Posts Tagged ‘Ringo Starr’
“What wonder that gigantic corporations employ their enormous wealth and the highest legal talent to strain the laws to their upmost! What wonder that ill-gotten fortunes menace the liberties of the people!”
Tech billionaires are building a post-democratic America. Francesca Bria and a team of researchers supported by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES, the oldest political foundation in Germany) warn that Europe is next…
In late July 2025, deep within the Pentagon’s bureaucratic machinery, the U.S. Army quietly signed away a piece of its sovereignty.
A ten-billion-dollar contract with Palantir Technologies—one of the largest in the Department of Defense’s history—was framed as a move toward “efficiency.”
It consolidated seventy-five procurement agreements into a single contract: a strategic handover of core military functions to a private company whose founder, Peter Thiel, has declared that “freedom and democracy are no longer compatible.”…
… J.D. Vance, propelled to the vice-presidency by $15 million from Peter Thiel, became the face of tech-right governance. Behind him, Thiel’s network moved into the machinery of the state.
Under the banner of “patriotic tech“, this new bloc is building the infrastructure of control—clouds, AI, finance, drones, satellites—an integrated system we call the Authoritarian Stack. It is faster, ideological, and fully privatized: a regime where corporate boards, not public law, set the rules.
Our investigation shows how these firms now operate as state-like powers—writing the rules, winning the tenders, and exporting their model to Europe, where it poses a direct challenge to democratic governance…
[Bria an the team use elegant interactive infographics to map and explain the what’s happened so far in the U.S, then turns to Europe…]
… By mid-2025, its reverberations were already felt across Europe. In Rome, Italian defense officials moved to integrate Elon Musk’s Starlink into military communications. In Berlin, Rheinmetall and Anduril expanded their joint venture to deploy autonomous drone swarms for NATO. The German variants of its drones still run on Californian code. Musk livestreams with the AfD’s Alice Weidel, endorsing the German far-right while supplying NATO infrastructure.
In London, the NHS scaled Palantir’s £330 million Federated Data Platform across tens of millions of patient records, By May 2025, the government had to pay KPMG £8 million just to encourage hospital adoption. Meanwhile, a £1.5 billion defense partnership binds Britain to Palantir’s AI systems.
None of these decisions provoked real debate. Few reached front pages. Together, they reveal the systematic outsourcing of European sovereignty to American oligarchs whose ideology openly undermines democracy.
It is a paradox with devastating implications: pursuing digital sovereignty while ceding control through every signed contract.
Each new contract deepens the trap. Once Palantir becomes indispensable, once Anduril’s drones are NATO standard, once nuclear facilities power AI that runs everything else— the transformation is irreversible. Europe faces an existential choice: build genuine technological sovereignty now, or accept governance by platforms whose architects view democracy as an obsolete operating system.Silicon Valley’s Authoritarian Tech Right is not theorizing this world. They are already building it. The pipelines are operational. The feedback loops are functioning. The sovereignty transfers are completing.
Democracy persists as a legacy interface— maintained for stability, while being systematically hollowed out and replaced.
The question now is whether democratic societies can recognize this formation for what it is—and build alternatives before the infrastructure of control becomes too deeply embedded to dislodge…
Eminently worth reading in full: “The Authoritarian Stack,” @francescabria.bsky.social, @fesonline.bsky.social.
* President Theodore Roosevelt, in his 1907 “Provincetown Speech“
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As we reclaim the rudiments of our republic, we might recall that it was on this date in 1970 that The Magic Christian premiered in the U.S. (having premiered in London two months earlier). Starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr (with appearances by John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Raquel Welch, Spike Milligan, Christopher Lee, Richard Attenborough and Roman Polanski), it was a scathing farce/satire of capitalism, greed, and human vanities, based on Terry Southern‘s 1959 novel of the same name.
“What’s in a name?”*…
Sometimes our first thoughts aren’t our best thoughts…
It’s one of the biggest decisions any band will face: what to call themselves. And yet, so many get it so wrong. Fortunately, for every group that comes up with a terrible name and sticks with it, there’s a band that comes up with a terrible name, plays a few shows under it, maybe releases a demo or even an album or two but then finally comes to its senses. Many well-known and successful groups – from Creedence Clearwater Revival to Green Day – have been through the latter growing pains, starting out life cursed with a misguided moniker before landing on a name destined to adorn the T-shirts of millions of devoted fans. The name makes the band, as they say; here are 25 bands that almost didn’t get made…
“25 Worst Original Names of Famous Bands“
* Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
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As we think again, we might send rhythmic birthday greetings to Sir Richard Starkey (or as his stage name would have it, Ringo Starr); he was born on this date in 1940. A musician, singer, songwriter, and actor, he is best remembered as one of the finest rock percussionists.
When he joined the band in which he made his bones, they were of course The Beatles. But previously, they had been Johnny and the Moondogs, The Beatals, and The Silver Beetles.
Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!…
Michael Deal, a Brooklyn-based graphic designer, has created “Charting the Beatles“:
These visualizations are part of an extensive study of the music of the Beatles. Many of the diagrams and charts are based on secondary sources, including but not limited to sales statistics, biographies, recording session notes, sheet music, and raw audio readings.
Consider, for example, “Authorship and Collaboration” (based on authorial attributions quantified by William J. Dowlding in the book Beatlesongs):
See Mike’s other nifty infographics e.g., (Self-Reference, Song Keys) here. And check out the “open source” collection of Beatles charts and graphs that Mike has solicited here… where one will find your correspondent’s favorite:
Many thanks to reader MH-H for the lead.
As we tap our toes, we might recall that on this date in 1964 Tollie Records (the fourth label to release a Beatle’s disc in the U.S.) released “Twist and Shout” (B-side: “There’s a Place”); it went on to spend 11 weeks on the Billboard chart, rising as high as #2.
Across the Pond on this very same day, George Harrison met Patty Boyd, his future wife (and the inspiration for Eric Clapton’s “Layla”), while filming the train sequence for A Hard Day’s Night.
Take me to your leader…
Just as one begins to feel self-satisfied about the dominance of humanity on earth, and the degree of interconnectedness afforded by Facebook, Twitter, and the like, this from the BBC:
A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered.
Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same inter-related colony, and will refuse to fight one another. The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination.
…
While ants are usually highly territorial, those living within each super-colony are tolerant of one another, even if they live tens or hundreds of kilometres apart. Each super-colony, however, was thought to be quite distinct.
But it now appears that billions of Argentine ants around the world all actually belong to one single global mega-colony.
…
Read the entire story here.
As we contemplate connection (and redouble our efforts to emulate E.M. Forster), we might recall that it was on this date in 1957 that young Paul McCartny attended a church picnic at which a newly-formed band, the Quarrymen, were playing between sets, McCartney played a couple of tunes on the guitar for the group and its leader, John Lennon, who invited McCartney to join. McCartney did, but was slow to serious commitment (Paul missed his first gig, as he had a scout outing to attend).
Still, the group gained a following, changed its name to Johnny and the Moondogs, and recruited McCartney’s friend George Harrison. After bassist Stu Sutcliffe joined, they changed the name again, to the Silver Beetles, then finally to the Beatles. Tommy Moore joined the band as drummer and was replaced by Pete Best in 1960. After a tour to Germany in 1961, Sutcliffe left the band to become a painter (a scant year before he died of a brain hemorrhage), and the band returned to Liverpool. In 1962, five years after Lennon and Mccartney found each other, they found Ringo; Best left the band; the Fab Four–McCartney, Lennon, Harrison, and Starr–recorded “Love Me Do”… and the rest is history.
McCartney and Lennon in the Quarrymen (source: Dull Neon/Random Notes)
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