal workers lost their jobs.

https://truthout.org/articles/the-biggest-threat-to-mamdanis-agenda-isnt-hochul-or-trump-its-wall-street/

"It was as a socialist, and because I was a socialist, that I fell in love with America. . . . If the Left wants to change this country because it hates it, then the people will never listen to the Left and the people will be right. To be a socialist — to be a Marxist — is to make an act of faith, of love even, toward this land. It is to sense the seed beneath the snow; to see, beneath the veneer of corruption and meanness and the commercialization of human relationships, men and women capable of controlling their own destinies. To be a radical is, in the best and only decent sense of the word, patriotic."

https://jacobin.com/2025/10/trump-no-kings-patriotism-protest/

new report from 160 scientists across 23 countries warns that Earth has reached its first major climate tipping point: the widespread death of warm-water coral reefs. Rising ocean temperatures, which have absorbed 90% of human-generated heat, and acidification from CO₂ emissions have caused half of the world’s coral cover to disappear over the past fifty years. Coral bleaching occurs when corals expel the symbiotic algae that provide energy, destabilizing reefs and pushing them toward collapse. Since 2023, over 80% of reefs have experienced severe bleaching events, while rising acidification hampers recovery and reproduction.

Warm-water corals are crucial ecosystems, supporting a quarter of all marine species, providing $9.9 trillion annually in goods and services like fisheries and tourism, and acting as natural barriers against storm surges. Yet governments are inadequately prepared, with emissions reductions far below what’s needed, leaving reefs—and society—vulnerable to cascading, interconnected crises such as droughts and disrupted ocean currents.

The report emphasizes the urgency of proactive measures to prevent further tipping points, highlighting that existing policies are insufficient. Positive developments include falling costs for renewable energy, making wind, solar, and battery storage more viable economically, though the world is still on track to exceed the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goal.

Locally, protective measures like marine reserves, overfishing control, and reduced coastal pollution can help reefs recover. Scientists are also actively breeding corals in labs, both as genetic refuges and to produce heat-tolerant corals for potential reintroduction into the wild. While the situation is dire, rapid shifts toward clean energy and innovative conservation strategies offer a chance to avert further irreversible damage to coral ecosystems and the broader climate system.

https://grist.org/oceans/coral-reefs-climate-tipping-point/

When they hit oil over and over again, men like H. L. Hunt and Clint Murchison set off a rush to the Texas oilfields that has never stopped. They also established themselves as powerful backers of right-wing politicians and, in Hunt’s case, fundamentalist Christian preachers. Over the next thirty years, oilmen who made their fortunes in the 1930s bankrolled right-wing think tanks, Joe McCarthy’s witch hunts, the John Birch Society, and a number of explicitly racist and anti-Semitic groups. By 1962, The Nation was reporting that “virtually every Radical Right movement of the postwar era has been propped up by Texas oil millionaires.”

"the vision underlying Abbott’s legislative agenda reflects a fascinating confluence of ideological streams. Colonial-era fears of a Mexican onslaught meet a New Deal-era dread of economic redistribution. Calls for individual freedom justify the universal imposition of a deeply patriarchal Christianity. The historical power of each of these streams amplifies the seeming legitimacy of the others until they flow together into a vision of a world led by white men, ordained by God with the right to rule over women and people of color and the natural world."

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-texan-ideology-turner