Stephen King, the prolific writer, is going to be the "star witness" in an #antitrust case stopping the merger of two huge leeches!
By "leeches", of course, I mean publishing houses who are trying to take bigger and bigger cuts from authors
https://apnews.com/article/publishing-government-and-politics-d27836f927d66cc48a1ea9a7f1a70085
Technical Writers Without Borders S1E3 -- Publishers
News article (above thread) says "The publishers counter that the merger would strengthen competition among publishers to find and sell the hottest books, by enabling the combined company to offer bigger advance payments and marketing support to authors. It would benefit readers, booksellers and authors, they say. "
Um, no.
Consolidation makes colonization easier. Colonization is the "how" squelching of minority voices and silencing (moderating / editorializing) unpopular ideas that "offend" cash-rich settlers. Consolidation is usually a precursor of colonization. European editors trying to buy their way in to rewrite colonization as "globalisation" -- basically gaslighting people that European languages and billion $ valuations ought to be default, permissible or even respected anywhere else.
Publishers w/marketing budgets become advertisers; the larger the merge the larger "operating budget". Traditional publishers doing the small town newspaper act then have their best salespersons bribe influencers on whatever mainstream "channel" -- NYTimes, Amazon reviews, Fox News, MSNBC, PBS -- any large settler colonialist channel with a significantly zombied population works to get buyers.
"Channel marketing" they call it, where large sums of money get distributed to different corporations to hype the book or author thru Facebook, Twitter, hoping to make a bestseller!
But these Facebook and Twitter are already "consolidated" channels of social media, taking money from everybody, hoping to please everybody. Each coordinating colonialist narratives on what can be "trending" by who gives the best ego massages and followers or fake follower counts and other fascist fronts.
Colonization is all about actions that control what people are talking about, see, hear.
Any move toward the #oligolipath ($OLIGOLIPATHY -- rich dudes buying censorship when they don't "like" being criticized or held accountable) is a bad move.
To Be Continued
Technical Writers Without Borders S1E3.5
"iso publishers against oligolipaths" (#ISO)
"Rivers and lands here were taken from indigenous peoples by supposedly more 'civilized' immigrants ... uh, not that long ago. Who is our expert author on time?"
"FiIK. And all this factual history continues to be oppressed, despite ... gobs of high-tech connected devices with their human dependents?"
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Possibly non-human voices blare into the sound-space -- vague hints of static, as from a distant 📺 or 📻 :: :::
"In the most oppressed place on the Internet, a number of people that has never been accurately reported -- but still, millions of people woke up this morning and reported their crisis, thoughts, hopes, fears and feelings directly to the data hubs of Meta Platforms, Inc.
Its corporate CEO is running a wannabe VR fantasy 'checkout from reality' kind of place. He recently branded it with a white "infinity" sign indicating his intent to continue the fantasy of fascism knowing no ends."
"Most people have not yet caught on that allowing a public company such distortion is dangerous. Maximum criminal and financial exploits amongst its settlers -- who are all now dying in droughts and wildfires as USA becoming more like Russia with young, dumb oligarchs and messy disasters in townships near coal and oil drilling sites."
<professor of ML> "All the data scientists in the world will tell you its politic-obsessed machine bad. Variables that cause extreme distress in humans, such as MASS VIOLENCE and GUN VIOLENCE, RAPE, SUICIDE, and
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE as some of the many examples of societal problems accelerated during rise of market cap! Abusing elders and minors, he gaslights grieving family members or others obsessed with their dead loved ones into keep using the site."
MDs asking everyone to quit ~ read:
