Hot Damn!
New Tunes, The Future of IG/FB and BL, Tracking Biden From The Left, More NFT's and Fascists Getting Knocked Out.
Morning Comrades!
When I started this project it was my adamant intention to have it replace IG. After 18 months of writing and working with this platform I finally sat down and looked at some numbers- I rarely do this and work much more on gut feeling but, a few lessons learned over the weekend, something to get into after the usual good vibes to kick off any and almost every week on here.
Shit yeah, a new playlist, with an immediate warning, it got a little cheesy towards towards the end. Other than that, there is heaps of new tunes on here mostly from the garage / post- punk end of the spectrum. Mid-week I got sucked into a 1950/60s Italian Jazz & Pop k-hole and yeah that made it on this playlist. I had to blow off most of Friday and Saturday due to some serious covid-fuckening at jr.’s school and naturally, I ended the week on some serious 80s cheeseball tunes - at the time of writing this I am genuinely debating to watch Top Gun to end the week with, just to give you a feeling of what to expect. Also, 90s hip hop, some, a genre I generally avoid but as I was going through my Sunday afternoon face mask and cigarettes routine, that was a vibe. As you can tell, it’s another fun odd one, I highly recommend switching on shuffle with this one, as with all of them to be honest. Enjoy!
Coming back to this project and my ever ongoing battle with IG - I know, it’s getting a little old and I am kind of annoyed with myself here but I wanted to play this one through with you all, transparency and all. The reason I am getting into this now is that a new plan for IG started appearing in some tech news sources over the weekend that made me look at actual numbers for a change. The plan was to ditch IG for all the obvious reasons for this platform. Mostly, that has worked, in terms of reach anyway. According to the official statistics I have somewhere around 34K followers on IG and around 8000 on here - with 85 of you supporting this with a monthly subscription, something that truly makes my life heaps easier. At the best of times, around 3-4 years ago, IG would show my content to about 20K people a day. Considering I had never paid for a promo post, that’s actually not all that bad and certainly was reflected specifically in sales through the online shop.
At this rate, IG shows my content to around 500 accounts a day. No need to go through all the reasons or pop culture ways to fix it - it’s genuinely not fixable and I am not interested in paying Zuck a penny. Interesting side note, a few years ago, I helped a close friend who owns a sizeable online store run their social media- who had utilised a 3000€ monthly budget for online advertising, FB/IG/GOOGLE etc - and their numbers were atrocious. Whilst apparently reaching 100k accounts per week, 90% of those weren’t from the people that had actually followed their accounts- aside from the immorality of paying tech companies, that experience solidified my decision to never give those bastards a cent.
Now to the new feature currently being tested on IG that had me thinking about that damn app this entire weekend. IG is currently testing a feature in which you and me will have the option to pay accounts so that you can see their content. There is no info as to what money structure that is run on, i.e., who gets what share but holy shit balls of fire- it just pissed me off that many people such as myself spent a good decade on their site, building business’ and in the meantime their business for it to get to this stage. I am keeping my eyes on this one but it all leads to several important questions for us, here.
Despite the majority of active, interested comrades now on this platform, the majority of hits to the online store still come from IG, not here. As a matter of a fact only about 2% of you readers here click on the shop link, surprising to be honest but hey, if that is what it is then IG actually still plays a role- as much as I hate to admit that. Why does that factor into all this you ask, well, aside from the money we raise through Black Lodges for mutual aid projects - an important part of this while construct of mine - when we don’t, BL is my almost full time job. Lecturing at a University is an essentially non-paying gig these days and that’s all about I can muster with the time available, outside of parenting, house work and so on - not a song that should be alien to anyone really. Fact is though- with IG still being the number one source for hit to the online store I might have to play that game a little differently.
This is where you come in - how do you prefer getting your links to drops? Here? The Telegram Group? IG? Do you get them at all? As many ideas as I have going forward, Black Lodges has always been a communal project and your input is wanted, important and now’s your chance: Any and all ideas regarding BL drops, comment, email me, text me on Telegram- you know how to reach me.
Tracking Biden From The Left
There is this most excellent other substack project called “Tracking Biden From The Left” that I enjoy a great, as it does precisely what it says in the title. It digs through all the bullshit DoubleSpeak and just lays down facts with sources for the reader to dg through. Many people, myself included, screamed at the potential bullshit this war hawk would get up to once in power and so far even most of my worst scenarios have not only come true but the bastard has exceeded a lot of them. For clarification, I genuinely despise and all people in power here in the west, I can’t find an honest soul in any country and I do not subscribe to the lesser of the two evil / binary narrative prevalent in the West as the plan is to dismantle this entire destructive shit show. Nevertheless, it is important to keep track of the realities and not the PR Shit Show on display and the above substack does a great job at this. Not that any of the below is surprising and often, no promises were made about these prior to his election, well, in some cases they actually were but that’s besides the point. Work likes this makes accountability easier to handle. A few highlights from a year into this presidency include:
-Because of crippling US sanctions: 23 million of 39 million Afghans not having enough food to eat
-Killing 10 people in a drone strike in Afghanistan
-Approving a $650 million potential air-to-air missile deal for Saudi Arabia
-Biden signing a $768,000,000,000 defense budget, $37,000,000,000 more than last years budget.
-Choosing Rahm Emanuel as the US ambassador to Japan.
-Approving the sale of $735 million in precision-guided weapons to Israel
-The Biden administration opposing the resolution blocking weapons sale to Saudi Arabia.
-Spending more on Israel than climate change.
-Continuing to support the Saudi Blockade in Yemen
-Continuing the Trump Pentagon’s policy of embracing landmines.
-Continuing a Trump policy that boosted armed drone exports
-Continuing to support a coup in Venezuela
-Conditions in Guantanamo Bay being worse now than they were under Trump.
-Mass deportations of Haitians
-Using Title 42 to expel 690,000+ people
-Extending the Trump-era Title 42 program that expels people seeking asylum without due process.
-Filling immigration courts with Trump hires
-Continuing to seize land for the border wall
-Joe Biden’s new budget boosting ICE funding by $18 million.
-Blocking media access to their border operations.
-Backing an effort to overturn a California law banning for-profit immigration detention centers
The list is a lot longer and if you are interested I have linked the article in the above picture.
Remember last week where during the second episode of Hot Shots I attempted to dissect the issues I have with NFT’s, Web3 and so on? Yeah, I tried at least but Dan Olsen here does such a brilliant job at it, and much better than I ever could that I wanted to end that subject on here, for the time being anyhow with this. No matter your opinion on the subject matter, watch this. It’s a whopping 2hrs long but entirely worth it.
On that note, a subtle reminder that you can always come back to the weekly Hot Shot episodes and that your feedback is appreciated and wanted.
I am going to leave you with that, for today as there is plenty for you to get into and send feedback, which would be great. Well, actually, here is another beaut from the weekend, a wonderful twitter thread of fascists getting their asses handed to them.
Until Wednesday, I remain yours, without compromise,
V.
About the BL drops - I still prefer to see them on IG cause honestly I spend quite a bit of time on there and your stories are always at the top for me so I can't miss them. As a second option I'd say email, and last I'd go with telegram - but that's just cause I've got lots of chats and channels on there so some messages get lost in all the mess and I end up seeing them days later